Sommaire pour January 2020 de MOJO

Sylvie Simmons Sylvie has been with MOJO since Issue 1. I’m Your Man: The Life Of Leonard Cohen, her definitive biography, was updated in 2017. On her book tour, she took along a ukulele and sang Cohen songs – it led to a record deal. She’s just finished making her second LP with Howe Gelb/Giant Sand. Alan Light Alan’s interest in Leonard Cohen began when he learnt the singer was a college classmate of his father. He’s the author of The Holy Or The Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, And The Unlikely Ascent Of Hallelujah, which is being developed as a documentary. He writes for us about Cohen on page 70. hitandrun hitandrun is a creative studio run by Greg and Zennor Meeson, specialising in CGI illustration and animation.…

SUDDEN DEATH leaves loose ends, and so many did Jimi Hendrix leave that one of his posthumous albums had that very title. Among the most fabled is the fate of the never-released footage of him and the Experience live at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in February 1969. At last, we have the answer. After rumours that a completed movie would be released in 2016, The Jimi Hendrix Experience: The Royal Albert Hall had its world premiere on October 21 at that very venue. Tickets cost up to £35 each, compared to as little as the 7/6d in old money (less than the price of a 45rpm single), which music writer Kris Needs paid for what in his new book Just A Shot Away he describes as, “the best show…

“We are well able to test our internal relationships to destruction.”COLIN NEWMAN FACT SHEET Title: Mind Hive Date: January 2020 Production: Colin Newman Songs: Primed And Ready / Oklahoma / Unrepentant / Shadows The Buzz: “We are no longer young. But the way that we follow things is very much a young man’s approach.” Colin Newman “WE’RE COMPLETELY proud of everything we’ve done in the past,” says vocalist Colin Newman from his Swim studio in Brighton, almost 43 years to the day since Wire first became operational. “But we don’t live there. We’d be shit as a heritage band, absolutely shit. The new thing is the holy thing, that we’re most interested in.” After reissues of their first three albums in May last year, Wire began recording their fourth LP…

NOVA-SCOTIA-BORN Matt Brennan first had the idea for an Ivor Cutler tribute record while drinking in Glasgow pub The Doublet, in autumn 2018. The musician, researcher and adopted son of Glasgow had just been to see Rip It Up, an exhibition dedicated to Scottish music at the National Museum Of Scotland. He and his pal Malcolm Benzie, of Edinburgh postfolkers eagleowl, wondered why there had been no room dedicated to the great Govanborn poet of dour Scottish surrealism. After all, Cutler was a harmonium playing singer-songwriter on the BBC Home Service who was championed by Paul McCartney, appeared in The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, and recorded with Neil Ardley and Robert Wyatt. His appearances on John Peel’s BBC radio shows earned him a cult following among hipster music fans and…

1 Young Jaz wins the Rex Watson Cup, Cheltenham International Music Festival, 1973, aged 12-13. 2 Tomorrow’s world: Jaz fronts Killing Joke at London’s Lyceum Ballroom, 1980. “Struggle is everything.” 3 “That’s how rabid we were”: Coleman bags it at a performance in the late ’80s. 4 In the land of milk and honey: Killing Joke at Conny Plank’s Cologne studio, 1982 (from left) Big Paul Ferguson, Geordie Walker, Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, Coleman. 5 “This was all accidental”: Killing Joke circa Love Like Blood, with bassist Raven (far right). 6 “It’s a long way from a squat”: Jaz is made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, 2010. 7 “One day you will be a new Mahler”: maestro Coleman conducts the Czech Philharmonic Collegium. 8 “There is nothing like Killing…

Early In The Morning Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated (Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, Castle, 2006) Baker was mesmerised by the ponderous power of this pain-wracked prison work song, taped at Parchman Farm by Alan Lomax in 1947. He arranged it for Graham Bond, and later Air Force, but Alexis Korner got first dibs in 1963. Camels And Elephants The Graham Bond Organisation (There’s A Bond Between Us, Columbia 1965) The original Baker showcase in all its round-the-kit glory. The band create the mood with an Eastern-flavoured fanfare. After 90 seconds, everything goes Ginger. It’s clearly a road to Toad, but more compact and sweetly recorded. And that hi-hat works hard. Sunshine Of Your Love Cream (Disraeli Gears, Reaction, 1967) It is one of the great riffs in rock, but it wouldn’t…

THE ACE IN DOWNTOWN Los Angeles, formerly known as the United Artists Theater, was built in 1927 as a silent movie palace. Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks would hold screenings amid the splendour of its rococo Spanish gothic interior. After a spell as a church for the televangelist Gene Scott, it opened up as a venue in 2015, and on an October night in 2019 it bore witness to Brittany Howard, singer and guitarist for rock’n’roll soullers the Alabama Shakes, as a consciousness-raising solo sensation. “I am dedicated to oppose those whose will is to divide us!” declaims Howard in 13th Century Metal, an irreligious sermon set to an abrasive, jazzy keyboard cascade, as scores of gay women in the audience raise fists in solidarity. There are shades of Aretha…

• The R&B wizard co-wrote and co-produced the bulk of Hyperspace. “About eight years ago we started hanging out,” Beck tells MOJO’s Tom Doyle. “He would play me his new song – ‘Sit down, I just finished this…’ and he put on Happy.” And yet Hyperspace sounds very little like ‘A Pharrell Williams Record’. “When I walked in there maybe I was hoping for something like Drop It Like It’s Hot,” says Beck. “And what I walked out with was Everlasting Nothing!”…

