The Fat Angel Sings

The London based acoustic band. Wandering Hearts, album “Déjà Vu”. And if that doesn’t sound familiar, keep reading.

The subtitle of this intriguing release is a lyric from the title track: “We Have All Been Here Before.” I mean, really–how many of us have actually sat down and decided to make a song by song cover album from one of the premier vocal bands of all time?.

“Déjà Vu” was, arguably, the release of 1970, as Messrs. Crosby, Stills and Nash bestrode the world, adding the trump card of Neil Young into the brand. Very much of its time, somehow it remains timeless. There are few 50-year-old records that can raise the neck hairs like this one can. Each and every song comes with an instant flashback to the day first heard, A wonderful record,

So who the Hearts, Wandering or otherwise? Tara Wilcox, Chess Whiffin and AJ Dean Revington is who. They have been on the UK country circuit long enough to have gained plaudits from most who have encountered them, sharing stages with big hitters like Robert Plant, Tom Petty and more. Indeed, no lesser than Lissie chose them as her support band for her US tour of 2024. This is album number four, the third as a trio, founding member Tim Prottery-Jones having left after their 2018 debut. All three are strong and confident singers, gelling well for the harmonies that are their trademark.

The trio electing to go for the full-on electric assaults that characterize the release. Which, given the axe-wielding credentials of Young and Stills, might be considered brave or even foolhardy. But suffice to say it is their regular band they employ to provide the surprisingly faithful instrumental heft of the full fat rock songs that fill out the recording, along with the additional input of producer Michael Rault. That the set was recorded at Taurus Rising Studios, Joshua Tree, CA, may have something to do with the atmosphere of authenticity, too.

The first and most obvious realization, as they launch into “Carry On,” is their willingness to mirror the original arrangement. So, strummed 12-strings, check. Dual and dueling lead guitars, check. A swell of organ to underpin it all, check. The organ isn’t the same organ, and the soloing is different, but the vibe is the same. The vocals, well of course they aren’t and can’t be those of four men, when these are but three, and two of them women. But they still shiver the timbers, and make for a pretty remarkable reproduction. But there the world class karaoke ends, as “Teach Your Children” becomes, actually, much less saccharine than the (let’s be honest) anodyne original. Electric piano gives it a likeable shimmy along. Revington takes the nominal lead, his female bandmates adding their harmonies, and I’m loving it.

“Almost Cut My Hair” is taken by Wilcox. She manages to imbue the song with a a convincing rock chick holler. Apparently she did then actually elect for a shorter coiffure, but it is a gutsy recreation, and Rault’s guitar, and that of Steve Milbourne, ring out to rally the troops with finesse. It is a strong contender for standout track. The aptly named Doug Organ, possibly a pseudonym, plays keyboards here and throughout, with bass from Dustin Bookatz and drums from Garrett Ray.

“Helpless” is one of the more-covered Neil Young songs in existence. So a good cover needs a very strong vocal delivery to lift it above the mundane. Whiffin has such a voice, abetted by her cohorts. The instrumentation is juggled neatly, which manages to give a different feel to, essentially, the usual arrangement. Organ’s piano is solid and strong, with moans of electric guitar to capture the high plains drift. As it becomes a cappella to finish, it is nigh on perfect. No interference for “Woodstock,” and no attempt to introduce any aspects from any other version. This doesn’t and shouldn’t disappoint. Revington is pleasingly gruff with his delivery, and Ray patters about his kit with sufficient relish to make for a very enjoyable experience.

Then the title track breaks rank, with flute tooting all over it, the bass of Bookatz a rotating rumble. The combined female vocals sound a little more rushed than Crosby perhaps planned, but I like that aspect, even as it then slows right, right down, the gruffness of Revington, as he takes over, now a little smoother, but still his own voice. A lovely retro guitar solo from Rault adds further luster, with the bass running riot as the song fades. Once more they have made one of my less preferred songs sound better. Can they do the same for the second of the Nash ick-fests? I am pleased to say that they can. Just. Guitar and vocals, Wilcox on lead, Whiffin on harmony.

One evening at the Jazz Cafe, Camden in 2018, six artists came together in celebration of John Martyn’s music. It was an evening of deep connection, not just to John’s music, but also with a unique community of John Martyn fans. That night saw the sparks of what was to become ‘The John Martyn Project’ – an ongoing homage to a truly pioneering and unique musical soul.

The John Martyn Project are not delicate flowers. Bonding at Music School during late nights of listening to records and enjoying exotic herbs, they bemoaned the fact that such beautiful music came from such a conflicting source. However, it is not their intention to deny the obvious. At their live shows, they often ask the audience to recount their encounters with Martyn. A cheerful nod if you bought him a drink merits a thumbs up. A stream of profane invective, either humorous or threatening, gets an appreciative nod. Actual physical violence from the “Great Man” gets a small round of applause. There is frequently someone in the audience with a story of this latter sort. They are not a “Tribute” band, as they don’t play slavish recreations of recorded tracks, and have no wish to honour the man, but they want to channel his inspiration.

