Table of contents for Oct-09-14 in Rolling Stone

1. Gary Clark Jr. “Catfish Blues” Clark’s new Live set is the album we knew the Texas ace had in him – a double shot of bone-deep blues, with no studio gimmicks. This red-hot cover of the Delta classic is a head rush of distorted power. 2. Yusuf “Dying to Live” Yusuf (a.k.a. Cat Stevens) follows through on his excellent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance with this sweet folk-rock cover of Edgar Winter’s 1971 song. 3. Ought “Pill” On the standout track from their new EP, the Montreal art punks spin a quiet ballad into a noisy guitar freakout. It’s everything that makes this band great, in five and a half minutes. 4. Aphex Twin “minipops 67 [120.2] [source field mix]” This extra-trippy groove from the secretive EDM…

NAOMI KLEIN BICYCLES UP TO a ferry terminal in downtown Toronto looking like the urban mom she is, in a gauzy orange scarf, jeans and purple running shoes. Her son Toma is a typically difficult two-yearold, so Klein was grateful he’d been unusually mature about her leaving that morning. As she looks around at the screaming YMCA day-camp field-trippers crowding our ferry, with their brightly colored backpacks, she smiles ruefully. “I’d kind of been hoping to get a break from kids for a couple hours,” she says. Ever since she released her anti-globalization manifesto, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, 15 years ago, Klein has been progressivism’s most visible, most charmingly articulate spokeswoman. In her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Klein writes of a…

‘IT’S A GREAT FOREST TO EXPLORE,” Dhani Harrison says of The Apple Years 1968-75, the first boxed reissue – seven CDs with bonus tracks and a DVD – of the early solo work of his father, Beatles guitarist George Harrison. “People will be surprisingly pleased with how strange some of it is.” The heart of the set, overseen by Dhani, is the 1970 masterpiece All Things Must Pass, and the spiritual 1973 hit Living in the Material World. But the set opens with George’s 1968 immersion in classical raga, Wonderwall Music, and the weirdly prophetic 1969 Moog recit al, Electronic Sounds. “Every synth and dance re cord ever made is in there,” Dhani claims. At the other end of the box are 1974’s earthy Dark Horse and 1975’s R&B-tinged Extra…

JOHN OLIVER IS SUPPOSED TO BE SHOOTING the 16th episode of his HBO show right about now, but there’s a small problem: He and his staff aren’t done writing it. Even as this evening’s audience files into the compact Last Week Tonight With John Oliver studio in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, the show’s star is still down the hall, behind a door helpfully labeled Rewrite Room. “I’ll read anything off the teleprompter,” Oliver jokes at one point, promising to “Ron Burgundy that shit.” In truth, however, he adheres to the rather more rigorous approach of his mentor, Jon Stewart, who is fond of saying, “If you take your foot off the throat of the show for a second, it’ll get up and walk away.” Anchorman “I don’t see this as a…

SMOKEY ROBINSON HAS WRITTEN songs all over the world: in hotel rooms, at the long-shuttered Detroit offices of Motown, and, just recently, while boarding a plane. “I called my voicemail and put it on there so I wouldn’t lose it,” he says. ¶ Today, Robinson’s songs can be found everywhere from soundtracks to a current Broadway show, Motown the Musical. Writing both for the Miracles – the group he formed as a teenager in Detroit – as well as artists like Marvin Gaye and the Temptations, Robinson became one of Motown’s most prolific songwriters. “Smokey Robinson was like God in our eyes,” Paul McCartney once said. “People all over the planet were singing those songs,” says Steven Tyler, who played “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” with his pre-Aero…

U2 Songs of Innocence Interscope 5.0/5.0 No other rock band does rebirth like U2. No other band – certainly of U2’s duration and achievement – believes it needs rebirth more and so often. But even by the standards of transformation on 1987’s The Joshua Tree and 1991’s Achtung Baby, Songs of Innocence – U2’s first studio album in five years – is risky, dynamic and focused renaissance: 11 tracks of straightforward rapture about the life-saving joys of music, drawing on U2’s long palette of influences and investigations of post-punk rock, electronica and dance music. “You and I are rock & roll,” Bono shouts in “Volcano,” a song about imminent eruption, through a delirium of throaty, striding bass, alien-choral effects and the Edge’s rusted-treble jolts of Gang of Four-vintage guitar. Bono…

