The Fat Angel Sings

For their second album, Chat Pile have zoomed out. Their 2022 debut LP “God’s Country” saw them taking a look at the dark underbelly of American society, and “Cool World” goes global by looking at disasters all around the world and how they affect each other and, ultimately, us. It’s a theme that hit especially hard this year, and Chat Pile match their global dread with a backdrop that’s even bigger, heavier, and harder to pigeonhole than their beloved debut. It ranges from somber, gothy moments to sludgy noise rock to straight-up extreme metal, with lots of other ground covered in between. In a time where it feels like things just keep getting worse, this album makes for a perfectly bleak soundtrack. 

Cool World had its work cut out, following in the footsteps of “God’s Country“, one of the most lauded noise-rock records in recent memory. With its thundering mix of sludge, metal and post-punk – centred around eerie, dissonant riffs and the guttural, anguished vocals of Raygun Busch – the album channels emotion in a more widescreen format than its predecessor. Songs like “Masc” are haunting and cathartic, blending a deepening exploration of surreal lyricism with raw, unfiltered energy.

The production is deliberately claustrophobic, intensifying the sense of unease while offering only fleeting moments of relief. “Cool World” is an unsettling, thought-provoking trip that continues Chat Pile’s exploration of existential dread, delivering a sonic experience that is as challenging as it is compelling.

Like the towering mounds of toxic waste from which it gets its namesake, the music of Oklahoma City noise rock quartet Chat Pile is a suffocating, grotesque embodiment of the existential anguish that has defined the 21st Century. It figures that a band with this abrasive, unrelenting, and outlandish of a sound has struck as strong of a chord as it has. Dread has replaced the American dream, and Chat Pile’s music is a poignant reminder of that shift – a portrait of an American rock band moulded by a society defined by its cold and cruel power systems.

The indie-folk-er is back with a rollicking roll of the dice – this picks right up from where ‘Down In The Weeds’ left off and slots right in amongst classics such as ‘Lifted’ and ‘Fevers & Mirrors’.’Five Dice, All Threes’ is a record of uncommon intensity and tenderness, communal exorcism and personal excavation. On the self-produced album, Bright Eyes embrace the elusive quality that has made them so enduring and influential across generations and genres, bringing their homespun sound from an Omaha bedroom to devoted audiences around the world. In Conor Oberst’s songwriting lies a promise that our loneliest thoughts and feelings can take on grander shapes when passed between friends, blasted through speakers, or shouted among crowds.

This time around, the band invites such like-minded voices onto the record with them, with notable guest appearances from Cat Power (“All Threes”), The National’s Matt Berninger (“The Time I Have Left”), and Alex Orange Drink, the frontman of the New York punk band, The So So Glos, who co-wrote several songs and shares a climactic verse in the surging “Rainbow Overpass.”

When they hit the studio with Oberst’s longtime bandmates — the multi-instrumentalist and producer, Mike Mogis, the keyboardist and arranger, Nate Walcott — they opted for a fast-paced approach that drew inspiration from formative influences like The Replacements and Frank Black. They sought textures that burst from the mix like gnarly splashes of paint on a blank canvas; they opted for first takes and spontaneous decisions. ‘Five Dice, All Threes’ thrashes and squirms and resists classification. In the brilliant expanse of “El Capitan,” they blend a galloping rhythm you might find in a Johnny Cash standard with a swell of funereal horns, shouted vocals, and lyrics that read like a sobering farewell between twin souls. “So they’re burning you an effigy,” Oberst sings. “Well, that happens to me all the time!” For every striking turn in his lyrics, the band knows just how to complement him.

On one level, ‘Five Dice, All Threes’ may be the most fun album in the Bright Eyes catalogue, filled with singalong hooks and buzzing performances. And yet, sitting alongside these adrenalized rockers that sound beamed in directly from the garage, you will find contemplative, psychedelic material like the heartbreaking “Tiny Suicides” and “All Threes,” a song whose jazzy piano solo and free-associative lyrics feel totally unprecedented in the Bright Eyes catalog. As per usual, the music comes loaded with subtext that invites deep listening—the signature touch of a band who has always honored the album as its own exalted work of art. In the game of threes, the titular move would indicate a perfect roll. Perfection, however, means something different in the world of Bright Eyes, where our flaws are what grants us authority and finding meaning is only possible if we bear witness to the dark, winding journey to get there.

