It is 35 years, give or take, since The Jayhawks formed in Minneapolis. It cannot have seemed, at the time, a likely long-term endeavour. In a city whose mid-’80s rock’n’roll soundtrack was being furnished by local punks like The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum, the establishment of a country band dedicated to chiming choruses and soaring sunshiney harmonies was a spectacularly headlong windmill-tilt. But all those years later, here The Jayhawks still are, and with an album that is certainly no worse than any of its 10 splendid predecessors, and that might age well enough to rank among...
Anyone who was there at the time will tell you how much the original Pretenders meant to Chrissie Hynde, how proud she was of the noise they made. She’d finally put together her dream band. There were hit singles, two albums of smouldering pop ballads and swaggering guitar rock. They were big news everywhere. Then half the band died. You know the story. At that point, Hynde could have gone solo, or put together a new band with different name. Instead, she stuck with the name and a sound she would return to repeatedly across the next 40 years....
As the dust settled on Margo Price’s second album, 2017’s All American Made, a settled picture was beginning to form about the kind of artist she was. The long version would reference the Midwest farmer’s daughter’s fondness for Nashville dive bars, her credentials as a new-wave country outlaw. There’s the duets with Willie Nelson (and a collaboration on some Price-branded marijuana), the spaces shared with Emmylou, with Jack White. All of this is memorialised on Perfectly Imperfect At The Ryman, the live album she released this May, two years after her residency at the famed Nashville tabernacle. It was...
CLICK HERE TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR Peter Gabriel, Michael Stipe, The Flaming Lips, Toots & The Maytals, Tanya Donelly, Tim Buckley, David Bowie, Archie Shepp, Jonathan Richman, Mary Chapin Carpenter and The Rolling Stones all feature in the new Uncut, dated September 2020 and in UK shops from July 16 or available to buy online now. As always, the issue comes with a free CD – this time comprising 15 tracks of the month’s best music. PETER GABRIEL: In his first interview for five years, Gabriel looks back on his ever-evolving career – from prog overlord to art...
Bravo! As they celebrate 25 years of recording, we present the Ultimate Music Guide to one of the world’s most adventurous and self-examining bands: Wilco. From the ramshackle dramas of Uncle Tupelo to the eclectic, Grammy-winning rock of A Ghost Is Born… and beyond. Featuring an exclusive introduction by Jeff Tweedy. To purchase a copy online, click here. Advertisement
They grow up so fast. It seems like just yesterday that The National opened up a studio in the two-car garage behind Aaron Dessner’s Brooklyn home to begin work on High Violet. The album marked a turning point for the band. Across their previous four LPs, acclaim around them had grown exponentially. Midwesterners by birth, they first appeared on the peripheries of the downtown New York rock scene of the early 2000s; by the time of their fourth album, 2007’s Boxer, they had a shelf full of awards, their songs had appeared in TV shows and Barack Obama was...
The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Robert Fripp, Khruangbin, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Laura Marling, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Little Richard all feature in the new Uncut, dated August 2020 and in UK shops from June 18 or available to buy online now. As always, the issue comes with a free CD – this time comprising 15 tracks of the month’s best music. THE BEATLES: As Peter Jackson’s new The Beatles: Get Back film is readied for release, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Jackson and more take us behind the scenes of the Fabs’ strangest chapter, the making of the Let It Be album and...
Over the past month or so, we’ve been hosting a series of lockdown sessions in association with one of our favourite labels, Paradise Of Bachelors. In case you missed any of them, you can now watch all four of these unique at-home performances below: James Elkington Advertisement Itasca Jake Xerxes Fussell Michael Chapman As always, please support the artists and label by buying the albums – visit the official Paradise Of Bachelors site to order directly or find links for local retailers. Advertisement
Since emerging as part of Cecil Taylor’s band in the early ’60s, saxophonist Archie Shepp has been a key figure in the development of jazz – both musically and as a force for social change. He’s played alongside Don Cherry in trailblazing avant-jazz ensemble the New York Contemporary Five and with John Coltrane on Ascension, also appearing live with everyone from Sun Ra to Frank Zappa. Meanwhile his landmark solo albums include the scorching free jazz of 1965’s Fire Music, the Afrocentric explorations of 1968’s The Magic Of Juju and the lush sweep of 1972’s Attica Blues, an intensely...
Introducing the fully-updated, deluxe edition of our Ultimate Music Guide to the music of Paul Weller. Featuring a wealth of spiky archive interviews and in-depth reviews of every album, from The Jam to The Style Council, all the way to this month’s On Sunset. “It’s philosophical,” Paul tells us in an exclusive new interview, “but also tongue in cheek.” Click here to buy! Advertisement
