Hit Singles

Hit Singles

Wilco – Cruel Country

After the amiable twang of their 1995 debut A.M. and the more ambitiously conceptual rock’n’roll of 1996’s Being There, Wilco went straight-up pop on 1998’s Summerteeth, trading the pedal steel for an orchestra and treating The Beach Boys as their new Gram Parsons. Country, even alt.country, was far too restrictive, too conservative both musically and culturally, for many bands identified with that movement, and some of the biggest acts – The Old 97s, Joe Henry, The Jayhawks – were toying with power pop and art rock. Few, however, went as far or as hard as Wilco, who by the 2000s were embracing noise and krautrock to capture something essential about America at the turn of the century. ORDER NOW: Queen are on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut It’s probably a coincidence that the upcoming 20th anniversary of Wilco’s 2001 breakout album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is preceded by a new studio album that gets back to their country roots. While it’s still a far cry from anything coming out of Nashville at the moment, Cruel Country is self-consciously grounded in classic country music and old-time folk – two styles that influenced Jeff Tweedy’s earliest music 30 years ago, first… Read More →

Hit Singles

Kikagaku Moyo – Kumoyo Island

Kikagaku Moyo seemed like a band going places. After initially struggling to make headway in their native country – despite tapping into a noble lineage of Japanese longhairs stretching back through Acid Mothers Temple to Happy End and Flower Travellin’ Band, Kikagaku bandleader Go Kurosawa complained to MonsterChildren.com that “most people [in Japan] don’t like this kind of thing, they like following the rules” – they’d been steadily building a worldwide following since relocating to Amsterdam in 2017. They toured with Wooden Shjips and hooked up with Ryley Walker at Le Guess Who? for a heady live improv set, released on his Husky Pants label as Deep Fried Grandeur; and last year they reached their biggest audience to date with a well-received set on the main stage at End Of The Road. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut But now it’s all over. A brief statement on their website confirms that Kumoyo Island will be their final album and Kikagaku Moyo will “go on an indefinite hiatus” after their 2022 world tour, having “truly achieved our core mission as a band”. Exactly what that mission was and how Kumoyo Island might be seen… Read More →

Hit Singles

The Eagles – Ultimate Music Guide

As the band head out on a major reunion tour, we present the Ultimate Music Guide to The Eagles. A band who made melodic music drawing on an explosive creative tension, their massive-selling albums unleashed the metaphorical power of California for a generation. “Two voices called to you from where they stood…” Buy a copy here!

Hit Singles

Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide to The Eagles

BUY THE EAGLES ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE HERE One thing you can be pretty sure the Eagles never did was to take it easy. Though already veterans of several countrywide late 1960s bands from the tail-end of the country rock boom, by the time the original line-up came together at Doug Weston’s Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, they weren’t so much disheartened by what had gone before, more primed and ready to make their next move. In the band’s circle were other promising artists. Linda Ronstadt, with whom they first performed together. John David Souther, who was in a band with Frey. And Jackson Browne, who, like Souther, contributed material to the new group. “Everyone was coming to California, and in the end that was what they were writing about,” Browne told Uncut, in just one of the eye-opening archive interviews you’ll find inside this latest Ultimate Music Guide. “That projected dream of what freedom could be. Vacate your assigned positions in life and be what you fucking want.” Advertisement Now in the right place at the right time, the Eagles seized their moment. Ambitious musically as well as personally, they were driven by what some called perfectionism, but might more… Read More →

Hit Singles

Norma Tanega – I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964–1971

It’s been rewarding to observe, over the past half decade, blossoming interest in the songs and life of Norma Tanega. Raised in Long Beach, California, she found a small degree of infamy in the mid-’60s, when her “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog” single hit the Top 40 in the US and UK. After time spent playing the coffee house circuit, this newfound visibility led to international travel, including a fated meeting with Dusty Springfield in London – the two would be lovers for a time, and Dusty would record some beautifully tender renditions of Tanega’s songs. There were only two albums to show for Tanega’s time in the industry, though (and a third unreleased set from the late ’60s); I’m The Sky contains a smart selection from those three song collections and a back half of unreleased demos. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut If the sometimes elaborate arrangements of her solo albums remind of other singer-songwriters of her times, the demos that make up the second half of I’m The Sky offer another angle on Tanega’s voice and songwriting. There’s something in their sturdy ranginess that suggests Mimi Fariña, while the odd… Read More →

