Sommaire pour March 2022 de MOJO

AFTER SIX LPs, it’s well-established that lightening the mood isn’t one of Interpol’s core values. That might change with the follow-up to 2018’s elegant Marauder. “I’m a pretty doom-and-gloom kind of vocalist,” says frontman Paul Banks, “and that’s not what came out of me this time.” The band’s seventh album started to take shape shortly after Banks’s side-project Muzz released their album in June 2020. Guitarist Daniel Kessler began sending songs through to Banks and drummer Sam Fogarino, the singer “writing vocals sitting in a comfy chair next to the window in Edinburgh,” his billet for the first lockdown. Mindful of the neighbours, he kept his voice down, but remote working led to the different spaces he was seeking. “I think my voice does different things at quieter volumes,” he…

“I WAS DEFINITELY at the right place at the right time,” says photographer, TV presenter/producer and writer Sophie Bramly of the archive of NY rap images collected in new book Yo! The Early Days Of Hip Hop 1982-84. “But you don’t know these things when you’re there. I don’t think anyone on the hip-hop scene had the feeling that it was going to change the world. It was a day-to-day thing, in a small community.” Consequently, hers is a view of a form in the process of becoming. Taken in rap’s streets, studios and venues, it stars the scene’s DJs and MCs (Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Run-DMC and many more) plus graffiti artists (Futura 2000, Zephyr) and breakdancers (the Rock Steady Crew, The Magnificent Force). As…

ANAIS MITCHELL KNEW BETTER THAN TO TAKE another job. It was June 2020, three months since she and her husband Noah had fled New York for the sheep farm where she grew up in middle Vermont, five hours due north. A week after the move, she had given birth to their second daughter, Rosetta. So when the invitation arrived to join a long-distance consortium of songwriters who penned and posted a song a day, she already knew she was too busy. But she also somehow knew she had to say yes. “That’s not how I roll – I take years to write,” exclaims Mitchell. “But as someone who second-guesses and overthinks things, I found it wildly healing. The exercise of having to say ‘Yes’ to whatever idea you have and…

ON PAPER, the idea looked fairly ludicrous: the septuagenarian Nick Mason revisiting the early days of Pink Floyd with erstwhile members of Spandau Ballet and The Blockheads. But, through their attention to detail and on-stage verve, Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets have been a resounding success. “It would sound too depressing to say I had very low expectations, because it was not really that,” Mason tells MOJO. “I just wasn’t sure whether it would interest people.” “What’s lovely is it’s Pink Floyd when they were a pop group,” states Guy Pratt. “Before it was this vast, faceless obelisk.” “We took the pomposity out of the music,” reckons Gary Kemp. “We gave it a little bit more fun, a little bit more edge, a little bit more anarchy here and there.”…

THERE ARE MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO pride themselves on their anonymity – their ability to disappear into the background and observe, the proverbial fly on the wall. Mick Rock was the opposite: a massive personality who lent his own energy to the people and events he recorded. On the occasions he would appear in the MOJO office – his attire never complete without an extravagant scarf – he would call everyone ‘darling’, regardless of their gender, like a star of the stage fresh from an excellent lunch at the Garrick. Rock discovered photography and drugs simultaneously, in the rooms of a “well-heeled friend” at Cambridge University In the course of a trip on blotter acid he picked up his host’s Pentax camera. “At the height of the lunacy, I started to…

The Monkees (Colgems, 1966) Heralded by the exquisite Paperback Rewrite of Last Train To Clarksville, The Monkees’ debut introduced Nesmith as a fully-fledged singer-songwriter, his countryish nasalese captured perfectly on the selfpenned Brit-Invasion-meets-Texas twang of Papa Gene’s Blues plus Sweet Young Thing, his captivating co-write with Goffin and King. More Of The Monkees (Colgems, 1967) Mary Mary introduces Nesmith the intuitive producer who brings grit and gusto to his song, sung here by Micky Dolenz, but first recorded by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (it was later covered by Run-DMC in 1988). The garage-poppy The Kind Of Girl I Could Love (authored with Roger Atkins) provides another Nesmith thrill. And then there’s I’m A Believer. Believe! Headquarters (Colgems, 1967) The group seize creative control and write and play the majority…

