The Fat Angel Sings

After a run of North American shows ranging from stadium dates supporting Foo Fighters to a sold-out two-night finale at the Fonda in L.A., Amyl and The Sniffers are to announce the release of their third album “Cartoon Darkness” via B2B Records / Virgin Music Group on October 25th, the album was recorded with producer Nick Launay (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles in early 2024. The album will be available in multiple formats, including limited edition glow in the dark vinyl with alternate artwork, and will feature lead track and BBC Radio 1 Hottest Record “Chewing Gum,” as well as previously released “U Should Not Be Doing That,” and no less than 11 tracks that showcase the band’s quantum progression and boundless energy.

Singer Amy Taylor explains, “Cartoon Darkness is about climate crisis, war, AI, tiptoeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they’re helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern-day god. It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.”

“Cartoon Darkness” is driving headfirst into the unknown, into this looming sketch of the future that feels terrible but doesn’t even exist yet. A childlike darkness. I don’t want to meet the devil half-way and mourn what we have right now. The future is cartoon, the prescription is dark, but it’s novelty. It’s just a joke. It’s fun.”

Regarding lead track “Chewing Gum,” Taylor comments, “The adversity of life is desire never fulfilled. Doing the dishes cleaning, but never the one eating the meal, so close but it’s never enough, and trying to celebrate the ignorance of youth despite it being robbed away, so choosing ignorance, choosing to be dumb and choosing love, despite everything, choosing bad decisions for love, for life, because it is short, or is it long? Surrendering to joy, surrendering to being a vision, in your own power, because making decisions based on emotion rather than logic is liberating, and despite the external inferno, you walk away unscathed, through flames, burnt but only superficially, unstopped, unaffected, unhuman. Life is work, life is not free, we can never work enough because the end goal doesn’t exist, so all we can do is choose to be wrong.”

“Into The Light” is the new 6CD box set from Whitesnake, and is based on David Coverdale’s three solo records. The “Into The Light” album was originally released as David Coverdale’s 3rd solo album, in September 2000, and was his first solo record in 22 years. Now it will be released remixed with extra tracks and presented as a Whitesnake album. With an impressive musical lineup, David is joined on “Into The Light” by guitarists Earl Slick and Doug Bossi, bassist Marco Mendoza, who would later join Whitesnake, legendary drummer Denny Carmassi, who as well as Whitesnake, has played with Montrose and Heart, and Mike Finningan on keyboards, who had previously played with Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s.

As well as plenty of unreleased songs and bonus tracks, the set includes “Too Many Tears,” a song David wrote with Adrian Vandenberg and originally featured on Whitesnake’s “Restless Heart” album.

Also included is “River Song,” David’s tribute to Jimi Hendrix, and “With All Of My Heart,” a song David wrote for his wife, and in his own words, one of top ten songs that he’s written. “Into The Light” also features the singles “Slave,” “Love Is Blind” and “Don’t You Cry.”

The box set will also include David’s first two solo records, Whitesnake “MCMLXXVII” from 1977 and Northwinds from 1978, the two titles he recorded immediately after leaving Deep Purple in 1976, in both remixed, expanded and remastered form.

Release Date: 25th October, 2024

Why Bonnie have unveiled a new single, ‘Three Big Moons’, which appears on their forthcoming LP “Wish on the Bone“. Following previous entries ‘Dotted Line’, ‘Fake Out’, and ‘Rhyme or Reason’, the track is “about how isolation can be equal parts comforting and lonely,” according to the band’s Blair Howerton. When Blair Howerton brought bandmates Chance Williams and Josh Malett together to work on Why Bonnie’s latest album.

Why Bonnie released their debut, “90 in November”, an album praised for its nostalgic depictions of wide-open spaces that earned comparisons to Waxahatchee and Wednesday. That album captured who Howerton felt like she was at the time – a twenty-something living in New York, yearning for the Texas of her adolescence through rose-colored glasses – but her self-conception is forever in flux. On “Wish on the Bone”, Why Bonnie is untethered from the particulars of landscape or genre, but a fixation on what it might look like to lead an authentic life grounds the record in place.

“Wish on the Bone” is set to arrive on August 30th via Fire Talk.

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are back after a five-year break with their new album “Wild God!” the upcoming 18th studio album by the Australian is set to be released on 30th August 2024 through PIAS.

It marks their first studio album in five years, following “Ghosteen” Across it’s ten tracks, the band dances between convention and experimentation, taking left turns and detours that enhance the rich imagery and emotion in Cave’s heartfelt narratives. There are moments that fondly recall the Bad Seeds’ past, but they are fleeting and only serve to add another facet to the band’s relentless and restless forward momentum. Nick Cave says of the album: “It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious.”

