The Fat Angel Sings

On October 25th, Songs: Ohia’s album originally released in 2000 “Protection Spells” will see a vinyl release from Secretly Canadian for the first time ever, after years being out of print in other formats. Featuring nine entirely improvised pieces, the album is considered a fan favourite for many and an irreplaceable part of the Jason Molina back catalogue.

Of “Protection Spells” album, Molina had this to say:
“The Protection Spells” is a collection of songs recorded over a period of several Songs: Ohia tours. Presented here are nine entirely improvised pieces. The approach to these songs involved no rehearsals, no second takes, no additions and no going back. What you have here are songs that just happened in real time. The many musicians on these recordings were friends, bandmates, and, at times, total strangers. I have long hoped to offer the listener a chance to have some of these great accidents on record. It is a direct look at my songwriting process, only a little more risky, and nobody has any idea what direction we are going until we all start working on it together. I think that the years of improvised music I played in the past helped to strengthen the risk-taking with these songs.

Here the goal was to still have basic songs without falling into long freak-out noise experiments, saving that kind of exploration for live settings. You will notice the appearances and disappearances of ideas that could never be recreated, not that they are all brilliant, but they are certainly not forced. The seemingly arbitrary moments of strange repetition the lyrics, the clear lack of a preconceived system of established song parts, all are the marks of improvised songwriting. Since even the singing had no idea what the floorplan of the song was to be, there were some unanticipated troubles and some shy steps taken, but I have preserved these mappings of the dangerous musical byroads that Songs: Ohia has always depended on. I hope you enjoy this.” — Jason Molina, July 10th, 2000

Secretly Canadian is proud to reissue a limited run of Songs: Ohia’s “Protection Spells“, a collection of some of the most precious time capsules in the greater Molina Vaults. 

“Protection Spells” has a spotty release history, with long periods out of print and limited formats. It returns to print now for the first time in  over a decade (possibly two) and for the first time ever on vinyl.

How often do we hear from the outsider’s perspective? For rising new artist Gia Ford, those figures on the fringes of society are by far the most fascinating. Her songs tell the stories of the downtrodden to the down right dangerous. And through them, we begin to hear familiar, uncomfortable truths about ourselves. 

“Transparent Things” is Gia Ford’s debut album, and first album release with Chrysalis Records. Produced by Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers) at Sound City Studios in LA. Since the release of her first single at the end of 2023, Gia has been championed by a number of taste maskers, including being chosen in The Independent’s Ones To Watch for 2024.

“Transparent Things” is about alienation. “Most of the characters in these songs are outcasts, all with unique ways of feeling on the periphery, somehow,” Ford says. “I’ve discovered, through the grouping of these songs, that I’m drawn to this sort of story.” While each song operates in its own realm, their subject matters create a throughline of eccentricity that turns “Transparent Things” into a kind of odyssey of outcasts. 

“Transparent Things” isn’t a concept album, but I think I have always been drawn to darker subject matters,” she says. “We’ve all gone through a period of not understanding why we feel a certain way, or having the sense that something is missing in our lives. We’ve all felt like outsiders.” – Gia Ford

Debut album “Transparent Things” out 13/09/24:

The Newport Folk Festival was never strictly limited to folk music, but the 2008 festival expanded the musical diversity more than ever before. Perhaps taking a cue from the massive success of younger festivals like Bonnaroo, the 2008 roster included bigger ticket artists like The Black Crowes right along with the folk, bluegrass and blues troubadours that usually topped the bill. Despite some weather issues, this approach turned out to be a resounding success and all of the headlining acts turned in memorable performances that often conveyed the influence of the traditional styles that originally launched the festival.

One of the most surprising and highly anticipated groups to appear was The Black Crowes, who closed out the Saturday schedule, following a torrential downpour that significantly reduced the size of the festival audience. When they hit the main Fort Stage shortly after 5:00 PM, those that remained were treated to what many considered the highlight set of the festival. The performance was tempered in a way that paid tribute to the festival and its history, while still featuring plenty of the group’s trademark guitar driven rock, heavily influenced by groups like The Stones, The Faces and The Allman Brothers Band, which the Robinson brothers had grown up on.

