UNCUT

MANATHA MORTON • BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN • THE

Spirit of ’67

Robyn Hitchcock’s new memoir and accompanying album revisit a pivotal year for himself and the world

Crazy to exist

The confounding young Scotland: why short-lived Postcard misfits Josef K continue to fascinate

A Quick One

Oh Lord, yeah! The latest Ultimate Music Guide

“He wanted to bringeverybody up together”

STEVE ALBINI |1962–2024

RAW POWER

10 essential Albini albums as bandleader and engineer

My sweet larynx

Dhani Harrison on joining forces with Tuvan throat singers Huun-Huur-Tu

Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band

Louisville continues to punch above its weight in the oddball country-rock stakes

Uncut Playlist

On the stereo this month... JAKE XERXES FUSSELL

Coast To Coast

15 tracks of the month’s best music

WARREN ELLIS

The Dirty Three and Bad Seeds shaman talks air-fryers, punching violins and rescuing brain-damaged monkeys

PAUL WELLER 66 POLYDOR

Noel, Bobby, Suggs and more help out on the Modfather’s collab-happy birthday LP. By John Lewis

WOKING TOGETHER

Some of Weller’s other recent songwriting collaborations

Q&A

Paul Weller: “It pushed me in different areas”

CASSANDRA JENKINS

My Light, My Destroyer DEAD OCEANS

Q&A

Cassandra Jenkins: “I write music for my friends”

SLEEVE NOTES

1 Devotion 2 Clams Casino 3 Delphinium

AtoZ

This month… P30 THE FOLK IMPLOSION P32 JOHN

THE FOLK IMPLOSION

Walk Thru Me JOYFUL NOISE

EIKO ISHIBASHI

Evil Does Not Exist DRAG CITY 8/10

DAVE ALVIN & JIMMIE DALE GILMORE

Album of the month

CINDY LEE

Diamond Jubilee REALISTIK 9/10

MADELEINE PEYROUX

Jazz vocalist extends her style and themes.

TOM VERLAINE

Warm And Cool/Songs And Other Things/Around (reissues, 1992, 2006, 2006) REAL GONE MUSIC

ADVENTURE IN SOUND

Earlier Tom Verlaine solo excursions appraised

Q&A

Patrick Derivaz and Jutta Koether: “See what happens when we play together…”

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

Merriweather Post Pavilion (reissue, 2009)

AtoZ

This month… P48 JOHNNY CASH P48 CLUSTER P49

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Sam Cooke’s SAR Records Story 1959-1965

MARGO GURYAN

Words And Music NUMERO

MASTER WILBURN BURCHETTE

Opens The Seven Gates Of Transcendental Consciousness (reissue, 1972) NUMERO GROUP

BORN TO REIGN

The coolest rockstar in the world right now is not a white boy with a guitar. It’s a New York-based Pakistani woman, singing mainly in Urdu, who’s redefined the parameters of 21st-century music with her unique and intoxicating blend of styles and traditions. With new album Night Reign poised to nudge her very subtly towards the mainstream, AROOJ AFTAB talks wit, whisky and Auto-Tune with Sam Richards. “I wanted to pull at your little mind-strings…”

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

This month, Dead & Company begin a 24-date residency at the The Sphere in Las Vegas, adding another twist to the long, strange afterlife of the GRATEFUL DEAD. To celebrate this run of shows, we look back at 20 classic live Dead shows in the company of bandmates, associates and Deadheads – from the countercultural highs of the Acid Tests, through their ’70s imperial phase to their post-Jerry iterations and beyond. “We found adventure in music,” Bob Weir tells Rob Hughes. “That was all we needed, the rest of it came naturally.”

“Is getting under people’s skins a constant goal for me? Yes...”

Continuing a characteristically extraordinary late-career hot streak, JOHN CALE is about to release his second great album in little over a year with POPtical Illusion – a set that sees him, at 82, pushing through the despair of the present and driving defiantly for the future, with phantoms from his past along for the ride. “Things are getting worse faster,” he tells Damien Love. “But I’m really going to fight my way through it, anyway. So I’m not going to be pleasant about it.”

OH MERCY!

