Sommaire pour August 2019 de MOJO

Stevie Chick When not helping to raise the world’s tiniest Joanna Newsom obsessive, Stevie has been trying to replicate the Meg White pizza mentioned in his Raconteurs feature (p42); the secret (whisper it) is high-grade Parmesan. His book Foo Fighters: The Band That Dave Made is published by Palazzo this autumn. Jeffrey Lewis Acclaimed indie-rock songwriter and comix artist (see Lead LP illo p87) Lewis began recording home-made cassettes in New York City in 1998, and signed to Rough Trade in 2001. Many albums and comix later, Jeffrey’s band still tours regularly. Paul Trynka One-time MOJO editor Paul Trynka first saw Prince in 1987, and witnessed many landmark performances. This month he assesses a posthumous collection from the fabled Prince vaults – and also appears on the MOJO Innovators Podcast,…

ESCAPISM, AS ANY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN scholar will tell you, is not without consequences. On Hello Sunshine, the first single from Springsteen’s remarkable new album, he sings of lonely towns and empty streets, about how he “always liked that empty road/No place to be and miles to go.” But freedom is complicated: “Miles to go,” he notes reflectively, “is miles away.” This month, MOJO’s David Fricke takes a long road trip into the American wilderness, and into the psyche of Bruce Springsteen, as Western Stars heralds a dramatic new phase in this most epic of careers. There is widescreen romance, and human fallibilities, and plenty of insights from Springsteen and those closest to him. Plus, we have amazing interviews with The Raconteurs, Madonna and the survivors of Trout Mask Replica; a…

Basskraft A Bass Tribute To Kraftwerk (PANDISC, 1998) Miami booty bass label presents KW covers with extra, speaker-damaging ‘Mega Low Bass.’ The Chuck D sample calling out “Bass! How low can you go?” appears. Wrong enough to cause queasiness. Komputer The World Of Tomorrow (MUTE, 1998) KW-like techno pop from the London duo once known as Fortran 5. Future-casting songs about “underwater cities” and “colonies on Mars” sound daffy, but a tribute to cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova has a strange weight. Craftwife Various (YOUTUBE) Japanese female coder-duo in Man-Machine livery who perform Kraftwerk songs using iPhones wi-fi’d to the SuperCollider Sound programme. Watch them do The Robots, Trans-Europe Express and It’s More Fun To Compute using their mobiles. Various 8-Bit Operators: The Music Of Kraftwerk (ASTRALWERKS, 2007) Restriction-loving Game Boy-fan producers…

… LEONARD COHEN’s posthumous album arrives in November, reports Paris Match. Cohen (right) was working on it from 2015 until his death in November 2016, with son Adam : the younger Cohen has since completed it in Los Angeles …having suffered a “studio nightmare” of breakdowns, GARY NUMAN’s back with regular foil and fixer Ade Fenton for “a number of cool side projects… as well as the new ‘Intruder’ bum” …punk pathetique diehards the TOY DOLLS’ newie Episode XIII is almost ready. Sample track: Richard Clayderman’s A Creep …in an interview with Radio X, NOEL GALLAGHER revealed he’s following up this month’s Black Star Dancing EP with two more four-trackers, “one at Christmas and one in between” … MIKE PATTON has recorded an album with Jean-Claude Vannier. Corpse Flower features…

THE OFTEN hysterical, hyper-detailed narrative drama of a typical Sparks song would suit the cinematic treatment, but Ron and Russell Mael’s previous attempts to break into the movies have been unsuccessful. A planned collaboration with French legend Jacques Tati, for example, was kiboshed when the auteur died in 1982, while 2009 radio musical The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman proved too esoteric to secure investment. They’ve had more luck with Annette, which Ron pitches as, “neurotic comedian marries beautiful opera singer – and tragedy ensues.” Sparks’ script is going into production this summer with French director Leos Carax, who used their 1975 song How Are You Getting Home? in his 2012 fantasy Holy Motors. “Leos is one of our favourite directors, and I think we share a sensibility,” muses Russell. “We…

MADONNA IS TIRED AND HUNGRY. Tired because it’s past 11pm and she’s just polished off two mob-handed round-table interviews with journalists from Japan and continental Europe, plus intimate tête-à-têtes with two other UK publications, having only arrived in London this afternoon. Hungry, because she missed her dinner. Huddled on a sofa in a voluminous black jacket, Marilyn-blonde, sniffling slightly, one of the planet’s top five most famous living people wears a black eye-patch with a big silver X over her left eye. Offered two bags of crisps – one posh root vegetable-style; the other common-or-garden spud-based – she tears open the latter and gets stuck in, encouraging MOJO not to wait ’til she’s done. “Don’t mind the crunching,” she crunches. The occasion of our encounter is the pending release of…

