OCTOVER 2018
W e live in difficult times – and sometimes it is hard to know what the appropriate response should be. Just recently, there have been several records that have, in a number of ways, attempted to forge a path through the perils of current events. Sons Of Kemet’s splendid Your Queen Is A Reptile found fresh ways to explore cultural identity, while Sleaford Mods continue to hone their lacerating observations of contemporary Britain on a new self-titled eP. In America, meanwhile, Moses Sumney’s “Rank & File” and Lonnie Holley’s “I Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America” have responded equally forcefully to social and cultural upheaval. Holley, the 68-year-old experimental musician, has described MITH – his new album – as a work of “concrete and tears; of dirt and blood; of injustice and hope”. ‘Hope’ seems a critical word here: what use are demonstrations or protests without the possibility that they will, in the end, achieve a positive outcome?
It is a sentiment, you might suspect, many people also expressed 50 years ago – during another period of uncertainty and disruption. We’ve held back so far this year from digging too deep into 1968 – but the looming anniversary of Electric Ladyland presented the right opportunity to delve into the extraordinary events of that era. With help from Jimi Hendrix’s collaborators, friends and confidants, Peter Watts has written a typically detailed and fascinating account of the album’s origins and its place in a wider cultural setting. “There was turmoil across the world and everybody knew that was part of the landscape,” Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Casady tells Peter. “Nobody tried to avoid it, it was the context.” Peter has also assembled a crack list of 30 albums from ’68 and thereabouts that, like Electric Ladyland, were attuned to the wider social and political tensions. We hope you agree with our list, but do drop us a line at uncut_feedback@ti-media.com with your own suggestions.
elsewhere, you can read new interviews with Soft Cell, Garcia Peoples, Mudhoney, Spiritualized, Richard Thompson, The Beach Boys, Candi Station and more. We discover all about two brilliant new collaborative projects – Big Red Machine, from The National and Bon Iver, and Harmony Rockets, from Mercury Rev and folk guitarist Peter Walker. There’s Aretha Franklin, Nick Mason and Paul McCartney – back at the Cavern (or a Cavern, more precisely).
But for now I’ll leave you with a quote from Richard Thompson, who among many other things in our wide-ranging new interview, offers some reflections on songwriting that seem fortuitously apt. “You can’t fail to reflect your own morality in what you write. It has to be in there, and I know it is,” he tells Tom Pinnock. “But I don’t like people beating me over the head with their beliefs; I find it repulsive, so I try not to do it to others. I hope what I do is non-dogmatic and subtle. My songs are about the human heart and the human condition.” enjoy the new issue!
“On the night I was born/I swear the moon turned a fire red”