The Fat Angel Sings

The music of New York trio Weak Signal (Mike Bones, guitar and voice; Sasha Vine, electric bass, violin, and voice; Tran, drums and voice) is a masterclass in simplicity and economy but these aspects aren’t present for their own didactic sake. Rather, their art is world-building in the most essential of ways, subtly spinning out in an enveloping, rich haze from a clear, architectural core. There are sections of knife-like collective squall and dialogic drift that glance at improvised music; while not strictly pop, the tunes are incredibly catchy with wry, keenly memorable lyrics that easily stick in one’s craw. Weak Signal formed in 2017. They waxed two full lengths in the period leading up to the pandemic (‘LP1’; ‘Bianca’), and during that unsettling year- plus without many gigs to speak of, the trio kept busy and unleashed a handful of choice digital EPs and a couple of split 7” singles (cue up “Rolex” if you haven’t heard it).

In 2023 the group released ‘War and War’, a self-published book/CD (its title taken from a volume by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai) that was reissued on LP by 12XU the following year. ‘Fine’ is their fourth full-length to date, its tight ten-song program fleshed out with sonic icing from keyboardist Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip) and guitarists Doug Shaw (Gang Gang Dance; White Magic) and Cass McCombs.

‘Fine’ is an unhurried jewel in the trio’s discography, partly the result of the time it took to write. Vine relates that “we cut the album in half, made it pretty concise, and part of that process was us figuring out what we wanted to sound like and what wasn’t working. Fine is how I envisaged it sounding. It was fun to take time and sit with the songs, whereas the first few records were written and recorded really fast.” Even if the vibe and structure is familiar – and one can easily pick out their stripped-down jangle, like the lovechild of the Rain Parade and Lungfish – there’s a clear evolution over the course of their records, each one more finely-tuned and comfortable. Vine adds that working these tunes out together in front of people is part of the journey: “I love playing the songs as much as possible live and that’s something that I’ve learned over time. With the first couple of albums, as we were playing them later I was coming up with different harmonies and ideas. It’s nice to be in the music for a while and figure out what it needs.” “Fine” was recorded by Jon Erickson and mixed by Rupert Clervaux (Sian Alice Group), whose expertise has been called in for records by Spiritualized and pianist Matthew Shipp, among others, keeping just enough of the SoundCloud lo-fi aesthetic to ensure it’s a proper Weak Signal record.

The lyrics on ‘Fine’ are mature and full of depth, though unadorned. Bones wrote the words and initial melodies, and the tunes were hashed out collectively in a continual back and forth. Themes of spirituality and religion, drugs, petty crime, love, and inner peace are woven throughout; one can peel back the layers of the onion if one wants to, but it’s not required as the delivery is so straightforward. There’s the gorgeous ode to ascetic universalism “Wannabe,” the transcendental hedonist subject of “Rich Junkie,” and the delicate timelessness of “Terá Terá.” In response to my calling him a “trap music-inspired Rumi,” Bones relates that “the mystics from whatever strain, they all look for whatever they’re looking for in the dirt and it’s nothing really new. “Disappearing” has that line ‘alone with the alone’ and that’s from an Ibn Arabi poem. If you read it in Arabic it’s holographic, and each character has a numerological aspect as well. But it all just comes out.” Then again, the aforementioned “Rich Junkie” takes its title from a line in a song by Atlanta rapper Future, spinning a passing reference into new worlds. Tran succinctly adds that “if you are sincere enough people get it and you don’t have to spell it out for them” and that is part of the engine that makes Weak Signal chug (and what now feels artistically rarefied): sincerity and honesty, warmth, a dash of smart humor, and craggy, soot- covered hooks for days. There’s no such thing as perfection but ‘Fine’ is sure to be a lasting and essential presence in the knapsack of underground rock and roll.

released September 20th, 2024

Weak Signal is Sahsa, Tran and Mike.

Blushing’s unique brand of dreampop-infused indie rock hearkens back to the halcyon days of college radio. With a diverse array of influences including Elastica, Curve, Veruca Salt, Lush, The Breeders, and Smashing Pumpkins, Blushing manages a deftly executed eclecticism that recalls the best elements of alt rock’s past while retaining a vitality and immediacy that tethers them firmly to the present. On their recently completed third LP, “Sugarcoat”, Blushing’s dynamism is on full display, flitting effortlessly from spacey psychedelia to twee pop jangle with finesse and panache. “Sugarcoat” is a dense, reverb-laden exploration of altrock’s 40+ year history that conjures up concord from chaos. This album is where the band get to explore their love for expanding genres, from Post-punk (Seafoam), Psych-gaze (Slyce), Grunge pop (Silver Teeth), Indie Pop (Tamagotchi), Slowcore (Sugarcoat) and beyond.

