The Fat Angel Sings

Twenty years after its original release, “Passover” has been re-recorded and reimagined through the lens of two decades of growth – as a band, as musicians, and as people.
These songs have lived many lives since 2006. Shaped across thousands of performances around the world, each track has evolved into a living, breathing organism – changing subtly night after night, year after year. These new recordings document that evolution.
Working alongside producer Dave Sardy (Oasis, LCD Soundsystem, Modest Mouse), The Black Angels returned to “Passover” not to recreate it, but to fully realize what the songs have become twenty years later.

The result is a heavier, deeper, and more expansive recording: bigger riffs, richer textures, deeper low end, and a renewed sense of atmosphere and intensity that reflects the band as they exist today – while preserving every ounce of the raw power and spirit that defined the original album.

Originally written and recorded during the Iraq War, the themes and message behind “Passover” feel more urgent and relevant now than ever before. Two decades later, these songs still speak to cycles of violence, disillusionment, resistance, and humanity’s ongoing struggle against oppression – a reminder that history continues to repeat itself.
This is not a nostalgia piece. It’s “Passover” transformed by twenty years of experience, perspective, and sound.

“PASSOVER XX” – out November 27th at your local record store for Record Store Day!

Twenty years after its original release, “Passover” has been re-recorded and reimagined – transformed by twenty years of experience, perspective, and over a thousand shows around the world. These songs have lived many lives since 2006, each track has evolved into a living, breathing organism – changing subtly night after night, year after year. These new recordings document “Passover” as it exists today – reshaped by twenty years of life on stage.

This RSD exclusive is presented in a deluxe gatefold jacket

Since the late ’80s, Mudhoney – the Seattle-based foursome whose muck-crusted version of rock, shot through with caustic wit and battened down by a ferocious low end – has been a high-pH tonic against the ludicrous and the insipid. Thirty years later, the world is experiencing a particularly high-water moment for both those ideals. But just in time, vocalist Mark Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, bassist Guy Maddison, and drummer Dan Peters are back with “Digital Garbage”, a barbed-wire-trimmed collection of sonic brickbats. Arm’s raw yawp and his bandmates’ long-honed chemistry make “Digital Garbage” an ideal release valve for the 2018 pressure cooker. “My sense of humor is dark, and these are dark times,” says Arm. “I suppose it’s only getting darker.”

“Digital Garbage” opens with the swaggering “Nerve Attack,” which can be heard as a nod both to modern-life anxiety and the ever-increasing threat of warfare. The album’s title comes from the outro of “Kill Yourself Live,” which segues from a revved-up Arm organ solo into a bleak look at the way notoriety goes viral. Arm says: “people really seem to find validation in the likes—and then there’s Facebook Live, where people have streamed torture and murder, or, in the case of Philando Castile, getting murdered by a cop. In the course of writing that song, I thought about how, once you put something out there online, you can’t wipe it away. It’s always going to be there—even if no one digs it up, it’s still out there floating somewhere.”

Appropriately enough, bits of recent news events float through the record: “Please Mr. Gunman,” on which Arm bellows “We’d rather die in church!” over his bandmates’ careening charge, was inspired by a TV-news bubblehead’s response to a 2017 church shooting, while the ominous refrain that opens the submerged-blues of “Next Mass Extinction” calls back to last summer’s clashes in Charlottesville.

Mudhoney’s core sound—steadily pounding drums, swamp-thing bass, squalling guitar wobble, Arm’s hazardous-chemical voice—remains on “Digital Garbage”, which the band recorded with longtime collaborator (and “Digital Garbage” pianist) Johnny Sangster at the Seattle studio Litho. The anti-religiosity shimmy “21st Century Pharisees” builds its case with Maddison’s woozy synths, which Arm says “add a really nice touch to the proceedings.” “Digital Garbage” closes with “Oh Yeah,” a brief celebration of skateboarding, surfing, biking, and the joy provided by these escape valves. “I would’ve really just loved to write songs about just hanging out on the beach, and going on a nice vacation,” says Arm. “But, you know, that probably doesn’t make for great rock.”