The journey to creating ‘Wild God’ began with sweeping epic ‘Frogs’. The first lines Nick Cave penned for the album were powerfully evocative, referencing the first murder in the Bible, Cain’s slaying of Abel. He wrote, “Ushering in the week he knelt down and crushed his brother’s head in with a bone/It’s my great privilege to walk you home.” This striking couplet became the opening lines to the song, and set the tone for the imagery and themes that followed.

Nick Cave says, “The sheer exuberance of a song like ‘Frogs’, it just puts a big fucking smile on my face.”

Produced by Cave and Warren Ellis and mixed by David Fridmann, Cave began writing the album on New Year’s Day 2023. Recording in Provence and London, the Bad Seeds finally added their unique alchemy, with additional appearances from Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar).

“Wild God...there’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it.” – Nick Cave

‘Wild God’, the new album from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds will be released on 30th August.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have released their first new album in four years. “Woodland“, which follows their 2020 covers LP “All the Good Times“, was recorded at the couple’s own Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville. “Woodland is at the heart of everything we do, and has been for the last twenty some years,” they said in a statement. “The past four years were spent almost entirely within its walls, bringing it back to life after the 2020 tornado and making this record. The music is (songs are) a swirl of contradictions, emptiness, fullness, joy, grief, destruction, permanence. Now.”

In November, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ 10th studio album, “Woodland”, was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Folk Album, and the lead track, “Empty Trainload of Sky,” received a nomination for Best Americana Performance. “Woodland” marks the 10th full-length studio album for the duo, who have been releasing their albums using alternating names based on “whoever was singing lead,” as Rawlings explains. With “Woodland”, Welch and Rawlings put both their names on it — along with the name of the studio where they not only record, but also the space they saved after it was struck by a tornado in 2020.

While in St. Paul for two nights of concerts at the Fitzgerald Theater, Welch and Rawlings walked over to The Current where Radio Heartland host and producer Mike Pengra welcomed them, along with bassist Paul Kowert, for a studio session. After playing a selection of songs from “Woodland”, Welch and Rawlings stuck around for a conversation with Mike Pengra.

A tight 10-track record that muses on loss and destruction, renewal and perseverance, the folk icons have brought another harmonic, thoughtful and sonically sparkling record our way yet again.

Acony Records is proud to present “Woodland“, the new album by the preeminent song writing team Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Following up their homespun Grammy-winning release “All The Good Times“, this ambitious 10 song album mingles full band tracks with intricate duet performances all tied together with the duo’s signature sound and remarkable lyricism. “Woodland” was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee at Welch and Rawlings’ own Woodland Sound Studio (newly rebuilt after the 2020 tornado) and cements the duo’s iconoclastic position at the forefront of acoustic music. 

A wonderful collection of songs. The range of styles and yet connected as well. Well worth waiting for.

released August 23rd, 2024

“Five Dice, All Threes” is a record of uncommon intensity and tenderness, communal exorcism and personal excavation. These are, of course, qualities that fans have come to expect from Bright Eyes, nearly three decades into their career. The tight-knit band of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott tends to operate in distinct sweeping movements: each unique in its sound and story but unified by a sense of ambition and ever-growing emotional stakes. Even with this rich history behind them, these new songs exude a visceral thrill like nothing they have attempted before.

Oberst has always sung in a voice that conveys a sense of life-or-death gravity. At times throughout “Five Dice, All Threes“, you may feel worried for him; other times, he may seem like the only one with the clarity to get us out of this mess. 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 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 multiinstrumentalist 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.

“Rainbow Overpass” (ft Alex Orange Drink), the second single off of ‘Five Dice, All Threes’

“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 catalogue. As per usual, the music comes loaded with subtext that invites deep listening—the signature touch of a band who has always honoured 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.

“Five Dice, All Threes” returns Bright Eyes to their most essential, urgent sound. Features Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and Matt Berninger (The National).‘Five Dice, All Threes’, out September 20th on Dead Oceans.

The Wednesday guitarist kicks out yet another thrilling solo album of indie rock moreishness, replete with grainy lo-fi melodies & muscular guitar wrangling.

The anatomy of an MJ Lenderman record might go something like this: warped pedal steels and skuzzed out guitar; crackin’ a cold one with some buds; a voice reminiscent of the high- lonesome warble of a choirboy. Songs snake their way from a lo- fi home recording to something glossier made with long time friends at Asheville’s Drop of Sun studios, but the recording setting doesn’t seem to matter much – at its core, a Lenderman song rings true. “Manning Fireworks” is a remarkable development in MJ Lenderman’s story as an incredibly incisive singer-songwriter, whose propensity for humour always points to some uneasy, disorienting darkness.

The punchlines are still here, as are the rusted-wire guitar solos that have made Lenderman a favourite for indie rock fans looking for an emerging guitar hero.