RITE OF PASSAGE Madonna True Blue (SIRE, 1986) After the sexy pop provocations of albums one and two, this was Madonna in a whole new dimension, fuelled by the emotions stirred up by her tumultuous romance with actor Sean Penn and co-shaped by Pat Leonard, destined to be a long-term facilitator. Live To Tell aches with the pain of untold hurt, Papa Don’t Preach took a nuanced, string-laden take on teen pregnancy to Number 1 both sides of the Atlantic. The next level. DIVINE INTERVENTION Madonna Ray Of Light (MAVERICK, 1998) The late ’80s and early ’90s were shaped by Madonna’s weaponised sexuality. This was another step-change: William Orbit’s amniotic house a vessel for the singer’s psycho-spiritual musings on the emptiness of fame, spiced by wonder at the birth of…

ACK WHITE has released his music in eccentric ways ever since he and bandmate Brian Muldoon planted all the copies of their second Upholsterers single inside 100 pieces of renovated Detroit furniture. To date, only two copies of 2004’s Your Furniture Was Always Dead… I Was Just Afraid To Tell You have been found, but White’s Third Man Records empire has provided a steady stream of weird delights for the most intrepid record collectors. For instance… (12-inch album, 2010) The most gothic of Jack White’s musical projects, with a correspondingly baroque catalogue of vinyl extravagance: 12-inch copies of the second Dead Weather album, Sea Of Cowards, came with two secret extra tracks whose grooves are disguised by the inner label – CD-style hidden tracks in an unfamiliar vinyl context. (Triple…

LAURA GIBSON (April 22, 2008) The performance that started it all, prompted by NPR’s Bob Boilen and Stephen Thompson witnessing a SXSW show by the Oregon-based singer-songwriter marred by audience chatter. Intimacy – the great strength of the format – is here in spades; the fragile-voiced Gibson might be in her front parlour, or yours. Check out the back copies of MOJO stacked on the shelf behind her. TOM TOM CLUB (October 6, 2010) Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and friends embrace the tech and volume limitations of the Tiny Desk space with a skiffle take on their big tunes. Genius Of Love with washboard and accordion? Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. There’s extra frisson from getting up close to 24-carat legends (cf. Los Lobos, Tom Jones, Randy Newman)…

Why did you bid farewell to music in 2009? “I knew I’d done way beyond my best. I was turning 42. If I somehow miraculously kept being valued after retirement I thought I could come back under another art ideology, less hostile to hustle. I started writing a book. My agent asked what I thought about using it as the foundation of an hour-long drama. The story of my life for $150,000 but I would have zero input. I had to walk away. I started working on a documentary, but to do it I would have to open my life to filming, but I wanted never ever to write anything that foregrounded my life experiences. Until this Purple Mountains record. Second act, new rules.” Your mum died in 2014. Am…

An abundance of MOJO-aligned podcasts in June: two feature BBC 6Music DJ (and former Menswear drummer) Matt Everitt, a host genial enough to make what’s essentially a David Gilmour charity drive sound enticing. Turns out it is quite interesting. As Gilmour prepares to auction off some of his guitars for good causes, he and Everitt discuss the most notable in Three Different Ones: a black Fender Stratocaster purchased in New Orleans after Floyd had their equipment stolen in 1970; two Martin acoustics played on Wish You Were Here; and his white Strat with the #0001 serial number that originally belonged to Leo Fender. Everitt’s schmooze continues on Digging Deep: The Robert Plant Podcast, in which Percy promises to illuminate moments from his back catalogue, marvelling “at how nuts some of…

Tracks: Well Of Memory, Part 1 / Come In / The Winter It Is Past / Old Man On The Mountain / A Little Harp Tune / Evening Comes / Crooked Way / Considering The Lateness Of The Hour / Three Stages Of A Band / Well Of Memory, Part II / The Weeping Willow Personnel: Pat Gubler (vocals, guitars, banjo, harps, ukelin, piano, organ, electric piano, synthesizers, tin whistle, recorder, harmonica, percussion), Helen Rush (vocals), Scott Freyer (percussion). Producer: Greg Vaughn Released: 2004 Recorded: New York City, New Jersey Chart peak: n/a Current availability: Amish Records CD…