Corridor ★★★★ Junior SUB POP. CD/DL/LP Band name of the month, Montreal’s Corridor have many more tricks in their bag: ultra-rhythmic, switchback guitar grooves (Domino) FX-heavy chime (Junior; Milan) and reverbed French vocals, like a post-punk Fleet Foxes (Renards Rapides?) Promising debut. JB Kate Rusby ★★★★ Holly Head PURE. CD/DL/LP KB brings her potent vocal vulnerability to a set of fresh Christmas songs that play up the ancient festival folk weirdness of it all. Mistletoe-crowns, hailing holly kings and hippos for Christmas (Gayla Peevey cover; great tuba solo), all a joy. JB Isaac Delusion ★★★ Uplifters MICROQLIMA. CD/DL/LP Parisian duo blend Daft Punk electro-funk with winsome, sad robot pop sung in Loïc Fleury’s Bronksi Beat falsetto-Franco, revealing a big crush on fluffy ’80s synth-pop (the sort that rhymes “guarantee” with…

Ruthless Rap Assassins Th!nk, It Ain’t Illegal Yet MURDERTONE, EMI, 1991 THE INDIE-DANCE bubble that made Manchester Britain’s music capital had yet to burst in 1990, and that September local hip hop movers Ruthless Rap Assassins were gassed to be getting their very first Radio 1 daytime play. And It Wasn’t A Dream wasn’t typical FM fodder: a tender tale of West Indian immigration, its Windrush woes tumbling poetically above a sample of Cymande’s reggae-funk oddity The Message. Their joy proved short-lived as, suddenly, the scratch attack of B-side Posse Strong filled the airwaves. DJ Simon Bates had played the flip by accident. But the blundering Our Tune schmaltz-lord never apologised, And It Wasn’t A Dream never aired. The single stalled at 75. “We were a bit pissed off,” understates…

Festive compilations, you say? So many. There’s Hitsville holidays on 20 Christmas Classics (Motown, 1993), cheese-balls ’n’ highballs with Ultra Lounge Christmas Cocktails (Capitol/ EMI, 1996), irie breadfruit cookouts on This Is Christmas (Trojan, 2017), and while we're here, let’s not forget The Joe Gibbs Family Of Artists’ Reggae Christmas (above), from 1982, and the Sheffield pub sing-alongs with English Village Carols (Smithsonian Folkways, 1999). For R&B, gospel and rockabilly, crank up Papa Ain’t No Santa Claus (Viper, 2006), Where Will You Be Christmas Day (Dust To Digital, 2004) and Big City Christmas (Bear Family, 2006). And don’t overlook the downtown no wave pop skronk of A Christmas Record (Ze Records/Island, 1981) and MF Doom’s Doom Xmas (Cookin’ Soul, 2018) for psychedelic cut-up sizzurp-soul rap.…

Voice Of The Eagle: The Enigma Of Robbie Basho ★★★★ MVD. DVD ROBBIE BASHO believed he’d lived multiple lives, lives he was being punished for during his brief time on this Earth. The Baltimore-raised guitarist and singer also imagined he could hear other voices, whispering witches and ghouls who he needed to bargain with before playing his music. “I’ve been totally influenced by Basho. You can hear it in my work.”PETE TOWNSHEND Existing in a state of almost constant physical and mental pain, the result of a car crash in his college years and disastrous experiments with LSD which “opened a gateway [I] could not close”, Basho made music as a salve, a balm. His ever-ascending 12-string ragas, folk-operatic songs of love and longing and elaborate fairy-tale-like narratives, woven together…

Norman Fucking Rockwell /Bartender / For Free (with Zella Day and Weyes Blood) / Mariners Apartment Complex / Born To Die / Blue Jeans / Wicked Game (with Chris Isaak) / Cherry & Scarborough Fair / White Mustang / Pretty When You Cry / Tomorrow Never Came (with Sean Lennon) / Medley: Change / Black Beauty / Young And Beautiful / Ride / Chelsea Hotel #2 (with Adam Cohen) / Video Games / Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have – But I Have It (with Jack Antonoff) / Daddy Issues (with Jesse Rutherford) / Summertime Sadness / Doin’ Time / Off To The Races / Venice Bitch…

SUB POP-AMOOLAH  2 Warner Music Group acquires a 49 per cent share of Seattle record label Sub Pop (their signing Sebadoh, above) in a deal believed to be worth over $20 million. STONE AGES  5 Following a five-year wait, The Stone Roses finally release their troubled second album, Second Coming, dedicated to the band’s publicist Philip Hall, who died of cancer in 1993. GOODBYE GARNETT  9 Jamaican reggae singer Garnett Silk dies, along with his mother, in a fire that destroys their home. LOVE & MONEY 12 A Los Angeles court decides that, in addition to being deprived of songwriting credits on 35 of The Beach Boys’ songs, Mike Love has also been denied a share of a prior legal settlement regarding the group’s song catalogue. BLUR: CLASSY  16 Blur…

