The Fat Angel Sings

Geordie Greep’s debut solo album comes 4th October on Rough Trade Records. “The main theme of the record is desperation; you don’t hear an unreliable narrator but someone who is kidding themselves that they have everything under control, but they don’t.” – Geordie Greep

Geordie Greep (guitarist and vocalist in black midi) releases his debut solo album ‘The New Sound’ and shares its first single ‘Holy, Holy’ plus video directed by Ethan and Tom.

Following three astonishing albums with black midi, most recently 2023’s ‘Hellfire’, and almost non-stop worldwide tours for near-on five years, Geordie Greep has somehow found time to record his first solo album ‘The New Sound’, an album that has allowed him scope to explore creative ideas like never before. It boasts a brand of high quality, all-embracing alternative pop fun not heard in a very long time. Geordie Greep; “With recording ‘The New Sound’, it was the first time I have had no one to answer to. And with every impulse I had, I was able to completely follow it through to its conclusion. Being in a band (black midi), we often have this ‘we can do everything’ feeling, but you are also kind of limited in that approach, and sometimes it’s good to do something else, to let go of things.”

Over thirty session musicians were involved in the making of the album, on two continents, in São Paulo and London. Geordie Greep; “Some of the tracks we had recorded already, elsewhere, but it just wasn’t right, so we re-recorded them with new people. Half of the tracks were done in Brazil, with local musicians pulled together at the last minute. They’d never heard anything I’d done before, they were just interested in the demos I’d made. The tracking was all done in one, maybe two days. Then we did the overdubs later, in London.”

Geordie Greep has had plenty of practice with black midi over the years in performing musical and lyrical Cruyff turns, full of stop-starts, blasts and bangs and whispered soliloquies. Here the method is employed to ask: what part of the narrative should we listeners believe, or take as our emotional crutch? The mercurial, insouciant tone set in ‘Terra’, or the gruesome imagery it is juxtaposed with? After all, Greep tells us, this is the story of “the museum of human suffering.” Consider, too, the strange emotional undulations created in ‘Through a War’, where the music makes a very polished stab at aping a soul revue; or a salsa class. It’s there to give colour to a set of imaginings which include cannibalism, being boiled alive, and a woman giving birth to a goat. You’re never quite sure when, or whether, you are supposed to be shocked; or laugh. Even if, as with the latter, Geordie Greep gives us the punchline; “And that’s how I spent my adolescence.”

Street life is all around: the listener is thrown into a world of cafes, bars and clubs, visit theatres, cabarets and strange museums, or rented rooms. Here we see our heroes carry out a series of naughty assignations, military cosplay or socio-economic triumphs. Greep; “I was often thinking of walking through a city, and thinking about a million dollars, showing that kind of feeling, you know?” Taking on The New Sound in its entirety can feel like you are trying to cross Piccadilly Circus after a skinful.

Single ‘Holy Holy’ is possibly the best example: has urbane romantic fantasy ever sounded this way? Probably not since Noël Coward. This story of an imaginary liaison in a nightclub is soundtracked by ’noughties indie pop chords and bravura Latin big band arrangements – including a three-piano attack (Steinway, Bechstein, electric). ‘Motorbike’ sees a change in vocal duties: as bassist and album producer Seth ‘Shank’ Evans starts up a doleful soliloquy about not getting what he wants.

It’s certainly an album that fully engages the listener, throughout the eleven tracks. Greep; “I was worried about the length in terms of not overblowing it. But I’m also really bloody bored of listening to music and, for better or worse, knowing in advance what it means or what it’s trying to do. All my favourite music is about the listener coming to terms with what is going on. My favourite singers, like Peter Hammill or Nat King Cole, are literally one of a kind. I love that. Especially with lyrics, where you’re not sure what they’re going on about, but you know it’s not just abstract thoughts.”

What next? Could we see “The New Sound” as a live concept or is the album going to stay forever in our collective imagination? Greep; “My plan is to ‘do a Keith Jarrett thing’, have a different group of session musicians in a different place and lean into the fact that we’re not going to get it the same.” How can anything ever be ‘the same’ with Greep at the helm?

