For those who have followed McNally’s nearly twenty year career, the essence of what she brings to Americana Blues music is all packed into her performance. McNally’s voice oozes with nostalgia of Blues music history to almost hypnotize and transports her audience back to a time when life was simple and music was outlaw. With a large and growing catalogue of songs and a star-studded list of peers with whom she has written, recorded and toured with, McNally continues to create music that transcends.
When Shannon McNally signed with the artist collective Blue Rose Music, she was given the option of recording … well, whatever she wanted. Which would be a dream come true for most of us, corporate backing with no demands on our artistic output. But where many singer/songwriters would choose to record their own material, McNally—who already has several releases of original material under her belt going back nearly two decades—chose to record not only an album of covers, but an album of songs originally cut by one of the most iconic country legends ever, and a male legend at that.
The Waylon Sessions is McNally’s upcoming album of Waylon Jennings material on Compass Records, set to drop on May 28. With tracks like “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line,” “I’ve AlwaysBeen Crazy,” and the current lead single, “Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This,” McNally enlisted friends Rodney Crowell, Buddy Miller, Lukas Nelson, and Jennings’ widow Jessi Colter to help out, as well as a top-notch band assembled by guitarist Kenny Vaughan of Marty Stuart’s Fabulous Superlatives.
Listen to “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” Written by Rodney Crowell Made Famous by Waylon Jennings sung by Shannon McNally on the new album, ‘The Waylon Sessions,’ out on Compass Records.
Last October, releasing “Sentimetal”, the debut album by London-by-way of Argentina three-piece, Value Void. Remember the band from when we posted the track ‘Back in the Day’ in May. That song features on the album, alongside ‘Babeland’, which to these ears, it conjures some kind of magical interzone between Breeders’ jangle and Women’s hypnotic creepiness. Not a bad place to be.
Sentimental is available on limited edition green vinyl (first pressing limited to 500 copies) and the usual CD and digital formats. Paz Maddio and Marta Zabala grew up with each other in Azul, a small town south of Buenos Aires, where the seeds of this project were sown. They collaborate in the same way that Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote songs, with Marta penning lyrics then taking them to Paz to spin them in to music.
Marta first came to London on tour with the super-slanted art punks Los Cripis, where she met Luke Tristram (of Cop, Score and Owner) who released their record via his Unwork label. Paz followed to join them and scrape rent from the city’s bars and cafes. By early 2017 the three of them were holed up in practice rooms, Luke adding Evens-esque basslines that laid concrete to their minimalist guitar-lead pop songs. Originally as WVS, they started playing shows with bands that had once orbited the tiny Power Lunches venue in Hackney and, since its death, were now to be found on bills at DIY Space, New River Studios and other dusty successors of its autonomous, cheap drink, creative-friendly spirit. In common with bands like Shopping, rudimentary surroundings and resources fed into nonetheless ambitious, hooky work. Songs such as “Teen For Him,” a self-effacing lark importing strains of Leslie Gore and the Velvets; the minimal, Guided by Voices-reminiscent chug of “Bariloche” and “Cupids Bow,” an up tempo, Breeders-esque standout, were lynch pins of a pummeling, inspired set.
In April of that year, they recorded with Euan Hinshelwood of Young Husband at the studio TVT, in an overlooked corner the other side of Blackheath, tucked under giant knots of flyover on the way to Charlton in South East London.
Upon deciding to flesh the songs out for a full length, they returned to TVT studios with Euan in April this year, tweaking the mix and laying down two new songs: “Mind,” a down tempo lullaby/lament in which the band track into the territory of early St. Vincent, Grouper or Julianna Barwick, supported by a raw dirge that blossoms in feedback, and “The Deluge,” which is also reflective but structured by a roaming curiosity and big chorus seeking road movie oblivion.
The album is instantly affecting, with an ease and clarity that suits the elegance of the lyrics: coded love songs and cool reflections on life which are all the more vulnerable and touching sung in Paz Maddio’s lilting, ultrachromatic voice – a ceramic-sharp diagonal transatlantic on a pure open tone, with subtle waves of vibrato at its top end. It’s a particular heart breaker on tracks such as “Babeland” and “Dead Ladies Lament”.