On ‘Five Dice, All Threes’, Bright Eyes embrace these beliefs with music that feels thrillingly alive, as if we were all in the room with them, shouting along and gaining the strength to move forward together. It doesn’t just sound like classic Bright Eyes. It sounds like their future, too.

released September 20th, 2024

Bright Eyes is: Conor Oberst (vocal, acoustic and electric guitars, baritone acoustic guitar) Mike Mogis
(pedal steel, electric guitar, manjo, dobro, mandolin, banjo) Nathaniel Walcott
(piano, trumpet, synthesizers, organs, mellotron, electric piano, celeste, glockenspiel, string and horn arrangements)

All songs: Produced by Bright Eyes

Nilüfer Yanya formally announced her new album “My Method Actor”, released September 13th on Ninja Tune. The news arrived alongside the release of her new single, the near-title track “Method Actor,” and follows her recent single “Like I Say (I runaway),” which the New York Times described as, “reveling in contrasting textures” and The FADER called, “a jolting return.” Putting herself in an unnamed character’s shoes, “Method Actor” portrays a mini-life story in under four minutes. The accompanying visualiser was shot in an old hotel in Benidorm, Spain and is a one take video capturing Nilüfer sitting down to share the song’s story.

Speaking about “Method Actor” Nilüfer describes how the concept for the song came together, “I was researching method acting – and from what I read, it’s based on finding this one memory in your life, a life-altering, life-changing memory. The reason why some people find method acting traumatic and maybe not safe mentally, is because you’re always going back to that moment. It can be good or bad but you’re always feeding off the energy, something that’s defined you – and that’s what helps you become the character. It’s a bit like being a musician. When you’re performing, you’re still trying to invoke the energy and emotion of when you first wrote it, 

The softer sound of Nilüfer Yanya’s third album, “My Method Actor“, belies a crop of new anxieties for the effortlessly innovative British singer and guitarist. She wrestles with the strangeness of growing older without ticking off the boxes that define how a person should be as they approach 30—married, entertaining motherhood, and otherwise settling down. “Shut up and raise a glass if you’re not sure!” she exclaims on “Keep on Dancing,” before launching into “Like I Say (I Runaway),” whose music video features Yanya literally absconding from the wedding altar at the very last second.

But these worries go down easy, set to finger-picked acoustic guitar that melts into the reliable snap of a drum machine. She might “feel shame the modern way” on “Faith’s Late” or find herself “dreaming of the end” on “Made Out of Memory” but on “My Method Actor”, Yanya wraps her vocals in layers of gossamer guitar, sounding fully in command even as she mines the depths of her own neuroses.

released September 13th, 2024

“I’m too much,” Bill Ryder-Jones admits on “I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)” before adding, “but I’ll never be enough for you I know,” all while still finding the beauty in a doomed relationship. That’s “Iechyd Da”, the former Coral member’s first solo album in five years, in a nutshell, where joy and deep sadness are processed as one emotion. Ryder-Jones has the kind of gentle, warmly melancholic voice that is perfect for material and melodies like these—some of his best-ever songs—and it’s all made more vibrant via orchestral arrangements and even a children’s choir. In less talented hands, this could all be too much, but “Iechyd Da” is just enough.

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 Domino Recording Co Ltd

Growing Stone is songwriter Skylar Sarkis from Rochester, NY, It’s not every day you hear someone who’s mastered the quiet and the loud the way Skylar Sarkis has. When he’s not busting eardrums with his punk band Taking Meds, he’s embracing sad, sombre singer/songwriters like Arab Strap, Smog, Sun Kil Moon, Sparklehorse, Mount Eerie, and Leonard Cohen with his solo project Growing Stone. 

“Death of a Momma’s Boy” is his second album under the name Growing Stone album and best yet, with gentle acoustic guitars, gorgeous string and horn arrangements, some light drumming, and deeply pained, personal singing and song writing from Skylar. It’s an album he wrote entirely sober, and says it’s “about feeling the actual pain, not feeling the consequences of avoiding it.”

Musicians:
Skylar Sarkis: vocals, bass, guitar, harmonica, percussion, piano, drum programming
Jimmy Montague: drums, keys, cello, viola, violin, lap steel, percussion
Matt Battle: drums on track 6
Jacob McCabe: trumpet on tracks 2 and 5

All songs written by Skylar Sarkis except track 8 which was written by Warren Zevon

released June 28th, 2024

Martha Skye Murphy is both a rookie and a veteran, as “Um” is her first proper album but far from her introduction to making music. She has EPs, singles, collaborations, and an electronic opera (Postcards Home) dating back to 2016, and her impressive résumé goes back even further than that; she sang on a Nick Cave song that sound-tracked the opening credits of John Hillcoat’s The Proposition when she was just nine years old. (She again collaborated with Cave in her teens when she sang on 2013’s “Push the Sky Away.)

Meaning shifts throughout Martha Skye Murphy’s debut album ‘Um’ with songs that meld moments of baroque beauty with crashes of electronic noise, employing textures that are by turns organic and artificial, hi-fi and lo-fi. Collaborations with the likes of Claire Rousay and Roy Montgomery are finely intertwined with the fruits of rigorous studio sessions with producer Ethan P. Flynn.

