Fox in the barn

Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold makes his live solo debut at Levon Helm’s place

House music

A new tribute album underscores the influence of Haruomi Hosono’s 1973 folk-rock outlier Hosono House

Gaze of our lives

Having helped to revive the fortunes of Slowdive, Ride et al, Sonic Cathedral founder Nathaniel Cramp looks back over two decades of shoegaze solidarity

Brothers on the Clyde

Bernard Butler, Norman Blake and James Grant unveil their Scottish fireside supergroup

A Quick One

May I introduce to you the latest in

Slate

Ambitions are high for this Cardiff quartet’s epic post-punk

Uncut Playlist

On the stereo this month...

Nocturnes

12 tracks of the month’s best music

“We don’t do anything on purpose!”

Mogwai, 2024: (l–r) Martin Bulloch, Stuart Braithwaite, Barry

AN AUDIENCE WITH... MOGWAI

The Glasgow noise gremlins on turning down Lou Reed, touching George Clinton, going sports goth and “Stuart’s Penis”

Belfast

Andy Cairns reveals the Belfast venues that have fostered the city’s music scene

BRIDGET HAYDEN AND THE APPARITIONS

Cold Blows The Rain

DABBLING WITH GRAVITY…

Beyond her austere folk album: freeform drones, sinister synth ambience…

“It’s a bit of a weird costume, isn’t it? This ‘folk maiden’ thing…”

Q&A

JULIAN COPE

Friar Tuck HEAD HERITAGE

Q&A

Julian Cope: “I am somewhat reborn” Three albums

A to Z

This month…

SUN RA ARKESTRA

Lights On A Satellite IN+OUT

Q & A

Marshall Allen on the sonic power of the

JAMES BLACKSHAW

Unraveling In Your Hands SELF-RELEASED

Q&A

James Blackshaw: “Things came together quickly” How have

AMERICANA

Album of the month

BROWN SPIRITS

Cosmic Seeds SOUL JAZZ

Q & A

Tim Wold & Agostino Soldati: “We’re part of

THE LAST POETS

Africanism AFRICA SEVEN

Q & A

Abiodun Oyewole: “Fela had our album sleeve on

SIMON JOYNER

Nebraska songwriter on writer’s block and the complexity of grief

STRAW MAN ARMY

The NYC renegades on a fired up trilogy

DENNIS BOVELL

“Makes no difference if you change my name/In my heart I’ll remain the same”

RECOMMENDED

REGGAE, DISCO, DUB…

Q & A

Dennis Bovell: “Following sound systems could be risky…”

LAURIE STYVERS

Let Me Comfort You: The Hush Rarities

Q & A

Alec Palao: “She just didn’t have that fire

A to Z

This month… P48 JESSE ED DAVIS P48 HIDDEN

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Sensitive: Indie Pop 1980–89 NEEDLE MYTHOLOGY

TERRY RILEY

Shri Camel (reissue, 1980)

THE SPECIALIST

AGARTHA Agartha: Personal Meditation Music (reissue, 1986) IMPORTANT

THE DUDE

Producer, arranger, composer, conductor, impresario and trumpeter, QUINCY JONES was one of music’s dominant forces for over half a century, whose genius gilded albums by artists including Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson and Miles Davis, as well as his own inimitable forays into jazz, big band, French pop, soundtracks and more. Neil Spencer reflects on Q’s remarkable life and achievements, from aspiring wiseguy to hit-making legend. “He could hear the complete thing,” recalls one former collaborator. “More than a dozen instruments, what they were doing, all in his head.”