Restricted to a palette of drums, bass, guitar and double tracked vocals caught on 2″ tape, coloured here and there with a daub of feedback or a passage of ground-shifting tape delay, this is the sort of thing that gets called “stripped back”. It speaks to the powerful understatement at the heart of their style, but it fails to capture the crafty, delicate, taught and spaced-out ride Value Void subject you to: a species of NY proto-punk and Californian post-hardcore born miraculously from London’s piss swilling street level like religious icons in toast.
Think of the Edgar Broughton Band and you immediately remember the hairy freak combo that emerged out of the tail end of psychedelia, to join Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies at the apex of the early 70s festival underground. Five albums cut for Harvest between 1969 (Wasa Wasa) and 1975 (Oora) contain some of the most dramatically out there rock of the age, and some of the most brilliantly conceived, as well – who else would medley the Shadows “Apache” with Captain Beefheart’s “Drop Out Boogie”?
Less feted are the albums that the band produced over the next seven years three studio sets and a live album to prove that even at the end of the decade, the Broughtons were a concert force to be reckoned with. Those records are the ones you’ll find here… Bandages (1975), Live Hits Harder! (1979), Parlez Vous English? (1979) and Superchip – the Final Silicone Solution (1982). And if you’re not familiar with them, let this be your introduction.
Bandages is the runt of the litter, recorded as the band struggled with both management problems and their new label… which just happened to be owned by their management. It definitely has its moments, but coming after the minor disappointment of Oora, it suggested that the band had reached the end of its tether. And so it had – the following year saw the Broughtons embark on their farewell tour.
A live album was planned, but it was three years before the tapes emerged as Live Hits Harder!, a savagely enjoyable collection even if, for Broughtons aficionados, it was recorded five years too late. Released only in Switzerland, it dribbled into the UK on import, and the story was over. Which means, nobody could have predicted what would happen next, as the band reformed at the end of 1978 and set to work on what can only be described as one of their masterpieces.
Parlez Vous English? was everything its most spirited predecessors are, but seen through a sheen that recognized all that had changed since the band was last in the studio, on record and in society. Released under the abbreviated name of the Broughtons, it’s an electrifying album, sharp and witty, demanding and demonstrative. The record did nothing chart wise, but it proved that the Broughtons were back.
And then they were gone again, vanishing for three years before re-emerging with the final album in this box, the conceptual Superchip.
Again the band had been paying attention to what was occurring outside of their studio. Synths burble and bleep all over, with the opening “Metal Storm” alone truly remarking upon the band’s former chaos. But it works. The lyrics are as crafty as ever, and Edgar’s always going to sound like Edgar, no matter what’s going on around him. And those are the elements that drag the electronics out of their then-customary roost in alienation and ice, to give Superchip an energy and an atmosphere that only John Foxx, of the contemporary wave of synth warriors, had even come close to capturing. It remains a joy.
It’s also the only album in the box to include a bonus track, the period b-side “the Virus,” but that’s barely a deficiency. Three of the four albums here demand a place in your collection, regardless of how many Broughton discs you already own; and the fourth (Bandages) will swiftly prove itself to be more than makeweight as well. Indeed, of all the early-mid seventies proggy favourites who persisted in making albums after punk scorched the ears… and that’s everyone from Caravan to ELP, from Genesis to Yes… the Broughtons truly were one of the precious few that were worth still listening to.
Skating Polly is an American rock band formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 2009. The band consists of multi-instrumentalists Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse, who were 9 and 14 years old when the band formed. The band is noted for its members alternating instruments, childlike yet mature and poetic lyrics, melodic arrangements, rudimentary musicianship and an eclectic array of songs that vary in style from riot grrrl to piano-based indie pop.
After a jam session at the girls’ Halloween party. Their sophomore album, Lost Wonderfuls, was produced by Exene Cervenka of X and mixed by Kliph Scurlock of The Flaming Lips. “LostWonderfuls” was released in April, 2013. They are now on their third album, Fuzz Steilacoom, Raised on ‘70s punk and early-‘90s alt-rock, Mayo (age 13) and Bighorse (18) inspiration from artists as disparate as Johnny Cash, The Ramones, NWA, Nirvana, and Bikini Kill and saturate their own songs with a raw energy reminiscent of their musical heroes. Skating Polly takes a minimalist approach to song writing, with the two largely self-taught musicians (Bighorse plays guitar, Mayo plays a guitar/bass hybrid called a basitar, and both girls play drums and piano) crafting super-catchy melodies mainly by “messing around with our instruments and figuring out how to make cool noises,” according to Bighorse. But despite their stripped-down aesthetic brutally in-your-face, gut-wrenchingly tender, and irresistibly fun.