We concentrated on original albums for the Top 10, but if you want to explore further there are many excellent compilations out there, including Ace Records’ Celestial Blues, Liberation Music and If You’re Not Part Of The Solution. Jazzman Records, meanwhile, has a Spiritual Jazz series, which concentrates on lesser known artists from around the world and now runs to eight volumes. There is no single book on Spiritual Jazz. However, Val Wilmer’s glorious As Serious As Your Life (Quartet, 1977) covers the freer end of the music’s history. Finally, check out mojo4music.com for our huge YouTube playlist covering all the records we had to leave out.…

Wu-Tang Clan Wembley SSE Arena, London “WE TRAVELLED across the Atlantic to rock with you motherfuckers,” says Wu-Tang Clan abbot RZA by way of introduction tonight, sizing up a sold-out crowd sprouting innumerable ‘W’ hand signs. An appearance from Staten Island’s finest is not so rare on UK soil, but it is when situated within Wembley’s cavernous SSE Arena. That’s precisely what this, the inaugural Gods Of Rap tour, was conceived to do: elevate influential acts to the stages their stature deserves. De La Soul and Public Enemy are also on the bill – plus DJ Premier of Gang Starr – but it is headliners Wu-Tang’s belated celebration of their classic debut’s 25th anniversary that constitutes the night’s main draw. With the group’s ranks so often destabilised by personal and…

MOTOWN JUNKED  1 At Belle Isle Park in Detroit, the ‘Americans in Harmony’ charity concert – with The Supremes, Marvin Gaye (above), The Four Tops and others – is cancelled when up to 20,000 fans crash the 5,000-capacity venue. AIRPLANE AIRBORNE  6 Jefferson Airplane – Marty Balin, Signe Toly Anderson, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and Skip Spence – make their stage debut at San Francisco’s Matrix Club. BAG IT UP  17 James Brown’s Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag enters both the US R&B and pop charts. It will become the Godfather’s first Top 10 pop hit. A one-take recording, cut while Brown still had the lyric sheet in his hand, an acetate was rushed to a New York DJ who immediately aired it. “The phones lit up,”…

“We’ve not been Number 1 that often.” BILLY CHILDISH THE THING about this album is that there’s so much that’s not on it,” says relentless musician, painter, poet and craftsman Billy Childish from his home in Rochester. He’s talking about Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot! , his new 48-track comp of 1977-2018 projects including The Buff Medways, Thee Headcoats, The Milkshakes, The Pop Rivets, Thee Mighty Caesars and more. His 100-plus album releases have taken in garage punk, rocking R&B, folk, spoken word and beyond – as well as the unflinching lyricism which he likens to “shitting out my demons” – and made admirers of Jack White, Kurt Cobain, Kylie Minogue and others. “People ask me about the way we do things, and I say there’s no point trying to…

“I HAD A bag of props – a rubber chicken, orange rabbit ears, fangs…” says photographer Neil MacKenzie Matthews, recalling the images of chart stars and personalities he took for 1980-83 music mag Flexipop. “I always tried to get a bit of humour into the pictures.” These characterful images and more appear in Matthews’ new book S N A P, in which his work careens around the pop world in the ’80s and ’90s, with starring roles for Wham!, Bananarama, Destiny’s Child and more. The choice selection seen here focuses mainly on his Flexipop work, where the norms of rock portraiture were joyfully suspended. You don’t often see The Cure’s Robert Smith climbing a tree, for example. “That was in Regent’s Park,” says Matthews. “First I had Robert rummaging through…

“Making Like A Virgin, her clarity of vision was obvious. We had an argument about the first single; I wanted Material Girl – I thought people would go bananas for the bass line – but Madonna knew how strongly Like A Virgin would speak to women. She makes amazing dance music – think Vogue, or Music – but my favourite Madonna track of all time is Live To Tell. It’s such an emotional performance – phenomenal.”…

ON A BALMY APRIL SATURDAY IN SOBRO, A NASHVILLE NEIGHBOURHOOD far enough from downtown that you can see the skyline from the sidewalk, barriers seal off one block of 7th Street from road traffic. Instead, the air hums with excited chatter and the sound of DJs playing arcane garage rock, as hundreds of devotees dressed in White Stripes, Dead Weather and Jack White T-shirts mill about stalls hawking vintage clothing, craft ale from the nearby Tennessee Brew Works and bats and caps by Warstic, the baseball gear company founded by Jack White. It’s 10 years since White set up shop for his Third Man Records in Nashville, and he’s celebrating by throwing a party-cum-festival across two stages, with performances from Third Man signings like Teddy & The Rough Riders, Lillie…