Imarhan ★★★★ Aboogi CITY SLANG. CD/DL/LP ARE YOU READY for the country? The further we get from the initial surprise that the ‘desert blues’ exist, the more each album reveals about the lives of the protagonists. Rather than setting up the music as a scene in which competing yet complementing bands joust for a hearing – à la Britpop, or whatever – the Tuaregs’ records coalesce to form a single narrative, different parts of one story delivered in varying voices yet, ultimately, unified. A Mahabharata or Ramayana for the Tamashek people who once reigned unchallenged across northern Africa. “We give space to the wind, the sun and the sand,” says Sadam, the band’s nominal leader. “We want to express their colours through music.” That this synaesthesia is the goal will…

★★★★★ Forfolks INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM. CD/DL/LP LA-based Tortoise guitarist spins filigree patterns of folk-jazz mystery. A linchpin member of Tortoise and Isotope 217, Jeff Parker defined Chicago’s ’90s post-rock sound as much as John McEntire, Bundy K. Brown or David Grubbs, his intricate, loop-driven minimalism occupying a bright new colour within the Venn diagram of jazz, folk, blues, funk and drone harmonics. On this, the follow-up to 2020’s rich and multilayered Suite For Max Brown, he is alone with just his guitar and effects and the results are mesmerising. Much like the late free improv guitarist Derek Bailey, Parker can unpick a standard with meticulous style, taking a classic like My Ideal and revealing its grand inner workings. Yet while his cover of Thelonious Monk’s Ugly Beauty reveals a kinship with…

(YOUTUBE/STREAMING SERVICES) “I’m not the season I’m in” sings Robin Pecknold towards the end of this solo acoustic set, recorded in December 2020 in a Brooklyn church and livestreamed to those stuck at home. While Pecknold excels at such archaic, elemental wisdom, the seasons seem, conversely, critical to his deeply grounded folk aesthetic. The same month this set was recorded, Fleet Foxes released a career-high LP, Shore, exactly on the autumnal equinox. For karmic balance, then, film of this show and its accompanying soundtrack manifest digitally on the winter solstice; the day of the longest shadows making a perfect backdrop to Pecknold’s shy virtuosity. Anyone who saw Robin roar into the rafters during his off-mike, solo acoustic spots at early Fleet Foxes shows, will remember how well Tiger Mountain Peasant…

Themes For Great Cities – A New History Of Simple Minds ★★★★ Graeme Thomson CONSTABLE. £20 NOVEMBER 1982 and Simple Minds are performing on Channel 4’s live-to-air Friday teatime music show, The Tube. In a four-song set, the standout being the unrelenting Neu! groove and fast-fingered synth shapes of New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) – the title track of their fifth album released two months before – they come across as a mysterious and faultlessly cool, post-punk-meets-Krautrock outfit. As the decade will progress, however, and as their sound turns to straighter-edged Big Music rock designed to fill arenas and stadiums, their magic and mystery will slowly evaporate. In this 345-page, band- endorsed biography, author Graeme Thomson states that while he doesn’t want to use their “young brilliance as a stick with…

…2-Tone reunites for Ethiopia FEBRUARY 26 The mid-’80s were a busy time for charity records raising funds for famine relief in Africa. Band Aid fired the starting gun at Christmas 1984. In February, with talents including Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Dylan and Springsteen, USA For Africa’s We Are The World was awaiting release. Also ready to go was Northern Lights’ Tears Are Not Enough, an all-Canadian affair with Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot and others. In a few months Stars, the all-star metal track billed as by Hear ‘n Aid, would be recorded with Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford and Derek Smalls among the many hard rock luminaries. On February 26’s whistle Test, on BBC2, the promo clip for a new fundraising 45 was seen. Starvation was a cover…