There’s a new sincerity, too, as Lenderman lets listeners clearly see the world through his warped lens.

Here we have a compilation entitled ‘I Followed My Dreams and My Dreams Said To Crawl” How I Admit I Didn’t Sign Up for Showbiz To Be Cosmically Knee-Capped By A Karmic Teacher Disguised This Time As The Bathetic Career of a Semi Beloved Fringe Balladeer In The Twenty Teens’, which exists now because over the last year or so, thanks to market forces beyond my comprehension, we’ve had an influx of new listeners. The idea was to offer them a piece of vinyl featuring, hopefully, all the songs they like in one place. Thanks for listening.

The double LP package features cover art from Kevin Tong Illustration, liner notes from novelist and screenwriter Bruce Wagner and comes on clear vinyl with green/blue/purple splatter.

“Greatish Hits: I Followed My Dreams and My Dreams Said to Crawl” is the singer-songwriter’s career-spanning collection of songs taken from his five widely acclaimed albums, including Fear Fun (2012), I Love You, Honeybear (2015), the Grammy-nominated Pure Comedy (2017), God’s Favorite Customer (2018), and Chloë and The Next 20th Century (2022). 

Greatish Hits marks the first appearance of fan favourite “Real Love Baby” on an album release. It also includes the brand new, previously unreleased song “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All.” 

Father John Misty has sold over 1.1 million copies in the US and has amassed over 11.7 million monthly listeners to date. He’s earned accolades from the likes of The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Rolling Stone, and has performed on Saturday Night Live, Austin City Limits, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and The Tonight Show. Father John Misty and his incredible nine piece live band have headlined The Hollywood Bowl, Red Rocks, and Radio City Music Hall as well as appearances at renowned International festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Roskilde, and Fuji Rock.

Father John Misty’s song “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All” is out on Sub Pop and Bella Union.

“I Followed My Dreams and My Dreams Said To Crawl’ is out now digitally and available for preorder on 2xLP and CD formats.

“Road to Red” Boxset. Sixteen concerts spread across 20 CDs of the final tour of my favourite King Crimson line-up. The shows here culminated in the creation of their final studio album, 1974’s “Red”. This was an intensely creative period for the band, full of musical improvisation. The music of this period was heavy and dynamic, moving effortlessly from whisper quiet to volcanically loud.

“Red” is probably my favourite King Crimson album. I love the guitar playing of Robert Fripp, and the drumming genius of Bill Bruford, but honestly, it’s the monster sized bass sound of John Wetton that keeps me coming back to this period of King Crimson. The new remaster of “Red” sounds superb to these ears and whilst the 5.1 recording is crystal clear, it is a matter of personal taste as to whether you like this modern take on classic albums.

The book contains Fripp’s diary which hold some interesting or telling comments and it would appear that Bill Bruford caused him some concerns at times, but there again he was not happy with his own playing all the time.  Tracks including “One More Red Nightmare” with John Wetton in top form and Robert Fripp creating building tension and release on the title track, it became one of Crimson’s most powerful beasts. And what about the beautiful, haunting mellotron intro to “Starless” introducing one of Fripp’s melodious and pure solos. Oh simply wondrous, not only is it beautifully packaged with an album size replica of the original cover, plus “USA” envelope of track recordings with pics inside and a most informative 40 page booklet

20 CDs of live material from the final USA & Canadian 1974 tours, 1 CD of studio material featuring a new stereo mix of “Red”, 1 DVD featuring various versions of the “USA” album/concert, 2 Blu-Ray discs featuring 5 complete concerts in high-resolution stereo + “Red” in hi-res stereo & 5.1, 12” box with booklet, memorabilia & album prints. Limited to one worldwide pressing.

“Red” was one of King Crimson’s best albums, if not The best and this set serves as a document of the music the band were making live leading up to “Red”. If it weren’t for the cost I’d say everyone should own this. This is a record of a ground-breaking band at the height of their powers.

Drawing from the best elements of the California psychedelic scene of the early 70s, along with a distinctly Zeppelin-esque flair, Feel captures the spirit of a bygone era, while suggesting what may be possible and still left unsaid from that heady time. They possess the keen energy, magnetism, and showmanship of the great vintage era bands without devolving into predictable cliché. Feel provides a promising glimpse into the direction of emerging American rock

Heat, passion, charm, and churn come together in FEEL’s invigorating new single “Find a Love,” a smile-inducing hard rock reverie full of raw energy and sizzling sound.

 Feel is a band for fans of searing guitar riffs, dynamic drumming, sonically charged melodies, and soaring vocals, that is. This is a band we Feel in our bones; a band whose fiery sound is as refreshing as it is familiar. Heat, passion, charm, and churn come together in FEEL’s invigorating new single “Find a Love,” a smile-inducing hard rock reverie.