At this time The Black Crowes were 18-year veterans of the road with thousands of concerts behind them, and a true force in modern rock music. The band had weathered internal struggles in the preceding years and had just completed their seventh album, “Warpaint”, their strongest in over a decade. Just prior to the sessions, two personnel changes had taken place, with the addition of keyboard player Adam MacDougall and former North Mississippi Allstars guitarist Luther Dickinson being brought on board.

The “Warpaint” album revealed a more seasoned band with a newfound sense of solidarity. Without changing their basic sound and dynamics, “Warpaint” conveyed a more original and distinctive band, while still drawing on the influences that initially drew listeners in.

The Black Crowes’ set began during a vibrant sunset, just as the storm had cleared. Well aware that much of their music would easily plow over most acoustic troubadours, the Robinson brothers initially hit the stage alone, armed with acoustic guitars.

Paying tribute to the stripped down folk music that initially launched the festival, they begin with a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country.” Following this, Luther Dickinson joins the brothers on stage, adding mandolin embellishments to “He Was A Friend Of Mine,” the 1960s anthem that conveyed the sense of loss following the assassination of President Kennedy. Both of these numbers are extremely well received and convey a sense of respect for the festival and its history.

With MacDougall (whose birthday it was) and the rhythm section joining the other members onstage, the first number off the new album, “Whoa Mule,” is next. A bluesy number that begins a capella and then builds its intensity gradually, this song has a thrust that cannot be denied. With Dickinson contributing slide and a striking vocal from Robinson, this conveys a band more comfortable and confident than ever before. Two well-chosen covers surface next, first in the form of “Polly,” a country flavoured obscurity written by ex-Byrd Gene Clark, recorded for the second (and more obscure) Dillard & Clark album in 1969.

However, it is the medley of Delaney & Bonnie songs that follows that is one of the true highlights of this performance. Rich Robinson starts it out with some strident acoustic rhythm as they kick into a wonderful rendition of “Poor Elijah.” This cooks from the get-go and quickly builds into a soulful romp with Dickinson seemingly channelling Duane Allman (who played on the original). Like the Delaney & Bonnie recording, it then gets even bluesier, with Robinson belting out the “Tribute To Johnson” section, but rather than concluding there, they toss in a bit of “Things Get Better” before wrapping it up. This is a superb performance that rivals the originals.

With MacDougall organ swells serving as a segue, they next ease into a confident reading of “Wiser Time,” the single from the 1994 album, “Amorica”. Dickinson’s slide work and MacDougall’s electric piano underpinnings are both notable here. As this progresses over twelve minutes, longtime listeners will recognize a newfound chemistry emerging between these musicians. The Crowes could always jam, but here there are no aimless improvisations. Instead, there is focused soloing and a collective sound that can only occur when musicians are carefully listening to each other. Two fine new songs from “Warpaint”, “Movin’ On Down The Line” and “Goodbye Daughters Of The Revolution,” are prime examples of this chemistry. Even on “Jealous Again,” the hit that first brought the band recognition, Dickinson and MacDougall’s contributions add freshness, while losing none of the Faces-influenced flavour that made it so fun in the first place.

The final 25 minutes of the set is a two-song tour de force beginning with the “Warpaint” ballad “Oh Josephine,” which gradually ratchets up the intensity level over the course of 8 minutes. One of the band’s most compelling songs, this is a slow-rolling burn that builds to a blazing close. A spacey organ interlude from MacDougall follows, before the band segues into the opening of “Thorn In My Pride.” Expanded well beyond its original incarnation, this is engaging from the start and doesn’t let go for its 15-minute duration. Within a few minutes, the band is deeply engaged with Rich Robinson’s overdriven guitar cutting through like a knife. Just when they’ve reached a major crescendo (at exactly the six-minute mark), everyone drops out, leaving Chris Robinson to begin a blues harp solo. With Robinson leading the way, the band builds into a menacing jam that is quite inspired. At times this bears a striking resemblance to the snaky grooves of “Midnight Rambler” and is every bit as intense as The Stones in their 1969 prime. Under tight time restrictions as the final act of the day, no encore was possible, but by the time “Thorn In My Pride” winds to its soulful conclusion, the audience erupts with applause having witnessed one of the hardest hitting Newport Folk Festival performances ever.