Lyrically Murphy conjures images inspired by everything from Ancient Roman hand-binding torture to a Fred and Ginger tap routine. A deep sense of longing and echoes of lost, distant memory haunt the record.
On the album, the artist says she wanted “the listener to feel
disoriented, erotically charged by the intimacy of a bedroom, then catapulted into a desert.”

released June 14th, 2024

Produced by Martha Skye Murphy & Ethan P. Flynn

After making the “Waiting Around” EP with multi-instrumentalist Laura Wolf as Lilts last year, John Ross returned to his main project, Wild Pink, and signed with Fire Talk Records in early 2024. To celebrate, they released the three-song EP Strawberry Eraser, and christened the accomplishment with “Air Drumming Fix You,” a pairing of diner jukebox-gentle drum machines and synthesizers with cresting saxophone scales and a spumante pedal steel—all while Ross sings about “shitting my pants in a VR world,” “baby breath” and someone, as the title aptly suggests, air-drumming Coldplay’s “Fix You.” Through vignettes of quick humour, however, come sharp lines that’ll gut you on the spot. “I guess the good life didn’t look like you thought it might” is going to be a lyric that sticks with me for a good while, especially, maybe forever. Too, “Unconscious Pilot” is another reverb-heavy slice of alt-folk that mangles itself into sublime, bulky distortion. It’s not as melodic as “Air Drumming Fix You,” but it doesn’t need to be—the fortune is all in the gloomy chords and cavernous singing from Ross. “What if the soul is real?” he ponders. “And it gets lost on the way to the next deal? What a nightmare, knowing you’re out there dead and scared and there ain’t a thing I can do.” Most of us didn’t know that an all-time great record like “Dulling the Horns” was on the horizon, but it was nice to live in “Strawberry Eraser” for a while—letting ourselves be enraptured by fluttering saxophones and weighty guitars, as if a jazz ensemble accidentally stumbled into a noise-band’s rehearsal. It all culminates in a storm of flanged strumming, as John Ross declares: “I hope it’s nothing.”

Though Wild Pink are known for their collaborations — among which include Julien Baker, Ryley Walker, Jasmin WIlliams, Ratboys’ Julia Steiner, and J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr.— “Strawberry Eraser”, a new EP and first for Fire Talk showcases Ross unadorned and singular, reinforcing him as “a truly gifted songwriter, one able to contain vast vistas within single songs” (Under the Radar). With spaced-out synths and saxophone, it conjures open and unexplored terrains, a natural extension of Wild Pink’s “vast and swooning” (The FADER) sound.

released March 21, 2024

Rain Parade’s seminal debut album, “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip”, is set to receive a deluxe 2xLP reissue. Originally emerging from the late 70s and early 80s Los Angeles scene known as the ‘Paisley Underground,’ the band’s music blended Californian and UK psychedelic rock influences with a punk/DIY edge. The album, originally released in 1983, quickly gained international recognition for its distinctive sound, with standout tracks sung by core members Matt Piucci and Steven Roback.

This deluxe edition of “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip2 includes the original ten-track album on the first LP, alongside a bonus LP filled with demos and live recordings, offering fans an even deeper dive into Rain Parade’s early work. Tracks like ‘Talking In My Sleep’ and ‘Look Both Ways’ remain timeless, showcasing the band’s ability to merge dreamy psychedelia with raw energy. Rain Parade’s influence on 80s and 90s guitar-driven music is undeniable, with artists like Ride’s Andy Bell citing them as a major inspiration. This reissue, coupled with their upcoming UK and European tour, reaffirms the band’s enduring legacy in the psychedelic rock landscape.

Nine years on from the release of his seminal Grammy, Brit, Ivor Novello and Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut album “In Colour“, musician, DJ and producer Jamie xx announces his long-awaited second album “In Waves”.

Jamie xx has been nothing if not patient. His first new album since 2015’s masterwork “In Colour” has been a long time coming, with numerous festival appearances, one-off singles, co-productions, and life experiences arriving along the way. Though it reveals a more expansive sound than his earlier work, “In Waves” also feels like a belated response to the pandemic. The urgency and ecstasy of the dancefloor is unavoidable, and with lively samples and widescreen collabs from the likes of Honey Dijon, Robyn, The Avalanches, and his xx bandmates, “In Waves” is a passionate, vivd request to treat each other right and revel in the freedom of dance.

Across 12 tracks including “Baddy On The Floor”, his joyous summer collaboration with club culture icon Honey Dijon, Jamie xx replicates the emotional crescendos and thrilling volatility of an almost mystical night out and features further collaborations amongst others Panda Bear, Oona Doherty and his The xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim. Created over a four year period ushered in by his much-loved 2020 Essential Mix and peppered with periods of self-reflection, a global pandemic, the blinking re-emergence into the strobe light and a newly discovered love of surfing as escapism, it’s an album that’s on course to eclipse the heights of its globally acclaimed predecessor.