Gary Clark Jr. Gary Clark Jr. Live Warner Bros. 4.0/4.0 For most rock acts, the live double album is breathing space between studio shots. This rising Texan’s two-CD set is his defining moment, a generous blast of prowess that backs up the future of-blues-guitar promises made in Gary Clark Jr.’s name since his bust-out performance at Eric Clapton’s 2010 Crossroads festival. Clark’s 2012 major-label splash, Blak and Blu, was vigorously uneven, betraying his impatience to plug the emotional dynamics of electric blues into contemporary R&B. The versions here of that album’s bolder tracks are a more natural affirmation. “Things Are Changin’ ” has a rougher, lusty sway. In “Blak and Blu,” Clark drops the studio take’s hip-hop trappings, letting his voice and soloing show all of the bruises. Covers of…

Mourning Robin “ROLLING STONE” BROUGHT one of the greatest talents of my generation into endearing focus [Robin Williams, RS 1217]. When I was younger, it was the deaths of Stevie Ray Vaughan and then Kurt Cobain that rattled me to the core, but Robin Williams’ passing scarred my soul. David Browne’s cover story was the intimate eulogy we all needed. Michael FaucherCroton-on-Hudson, NY THE ROBIN WILLIAMS PHOTO gripped me more powerfully than any RS cover I’ve ever seen. Thanks to David Browne for a fine, insightful story that arrived when many of us were still dealing with the shock of Williams’ death. And thank you, Robin – you will be terribly missed. Be at peace. Scott Sinclair, Winchester, VA IT WASN’T JUST THE WAY HE made us laugh. Or amazed…

Dave Davies We asked the Kinks’ lead guitarist – who has a new solo album due out in October – to tell us what he thinks of five songs, old and new. OLD The Who “I Can’t Explain” When I first heard this, I thought, “Sounds a bit like a Kinks record. Those cheeky buggers are copying us!” But they did have a great energy live. Van Halen “You Really Got Me” I like Van Halen, but I don’t like this. Our song was working-class people trying to fight back. Their version sounds too easy. NEW Arctic Monkeys “R U Mine?” I love his voice, this kid. And the song has got a great riff in it. These guys are shifting gears and getting heavier. I love it. Jack White…

LENNY KRAVITZ HOLDS UP A SWATCH OF CLOTH AND INSPECTS it with oversize hands. “There are so many palettes,” he says. “This needs a little more ash or gray in it.” ¶ It’s early evening at the downtown Manhattan headquarters of Kravitz Design. Since it began in 2003, the company has designed high-end homes, a resort in the Bahamas and even the set of The Queen Latifah Show. In the conference room where Kravitz is seated, one wall is plastered with photos of various styles of furniture, each given labels like “Industrial Chic” and “Comfortably Rich.” ¶ Kravitz just came from a photo shoot for his new album, Strut, and now he wants to examine stagedesign sketches for his upcoming tour, as well as some new ideas for his Paris…

ON THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 3rd, 1976, gunmen broke into Bob Marley’s home in Kingston, Jamaica, and opened fire, seriously wounding Marley, his wife, Rita, and his manager. The shooting, which remains unsolved, is a big part of Marley’s legend – he defied his attackers by performing at a massive free concert in Kingston just two days later. Now, the incident has inspired A Brief History of Seven Killings, an excellent new work of historical fiction by Jamaican writer Marlon James. Part crime thriller, part oral history, part stream-of-consciousness monologue, James’ nearly 700-page tale reconceives the questions, conspiracies and half-truths surrounding the incident. “It’s like writing about Kennedy – there’s no straightup narrative,” says James, a former music critic for the Jamaica Observer. “There are all these rumors and contradictions,…