Along with earning the adoration of Cervenka (whom they befriended after attending one of the X singer’s 2010 solo shows and playing their demos on a cell phone), Skating Polly has found fans in Rosanne Cash and Sean Lennon, taken the stage with punk legends like Mike Watt, and opened up for such indie heavy-hitters as Deerhoof and Band of Horses. Tapping Mayo’s dad as their tour manager, the stepsisters typically hit the road with their entire family and optimize their travel time by making up songs on their ukulele.
Skating Polly also feature in the soundtrack for Viggo Mortensen’s movie “Falling” is out on Bandcamp, Itunes, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Google Play!!!
Skating Polly “Little Girl Blue and The Battle Envy” from their record “The Make It All Show”
On his fourth full-length, “Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!”, East Nashville country-to-not-country songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan is as eager to flesh out the contours of his narrative as the exclamation points imply. Only a month into 2021 and we already have a strong contender for Album of the Year. Just a glorious sound – pop, Americana, psychedelia, it’s a little of everything.
For all of the album’s autobiographical tendencies (often taking shape in references to his bisexuality), Tasjan’s search for meaning is most satisfying when he adopts a hedonistic, albeit good-natured, nihilism. The faster the tempo, the glammier the synth, the brighter the key, the more room for pomp and panache, the more at home Tasjan sounds. This isn’t wholly surprising, given the rhinestone cowboy gallop of 2016’s “Silver Tears” and the enormous hooks trotted out in 2018’s “Karma For Cheap”—the latter’s “If Not Now When” and “The Truth Is So Hard To Believe” paraphrase Oasis in more ways than one. There are so many gems on this album! Up All Night was the first song birthed into the world, and I was immediately hooked. Aaron Lee Tasjan has reinvented himself previously, and expands into new territory yet again with sounds both novel and familiar.
Tasjan nails it on “Don’t Overthink It,” with its meaty bass, gossamer guitar line, and matter-of-fact “I know the bad is getting badder/ It doesn’t matter” message. He adopts a similar approach on lead single “Up All Night,” shot through with ‘80s Springsteen optimism and devil-may-care sparkle: “Broke up with my boyfriend/ To go out with my girlfriend/ Because love is like, love is like, love is like that.” So it is.
If the neon car he drives through the galaxy in the video for “Computer of Love” is any indication, Tasjan isn’t especially self-serious. But he’s susceptible to the self-titled trap of needing capital-S something to capital-S say. The album finishes with a trio of meandering ballads that feel meant to offer some positive personal resolution. “Now You Know,” the best of the three, manages a deft minor-key change with the old school tremolo of an electric organ. But Tasjan is at his best when he throws his hands up in gleeful and messy resignation, the kind of mentality befitting an album with this many exclamation points built in.
All songs written by Aaron Lee Tasjan
Released February 5th, 2021
Instruments & vocals by: Aaron Lee Tasjan, Tommy Scifres, Dylan Sevey. Gregory Lattimer, Keith Christopher, Fred Eltringham, Josh Kaler, Devon Ashley, Dom Billet, Jon Radford, Matt Rowlands,
Aerial East’s life as well as her new album “Try Harder”, released this week on Partisan Records (IDLES, Fontaines DC), is infused with a sense of disconnectedness and alienation. The daughter of a military family, East moved around a lot in her early years, including living in Germany for six years from the age of nine until fifteen. “We went to an American school and lived in American neighbourhoods,” she explains. “So I didn’t learn German or anything, it was a very small and isolated community, there were like 300 kids in my school. There weren’t any malls, any popular culture that we would get would come late! I was a teenager and I wanted to go to malls and see boys that weren’t the 150 boys that were available to me.”
Yet when it came time to leave Germany and move to Abilene in West Texas, she was initially hesitant: “When I lived in Germany and found out I was moving to Texas, I was like ‘oh no, guys with pickup trucks everywhere’, but it wasn’t really like that.” Her fondness for her time in West Texas soon becomes clear. “It was beautiful,” she says, smiling. “I learned how to drive there which is such a big deal, when you suddenly are so free. We drove around a lot – if you drive 30 minutes toward Buffalo Gap, you get to the middle of nowhere, you turn after the second gas station, you drive up this rocky hill and you get to this secret campsite that we used to go to. It was like that mostly, we’d just drive around and explore.”