HELLO LATE 1969 Tim Hart [voice, stringed instruments] and I had a small flat in Archway, in a house with about four flats in it. I was very into the olde worlde thing, everything was polished wood. I think three of the flats were actually rented by folk people, it was a sort of a community. The first day of the group would be the dinner we had there with Ashley Hutchings [bass] and [folk rock married couple] Gay and Terry Woods, when they said, “Do you want to join the band?” At the time, there was a lot of talk about folk going electric, but basically nobody could afford it, and we didn’t know how to do it anyway. But Ashley had been in Fairport Convention and had access…

NORTHERN PUNK crucible the Electric Circus, a grotty venue in Manchester’s Collyhurst, lasted a year but saw performances from the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash, Ramones, The Jam, Banshees and every major act of the day. The best-known audio document of it remains the 1978 eight-track 10-inch Short Circuit – Live At The Electric Circus, recorded during the venue’s last weekend before it closed on October 2, 1977. With Joy Division (still known as Warsaw), Buzzcocks, The Fall, John Cooper Clarke, Steel Pulse and The Drones recorded on Virgin’s multitrack mobile studio, the high-quality recordings were thrilling, if few in number. So what happened to the tapes of the groups’ complete performances? And what of Magazine, The Negatives and others who appeared at the venue’s last hurrah? The online…

“It’s important to bring lightness to the stage.”ERIN RAE YOU KNOW your mom lives in the sticks when the local draw is the World’s Largest Cedar Bucket. “Only in America,” chuckles Erin Rae, whose mother’s current locale – near Oxford, Mississippi – has this honour. “You get these weird attractions. Like this summer, we were on our way to Red Rocks and stopped in Kansas to see the World’s Largest Ball Of Twine...” Supersizing might be a national pastime, but it’s far from Erin Rae’s aesthetic. The Nashville-based singer’s tunes have a simple beauty and her voice a pure clarity – a little bit country, a little bit Laurel Canyon. “When Erin opened her mouth and started singing I was hooked,” says Jonathan Wilson, the producer of her bewitching new…

THE LONGER FLOYD ONE Pink Floyd – Atom Heart Mother (23:44) (from Atom Heart Mother, Harvest, 1970) Pseudo-classical suite (nearly called The Amazing Pudding) with starring roles for Rick Wright’s organ, the brass section of the EMI Pops and John Aldiss’s long-suffering choir, barking nonsense, all marshalled by avant- composer Ron Geesin. Best bit: when Gilmour comes in at 10:36. DE THE POST-ROCK ONE Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Providence (29:02) (from F# A# ∞, Kranky, 1998) The Canadian soundscapers perfected their – and post-rock’s – blend of classical expansiveness, drone-rock repetition, Morricone twang, martial rhythms, found sound manipulations, obtuse references and grandstand dread as early as their first album. The glockenspiel of the apocalypse arrives, disingenuously, at 6:08. JM THE TECHNO ONE The Orb – The Blue Room (39:58)…

REACH ENDGAME WITH PAWN HEARTS “SOMEONE SHOUTED, ‘FUCK OFF WITH YOUR MUSIC!’ …ONE OF OUR CATCHPHRASES FOR A WHILE.”Hugh Banton John Anthony: In 1969, I was DJ-ing at [London club] the Speakeasy. There were three bands that could empty the place: Egg, Jody Grind and Van der Graaf Generator. But I loved that. VdGG were far out and not trying to be rock’n’roll and groovy, ploughing their own path. Peter Hammill: There hadn’t been a line-up like ours, with lead saxophone and organ, and an almost complete absence of guitars. Like a late-’60s soul band, but warped by the spirit of Stockhausen and Messiaen, sci-fi, Catholicism and Icelandic sagas. Big stories, moral rights and wrongs, the ‘What if?’ world. I think we wanted to make things difficult for ourselves by…