Hit Singles

Arcade Fire – We

Anyone harbouring the ambition to create a work that encapsulates the chaos and confusion of these times faces a fundamental obstacle: there’s rather a lot to cover. That’s certainly one of the reasons that We – Arcade Fire’s sixth album and first since 2017’s Everything Now – required the most protracted birth process in their two-decade career. In a BBC interview in 2020, frontman Win Butler claimed to have written “records and records” of material while locked down at home. Nor did this torrent stop when they were able to re-enter the world and work on the album in studios in New Orleans, El Paso and Mount Desert Island, Maine, through 2020 and 2021. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Somehow, the band and producer Nigel Godrich honed down this mountain of material to seven songs and 40 minutes. The one song they debuted in the first year of the pandemic – “Generation A”, which they performed on the night of the US presidential election on Late Night With Stephen Colbert – was among those that didn’t make the cut. A 45-minute ambient track released via the meditation app Headspace suggests another of… Read More →

Hit Singles

T.Rex – T.Rex 1972

In 1972, England found itself staring down a very bleak decade. Inflation continued to soar, and unemployment hit its highest rate since the 1930s, with nearly one out of every four people out of work. Tensions in Ireland escalated, and uncertainty loomed on seemingly every front. Those and other trends would culminate in blackouts and dole queues, and a general sense that the country and its culture were crumbling. But the sprite born Mark Feld existed in direct and ecstatic opposition to such doom and gloom. The country moped, but he rocked. That summer the rockstar rechristened Marc Bolan greeted his fans with a hearty mwaaaa-waaah-wahh-waaaaaah-oah! that served as a fanfare for the buoyant groove and giddy poesy of “Metal Guru” and for the poses and skewed introspection of The Slider. It wasn’t the best-selling album of the year – Rod Stewart outsold Bolan with Never A Dull Moment – but Bolan arguably more than any other musician at the time seemed to represent the future of rock’n’roll, not just where it was headed but who was defining it. ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut 1972 was, of course, a signal year for… Read More →

Hit Singles

Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal – Get On Board

The original Get On Board by blues icons Terry and McGhee was a 10” album released on the Folkways label in 1952, the eventual fruits of a partnership formed a decade earlier and which thrived well into the ’60s. The record’s contents were key texts in the early musical education of both Mahal and Cooder during their teenage years in California, and a shared love when both were members of The Rising Sons (although the band’s only album, recorded in ’65, went unreleased for more than quarter of a century). ORDER NOW: Miles Davis is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut However, this second set to bear the title is far from a straight tribute or reworking of the first. Just three of the nine songs from the old masters’ release feature here, and a wider net is cast to fill the remaining berths with material from the subsequent Terry/McGhee catalogue, found on arguably better-known albums the duo recorded as their profile became more visible on the burgeoning club and coffee house scene of the late ’50s and early ’60s. The original three that do make the cut act as a template for the rest of the album,… Read More →

Hit Singles

Various Artist – Saturno 2000 – La Rebajada de Los Sonideros 1962​-​1983

In 1970s Mexico, an entire sub-genre of music was created by DJs doing what John Peel used to sometimes – unwittingly – do, which is to play records at the wrong speed. The clubbers of Monterrey and Mexico City loved the uptempo cumbia music coming out of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru, but they often found the tempos too fast for the dancefloor. Commercial turntables with variable speed controls, like the Technics SL-1200, were prohibitively expensive, so Mexican soundsystem DJs – or “sonideros” – found ingenious ways of adjusting the electrical circuitry on their sturdy Garrard 88 turntables so that they could slow down 33rpm LPs and play them as low as 25 or 20rpm. This way, rhythms that were usually between 100 and 120bpm could be slowed down to 80-100bpm. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut The genre became known as “cumbia rebajada” – “rebajada” meaning lowered, or slowed down – and you’ll find plenty of Mixcloud and Soundcloud websites filled with rebajada playlists that were recorded onto tape. But the best introduction to this proto trip-hop is told by Saturno 2000: La Rebajada de Los Sonideros, a 15-track Analog Africa compilation… Read More →

