The Fat Angel Sings

SAVAGES –  Adore Life

It’s about change and the power to change. It’s about metamorphosis and evolution. It’s about sticking to your guns and toughing it out. It’s about now, not tomorrow. It’s about recognizing your potential. It’s about self-doubt and inaction. It’s about you. It’s about me. It’s about you and me and the others. It’s about the choices we make. It’s about finding the poetry and avoiding the cliche. It’s about being the solution, not the problem. It’s about showing weakness to be strong. It’s about digging through your dirt to look for diamonds. It’s about claiming your right to think unacceptable thoughts. It’s about boredom and the things we do to drive it away. It’s about being on your own so you can be with people. It’s about knowing what it means to be human and what it might mean one day. It’s about the parts and the sum of the parts. It’s about the music and the message: together, one and the same. It’s about bass, guitars, drums and vocals. It’s about opening-out and never, ever dying. But most of all it’s about love, every kind of love. Love is the answer. Savages’ second album ‘Adore Life’ was recorded in RAK Studios, London in April 2015. Johnny Hostile was the producer and Richard Woodcraft the engineer. Anders Trentmoller took care of the mixing in Copenhagen.
LP – Gatefold Sleeve With Download.

SUEDE –  Night Thoughts

Brand new studio album ‘Night Thoughts’ from Suede. ‘Night Thoughts’, which features a full string section, was produced by long-time Suede collaborator Ed Buller. It was recorded at SARM studios in London and ICP in Brussels. This is Suede at their best, grand, theatrical, unfraid of an overblown lyric or a hook (the jubiliant, ‘Coming Up’-esque ‘Like Kids’ even has a “na na na”), but it’s been filtered through the wisdom of age. There’s less of the superficial swagger, more mature contemplation and reflection.
CD –  12 Tracks.
CD/ DVD – 12 Track CD accompanied by a feature film directed by acclaimed photographer Roger Sargent on DVD
CD+ – 12 Track CD accompanied by a feature film directed by acclaimed photographer Roger Sargent on DVD and housed in a hardback bookset.
2LP – Double 180 Gram Gatefold LP with Download.

FAT WHITE FAMILY  –  Songs For Our Mothers

Fat White Family release their second album, titled ‘Songs For Our Mothers’. Say the band: “While our first LP might be considered an assault, a spasmodic outpouring of disdain generated by the utter tedium of life when it is found unlivable, ‘Songs For Our Mothers’ is an invitation. It is an invitation, sent by misery, to dance to the beat of human hatred. In it we ask that you take us gently by the hand as we lead you on a journey, a journey that leads us from the blinding white heat of a midday Mediterranean shore, to the embattled boudoir of Ike and Tina Turner, from the clotted grey droll of Dr Harold Shipmans waiting room, to the final hours of the Third Reich in the Berlin bunker”. So that’s nice. They continue: “It is as much a catalogue of our obsessions as it is a sensual odyssey; sex, drugs, politics, death, the Northern Irish A-lister Sam Neil, it’s all here, all that’s left to do now is breathe it in”.
LP – With Limited Poster and Download.

TY SEGALL  –  Emotional Mothers

As usual, Ty Segall has been keeping himself busy. In the past four months alone, the California garage-rock king has formed two new bands and released a ripping new album with his band Fuzz. But it’s been over a year since his last solo LP, the glam-rock opus ‘Manipulator’, which means it’s about time for a new one. ‘Emotional Mugger’ proves that Ty Segall can do no wrong. This is electric blues that has been put through an experimental post-punk blender, laced with heavy doses of prog, punk, glam, psych, rock and metal. ‘Emotional Mugger’ is a funky as it is it is twisted – a heavy record that truly grooves.

ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER –  New Line

‘New View’, the third solo album by Eleanor Friedberger, was rehearsed in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Echo Park and recorded in upstate New York. In the past, she was a member of the much loved Brooklyn two-piece, The Fiery Furnaces. The songs were recorded live to tape with simple instrumentation: drums, bass, Wurlitzer and 12-string acoustic guitar on almost every track. These come courtesy of the band Icewater (Malcolm Perkins, Jonathan Rosen, Michael Rosen, Noah Hecht), with Dorian DeAngelo contributing a handful of well-placed guitar solos. Producer Knieper (son of Jurgen Knieper, the German composer whose credits include the score to Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire) gives the album a classic sound, like something that’s existed forever on a record collector’s shelf, wedged in with Dylan’s New Morning and John Cale’s Vintage Violence. For everything new about ‘New View’, it still fits comfortably in the continuity of Friedberger’s work. Songs like ‘Open Season’ recall the Furnaces at their most magisterial. The wry, plainspoken ‘Because I Asked You’ builds on the style Friedberger first polished on her solo debut ‘Last Summer’. And then there’s ‘A Long Walk,’ the sun-striped finale that lends a memorable afterglow to ‘New View’. She’s never lacked confidence – this is someone who once took a fractured nine-minute ballad about the international blueberry trade and put it across like it was ‘Thunder Road’ – but there’s a new kind of confidence on this record. It’s a sweet, aching goodbye from an album that seems full of them.
LP – With Download.

KIRAN LEONARD  –  Pink Fruit

BONNIE PRINCE BILLY  –  Pond Scum

There are no Peel sessions anymore – that tradition was buried in the pyramids with John Peel himself upon the great man’s passing. Of the thousands left in the wake, six are ascribed to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – and of those six, three have been combined to form the deeply congruous experience of Pond Scum. A span of eight years is covered, in reverse, and many chestnuts are rolled out, freed of former contexts with sparse arrangements. ‘(I Was Drunk at the) Pulpit’ feels, ten years from inception, more vividly worn; ‘Death to Everyone’ is loosed from its frame, the bones decoupled and spread out, giving the song a reflective air (as opposed the biting declamation of the original); ‘Arise, Therefore’ adapts its metronomic base, the evangelic twist of its roots made palpable. With the centre of the performance in stark relief, the gnomic qualities of two ‘Get On Jolly’ pieces are intensified. Further accenting the devoted spirit of this collection is the inclusion of Bonnie’s take on Prince’s ‘The Cross’, as well as the previously-unreleased original ‘Beezle.’ Bonnie’s lone shadow casts over this lot, accompanied on the first four tracks by David Heumann, but otherwise playing solo through a set of original songs (and two covers) representing a decade of progress in the almost unbearably intimate-yet-unknowable manner that was so often the vibe of those strange and wondrous days. Layers peel to reveal the subtle artistry and refinement contained within these sessions.

SHEARWATER  –  Jetplane and Oxbow

This is definitely Shearwater’s biggest and loudest record – it’s easy to imagine these songs roaring from the stage – but it’s also their most detailed and intricate one. Frontman Jonathan Meiburg and producer / engineer Reisch (who also recorded 2012’s ‘Animal Joy’ and the off-the-cuff collaborations of 2014’s ‘Fellow Travelers’) spent two years crafting ‘Jet Plane and Oxbow’ with help from drummer Cully Symington, longtime Shearwater associates Howard Draper and Lucas Oswald, and tour mates Jesca Hoop, Abram Shook, and Jenn Wasner. But their secret weapon this time is film composer and percussionist Brian Reitzell, whose soundtracks include The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, The Bling Ring, and 30 Days of Night. Reitzell’s arsenal of strange instruments emphasizes ‘Jet Plane and Oxbow’s cinematic depth and scope, and reflects the band’s choice to anchor the record in the era when digital technology was just beginning to transform the world of recorded music. In Shearwater’s hands this doesn’t feel like nostalgia; the racing synths and hammered dulcimers of heart-pounding opener ‘Prime’ or the addled motorik of ‘Radio Silence’ sound more like a metaphor for our own bewildering moment.
2LP – Black Vinyl with Download.
LP+ – Loser Edition Blue Coloured Vinyl with Download.