They were sensational – and each on-stage album from CSN&Y feels sensational too. Not that there were too many of those releases capturing David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Neil Young in their prime: only 1971’s “4 Way Street” would count as such, with “CSNY 1974” from 2014 documenting the quarter’s second coming, with a few moments in the “Woodstock” and “Journey Through The Past” soundtracks rounding off the foursome’s officially available early-era concert recordings.

Here’s why “Live At Fillmore East, 1969” which will be out on October 25th is a historic thing.

The platter that Neil Young hinted at as early as in April of this year and that he and Stephen Stills mixed from the original eight-track is much more interesting than its predecessors not only because it comes from a single venue and a single date, September 20th – although there were two shows performed there but also because it leans on the players’ solo material to a lesser extent.

Comprised of two sets, acoustic and electric, the band’s repertoire on the night included “Our House” and “4 + 20” which would surface on “Déjà Vu” in 1970 – the former addressing Joni Mitchell, who inspired the song and was in the Fillmore to hear Graham Nash serenading her – and “Find The Cost Of Freedom” which would appear later as a B-side of the “Ohio” single. Factor in Buffalo Springfield’s “I’ve Loved Her So Long” and pieces from the ensemble’s debut LP, and the significance of the forthcoming release becomes impossible to overestimate.

After famously playing their second show at Woodstock in August 1969, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young spent the rest of the year touring and writing songs for what would become Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 debut, ‘Déjà Vu’. A newly discovered multi-track recording of the band’s September 20th, 1969, concert at the historic Fillmore East in New York City captures an early moment from that first tour. The setlist spotlights soon-to-be classics from CSN’s self-titled debut and Young’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere with “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” “Helplessly Hoping,” and “Down By The River.” 2xLP and CD are out everywhere on October 25th.

“Live at Fillmore East, 1969” contains an acoustic portion—featuring performances of “Helplessly Hoping,” the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” Buffalo Springfield’s “On the Way Home ” and “Broken Arrow,” Déjà Vu’s “4 + 20,” and more—and a shorter electric portion featuring “Sea of Madness,” “Down by the River,” and more.

In a statement, Graham Nash said, “Hearing the music again after all these years, I can tell how much we loved each other and loved the music that we were creating. We were four people revelling in the different sounds we were producing, quietly singing together on the one hand, then rocking like fuck for the rest of the concert.”

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 

So similar in name to Dr Hook but don’t be alarmed this is something completely different. It has been voted one of the rarest records of all time and was released in an edition of less than a hundred back in 1972.  Instead what we have is another one of those 1970s private press LPs unearthed by Numero Group.

D.R. Hooker was a robe-clad hippy going through a midlife crisis and made this wonderful spiritual album which showcases a rare songwriting talent mixing acid-rock, folk and on ‘Falling Asleep’ something that sounds like Syd Barrett meeting Love. Hints of Rodriguez too, certainly on the opening ‘Forge Your Own Chains’ which leads off an album that is way more sophisticated than it has any right to be and rightly deserves a larger audience.  

“The Truth” is somehow out of time and very of its time—it’s very, very 1972. Washy, psychedelic grooves drift along, occasionally dipping into electronic processing and heavy guitars, while Hooker make attempts to come to terms with the psychedelic movement. The songs are fuelled by this tension between psychedelia and religion. After the carefree 1960s, and the prevalence of free love, be-ins, and LSD, the 70s took a decidedly darker, more paranoid turn. For some, drugs clearly were not the answer, and “The Truth” is clearly rooted in Hooker’s desire to find something more concrete and less fleeting. In the title track, he asks “Does it seem to pass you by / Or do you try to change your mind”, as if giving voice to the inner turmoil highlighted in songs such as ‘Forge Your Chains’, a discussion about hedonism, and whether “the hard stuff ain’t so bad”. 

“The Truth” is a tantalising prospect. Much like its namesake, the album is elusive and amorphous. For a start, it was a private press—a very private press. Only ninety-nine copies were ever made, which made it something of a Holy Grail for collectors.

