Long and winding road

THIS MONTH’S REVELATIONS FROM THE WORLD OF UNCUT WITH... Ayers, Cale, Nico, Eno | Cornish folk | Jefferson Airplane | Willy Vlautin

High infidelity

Fifty years ago, Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Brian Eno and Nico survived a spot of bedhopping to record a legendary live album

Wild wild county

A new folk scene is thriving in Cornwall, inspired by the area’s unique landscape, history and “magical possibilities”

Feed your head!

How Mike Frankel’s innovative live photos of Jefferson Airplane landed him on stage at Woodstock

Foal’s gold

Willy Vlautin’s new novel The Horse may be bleak, but it’s spurred him on to write the next Delines album

Landless

Stunning four-part harmonies from the same Dublin folk scene as Lankum and Lisa O’Neill

Editorial

On the cover: David Gilmour ©Anton Corbijn Beth

IRMIN SCHMIDT

As the spectacular Can live series continues, the band’s co-founder talks Damo, drug busts and drinking with Mark E Smith

Can Live 1973-1977

Exclusive with this issue of Uncut!

BETH GIBBONS

THE UNCUT GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S KEY RELEASES

SIMPLY THE BETH

The pick of Gibbons’ back catalogue, from Portishead to the Polish National Radio Orchestra

Q & A

Lee Harris: “She found her ‘spark’” You’ve crossed

EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN

Rampen (apm: alien pop music) POTOMAK

WILLIE NELSON

The Border LEGACY

REVELATIONS

BERNARD BUTLER Reluctant solo artist on a ‘happy

NEW ALBUMS

BERNARD BUTLER Good Grief EVAVERMANDEL;JEREMYCOWART 355 8/10 Butler

JOANA SERRAT

Catalan songwriter slays demons on soul-searching sixth

SLEEVE NOTES

1 The Cord 2 Feathers 3

Q&A

Joana Serrat: “I put myself outside of my

KAIA KATER

Strange Medicine

AMERICANA ROUND -UP

WHEN ex-Blasters founder Dave Alvin returned to live

NEW ALBUMS

CROWDED HOUSE Gravity Stairs BMG 6/10 Business as

RICHARD HAWLEY

“I’m trying to find that peace all of

THE DECEMBERISTS

As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again

SLEEVE NOTES

1 Burial Ground 2 Oh No! 3

Q&A

Colin Meloy: “It’s a very crafted thing” You’ve

NEW ALBUMS

IBIBIO SOUND MACHINE Pull The Rope MERGE 8/10

POPPYCOCK

Una Baines maps the band’s fitful journey B

EZRA FEINBERG

Former Citay dweller completes his blissful minimalist makeover.

SLEEVE NOTES

1 Future Sand 2 Soft Power 3

Q&A

Ezra Feinberg: “The everyday is psychedelic” Are there

NEW ALBUMS

SEASICK STEVE ATrip AStumble AFall Down On Your

GASTR DEL SOL

We Have Dozens Of Titles

Q&A

Jim O’Rourke & David Grubbs “We felt like outliers”

HOLLAND-DOZIER-HOLLAND

Detroit 1969-1977

TRY IT, YOU’LL LIKE IT

Three of H-D-H’s earlier Motown highlights

A to Z

This month…

BLANCMANGE

Everything Is Connected: The Best Of Blancmange 1979-2024

ROBIN TROWER

Bridge Of Sighs

Q&A

Robin Trower: “In the studio there was a lot of confidence”

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Ghana Special 2: Electronic Highlife & Afro Sounds In The Diaspora, 1980-93

THIS IS A CALL

MDOU MOCTAR has come a long way since he built his first guitar out of wood and old bike parts. Currently holed up in Los Angeles, the charismatic desert blues prodigy and his band of brothers are about to use their well-earned international platform to rail against injustice in his Saharan homeland. “We write our songs about real life, not fiction,” hears Kevin EG Perry

CLASS AXE

Mdou Moctar’s five favourite guitarists

OUR FRIEND IN THE NORTH

Emerging from lockdown with “a lot of junk building up in the backyard”, MARK KNOPFLER has crafted one of his finest solo albums – a semi-autobiographical reckoning with his Geordie roots, ageing and even his old band, Dire Straits. Stand by as the guitarist’s guitarist – aka “the laziest person I know” – reveals how the songs of Bernard Cribbins, 1950s fairgrounds and touring with Bob Dylan have got him to this point. “You’re marching right up to the source of the dragon, the smoky cave,” he confides to Tom Pinnock

