“There’s good riots and bad riots. We had good riots…”

Eighty-four years young in June, the indefatigable IAN HUNTER is about to release the first of two new albums. A star-studded affair – including Jeff Beck’s final studio performance – it demonstrates how brightly the “true spirit of rock’n’roll” still burns within the former MOTT THE HOOPLE frontman. Not bad going, then, for a career that’s taken him from Shropshire factories to Hamburg’s Star-Club, limos with David Bowie and beyond. “Half a century!” he tells Tom Pinnock. “I’d have thought six months…”

Hunter’s spoils

The best of his solo work

Culture Clash

Hunter on punk, The Clash and Bowie’s stolen mics

SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

Escaping tragedy in her home country and beyond, Malian superstar FATOUMATA DIAWARA has found respite reimagining her proud musical heritage in dynamic new ways. But with a new album,this inventive serial collaborator is going deeper than ever. “Music is like a guard to defend myself,” she tells Nick Hasted

BUYER’S GUIDE

FATOU (WORLD CIRCUIT, 2011) Taped in London and

Visions of the country

A steel-string guitarist turned electrifying bandleader, CIAN NUGENT has spent seven long years fashioning his latest album of expansive psychedelic folk-rock. At his studio on the edge of Dublin Bay, this restless spirit reveals the source of his ever forward momentum. “It took me a while to feel like I had anything to say,” Sam Richards discovers. “Or any right to say it…”

“I got carried away with a sense of Old Europe”

How Nugent’s song “Empress” was inspired by a murdered monarch and psychoactive mould

TIME LINE

February 1982 The Wild Swans release “Revolutionary Spirit”

SONGS FROM HER ROCK’N’ ROLL HEART

Collaborators name their favourite Lucinda Williams song

GEORGE AND JIM

Four classic Keltner and Harrison recordings

DIG LOVE

Keltner on green-fingered George

FEEDBACK

Elvis Costello with the Attractions: taller than expected

Uncut

Onthe cover: The Nationalby JoshGoleman GeorgeHarrison byAvalon.Red

Have one on us!

Fleet Foxes’ Spring Recital heralds the surprise return of JoannaNewsom

Strips of your ’toon

“Ifound the results very moving”: Robert Forster endorsesthenew Go-Betweens comic book

“We were outrageous”

Adele Bertei looks back on her time with The Contortions, queer punk-funkers The Bloods, and buying socks for Brian Eno

A QUICK ONE

Fahren,fahren,fahren! The latest Deluxe Ultimate MusicGuide isa 148-pagecelebration

He’s the One

A star in West Africa four decades ago, Peter One is finally making his comeback, in Nashville

Modern Cosmology

WE’RE NEW HERE

UNCUT PLAYLIST

On the stereo this month...

One hell of a ride

Happy 90th birthday, Willie Nelson! Over the page, friends and collaborators including Steve Earle, Daniel Lanois and Margo Price salute an indefatigable icon

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Even at 90, Willie ain’t slowing down.This year he’s got a full calendar of events, including…

Natalie Merchant

The voice of America’s conscience talks Greek myths, pickled vegetables and why you shouldn’t disturb her when she’s writing lyrics: “I’m like an angry animal!”

SHIRLEY COLLINS Archangel Hill DOMINO

THE UNCUT GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S KEY RELEASES

SLOWLY BUT SHIRLEY

Three landmarks from the Collins back catalogue

Q&A

“I don’t have to worry about anything now, except my voice”

GRAHAM NASH

Now BMG 8/10

AtoZ

This month… P24 SBT P26 ROGER ENO P28

Q&A

Graham Nash: “I'm ready to rock”

Q&A

Sarabath Tucek: “This record is more existential…”

REVELATIONS

ANDY BELL The Ride man on his collaborationwith

AMERICANA

Album of the month

REVELATIONS

JAMES ELLISFORD Producer finds going solo “trickier than

Q&A

Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni: “We play songs for years before recording them”

HANNAH JADAGU

The Texan on her debut’s journey from phone to studio

Q&A

Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay: “We met each other at a pivotal time”

Q&A

Craven Faults: “The music feels like it’s constantly in flux”

NASHVILLE AMBIENT ENSEMBLE

Michael Hixon a “loosely knit rotating cast of friends”

JONATHAN RICHMAN

Jonathan Goes Country (reissue, 1990) ROUNDER

MODERN ARTIST

HOW TO BUY...