Active as a touring project since 2018 they have now released their first album, “The John Martyn Project – Volume One”.  It is an amazing refreshing and energizing romp through (mainly) the ’70s highpoints of Martyn’s catalogue.

In not lionizing the man you should not dishonor the things that he did well. Martyn’s focus was his guitar, and there is no shortcut to paying appropriate tribute to the musician, if not the man, if you cannot dazzle in this area. Fortunately, Kit Hawes has the chops. His guitar work is impressive throughout, encompassing the range that Martyn did himself, but also augmenting it. Martyn also worked with the very best over the years. Some, like erstwhile Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson, could both meet his musical standards and share/tolerate his hellraising and were long-term partners. Other musical arrangements were necessarily shorter. But Martyn’s musical standards were always high. The JMP carries all the necessary tools. Jon Short on basses, and John Blakely on drums and percussion, have to embody a range of styles, and do so admirably and inventively.  Blythe Pepino, Kit Hawes, Pete Josef and Sam Brookes provide rhythm guitar and keyboards in various combinations.

The vocals are a specific revelation and break from their originator. Martyn wrote tunes, to which he later added words and vocals. His voice “weathered” through the years, and his slurred style became more pronounced. This was a stylistic choice, but they fit the style of someone struggling to hold things together. Sometimes things were lost. JMP rotates the vocal duties. Sam Brookes has mastery of the folk style, and can elide but in a cleaner style. He can add pathos without intimidation (this is good!). Hawes and Josef bring cleaner styles.

The addition of a female singer brings something else entirely. Initial success in working with Beverley Martyn turned into a personal failure for John, and a disaster for Beverley. Martyn primarily worked with men throughout his career, and this may have been best for all.  Pepino reclaims and redeems her tracks. On “Don’t Want To Know,” I was never convinced that Martyn preferred love to evil. With Pepino there is no doubt at all, and it is beautiful to hear.

Folk music is for mutual singing, and JMP incorporate this into their shows, and now they provide a rousing version of “May You Never” for you to sing to with them.

“The John Martyn Project – Volume 1” is a worthy and guilt-free way to listen to the music of a person who should have been a better man.

Joni Mitchell has announced “Joni’s Jazz”, a career-spanning collection featuring recordings chosen by the legendary musician that reflect the genre’s profound influence on her music. The passion project, years in the making, arrives September 5th, 2025, as an 8-LP box set and as a 4-CD edition. Both formats include liner notes with rare and previously unseen photos and original artwork by Mitchell. An exclusive fine-art print is available as a gift-with-purchase exclusively from her website.

Spanning 61 tracks, “Joni’s Jazz” includes studio recordings, live performances, rare alternate takes, and material drawn from multiple decades and record labels. Among them are two previously unreleased 1980 demos, including one for “Be Cool.”

The June announcement notes that the set features contributions from some of Mitchell’s most important collaborators in jazz, among them Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, Charles Mingus and Herbie Hancock. The latter wrote, “I thought she might have the quote-unquote limitations of rock ’n’ roll and folk. But she wasn’t like that. Joni is as cutting-edge as anybody. When I really began to pay attention to her music, I saw that she was already designing music that was not your typical rock.”

Mitchell, who calls Shorter her favorite collaborator, dedicates the collection to him following his passing in 2023. “It was a joy to play with him,” she writes. “He will be missed, but he will remain alive for me in this music.”

The collection’s liner notes include Shorter’s response to an interviewer’s question as to whether Mitchell had “jazz chops.” “I would say that her craft spilled over the borders of what people and critics who would want to keep her in a controlled setting,” he replied. “You know what I mean?”

Covering nearly every era of her recording career, the collection includes selections from “Songs To A Seagull”, “The Hissing of Summer Lawns”, “Hejira”, “Mingus”, “Turbulent Indigo”, “Both Sides Now”  and more. It also features her guest appearances on projects like Hancock’s Award-winning album, “River: The Joni Letters”.

“Joni’s Jazz” draws from more than five decades of Mitchell’s recordings, going back to 1968 for “Marcie.” The most recent is her performance of “Summertime,” recorded live at the 2023 Newport Folk Festival. It marked Mitchell’s first full-length concert in over two decades — a powerful return that resonated around the world, and ultimately earned her a Grammy Award.

We’re pleased to present “Joni’s Jazz”, a passion project years in the making. This career-spanning collection features recordings chosen by Joni that reflect jazz’s profound influence on her music.