BESIDES THE PROVENANCE AND ABILITIES OF THE MERIDIAN™ SOUND SYSTEM IN THE NEW JAGUAR XE, WHAT ELSE CAN YOU EXPECT FROM JAGUAR’S COMPACT SPORTS SALOON? EXTERIOR TWEAKS INCLUDE A RESHAPED FRONT GRILLE AND NEW BUMPER WITH LARGER AIR INTAKES. EVERY XE ALSO GET JAGUAR’S SIGNATURE-LED ‘J-BLADE’ DAYTIME RUNNING LIGHTS AS STANDARD. THE INTERIOR FEATURE A REDESIGNED CENTRE CONSOLE WITH JAGUAR’S TOUCH PRO DUO INFOTAINMENT SYSTEM*, WHICH GIVES YOU NOT ONE BUT TWO TOUCHSCREENS TO INTERACT WITH WHEN YOU ARE PARKED UP, AS WELL AS A WIRELESS CHARGING PAD*. IN OTHER WORDS, THE PERFECT ENVIRONMENT TO APPRECIATE MUSIC AT ITS FULLEST. PRICES FOR THE NEW JAGUAR XE START FROM £31,505 OTR…

IN SUMMER 2004, JOHN FRENCH CAME HOME to California from England’s Glastonbury festival, where he’d performed with the Magic Band, a revived version of the group that had been fronted, dominated and undermined, from 1965 onwards, by Don Van Vliet – the singer and artist also known as Captain Beefheart. Van Vliet had retired from music in 1982 having hired and fired many subsequent backing bands; now he concentrated on painting from his home in northern California as the music press filtered rumours of his failing health. But even from exile, the shadow cast by Van Vliet/ Beefheart was long. Upon his return, French received an invitation to the Zappa family home on Woodrow Wilson Drive in Laurel Canyon. The drummer had not set foot in the house since 1969,…

IT IS A LITTLE OVER AN HOUR BEFORE showtime, and Bruce Springsteen is on double duty in his small, spare dressing room at Stadio San Siro in Milan, Italy: doing an interview while creating that night’s setlist. Hunched over a sheet of paper at a small table, he scrawls song titles, almost 30 in all, in two columns in rough, slanting capital letters. It is a futile exercise. When Springsteen hits the stage tonight – June 3, 2013 – with his 17-piece soul-army version of the E Street Band, he will scrap that order after two numbers, improvising the gig – as he has across this run of European football fields – with fan requests and impromptu rarities mixed with the songs of economic and emotional distress from his latest…

Purple Mountains ★★★★ Purple Mountains DRAG CITY. CD/DL/LP “WELL I DON’T like talking to myself/ But someone’s got to say it, hell/I mean things have not been going well/ This time I think I finally fucked myself.” As opening statements on comeback albums go, it’s hardly “I’m a rolling thunder/A pouring rain/ Comin’ on like a hurricane.” But for fans of David Berman’s sardonic wit, such arch lyrical honesty and pleasing poetic construction is like an oasis of sweet rainwater after the decade-plus cultural desert since Silver Jews’ 2008 swan-song, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. “An expertly sequenced narrative of lethargy, collapse and recovery.” According to Berman, that final Jews record is “the only one whose author intimidates me. I knew I’d done way beyond my best.” Yet among fans, it’s…

SCOTLAND Assai 241-243 King Street, Broughty Ferry, Dundee DD5 2AX 01382 738406 1 Grindlay Street, Edinburgh EH3 9AT 0131 228 3943 Barnstorm Records 128 Queensbury Court, Dumfries DG1 1BU 01387 267894 Europa Music 10 Friars Street, Stirling FK8 1HA 01786 448623 Maidinvinyl 7 Rosemount Viaduct Aberdeen, AB25 1NE 07864 547203 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 Grind and Groove Records 58 Cavendish Street, Keighley BD21 3RL 07483 156867 Loafers Vinyl & Coffee Rustic Level, The Piece Hall, Halifax HX1 1RE 07960 532371 Piccadilly Records 53 Oldham St, Manchester M1 1JR 0161 839 8008 Vinyl Cafe 44 Abbey St, Carlisle CA3 8TX 01228 522845 X…