As the final studio album to feature guitar virtuoso Michael Schenker before his temporary departure from UFO, “Obsession” holds a special place in the band’s storied history.

“Obsession” was released at a pivotal time for UFO. It was the band’s seventh studio album and followed the success of “Lights Out” (1977), which firmly established the band as a force to be reckoned with in the hard rock and heavy metal scenes. While “Lights Out” broke into the UK Albums Chart “Obsession” continued this momentum, further cementing UFO’s reputation as one of the leading rock acts of the late 1970s.

On “Obsession”, UFO showcased a more atmospheric and darker sound, signaling the deepening collaboration between vocalist Phil Mogg and guitarist Michael Schenker. The album features iconic tracks like “Only You Can Rock Me” and “Cherry,” both of which became staples in the band’s live performances. The album’s production, handled by Ron Nevison, helped give it a polished yet powerful sound, one that would stand the test of time.

The 2024 Remastered Deluxe Edition: of “Obsession” has been crafted with great care, using the original production tape transfers and remastered at AIR Mastering.

One of the standout features of this deluxe edition is the inclusion of a previously unreleased 2024 mix of “Live At The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland“. While parts of this performance originally appeared on UFO’s legendary “Strangers In The Night” live album, this new mix—engineered by renowned producer Brian Kehew—offers the best version to date, straight from the original multi-track tapes. This live set captures UFO at their peak, with Schenker’s blistering guitar work and Mogg’s commanding vocals on full display.

In addition to the remastered album and live material, the 2024 Remastered Deluxe Edition also includes four bonus tracks. Notably, the set features an alternate version of “Cherry,” giving listeners a fresh perspective on one of the band’s most beloved tracks.

Two of the bonus studio tracks were recorded at The Record Plant during sessions for “Strangers In The Night”, adding another layer of historical significance to this release. These tracks highlight UFO’s creative energy in the months following “Obsession’s” release, offering a glimpse into the band’s dynamic during one of their most productive periods.

Upon its original release, “Obsession” was met with critical acclaim for its blend of hard rock, intricate melodies, and atmospheric elements. The album’s success further solidified UFO’s standing in the rock world, and Michael Schenker’s contributions were particularly praised. Schenker’s innovative guitar work on “Obsession” became a key influence on future generations of guitarists, with tracks like “Hot ‘n’ Ready” and “Pack It Up (And Go)” showcasing his remarkable technical ability and creativity.

Although Schenker departed the band shortly after the release of “Obsession”, the album remains a defining moment in UFO’s discography. It bridged the gap between their earlier, more straightforward rock sound and the more complex, progressive elements that would follow. “Obsession” is regarded as a landmark album, not just for UFO but for hard rock and heavy metal as a whole.

The deluxe packaging includes a poster booklet with liner notes by esteemed music journalist Michael Hann, featuring interviews with key band members Phil Mogg, Andy Parker, and Michael Schenker. This detailed insight into the making of “Obsession” offers fans a deeper understanding of the album’s creation and its lasting impact.

UFO – Obsession [Deluxe Edition] available on 2CD with poster booklet + 3LP vinyl. Includes a new previously unreleased 2024 mix of “Live at the Agora Ballroom”, Cleveland, 16th October 1978, plus 4 bonus tracks (CD format only), new liner notes, and new interviews.

The “Obsession” (2024 Remastered Deluxe Edition) will be released on November 8th, 2024,

Mermaid Chunky are an audio visual duo made up of artists Freya Tate and Moina Moin. Bathing in milkmaid serenity and improvised chaos, the duo boast of pumping trance rhythms, and seriously arousing sax solos. Catching their live performances may cause havoc on your retinas as they are often accompanied by euphoric sculptural visuals.

“It was really surreal,” recalls Moina Moin, of the day in 2022 when DFA Records founder James Murphy invited Mermaid Chunky, the duo Moin formed six years earlier with best friend Freya Tate, to sign to his label and support his group LCD Soundsystem at the Brixton Academy.

