The Fat Angel Sings

Mannequin Pussy’s music feels like a resilient and galvanizing shout that demands to be heard.

Across four albums, the Philadelphia rock band that consists of Colins “Bear” Regisford (bass, vocals), Kaleen Reading (drums, percussion), Maxine Steen (guitar, synths), and Marisa Dabice (guitar, vocals) has made cathartic tunes about despairing times. “There’s just so much constantly going on that feels intentionally evil that trying to make something beautiful feels like a radical act ,” says Dabice. “The ethos of this band has always been to bring people together.”

“I Got Heaven,” the lead single and title track from Mannequin Pussy’s new album, was heaving and portentous; its follow-up “I Don’t Know You” is the complete opposite, sticky and sweet. Marisa Dabice’s singsong count-up threads itself throughout the song: “I know 4, 5, 6, 7 ways to get ahead/ But I wouldn’t know how to get you into my bed/ There are 3 little words/ That I wish I had said/ But I wouldn’t tell you.” Those three small words might have taken on a different from in an earlier iteration of Mannequin Pussy, but here they’re rendered in a swooning love song, one that filled with a hopeful anticipation at the possibilities of the unknown. 

Their new album, “I Got Heaven“, which is out via Epitaph Records, is the band’s most fully realised recording yet. Over ten ambitious tracks which abruptly turn from searing punk to inviting alternative pop, the album is deeply concerned with desire, the power in being alone, and how to live in an unfeeling and unkind world. It’s a document of a band doubling down on their unshakable bond to make something furious, thrilling, and wholly alive.

Following the 2019 release of their critically acclaimed third album “Patience”, Mannequin Pussy returned in 2021 for their EP “Perfect”. They toured that release relentlessly and added guitarist Maxine Steen to the band’s official line-up. The band changed their entire creative formula, choosing to write together in the studio in Los Angeles with producer John Congleton, over slowly crafting tracks at home. “Everyone felt empowered to speak up about their own ideas to make this thing the best it could possibly be,” says Regisford.

Ducks Ltd. begin their spring/summer 2024 tour this weekend, and to celebrate they’ve shared a new single. “When You’re Outside” features backing vocals from Ratboys‘ Julia Steiner and Moontype‘s Margaret McCarthy and was recorded during the same sessions as this year’s fantastic “Harm’s Way” album .

On “Harm’s Way”, the songs are better, the production shimmers more brightly, and the arrangements are more ambitious (piano, strings), with assists from Ratboys‘ Julia Steiner and Marcus Nuccio, Dehd‘s Jason Bala, Finom’s Macie Stewart and more. Most notably, they’ve added real drums to augment their arsenal of drum machines and that adds real punch to these breathless, pop nuggets, and ups their replayability. Effortlessly tuneful songs like “Hollowed Out,” “The Main Thing” and “Deleted Scenes” (there’s not a bum track here) may invite comparisons to The Go-Betweens, The Wedding Present, The Verlaines, and others, but they also hold their own against them.

McGreevy says it was their time on the road with Nation of Language, Archers of Loaf and Illuminati Hotties that made the biggest difference between this and their debut. “When we got signed, we had played maybe five or six shows ever. After last year, it’s in the hundreds. That experience can change your perception of your own music and songwriting. In the past when we got stuck on a song we had a tendency to look at our favorite records to see how they tackled it. But now, instead of asking ‘what would Orange Juice do?’, we’d ask, ‘what would we do?”

“When You’re Outside” is out now on Carpark / Royal Mountain Records.

A soulful masterstoke from the Alabama Shakes-er – ‘what now’ finds Brittany Howard dealing multiple modes: hip-flinging funk, devastating vocal gymnastics, sultry guitar licks, and hosting a dancefloor spectacular – all of which she manages to blend seamlessly despite their seemingly incongruent paths.

“[on this record], every song is its own aquarium, its own little miniature world built around whatever i was feeling and thinking at the time”. “with the world we’re living in now, it feels like we’re all just trying to hang onto our souls. everything seems to be getting more extreme and everyone keeps wondering, ‘what now? what’s next?’” – Brittany Howard

Brittany Howard found escapism from the strife of the outside world in the making of her second album What Now, the title reflecting the ever-present question she felt following the seemingly increasing chaos in recent years. Hence, in such a tumultuous world, the Alabama Shakes frontwoman created a piece of work where the only predictable element is her unpredictability, each track “its own aquarium, its own little miniature world built around whatever I was feeling and thinking at the time”, the singer-songwriter explains. As ever, Howard’s cavernous, soulful, venue-filling vocals are a standout, accompanied by polyrhythmic drumming and funk guitar – a sonic rallying cry perfect for an album in which she espouses for us to retain our souls.

