The Fat Angel Sings

As they begin the European leg of their autumn tour, Indianapolis band  Wishy have shared a previously unheard track from the sessions that produced their new album “Triple Seven”. About “Planet Popstar,” Kevin Krauter says, “This song is about the feeling of longing for someone or something which, by all accounts, seems entirely out of reach. You could call Wishy’s story a lucky one. After prior monikers and iterations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music’s semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together. On “Triple Seven”, Indiana songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites’ musical synergy proves itself to be a rare one–the kind that sounds like someone striking gold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it’s only fitting their much anticipated full length debut is titled “Triple Seven”, where Wishy’s penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally in pillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion.

By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitar lessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by trade and often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up in a scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkites instead found themselves writing melodies in their heads while driving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier, more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, their music oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock.

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder. We recorded this song during the “Triple Seven” sessions at the end of last year, but the song ultimately didn’t make it onto the album.”

“We recorded this song in Los Angeles in November 2022 with a bunch of other songs that ended up on “Live Laugh Love,” says Chastity Belt’s Julia Shapiro of “That Guy,” which is being released on a split 7″ with Austin band Holy Wave. “It didn’t quite make the cut, but I’m excited to release it now! I really love Lydia’s meandering lead guitar line. I remember her having so many different ideas of what she could do, and we were like, do them all! I wrote the lyrics after Chastity Belt had just come back from doing a bunch of touring, and I had to go back to normal life.

It’s always a rough transition for me. I feel so alive on tour! There’s this one line in the song about this habit I have with music where, when I find a new song that I love, I listen to it on repeat until it no longer makes me feel anything. Like I’ve drained all the blood from it.”

“That Guy” out February 7th, 2025 on Suicide Squeeze Records

Iggy Pop is an avant-garde icon and a punk pioneer. The Montreux Jazz Festival is a boundary-pushing event that brings the best of all musical genres to one gorgeous location every year.
“Live At Montreux Jazz Festival 2023” captures the dazzling Iggy Pop performance that could only happen here. First in a series of earMUSIC releases from the festival, this concert marked Iggy’s third appearance at the 57th edition of Montreux.

Rock icon Iggy Pop’s performance at the 2024 Montreux Jazz Festival is now being released as a live album on January 24th via earMUSIC. You can listen to “Five Foot One” (A track from 1979’s “New Values” album. Iggy says, “I give something extra every time I do Montreux Jazz set. In ’23 it was deep cuts like ‘Mass Production,’ ‘Endless Sea,’ ‘Five Foot One’ and a hell of a lot of sweat.”

Backed by a seven-piece band, Iggy breathes new fire into The Stooges classics like “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “T.V. Eye” and ignites the adoring crowd with visceral run-throughs of “The Passenger” and, of course, “Lust for Life.”
The year 2023 marked Iggy’s return to the top 10 in major territories with his album “Every Loser.”
It was the perfect moment to showcase his classic songs and share new ones (“Modern Day Ripoff,” Frenzy”) at the venerated Stravinski Auditorium.

Frank Black was once voted Teenager of the Year in his youth hence the title of his second solo album. After putting the Pixies on hold he embarked on a solo career beginning with a workmanlike 1993 self-titled debut. 

Teenager of the Year came along not long after and was a dizzying and often inspired effort containing twenty two tracks of varying quality but when it wsas good it was very good indeed.  

This double LP set on gold-coloured vinyl has been remastered from the original tapes by Kevin Vanbergen and cut at 45 RPM for maximum fidelity. It also comes with a gatefold sleeve featuring new liner notes by Frank and keyboardist/co-producer Eric Drew Feldman.

“Teenager of the Year”, which will be out January 17th via 4AD.

Cindy is to release a new six song EP called “Swan Lake” on 4th October via Tough Love. The title isn’t a nod to the folktale or ballet in any real way, but to the fact that it all has ended up in the collective imagination as an object, vaguely recognizable, a little suggestive, and mostly blank. Karina Gill, Cindy’s songwriter, likes to make use of that kind of resonance to connect sound and experience.

The six songs on this EP continue the stripped-down habits of previous Cindy releases, while adding a few departures and left-turns. Cindy likes to work at the essentials and the elements here say exactly what’s needed. In other ways, these songs present a soft filigree that’s unusual for their recordings. Oli Lipton (Now, Violent Change) on guitar and Will Smith (Now) on bass play counterpoint melodies to Gill’s structures. Staizsh Rodrigues (Children Maybe Later, Almond Joy, Peace Frog) sings vocal harmonies that both offset and deepen Gill’s voice and delivery.