LOCAL GUITAR HEROES

Mark Knopfler on the recording of his all-star charity take on Local Hero’s “Going Home”

TRIBUTARIES

The route to One Deep River

Isobel Campbell

A pick of the singer’s group, solo and collaborative albums: “They’ve all influenced each other…”

LOST IN MUSIC

Nearly 30 years after they were dropped by their record label and turned on by the capricious music press, SLOWDIVE are enjoying an unlikely renaissance – as hit albums, a growing multi-generational audience and an influential legacy attest. But their glorious second act is about more than just unfinished business, as loss, grief, family and ageing figure beneath the heavy distortion. “Things feel more acute,” they tell Nick Hasted

“We were all in tears”

Slowdive’s Spanish comeback

“Their music is everywhere”

Slowdive’s American invasion

A BETTER WORLD

Sinister nightmares! Manipulative technologies! Faceless shadow men! Is this the end for T BONE BURNETT..? As the Dylan veteran, Americana emissary and super-producer prepares to revive his own, long-dormant solo career, he reveals how childhood fears and spiritual quests continue to inspire hard-won life lessons. “A lot of my writing was about the dystopia,” he tells Will Hermes

A-LIST FRIENDS

Origins of The Alpha Band

PRIME CUTS

T Bone buyers’ guide

Electric Avenue

How the former Equals lead guitarist created a catchy song that managed to sneak the politics of protest into the 1983 charts

TIME LINE

PAULNATKIN/WIREIMAGE April 1981 The Brixton uprising takes place

VETERANS OF DISORDER

Dysfunctional outlaw spirits from the DC underground, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema brought drugs, psychedelic heaviosity and a Rolling Stones fixation to their sonic adventures as ROYAL TRUX. After a brilliant run of albums, rehab, relapses and a record company that wanted them to be “the next Guns N’ Roses”, things fell apart – twice! Yet beyond the chaos and excess, their spectacular music endures: “At the end of the day, there’s really nobody like us,” discovers Rob Hughes

LET’S GET LOST

ARoyal Trux buyers’ guide

“THEY WERE GENIUSES”

Musician and producer Matt Sweeney recalls working with Royal Trux

“It’s time for a decısıon”

One song cautions against rock excess, another hymns the miracle of human consciousness, while a third rages against a “no-God cosmos” and a fourth features a posthumous contribution from a fallen bandmate. Welcome to Luck and Strange – DAVID GILMOUR’s first studio album for nine years. In a world exclusive interview, the reinvigorated guitar genius explains to Uncut why he is “sick of the past”, how lockdown livestreams, the sanctity of family life and encroaching mortality have informed his powerful new record… and why we might not have to wait quite so long for the next one. “The intention is to get something else out as soon as possible,” he confides to Pete Paphides

Marriage material

Musical partnerships where the wife writes the words. Here are four more…

“I used to call him Old Gilmour’s Almanac”

Guy Pratt looks back on four decades of working together

Flying below the radar

The Montgolfier Brothers

“He was a very significant part of what we did”

Gilmour and friends on avery special relationship with fallen bandmate Rick Wright

TEENAGE CANCER TRUST: OVATION

Royal Albert Hall, London, March 24

PIXIES

O2 Forum Kentish Town, London, March 18

SCREEN

Astartling debut; love and theft in Tuscany; platonic intimacy in the Baltic; Malaysian menstrual monsters, and more…

CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG

MAGNOLIA

BOOKS

PeteSeegerat theGarrison Picnic on June 17, 1968inGarrison, New

The darling buds

BEST BUY The pick of the latest wireless

Not Fade Away

Fondly remembered this month...

Feedback

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Crossword

One LP copy of Beth Gibbons’ Lives Outgrown

UNCUT

Kelsey Media, The Granary Downs Court, Yalding Hill, Yalding,

Bill Janovitz

The Buffalo Tom general on his essential listens: “I have this thing for big, sprawling double albums”