Mudhoney, however, know what does make great rock—and the riffs and fury of “Digital Garbage” will stand the test of time, even if the particulars fade away. “I’ve tried to keep things somewhat universal, so that this album doesn’t just seem like of this time—hopefully some of this stuff will go away,“ Arm laughs. “You don’t want to say in the future, ‘Hey, those lyrics are still relevant. Great!’”

This new song is the fourth track from his forthcoming album “o\i” Peter Gabriel has released “Till Your Mind Is Shining”, the fourth track from his forthcoming album “o\i.”

Following on from “Been Undone”, which was released on January’s Wolf Moon, “Put The Bucket Down” which was released on February’s Snow Moon, and “What Lies Ahead” which released on March’s Worm Moon, “Till Your Mind Is Shining” arrives on the pink full moon.

New songs from “o\i” will be released on subsequent full moons, revealing the whole album at the end of the year.

Written and produced by Peter Gabriel, the Dark-Side Mix by Tchad Blake is the first version to be released.

“The song began around a chord sequence which I liked and which felt quite poppy and playful, so I just kept on playing around with it till I had something. Of all the songs that I’ve written for i/o and o\i this is probably the poppiest for me.

“It takes me back to my schooldays, in some ways, because before there was Genesis we were effectively trying to be songwriters more than musicians – pop songs or soul / R&B songs. I think this song connects me back to some of those roots and the sort of thing that I was working on then and trying to master. 

“Some elements of this are a few years old, I mean pretty much most things I work on take a while to mature. I leave songs for a while and go and do something else and when I come back to them and they smell alive, I will want to complete them. I really enjoyed singing this one, particularly the end, and I think the band had a good time playing it too. You can hear some wonderful performances from all the band. It was really a fun thing to create.

“I’ve always been fascinated by explorations of consciousness and attempts to understand from where it originated, along with all the recent investigations into animal and plant sentience.

“In some ways it’s about opening up the mind and stepping inside to understand a little more of ourselves and the world we live in with the hope that we respond a little more responsibly and compassionately.”

This month’s art comes from Tatsuo Miyajima and his work ‘Warp Time with Warp Self, No.2’. Miyajima is a contemporary artist from Tokyo, Japan, who has held numerous exhibitions both in Japan and abroad. He first came to prominence in 1988 when he was invited to the Venice Biennale, in the young artist’s section, where his works using digital numerals attracted international attention. Since 1996, he has also been promoting the ‘Kaki Tree Project,’ an art project that promotes peace and the importance of life through the planting of saplings taken from a kaki tree in Nagasaki which miraculously survived the atomic bomb.

“I went to Hiroshima a few years back and talked to some of the survivors of the bomb, extraordinary women who have dedicated their lives to keeping alive their experience of the awful reality and total horror of a nuclear bomb.

“I really wanted an image that felt like a mixture of something cold and structured and informative as well as being soft and self-reflective. Tatsuo calls this piece ‘Warp Time with Warp Self, No.2’ and I love that it feels quite futuristic in one sense, with numbers and data and yet you’ve got this ‘warp self’ in the background. There’s an interaction between the human and the mechanical AI world that we’re creating, or at least that’s what it says to me.  I like that, particularly in the context of where the ‘Shining Mind’ could lead you and what that is there to counter, in terms of what we’re creating in this outside world.

“On the one hand, there’s time and space and data and analysis and then on the other hand there’s this journey inside us, that I think is linked to Buddhist thought, which feels as if it belongs right in there. So, it’s that marriage between the two that I got excited about.”

Mark ‘Spike’ Stent’s Bright-Side Mix of “Till Your Mind Is Shining” will be released later in the month, on the new moon.

This deluxe 3LP set features the original album newly remastered and expanded with “Who Put The Boot In” – a classic live performance recorded at Swansea’s Vetch Field in 1976. Presented on heavyweight vinyl and includes a booklet featuring rare photographs and memorabilia from the era.

The Who will celebrate the 50th anniversary of “The Who By Numbers” with an expansive new super deluxe edition featuring 92 previously unreleased audio tracks, a restored concert film, new mixes by Pete Townshend and a 100-page hardback book.