Spanning 61 tracks, JONI’S JAZZ includes studio recordings, live performances, rare alternate takes, and material drawn from multiple decades and record labels, among them are two previously unreleased 1980 demos.

Across the collection, the music follows Mitchell’s artistic growth — from the rhythmic layering of “Harry’s House / Centerpiece” to the bold experimentation of “The Jungle Line,” the narrative scale of “Paprika Plains,” and the airy, improvised feel of “A Chair In The Sky.”

As a self-portrait in sound, “Joni’s Jazz” captures an artist in conversation with jazz over a lifetime — never imitating, always inventing. Last year, in the liner notes for JONI MITCHELL ARCHIVES – VOL. 4, she joked, “People ask me my favourite of my albums, it’s going to be this one Now it is.

Order from Joni’s official store and you’ll receive an 8X8 original JMA art print of “Charlie The Bull Dying In Mexico,” while supplies last.

These songs are about wounds from my past and some fresh wounds I’m hoping to leave in the past. I tried to be as open and honest as I was able to in hopes that anyone listening can identify with how I felt in these moments. Some of these songs involve wounds from my childhood that my family experienced with me, including domestic violence. The cracked wall symbolizes the wounds from those times and the actual broken walls caused by the violence. The picture is of my mother in the 90s before it all unraveled. She did so much to keep me safe and conceal the wounds. She was probably the most affected by it all.

released June 27th, 2025

Produced, Mixed, and Mastered by Doug Gallo
Guitar and Lead Vocals by Matthew Smith
Drums and Backup Vocals by Andrew Moore
Lead Guitar by Paul Singh
Bass by Wyatt Rydlewski
Lead Guitar on “Austin” by Nels Cline
Pedal steel on Another Way by Will Lauzon
Harmonies on select songs J Owen Smith

Greet Death have announced their third album titled “Die In Love” set for release on June 27th, 2025 via Deathwish Inc. True to the band’s name, death creeps into nearly all of Greet Death’s songs. And yet, through this ever-present certainty, the band finds the absolute core of what it means to be alive.

Greet Death’s music, drawing from shoegaze, doomgaze, indie rock and dream pop, explores themes of life and death with emotional depth and melodic sensibility. Returning six years later with what has been described as their third and best album, Greet Death have shown tremendous growth while expanding their sound into new territory, capturing the perfect balance of the breezy and dreamier elements of their sound with the loud, anthemic and noisier moments. 

“Die In Love” is a beautifully melancholic album by Greet Death. The band’s dizzying melodic nature shines throughout its nine tracks, featuring delicate acoustic shimmers, somber percussion, and high-volume post-everything fuzz.

The bands latest single “Country Girl” arrives with a brilliant music video by Chromatone Studios, written and produced by Harper Boyhtari and L Morgan / starring Greet Death‘s Harper Boyhtari and Logan Gaval.  Harper says the song is about “...identity, alienation, and detachment.

It’s like trying to solve a murder mystery and finding out you were the killer the whole time.” The single follows previously released single “Same But Different Now” both taken from the forthcoming LP.

released June 27th, 2025

Greet Death is: Logan Gaval, Harper Boyhtari, Jim Versluis, Jackie Kalmink, Eric Beck

The new release this week was ‘Bits’, the second single from No Joy’s forthcoming album “Bugland“, which is out on August 8th.

It’s a stunning song, which switches effortlessly between Lush dreampop and L7-style grunge. “The original demo was built around me blowing out my guitar distortion using the EarthQuaker Devices Bit Commander guitar pedal,” explains No Joy’s Jasamine White-Gluz. “Thematically, I wanted to capture the feeling of running through tall grass, playing hide and seek behind big trees.”

The spoken word towards the end of the song is excerpts from a letter Jasamine wrote to the music media as a child in 1994 defending Courtney Love and urging them to leave her alone.

It’s the Canadian shoegazers long-awaited fifth album “Bugland”. Now the solo project of Jasamine White-Gluz, it’s their first new material for five years and also their debut for Sonic Cathedral. “Bugland” finds Jasamine Gluz-White teaming up with producer Fire-Toolz (aka Angel Marcloid) to create the aural equivalent of a late-’80s i-D magazine front and back cover, with a non-problematic National Geographic hiding within. It was, at least in part, inspired by White-Gluz’s move to a more rustic area of Quebec, something which also explains the gap between albums.“The wait wasn’t intentional,” she explains, “but I think rural living made me tune out the noise of the music biz and focus more inwards, writing and taking my damn time.”