Barbara Acklin ★★★ Love Makes A Woman DEMON/BRUNSWICK. LP Co-produced by Chi-Lite Eugene Record, this 1968 set opened with two Dionne Warwick covers. Why? The mistake is soon rectified by six Record originals, three co-written with Acklin. The title track, Come And See Me Baby, closing stomp Be By My Side are all standouts. GB Depeche Mode ★★★ Music For The Masses: The 12” Singles SONY. LP DM’s mid-’80s lurch bigger, darker – the story of this box of seven 12-inch singles – was the key to US arenas. Only superfans need this many remixes, but Pleasure, Little Treasure is a pearl of a B-side. Black Celebration: The 12-Inch Singles is also available. DE Sonic Youth ★★★★ Battery Park, NYC July 4, 2008 MATADOR. LP Vinyl release for the 2008…

THERE ARE numerous tributaries of spiritual jazz, but only one true source: John Coltrane’s 1965 album, A Love Supreme. With the advent of the 1960s, the Carolina-born saxophonist, along with many other African-American jazz musicians, began pushing against the formal constraints of the genre, and the cultural influence of ‘cool jazz’, which favoured luminous deliberation over be-bop’s force and speed. With albums such as Africa/Brass and “Live” At The Village Vanguard, Coltrane drew on his cultural roots – gospel and Africa – and the free jazz improvisations of Ornette Coleman to create a new sound of tumult and upheaval, that sought out the transcendent and the divine. Recorded over two days in December 1964, with Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison, A Love Supreme is a work of spiritual…

Peter Perrett STILL THE ONLY ONE What music are you currently grooving to? Mostly to music made between 1964 and 1969. I’m quite particular. Having said that, I do listen to stuff like Courtney Barnett, but only because she sounds like the old days. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? It would have to be [Bob Dylan’s] Highway 61 Revisited or Blood On The Tracks. I don’t think I could choose between them though – that’d be like Sophie’s Choice. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? I bought the first Rolling Stones album when I was 12, but I was so disappointed with it. The only track I liked was Tell Me! I’d been given a record…

“IT’S FANTASTIC,” Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi tells MOJO. “All these things are going on in Birmingham for the band. We have our own Black Sabbath bench and bridge. And now this exhibition. It’s amazing.” “We have our own bench and bridge. And now this.”TONY IOMMI The exhibition is Black Sabbath: 50 Years – a Brummie answer to the V&A’s David Bowie retrospective, set within the imposing 19th-century interior of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. After the bench and the soon-to-be dedicated Black Sabbath Bridge in the city centre, the 50 Years exhibition brings more metal memorialisation – the content ranging from key Sabbath instrumentation and stagewear, to Ozzy Osbourne’s on-tour postcards to his dad, to 3,000 photographic portraits of Sabbath fans from around the world. The latter category includes…

Title: Jaime Date: September Production: Brittany Howard, Shawn Everett (mixing, engineer) Songs: Georgia / Stay High / 13th Century Metal / Goat Head / Run To Me The Buzz: “This is the time I finally get to bloom… I’m getting my story out there, I’m getting to be who I am, in my highest and my lowest moments, there’s nothing hidden, it just is what it is, little vignettes of my reality, things I’ve seen and ways I’ve felt. I didn’t hold back and that’s very cathartic and very freeing.” Brittany Howard…

“There was a Nashville DJ called John R who did night radio. He played rhythm and blues, some jazz, and rock’n’roll. Me and my brothers should have been sleeping but we stayed up late secretly listening to his show. And if we heard something we liked, we’d go buy it. That’s how I heard Ray Charles’s What’d I Say, and I bought it on a 45. I remember he was playing a Wurlitzer electric piano on it, which was new for the time. But it was the way he sang that got me. His delivery sounded as if he really knew and had experienced what he was singing about. It sounded authentic and true, like he was saying, ‘I’ve gone through this.’ I remember when he did another record, That…

1 SLEATER-KINNEY HURRY ON HOME The panting urgency of S-K’s first St. Vincent collab involves a shrewd take on the lyric vid, with Carrie Brownstein playing supplicant in a text swap between estranged lovers: “I’m dress-downable/Uptownable…” Find it: streaming platforms 2 DR. JOHN TIPITINA Hail and farewell, good Dr., with his 1972 version of Prof Longhair’s classic on the album just before his Right Time, Wrong Place hit. An already missed champ of N’Orleans piano’n’fonk. Find it: Dr. John’s Gumbo (ATCO) 3 SHANNON LAY SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND The Dino Valenti song sung by Karen Dalton, covered: less scorched, it has a different kind of empathy. Find it: YouTube 4 CHRISSIE HYNDE MEDITATION ON A PAIR OF WIRE CUTTERS Mingus’s 23-minute ’64…

