Hit Singles
Fleet Foxes: Usher Hall, Edinburgh, August 30, 2022
For the last few tours, Fleet Foxes have closed their live sets with “Helplessness Blues” – a song about Robin Pecknold’s struggles to overcome existential worries about his place in the modern world. “What’s my name? What’s my station?” he sings. “Oh, just tell me what I should do”. In the 11 years since the song was first released, you could argue that the conditions that first inspired Pecknold to write “Helplessness Blues” have become more pronounced; but the man singing the song in 2022 is evidently in a different place entirely. Indeed, watching Pecknold bobbing and bouncing around...
The 6th Uncut New Music Playlist Of 2022
You join us on a busy Monday morning where we’re in the throes of finishing an issue. We’ll talk about that soon enough – stand by for revelations concerning the car boot sale purchases of one of our most beloved artists – but for now here’s something to ease you into the week: a list of the records we’ve played over the past couple of days in the virtual Uncut office. Lots of good new stuff from Margo Price, Arctic Monkeys, Pole, Caitlin Rose and The National as well as some more recent discoveries for you. Incidentally, I’m off...
Ezra Furman All Of Us Flames
Plenty of artists openly protest against their categorisation along genre lines, while many more just quietly resent it, but across five albums since 2012, Ezra Furman has unabashedly channelled the rock’n’roll classicism of Reed, Dylan, Young and (especially) Springsteen, while repurposing its power to a unique end. In the run-up to 2013’s breakthrough, the hectic Day Of The Dog, Furman, who came out as a trans woman last year, declared her ambition was to be like Elvis, Buddy Holly or Patti Smith, and though solo identity as a group leader was on her mind there, not glory, with the...
Lou Reed Words & Music, May 1965
In 1965, Lewis Reed was a half-formed thing. In fluctuating quantities he was a street poet, a reporter, a Greenwich Village folkie, a comedian, a pop hack. He had his own ideas, some of them borrowed, a few of them blue. He was an experiment. He wasn’t yet an original. Run the tape backwards – to 1963/4, say – and it’s evident that Reed’s metamorphosis was speeding up. Back then, when two years in pop history was an age, the Dylanisms came loaded with harmonica and deference to the workmanlike chug of the blues. Peer back further, into the...
Bridget St John From There / To Here UK/US Recordings 1974-1982
Speaking in the mid-1970s, singer-songwriter Bridget St John was aware that her personal musical golden age was over. “It’s not enough to make nice records anymore,” she told the Liquorice fanzine. “You’ve got to have a whole campaign behind you.” A slightly untogether free spirit, St John struggled to adapt to a more bread-headed world, with this 3CD boxed set, stacked with unheard recordings, capturing the Nico-voiced bohemian’s curious and woolly attempts to stay artistically upright in a time when being a John Peel show regular was no longer quite enough. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover...
Arctic Monkeys announce new album, The Car
Arctic Monkeys have announced details of their new album, The Car. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut The band’s seventh studio album, The Car features ten new songs written by Alex Turner, produced by James Ford and recorded at Butley Priory, Suffolk, RAK Studios, London and La Frette, Paris. The deluxe LP will be available on limited grey vinyl with a tip on sleeve and mounted gloss cover image via the band’s official store. An exclusive, custard coloured LP will be available at independent record shops and HMV stores. The Car...
Hear Bitchin Bajas’ new track, “Amorpha”
Bitchin Bajas are back, with their first new album since 2017’s Bajas Fresh. ORDER NOW: Joni Mitchell is on the cover of the latest issue of Uncut Bitchin Bajas – aka Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan – release Bajascillators on 2xLP and cassette September 2 by Drag City. You can watch the video for “Amorpha”, from the album, below. Advertisement The band have also announced a run of American dates: Oct.12 – Minneapolis, MN @ Parkway Theater * Oct.13 – Iowa City, IA @ Trumpet Blossom Oct.14 – Rock Island, IL @ Rozz Tox Oct.15 – Milwaukee,...
The National: How we made “Bloodbuzz Ohio”
The National arrive in the UK this coming week, for their first tour here since 2019, to play All Points East and the Connect festival. To celebrate, here’s our piece on the making of their classic track “Bloodbuzz Ohio” from Uncut’s June 2020 issue. Now read on… In 2009, The National were burned out. They had toured solidly on the back of their Alligator (2005) and Boxer (2008) albums and found themselves in what guitarist Aaron Dessner calls “a dark place… It was exhaustion and everything that comes with being that fatigued,” he says. “Relationships were suffering. We almost...
Tall Dwarfs Unravelled: 1981 2002
Tall Dwarfs emerged among a handful of standout ’80s punk-adjacent acts from New Zealand, burbling up in the wake of iconic label Flying Nun’s founding; and they tread a familiar path – locally beloved, but otherwise more obscure, an intriguing and essential layer in the country’s cultural underground. They were born out of cult band Toy Love, who were at one point so popular they made the hop to Sydney, on the promise of a springboard to London, but were swiftly met and then rejected by head-scratching pub-rock punters who didn’t get it. Crestfallen, Dwarfs co-founders Chris Knox and...Recent Posts
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