AM-PACKED WITH powerful sonic performance, the standard-setting Astell&Kern SR15 Portable Digital Audio Player sets the standard for listening just as the artist intended it, with noise and distortion straightened out with a very fast Quad-core CPU. With an intuitive user interface allowing easy operation and access to music streaming services, its stylish design ensures a good grip however you hold it and that your hand never hinders the display screen. Match it with some fine Billie Jean In-Ear-Monitors, a collaboration between Astell&Kern and Jerry Harvey Audio, and the very best – and most comfortable! – audio experience is assured. They’re worth a cool £549 and £249 respectively, and this month we have a set to give away. So get Maestro Imperial Fred’s crossword filled in and send it Digital Wonder…

75 JESSICA PRATT Quiet Signs (CITY SLANG) 74 HANNAH PEEL AND WILL BURNS  Chalk Hill Blue (RIVERTONES) 73 THE SPECIALS Encore (ISLAND) 72 GRUFF RHYS Pang! (ROUGH TRADE) 71 HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER Terms Of Surrender (MERGE) 70 SARATHY KORWAR More Arriving (LEAF) 69 SEED ENSEMBLE Driftglass (JAZZ RE:FRESHED) 68 JAMILA WOODS Legacy! Legacy! (JAGJAGUWAR) 67 MADONNA Madame X (INTERSCOPE/UMG) 66 VAMPIRE WEEKEND Father Of The Bride (COLUMBIA) 65 SLEAFORD MODS Eton Alive (EXTREME EATING) 64 RHIANNON GIDDENS WITH FRANCESCO TURRISI  There Is No Other (NONESUCH) 63 MEGA BOG Dolphine (PARADISE OF BACHELORS) 62 OH SEES Face Stabber (CASTLE FACE) 61 NEIL YOUNG Colorado (REPRISE) 60 TOOL Fear Inoculum (RCA) 59 THE WHO WHO (POLYDOR) 58 LANKUM The Livelong Day (ROUGH TRADE) 57 SANTANA Africa Speaks (CONCORD) 56 DANNY BROWN Uknowhatimsayin¿…

1 CHRISTONE ‘KINGFISH’ INGRAM  Kingfish (ALLIGATOR) 2 TORONZO CANNON The Preacher, The Politician Or The Pimp (ALLIGATOR) 3 GILES ROBSON Don’t Give Up On The Blues (AMERICAN SHOWPLACE MUSIC) 4 RICK ESTRIN & THE NIGHTCATS Contemporary (ALLIGATOR) 5 CHRIS BERGSON & ELLIS HOOKS  Live In Normandy (2 SHIRTS) 6 VARIOUS Sweet Home Chicago: Down Home Blues – Chicago Volume 2 (WIENERWORLD) 7 ZAC HARMON Mississippi BarBQ (CATFOOD) 8 BOBBY RUSH Sitting On Top Of The Blues (DEEP RUSH/THIRTY TIGERS) 9 CASH BOX KINGS Hail To The Kings! (ALLIGATOR) 10 BIG DAVE MC LEAN Pocket Full Of Nothin’ (BLACK HEN)…

1994 JEFF BUCKLEY Grace 1995 RADIOHEAD The Bends 1996 BECK Odelay 1997 RADIOHEAD OK Computer 1998 BECK Mutations 1999 TOM WAITS Mule Variations 2000 JOHNNY CASH American III: Solitary Man 2001 SUPER FURRY ANIMALS Rings Around The World 2002 SOLOMON BURKE Don’t Give Up On Me 2003 THE WHITE STRIPES Elephant 2004 NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS Abattoir Blues/ The Lyre Of Orpheus 2005 ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS I Am A Bird Now 2006 THE RACONTEURS Broken Boy Soldiers 2007 RADIOHEAD In Rainbows 2008 FLEET FOXES Fleet Foxes 2009 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Merriweather Post Pavilion 2010 JOHN GRANT Queen Of Denmark 2011 P.J. HARVEY Let England Shake 2012 JACK WHITE Blunderbuss 2013 BILL CALLAHAN Dream River 2014 BECK Morning Phase 2015 JULIA HOLTER Have You In My Wilderness 2016 DAVID…

20 VARIOUS Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990 (LIGHT IN THE ATTIC) A chronicle of Japanese music designed for social spaces (in-store Muji atmos), objects (a Seiko watch ad) or activities. An audio feng shui guaranteed to spark joy. 19 VARIOUS The Time For Peace Is Now (LUAKA BOP) These 14 sanctified rarities from the ’70s sadly still resonated today, addressing hardscrabble issues ranging from the Reverend Harvey Gates’s bluesier-gospel It’s Hard To Live In This Old World to The Triumphs’ Philly-suited We Don’t Love Enough. 18 RONNIE LANE Just For A Moment: Music 1973-1997 (UMC) Assiduous 6-CD cross-label set brought the Faces/ Small Faces man’s four solo albums together with attendant singles, B-sides, outtakes and rarities. It culminated in his final session from 1989: voice…

1 PRINCE The Beautiful Ones (CENTURY) THE LATE PRINCE Rogers Nelson’s unconventional memoir was three books in one: a vivid recollection of his childhood in his own hand; an intimate scrapbook of pictures and reflections from his early career; and Dan Piepenbring’s account of the conversations he had with Prince about the book he envisioned, before his death in April 2016 curtailed all plans. All three parts deliver poignant insights into the principal, his ideas about art and creativity and his purpose on the planet, all couched in wit and charm and – as Piepenbring tells MOJO – wreathed in regret for what might have been… The Beautiful Ones is MOJO’s Music Book Of The Year. That is so delightful! I am thrilled and very grateful. Prince’s idea of what…