SOUTH AFRICAN singer, actress and model GENEVIÈVE WAÏTE (below, b.1948) married her second husband, John Phillips’, in 1972. He produced her 1974 album Romance Is On The Rise, which contained her composition Biting My Nails, a song covered by Renegade Soundwave in 1988. In 1976 Waïte’s Love Is Coming Back also appeared on the OST for The Man Who Fell To Earth. ACTRESS AND SINGER DORIS DAY (b.1922) began her singing career in 1939, meeting her, abusive first husband, trombone player Al Jordan, while singing with bandleader Barney Rapp. She had her first Number 1, Sentimental Journey, with Les Brown in 1945. The film career that saw her embody the American ideal exploded in the ’50s, though her biggest hit was 1956’s Oscar-winning Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will…

1 Madonna Louise Ciccone in early terpsichorean mode, The Who an unlikely muse. 2 Into the groove: Madonna the driven dance student, New York, spring 1979. “I like to go to classes. I like to study” 3 In her 1985 video for Material Girl, Nile Rodgers’ overruled choice for first single off second album, Like A Virgin. 4 One of these fashion criminals is bound for superstardom – with Marilyn, New York, 1983. 5 “My life was very simple” – with first husband, actor Sean Penn, January 1989. 6 At pop’s high table: with Beatle George Harrison, promoting Handmade movie Shanghai Surprise in London, March 1986. 7 “So intimidating”: as Eva Peron in the 1996 movie, Evita – for which she was obliged to take singing lessons. 8 Rocking the…

( Third Man, 2006) The most cohesive and easy-going Raconteurs album, with White generally reining in his chops in deference to Benson’s finessed powerpop. Extravagance comes in the shape of the title track and Store Bought Bones, capturing as they do the rococo moment when psych began to evolve into prog. Note, too, White’s use of the word “kakistocracy”, a good decade before it became common parlance in US politics. (Third Man, 2008) Heavier and more diverse, the quartet’s underrated second arrived with no advance publicity, on March 25, 2008. This time, White and Benson’s aesthetics seem sportingly adversarial rather than harmonious, the former’s vituperative heft often in the ascendant. But amid the precision-tooled bombast lurk great songs and country trim, none better than the Dylanish shaggy-dog story of Carolina…

★★★★ (Immediate, 1967)  The dramatic, slightly camp arrangements suggested that Immediate boss Andrew Loog Oldham rather fancied Arnold as Ronnie Spector to his Phil (artistically, at least). A great mix of material includes her definitive The First Cut Is The Deepest and Marriott/Lane’s (If You Think You’re) Groovy with Arnold in her best gear: full pelt. ★★★ (Immediate, 1968) The fashionable Afrocentrism of the sleeve art and album title (Kafunta is in Zambia) is nowhere reflected on an album with Pet Sounds conceits (instrumental and found-sound interludes; God Only Knows, with Arnold sounding flanged). Chip Taylor’s Angel Of The Morning and Welcome Home are beautifully sung, but as a producer, Oldham was a great manager. ★★★★ (Kundalini, 2017)  Lost material from 1968-1970 indicates what she could have achieved with grittier…

IT’S JUST PAST NOON ON MONDAY, AND BOB BOILEN IS worried about his desk. Understandably so, for Bob’s desk is the Tiny Desk, venue for the prestigious Tiny Desk Concerts, where since 2008, musicians have performed 15-minute sets at this Emmy award-winning host’s workstation in the Washington DC headquarters of National Public Radio. The audience for the concerts, a web-era twist on the MTV Unplugged formula, are Boilen’s NPR colleagues, who congregate in the open-plan space to watch whoever is playing in their office today. The format, and Boilen’s personal taste, has historically favoured the more contemplative corners of indie rock and folk; recent Tiny Deskers include Kurt Vile and Cat Power. Loud rock bands present a challenge, and the stipulation that no instrument be louder than the singing voice…

Punk’s characteristic angularity owed as much to hamfisted accident as it did design. But when Buzzcocks first entered a studio in October 1976 to record their Spiral Scratch EP, they saluted the master iconoclast with a version of Beefheart’s I Love You, You Big Dummy from 1970’s Lick My Decals Off, Baby. Then-frontman Howard Devoto later re-recorded the song for a 1978 Magazine B-side. Crawling out from the Midwest city of Cleveland, Ohio in 1975, with a handful of independently released 45s, Ubu’s subterranean disposition, Dadaist name (from Alfred Jarry’s play) and hulking, charismatic frontman David Thomas (right) gave them the aura of a latter-day Magic Band. Flailing bottleneck guitars, shifting time signatures and a prevailing dissonance confirmed the kinship. No band echoed the Beefheartian equation of dictatorial guiding spirit…