Part memoir, part elegy, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is one of this fall’s best nonfiction books – the story of a young man who survived the streets of Newark, New Jersey, to earn a full scholarship to Yale, only to be murdered on his home turf in a suspected drug dispute. The book was written by Peace’s Yale roommate, Jeff Hobbs. “I’d never done journalism,” says Hobbs, whose 2007 novel, The Tourists, was a bestseller. “My access to Rob was limited to our experience in an affluent, rarefied place. It felt presumptuous to go to where he grew up, where his strongest relationships were, and say, ‘Tell me your stories.’” But Hobbs, the son of a surgeon, did just that, interviewing dozens of Peace’s friends and…

PEOPLE COME TO LOS Angeles so they can have an experience like Pendleton Ward’s: Two years after arriving, he was about to move into his car. Three years after that, he had one of the biggest cult hits on television: a rapturously surreal postapocalyptic animated saga that has since spawned a merchandising empire, 14 million weekly viewers, a 17 million-strong Facebook following and virtually unanimous acclaim. That’s gotta feel pretty good. And it probably would to nearly anyone except Pendleton Ward, the culthero creator of Adventure Time, which in three years has generated 176 11-minute episodes with a dizzying array of not just characters but dimensions, plotlines, parallel realities and origin stories. “Dealing with people every day wears on you,” Ward says, squeezed into a desk chair in the Burbank,…

THE ENORMITY OF THE KOCH FORTUNE is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they’ve cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today’s GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year’s midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the Senate. ¶ What is less clear is where all that money comes from. Koch Industries is headquartered in a squat,…

Lenny Kravitz Strut Roxie 4.0/4.0 Check out the cover of Lenny Kravitz’s 10th album and be amazed: Dude turned 50 this year, but his open shirt reveals a body that could be half as young. Kravitz’s music has always cheated time too, blurring Sixties and Seventies guitar power and post-Purple Rain flash into something pumped and polished enough to feel contemporary. His last album, 2011’s Black and White America, was a post-hip-hop rumination on our vexed racial politics. Strut is inspired by something else that keeps him up at night: “I’m just a slave for your pleasure, and I’m waiting to pop,” he sings on “Sex,” which opens a muscular back-to-rock album recalling his early-Nineties work. Kravitz produced Strut in his studio in the Bahamas and played many of the…

Oasis (What’s the Story) Morning Glory: Chasing the Sun Edition Big Brother 4.0/4.0 Released in 1995, Oasis’ second and bestselling album was a masterpiece of illusion: the conservative retrospection in guitarist-composer Noel Gallagher’s Beatlesque bones of tune sold as swaggering modernism with stacks of swarthy glam-rock guitar, psychedelic-sunshine harmonies and his brother Liam’s scouring, cocksure vocal assault. As a lyricist, Noel was better at the sound of syntax and affectionate theft (the outright George Harrison grab in “Wonderwall”) than linear meaning and emotional disclosure. But Liam’s braying way with long vowels made its own urgent sense in the wind-tunnel roar of “Morning Glory” and epic mixedmetaphor bliss of “Champagne Supernova.” This three-CD reissue of Brit pop’s greatest party record is short on true rarities – just five acoustic-Noel demos. The…

In RS 1217, Alex Morris wrote about LGBT teenagers rejected by their religious families [“The Forsaken”]. The story triggered a massive response from ROLLING STONE readers. KUDOS TO ALEX MORRIS for a beautiful and enriching article. As a single mother to now-adult children, I can’t wrap my brain around rejecting your child based on ignorance. For those suffering: You are loved more than you know. Lori Jayne BayDelaware, OH IRONICALLY, CHRISTIAN values are being displayed not by the parents who cast out their LGBT children, but by the rejected children themselves. Jackie’s parents may feel she’s turned her back on moral standards, but her generosity of spirit in not condemning them, and her lack of animus despite the way they treated her, show that she lives her life in a…

