This Week's Top Releases

Doves The Universal Want

Rock history tells us that there is usually a pretty good reason why chart-topping bands take an extended break. From rehab to road weariness to the age-old ‘musical differences’ – code for mutual loathing brought on by too long in each other’s company – it rarely bodes well. Doves’ 11-year absence, on the other hand, has, we’re told, simply been the result of midlife drift, the kind that sees old friends lose touch as real-world responsibilities take over. Having explored various musical avenues with their solo projects – Jez and Andy Williams with Black Rivers, Jimi Goodwin with solo...

Send us your questions for Todd Rundgren

The great thing about pressing play on a new Todd Rundgren release is that you genuinely have no idea what it’s going to sound like. Will it be a sumptuous slice of blue-eyed soul? Will it be an intergalactic prog opus, a la Utopia? Will it be a synthy studio exploration, or a note-perfect Beatles homage? Or perhaps all of those things together, as on his 1973 masterpiece A Wizard, A True Star? But as you can hear below, “Espionage” is something new again for the ever-evolving Rundgren. Featuring Iraqi-Canadian rapper Narcy, it’s an impressively on-point cosmic hip-hop voyage...

PJ Harvey, Tom Petty, Idles and more star in the new Uncut

In this issue, John Fogerty talks about the influence that one of his favourite bands had on Creedence Clearwater Revival: “Booker T & The MG’s were our idols and our template for how you ought to be as a band. They were unselfish in their music.” While I suspect Fogerty’s observation was more about the MG’s’ creative generosity of spirit, I’d like to think that the phrase “unselfish in their music” also applies to the joy they brought listeners. It’s a positive trait I’m sure is true of many of the musicians we write about in Uncut – whether...

Uncut – November 2020

CLICK HERE TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR PJ Harvey, Tom Petty, Idles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Matt Berninger, Steel Pulse, Hüsker Dü, Laura Veirs, Chris Hillman, Isaac Hayes and Hen Ogledd all feature in the new Uncut, dated November 2020 and in UK shops from September 17 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 new music. PJ HARVEY: 25 years after To Bring You My Love, we talk to Harvey’s closest collaborators about toy dinosaurs, Dorset skittle alleys and Dylan bootlegs – and how a...

Toots Hibbert: “Believe in what you believe in”

The sad news came through this morning (September 12) that reggae pioneer Toots Hibbert of Toots And The Maytals has died, aged 77. Uncut were honoured to interview him just a couple of months ago, on the release of his new album Got To Be Tough. Here’s Graeme Thomson’s full feature, which originally appeared in the September 2020 issue of Uncut, Take 280. “Is a good day,” pronounces Frederick “Toots” Hibbert breezily, calling Uncut from his studio in Kingston. “Is good here all the time.” It’s precisely the kind of blunt positivity we’ve come to expect from the man...

Music Video Premiere: Vallyre Pairs Latest Single “Bloodsweat” With Mysterious Visuals

Boston-based artist Vallyre has just dropped a brand new music video to pair her catchy single “Bloodsweat,” released a few days ago. The American singer-songwriter is introducing herself with full force to audiences worldwide, thanks to her sophisticated blend of dance, pop, and electro-inspired textures that lay the perfect foundation for her to deliver a hauntingly beautiful vocal performance. The visuals pair the song to perfection, and bring a mysterious feel to the imagery chosen to mirror “Bloodsweat”’s soundtrack. Often compared to entertainers such as Beyoncé and J.Lo, Vallyre’s passion for music leaves you intoxicated every single time she...

Southern Journey (Revisited)

The original Southern Journey was a schlep undertaken by the American musicologist Alan Lomax in 1959. He and his then partner, English folksinger Shirley Collins, lugged an Ampex 601 reel-to-reel recorder though Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia and North Carolina, collecting performances by church choirs, jug bands, chain gangs, barroom warblers, front-porch crooners and assorted other guitar-pluckers, harp-blowers and banjo-botherers. Lomax and Collins’ recordings were – and are – astonishing, a glorious trove of treasures hauled from the deepest recesses of the collective national memory. There was gold indeed in them thar hills. Southern Journey (Revisited), a...

Nubya Garcia Source

Plenty of ink has been spilt on the subject of London’s jazz scene over the last couple of years, but you’ve got to concede that the hype is broadly justified, backed up as it is by an impressive, ever-growing stack of wax. Moses Boyd, Kamaal Williams, Zara MacFarlane, Shabaka And The Ancestors, Emma-Jean Thackray, KOKOROKO – all have released music in 2020 that both feel situated in the jazz tradition, while smartly redefining the form with a modern, quintessentially London sensibility. With Source, saxophonist and bandleader Nubya Garcia positions herself right near the top of that list. Born in...

Dana Parker’s 3 to 7 Drop Self-Titled Album

Dana Parker just released an intricate collection of sounds under the form of a new album titled 3 to 7, which is also the name of the EDM collective he founded years ago. 3 to 7’s new album is an 8 track collection, combining modern music technology with the best session musicians in Los Angeles, to create a linear EDM style with the classic Motown techniques of recording, production and musicianship. The entire album was recorded and mixed at Dana Parker’s private facility in Diamond Bar, and the Mastering is done by himself and/or Howie Weinber, depending on the...

The 10th Uncut New Music Playlist Of 2020

You may have already seen today’s big news – there’s a new New Order song in the wild – though we’re equally excited by the returns of Gwenifer Raymond, Actress, Todd Rundgren (teaming up unexpectedly but seamlessly with rapper Narcy), Negativland and a whole new album-length EP from William Tyler. Also on today’s agenda: underrated soul legends William Bell and Steve Arrington, molten freakouts from The Heliocentrics and Carlton Melton, plus Hot Chip covering The Velvet Underground. Meanwhile fans of lap steel-based bliss-outs are in for a treat… NEW ORDER “Be A Rebel” (Mute) Advertisement LIRAZ “Injah” (Glitterbeat) SKYWAY...