From Uncut’s August 2020 issue , the songwriting seeker talks us through her back catalogue… A follow-up to this spring’s Song For Our Daughter may be a little way off, explains Laura Marling. “If I’m on the road for an extended period of time, I tend to have written an album by the time I get back,” she says. “Obviously that’s been completely scuppered by coronavirus. When I’m at home I play the guitar but I don’t really feel the need to write – I mean, I’m at home, I’ve got nothing to miss.” Advertisement For now, though,...
From Uncut’s September 2016 issue : TOM PETTY gets the old gang back together. That is, his doomed first band, MUDCRUTCH, a mix of Heartbreakers and guitar teachers reunited for a long-awaited turn in the spotlight. Uncut meets a reborn Mudcrutch in New York, and explores with them the lost hinterland of a rock superstar. Tom Petty came to success in a very roundabout way. During his induction into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in New York in early June, Petty explains that, even today—having spent the best part of three decades refining back-to-basics American rock—he still considers himself to...
“Before Elvis,” John Lennon famously said, describing the cultural landscape of the 1950s, “there was nothing.” And if you were a young aspiring musician looking for an escape from your suburban existence, then that must have been how the decade seemed. Post-war austerity. Scant television. “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?” on the radio. Advertisement As you’ll read in this new magazine, though, if it felt like there was nothing before Elvis, there was plenty going on at around the same time. John might have inclined to Elvis, but alongside his explosion there was a volley of...
This is Josh Tillman’s debut at the Royal Albert Hall – or, as he tells the audience, the first time he’s ever even been in a room this distinguished – but it feels like the venue that Father John Misty was born to play. Ever since Tillman recorded Fear Fun as Father John Misty in 2012, he has perfected the art of the opulent confessional – part folk, part cabaret – that feels tailor-made for the interior of the Albert Hall, a womb designed by Fabergé. Advertisement THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING...
Some musicians get their first glimpse of celebrity, flinch in the glare of the spotlight, and quickly burrow their way back underground. But Duncan Sumpner, you suspect, knew from the beginning that fame – even fame on a very small and grassroots indie level – was not for him. Advertisement THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE A schoolteacher from Oughtibridge, a residential village on the outskirts of Sheffield, Sumpner has released a string...
Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, heroic challenger to male authority, has stamped her identity on Western culture over millennia, the subject of ancient Greek tragedy and French drama, European operas and world cinema. In Sophocles’s play, she ends up hanging herself rather than being walled up alive in a tomb. Eiko Ishibashi’s latest album may share a name with the tragic heroine, but there’s no melodrama here. The prevailing mood of Antigone is a stalling world nudged by invisible forces off its axis, beginning its slow spin into decay or disaster. Which makes it a pertinent listen for the wobbly...
In 2022, Neil Young embarked on his first concert tour in almost four years, 15 shows that never strayed too far from the Californian coastline. For Young – subjected, like all of us, to lockdown restrictions – this was the longest period he’d been off the road since 1978. As a consequence, Coastal finds Young in unusually reflective form. “It’s going to be a real trip walking out there on stage,” he confides to driver (and straight man) Jerry Don Borden. “Focus somewhere else,” advises Borden sagely as he pilots Young’s beloved Silver Eagle tour bus along the highway....
Noddy Holder is recounting the colourful discussions that led to Slade In Flame, the 1975 feature film that stalled the band’s career but has been subsequently hailed (by critic Mark Kermode) as “the Citizen Kane of British pop movies”, poised for a plush 50th anniversary remaster by the BFI. “We were adamant we were not going to do a slapstick movie, which is what was expected of us,” says the ever-avuncular Holder. “Although, we were quite interested in one idea for a sci-fi horror movie – a spoof of The Quatermass Experiment. We all liked it apart from Dave...
Lana Del Rey has released a new single, “Henry, come on“. Advertisement The track was written by Del Rey and Luke Laird, who both produced the track together with Drew Erickson. THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE The track, released by Polydor Records, is the first preview of her upcoming album The Right Person Will Stay. Advertisement
Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe have announced two collaborative albums. Luminal and Lateral will be released together on June 6 through Verve Records. You can hear ”Suddenly” and ”Big Empty Country (Edit)”, from Luminal and Lateral respectively, below. Advertisement THE MAY 2025 ISSUE OF UNCUT IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW: STARRING SMALL FACES, A SMALL FACES RARITIES CD, RADIOHEAD, LOU REED, BOOTSY COLLINS, POGUES, THESE NEW PURITANS, SUZANNE VEGA AND MORE Eno and Wolfe first met through their environmental work when they gave a South By South West talk on ‘Art and Climate’. The pair then met again when they were each showing their visual and...