A huge highlight when making the album was the ability to collaborate with Jeff Schroeder on the track “Seafoam”. The band had the opportunity to meet with him a few times over the years and asked him to see if he would be interested in lending lead guitar on the track as they were nearing the end of recording. He agreed right away and wrote a perfect accompanying lead while out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins. The contribution elevated the song and the band are so grateful to have his influence captured on the album.

The relatively short life of San Francisco’s Aluminum has so far yielded a single “Spinning Backwards”, 92020) and an EP “Windowpane”, (2022), but their debut LP, “Fully Beat”, overflows with tenured confidence and a singular style that deftly comprises shoegaze, big beat, and jangle pop. With influences ranging from Orbital, to Wipers, to The Avalanches and Sly and the Family Stone, theirs is a multifaceted take on established forms, fed through fuzz and led by honeyed, male-female vocal harmonies from Bay Area post-punk veterans Marc Leyda (of Wild Moth) and Ryann Gonsalves (of Torrey).

Composed across several weeks of experimentation, it is a prime iteration of Aluminum’s meticulous world of sound, which nevertheless carries an air of wry nonchalance. Asking, “Do you ever see behind my mouth?”, Gonsalves notes that the song “comes from a place of wanting to be understood authentically, and to communicate intentionally.”

Band Members::
Marc Leyda – vocals, guitar, sampler
Ryann Gonsalves – vocals, bass
Austin Montanari – guitar
Chris Natividad – drums

For fans of My Bloody Valentine, Happy Mondays, 80s underground punk, Primal Scream, Mission of Burma.

The full-length debut by Detroit duo Giovanna Lenski and Christian Molik aka the band Clinic Stars both refines and redefines their pitch-perfect fusion of downer-pop balladry and featherweight shoegaze: “Only Hinting”. Recorded and produced at the band’s home studio, the album was crafted across 2022 and 2023, patiently layering FX and spatial depths to give each song a swirling, subconscious undertow. From the strummed whirlpool of “I Am The Dancer” to the gated reverb of “Remain” to the greyscale guitar reverie of “Isn’t It,” the record aches as much as moves, daydreaming of escape and transcendence.

The group cite a desire to leave their “industrial environment” as muse, although the songs also revel in the romance of longing itself, in the beauty of hearts grown distant. The duo’s previous EPs, “10,000 Dreams” (2021) and “April’s Past” (2022), captured a similarly swooning slowcore palette, but Only Hinting hits different. Here haze is as much instrument as texture, gauze and melody married as one, traced in elegant arcs across cities streaked in shadow. For fans of the Cocteau Twins and Slowdive maybe.

released September 20th, 2024

The music of San Francisco’s Sea Dramas ranges from hazy folk with pensive melodies to 60s inspired echo laden pop that melds genres and styles with swirling, dreamlike qualities.

“Escape Scenes” is the new album by Sea Dramas, the San Francisco Bay Area based music project led by Scott Pettersen. Produced by Pettersen and mixed & mastered by David Glasebrook (Sugar Candy Mountain, Sam Burton, Sandy’s), the album explores the liminal space of 2020-2021, reflecting Pettersen’s experience as life turned inward and time blurred. Influenced by library music, dream pop, folk, and 60’s pop, Pettersen took the opportunity to start fresh and experiment with a new palette of sounds, recalling Scott Walker, John Cale, Echo & the Bunnymen, and The Teardrop Explodes.

“There’s darkness, there’s sadness, there’s light and there’s joy. All bound together in the realm of that unique time. The making of the album was my particular escape scene” says Pettersen. Highly anticipated new album from Sea Dramas.

released February 2nd, 2024

“If you were here i’d be home by now” is the debut album by Vancouver shoegaze band Smush. The record opens softly with a gently picked indie rock melody accompanied by an equally soft and inviting voice. This lasts for about a minute before a shriek of feedback and thrashing guitars decimate the short lived peace. In an instant the soundscape Smush invokes becomes fully realized. I love the way the vocals don’t increase in intensity as the instrumentation absolutely does. It’s almost like being guided forward by a soft hand into a hazy netherworld.

The angelic voice becomes a lifeline as we are plunged beneath wave after wave of fuzz. The lyrics of the opening track “if we didn’t cry” are some of the most heart-breaking of the album and set the tone early. ‘As tears fill up my eyes / it would be sadder / if we didn’t cry / each time we say goodbye.’ if you were here carries as heavy an emotional weight as it does musically.

A wonderful album that explores the legacy of both Slowdive and Sonic Youth, dipping into several other genres, serving a pleasant surprise or two while managing to remain coherent from the first track to the last. Catchy melodies are seamlessly intertwined with walls of sound while the often delicate vocals go hand in hand with the crackle and fuzz of the instruments exploring the more noise oriented realms of alternative rock. Genuine emotion with a hint of unpretentious nostalgia. 