Fairy Tale (1968; The Monkees TV series) They could do comedy alongside the best of them – and this episode, Nesmith’s favourite, proved it. A zany and hilarious fractured Grimm fairy-tale featuring Nesmith in dual roles as a cobbler and, better still, in drag as Princess Gwen. Bonus points for concluding with a performance of Nez’s psychedelic masterwork, Daily Nightly. The Monkees Blow Their Minds (1968; The Monkees TV series) The title says it all. But this second-to-final episode remains most notable for its opening sequence which features Nesmith impersonating Frank Zappa, a longtime champion of the Prefabbers, and vice versa before they destroy a car with a sledgehammer to the strains of Mother People. Pretty hip ‘teenybopper’ fare for 1968! Head (1968; feature film) The scene of The Monkees’…

★★★ Cold As Weiss COLEMINE. CD/DL/LP Soul-jazz group’s cool, retro-flavoured grooves. BACK IN THE late ’50s and early ’60s, organ trios were the hippest combos in jazz, led by Hammond heroes such as Jimmy Smith and Big John Patton. Taking their stylistic cue from those pioneers, this Seattle-based trio combine cool Blue Note-influenced sounds with funk elements that reverberate with echoes of The Meters, The JB’s (minus the horns) and Booker T. & The M.G.’s. The band’s new drummer Daniel Weiss is the inspiration for this third LP, where his snare drum’s crisp crackle locks in with Jimmy James’s scratchy guitar filigrees and Lamarr’s booming organ bass. From the funky Pull Up Your Pants to the slow-grinding Big TT’s Blues and more upbeat Get Da Steppin’, the DLO3 serve up…

Mark Lockheart ★★★★ Dreamers EDITION. CD/DL/LP Quartet set from under-sung saxophonist, an exemplar in the art of mood building. After working with a 30-piece orchestra for 2019’s Days On Earth, Dreamers marks a partial return to Lockheart’s eccentric roots in Loose Tubes and Polar Bear. A jagged, otherworldly feel percolates through this four-way with Dinosaur keyboardist Elliott Galvin, long-term bassist Tom Herbert and drummer Dave Smith – relatively gentle as it weaves around Lockheart’s raga- like two-bar sax riff on Jagdish before careening off the rails on Gangster Rat and Mingle Tingle, with Galvin wreaking havoc from his Frankensteined box of tricks. The Kraftwerk-inspired title track and longing tour-de-force Weird Weather better display Lockheart’s contrasting spare and feathery tones, shades of Wayne Shorter and Michael Brecker brushing up against spaced-…

IN 1958, the co-owner of the German electronics manufacturer SABA, Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, an expert in sound equipment, accomplished pianist and knowledgeable jazz fan, built a recording studio in his villa in Villingen-Schwenningen in the Black Forest region. When Oscar Peterson came to Zurich to perform a concert in 1961, Brunner-Schwer invited him to his home studio, promising him the best sound he’d ever heard. Peterson was indeed impressed by HGBS’s crystalline recording of the performance he gave at the house: “I never heard myself like this before...” He returned every year for similar events, making recordings which couldn’t be released commercially while Peterson was under contract to Verve, but which circulated nonetheless among connoisseurs. In 1968, Brunner-Schwer left SABA to start his own jazz label, MPS, standing for Musik…

The Cake The Cake DECCA, 1967 MAMAS & THE PAPAS singer Michelle Phillips wasn’t expecting any pushback when she refused to let a young female vocal trio called The Cake backstage at Monterey Pop in June 1967. But as founding member and songwriter Barbara Morillo recalls today, their friend Eric Burdon was not pleased: “He said, ‘You’re going to give passes to The Cake – or we’re pulling The Animals and Jimi Hendrix off the show!’” The Cake gained entry, talked to their pal Hendrix and marvelled at the “unbelievable spread of food”. Bronx-raised Morillo didn’t see much music that day, however, distracted as she was by the festival’s forest setting and communal tripping. “In the Bronx,” she says, “there wasn’t even a tree on my block. It was just…

