UNCUT

FEBRUARY 2025 TAKE 335

Got back!

THIS MONTH’S REVELATIONS FROM THE WORLD OF WITH...

Pop hits in heaven

Giving you The Chills: the singular legacy of NZ indie legend Martin Phillipps

“It’s just songs I like to sing”

Southern soul star Candi Staton on country music, champagne and covering The Rolling Stones

Just a shutter way

New photos emerge from the archive of Rolling Stones fixer, Spanish Tony

Ticket to Ryde

Meet Echolalia: the new Nashville supergroup getting it together on the Isle Of Wight

Greg Mendez

I’M NEW HERE

Uncut Playlist

On the stereo this month...

Take A Load Off

15 tracks of the month’s best music

AN AUDIENCE WITH... GARY KEMP

The Spandau Ballet songwriter turned Saucerful Of Secrets frontman talks Soho, Black Midi, Ronnie Kray and kilts

Introducing... Bad Touch

A new series in partnership with Marashall

Norwich

Bad Touch sing the praises of the city’s busy live scene

CHRIS ECKMAN

THE UNCUT GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S KEY RELEASES

ESSENTIAL ECKMAN

Three highlights from a singular Americana voice

Q&A

Chris Eckman: “A sense of place has always been part of my songwriting”

BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY

The Purple Bird DOMINO

AtoZ

This month…

YAZZ AHMED

A Paradise In The Hold NIGHT TIME STORIES

Q&A

Yazz Ahmed: “You can hear everyone laughing and joking”

JIM GHEDI

REVELATIONS

AMERICANA

Album of the month

SONGHOY BLUES

Héritage TRANSGRESSIVE

Q&A

Garba Touré: “Exile still animates me”

THE DELINES

The Delines: a knife-edge performance Mr Luck &

Q&A

Willy Vlautin: “Desperation is steeped into the lyrics”

KEVIN FIGES & JULIE TIPPETTS

Figes and Tippetts: revelling in creative curiosity Happy

Q&A

Kevin Figes: “The sense of play is hugely important”

JEAN CLAUDE VANNIER

REVELATIONS

Archive

LOTTI GOLDEN

GOLDEN WONDERS

Three more lucky Lotti winners

Q&A

Lotti Golden: “It’s large and it’s bold and it’s unapologetic”

TELEVISION PERSONALITIES

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out: Radio Sessions 1980-1993

Q&A

Jeff Bloom : “We treated it as a gig and that’s what I love”

AtoZ

This month…

BRIDES OF FUNK ENSTEIN

REDISCOVERED

DOUG SAHM & THE SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET

The Complete Mercury Recordings FLOATING WORLD

THE SPECIALIST

VERONIQUE CHALOT J’ai Vu Le Loup/ A

Chords of pure delight

After a rollercoaster decade, the stars finally seem to have aligned for New Zealand singer-songwriter NADIA REID. As she prepares to release her fourth album, Enter Now Brightness, she explains how magic, motherhood and Manchester have fed into her boldest work yet. “The whole thing’s been mad,” she tells Stephen Troussé

REBEL SOULS

Championed by Bob Marley and lauded by early punk audiences, ASWAD were UK roots reggae pioneers, battling prejudice to share their message of antiracism, Rastafarianism and community. Here, band members past and present chart their rise from the Jamaican music scene in west London to the brink of stardom, via cameos from Peter Tosh, Burning Spear and Eddie And The Hot Rods. “We weren’t out to make pop records,” co-founder Brinsley Forde tells Peter Watts. “We wanted to fight for what we believed was right.”

TYRANNY AND MUTATIÖNS!

From hippie communal living to sold-out arena tours via heavy licks and eldritch mythologies, Patti Smith, Death, Godzilla, capes and an umlaut, one of ’70s rock’s biggest – and strangest – bands. BLUE ÖYSTER CULT were “We had no concept of being commercial,” learns Peter Watts. “We didn’t know what we were doing except pouring our hearts out.”

Sean O’Hagan

Career highlights from Microdisney to the High Llamas via Stereolab and (almost) the Beach Boys

BURNING FROM THE INSIDE

From heartbreak to heroine, journey has been characterised by candour and insight. With her new band to make their debut, this devastatingly intimate songwriter reveals how she found fresh inspiration in collaboration. “How can I keep doing what I’ve been doing, but try new things?” she wonders to Laura Barton SHARON VAN ETTEN’s musical THE ATTACHMENT THEORY set

A PERFECT STORM

Before Urban Hymns briefly made them the biggest band in Britain, The Verve summoned some of the most rapturous rock music of the ’90s, fuelled by a prodigious diet of booze, drugs, Rosicrucianism, home-delivered lasagne and lashings of self-belief. Luckily, they lived to tell the tale. “We wanted that rock’n’roll life,” hears Sam Richards. “It was all that mattered.”

“A new kind of rock’n’roll”

Together, ROBBIE ROBERTSON,RICK DANKO, GARTH HUDSON, RICHARD MANUEL and LEVON HELM forged a vision of American music, one steeped in its rich cultural history, and whose profound and far-reaching influence can still be felt today. Fifty years on from the release of The Basement Tapes, Uncut invites compatriots, aficionados and heads – including JASON ISBELL, RICHARD THOMPSON, LUCINDA WILLIAMS, ELVIS COSTELLO, VAN MORRISON, MARGO PRICE and STURGILL SIMPSON – to celebrate THE 30 GREATEST SONGS OF THE BAND

MARK LANEGAN: A CELEBRATION

Roundhouse, London, December 5

WE JAZZ FESTIVAL

Helsinki, November 28-30

SCREEN

A Greenwich Village-era Dylan biopic; anger issues in the London suburbs; a real-time restaging of the first Saturday Night Live…

THE YARDBIRDS: IN THEIR OWN WORDS SKY ARTS/NOW TV

7/10

BOOKS

THERE is a ghost in David Browne’s history

The pick of the latest hi-fi upgrades

CAMBRIDGE AUDIO EVO ONE Price: £1,299 THE Evo

Not Fade Away

Fondly remembered this month...

Feedback

Send your brickbats, bouquets, reminiscences, textual critiques, billets-doux and all forms of printable correspondence to letters@uncut.co.uk

Crossword

One LP copy of Chris Eckman’s The Land

Eddie Chacon

The second-chance soulman on the records that bring him pleasure, joy and happiness: “I learned that imperfections can be beautiful”

“Question”

Their dual-speed No 2 hit thrilled festival crowds

UNCUT

Kelsey Media, The Granary Downs Court, Yalding Hill,