Due for release on October 30th, the reissue revisits the band’s introspective 1975 seventh studio album across a 5CD/1 Blu-ray boxset, alongside separate 3LP, 2CD and coloured-vinyl editions.

You can hear the previously unheard “Imagine A Man (Pete Vocal, Early Mix)”

Originally released in October 1975, “The Who By Numbers” marked a notable shift in Pete Townshend’s songwriting, trading the grand narratives of “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia” for a more personal and often vulnerable collection of songs. The album reached No. 7 in the UK and No. 8 in the US, and spawned the hit single “Squeeze Box”.

Reflecting on the record in the new set’s accompanying book, Townshend says: “The Who By Numbers” is a tricky album to talk about. It’s the only one where I allowed songs that were so personal to be used by The Who.”

Roger Daltrey adds: “In some ways, “The Who By Numbers” is my favourite [Who] album. For me, songs like ‘Imagine A Man’, ‘How Many Friends’ and ‘However Much I Booze’ expose our vulnerabilities, and the album is wonderful for that.”

Among the archive highlights are 11 Townshend demos, studio tracking sessions from Ramport and Shepperton Studios, alternate vocals, guide tracks, early mixes and a selection of newly created acoustic “stripped” mixes.

The box’s live material focuses on a fascinating period in The Who’s history. Disc Five presents the most complete release to date of the band’s June 12th, 1976 performance at Swansea’s Vetch Field, recorded during the “Who Put The Boot In” tour and notable as Keith Moon’s last major show before a British audience.

The Blu-ray also includes video of The Who’s December 6th, 1975 concert at the Metropolitan Stadium in Pontiac, Michigan. Attended by nearly 77,000 fans, the show set a record at the time for the largest indoor rock concert audience and has now been restored from original 2-inch videotape. The performance stands as one of the few surviving visual documents of The Who’s final major tour before Moon’s death in 1978.

As well as newly remastered versions of the original album, the Blu-ray contains brand-new Atmos, 5.1 surround and stereo mixes overseen by Townshend.

The release is accompanied by a 100-page hardback book featuring rare photographs, memorabilia and new liner notes by Townshend and longtime Who archivist Andy Neill.

The War On Drugs return with the new single “Who’s That”, their first new studio recording released since 2022.

Written and produced by band leader Adam Granduciel at his Burbank studio compound, “Who’s That” also features Anthony LaMarca (drums) and Dave Hartley (bass).

“Who’s That” was written in 10 minutes somewhere between first coffee and school drop off,” says Granduciel. “It’s a song about trying to love yourself despite things we can’t always control, like the anxiety, depression and self-doubt that may stand in the way of living the life we truly desire.” The track is accompanied by a Max Flick-directed video featuring Granduciel on a surreal late-night stroll around the streets of Burbank.

The War On Drugs will play festivals and shows across America this Autumn:

Lankum singer and multi-instrumentalist Radie Peat has announced that her debut solo album, “No Human Tongue Can Tell“, will be released by Rough Trade on November 13th. “The seed for this album was planted a long time ago, it’s been ticking along in the background of my head for probably 15 years or so,” says Peat. “When I was in my twenties, I watched a documentary on Mike Oldfield making Tubular Bells and the idea just stuck that I would like to try record like that, where you write and play all the intersecting parts. I found the idea of being limited by your own mind and abilities, with all the blind spots and personal preferences, very appealing, and I felt it would make something definitively unique, for better or for worse.

The collection of folk songs on the album came together easily, and it’s only now I see a thematic link between them. They are largely songs of female struggle, suffering, strength and endurance. But there are many about love as well, with all the complications that brings. I’ve put a lot of myself in this album and I hope it lands where I was aiming for.”

With her Union Chapel show in London now completely sold out, Radie Peat has announced a new London date at The Barbican on May 19th, 2027, as well as a date at La Trabendo in Paris on February 1st.

Debut album ‘No Human Tongue Can Tell’ out November 13th,

The formative years of Joe Strummer are to be chronicled in a new archival release, “Joe Strummer 003: The 101’ers Years (1974-1976)“, due via Dark Horse Records on December 11th.