Immaculately produced but still full of vibe, this is a total new fave. With levels of guitar sludge, plus the more abstract sample based tracks give this a whole other dimension.

released June 15th, 2024

bass/vox: Emily Borrowman
guitar: Atley King
drums: Jay Christie

Following 2022’s Rough Dimension LP, Noel Skum – aka Andrew Clinco of Drab Majesty – made the radical leap of expanding his psychedelic post-punk vehicle VR Sex into a fully collaborative five-piece band. To christen the new group’s camaraderie, they booked a block of studio time in Glassell Park, swapped skeletal iPhone demos, and “did that classic thing of a band making the exact record they want without any interference.” Working 12-hour days, they banged out the basics in a week, then tracked the rest over a month, fine-tuning it with flourishes, FX, and amplifier experiments. Hard Copy is the result – 10 tracks of sneering psychedelic punk streaked with Chrome-damaged freak-outs and snotty power pop harmonies chronicling sex doll love affairs and glue-sniffing fatales.

Mixed by guitarist Mike Kriebel – an accomplished engineer with dozens of credits across the punk, goth, and garage underground – the album is dense, rich, and spatial, spurred by Clinco’s muse of “reckless abandon.” Shadows of Chrome, Stickmen With Rayguns, Japanese psych, and loud- quiet-loud grunge anthems flicker here and there, but ultimately VR Sex’s mode is more sardonic and saturated, oscillating between ripped leather riffing and space echo meltdowns. Banning plug-ins was a mission statement, with most instruments tracked direct into the board, then guitars added via a daisy chain of amplifiers, panned and mixed and matched for maximum intoxication: “My goal is always to load up every take with as much sound as possible in one pass.”

Lyrically, the record revisits the project’s perennial fascinations: twisted lust, cheap thrills, dirty money, doomed delinquents, and ruined romance amid the creeps and cracked dreamers of gritty city voids. The title refers to the uncanny valley between “facsimile and the real thing, and the illusion that one is better than the other – when both come with their own menu of delights and demonic pleasures.” Hard Copy” embraces extremes and outliers, delusion and perversion, the conflicted dimensional depths lurking in every exploded heart: “I can be ugly / I can be strong / I can be proper / I can be wrong / I can be lovely / or I can be gone / the thing that will haunt you is still hanging on.”

Guided by San Francisco musician Andy Pastalaniec, Chime School pays homage to the formative jangle of The Byrds by way of early Primal Scream and The Springfelds; the production and pop sensibility of Biff Bang Pow! and The Razorcuts; and the spirit of great singles labels like Creation, Postcard and Sarah – Although it would have ft with any of those labels, Chime School found a natural home with Bay Area indie stalwart Slumberland Records, releasing a self-titled debut in 2021, and a follow-up 7″ single in 2023, to broad acclaim.

The anticipated follow-up LP “The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel” is as stellar as we could have hoped for – deeper, richer and evolved in every way. While still joyfully packed with janglepop gems, “Paisley Hotel” takes a turn toward the winsome melancholy of groups like East Village, The Go-Betweens, and The Loft, and represents a leap forward in production, composition and arrangement. “The first record was a bit manic. I was trying to stuff so many years of influences into thirty brisk minutes. With “Paisley Hotel” I chose a more condensed palette, and I feel I’m getting closer to the sonic vision I had from the beginning.”

Taken from the album “The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel,” out August 23, 2024 on Slumberland Records.

Few classic rock titans have figured out how to reinvent their old songs as effectively as Robert Plant. Together with Alison Krauss, the former Led Zeppelin frontman offers another take on the Memphis Minnie blues tune, reimagining it as an exotic, elemental dirge. Plant’s husky vocals lend an air of desperation to the performance, while Krauss’ evocative violin work nods briefly to Zeppelin’s “Friends” before propelling the song to a climactic rootsy stomp.

A singer-songwriter who wrote for the Judee Sill in her early 1970s heyday was compared to Asylum label contemporaries like Joni Mitchell, Sill was the first artist signed to David Geffen’s label Asylum Records. She released her first album, “Judee Sill“, in 1971, followed by “Heart Food” in 1973. Both albums were critically acclaimed, but were not commercially successful though her music had stronger spiritual overtones. This nearly forgotten performance reveals a true talent that deserved so much more during her short lifetime. Judee Sill grew up in a very troubled home and came through it with some truly great music to tell so many stories that many of the more sentient listeners will appreciate.

The Songs; Jesus Was A Crossmaker, Enchanted Sky Machines, The Kiss, The Phoenix, Lady-O, The Lamb Ran Away With The Crown, Down Where The Valleys Are Low