From the new album ‘The New Sound’,

Radiohead began taking longer and longer gaps between albums over the years (But there’s still hope that they’ll do another album together), but with The Smile, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are already more prolific than Radiohead have been in years, if not ever. “Cutouts” is their third album in a two-and-a-half year span, and their second released this year. And as “Kid A/Amnesiac” fans know, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood releasing two albums in close succession does not mean that one is leftovers.

If anything, this follow up to January’s acclaimed “Wall of Eyes” might be even better than its predecessor. It’s at least more accessible; it harnesses some of the same psychedelia that fuelled “Wall of Eyes” (particularly on the hallucinogenic “Colours Fly”), but it’s less jammy and freeform. It veers closer to the tight, futuristic art rock of 2000s-era Radiohead, with Thom’s ever-angelic voice supported by a bed of stabbing guitar riffs, buzzing synths, sweeping string arrangements from the London Contemporary Orchestra, and the heart-pounding rhythms of drummer Tom Skinner.

These songs are some of the strongest that Thom and Jonny have written together in recent memory, and they scratch so many different types of Radiohead-esque itches, from the chaos of “Zero Sum” to the gentle acoustics of “Instant Psalm” to the paranoid pop of “Don’t Get Me Started.”

It can be easy to start to take brilliant, lifer songwriters like Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood for granted, especially when they give you two albums in the same year, but a great album like “Cutouts” is as good a reminder as any to never do that.

Featuring interviews with band members, fellow musicians Bob Geldof, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, The Specials’ Jerry Dammers, Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri, Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield, writer Irvine Welsh, actress Molly Ringwald and album producers John Leckie, Pete Walsh, Steve Hillage, Trevor Horn and Jimmy Iovine. Produced and Directed by Joss Crowley

Considered one of the greatest live bands of the past 40 years

“An engaging look back at an inspiring backstory through the eyes of the band’s founding friends. As Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill prepared to tour their latest version of Simple Minds – described by Kerr in the film as being as much of a “theatrical ensemble” as a traditional band – Joss Crowley’s film goes back to the start, when the pair met in a building site at their new flats in Toryglen in Glasgow – a city “in a rush to modernise” as Kerr recalls.” – Peter Watts (UNCUT)

‘Simple Minds: Everything Is Possible’ The first ever feature length documentary-film chronicling the most iconic and influential Scottish band in history.

Nearly two decades since their beginnings, The Horrors are set to release their 6th album and with this new record comes a new captivating sound that still encompasses those early years with even more gothic allure. Nearly 20 years since they first began, there are few bands who’ve created a canon as determinedly innovative and consistently critically acclaimed as The Horrors. Emerging as zeitgeist-shaking garage-goths on their 2007 debut “Strange House”, before taking a shoegaze-nodding sharp left on their Mercury-nominated follow up “Primary Colours“, since the beginning they’ve roamed between genres and atmospheres freely. 2011’s “Skying” won the NME Award for Best Album; “V” was heralded as “a triumph” in a five-star Guardian review, while 2021’s pair of EPs – ‘Lout’ and ‘Against The Blade’ – marked a visceral new chapter with their most industrial, uncompromising output yet.

Whilst the end results have changed, however, at their core has always been the same unbending commitment and bloody-minded allegiance to the cause. The Horrors are not and will never be a band that approach the job lightly. They’re musicians who’ll funnel everything they are into the process, at the expense of health, wealth and sometimes sanity. And so, whilst sixth album “Night Life” sees the band once more shapeshift into a new form, with a new sonic outlook and – this time – a new line up, in some ways The Horrors are still as they ever were.

We’ll be playing some special intimate UK shows in November and December.

This is the first single from our coming album, “Night Life”, out 21.03.25.

Vince Vaughn‘s AppleTV+ series “Bad Monkey” has almost wrapped up its first season, and the soundtrack, with an impressive list of artists covering Tom Petty‘s music, is officially out today.

Vince Vaughn stars as a former detective in black comedy series “Bad Monkey”. Based on the novel by Carl Hiaasen, the series follows former police detective turned restaurant inspector Andrew Yancy (Vaughn) who is pulled into a world of greed and corruption after a tourist finds a severed arm while fishing.

We’d already heard renditions of Petty’s songs from Eddie Vedder, Larkin Poe, Fitz & The Tantrums, flipturn, The War on Drugs, Jason Isbell, and Kurt Vile from it, and now you can hear the rest, including Sharon Van Etten‘s take on “I Won’t Back Down,” Weezer‘s version of “Here Comes My Girl,” also Nathaniel Rateliff‘s rendition of “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” Stephen Marley‘s cover of “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” and more.

