UNCUT

“I ALMOST started writing my memoirs a few years ago,” Terry Hall told Uncut in 2019. “The working title was ‘I’ve Worked With Some Right Cunts’, which didn’t go down very well. But I’ll wait until I’m 70 until I write that.” Sadly, Hall never got to that stage, but it would have been a gripping read – and one made up of fascinating contradictions. As the focal point of one of the most thrilling bands ever to emerge from the UK, he was the softly spoken, mild-mannered guy who looked like a football hooligan, the depressive comedian, the suedehead who loved easy listening. But whether quelling riots on stage with The Specials or crooning ballads later in his career, central to everything was that extraordinarily ordinary voice. While his post-punk…

THE SPECIALS TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG (1979) The band’s first No 1 was Jerry Dammers’ response to Lloyd Charmers’ “Birth Control”, where a frenzied live performance is offset by Hall’s bored disgust at unchivalrous men not using contraception. THE SPECIALS STEREOTYPE (1980) Hall is the calm everyman at the centre of Dammers’ quiet riot of mariachi trumpets, Casiotone rhythms and muezzin chants. THE SPECIALS FRIDAY NIGHT, SATURDAY MORNING (1981) The extraordinary B-side to the even more extraordinary “Ghost Town” was this rare Hall composition for The Specials, a childlike narration of a lairy night out, set to a soft lovers rock beat. THE GO-GO’S OUR LIPS ARE SEALED (1981) Co-written with Jane Wiedlin and alluding to their clandestine affair, The Go-Go’s took this song to the US Top 20, while Fun Boy Three had the UK Top 10 version. FUN BOY THREE THE…

“MY parents saw us as a delusional experiment who didn’t know how to play our instruments,” recalls Adam Green in the upcoming documentary film Meet Me In The Bathroom, voicing-over a scene that finds him shirtless and cherub-like in a New York apartment. His bandmate Kimya Dawson is dressed in giant floppy bunny ears. Both are grinning maniacally as they strum and sing in unison: “Sleeping in a van between A and B/Sucking dick for ecstasy”. Releasing their sole album in 2001, The Moldy Peaches blended the childlike with the profane in a way that was crass, funny and catchy. When Green and Dawson were invited to play at the premiere of Meet Me In The Bathroom, based on Lizzy Goodman’s oral history of the early-2000s NYC scene, it was an…

“I DON’T really sit down with the aim of writing a song,” Christine McVie told Uncut in 2017. “I keep notebooks full of lyrics that usually don’t go anywhere, but when I sit down at the piano, I’ll knit bits together. I sit down with the aim of just seeing what crops up.” What usually cropped up were songs that cut right to the chase, expressing the joys and pains of romance in language that was economical yet rich, simple on the surface but concealing emotional complexity just underneath. McVie, who died on November 30, aged 79, was the architect of many of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest and most enduring hits, though she was a modest pop genius. Occasionally she was overshadowed by the more forceful personalities in that band, yet…

“WHEN you’re playing with musicians from other cultures, the first thing is to honour each other’s tradition,” the Scottish piper Ross Ainslie tells Uncut on a not-entirely-reliable phone connection from a remote rehearsal room under a blanket of winter snow somewhere in the Highlands. “You can’t just hash things together if you want it to be believable. You explore common ground but you remain true to your own roots.” This month, Ainslie will put the principle to the test at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival in an ambitious concert which seeks to join the dots between three disparate traditions: the griot heritage of West Africa, the vernacular music of North America and the ancient songs, jigs and reels of Gaelic folk music. From Scotland, along with Ainslie, will come the young Gaelic…

WHEN Mary Elizabeth Remington was seeking a housemate while studying in Boston in 2010, she was excited to hear about “this really cool girl who played the guitar and went to Berklee”. That “cool girl” turned out to be future Big Thief Adrianne Lenker and the pair’s ongoing friendship informs Remington’s wonderful debut LP In Embudo. It was recorded in the New Mexico hamlet that gives the album its name, with Remington’s husky voice and gospel melodies combining with Lenker’s rippling guitar, as well as contributions from Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia and multi-instrumentalist Mat Davidson of Twain. It’s intimate and warm, with shades of Nick Drake and a sense of the spiritual. “Recording was pretty chill, I have to say,” says Remington. “We were on the river, drinking delicious coffee,…