It was being a musician that East only ever wanted to do – the alienated American in a foreign land, dreaming of the glitz and glamour of the pop stars from back home she would hear belatedly about. When she returned to the US, she did talent shows, she got professional voice lessons, she sung the national anthem at a major league baseball training game. East then lets out a surprise revelation: she also auditioned for American Idol. “It was in 2004,” she explained, somewhat shyly. “I didn’t get past the first round and my mum was really upset, it was more her dream than mine.”
Wanderlust and aimlessness provoked her move to New York aged eighteen but it was mostly inspired by am Abilene high school friend Katharine, who she sings about in the touching song of the same name on the album. “My best friend Katherine moved to New York to go to fashion school and be a model. My family was moving away from Texas and I was living with my ex boyfriend at the time and she needed a roommate and I just thought why not?” Katharine was the first person East shared her songs with and she insisted that East share them with others too. “She’s still an important figure in my life even though we haven’t seen each other in a while,” adds East.
Once I moved to New York City, I quickly met a bunch of artists and musicians who showed me that there was this other possibility.” Shortly after arriving in the big city, she also underwent a formative musical experience. “I saw Sharon Van Etten play in Brooklyn and it blew my mind and opened up my world,” she explains. It’s been a long time since we last heard from East. Her debut album Rooms was released back in 2016. “I had been working on this album pretty quickly after Rooms came out but not in a focused way until after I signed the deal with Partisan, which was around 2017 or 2018,” she explains. “It takes me a long time to write and record. I also did a full pendulum swing, I really wanted it to be different. I loved Rooms, I wanted it to be really big and orchestral and loungey but I wanted this record to be the opposite, very minimal, very quiet, very direct, very intentional.”
And Try Harder reflects this swing. Her lyrics are simple but meaningful, songs of heartbreak, coming-of-age, and the beauty of small things all whispered beautifully. It’s not surprising that it’s all so hushed and intimate when you realise that there are no drums behind her on the record, reflecting East’s anxious state when she was recording. Any accompanying instrumentation – swooning strings or wilting guitars – is sweetly minimal, delicately sparse. It all feels precise and intentional, and it allows the soft beauty of East’s spellbinding voice to suspend and transport the listener.
East is a very serious person; ponderous in reply and thoughtful with her answers. It feels authentic: she isn’t trying to put on any pretensions for the purposes of our conversation. East is also now 32, having had to wait patiently for her time, something that just doesn’t happen on such reality shows.
East shares with me a playlist of the songs that she listened to during the recording of Try Harder. Despite Spotify once informing her that the genre she most listened to was art pop, it’s indie folk that dominates: Angel Olsen, Big Thief, Cat Power, Julia Holter, and Jessica Pratt are some of the prominent names. It was a lesser-known Ethiopian artist that unexpectedly provided the biggest inspiration though. “I really wanted the album to sound like this solo piano album made by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou (Ethiopiques, Vol. 21: “Emahoy (Piano Solo)”). I heard her at the restaurant I was working at. I became obsessed with it, it’s so beautiful and charming.
Texan characters – former flames and lost friends – and places – “San Angelo”, Abilene, Amarillo – populate the record. It was a sincere and pointed act, to portray a better side to the state. “Everything is so politicised now,” she sighs. “There’s shadow and light to that. I definitely did want to tell stories about people that my New York social bubble don’t have any idea about.
Perhaps this memorialisation is an act of necessity for East herself. Having lived in New York for so long now, this new sense of permanence is perhaps daunting for someone whose life was so aimless and itinerant before it. Remembering West Texas, then, becomes about acknowledging the temporality from which she emerged; a message to Katharine, to ex-partners, to the small towns that they won’t be forgotten.
Everything happens for a reason: Try Harder was supposed to come out last September but it was pushed back because of Covid. East, forever used to temporality and fragility, adapted as she’s always done. “I remember Jessica Pratt’s record (Quiet Signs) came out in January or February in 2019 and everyone I knew was listening to that record because those were the darkest days of the year and it’s such a pretty, introspective record. And I think that Try Harder is a good winter record so it actually feels better being released now.” In a time where many are locked in our homes, thinking of old and better times, East’s record, a remembrance of things past, is comforting, for both her and us.
“Katharine” from her new album, “Try Harder” is released on 12th February via Partisan Recordings.