Vedder also did a solo take on Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” playing a guitar Petty had given him, at Pearl Jam’s Philadelphia show last month,

Jason Isbell included a rendition of Petty’s “Room at the Top” on his new live album, “Live From The Ryman Vol. 2”, which is also out today. Isbell’s contribution is “You’re Gonna Get It,” which, accordingly is not one of the eleven Petty covers that Isbell has performed live over the years. As you might expect, Jason nails a perfect balance between staying faithful to the original and making it his own. 

Sharon Van Etten, meanwhile, did a fantastic cover of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Shearwater for the AV Club in 2012.

With his 2021 self-titled debut, Andy Pastalaniec’s Chime School became one of the defining acts of the seemingly never-ending, prolific and multifaceted Bay Area pop scene. Slumberland Records is thrilled to announce his LP, “The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel”, is set for release on August 23rd.

Recorded by Pastalaniec himself, in his home studio on the foggy southern edge of San Francisco, “Paisley Hotel” sets a moodier tone; slowed and patiently unfolding in moments that highlight an evolution in songcraft, production and arrangement–while still bouncing along with the jangling drive Chime School fans have come to adore.

As its title implies, 30-plus years of UK indie pop’s deeper cuts are voraciously mined and refined on the 11-song release that fans of East Village, later Teenage Fanclub, and maybe even Northern Picture Library’s Alaska will devour.

But these songs are also very much rooted in the Bay Area of 2024, boasting both lyrical gestures to gentrification’s destruction, beloved shuttered bars and theatre’s, as well as a song writing collaboration with SF native Mike Ramos, of Tony Jay/Flowertown fame, on the album’s penultimate song.

Cheekily-named opener, “The End,” starts with a strum of acoustic guitars, before bursting into Chime School’s characteristic 12-string jangle, then veering off into melancholy mid-tempo pop that East Village’s Kelly brothers should be proud to have influenced.

“Give Your Heart Away” shows off Pastalaniec’s evolution as a songwriter, gracefully moving beyond the confines of beloved records that have come before, and then stepping out and making his own.

Standout track “Wandering Song,” shares that same innovation, even as you hear a whisper of Gerry Love’s finest moments swirling beneath. As the final atmospherics of “Paisley Hotel’s” closer “Points of Light” fade and you inevitably turn the record over for another listen, it’s likely you’ll hear both subtle references you didn’t hear before, and also be left with a sense for this musician; how the journey of writing, arranging and recording each record elevates him to a new, fresh place you’ll want to follow, where we all hope Chime School keeps going.

released August 23rd, 2024

The Royal Mail to mark the 60th anniversary of The Who revealed details of 12 stamps which feature images of some of The Who’s most popular album covers and group shots from some of their live performances. The album covers are “My Generation” from 1965 designed by David Wedgbury; “Tommy” from 1969 designed by Michael McInnerney; “Who’s Next” from 1971 designed by Ethan Russell and Kosh; “Quadrophenia” from 1973 designed by Graham Hughes; “Who Are You” from 1978 designed by Terry O’Neill and Bill Smith; “Face Dances” from 1981 designed by Sir Peter Blake; “Endless Wire” from 2006 designed by Richard Evans; and “WHO” from 2019 designed by Sir Peter Blake.

A miniatures sheet features two group publicity shots and two images of the band’s live performances at the Marquee Club in London in 1967 and the Kings Hall in Belle Vue, Manchester, in 1973.

Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon formed The Who in 1964. (Before that they were The Detours and, for a short while, Within five years, they went from performing club shows to headlining the Woodstock festival in the US and becoming the biggest box-office draw in the world.

Roger Daltrey said: “The artwork on the album sleeves was almost as important to the success of the record as the music. It’s great to be reminded of them.”

And Pete Townshend added: “Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! It’s what I’ve done on stage all my life, sometimes in the air. At last my stamping, and that of my buddy Roger, has been honoured properly, and will help letters, parcels and birthday cards travel through time and space, just as we have.”