By some measures, it was the biggest album release of all time: In early September, U2’s new album, Songs of Innocence, suddenly appeared in the libraries of 500 million iTunes users. “Wow,” said Bono, onstage at the Apple press conference where it was announced. “That’s instant gratification. Did that really happen?” The album’s launch may have been close to instantaneous, but the recording process was U2’s longest ever – over five years, they recorded roughly 100 songs. To add to the pressure, the band was coming off 2009’s No Line on the Horizon, which spawned the most successful tour ever, but underperformed commercially by the band’s standards. “I thought to myself, ‘Why would anyone need a new U2 album?’ ” says Bono. “ ‘There’s loads of them out there.’ And…

FOOTBALL On the surface, The League is a show about fantasy football. And yet the excellent FXX comedy – which just began its sixth season – is about so much more, including the lengths grown men go to top one another in fundamentally meaningless contests. Steve Rannazzisi plays Kevin MacArthur, a man so desperate to win his fantasy league that he traded away naming rights to his first-born son. Fans who run into the 36-year-old actor and comedian press him for fantasy advice (“I tell them to let ‘Auto Draft’ pick for them,” he jokes), but as a die-hard Giants fan, Rannazzisi prefers to talk actual football. So he blitzed us with five takes on the new season. The new NFLuniforms are awful. The Jaguars look like they play in…

HOT BERLITZ If you really want to take your Game of Thrones fandom to the next level, you’ve got to check out Living Language Dothraki – a book, CD, website and mobile app that make it easy for Thrones die-hards to become fluent in the fictional tongue spoken by the hit HBO series’ horse-riding warriors. It’s the latest project from Californiabased linguist David J. Peterson, who expanded the original 56 Dothraki words used in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books into a full language for the TV show. (He beat out some of the world’s top language creators for the GoT gig, undergoing a two-round process that included a 300-page proposal.) “There was no cap on what we could do,” Peterson says with a laugh, “which…

YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOLD-DUST WOMAN down – and Stevie Nicks is one busy gypsy these days. Her excellent new album, 24 Karat Gold – Songs From the Vault, features tunes she has written over the years but never recorded before, reaching back to 1969. This fall she hits the road again with Fleetwood Mac – this time with Christine McVie back in the fold after 16 years away. “The five original cast members,” Nicks says proudly. “Of all the elite bands of the Seventies, we’re the only one touring with the same lineup we had in 1975.” So you go back on the road with Fleetwood Mac – a week before you release your solo album? Yeah, I’m running two careers at the same time. But I don’t walk…

Foos Go Underground In September, a mysterious band called the Holy Shits announced a series of U.K. club shows. Turns out it was the Foo Fighters! The highlight was their set at a venue in the old train tunnels under London’s Waterloo station, where they blasted through rarities like 1995’s “Weenie Beenie.” They didn’t play anything from their upcoming album, Sonic Highways (out November 10th), but Dave Grohl promised a bigger tour soon: “I’m pretty sure when we come back, it’s not going to be in a place like this.” Murder Incorporated Bruce Springsteen plays a mortuary owner in the season finale of Steve Van Zandt’s Netflix Mob comedy, Lilyhammer. Says Van Zandt, “I had to make a deal with the paparazzi so the set wouldn’t get flooded with fans.”…

YOU KNOW HOW every year people complain network TV has hit the lowest of lows? That was before they gave us Selfie: The Sitcom or Katherine Heigl: Action Hero! That was before they invented the “fun-cedural.” This fall is a historic boneyard for mind blowingly bad new shows. But there are glimmers of light amid all the carnage – at least some of the terrible ones are comically terrible. The lack of fresh ideas is frightening. What does it mean that superhero comics are stealing all the TV thunder? And what does it mean that Selfie turns out to be one of the better sitcoms? Only that the networks have really hit the lowest of lows this time. Save us, Katherine Heigl. Gotham Fox Mon., 8 p.m. This season’s debuts…