Hit Singles

Wet Leg – Wet Leg

The breakthrough British guitar band of last year, Wet Leg created an inescapable earworm with their debut single “Chaise Longue” and its surreal, sunny, self-directed video. After their former folk-tinged project fizzled out in 2019, Isle Of Wight duo Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers adopted a new name and sound with the intention of making music that was emphatically fun, “goofy and a little bit rude”. Signing to indie hit-maker label Domino, home of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand, they struck a perfect mood-lifting chord for the end of Covid lockdown, selling out their riotous live shows and even making waves in America. But this debut album arrives in darker, more serious times. Their arch, playful, nursery-rhyme punk-pop escapism risks sounding very Last Year. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut In fairness, the initial novelty buzz of the band’s early singles has not faded. “Chaise Longue” still sounds instantly, ridiculously catchy and even lightly experimental behind its propulsive new-wave garage-punk throb and hilariously deadpan lyric, a sprechgesang masterclass in saucy innuendo delivered with sexy-cool, arched-eyebrow nonchalance. Its lesser sequel “Wet Dream” is more conventionally indie-rock in sound and more overtly sexual in content,… Read More →

Hit Singles

Pavement – Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal

When Pavement split after touring their fifth album, it was hardly a surprise. They’d always been a strange entity, not really a band at all in the conventional sense. Formed by Stephen ‘SM’ Malkmus and Scott ‘Spiral Stairs’ Kannberg, two Stockton, California friends into hardcore and the gonzo surrealism of The Fall and Captain Beefheart, they were on shaky foundations from the beginning: after recording their first EP, Slay Tracks 1933-1969, Malkmus took off to Europe, leaving Kannberg to release it, and was surprised to find a finished copy in a record store on his travels. After success came, they still took breaks after each album without knowing if they would reconvene. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Much of that ambivalence, it seems, stemmed from Malkmus, whose apparent disinterest was countered by his preternatural way with a tune and brilliant, fragmentary lyrics. Terror Twilight has plenty of both, though it was perhaps less obvious in 1999: Pavement’s noisy abandon and freeform irreverence had long been eroding away, gradually replaced by a stately classic-rock feel which didn’t seem quite as hip. Even the group seemed embarrassed by the record, much of it recorded… Read More →

Hit Singles

Father John Misty – Chloë and the Next 20th Century

A lot needs to be unpacked whenever a new Father John Misty record arrives – that’s the case even when it’s one as good as Chloë And The Next 20th Century, an album of lovelorn orchestral melancholia spiced with the traditional dollop of cynicism. When Misty appeared on the scene with his 2012 debut Fear Fun – one of Uncut’s 300 best albums of the past 25 years – he felt intoxicatingly fresh. There were winding melodies, good looks, a great voice, witty lyrics and playful interviews where he carefully laid out the central conceit: Father John Misty as an exaggerated representation of Josh Tillman’s true self. But as his fame grew, things began to sour. His lyrics, occasionally tipping from incisive to cruel, were dissected, and Tillman would then bite back in interviews and on Twitter. The feedback loop did nobody any favours. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Somebody as culture-savvy as Tillman could sense the trap he was creating, so a few years ago he abandoned social media and stopped conducting extensive interviews, preferring to, as they say, let the music do the talking. But even then he’d still blur… Read More →

Hit Singles

Daniel Rossen – You Belong There

You Belong There is Daniel Rossen’s first ever full-length solo album. But, as the saying goes, it’s taken him a lifetime to get here. For some 20 years, Rossen has been a member of Grizzly Bear, the orchestral Brooklyn troupe who smartened up the city after The Strokes’ rock’n’roll reign, pioneering a wave of literate, sonically sumptuous indie rock in their wake. Grizzly Bear released five studio albums, won acclaim from the likes of Radiohead – Johnny Greenwood declared them his favourite band – and spawned a side-project of sorts in the shape of Department Of Eagles, which Rossen actually formed while studying linguistics and psychology at New York University around the turn of the millennium. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Grizzly Bear’s intrinsic grasp of a certain strain of melodic rock classicism – that of Van Dyke Parks, Paul McCartney and Randy Newman – set them up for longevity. But there were also signs of creative tension, in particular between the band’s nominal leader Ed Droste – who began Grizzly Bear as a solo project in the early 2000s – and Rossen, who joined in 2005 and became the group’s second… Read More →

