Presenting our latest online exclusive: The Ultimate Companion to Ziggy Stardust. The full scoop on Bowie’s most famous creation – Ziggy Stardust. Includes a massive new interview, the lowdown on every Bowie’s music from 1970-1973. Also: rediscovered interviews, all in this latest issue. Buy a copy here!
The next band to kindly volunteer for a gentle grilling by you, the Uncut readers, are alt.country pioneers Cowboy Junkies. Formed in Toronto in 1985 by Michael, Margo and Peter Timmins plus bassist Alan Anton, Cowboy Junkies have were ahead of the curve in rejecting ’80s studio trickery to record landmark album The Trinity Session in a church, its languid and haunting sound proving hugely influential. Since then, the band’s discography has expanded to include more than 20 albums, including the powerful recent one-two of All That Reckoning – partly inspired by William Blake and described by Uncut as...
It seems simple enough on the surface. “Baby, there ain’t no clouds,” Jana Horn sings blithely on the title track of her debut album, voice as clear as a mountain stream. “Baby, there ain’t no crying, or figuring this thing out”. However, for all of the promise of blue skies, sunshine and one-word answers, there’s something profoundly inscrutable about Optimism, a curious deep-fake ‘folk’ record which smacks of Broadcast, hippy Donovan, Julia Holter, Syd Barrett and the more wistful bits of The Cure while retaining an odd, metallic taste entirely of its own. By the time you’ve realised that...
The centrepiece of Good And Green Again, the ingenious and soulful new album by North Carolina-based folk musician Jake Xerxes Fussell, is “The Golden Willow Tree”, an epic story-song about the sinking of a ship. Combining lyrics and melodies from various folk tunes – including a song by The Carter Family and another by a North Georgia singer named Paralee McCloud – it’s an intricate tale of maritime espionage, of courage and conspiracy, betrayal and comeuppance, told over a dozen swashbuckling verses. Fussell recounts a sailor’s offer to scuttle his own ship to win the favour of a rival...
Rob Aldridge isn’t familiar to most, but that’s no reflection on his talent. Having spent the last few years touring the American South and breaking onto the festival circuit, first as a solo artist and then heading up The Proponents, the Alabama native is finally starting to get noticed as a songwriting frontman capable of a gnawing hook and a finely weighted turn of phrase. Jason Isbell is a fan, having commandeered Aldridge and the band as the opening act on his recent swing through the state. And the connection to Drive-By Truckers is deepened by way of The...
It’s unfortunate that The Soundcarriers are so identified with ‘hauntology’, the term coined by Simon Reynolds to describe what he referred to as “ghostified” music. While it’s unquestionably invited and warranted, this emphasis on the Nottingham band’s expertise at evoking a bygone era, as well as the technical manner in which they do so, focuses the spotlight on their historical influences. Prioritising style over their substance does the quartet few favours, however, because it makes it harder to think of them as a ‘living’ band. The reality is that while they may raise ghosts from the past – among...
Celebrating the recent re-release of the band’s classic first two albums, the Ultimate Music Guide to the Pretenders. How Chrissie Hynde put together the first No 1 band of the 1980s, piloting them through drama and rebirth, with their attitude and their unique sound intact. “I got to have some of your attention…” Buy a copy here!
BUY THE PRETENDERS ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE It’s fitting in a way, for a boxing fan like Chrissie Hynde, that she should enjoy a reputation as a fighter: in fact, the ultimate comeback kid. More than once she’s had to take the knocks, but she returns undaunted. Maybe a bit bruised by the experience, but with her spirit as strong as ever. It’s that spirit and resilience we celebrate in this latest Ultimate Music Guide, to her band: the Pretenders. If Chrissie was a nearly-was of punk rock – an employee of Malcolm McLaren’s shop Sex; in bands, however...
The writing was on the wall for Mary Wilson long before “Reflections”, The Supremes’ 1967 hit, and 13th consecutive million-seller. It may have been the first single where the name of the group on the label was prefaced by the words “Diana Ross And…”, but lead vocal opportunities were already scarce – Wilson was afforded the middle-mic spotlight on just three tracks from the trio’s previous half-dozen albums. ORDER NOW: Johnny Marr is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Yet, even when Motown founder Berry Gordy stepped back from overseeing the trio three years later to...
A cover can be a disguise or a source of warmth. Or it can be someone else’s song. For Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, all definitions apply. Ask her to explain the process of choosing which songs to record on her third album of covers and she will respond with a rush of consciousness that mirrors the way the record was made. ORDER NOW: Johnny Marr is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Some of the songs evolved through live performance, sometimes as reactions to Marshall’s own compositions. She took to singing Frank Ocean’s “Bad Religion”...