REGGAE’S DEFINITIVE bassist, Robbie Shakespeare’s brawny, melodic and spacious basslines evidenced a broad and effortless grasp of musical styles. Over a career spanning more than 40 years, he and ‘Riddim Twins’ drum partner Sly Dunbar would back every Jamaican star of note, bring Grace Jones to mainstream success, and be called on by stars including Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Jackson Browne, Serge Gainsbourg, Joe Cocker and Ian Dury. “If an artist is a singer, an instrumentalist, or whatever, we’re going to play the music to match that specific sound,” Shakespeare told me in 2005. we weren’t just listening to one type of music, we were listening to James Brown, Marty Robbins, Diana Ross, a little rock’n'roll…” Born on September 27 1953, and raised in the down-at-heel district of Vineyard Town…

“IT’S FINE IF you call us metal or psychedelic or drone,” says Boris drummer Atsuo. “We’re in a space where all those genres connect... our genre is ‘heavy’, whatever you perceive that to be!” Chatting to MOJO via an interpreter over Zoom, the long-running Tokyo trio – completed by lead guitarist Wata and bassist/rhythm guitarist Takeshi, with all three sharing vocal duties – illustrate their eclectic creativity by nominating personal cult heroes. Wata cites the influence of David Gilmour, while Atsuo opts for the “methods and sensibilities” of canonical Russian art house director Andrei Tarkovsky. In no-frills contrast, Takeshi points to 1980s Hiroshima hardcore punk hellions Gudon – specifically their guitarist Zigyaku, who guested on Boris’s previous album No. Initially self-released in summer 2020, No combined elements of crust punk,…

LOS BITCHOS’s lead guitarist Serra Petale was drumming with London indie-rockers Kid Wave when her eureka moment arrived. Playing a compilation album called The Roots Of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru, she came across the sashaying instrumental A Patricia by Los Destellos – a 1960s combo credited with introducing the electric guitar to Peruvian indigenous musics. The discovery sparked a life-changing realisation. “I was like, ‘Ah, right, of course you can do an instrumental band – why can’t you?’” Petale recalls today. She’d been playing guitar privately at home, but “lyricism never came to me”, and A Patricia showed her how she could express her tequila-bumping personality without the necessity for words. Petale, who grew up in Western Australia, shared her find with her friend Josefine Jonsson, who’d moved to…

IN A REHEARSAL SPACE IN NORTH LONDON, NICK MASON SITS BEHIND HIS DRUM kit, listening to himself shouting 50 years ago. As he builds up a tom-tom tattoo to accompany a familiar echoing bassline, his mangled, pitched-down voice, recorded back in 1971 (and now sampled), dementedly barks through the PA: “I’m going to cut you into little pieces...” Around him, his Saucerful Of Secrets band – trading in ’67-’72 Pink Floyd since 2018 – kick into the proto-headbanger crescendo of One Of These Days, the opening track from 1971’s Meddle. After the song culminates in a flurry of cymbal and guitar noise, MOJO wonders aloud: isn’t Mason tempted to set up a microphone and re-enact his vocal role live? “Yes, I am tempted, and we have looked at that, and…

ON JUNE 1, 1968, MICHAEL NESMITH WALKED into the RCA Victor studios in Nashville with an idea foi a tune – no lyrics yet, just some chords – that, as the day progressed, became a mission statement for him as a musician, songwriter and, at that moment, a member of one of the biggest and most divisive groups in pop Nesmith called the song Listen To The Band. The year before, Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Peter Tork – The Monkees – had wrestled control of their records from the Hollywood producers and label executives who brought then together in 1965 to play a fictional combo in a television series. Gifted singers and players with varying degrees of studio and gig experience, the four proved themselves with the folk…

Magnetic South (RCA, 1970) A statement of intent recorded for RCA Nashville, Nesmith’s solo debut utilised crack Monkees session players to craft a series of softly philosophical ‘cosmic country’ ballads, defined by the keening pedal steel of OJ ‘Red’ Rhodes, Nesmith’s own easy-flowing lyrics, and a voice that slides from soothing croon to lonesome Jimmie Rodgers yodel. Loose Salute (RCA, 1970) Buoyed by the commercial failure of Magnetic South, the second First National Band LP is more defiantly eclectic and playful, moving from exquisite covers (I Fall To Pieces) to curious Latino funk (Tengo Amore; Hello Lady) goofy rockers (Dedicated Friend) and a handful of plaintive, metaphysical love songs (Conversations; Lady Of The Valley). Nevada Fighter (RCA, 1971) Recorded while The First National Band and Nesmith’s own personal life were…