Hit Singles

Hank Williams – I’m Gonna Sing: The Mother’s Best Gospel Radio Recordings

Hank Williams enjoyed a simple metaphor as much as he liked a drink, so let’s compare him to a fine liquor. How would you like him served? On the rocks? Neat, undiluted? Two hundred per cent proof? I’m Gonna Sing is all of that and, swallowed whole, it makes an intoxicating case for a re-evaluation of Hank’s gifts. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Since his death, the life of Hank Williams has been turned into a parable in which the singer’s life of pain – of the spine as much as the heart – was reflected in his music. Hank was 29 when he died in the back seat of his Cadillac in 1953, but his voice was ancient. The tragedy of Hank’s passing framed his reputation, and while he exists in the broader public imagination as the author of the jaunty country novelty “Hey, Good Lookin’” (a Southern-fried version of a Cole Porter ditty), the depth of his talent is to be found in his broader catalogue, where Williams walks the thin line between hurt and bottomless misery. In marketing shorthand, Hank Williams is sometimes referred to as “the hillbilly Shakespeare”,… Read More →

Hit Singles

Jon Spencer & The Hitmakers – Spencer Gets It Lit

Before there was Jack White, there was Jon Spencer, the original underground white boy rock’n’roll freak force with jet-black hair and an encyclopedic knowledge of the blues. In 1991, after playing in Pussy Galore, he formed The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion with Judah Bauer, Russell Simins and a theremin. The band blasted a scuzzed-out amalgam of garage rock, punk, blues, R&B and occasionally hip-hop, with no bass guitar, unwitting progenitors to the garage revival of the new millennium and bass-free acts like the White Stripes and The Black Keys. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Spencer has always followed his offbeat instincts, seemingly allergic to the requirements of a commercial crossover. His particular aesthetic – monster-movie camp meets a record collector’s studiousness and a charismatic preacher’s howls – has endeared him to a host of likeminded but more famous oddballs, everyone from the late Anthony Bourdain to the director Edgar Wright. But it has also placed him firmly in the margins, in spite of a few hits like “Bellbottoms” (used in Wright’s film Baby Driver) and funk burner “Calvin” from 1998’s Acme. Instead of moving zillions of units, he built his reputation as… Read More →

Hit Singles

Aldous Harding – Warm Chris

No stranger to the incomprehensible visual metaphor, Aldous Harding is wearing a blonde wig and a lizard’s tail in the video for “Lawn”, the skittish beach samba released to herald the arrival of her fourth album. “Can you imagine me just being out and free?” the 31-year-old asks. “Doors are the way you leave/Open it up to me”. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Listening to the defiantly peculiar Warm Chris, it’s not easy to imagine how much more untethered the artist born Hannah Topp can get. The cryptic crossword lyrics and séance medium voices that defined 2019’s Art Deco-toned Designer are even more apparent on a record that welds the shape-shifting artistry of Cindy Sherman to the musical surrealism of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, with an unsettling bossa nova undertow. Determinedly following a logic of its own, it feels like John Cale’s baroque costume party Paris 1919, scripted by The Day Today’s Collaterlie Sisters. Idiosyncratic has been Harding’s modus operandi ever since her mid-twenties when she reneged on her plan to become a vet, having been wary of following her folkie parents into a life on the margins. Born and raised in Lyttleton,… Read More →

Hit Singles

Son House – Forever On My Mind

When Son House returned to performing in the 1960s, he played “Death Letter” so often it became his signature tune. It was a highlight of every setlist, and sometimes he’d run through it multiple times during a show, as though something within the song eluded him. He sang it like he had to puzzle something out or find some dark secret at the song’s core, which made every performance sound slightly different. He would invert the guitar riff, reorder the verses, change the lyrics, borrow from different sources, vary the tempo: sometimes fast and jumpy, sometimes slow and languorous. The most popular version, which he recorded in the 1960s, is a fast version, with a nervy twitch in his guitar playing and an emotional urgency in his singing. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Compare that to the new version of “Death Letter”, which appears on Forever On My Mind, an album of lost recordings assembled and produced by Dan Auerbach. House recorded it in an intimate setting, with his manager Dick Waterman running the tape and with no plans for commercial release. He slows the song down and stretches it out. “Well,… Read More →