Close on the heels of “Summerlong” (still in heavy rotation on our turntables), Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo) adds another gem of an album of soon-to-be classics. Hop in your car, roll down your window – or pop in the earbuds and go on a hike. Most importantly, TURN UP THE VOLUME! These tunes are made for travels of the mind and body! Rich melodies, intimate vocals, elongated epic guitar solos and just a dash of country-rock twang, “Earth Trip” takes you to summers spent in the company of friends, and celebrates mediation, nature, space and stillness.
Rose City Band is celebrated guitarist Ripley Johnson. A prolific songwriter, Johnson started Rose City Band as an outlet nimble enough to match the pace of his writing as well as to explore song writing styles apart from Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo. Rose City Band allows him to follow his musical muses as they greet him and not be bound by the schedules of bandmates and demands of a touring group. On Earth Trip, Johnson colours songs with a country-rock twang and a melancholic, wistful undertone. Themes recur such as pining for summers spent in the company of friends to newer meditations on space, stillness and the splendour of the natural world. Johnson’s laid-back and classically West Coast songs communicate emotions entirely of the moment with both his lyrics, intimate vocal style as well as his elegant elongated guitar lines and astute use of counter-melodies on the pedal steel.
Earth Trip was written during the period of sudden shocks and drastic lifestyle changes of 2020, quite literally “called down off the road” as he sings in elegiac album opener “Silver Places”. Home for an extended period for the first time in years, he was able to reconnect with simple pleasures of home life: hikes in nature, bathing outside and waking with the dawn. Johnson found hope and healing in forming a more mindful relationship with the natural world, from the simple pleasures of tending a garden to sleeping out under the stars. “Lonely Places” in particular captures the sheer joy and freedom of losing oneself in nature, an ode to the wealth of natural beauty the west coast provides, as well as the importance of appreciating wild, open spaces. “In the Rain” seeks beauty and hope in life’s darker moments, while “Dawn Patrol” finds solace in the earth’s natural rhythms.
Recorded primarily at his home in Portland and mixed by Cooper Crain (Bitchin’ Bajas, Cave), the songs on “Earth Trip” make deft use of space through their lean arrangements, guest Barry Walker’s shimmering pedal steel, open and elongated guitar melodies, and upfront and intimate vocals. Johnson describes the arrangements this way; “I was trying to capture that feeling when you take psychedelics and they just start coming on – maybe objects start buzzing in the edges of your vision, you start seeing slight trails, maybe the characteristics of sound change subtly. But you’re not fully tripping yet. Cooper got the idea right away and his mix really captures that feeling.” Johnson’s lithe guitar playing treads an equally fine line between country and cosmic, melodies blooming into long reverb trails and solos evocative of radiant summer warmth.
Earth Trip’s message of interconnectedness with the environment expands on a long country music tradition that draws a symbiotic relationship between storyteller and the land, celebrating the beauty of the natural world without forgetting our responsibility to preserve it for future generations. It cements Johnson’s place as a musician and songwriter of inimitable skill.
“Earth Trip” is available in a few different merch packs – keep reading to learn more, there are only a super limited amount of The Rambler Pack available only to our newsletter subscribers: Rambler Pack includes: A tasty tote bag (back by popular demand), custom printed rolling papers, a sweet sticker, die cut jacket (picture window) with printing on the inside of the jacket (think on the beach, amigo…) as well as heavy stock inner jacket and a mail order exclusive Wood coloured vinyl.
Very happy to announce our new album, Earth Trip, coming out May 21st on Thrill Jockey Records
Limited edition “Rambler Pack”, which comes with the ltd-edition LP, tote bag, rolling papers and sticker, available on the Thrill Jockey website
Hailing originally from Melbourne, Australia, Heligoland have been making oceanic dreampop for over 20 years, forming in 1999 and having released their debut album in 2003. The band’s inspirations are pretty clear, right down from their name (which means “Holy Land” in Dutch), drawing from the gentler side of ’80s/’90s shoegaze and slowcore. Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie produced their third album, 2010’s All Your Ships are White, which tells you a lot but their sound is more in the Slowdive (Mojave 3 )/ Low / Cowboy Junkies style, evoking sun-baked cracked earth and sand as much as the sea.