TINDERSTICKS  – The Waiting Room

Tindersticks release their new album ‘The Waiting Room,’ a milestone not just numerically, but musically and creatively. Their first studio album since 2012’s critically acclaimed ‘The Something Rain’ is the most ambitious, diverse and elaborate album you’ll have heard from Tindersticks in recent years. 2 decades into their musical voyage Tindersticks, established masters of restraint and poetic human emotion, are a band now confidently making the best songs of their career. ‘The Waiting Room’ breathes gravity and features guest appearances by Jehnny Beth of Savages and a particularly poignant duet with long time friend of Stuart Staples, Lhasa De Sela. Not just an album but also an elaborate collaborative artistic project, each track is accompanied by a short film, each one a visual interpretation by it’s own director. Christoph Girardet, Pierre Vinour, Claire Denis, Rosie Pedlow and Joe King, Gregorio Graziosi, Richard Dumas and Gabriel Sanna.
CD –  Standard 11 Track CD.
CD / DVD – With DVD Version
LP – Black Vinyl with DVD Version.
LP+ – Limited Coloured Vinyl with DVD Version.

PROMISE AND THE MONSTER  –  Feed The Fire

Billie Lindahl, the woman behind the name Promise and The Monster, brings a vivid landscape to life on ‘Feed The Fire’, her first album for Bella Union. ‘Feed The Fire’ was recorded in Stockholm, where Lindahl lives, at Labyrint, a small basement studio run by her friend Love Martinsen who produced the ‘Feed The Fire’ album and shares most of the instrumentation with Lindahl. “We aimed at combining the elegance of old Sixties recordings with something darker and more mechanical,” she recalls. “Like you would play a Lee Hazlewood song on top of Nico’s late Eighties records.” Duality sits at the core of ‘Feed The Fire’, likewise the name Promise and The Monster. “To feed the fire can be seen as both constructive and destructive,” Lindahl concludes. “You keep the fire burning, the spark alive. But fire can kill you. To see, listen and feel is quite a violent and confusing experience, and I think my lyrics often evolve around that, blurring boundaries between dream and reality, and between sanity and insanity.”
LP – With Download.
CD – Digipack.

HIGH LLAMAS  –  Here Come The Rattling Trees

Melodiously receptive ears rejoice! The High Llamas, the best in the game at warmly wonderous pop song, arrangement and harmony, return with a new album! With witty, artful musical strokes, Sean and the High Llamas have crafted deft musical sketches with the signature ‘Llamas’ sound that has evolved over ten album releases since 1992. A colourful array of electric, acoustic, and synthetic instruments, alongside Sean O’Hagan’s gentled vocals, are deployed to transport the listener to the low-key highs and lows of the British working week – an incisive, sympathetic view to the wonders slipped in between the pages and too often passed over in everyday life.

THE VRYLL SOCIETY  –  Pangea EP

The Liverpool band’s debut EP Pangea (derived from ancient Greek for whole of the earth) showcases Mike Ellis’ ethereal vocals and occupying territory from Neu and Air to early Verve and Stone Roses. They undoubtedly deliver a unique blend of styles which they are making their own. The EP starts with Coshh’ – a melodic Kraut-rock juggernaut, lodged in lyrical realism and a howling lead line that stretches the senses. Followed by next track ‘Air’- think funk meets electronica, in this tribal beat driven collage of sound. Next up is ‘Metropolis’ – inspired by the 1920’s silent classic ‘Metropolis’ using hip hop drums, gypsy guitar lines, medievall Gregorian vocals and bombastic solos to create something truly unique. Finally ‘The Egg’- creates a feeling of isolation, using World War 2 style SOS sounds under a richly satisfying chord progression, leading into a jam that continues to rise and rise

THE BESNARD LAKES  –  A Coliseum Complex Musuem