The set gathers the first known recordings made by the future Clash frontman, documenting the group’s journey from London’s pub-rock circuit to the brink of the punk explosion.

Produced by David Zonshine and remastered by Paul Hicks (The Beatles, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones), the deluxe edition spans three CDs and 48 tracks, including 15 previously unreleased demos and 21 live recordings. Many of the latter have been restored from original cassette tapes, including soundboard recordings unheard for decades.

The set includes a newly mixed version of the band’s “Keys To Your Heart”

The release is housed in a 48-page hardback book featuring rare photographs, illustrations and writings by Strummer, as well as a foreword by Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock and new liner notes from former 101’ers drummer Richard Nother Dudanski.

The 101’ers took their name from a squat at 101 Walterton Road, Maida Vale, where the band lived communally. Regulars on London’s mid-’70s pub-rock scene, they mixed rock’n’roll, R&B and rockabilly influences at a moment when punk was beginning to emerge.

Among the collection’s highlights are intimate basement recordings such as “Full Moon”, recorded by Strummer alone at the band’s West London squat, plus early versions of songs that would later find new life in his Clash repertoire, including “Lonely Mother’s Son”, an early incarnation of “Jail Guitar Doors”, and live performances of “Junco Partner”.

Recalling the circumstances that led to the band’s formation, Strummer said: “Within about a year I had formed a band in a squat. It was named ‘The 101’ers’ after our address (Walterton Road, Maida Vale). We ran a club every Wednesday in the upstairs room of a pub. Entry fee: 10p.”

‘Joe Strummer 003: The 101’ers Years,’ the definitive collection of studio and live recordings from Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash band, The 101’ers, will be available November 20th via Dark Horse Records as a 3CD deluxe edition, 2LP and digital. Featuring the first known recordings of Joe Strummer, the collection captures a pivotal chapter in his development as an artist and documents a band caught between London’s pub-rock scene and the punk revolution that was about to unfold.

A special double-LP vinyl edition will be released,

Billy Bragg and Wilco’s celebrated “Mermaid Avenue” project is being revisited in an expanded new collection.

Due on December 11th via Craft Recordings, “Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions” brings together all three instalments of the series alongside 16 previously unreleased recordings, including alternate takes, demos and live performances drawn from the original sessions.

The collection will be available as a 7LP + 7″ vinyl box set, a 4CD edition and digitally. Among the newly unveiled material is “Aginst Th’ Law (Alternate Version)”, available now, while the vinyl box also includes a single-sided 7″ featuring a recently discovered 1951 home recording of Woody Guthrie performing “Hesitating Beauty”.

Originally released between 1998 and 2012, the “Mermaid Avenue” albums found Bragg and Wilco setting music to previously unrecorded lyrics from Guthrie’s archive, producing songs including “California Stars”, “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”, “Airline To Heaven”, “Remember The Mountain Bed” and “When The Roses Bloom Again”.

The new edition adds an entire disc of Alternates & Demos, featuring previously unheard versions of songs including “All You Fascists”, “She Came Along To Me”, “I Guess I Planted” and “Aginst Th’ Law”, as well as demos of “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again”, “Hot Rod Hotel”, “Birds And Ships” and “The Unwelcome Guest”.

Reflecting on the project, Bragg said: “It’s been over thirty years since Nora first asked me to look at some unpublished lyrics of her father’s. I had no idea then that the project that she, I and Wilco undertook would lead to a complete reassessment of the legacy of Woody Guthrie.”

The announcement follows a reunion performance at Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival earlier this year, where Bragg, Wilco, Nora Guthrie and special guests revisited material from across the “Mermaid Avenue” catalogue.

In the shadow of Washington, Bruce Springsteen and a few musical giants had a message for the world: “Let them hear you in Washington,” he cheered. He played a number of political songs during his headlining set at the inaugural “Power to the People” star-studded protest festival at Columbia, Maryland’s Merriweather Post Pavilion on Saturday. Organized by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, the festival aimed to celebrate “peace, justice, solidarity, music and community action,” according to its mission statement, and promote voter turnout.