John Cale’s road to POPtical Illusion

UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

Cale’s most disquieting characters

“IWant You”

How the Madchester mainstays hooked up with a local legend and scored a slot on Top Of The Pops, creating a moment in musical history

WILD HEART

Back in 2014, STEVIE NICKS calls Uncut on her way to a Fleetwood Mac rehearsal to tell us about the newly reformed Rumours lineup of the band – and her own new collection of lost songs, “the greatest hits that never came out”. In this great, recently unearthed interview, we learn about her fear of computers, her gold dust problems, the quality of Mick Fleetwood’s jewellery, and what it’s like getting a serious talking-to from Tom Petty. “Tom can be a scary character,” Piers Martin hears. “You wouldn’t want to run into Tom in an alley…”

GOLD DUST

Five hidden Stevie gems

BROTHERS (AND SISTERS) OF THE MOON

DAVE STEWART Nicks first encountered (or rather, cornered)

Bonny Light Horseman

Saddle up as the American folk trio talk us through their recorded highlights: “We all have space…”

ON THE

Incubated in Düsseldorf’s progressive underground scene during the late ’60s, the formative incarnation of KRAFTWERK involved flutes, improvisational jazz rock and LSD. How, then, did these arty hippies transform into music’s most famous robots? With the 50th anniversary of Autobahn this year, we explore the origins of these mechanical marvels with help from former bmates and contemporaries. “Early Kraftwerk was free music, free people,” one founder member tells Nick Hasted. “All our friends together.”

“YOU GET A FEELING OF THE NEXT DIMENSION”

Ralf And Florian’s Comix

Leaving The Dream

In 1976, JONI MITCHELL left behind the wreckage of a failed relationship, a cancelled tour and heightened commercial expectations and disappeared into the American wilderness, seeking refuge on the road. “I’m porous with travel fever”, she sang, “but you know I’m so glad to be on my own”. She returned, at last, with the songs that formed Hejira – a dazzling meditation on resilience and responsibility, love and independence that counts as Mitchell’s true masterpiece. Here, collaborators and confidants share Hejira’s secrets, from Mitchell’s studio practices to the enduring sleeve artwork, while admirers including THE WEATHER STATION, WEYES BLOOD, ALLISON RUSSELL and COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS hymn Hejira’s many musical achievements. “This record must have taken a lot of courage to put out,” muses one acolyte. “It was not at all what people would have thought of when they thought of Joni…”

“SHEUSEDTOSIT ATTHEFRONT”

Fellow Rolling Thunder Revue alumnus ROGER McGUINN tells Peter Watts about sharing the bus – and songs – with Joni

“CAN YOU PLAY THATPARTAGAIN?”

Joni’s “extensive” 1976 tour ended abruptly in late February when she broke up with drummer John Guerin. Until then, “it couldn’t have been a more cheerful scene”, LA Express’s guitar upstart

“She tells a story”

Guitarist LARRY CARLTON was Joni’s co-conspirator on the Hejira sessions. “It was all about the song, nothing more,” hears Peter Watts better situation for someone like myself to come into.”

“I FEEL LIKE IDREAMEDHIM”

The precocious talent of Mitchell’s other great Hejira collaborator,

“SHEWASLIVING DIFFERENT IDENTITIES”

NORMAN SEEFF photographed Joni numerous times during the 1970s and ’80s. He recalls their artistic connection, the Hejira sleeve and her many guises. “She’d want to destroy what she did before,”

“ANINTERESTINGTINTERESTINGT

With The Persuasions, JAYOTIS WASHINGTON accompanied Joni the first time she toured Hejira songs in 1979. He tells Nigel Williamson of thunderstorms, doo-wop and hit singles: “We put our best foot forward”

NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE

Stompingground: (l–r)MicahNelson, Neil Young and Billy Talbot form a “tribal circle” arounddrummer RalphMolina

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND

Principality Stadium, Cardiff, May 5

SCREEN

Henry James given a time-tripping spin; island life lessons for a child; an East European border drama; Bigfoot on ’shrooms…

THE BEACH BOYS

We hardly need another Life of Brian, but the latest version of the Beach Boys story goes too far towards the Love Story. By Stephen Troussé

BOOKS

THERE is a touching moment towards the end

The ears have it

The pick of the latest wireless headphones

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

HOW TOENTER

The letters in the shaded squares form an

CLUES ACROSS

1 Make two presents of one Oasis album

ANSWERS: TAKE 325

ACROSS 1+23D Tougher Than The Rest, 9 Karma,

CLUES DOWN

1“I’vegota_______________,gotmeso blind,Ican’t see”, Fleetwood Mac (5-5-5) 2 Edgar

WIN! Crossword

One LP copy of Cassandra Jenkins’ My Light, My Destroyer

Uncut

Kelsey Media, The Granary Downs Court, Yalding Hill,

SamanthaMorton

The actor, director and now singer on her essential aural companions: “When you’re lonely, music becomes your friend”