Heligoland went dormant after All Your Ships, though they popped up from time to time with new EPs, all produced by Guthrie. They also left Australia for the suburbs of Paris. Now just the core duo of Karen Vogt (vocals, guitar) and Steve Wheeler (bass, guitar), Heligoland are back with their first album in 11 years. Guthrie is back for this one as well, and in addition to producing the record, he also plays on it — everything but guitar, contributing drums, bass and keyboards. No real surprise, but This Quiet Fire is gorgeous stuff. Vogt is an emotive singer, a quality you don’t usually associate with dreampop like this, sounding closer to Tracy Thorn than Elizabeth Fraser. Her voice elevates stunners like “Hope,” “Running” and “Palomino,” distinguishing This Quiet Fire in a genre that in too many less-skilled hand can play like ethereal wallpaper.
Fourth album from UK trio finds them pivoting again, this time into Big ’80s R&Bish synthpop, trio Virginia Wing made 2018’s fantastic Ecstatic Arrow under idyllic conditions — in Switzerland at the family home of a good friend, surrounded by the country’s alpine beauty. This one was made stuck at home in Manchester, England in their “jogging bottoms.” There’s no doubt this is the same group, but “Private Life feels forcibly contained while anxious to break free.
All the sounds on “Private Life are big, the drum sounds, the thick synthy basslines, the blasts of keyboards — not unlike those early Art of Noise records, hitting like punches in a Shaw Brothers martial arts fantasy or a buzzsaw to the hood of a car. But then they fill the stereo field with wondrous, beautiful organic sounds, from delicate strings, to lilting saxophones and flutes, tinkly windchimes, jazzy piano loops, “nature,” and warm harmonies. It all sort of floats, at times almost anchorless, through the mix. These sounds have also been run through severe digital processing, chopped up, degraded, and warped, giving songs a slightly unmoored feel that, like Merida Richards‘ icy vocals, is distinctly Virginia Wing.
Virginia Wing continue to toy with pop and dance music, but largely keep things at arms length. “I’m Holding Out for Something” flirts with a decidedly R&B beat and synth strings that suggest Prince, while pitched up vocal samples may make some think of Kate Bush. But Richards’ declaring “There will come a time when you have to satisfy the ache face to face” yanks the song in an entirely different direction. (Laurie Anderson may be a more apt ’80s comparison.) Likewise, part of “Moon Turns Tides” wants to be an electro funk jam that will tear the roof off, but before that can happen Richards dryly notes, “Whilst you’re here, it’s important that you don’t touch anything / it’s all very, very expensive.” There’s a distinct look-but-don’t-touch sense of detachment — the kind where you end up having more conversations with yourself than other people — that’s a relatable feeling these days when our lives may be too private. If that’s you, welcome to the party.
Raised in the rolling hills of North Yorkshire on artists such as Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Joan Armatrading, and Kate Bush, Billie Marten’s critically acclaimed debut album ‘Writing of Blues and Yellows’, was released in 2016 when she was still just 17, while its follow-up ‘Feeding Seahorses By Hand’ was similarly lauded in 2019.
“Flora Fauna”, was recorded with Rich Cooper in London. Marten’s new material blends those signature hushed, resonant vocals with a rapid pulse and rich instrumentation, her inspirations now stretching from krautrockers Can, to Broadcast, Arthur Russell, and Fiona Apple.
Also completing musical Top Trumps is Guy Garvey from the band Elbow, providing guest vocals on the ‘Walnut’ track.
Built on the minimalist acoustic folk foundations she made a name for herself with, ‘Flora Fauna’ is a more mature, embodied album fostered around a strong backbone of bass and rhythm. Shedding the timidity of previous work in favour of a more urgent sound, the songs mark a period of personal independence for Marten as she learned to nurture herself and break free from toxic relationships – and a big part of that was returning to nature.
“I wasn’t really treating myself very well, it was a bit of a disruptive time. All these songs are about getting myself out of that hole – they’re quite strong affirmations. The name Flora Fauna is like a green bath for my eyes. If the album was a painting, it would look like flora and fauna – it encompasses every organism, every corner of Earth, and a feeling of total abundance.”
I can’t begin to express to you how much I’ve wanted this to be in the world, I am so excited and ready. We started this thing a while back and it’s all stringing together quite beautifully now. A total fresh and untouched slate. Thank you ever so much for your patience and kindness throughout, and in the meantime, here is “Garden of Eden”. It’s about the competition to grow and constantly be better, about how we all desperately need to be fed and watered and given space to thrive, and yet we’re so subscribed to this idea of pushing and evolving that we’re not actually doing the living part. So my message to you is thank you and I hope you can slow down and FEEL again. X
There’s an absolute bombardment of new things to come so stay with me, Billie Marten.
The Fat Angel Sings 