Additionally, a portion of the proceeds from all ticket sales will benefit the organizations VoteRiders and HeadCount.

Many of the acts used their platform to denounce recent actions conducted by the U.S. government. The one-day, two-stage festival boasted a stacked lineup heavy with veteran rock ‘n’ roll bands. It also included performances by acts like Dropkick Murphys, Jack Black, Serj Tankian, Killer Mike and the Linda Lindas.

Springsteen opened with “Streets of Minneapolis,” in response to the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents.

“The power and solidarity of the people of Minneapolis, of Minnesota, is an inspiration to the entire country,” he told the sold-out crowd. “Their strength and their commitment told us that this is still America, and this will not stand. They gave us hope. They showed us courage.”

For his second number, folk icon Joan Baez emerged, and the pair duetted Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.” Later, Springsteen, Morello, Dave Matthews and Nathaniel Rateliff joined forces for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”

In addition to the protest music on stage, fans in the crowd wore shirts with strong messages. “Immigrants Make America Great,” read one. “No Kings,” “No one is illegal on stolen land,” “Bring on the Matriarchy” read others.

Morello’s early evening set, he was joined by System of a Down’s Serj Tankian for a duet of Audioslave’s “Like a Stone” in honour of the late frontman Chris Cornell. It was the start of a trend: After Tankian came Chuck D, Run DMC, Flavor Flav for various covers; Morello and Foo Fighters’ frontman Dave Grohl also tackled Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Nite.”

Jack Black appeared on stage as “Jack Sabbath,” performing Black Sabbath covers while backed by a band of children — including the sons of Morello and Anthrax’s Scott Ian — in what read like both a real-life “School of Rock” set and a touching tribute to the late, great Ozzy Osbourne. In fact, Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler joined them on stage for “War Pigs.”

Baez, Rateliff and Matthews joined forces for Woody Guthrie’s protest song “Deportees,” before launching into Baez’s “(Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody) Turn Me Around.”

As they exited, Stephen Stills took the stage to perform Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”

The festival, which Baez labelled a “magnificent antidote,” concluded with all the day’s performers singing Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” — with all its original verses — as well as John Lennon’s “Power to the People.”

November 2026 marks the arrival of “45 (Vol.1)”, a brand-new LP compilation on 200-gram vinyl, celebrating XTC’s explosive run of singles between 1977 to 1980. Bringing together the A-sides from the band’s first, fiercely inventive years (including the US A side version of ‘Ten Feet Tall’ and soundtrack rarity ‘Take This Town’), the collection captures XTC in an era where many new bands would have sacrificed future first-borns to have one decent songwriter. Yet this run of singles made it abundantly obvious that XTC contained two – in Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge.

Punk and its assorted brethren from New Wave to DIY Electronica, Mod, Ska revivals and more sub-genres shared one vital element in common it was, for a brief few years, to re-establish the primacy of the 7” single. While XTC is, rightly, now remembered more for the consistent brilliance of its albums output, its commitment to the notion that every single should be an event: solid catchy A side, equally inventive (if sometimes more experimental) B side and artwork given as much attention as an album. This made all of their singles, the hits and the non-hits alike, one of the most distinguished catalogues of the 7” artform, from the (planned for end of ’77, actually released January 1978) ‘Science Friction’ through to the 1992 almost release of ‘Wrapped in Gray’ the key single from “Nonsuch” which was caught up in and lost via the turmoil of Virgin’s takeover by EMI.

Listened to now, as a collection, it’s the pace of development of the songwriters in a period of a little over three years that impresses, while the arrival of Dave Gregory following the departure of Barry Andrews gave the band a confident musical stability that enabled it to grow rapidly. The demands of regular singles releases – many of them non-album tracks in this period – pushed the pace of the band’s development which, in turn, fed back into the albums.

Perhaps that’s why XTC are still popular across continents and feel relevant today. Many of their singles resonate as individual songs because they never chased fashion and they built their own distinctive sound.

45 (Vol.1) is more than a retrospective.  It’s a reminder of how exciting the very idea of the single could be.