There are playful drums by Mike Ramos (Tony Jay, Sad Eyed Beatniks) and coolly elaborate guitar lines from Stanley Martinez (Famous Mammals, Violent Change, Non Plus Temps).

Gill’s songs strike this balance too: almost nonchalant reporting tied up in unexpected knots. A ride in an elevator connects up with questions about peace and/or the nature of things; the title track wonders about associative thinking and associative feeling; The Bell is an account of one of those times when everything makes sense but you can’t explain it; and there’s the scene of a party viewed with admiration for how friends can love each other. As Gill herself says:

“People have told me that they can’t quite identify my influences. Me neither. The foundational layers of music of the past and my past have been metabolized like breakfast and turned into more me, sorry to say. But I experience the music of people I’m connected with and it impacts me in the moment. There’s the music I’m around – April Magazine, Sad Eyed Beatniks, Violent Change, Katsy Pline, collaborating with Mike on Flowertown – that I can feel a direct line from. Then there’s music that is being made far away but feels close, like Lewsberg, specifically, for this EP. “

The exact relationship between Henry (T-Bone Burnett) and Howard Coward (Elvis Costello) remains ambiguous. They often referred to themselves as “One and a Half Brothers,” which might hint at their height difference or imply they were not actually siblings but were involved in an elaborate ruse.

Their musical partnership, known as The Coward Brothers, was initiated by Smiley “Doc” Snipson, who discovered Henry Coward in 1956 and signed him for a UK tour. The brothers’ hit single, “My Baby Just Squeals (You Heel),” was followed by less successful records and a controversial Cold War-themed song. To preserve their fading fame, Snipson orchestrated their supposed death in a plane crash, but they were actually in hiding on a Caribbean island, secretly recording music and sending it back to Snipson.

When their funds ran out, they returned to Miami and made sensational claims about writing famous songs, leading to a brief stint as songwriters for Bill Bogguss. They later resumed recording, but their partnership eventually fractured, leading to years of estrangement.

Their music, from early rock and roll hits to later, more introspective songs, is compiled in the album, “The Coward Brothers“. After years of silence, their story was explored in a radio program, revealing the complexity of their relationship and their enduring bond. Despite their tumultuous history, their music remains a testament to their unyielding spirit.

The Coward Brothers are Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnett. The Audible Original radio play, “The True Story Of The Coward Brothers“, is directed by Christopher Guest, and stars Howard Coward, Henry Coward, Harry Shearer, Edward Hibbert, Rhea Seehorn, Stephen Root, and Kathreen Khavari.

‘The True Story of The Coward Brothers’, a three-part scripted Audible Original audio series – referred to by the author as a “wireless drama” – that recounts the history of Henry and Howard Coward, a pair of delightfully deluded pop practitioners and conjurers played by Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett. Adding to the lore of these rock and roll charlatans comes an all-new, 20-track album from Costello and Burnett, who first worked together as The Coward Brothers forty years ago. To learn more about the mysterious origins of The Coward Brothers, head to https://www.audible.com/Coward

Released on 15th November

This month the cover stars are Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr of U2. Inside, over 14 pages, there is a veritable U2-fest, with specific reference to the band’s 11th studio album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb: Bono writes RC a letter about that 2004 LP and offers his “unreliable recollections” of the sessions and writing process; The Edge explores the events and emotions behind the making of the album; Adam Clayton looks beyond it for a freewheeling conversation about the past, present and future of the band, 45 years since their debut release; and John Coleman compiles a discography of U2’s recordings of the century so far.

Elsewhere in this issue we continue with RC’s ongoing celebration of our 45th anniversary with a special feature on the 45 best singles ever released by Manchester artists. Mike Batt proves he is the Zelig of pop. Redd Kross offer ample evidence that they may be the punk-rock Osmonds. The Chesterfields reveal themselves to be quintessential C86 indie popsters. Cherie Currie remembers the halcyon days (phrase used advisedly) of The Runaways. Brand New Heavies put the funk’n’soul into acid jazz. Joey Santiago of Pixies chooses the records that have soundtracked his life to date. We spend 33 1/3 minutes with Leo Sayer. And we offer the ultimate overviews of new albums and reissues from The Cure, New Order, Queen, Phil Manzanera and more. 