Big Thief ★★★★ Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You 4AD. CD/DL/LP IN ONE OF two free-form band biographies accompanying Big Thief’s fifth album, their friend Mat Davidson, a guest here on fiddle and more, summons a certain Austrian poet. “Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as criticism,” he writes, quoting Rainer Maria Rilke. “Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them.” It’s unintentional, perhaps, but Davidson’s citation feels like a disclaimer. An amorphous, stylistically diverse record you must savour and digest slowly, like a python eating a deer, the mystically-titled Dragon… was recorded in four different locations with four very different engineers, its 20 questing songs culled from a possible 45 and speaking enigmatically of death,…

Black Country, New Road ★★★★ Ants From Up There NINJA TUNE. CD/DL/LP ANYONE AS YET undecided about Black Country, New Road would have to concede that the Cambridgeshire post-rock/jazz explorers have triumphed in extraordinarily adverse circumstances. To wit: their initial lifespan as Nervous Conditions was cut short by their original singer’s online ‘cancellation’. Then, once they’d embarked upon their ‘new road’ with guitarist Isaac Wood stepping up to the mike unplanned, their excellent debut For The First Time dropped in January 2021, depriving them of the missionary touring that ordinarily would have ensued. This follow-up lands one year later: however hampered by 2021’s restrictions, they’ve not stood idly by. BC,NR were among the first to live-stream a show online, and the audio of that memorable coming-of-age performance at London’s Queen…

True West ★★★★ Kaleidoscope Of Shadows: The Story So Far BRING OUT YOUR DEAD. CD FOR A FEW hot minutes in the early ’80s, True West were the most psychedelic band in the American underground. Named after the Sam Shepard play, they came from those exact coordinates: Davis, California, a college town in the farm country north-east of San Francisco, forming in 1982 after a local student combo called the Suspects broke up after one peppy new wave single. Two members, guitarist Steve Wynn and singer (soon bassist) Kendra Smith, went to LA and started The Dream Syndicate. Two other Suspects, guitarist Russ Tolman and drummer Gavin Blair, debuted as True West with an indie 45 cover of Pink Floyd’s Lucifer Sam, then added guitarist Richard McGrath for a 1983…

★★★★ Life Between Islands: Soundsystem Culture: Black Musical Expression In The UK 1973-2006 SOUL JAZZ. CD/DL/LP Expansive comp highlighting the enduring impact of Black British soundsystem culture. PRODUCED TO accompany the Tate Modern’s acclaimed exhibition, Life Between Islands provides shuffle – mode snapshots of the more important musical forms that evolved from the soundsystem culture pervasive in diverse Black British communities. As explored in Lloyd Bradley’s insightful notes, the roots reggae of Black Slate, proto-jungle of Ragga Twins and rumbling dubstep of Digital Mystikz all draw from the soundsystem experience, the compilation emphasising the distinctive niches carved out by pioneers. Thus, Pebbles’ toasting cut of Errol Dunkley’s A Little Way Different, expertly produced by Dennis Bovell, conjures the community centres and blues parties where soundsystems flourished, and lovers rock is…

AWARD-WINNING French speaker brand Triangle are much praised for their strong, unique identity and products’ ability to stand the test of time. The best-selling Esprit Titus EZ is no exception. At just 30cm tall and 17cm wide, the Titus EZ bookshelf speaker blends neatly with its surroundings while effortlessly filling rooms with detailed hi-fi sound, offering outstanding sonic intensity and powerful bass. The brown maple finish brings a combination of modern aesthetics with a sense of traditional craftsmanship to Triangle’s most famous product range. They retail at £900, and we have a set up for grabs for this issue’s crossword prize! So dig deep and complete rock-word puzzle-riddler Michael Jones’ crossword and send a scan of it to mojo@bauermedia.co.uk, making sure to type CROSSWORD 340 in the subject line. Entries…