Q&A

Donnie Clinton Thompson on his fameswerving peripatetic pal: “He’s one of a kind”

CALEXICO

Feast Of Wire: 20th Anniversary Deluxe Reissue CITY SLANG

Q&A

Joey Burns: “It’s so super eclectic”

AtoZ

This month… P44 ALBERT AYLER P45 SUARASAMA P46

REVELATIONS

THE FLK Take a chill pill with The

Q&A

Suarasama’s Rithaony Hutajulu on custom instruments and spirituality

REDISCOVERED

Uncovering the underrated and overlooked

NEIL YOUNG WITH THE SANTA MONICA FLYERS

Two very different sides of Neil’s 1970s

LA MONTE YOUNG/ MARIAN ZAZEELA

THE SPECIALIST

COMING NEXT MONTH...

B ETTER weather might be on its way,

Revolutionary Spirit

The chequered genesis (and afterlife) of Liverpool’s lost post-punk classic: “I knew it had to be the final ever Zoo record”

Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone

Three years ago, a stroke left medical professionals wondering whether LUCINDA WILLIAMS would ever walk again. With dogged resilience, however, she returns this spring with her long-awaited memoir and her 16th album – whose guests include Bruce Springsteen, Margo Price and Angel Olsen. Stephen Troussé meets a great American original and finds out how making peace with the past gave her the strength to recover and return with her strongest album in years.

The Orb

Ambience unlimited! Alex Paterson talks Uncut through his electronic adventures beyond the ultraworld

Let It Roll

To mark the 50th anniversary of GEORGE HARRISON’s mysterious and magnificent second solo album, Living In The Material World, his great friend and go-to drummer JIM KELTNER recalls their first meeting in 1971 and how they came to make the record, the first of numerous auspicious collaborations. Their “brotherly” relationship continued for a further 30 years – in good times and more challenging ones – cemented in friendship, laughter, truth and music. “He always spoke about the conflict in his life,” says Keltner. “It was apparent when you knew him, you could see it. George had the beautiful ability to put it into his songs.”

THE TIES THAT BIND

Trouble, it seems, finally found THE NATIONAL. Existential bouts of writer’s block, insecurity and depression – exacerbated during the darkest days of the pandemic – called into question the band’s very future. Could they overcome their anxieties and find new ways to reconnect with each other? Would their often tense relationships survive? With a brilliant new album due for release this month, they tell Laura Barton, “Sometimes this intensely intimate relationship feels like a riddle that nobody can solve.”

TREES,BEASTS ANDBEYOND

The three records that get us to …Frankenstein

FIRST TWO PAGES OF FRANKENSTEIN

THE UNCUT REVIEW 4AD 8/10 A turbulent tale

“IT IS NOT A PHRENOLOGICAL HEAD!”

Decoding the sleeve artwork for First Two Pages Of Frankenstein

NATIONAL TREASURES

YOUR GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S FREE CD IN

NADIA REID

The Prince Albert, Brighton, March 11

FILMS

One last job in deepest Ukraine; a coming-ofage tale in harrowing reverse; Norwegian hipsters skewered…

REVIEWED THIS MONTH

PAMFIR Directed by Dmytro Sukholytkyy- Sobchuk Starring

ALSO OUT...

RENFIELD RELEASED APRIL 14 Having served for centuries

LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING

Lookinggood: LittleRichard, Wrigley Fields, LA, September1956 INCINEMAS 9/10

BOOKS

THE phantom in Robert “Mack” McCormick’s extraordinary Biography

Not FadeAway

Fondly remembered this month…

STEVE MACKEY

Pulp’s polymath bassist (1966 2023)

Durand Jones

The Indications frontman on his love of jazz, pop and storytelling soul: “It allows your imagination to run wild”