“I’ve always railed against it when people ask if making a record is cathartic,” Bill Ryder-Jones says of his fifth solo album, “but I’d have to admit that this one really was.” The Coral co-founder, who’s been a solo artist longer now than he was in a member of that band, had a rough pandemic, including a bad breakup and close calls with substance abuse. He’s come through the other side, though, with one of his best-ever records. “Iechyd Da”, which is Welsh for “Good Health,” is one of those albums that seems to process joy and sadness as the same emotion, not unlike Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs, The Delgado’s The Great Eastern or pretty much everything Spiritualized or Sparklehorse have ever done. Whether he’s singing “It’s noone’s fault, there’s sometimes nothing to be done / I just don’t see myself getting past this one” (“Nothing to be Done”) or “There’s something great about life” on the very next song (“It’s Today Again”), they all hit with a massive wave of beautiful sadness.

There are some wonderful pop moments, too, including “If Tomorrow Starts Without Me,” that bring on the warm-n-fuzzies while still keeping a dark cloud in the blue sky. The whole album washes over you with orchestral grandeur, swooning strings and choral backing (more than once via a children’s choir), and in lesser hands these towering creations would topple from schmaltz. But Ryder-Jones has such a sure grasp of tone, in all senses of the word, so that the songs never wobble. He’s got a soft, fragile voice that could carry the emotional weight of these songs all on its own but is also the perfect center for exquisite heartbreak he’s wrapped himself in. 

Beautifully produced and rich in scope – “Iechyd Da” is Bill Ryder-Jones’ most ambitious record to date. At times joyous and grand, at others intimate and heartbreaking, the past few years spent producing other artists have provided that gentle nudge to expand into new territory, from kids choirs and tender strings to dramatically re-contextualised disco samples.

“It’s been incredible making this,” he says. “Despite all the life stuff that’s happened, it has brought me immense happiness. I’ve always railed against it when people ask if making a record is cathartic but I’d have to admit that this one really was.”

Released January 12th, 2024

2024, Domino Recording Co Ltd

Lush cofounder Miki Berenyi has shared the debut single from her new group, the Miki Berenyi Trio, which includes her partner and Piroshka bandmate KJ ‘Moose’ McKillop (also of ’90s shoegazers Moose) and Oliver Cherer.

“‘Vertigo’ is about anxiety and the efforts to talk myself down from the precipice – the usual cheerful stuff,” Berenyi says of the single, which adds electronic percussion to the ethereal sound she’s honed with previous groups. “It’s a challenge to not have a drummer, and to use more programming,” she adds, “but the essence of the music is still guitars and melody – as it always has been, particularly in mine and Moose’s bands.”

Berenyi’s fantastic memoir, “Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success”, was recently released in North America.

“Oyster Cuts”, the Merge Records debut of Quivers, finds the Melbourne, Australia–based outfit awash in the kind of emotions people tend to fear losing themselves in. Finding love after grief, the outsized guitar pop of Quivers gleams like the surface of an ocean, beneath which lies a reef that is at turns beautiful and painful, its features alien and sharp enough to wound. Propelled by melodies that at times recall Galaxie 500 and The Pretenders, Quivers make music that is tender and tough, compelling the listener to dive in again and again, each song a new angle on all of your feelings.

The losses and loves that have informed Quivers’ music since their inception—the sudden loss of a brother in the cracked optimism of “We’ll Go Riding on the Hearses” (2018) and the life in and after grief of “Golden Doubt” (2021)—ripple into “Oyster Cuts”, which is committed to moving forward while accepting that some feelings, like grief, are a cycle. Crucially, Quivers committed to moving forward with each other. Paring away the choir and strings of its predecessor, “Oyster Cuts” is a showcase for what’s still possible when four people—Sam Nicholson (guitars), Bella Quinlan (bass), Michael Panton (guitars), and Holly Thomas (drums)—make music together.

Lindsey Buckingham’s earliest solo works are getting a box set from Rhino Records this summer.

True to its name, “20th Century Lindsey” will feature remastered versions of the three albums the Fleetwood Mac singer/guitarist issued during the 20th century – 1981’s “Law and Order”, 1984’s “Go Insane” and 1992’s “Out of the Cradle” – plus a newly compiled disc of eight rarities. The set showcases Buckingham’s restless creative spirit that fuelled a good portion of Fleetwood Mac’s discography, blossoming into wild and sometimes unexpected territory on his own.