Do you still believe it?” John Ross asks that question after journeying through the wreckage, after singing of thunder rolling down the track and lighting in a bottle. These are tropes, and he knows it. It’s a moment where he’s returning to the ancient wisdom of his classic rock forebears, trying to find the answers all over again. This is the ground Ross travels in “The Fences Of Stonehenge,” the lead single, opening track, and mission statement of the new Wild Pink album “Dulling The Horns“. The question reverberates across the album: “Do you still believe it?” And what happens when you don’t anymore?

Ross’ response is to start anew. From the late ‘10s through the early ‘20s, Wild Pink was on the classic ascension arc. The otherworldly synth-Americana of 2018’s “Yolk In The Fur” garnered them press buzz and accolades, while the widescreen gloss and scope of its follow up, 2021’s “A Billion Little Lights”, swung for the fences at the cusp of the band’s breakthrough. Then everything changed: Ross received a shocking cancer diagnosis. Wild Pink’s subsequent release, 2022’s “ILYSM”, was inevitably saddled with the weight of being an album about mortality and love. On the other side of it all, Ross began to reimagine what Wild Pink was.

The genesis of “Dulling The Horns” goes back to late 2022, when Ross began workshopping new material during soundcheck on the ILYSM tour. Last summer, Wild Pink decamped to western Massachusetts to reunite with engineer Justin Pizzoferrato. Ross decided to record “Dulling The Horns” live in the room, in an effort to capture Wild Pink’s onstage style — rawer, grainier. Gone are the glimmering atmospherics and studio affectations of recent Wild Pink outings. Instead, Ross’ voice is haggard against the humid distortion coating every song. “I didn’t want to clean up anymore,” he says. “In doing so we’ve arrived at a new place.”

After the “digital lacquer” of “A Billion Little Lights”, Ross had already wanted “ILYSM” to be more organic and human. But “Dulling The Horns” takes that prompt further in every way. There will still be occasional synth plinks, sax drones, pedal steel courtesy of frequent collaborator Mike “Slo Mo” Brenner, and even a bit of fiddle.

But otherwise, “Dulling The Horns” is coarse, lived-in, visceral — music intended to be played live, with pounding rhythms and guitars bleeding all over. “I wanted to make economical songs,” Ross explains. “Music that is very much at its core three or four people rocking.” If before, Wild Pink took notes from Springsteen and Petty, they’ve now entered their Crazy Horse era.

“Dulling The Horns” is the sound of Wild Pink fraying at the edges. On the other side of his cancer battle and having to retell the story through an album cycle, he found himself exhausted — desperate for a new spark, a new story. “You zoom out, and I’m very fortunate,” he continues. “But “Dulling The Horns” came from the feeling of figuring out how do you deal with things and move forward and just keep creating.”

There’s a paradox at the core of the album: You can hear the toll the years took on Ross, but his new music sounds like a vital reclamation. Accordingly, the album’s overall mood conflicts with itself, too. Ross picked the phrase “dulling the horns” to refer to when a wild animal’s horns get worn down and thinking about the treadmill of the music industry. But now as Ross has also become a father, aging has meant wear and tear as well as those new joys.

But before you foist the parenthood album on Ross after his cancer album, “Dulling The Horns” is more a rangey, unruly eruption than the pristine epics of previous Wild Pink albums. Far from staid domestication or venturing out to pasture, Ross’s latest collection is wooly and wild with ideas. Throughout, his lyrics mirror the music in its scrappiness. Some connect, some are ellipses; some resonate poignantly and some tumble into hilarious asides. With “Dulling The Horns” as Wild Pink’s reset, it’s as if Ross is emptying all this loose, untamed energy both musically and spiritually.

That means “Eating The Egg Whole” rides a chugging road ramble of a beat while Ross muses on Michael Jordan documentaries and DC sports history, slyly connecting local vicissitudes to mortality with one raspy “Nothing lasts forever!” “Sprinter Brain” takes its name for a band in-joke — about one particularly stressful sprinter van tour that plagued Ross — but cloaks one of the album’s most touching stories as Ross juxtaposes his anxiety against his wife’s solidarity. Tiny moments of personal revelation sit right alongside a mesmerizing mess of disparate asides and themes. Take “Catholic Dracula,” a song in which Ross sings about how Dracula was, in fact, once a Catholic, before asking: “And I wonder what he thought about/ All that imagery of suffering/ The execution on the giant wooden pole/ And how it must have inspired his later work.”