Weyes Blood HERE COMES THE FLOOD What music are you currently grooving to? Joni Mitchell’s Night Ride Home. Maybe some of the best baby boomer music from the ’90s. There’s a special weird nostalgia I get from it. I also think it’s the point where she completely returned to the kind of songwriting that everybody really loved. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Joni Mitchell – Hejira. A lovely road record, and I spend a lot of time in the van. She plays electric guitar with flange and there’s a lot of pedal steel, it’s like a proto-Daniel Lanois record. The lyrics are gorgeous, especially Amelia, about Amelia Earhart, a strong independent-style woman who chose a career over motherhood. I can just really relate. What…

… TOOTS AND THE MAYTALS will release a new album early next year, produced by Toots (right), Zak Starkey and Youth. Said Toots, “We are very in sync and making a great record”… JARVIS COCKER premiered latest project Jarv Is in 2017, and released debut track Must I Evolve? in May. But new songs such as Swanky Modes and Sometimes I Am Pharoah may yet appear in recorded form… SAXON’s lead singer Biff Byford has sured fans that, despite his recent heart surgery, the long-standing Sheffield metallers will record a new album in Germany, with Byford adding his vocals in January 2020, although he’s said his “breathing is still a bit dodgy sometimes, but… I’m getting better”… 50 Cent has told the Hollywood Reporter that he’ll be on a new…

“A friend introduced me to it about six years ago, and the wonderful sleeve instantly drew my attention. I was straight out of university when I first heard it. I was focused on technical ability and virtuosity and this made me ask: Why do we make music in the first place? It reminded me of the spirit of communal participation, how music serves another function in society. As a listening experience, you put the whole record on. Some tracks are more arranged and composed, then the last track [Resa] is him teaching some students in the classroom with the harmonium, and it’s brilliant. The standout track for me is Hope. It has a beautiful melody, is very uplifting, but also heavy and almost tragic . My only problem with this…

“It’s a really proggy, melodic record,” says Erin Birgy of the sumptuous Dolphine, her fourth and most recent album as Mega Bog. “It feels like I was referencing people like Robert Wyatt. I was constantly saying to Matt Bachman, who plays bass, More Jaco! You’ve got to be more Jaco Pastorius.” The references give some sense of Dolphine’s shape-shifting properties, but don’t fully capture the scope of the album’s 12 twisting yet structured compositions. One moment, the Pacific North-west-based Birgy is channelling the spirit of the questing, jazz-smitten Joni Mitchell. Then, abruptly, there’s a left turn, and clarinet, flute and bubbling analogue synthesisers give way to her conversationally declaring, “Shot myself in the foot, again/Now there’s blood on the wall/So what…” “When I started playing music, I thought, I want…

DUNDEE tenor sax man MALCOLM ‘MOLLY’ DUNCAN (below, b.1945) was a founder member of Scottish soulmen The Average White Band. In 1974 they broke through internationally with their self-titled second album and had a million-selling US Number 1 with Pick Up The Pieces, which got its own answer record courtesy of James Brown’s AABB (AKA the Above Average Black Band). Duncan, who left the group in 1982 after further hits including Cut The Cake (1975) and Let’s Go Round Again (1980), also played live and recorded with Ray Charles, Tom Petty, Marvin Gaye and Bryan Ferry. Later activities included cutting drum’n’bass with his son Dan, and AWB alumni The 360 Band. PRODUCER GLEN BROWN (b.c.1944) started his career in reggae as part of a singing duo with Lloyd Robinson, who…

THE POST-PUNK CLASSIC Killing Joke Killing Joke EG, 1980 KJ’s game-changing debut opened with a much undervalued Coleman contribution: Requiem’s ominously jabbering synth, which on the ensuing Wardance morphs into screeching interference. His voice, shapeshifting between naked vulnerability and growling fury, duly delivers inspirationally lurid snapshots of surveillance paranoia, military conscription, vile pollution, scary subcultural gatherings and pervasive post-apocalyptic terror – anxieties that feel as fresh as the accompanying music, four decades later. THE ORCHESTRAL MEISTERWERK Anne Dudley And Jaz Coleman Songs From The Victorious City CHINA, 1990 After an in-fighting KJ turned down an offer to record in the Middle East, Jaz landed a £500,000 deal alongside sometime Art Of Noise member Dudley which financed his studies at Cairo Conservatoire, then this exquisite orchestral tribute to al-Qahirah, or the…

THE BODY LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE IN a series of photographs tells the story of rock music’s future. The month is August, the year 1965, the event the Newport Folk Festival. This is where Bob Dylan would first perform on-stage with an electric rock’n’roll band and foment controversy that’s still debated. That group – The Paul Butterfield Blues Band – would roar through three sets of their own, infuriating folk purists before Dylan even plugged in. In these photos, Geoff and Maria Muldaur, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Eric Von Schmidt, Spider John Koerner and others are caught in the moment of ecstatically affirming the visceral noise of Butterfield and co. Their fists are pumping, arms akimbo, jaws dropped. Maria Muldaur is frozen mid-boogaloo. Seven years later, Geoff Muldaur would form…