“Law and Order” continued the New Wave tyro style Buckingham had meticulously cultivated on the Fleetwood Mac’s ambitious “Tusk” in 1979. Having been told in no uncertain terms by his bandmates that their next album would likely be more back to basics, Buckingham sought wide open sonic spaces, playing nearly everything and offering every voice on the album. (Fleetwood did contribute drums to “Trouble,” Buckingham’s sole Top 10 hit, and Christine McVie lent harmonies to the album cut “Shadow of the West.”) After Fleetwood Mac’s “Mirage” in 1983, Buckingham was back in the studio for “Go Insane”, another mostly self-contained affair (co-produced with Richard Fordyce and executive produced by Roy Thomas Baker, with Buckingham performing and programming nearly everything) that was inspired by everything from the dissolution of his relationship to singer Carol Ann Harris to the passing of Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys.

Buckingham didn’t return to solo recording until 1992’s “Out of the Cradle”, and things had changed for him considerably: after driving much of Fleetwood Mac’s “Tango in the Night” in 1987, Buckingham left the band for nearly a decade. “Out of the Cradle” was a reunion with co-producer Richard Dashut, who’d worked on nearly every one of Buckingham’s projects since 1975’s pre-Mac effort “Buckingham Nicks”. Together, they gravitated toward a less programmed, more acoustic sound on songs like “Countdown,” “Wrong” and “Soul Drifter” and even a few choice covers (The Kingston Trio’s “All My Sorrows,” Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific number “This Nearly Was Mine”).

The eight tracks on “20th Century Rarities” offer some crucial entries in Buckingham’s ’80s discography, including immortal soundtrack cuts for National Lampoon’s Vacation (the unforgettable theme “Holiday Road”) and Back to the Future (the nervy “Time Bomb Town”). There’s also a few rare remixes of “Go Insane” and “Slow Dancing” that were predominantly issued in Europe, and a rare reunion with former creative and romantic partner Stevie Nicks – “Twisted,” off the soundtrack to the 1996 action disaster flick Twister – that anticipated Buckingham’s second tenure in the band, from the 1997 live reunion “The Dance” until his second departure from the group in 2018. (Lindsey has been quite active since then, releasing another four solo albums in the 21st century – perhaps a hook for a second box set in the future?)

“20th Century Lindsey” is available on four CDs or LPs on August 16th. 

In a solo career that’s stretched past 40 years, Cyndi Lauper has gone from unlikely pop idol to one of the genre’s great, enduring voices – not to mention an icon and activist for the LGBTQ+ community. All of those sides of her work are the subject of a forthcoming documentary this summer – and Legacy Recordings, keeper of most of Cyndi’s catalogue (and a producer on the film) – will release a companion album to go with it.

“Let the Canary Sing” bows on Paramount+ on June 4th. Directed by Alison Ellwood, who helmed documentaries on The Go-Go’s and the Eagles, “Canary” traces Lauper’s life story from her upbringing in the New York borough of Queens, raised by a single mother; to her earliest attempts at a singing career which eventually bore incredible fruit with the multiplatinum “She’s So Unusual” (1983) and eight Top 10 hits across the decade of MTV. Her family life, charity work and forays into Broadway (writing the Tony-winning score to 2013’s Kinky Boots) are all covered in Technicolor detail, with Lauper’s signature wit guiding the way in interviews.

“Let the Canary Sing” chronicles Lauper’s meteoric ascent to stardom and her profound impact on generations through her music, ever-evolving punk style, unwavering feminism and tireless advocacy. The documentary takes the audience on an engaging exploration of a renowned and pioneering artist who has left a remarkable legacy with her art.

The companion album to the film, available digitally and on vinyl, is a solid 13-track overview that also serves as the first truly career-spanning compilation devoted to Lauper’s discography. In addition to songs from Lauper’s ’80s material – “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Time After Time” “She Bop” and “Money Changes Everything” from “She’s So Unusual” plus smashes “True Colors” and “I Drove All Night” – the set also includes favourites from Lauper’s work in the ’90s (“Who Let in the Rain,” “Sisters of Avalon”) and ’00s (the Billboard No. 1 dance single “Into the Nightlife,” a cover of Etta James’ “At Last”). There’s even a track from Lauper’s rare 1980 album with the band Blue Angel, the stunning “I’m Gonna Be Strong.”