Hit Singles

The 2nd Uncut New Music Playlist Of 2022

At times like these we can always take heart from the musical community, whether they are directly trying to raise money and awareness or simply putting more joy and understanding into the world. Belle And Sebastian’s new single “If They’re Shooting At You” (“…kid, you must be doing something right”) comes with a video created in collaboration with photographers covering the conflict in Ukraine. All income and royalties will go to the Red Cross/DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal and you can also donate directly here. This playlist includes some similarly emotional and thought-provoking new videos from the likes of Fantastic Negrito and El Khat; there are also people in horror film costumes dancing goofily on their patios. Plus terrific new tunes from The Black Keys, Gruff Rhys, Hannah Peel, Altin Gün, Spiritualized, Kevin Morby, Fatoumata Diawara, José González, Floating Points and lots, lots more… BELLE AND SEBASTIAN “If They’re Shooting At You” (Matador) Advertisement THE BLACK KEYS “Wild Child” (Nonesuch) FANTASTIC NEGRITO “Oh Betty” (Storefront Records) SPIRITUALIZED “The Mainline Song” (Bella Union) KEVIN MORBY “This Is A Photograph” (Dead Oceans) OLIVER SIM “Romance With A Memory” (Young) VEPS “Ballerina (Norah)” (Kanine) Advertisement ALTIN GÜN “Badi Sabah Olmadan” (Glitterbeat) LALALAR “Abla Deme… Read More →

Hit Singles

Carson McHone – Still Life

A vivid presence on the Austin music scene for nearly a decade now, Carson McHone drew wider acclaim with 2018’s exceptional Carousel, issued on Loose the following year. And while subsequent tours of the UK and Europe furthered her reputation as a country traditionalist with leftfield leanings, Still Life feels altogether more ambitious. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut It’s certainly rockier in places, with McHone and producer/multi-instrumentalist Daniel Romano driving hard on tunes like “Hawks Don’t Share” and “Only Lovers”, punctuated by fat brass and gnarly guitars. Saxophonist David Nardi and Mark Lalama (piano, organ and accordion) are key to all this too, helping bring an intuitive sense of motion. There’s swishy R&B and some Southern soul as well, though McHone and her acoustic guitar remain squarely front and centre of these captivating songs, so that any embellishments are complementary rather than a distraction. Her supple voice is a thing of understated beauty, bonded to tales of emotional attachment and release in a way that suggests full closure is still a little way off. With its nod to Dolly Parton’s “Little Sparrow”, the narrator of the expertly measured “Folk Song” is… Read More →

Hit Singles

The Coral – The Coral

Time has a way of smoothing the rough edges of songs, sanding down what was once shocking until it feels safe. Some moments are curiously resistant, though: The Beatles’ “Revolution”, say, its stinging fuzz still as unhealthily exciting as it must have been almost 54 years ago. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut The Coral’s “Skeleton Key”, too, has proved rather hardy: the first proper taste of their self-titled 2002 debut, it combined unhinged Beefheart clatter with shanty chants and a space-rock middle-eight seemingly beamed in from a post-Syd Floyd album. Oh, and a jokey disco-funk coda in which the band seem to shout-out kids TV series Byker Grove. The mixing of these elements isn’t noteworthy in itself, but the way the sextet managed to make the result feel so natural and cohesive certainly is. The Coral were in their late teens or early twenties by this point, and had been playing since the late ’90s, feverishly handing around music – Safe As Milk and Forever Changes were two big favourites – and joints. Alan Wills formed the Deltasonic label primarily to release their early stuff, and debut single “Shadows Fall” appeared… Read More →

Hit Singles

Andy Bell – Flicker

The cover of Andy Bell’s second solo album features an obscured portrait of Bell shot for Ride’s 1990 debut, Nowhere. This old image of distorted youth reflects the themes of Flicker, a record that sees Bell explore ideas of nostalgia and memory while re-engaging with the optimism and playfulness of youth from the perspective of a man of 50. The songs similarly cross time zones: some were written as far back as the 1990s and all were initially recorded in 2016 by Oasis’s Gem Archer before Bell completed them in lockdown in 2021, when it was hard to do anything but reflect. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut Bell has been coaxed into his late-blossoming solo career by the Sonic Cathedral label. It started with a 7” (“Plastic Bag”/“The Commune”) in 2019 that Bell immediately recognised as the first step in his long-delayed journey into the spotlight. It’s taken a few decades for Bell to leave the security of a band, but he has now embraced the situation, releasing two albums in 18 months. The first, The View From Halfway Down, saw Bell test the waters before this more ambitious double album,… Read More →