JONI MITCHELL You can hear Mitchell in Jaime’s quieter moments. “Joni’s got all this information,” says Howard. “Whether she feels big or small, she lets you know. And she has funky open tunings, just like Memphis Minnie did.” WOODSTOCK Three days of peace and love in upstate New York remain a benchmark for Howard in terms of the liberating power of music. “I think back to Santana [pictured] or Sly Stone at Woodstock and dudes are expressing themselves, man. Yes, they’re on a shit-ton of drugs, but they’re not thinking about their image. I miss that in modern music.” JAMES BROWN Anyone seeing Howard live will think of the Godfather Of Soul. “It’s a big compliment, but when I’m up there I’m not thinking of James Brown,” she says. “I’m…

THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE big one. It had been five years since Leonard Cohen released Recent Songs . That record made a minimal splash – “It was against the law to listen to Leonard in the days of punk,” is how U2’s Bono would later explain it – and after the tour that followed Cohen headed for the hills, spending time at a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy, just north-east of Los Angeles, and in Bonnieux above Marseille, where Adam and Lorca lived with Suzanne. “It’s just house cleaning,” he’d describe his withdrawal. “From time to time the dust and the dirty clothes accumulate in the corners and it’s time to clean up.” But now he was ready to get back into the studio, with a newly deepened…

Steve Gunn Acoustic Unseen MATADOR. DL His guitar-playing has such windblown qualities that one supposes Steve Gunn’s songs emerge in real-time, like some elemental bloom. Of course, it’s more down to repetitive application of skills honed over time. Acoustic Unseen is a case in point: Gunn returns to seven songs from 2019’s album The Unseen In Between , where his luminous electric picking and transcendent solos spun mystical webs around essentially basic observational character studies. Now, returned to the acoustic format in which Gunn demoed them – at length – but after months of playing out on the road, the songs’ intrinsic depths are laid bare. Lightning Field’s cosmic peals reduce into tense bare-wall mantras, while the coiling melodies of Vagabond combine with Gunn’s wry vocals to form a dusty…

“There are shivers galore on this huge and splendid artefact.” The Go-Betweens ★★★★★ G Stands For Go-Betweens Volume 2 DOMINO. CD/LP BOX THE PREPARATION of enormous box sets must have psychic ramifications for those who self-compile. Going back through all that vintage material and those long-gone situations and places, revisiting previous selves and close friends, reacquainting with those now lost, remembering a time when all was to play for, before horizons narrowed. The knowledge that all those songs are still out there, waiting to find you again. Even when considering your own life’s work, there’s always the unexpected to contend with. Robert Forster, The Go-Betweens’ co-songwriter and singer alongside the late Grant McLennan, has worked on this 1985-89 overview since 2016, and in 2017 received a session unearthed from the…

Tracks: What Did You Say Your Name Was? / Listen To The Hit / Why Me? / Th!nk / Hard And Direct / I Got No Time / Radio / Down And Dirty / No Tale, No Twist / Pick Up The Pace / (I Try To) Flow It Out / Less Mellow Personnel: Carson (vcls, turntables), Kermit (vcls, beats), Anderson (vcls, beats), Greg Wilson (keys, turntables, samples), Tracey Carmen (vcls), Mike Hunter (gtr, bs), Chris Campbell, Phil Melia (both gtrs), Tommy Trainor (pno), Ian Tilton (harmonica), Ged Lynch (drms, perc) Producer: Greg Wilson Released: October 1991 Recorded: Amazon Studios, Kirkby, Liverpool Chart peak: n/a Current availability: second-hand…

• Robbie took his new surname from 17th century Zen poet, Matsuo Basho. • During a spiritually important concert for Native American elders at Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico, Robbie was distracted by “a conversation between a witch and goblin on [my] back”. “The Indian people struggled to understand the music,” explains Robbie’s concert promoter, Clive Adams. • Much of Basho’s later music was inspired by the landscape of old America, yet while touring the US in the early ’80s he told his driver to bypass the Rocky Mountains due to an inner ear infection.…

1 THE CAN LOVE YOU FEEL TONIGHT ELTON JOHN MERCURY 2 YOUSSOU 7 SECONDS N’DOUR AND NENEH CHERRY COLUMBIA 34 I - SWEAR ONE ATLANTIC ALL 4 MADONNA SECRET MAVERICK/ SIRE 5 LOVE I’LL MAKE TO YOU BOYZ II MEN MOTOWN 6 NIGHT SATURDAY WHIGFIELD AIRPLAY 7 M SI ’ TU ESSAYER VEUX FLORENT PAGNY PHILIPS 8 GIRLS WANT JUST TO HAVE FUN CYNDI LAUPER EPIC 9 FEEL HEAT THE OF THE NIGHT MASTERBOY POLYDOR 10 HOPES HIGH PINK FLOYD EMI FRANCE…

1 BILL CALLAHAN Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest (DRAG CITY) 2 BUDDY AND JULIE MILLER Breakdown On 20th Ave. South (NEW WEST) 3 PURPLE MOUNTAINS Purple Mountains (DRAG CITY) 4 SON VOLT Union (TRANSMIT SOUND/THIRTY TIGERS) 5 DAMIEN JURADO In The Shape Of A Storm (LOOSE) 6 RHIANNON GIDDENS WITH FRANCESCO TURRISI  There Is No Other (NONESUCH) 7 MOLLY TUTTLE When You’re Ready (COMPASS) 8 PETER BRUNTNELL King Of Madrid (DOMESTICO) 9 JOHNNY DOWD Family Picnic (MOTHER JINX) 10 CROOKED JADES Empathy Moves The Water (JADE NOTE)…