The “Let the Canary Sing” album hits stores May 31st,

“The Endless Coloured Ways” is a collection of songs by legendary singer/ songwriter, Nick Drake, performed and recorded by over 30 incredible artists from a range of different backgrounds, genres, age groups and audiences. From Fontaines D.C to Guy Garvey, and Aurora to Feist, each artist has offered their own incredible take on a timeless classic.

The album was originally announced in March along with the release of the lead single, Fontaines D.C.’s rendition of “‘Cello Song” from the 1969 album “Five Leaves Left”. Prior to the album, a series of limited edition 7″ singles were released featuring a selection of the album’s tracks. The series also included a never-before-released recording of Drake playing Bob Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is a Long Time”

AllMusic rated the album 3.5 out of 5 stars, with critic Fred Thomas writing that “it’s wonderful to hear yet another generation of artists doing interesting things inspired by Drake’s evergreen presence”. Bill Pearis of BrooklynVegan highlighted this album as one of the best of the week in indie music and highlighted several “lovely recordings” among the songs. In The Daily Telegraph, James Hall gave this release 5 out of 5 stars, stating that “new angles abound” in interpreting Drake’s songs and declaring this compilation “an essential manual on the art of songwriting”. Writing for Hot Press, John Walshe scored this album 9 out of 10, summing up that it is “respectful without being overawed of its subject, this is a wonderful collection”. In Under the Radar, Ian Rushbury scored this compilation a 7 out of 10, calling it “occasionally fascinating and occasionally frustrating” for its choice of performers and songs that he ultimately considers “a mixed bag”. Graham Reid of The New Zealand Herald included this in his favourite albums of 2023.

This RSD exclusive 7″ Singles Boxset includes eleven tracks across six 7″ singles from the original campaign and housed in a brand new exclusive and limited edition collector’s box, including an exclusive double- sided pull-out poster insert Record Store Day UK exclusive for 2024.

The box includes the two new Nick Drake recordings on 7”, originally included as a bonus with the LP.

The project was helmed by Chrysalis CEO Jeremy Lascelles and Nick Drake estate manager Cally Callomon.

American musician and producer Steve Albini, who was known for his work with acts including Nirvana, The Pixies and PJ Harvey, has died at the age of 61. Albini was an instrumental and uncompromising figure in the US indie scene in the 1980s and 90s, leading bands including Big Black and Shellac.

Along the way, he worked with a succession of acclaimed alt-rock luminaries – Low, Mogwai, Plush, Will Oldham, Nina Nastasia, the Manic Street Preachers, Joanna Newsom – as well as a couple of his formative influences: the reformed Stooges and Cheap Trick,

His influence was also heard on the several thousand albums he produced and engineered. Which included The Pixies’ seminal LP “Surfer Rosa” and Nirvana’s “In Utero”. Kurt Cobain recruited Albini to record the 1993 follow-up to their hugely successful “Nevermind” album after being impressed by his work with Big Black, The Pixies and The Breeders. He reportedly agreed to work with them because he felt sorry for them, believing they were at the mercy of their major record label, and wanted to give them a more abrasive sound.

The album’s resulting raw feel did not impress the Geffen label, which insisted the singles “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apologies” were remixed. “In Utero” went on to sell five million copies in the US alone, and Albini remarked: “I like it far more than I thought I was going to.”

A lot of what Albini did “implicitly screamed ‘hate me, please!’” There were the spectacularly abusive columns he wrote for fanzines in his adopted home town of Chicago, the subject matter of the songs by his band Big Black, and even the way their records were packaged (Albini stuffed razor blades and fish-hooks into the sleeve of their debut EP “Lungs”; 1987’s . Whatever Albini thought about their music, his work on “Surfer Rosa” made the Pixies sound awesomely powerful: it feels like the band are playing live, inches away from your face. On PJ Harvey’s “Rid of Me”, his production is the perfect match for Harvey’s shift towards a darker, more visceral tone: it amplifies both the glowering tension in the music and moments of cathartic release.

In general, he disliked the title of producer, telling the media last year he preferred to be credited as an engineer because he saw his role as recording a band and not shaping its sound. He also declined to take royalties, charging only a flat fee because he considered it unethical to make money from an artist’s work indefinitely. The alt-rock producer and music legend leaves behind a legacy of controversial provocation but uniquely daring music

He ran his own studio, Electrical Audio, in Chicago, and had been preparing for the release of Shellac’s “To All Trains”, their first album since 2014, on 17 May.