THE MOS T IMPORTANT thing to know about Kurt Sutter is that he once weighed 400 pounds. One might wish it otherwise, but what can you do? Without that immense amount of weight planted firmly in his background, he wouldn’t be here today, looking tough and trim at 190 tops, 54 years old, arms slathered in tribal tattoos, hair dragged back into a ponytail, tugging at a patch of peppery chin scraggle inside the North Hollywood building where he oversees everything that has anything to do with the ultraviolent, super bloody motorcycle psychodrama and mega FX hit, Sons of Anarchy. Actually, it’s the biggest hit in the history of the network, by far, and its success has been rollicking. It averaged 2.6 million viewers an episode in 2008, its first…

One Direction “Fireproof” 3.0/3.0 The 1D boys return with a cleverly precise Fleetwood Mac tribute, like a wedding-DJ master mix of “Gypsy” and “Little Lies.” It takes real dedication to nail John McVie’s exact bass thump. Bonus: useful lyrics about fire safety. The first taste of Four sounds so mellow it’s downright eerie, especially those whippedcream background vocals. If Midnight Memories was their Tusk, Four is shaping up to be their Mirage. ROB SHEFFIELD Flying Lotus feat. Kendrick Lamar “Never Catch Me” 3.5/3.5 Abstract-beat scientist Flying Lotus recruits elastic wordsorcerer Kendrick Lamar for a tripped-out adventure off Lotus’ upcoming You’re Dead. Over warp-speed psychedelic soul jazz, Lamar unleashes a lyrical waterfall with a worried emotional core that can bend hearts as well as minds. JON DOLAN Neil Young Who’s Gonna…

Kenny Chesney The Big Revival Big Chair/Columbia Nashville 3.5/3.5 KEY TRACKS: “Til It’s Gone,” “The Big Revival” Kenny Chesney’s last album, 2013’s Life on a Rock, was a foray into Bud Lime-tinged reggae that was at turns admirably ambitious and sort of disastrous. Here, he’s back on more solid country ground with his strongest collection of songs since 2010’s careerdefining Hemingway’s Whiskey. Whether he’s making a religious leap of faith (“The Big Revival”) or trying to make the most of his limited days on this lonely planet (“Til It’s Gone”) or just tailgating before a big college football game (“Flora-Bama”), country’s number-one beach bum continuously brings a sense of musical energy and emotional urgency his previous easygoing albums have sometimes lacked. Even paint-by numbers moments like “Beer Can Chicken,” a…

iTUNES TOP 10 SONGS 1 Meghan Trainor “All About That Bass”Epic 2 Taylor Swift “Shake It Off ”Big Machine 3 Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj “Bang Bang”Republic 4 Fall Out Boy “Centuries”Island 5 Nicki Minaj “Anaconda”Cash Money 6 Iggy Azalea “Black Widow”Grand Hustle/Def Jam 7 Maroon 5 “Maps”222/Interscope 8 Clean Bandit “Rather Be”Warner Bros. 9 Jason Aldean “Burnin’ It Down”Broken Bow 10 Ariana Grande “Break Free”Republic COPYRIGHT © 2014 iTUNES COLLEGE RADIO TOP 10 ALBUMS 1 Ty Segall Manipulator Drag City 2 Spoon They Want My Soul Loma Vista 3 The New Pornographers Brill Bruisers Matador 4 J Mascis Tied to a Star Sub Pop 5 Allah-Las Worship the Sun Innovative Leisure 6 Avi Buff alo At Best Cuckold Sub Pop 7 Cymbals Eat Guitars Lose Barsuk 8…

Lecrae’s Crazy Hit Christian hip-hop artist Lecrae’s seventh LP sold 88,000 units in Week One. He’s the first act ever to top both the Gospel and Hot 200 charts at the same time. Bought and ‘Souled’ R&B singer Aiko first broke through as a guest vocalist on Drake’s 2013 album Nothing Was the Same. Her first solo LP sold 70,000 units in Week One. The Return of Ryan Prolific singer-songwriter Adams sold 45,000 copies of his 14th studio album in its first week on sale, marking his highest chart position ever. Heeere’s Jeezy! Jeezy’s fans don’t seem to mind that the Atlanta rapper dropped the “Young” from his name: His fifth LP has sold 154,000 units in its first two weeks. 00 Chart position on September 17th, 2014 00 Chart…