1 BRIAN HARNETTY Shawneee, Ohio (KARL) 2 JAY GLASS DUBS Epitaph (BOKEH VERSIONS) 3 ELLEN ARKBRO Chords (SUBTEXT) 4 SARAH DAVACHI Pale Bloom (W.25TH) 5 FELICIA ATKINSON The Flower And The Vessel (SHELTER PRESS) 6 ERNSTALBRECHT STIEBLER Zwischen Den Tönen (EDITION TELEMARK) 7 KYLE BOBBY DUNN From Here To Eternity (PAST INSIDE THE PRESENT) 8 OREN AMBARCHI Simian Angel (EDITIONS MEGO) 9 BILL ORCUTT Odds Against Tomorrow (PALILALIA) 10 JONI VOID Mise En Abyme (CONSTELLATION)…

1 LANKUM The Livelong Day (ROUGH TRADE) 2 ROWAN RHEINGANS The Lines We Draw Together (RED DRESS) 3 VARIOUS Vision & Revision: The First 80 Years Of Topic Records (TOPIC) 4 LEVERET Diversions (ROOTBEAT) 5 NANCY KERR & JAMES FAGAN An Evening With Nancy Kerr & James Fagan (LITTLE DISH) 6 VARIOUS English Folk Field Recordings 2 (FROM HERE) 7 JIM MORAY The Outlander (MANAGED DECLINE) 8 NAOMI BEDFORD & PAUL SIMMONDS Singing It All Back Home (DUSTY WILLOW) 9 LUNATRAKTORS This Is Broken Folk (BROKEN FOLK) 10 THE RAILS Cancel The Sun (PSYCHONAUT)…

THE FIRST SONG THAT LEONARD COHEN intones on Thanks For The Dance begins, “I was always working steady/But I never called it art.” The modesty, perhaps, is a little disingenuous. Cohen was a poet whose forays into songwriting seemed to miraculously enhance his cultural credibility rather than diminish it. Over the 14 albums he completed in his lifetime, he created a kind of popular music that made sense to the gatekeepers of high art, while at the same time understanding the radical bohemian spirit of a new generation. “Cohen’s rebellion was not of the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll kind,” writes his biographer Sylvie Simmons in this issue of MOJO, “though he was a longtime fan of the first two.” Sylvie is among a crack team of MOJO aesthetes who celebrate…

Ram John Holder Wimpy Bar Blues (FROM BLACK LONDON BLUES , BEACON, 1969) A sauntering, literal account of visiting a Wimpy Bar on the Edgware Road and nodding off, with parping sax accompaniment, from the groovy cat who later played Porkpie in Channel 4 barber-com Desmond’s. Pub Crawl Blues is also a must. Stephen Grey Moonlight Over McAlpines (FROM INDUSTRY VOLUME 2 , KPM, 1975) Haunting reeds hover in the dark for this library cue for the great night-time empty building site of the mind (description: ‘LETHARGIC, STATIC – CLARINET’). Also includes Deserted Factory, Desolate Warehouse and Industrial Waste. Various Songs From The Bull Ring (BIRMINGHAM MARKETS EP, 1985) Celebrating 21 years of Brum’s shopping centre, local acts Salty Dog, Milestone Express, The Open Roaders and Malcolm Stent bring folk,…

“I ENJOY SPENDING time here when I’m not schlepping round the world with my great love, Priest,” says Rob Halford from Phoenix, Arizona, “but home to me will always be Walsall.” The one they call the Metal God joined the hell-bent-for-leather hard rockers in 1973 and has sung on 16 albums, with last year’s Firepower a thunderous restatement of their heavy metal maximalism. But for all his dramatic, lung busting power-vocalising, in conversation Halford is genial and upbeat, asking bathetically, “Are you having a lovely Brexit?” before adding, “this is why we need the joy of music – to help you forget all the horror.” Enter Celestial, his new Christmas album, created over three years with his brother, Nigel, and nephew, Alex, plus sister Sue on jingle bells percussion. It…

1 LAMBCHOP SO MODERN AND SO TIGHT Kurt Wagner’s uncanny digitisation continues apace on the drolly-titled Basement Tapes EP. Sad country robot has a breakdown over Satie, is the rough vibe. Find it: streaming services 2 BISHOP BRIGGS FEAT. TOM MORELLO CHAMPION Morello adds wind tunnel shredding, hyperactive electronic beats’n’squelch to this strident single from London pop noir export’s second album. Find it: streaming services/Champion (ISLAND) 3 DESTROYER CRIMSON TIDE A pile-up of oddball non sequiturs over epic synth-pop in this taster from the forthcoming Have We Met. As usual there’s a subtext of what an idiot Dan Bejar is. Find it: streaming services 4 Or, Kieran Hebden adopts a hieroglyph-alias for scissoring breaks and snakey vox, before chimes come in like the sun’s…

COYLY ADVERTISED THESE DAYS AS “A charming budget hotel overlooking Hyde Park”, the Columbia on Lancaster Gate has always been the rock’n’roller’s favourite London boarding house, thanks to its amenable bar hours and tolerance of musicianly high spirits. “Back in ’77-78, all the punks used to meet here for a late drink,” explains Jaz Coleman, as he breezes through its pillared Victorian portal on a bright autumn afternoon, blithely waving at the receptionist en passant as if he owns the place. “And here we are 40-plus years later,” he concludes, emitting the first of many savage roars of laughter, “absolutely no progress whatsoever!” With his chest-length black hair, black sunglasses and all-black attire, Killing Joke’s mercurial frontman certainly looks the part of the rock god in residence. The shades will…