2025 ALBUMS PREVIEW

PATTERSON HOOD

THE WATERBOYS

Title: date: To be confirmed Release April Mike Scott accesses his “inner teenager” for a rock’n’roll concept album, kicked off by Steve Earle

LUCINDA WILLIAMS

Title: date: To be confirmed Release To be confirmed Organic processes and civil rights songs

2025 NEW RELEASES ROUND-UP

Bryan Ferry, Hawkwind, Panda Bear, Dry Cleaning, My Bloody Valentine

FRED VAIL WITH BRIAN WILSON

Title: date: Cows In The Pasture Release Autumn Long-gestating country album, fronted by The Beach Boys’ one-time manager

MY MORNING JACKET

BLANKENSHIP; ALIYAH OTCHERE

REISSUES ROUND-UP

Genesis, Kraftwerk, Pentangle, Wilco, Bowie, The Beatles

SHELTER FROM THE STORM

Overcoming a period of dissociation and despair, Tamara Lindeman has found renewal through album THE WEATHER STATION’s new Humanhood – a record that seeks out connection and compassion in the face of daunting challenges. “It’s a document of where I was at, so it is what is,” she tells Jason Anderson. “But I’ve never worked so hard on a record ever!”

“God Make Me Funny”

Written for a radio ad, it became one of the most-sampled grooves ever, thanks to Herbie Hancock’s funky fusionists

ONCE UPON A TIME...

Next month, James Mangold’s film A Complete Unknown opens in cinemas, bringing to the big screen the early years of BOB DYLAN, from folk interloper to his electric apostasy at Newport in 1965. But how much involvement did Dylan himself have in this cinematic undertaking? Quite a lot, it seems… “His recollections and observations were critical,” Mangold tells Nick Hasted. “Including his sense that he hadn’t even come completely to terms with, or understood, what happened.”

“THEREʼS SO MUCH MUSIC”

A Complete Unknown’s Music Supervisor recalls recreating Bob

SWEET &TENDER HOOLIGANS

During punk’s most mischievous miscreants – until feuds, disagreements and differences drove them apart. Now reconciled and reunited, the pair look back at some of their most diabolical misadventures – and in doing so discover something about the enduring nature of… is it THE DAMNED’s heyday, CAPTAIN SENSIBLE and RAT SCABIES were friendship? “When I quit the band the very last time, my first emotion was anger and a feeling of ‘fuck them’,” hears Alastair McKay. “Then I thought, ‘So why did you stay in a band with them for so long?’ You realise, actually, it’s because you do have a great bond.”

NEAT NEAT NEAT

The best of the early Damned

WISH YOU WERE HERE

The madcap album that got away

The Go-Betweens

Members of the esteemed Australian indie outfit discuss their pre- and post-reformation albums

“I had this big imagination thing going on”

Fantastical creatures. The internet. Pop music. The creative spirit. Success. The nature of celebrity. That time she nearly set the house on fire... In a rare and revelatory interview from 2011 – most of it unpublished until now – KATE BUSH takes us inside her sensual world, offering us a deeper understanding of her remarkable working practices and inspirations. “The work is the interesting bit,” she told Andy Gill. “I don’t think that I’m that interesting.”

Moments of pleasure

Looking back on Kate’s magic in 2011

“A yeti eating rhododendrons...”

Night manoeuvres: (here and below right )scenes from

“We created about 50 different versions...”

JONATHAN BARNBROOK has worked with Damien Hirst and

The framing of the shrew

The Little Shrew and (below) one of Bush’s

BIG STAR: RADIO CITY 50TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR

Hackney Church, London, October 31

THE SAINTS ’73-’78

Northcote Theatre, Melbourne, November 17

An extraordinary tale of escape in 1960s Florida; Burroughs triumphantly reimagined; coming of age in the drug cartels; more…

Heads up for the Nickel Boys NICKEL BOYS

REVIEWED THIS MONTH

NICKEL BOYS Directed by RaMell Ross Starring

ALSO OUT...

Bill Skarsgård in Nosferatu KRAVEN THE HUNTER RELEASED

BEATLES' 64DISNEY +

7/10

BOOKS

A deep look at herself: Cher in LA,

Music to your ears

A selection of the best new headphones on

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

TOTALLY DEVOTO

Thank you so much for the feature on

EC WAS HERE

Thanks a ton for the Elvis Costello feature

WILD GODS

BOB DYLAN IS NOW TWEETING ABOUT NICK CAVE.

Crossword

One LP copy of Bridget Hayden And The Apparitions’ Cold Blows The Rain

Frank Black

The Pixies mainman welcomes us to his planet of sound: “You have to embrace the simplicity, the rawness”

UNCUT

JANUARY 2025 TAKE 334

UNCUT

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