Mojo Say:
Reprising their Grammy-grabbing 2007 team-up, Raising Sand, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are back in the heart of Americana, collaborating on spine-tingling blues, country, folk and R&B on Raise The Roof. Read MOJO’s world exclusive interviews! Also in this issue: reclaiming Bob Dylan’s ’80s; inside the Aretha Franklin biopic; The War On Drugs return! Plus: Jack White, Faust, Lindsey Buckingham, Low, Wanda Jackson, Public Service Broadcasting, Brinsley Schwarz, Courtney Barnett, Van Der Graaf Generator, XTC, Dusty Hill, Faces reunion rumours, Robert Fripp & Toyah, and... the worst festival ever!
This month's covermount CD is Sand Blasters: 15 tracks of rootsological wonderment compiled for MOJO by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Includes: The Louvin Brothers, Ralph Stanley, Low, Bobby Parker, Bert Jansch, The Everly Brothers, Calexico, Plant & Krauss themselves and much more!
Contents:COVER STORY: ROBERT PLANT & ALISON KRAUSS Raising Sand changed the game, hoovered Grammys, displaced Led Zeppelin in their singer’s priorities. With a sequel due, its protagonists trace their story so far, with a detour via Led Zep IV, 50 years on.
ARETHA FRANKLIN With the Respect biopic about to drop, its director and stars talk us through its challenges. Plus: David Hood remembers the real Aretha in the studio.
THE WAR ON DRUGS Adam Granduciel’s graduation from Kurt Vile’s Mate to arena star brought angst and anxiety. Now he’s ready to transcend: “I just want to keep this thing going.”
BOB DYLAN Never mind the reverb! A new Bootleg Series box redeems Dylan’s ’80s (somewhat). We get back in the trenches with his bemused and beleaguered bandmates.
LOW The married Mormom mavens of US alt-rock are making the best music of their lives. It’s healing the mind of their troubled male half; can it save the world?
FAUST Their label thought they were getting the German Beatles, not Krautrock’s most uncompromising group: “They were extreme, a different scale.”
READING ’88 For Britain’s defining rock festival to be reborn, first it had to die in a hail of turf and urine-filled projectiles. Eyewitnesses relive the chaos.
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING Achtung! The UK’s most singular group have turned the space race and the mining industry into epic pop. Now they’re mining the history and atmosphere of Berlin.
REVIEWED Lindsey Buckingham / Amyl And The Sniffers / Van Der Graaf Generator / Steve Gunn / The Bug / Metallica / Big Red Machine / Moor Mother / Tintern Abbey / José González / Petula Clark / Boris / W.H. Lung / Shaun Ryder / Rory Gallagher / Sturgill Simpson / Haiku Salut / St Etienne / Anna Leone / The Shadracks / The Specials / The Stranglers / Matthew E White / Grouper
PLUS Small Faces live! And Faces revived? / inside Courtney Barnett’s bunker / Wanda Jackson roars back / Gabriels and Pip Blom are rising / Jack White opens Third Man shop in London / the rise and fall of Air Studios Montserrat / How To Buy... Diana Ross / Colin Moulding – in and out of XTC / Bye bye Dusty Hill, Biz Markie, Chuck E Weiss / the ballad of Brinsley Schwarz / ...and it’s all back to Toyah’s (and Robert’s)!