NOVEMBER 26, 1968: JACK Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker walk out onto the Royal Albert Hall stage to a hero’s welcome. The crowd’s joy at their nine-song set, dominated by exhilarating feats of improvisation, is tempered by the knowledge that the evening’s two concerts will be Cream’s last. For the past two years, thanks to an unprecedented cocktail of volume, virtuosity and one or two classified ingredients, the trio had transformed contemporary music. By taking a jazz approach to a repertoire of blues- and pop-oriented songs, Cream had created a new form. The new, grown-up rock world grieved the early demise of this trailblazing young trio. Not Ginger, though. “No!” barked the man from his recliner when I visited him at his home outside Canterbury in 2014. “A ruddy…

LOSER (Mellow Gold, DGC 1994) Dylan met Beastie Boys in the surrealist, cut-up verses before Beck mocked his MC skills in a “Why don’t you kill me?” chorus some took as novelty nihilism. The slacker anthem he never really wanted, Loser was large-scale exhibition of his modernist collage approach. SLEEPING BAG (One Foot In The Grave, K 1994) From the rush-released, Geffentolerated indie album – as Beck battles sellout slurs with “difficult” anti-folk – came this dreamy, barely held together country-blues strummer. “It’s getting hard to think,” he coos. “And my clothes are starting to shrink.” THE NEW POLLUTION (Odelay, DGC 1996) With the beatbox set to Tomorrow Never Knows, the ’60s are beamed into the ’90s. Bursts of flute gave way to snippets of howling feedback and a reverie-inducing…

IT’S HARD THINKING OF LEONARD COHEN AS a young man. For most he’s the rat pack rabbi in suit and fedora on those triumphant, late-life comeback tours. He was old in 1967 when he released his first album – 33, at a time when the counterculture advised you trusted no one over 30. Born in 1934 in Montreal, Canada to a well-to-do Jewish family that raised religious leaders and important businessmen stretching back generations, Cohen’s rebellion was not of the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll kind, though he was a longtime fan of the first two. When he was young, he wanted to go to military school; when he was old, he wanted to live as a Buddhist monk; in-between he wanted to be a poet and novelist. His first poetry…

I’D JUST PRODUCED LEWIS Furey’s first album – he was Montreal’s artiste du jour, a mix of tango, rock, bowed cellos and banjo. I’d assembled his band and we were playing the Hotel Nelson, and the place was going nuts. This guy comes over, in a rumpled black suit, and says, “I’m Leonard Cohen, can we meet?” I was aware of Suzanne but I was more into progressive, interesting stuff – but sure. He sat on my couch and played There Is A War, Chelsea Hotel #2 and Who By Fire. They were great songs, and I began to think of arrangements, like This Is A War suggested a North African feel. I was figuratively putting them in picture frames, like vignettes, and Leonard liked that idea. It wasn’t folk…

Beck ★★★★ Hyperspace EMI. CD/DL/LP BECK HANSEN’S detractors often complain that they find him slippery, ungraspable. There’s the constant musical costume changes for a start. Is he an all-bopping post-modernist, juxtaposing fragments of pop history for fun and profit, or a sad-eyed balladeer, fused to an acoustic guitar, prizing emotion over invention? But more than his generic switchbacking, there’s the elusiveness of who he is, what he wants, what he thinks. It’s easy to imagine this enigma-weaving is deliberate – part of a secretiveness that chimes in some way with his association with the Church Of Scientology, something fundamental in his life that he cannot share with outsiders. Does Beck live, and love, as other humans? Sea Change – the bruised and beautiful 2002 album he made after his break-up…

SCOTLAND Assai Records 33 Union Street Dundee DD1 4 BS 01382 205671 1 Grindlay Street, Edinburgh EH3 9AT 0131 228 3943 Europa Music 10 Friars Street, Stirling FK8 1HA 01786 448623 Mo Fidelity 126 Murray Street Montrose, DD10 9JG 07870 491240 NORTH WEST 81 Renshaw Street Liverpool L1 2SJ 01517071850 Action 47 Church St, Preston PR1 3DH 01772 884 772 / www. action-records.co.uk Five Rise Records 30c Park Road Bingley, West Yorks BD16 4QF 01274 512867 Piccadilly Records 53 Oldham St, Manchester M1 1JR 0161 839 8008 Vinyl Cafe 44 Abbey St, Carlisle CA3 8TX 01228 522845 X Records 44 Bridge St, Bolton BL1 2EG 01204 384579 TNT Records Ltd 86 Duke St Barrow in Furness Cumbria LA14 1RD 07428171256 Wax at Moorgate 643, Chesterfield Road,Sheffield S8 0RY 01142 275…

• “The songs feel closer to me than the person who wrote them,” says Robert Forster of his ’80s self, “though I have great affection for that person. [But] I recognise Grant [above left] totally in his songs. My appreciation for what he did grows, and it’s at such a distance now that I almost have questions for him. Like, What did you mean by that? I kick myself that I didn’t ask him, but you’re caught in the moment of creation and you think it’s never gonna end, so you don’t ask questions or comment as much as you should.”…