4TH OF JULY, ASBURY PARK (SANDY) (from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, 1973) Although ostensibly addressed to a girl, Bruce is really serenading a place – or rather, the romanticised memory of his adopted hometown. The 1970 Asbury Park race riots began on July 4, loading extra bittersweetness into those “fireworks hailing over Little Eden”. He promises “I’ll love you forever”, but both Sandy and Asbury know this means goodbye. BORN TO RUN  (from Born To Run, 1975) Springsteen’s artistic DNA is embedded in this one pheromonal wall of overwrought fume-blasted sound. Born To Run is pure exit strategy: destination vague (“that place where we really want to go”). Amid the panicky exhortation, Bruce lays out his future: essentially, “sadness” and “madness”, but one hell of…

• Berman named his new group after mishearing the lyrics of America The Beautiful. “It seemed a little cynical to hijack America's unofficial anthem,” he says, “but I have plausible deniability because it’s officially a mondegreen. Once I realised the list of groups with purple in their name – Deep Purple, New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Purple Gang – was so short I was more sold. I figure Prince monopolised the colour for the length of his career but no man is a colour. Furthermore, I liked that it was another colour noun, like Silver Jews. If it was 20 years ago, The Coloured Nouns would have been funny. Hmm, The Coloured Nouns…”…

Did you feel nervous about regrouping? “Yeah, but that was only because I didn’t want to go out and tour as The Black Keys because it’s so time-consuming. It’s not just two guys making a record in a basement any more. It’s a whole thing, and once you do the Black Keys thing again you have to commit to it.” Have you got a plan to make touring less difficult for you this time? “I don’t think that we’re going to be touring as much. If you’re a Black Keys fan and you see that we’re playing some shows, you should get some tickets because we’re probably not going to come round you again. I wasn’t nervous about anything other than that. The recording – getting together with Patrick –…

DJ Python ★★★★ Derretirse DEKMANTEL. CD/DL/LP Via brilliant sonic alchemy, Brian Piñeyro’s reggaeton experimentation turns its skipping dembow riddim into something lush and swoonsome here. His second EP hints that he’s spent time in Boards Of Canada’s tender arms. In its haunted ambient chords and fractured dancefloor beats, Derretirse displays a consistent fondness for gauzy shimmer and hypnagogic atmospherics. Clark ★★★★ Kiri Variations THROTTLE. CD/DL/LP The origins of Chris Clark’s new album were as soundtrack to BAFTA-nominated Channel 4 drama, Kiri. From the seeds of music only sparingly, albeit intentionally, used in the programme itself, Clark has incubated this elegant, eclectic collection that shuttles between haunting modern classical and folktronica, complex sound design, brutal beats and scabrous noise. A Sagittariun ★★★ Return To Telepathic Heights RUNNING BACK INCANTATIONS. CD/DL/LP Stalwart…

Minyo Crusaders ★★★ Echoes Of Japan MAIS UM DISCOS. CD/DL/LP Japanese folk songs – harvested from the traditions of miners, fishermen and sumo wrestlers – turned on their heads by Katsumi Tanaka’s 10-piece, who play them as cumbias, mambos, pre-revolutionary Chinese pop songs, dub or anything else that takes their fancy. First play suggests a fun novelty, but this is a grower, bringing dormant music into a dynamic 21st century setting. Trash Kit ★★★ Horizon UPSET THE RHYTHM. CD/DL/LP Naturally, this year’s best Zimbabwean post-punk no-wave LP comes out of London. The sense of progression is overwhelming: Trash Kit’s debut featured 17 tracks in 26 minutes, now they can hold your attention as songs pass the seven-minute mark. It’s an unlikely explosion of X-Ray Spex, The Raincoats, Oliver Mtukudzi and…

Prince ★★★★ Originals WARNER BROS. CD/DL/LP HOWEVER YOU break down the fabric of popular music, there’s always been a thread of blue woven through it. Even in the midst of the most joyous Saturday night songs, the consciousness that Blue Monday is just around the corner is part of our musical heritage, and the human condition, too. Perhaps that’s why a collection of mostly previously unheard Prince songs, many of them masterclasses in songwriting, left me feeling blue, each perfect moment a source of sorrow. “It’s a wonderful listen, and the joy in creation that is so obvious nearly wipes out the sadness.” Manic Monday, a lusciously minimal songwriter’s demo recorded in February 1984, and released here for the first time, pretty much says it all. It’s hard to think…