The hook-up with Fire-Toolz was inspired. The renowned future fusionist adds not only magical co-production, but other sonic additions/dances/noises/mysticism. “The collaboration really felt limitless,” she enthuses. “I could easily relate to it because Jasamine and I liked a lot of the same music, and I was able to be creative in ways that were freeing as if I was making my own album.” Both spent days driving on empty rural highways listening to the mixes, and it reflects in the final product. With an open ear, many “influence eggs” can be detected by the listener. ‘Garbage Dream House’ is Zooropian without any of U2’s ego baggage. Epic closing track ‘Jelly Meadow Bright’ even manages to meld the out of control saxophone from The Stooges’ Fun House with the chill buoyancy of a high-end spa. Touching on respected, familiar genres and sounds while attempting to advance one’s own isn’t easy but “Bugland” manages to. What genre is it anyway? Is it even shoegaze when it could live happily on a shelf next to Boards of Canada and Autechre? The right answer is ‘yes’. What a lovely shelf it would be as well. “Bugland” is a testament to White-Gluz’s evolution and her ability to channel a wide variety of tastes into something cohesive that can descend into fine-tuned chaos, then out of that chaos with ease. 

From the forthcoming album “No Joy” album “Bugland”, August 8th 2025 via Hand Drawn Dracula & Sonic Cathedral.

Impressed Recordings are proud to present Wednesday, the dynamic North Carolina-based band led by Karly Hartzman, captured live at Sydney’s Factory Theatre on February 29th, 2024, and committed only to highly limited edition vinyl.

Wednesday emerged from the vibrant North Carolina indie rock scene, quickly making waves with their genre-blending sound that combines elements of alt-rock, indie, and shoegaze. Led by the enigmatic Karly Hartzman, the band’s music has resonated with audiences thanks to their emotionally charged lyrics, dreamy yet driving instrumentals, and a powerful live presence that’s garnered critical acclaim. Their breakthrough album, “Rat Saw God” (sold out vinyl) released in 2023, solidified their place in the modern indie rock scene.

Featuring standout tracks like “Got Shocked” and “Bull Believer”, the band’s blend of introspective storytelling and gritty guitars creates a raw, captivating experience that speaks to fans of both vintage alt-rock and contemporary indie sounds.

Wednesday’s performances are known for their raw energy, vulnerability, and atmospheric presence that captivates audiences from the first note to the last. “Rat Saw God” was Pitchfork’s #4 Album of 2023, and Karly and the band embarked on a victory lap around the world. Which led us to The Factory Theatre in Sydney on February 29th 2024. Recorded live in front of a Sydney crowd, this 11-track record features a mix of their acclaimed tracks including “Got Shocked”, “Turkey Vultures”, and “Hot Rotten Grass Smell”. The show was a perfect blend of the band’s signature style, featuring moments of brilliance from each member, with Hartzman’s captivating presence leading the charge.

Wednesday, “Live at Factory Theatre” is presented on limited edition heavyweight multi-coloured splattered vinyl. Strictly limited to 500 copies only

Wednesday owes so much to our musical influences. The music we love is a big part of what brought us together. My bandmates Margo and Xandy both had infamous Asheville house show venues, Jake was in like a billion different bands which often played in their muggy basements and Alan was usually the one who brought the PA. Our immersion in music predated us trying to make songs together ourselves.

Our common interests in noisey ‘90s guitars, good lyrics, and country music was quickly what permeated into our voice as a band. Most decisions in our songs are made by an amalgamation of all five of our inputs, which happens pretty naturally because of this thread of influences that ties us together.

So when we got an opportunity for some recording time with Alli Rogers at Betty’s studio in Durham, NC we decided to record covers, and hopefully repay in part the huge debt we are in to the artists who contributed so much to the music we write ourselves. When I was thinking if there was anything that these songs have in common, the main thing I found recurring was the combination of sadness and humor. It’s effective as hell to combine the two emotions, making each other more intense by the contrast…”—Karly Hartzman. 

Features songs by Gary Stewart, Chris Bell, Roger Miller, Drive By Truckers, Hotline TNT, Greg Sage, Vic Chesnutt, Medicine, and Smashing Pumpkins.

Wednesday’s 2022 album full of covers is available now

Back in 2015, Ty Segall released “Mr. Face” EP, the fantastic gatefold 2×7″ was not only packed with four killer jams but was also quite possibly the world’s first playable pair of 3D glasses. Now Famous Class Records is thrilled to release a 10th anniversary 12” vinyl edition. All copies are pressed on split color translucent red and blue-coloured vinyl and come with special Mr. Face 3-D glasses to activate the supercharged 3D artwork.

“Mr. Face,” a four-song EP that’s a terrific showcase for Segall’s artfully ragged style. He plays everything on these recordings with the exception of one drum part on one song.

The Ty Segall – Mr. Face 10th Anniversary Edition records are out today