The songs work almost as collage vignettes, Ross rattling himself out of ennui with loud, emphatic music chasing whichever thread his frazzled mind thought might lead somewhere surprising.

But in the end, he finds his way back to something like home. “Dulling The Horns’ was almost named for its closer, “Rung Cold,” the first song Ross began working on for the album. Instead, it becomes the final word, one last avalanche of modern day overstimulation and overdosing on cappuccins and Czech news on a TV in a bank before, finally, Ross concludes: “And if you can’t get along with it/ You gotta just get on with it.” Perhaps it’s a fittingly world-weary sentiment, an unsteady resolution for the ineffable “it” Ross was still trying to believe in at the beginning of the album. On “Dulling The Horns“, you can hear him rediscovering the fire in real time. Tropes discarded along the roadside, songs pulled from the formative DNA of rock music, all filtered through years of messy fog. “There is no answer to these problems,” Ross says, having eventually yielded. But as far “Dulling The Horns” is concerned, there’s at least one path forward: Burn it all away, and keep moving. 

released October 4th, 2024

Fifty years ago, Ed Kuepper and Chris Bailey birthed a blistering punk missive called ‘(I’m) Stranded’.

On a late train to his parents’ house in the Brisbane suburbs, Kuepper developed the melody and the first verse of what would become The Saints‘ debut single, before passing it on to band mate Bailey to finish off. The Saints, comprised of Kuepper, Bailey, drummer Ivor Hay and Kym Bradshaw on bass, independently pressed and distributed just 500 copies, the single pre-dating the first releases by the likes of The Damned, The Sex Pistols and The Clash.

Their debut album, recorded in December 1976, was essentially the band’s live set comprised of songs like ‘Nights in Venice’ and ‘Messin’ with the Kid’, which they’d developed over the handful of gigs they’d played at that point.

The Saints had their fans, but also met with plenty of resistance. “We were hillbillies from Brisbane,” Bailey explained to the ABC’s Long Way to the Top series. “Apart from the Bee Gees, nothing had ever come out of here, and they were foreign as well. Anyway, we’d been given a record contract from overseas, and at that particular point in time, with cultural cringe, Australian acts just didn’t make it overseas. So that was like a double whammy. And quite frankly, most people at the time thought we were crap.

The band’s relocation to London in 1977 proved equally challenging. They refused to ingratiate themselves to the English press, nor align themselves with the stylised imagery or fashion of punk staying true to their DIY ethos and the rigorous strains of social alienation that permeate the debut record, “(I’m) Stranded”.

It seems decidedly ‘unpunk’ to romanticise the story but, half a century on from its genesis, our understanding of its impact on Australian music and its role in the explosion of punk, rock and grunge around the world only continues to grow.

The Australian rock legends The Saints are reuniting this November to celebrate the release of a special vinyl box set featuring their iconic 1977 debut album, “(I’m) Stranded”. Following the tragic death of former lead singer Chris Bailey in 2022, the touring line-up includes two founding members—guitarist Ed Kuepper and drummer Ivor Hay—alongside honorary Saints: Mudhoney’s Mark Arm on vocals, Sunnyboys’ Peter Oxley on bass, and former The Birthday Party/Bad Seeds guitarist Mick Harvey. Billed as ‘The Saints ‘73-’78 Tour’, the live shows will cover the sounds of their first three albums: “(I’m) Stranded (1977), Eternally Yours (1978), and Prehistoric Sounds (1978),

Upon announcing the vinyl box reissue, the process of putting it together both “thrilling and exhausting.”

The exhausting part was that—and it wasn’t like I was working on it day in and day out—it took a long time editing it. There’s a lot of stuff that we didn’t include, and yet there’s a shitload of stuff that was. It was the booklet that took the longest time, just getting things into the correct chronological order, so it’s like a photo essay of sorts. You start at one point and then move through to a number of months or years after. It all took place in a relatively short period of time, so it took some time choosing what to include and exclude.

It’s almost like doing a biography or something. Because I was involved right from ’71, going through the music was easier because we knew what had to be included. It was a bit of an effort getting all the tapes together, but we managed to get that together and get them remastered with Don Bartley. It’s the first time it’s been mastered for vinyl in 40 years, and it sounds great. I was really taken; in fact, I think it sounds better than the original release.