10 Lonnie Liston Smith And The Cosmic Echoes Astral Travelling FLYING DUTCHMAN 1973, £14.60 You say: “In Search Of Truth, driven by tamboura drones and Cecil McBee’s strong bass, might be the pick of the bunch.” MandrewB, Twitter The Virginia-born pianist’s first LP as bandleader, after sideman experience with Roland Kirk, Gato Barbieri, and on five Pharoah Sanders albums, this is a quest for meaning as out-of-body-experience, with a band that includes many of Alice Coltrane’s collaborators. Smith’s keyboards emulate the bright glissandos of Alice’s harp but, unlike her recordings, Smith adopts a composed approach that mostly feels close to new age music. That’s not to denigrate the sound – adrift on the rainforest percussion and bird-song horns of this blissful work, you’ll care for nothing but serenity. 9…

• After he was fired from The Byrds in 1967, Crosby went sailing on a schooner, The Mayan, that he bought with a $25,000 loan from Peter Tork of The Monkees. • Neil Young wrote Ohio after Crosby showed him the May 15, 1970 issue of Life with a cover photo of a student shot by the National Guard during a Vietnam protest at Kent State University. Crosby, Young says, “has a way of bringing things into focus.” • CSN’s final performance was at a White House Christmas tree-lighting ceremony broadcast live on television. They sounded woefully out of tune. “It’s so sad,” Crosby says, “that the last song CSN sang together was Silent Night.”…

Bring Da Ruckus / Shame On A Nigga / Killa Bees On The Swarm / Clan In Da Front / Wu Tang: 7th Chamber / Winter Warz / Can It All Be So Simple / Da Mystery Of Chessboxin’ / Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing Ta F’Wit / C.R.E.A.M. / Tearz / Protect Ya Neck / Come Together / Reunited / Duel Of Iron Mic / Ice Cream / 4th Chamber / Severe Punishment / Glaciers Of Ice / Black Jesus / ’97 Mentality / Love Rap / (Mathematics DJ set) / Mighty Healthy / The Mexican / Shimmy Shimmy Ya / Got Your Money / Duel To The Death / Triumph / Gravel Pit…

1 CRYING IN THE CHAPEL ELVIS PRESLEY WITH THE JORDANAIRES RCA 2 LONG LIVE LOVE SANDIE SHAW PYE 3 EVERY STEP OF THE WAY DICKIE ROCK, MIAMI & STRINGS PYE 4 I GUESS I’M CRAZY LARRY CUNNINGHAM AND THE MIGHTY AVONS KING 5 A WORLD OF OUR OWN THE SEEKERS COLUMBIA 6 RIGHT OR WRONG (I’LL BE WITH YOU) THE CADETS WITH EILEEN REID PYE 7 THE PRICE OF LOVE THE EVERLY BROTHERS WARNER BROS 8 TRAINS AND BOATS AND PLANES BURT BACHARACH HIS ORCHESTRA & CHORUS LONDON 9 HE’S GOT YOU THE DIXIES PYE 10 TRAINS AND BOATS AND PLANES BILLY J.KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS PARLOPHONE…

When Simon Dupree And The Big Sound covered Manfred Mann’s Each And Every Day (in 1967), it was entitled Day Time, Night Time. Have there been other examples of songs being renamed? Alan Brown, Faulconbridge, Australia Fred Says: There have been many examples of pragmatic retitling. Fly Me To The Moon was called In Other Words when Bart Howard wrote it in 1954, but in 1963 he bowed to public opinion (and Peggy Lee’s recommendation) and changed it. Elton John’s 1973 track Screw You was dubbed Young Man’s Blues for delicate US listeners, while the same year Barry Manilow altered the title of Scott English’s song Brandy to Mandy, lest it be confused with Looking Glass’s 1972 smash – and Guardians Of The Galaxy mixtape fave – Brandy (You’re A…

SPEAKERS YOU can carry around with ease are all well and good, but they need to have the right sonic welly for the deal to be complete. Enter Marshall, purveyors of top-flight sound for 57 years, and their portable range with their unmistakable look and livery. This month we have a power trio’s worth to give away, all durable, fast-charging and Bluetooth 5.0-equipped with analogue control knobs for bass, treble and volume, multi-directional sound and 20-plus hours of wireless listening at a range of 30 feet. In ascending order of loudness, they are: the compact Stockwell II (RRP £219.99); the stout-hearted Kilburn II (RRP £269); and the commanding Tufton (RRP £349.99). Want one? Then get Straight Thuggin Fred’s pukka crossword completed and send it to Marshall Law Declared!, MOJO, Academic…