David Gold, Royal Mail’s director of external affairs and policy, said: “With their truly original sound and effortless ability to mix musical styles, The Who are rock royalty. These stamps celebrate one of the UK’s much-loved and revered musical bands who have achieved global popularity for six decades.”

The new Royal Mail special edition stamps celebrating 60 Years of The Who will be available to purchase on 17 October from the Royal Mail website.

UFO’s seventh album “Obsession” will be reissued in November as vinyl and CD deluxe editions.

The 1978 album was the last to feature Michael Schenker, until his return to the band in the ’90s. one of their most interesting musically. With the writing partnership of Mogg / Schenker in fine form, these recordings feel more atmospheric and darker than previous outings. For this re-release the album has been newly mastered from the original production tapes transfers (at AIR Mastering).

The four bonus tracks include a previously unreleased Alt. Version of ‘Cherry’ as well as two studio tracks recorded at The Record Plant for “Strangers In The Night” live album in the months following the “Obsession” release.

Both 2CD and 3LP vinyl editions offer a previously unreleased 2024 Mix of “Live at The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland”, which originally featured within the classic “Strangers In The Night” live album. This has been newly mixed by engineer Brian Kehew, from the original multi-track tapes.

“Come Ahead” is Primal Scream’s 12th full length record. 11 new songs that find Bobby Gillespie preparing to release some of the most personal song writing of the band’s career.

The song writing process for “Come Ahead” began in 2019. At which point Bobby Gillespie had no idea if he would make another Primal Scream album again. For the first time, the lyrics came before the music. The story came first. Bobby wrote alone, using an acoustic guitar. Ideas flowed fast, in long bursts of inspiration. This process, in tandem with encouragement from producer David Holmes, provided a new way in. Working with Holmes and Primal Scream guitarist Andrew Innes, the “Come Ahead” sessions were completed between Belfast, London and Los Angeles.

“I’m very excited about this album in a way that you would be making your first record. If there was an overall theme to “Come Ahead” it might be one of conflict, whether inner or outer. The title is a Glaswegian term. If someone threatens to fight you, you say, ‘come ahead!’ It’s redolent of the indomitable spirit of the Glaswegian, and the album itself shares that aggressive attitude and confidence. They have a word for this up there, gallus. “Come Ahead’s” quite a cheeky title too.” Bobby Gillespie.

Taken from the upcoming album ‘Come Ahead’ out 8th November.

“King of America” Elvis Costello‘s 1986 album has been remastered and expanded for a new 6CD box set called “King Of America & Other Realms” which is described as “97-track musical journey” and takes in unheard demos, live performances and tracks & rarities related to other albums recorded in America later in Costello’s career.

Discs 1, 2 & 3 in this set focus on “King of America” with the first offering a 2024 remaster (from the original tapes) and the second home to 17 demos. It seems incredible that there’s anything left after the expanded and double CD sets of the 1990s… but there is! Specifically, there’s six previously unreleased demos cut at Red Bus Recording Studios in London, in the months prior to the “King Of America” sessions in Hollywood which are mixed from newly discovered multitrack tapes. The third CD offers a 17-song Royal Albert Hall concert from 1987 in London, also mixed from the multitracks.

Costello himself has compiled this set (with Steve Berkowitz) which probably explains disc 4, 5 & 6 which are “a three-disc compendium of recordings and collaborations from across the last four decades, including previously unreleased demos, outtakes and live recordings”. For example, there’s some songs from Costello and Allen Toussaint’s collaborative album, “The River In Reverse“, almost half of Costello’s “National Ransom” record from 2010 (it was recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles) along with some demos and outtakes from the same album.

“King Of America & Other Realms” culminates with three new recordings recorded in 2024: ‘Indoor Fireworks’ (Memphis Magnetic Version), ‘That’s Not The Part of Him You’re Leaving’ with Larkin Poe and a recent arrangement of ‘Brilliant Mistake’. The final song is ‘That Day Is Done’ a song co-written by Costello and Paul McCartney for McCartney’s 1989 album “Flowers In The Dirt”, performed with the gospel group The Fairfield Four (this has been available before).

The 6CD super deluxe edition box comes with a 57-page booklet, home to a 35-page essay from Costello with the usual rare photos. The bookset type package is almost album-sized, at 12” x 11.5”.

“King Of America & Other Realms” is released on 1st November 2024 via UMe.