Alton Ellis ★★★★ Greatest Hits DOCTOR BIRD. CD The serene power of the singer dubbed ‘Mr Soul Of Jamaica’ is handsomely served by this 2-CD, appraisal of his Duke Reid/ Treasure Isle rocksteady era. This 1974 release of 12 tracks recorded between ’67-70 now offers an extra 37 cuts, of varying rarity, all touched by Alton’s majesty. KC The Fall ★★★★ 1982 CHERRY RED. CD/LP 1982’s mighty Hex Enduction Hour and Room To Live, plus live and Peel sessions, over six discs. Think avant-garage racket, two drummers and Mark E. Smith’s relentlessly stimulating psycho-bombast role-playing: runic enigma, torture and absolution in one go. IH The Hammersmith Gorillas ★★★ Why Wait ’Til Tomorrow 1974-1981 JUST ADD WATER. LP All Jesse Hector’s proto-punk Mod rock’n’rollers recorded not on ’78’s Message To The…

THE MOJO office has an admirably catholic music policy, with everything from the Grateful Dead, Sleater-Kinney, King Tubby, Ween, and the UK Subs occupying space on the turntable. However, one area where we’ve always held rigid ideas of excellence is in the arena of the Christmas record. When it was suggested we compile a Festive How To Buy list, it felt like a very open-and-shut case: there can’t be that many great Christmas records, and MOJO probably knows them all. How wrong could we be? “Capturing spookiness and melancholy… joy and togetherness.” Second only to MOJO 309’s longlist for Spiritual Jazz, this was the best response we have ever received from the readers for a How To Buy piece. Everything from the first artist-fronted Yuletide long-player (Bing Crosby’s Merry Christmas,…

Booker skipped school early one day in 1960 to go with his friend, William Bell, to Satellite Records, where he played baritone sax on Rufus And Carla Thomas’ Cause I Love You, the nascent Stax label’s first hit. His first son, Booker T. Jones III, died of a heart attack in 2014. He was studio engineer for Prince, who died just a few months later. For the studious, Booker explains the creation of Green Onions: “At my mother’s piano, I had played F, A flat, B flat, F – using the contrapuntal chord triad structural rules from 18th century Baroque Bach. A little swing and blues changes, and the song was born.”…

Lana Del Rey Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles “YOU CAN’T BE in the middle of Hollywood and not hear the sexiest song of all time,” declares Lana Del Rey from the stage of, not coincidently, the Hollywood Bowl, where she’s headlining for the second time, and in which she could not be more in her element. Sexy? She’s right. She just brought Chris Isaak on-stage to sing Wicked Game with her, and mid-song you’re involuntarily greeted by visions of Isaak and model Helena Christensen frolicking on some sandy beach in 1989. Isaak is just one of a handful of tonight’s strategically-selected guests, all of whom complement rather than overshadow the night’s star, touring to promote what is likely her best album ever. Del Rey glides effortlessly through a set of what…

According to co-producer Steve Katz, Lou Reed’s live album Rock N Roll Animal features extra crowd noise from a John Denver concert. Is this a widespread practice, as I suspect, and who did it first? Brian Yates, via e-mail Fred Says: You guessed it – as well as discreet overdubs and cherry-picked performances from different gigs, the live album loves bunging on extra cheers. It’s not always precise: notable examples with often clanging audience noise include 1971’s Live Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page, The Kinks’ 1967 album Live At Kelvin Hall and 13th Floor Elevators’ 1968 studio outtakes compilation album Live, plus outings by James Brown, Kiss, the Stones, The Seeds, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix and others. Particularly egregious has to be the Sex Pistols’ 1990 long-player Live At Chelmsford Top…

1 BRITTANY HOWARD History Repeats Written by Brittany Howard. Published by Blackfoot Whitefoot (BMI) ℗ &© 2019 Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited, from the album Jaime (Columbia Records) 2 EDWYN COLLINS I Guess We Were Young Written by Edwyn Collins. Published by Kobalt Music Group Ltd ℗& © 2019 Edwyn Collins under exclusive license to Analogue Enhanced Digital (AED), from the album Badbea (AED Records) www.aedrecords.com 3 P.P. ARNOLD Baby Blue Written by Steve Cradock, Steve Grizzell. Published by Copyright Control, Kundalini Music ℗ &© 2019 Edel Germany GmbH. earMUSIC is a project of Edel. Download: https://we.tl/t-3dqfk7PfBF 4 CATE LE BON Daylight Matters Written by Cate Le Bon. Published by Domino Publishing Co. Ltd. (PRS) ℗ &© 2019 Kemado Records, Inc., d/b/a Mexican Summer, from the…

1 SARATHY KORWAR More Arriving (LEAF) 2 BINKER GOLDING Abstractions Of Reality Past & Incredible Feathers (GEARBOX) 3 THE COMET IS COMING Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery (IMPULSE!) 4 THEON CROSS Fyah (GEARBOX) 5 SPAZA SPAZA (MUSHROOM HOUR HALF HOUR) 6 ABDULLAH IBRAHIM The Balance (GEARBOX) 7 JAIMIE BRANCH Fly Or Die II: Bird Dogs Of Paradise (K7) 8 ETHNIC HERITAGE ENSEMBLE  Be Known Ancient/Future/Music (SPIRITMUSE) 9 SEED ENSEMBLE Driftglass (JAZZ RE:FRESHED) 10 RUBY RUSHTON Ironside (22A)…