Delighting in playfulness, performance art and ambient-folk reveries, Mermaid Chunky may seem an unusual signing for the hyper-cool DFA. But after hearing tracks from their 2020 debut “Vest” on the online radio station NTS, Murphy was entranced, emailing to tell the duo: “You’ve restored my faith in music.” Now their first full-length album for the label, “slif slaf slof”, looks set to work that magic on the public at large. It presents a beguiling world where looped recorders tootle primitive melodies, where charmingly homemade house bangers rub shoulders with squelchy rodeo funk, and where a catalyst of eccentrics.

Mermaid Chunky hail from Stroud, Gloucestershire, and met 13 years ago at Stroud Valleys Artspace, a complex of studios and performance spaces Moin’s parents helped found in the mid-90s. “We both shared this really stupid and bizarre sense of humour, based around being silly and breaking things down,” says Tate. Members of a local youth ska orchestra, they formed a break-off “girl band” with all the girls from the orchestra. “But then people started slipping off to uni, so it ended up just being Moina and me.”

The duo duly booked a gig at a local poetry night. “We rehearsed in my dad’s kitchen without any instruments, just me whacking a stuffed toy rabbit on the countertop,” remembers Moin, “and we made up this song around it.” The show itself snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, or perhaps vice versa. “It was chaotic: we forgot how to play the song; I fell and knocked over the keyboard,” says Moin.

“But everyone was laughing,” adds Tate. “And we were like: ‘Hey, that went well!’”

Tate moved to Brighton to study; when she returned and found herself “in that post-uni period, feeling like a weird blob, some sort of failure, like I’d dropped from outer space”, she and Moin refocused their energies on Mermaid Chunky (named after a kind of yarn). “We started experimenting with loops, and it got weirder and weirder,” says Tate. “We felt quite incubated in Stroud, able to jump around and do things.”

A mission statement took shape: Hang out, make jokes, dress up. “We’re quite visual and performative,” says Moin, who produces the band’s videos, as well as designing their onstage costumes with Tate. Mermaid Chunky’s lyrics are monologues, short stories and character studies that evolve out of late-night conversations on long drives where, Moin says, “all of a sudden these weird characters surface, and we have no idea what they will do next”. Moin plays saxophone, rather excellently in fact. Tate plays keyboards and operates a drum machine her mum got “for 20 quid at a car boot sale. I don’t really care about fiddling with technology. I’m not very Aphex Twin-y. I just grab the sound, I don’t care whether it’s cool or not.”

Their disregard for cool may be the gift that enables Mermaid Chunky to cook up such bewitching music. “Céilí”, the lead single from “slif slaf slof”, was born at a show at a warehouse in Hackney Wick, east London.

“Céilí” took shape that night, as they ran recorders through loop pedals and added new-age synths, chanting and tribal drum patterns. “We were playing ‘stripped-down’, because we hadn’t been able to bring all our usual gear,” says Moin. “We were improvising on limited equipment, the stuff we’d started off with: Freya’s mum’s drum machine and the recorder I’ve been playing since I was really young; these two meaningful, characterful sounds that represent us. We were dancing, really taking these sounds seriously in a beautiful, celebratory way, seeing each other and hearing each other.”

Beyond the weaponised weirdness and arty playfulness, there is great emotion within Mermaid Chunky’s music: a celebration of these women and their friendship and the lives they’ve chosen. “We’re very in our own bubble,” Moin admits, but she knows their music affects people. “People will come up to us after gigs and say: ‘I related to that, I loved that so much.’ Younger women say: ‘I can’t wait to go and make some music of my own.’ And we still make mistakes at our gigs, but people are like: ‘I can’t wait to make mistakes of my own, and push something over as well.’ They really like to see that you can do things your own way. These songs bring a lot of joy, which feels like an honour.”

For Moin, however, the process is the point. “Mermaid Chunky is about Freya and I connecting in this different realm. When we’re practising, it’s like a party – you feel mad, you feel really great, and you feel like you’ve won. It doesn’t matter how it’s received. It’s such an extravagant pleasure to be able to communicate with someone else by whacking a stuffed toy rabbit on a table.”

 “slif slaf slof” is released on DFA Records on 13th September.

‘Reason Enough’ is a more melodic work than we’re used to hearing from Crows, “rather than being all-out punk”, as the band’s Steve Goddard puts it. “It feels less lo-fi, cleaner and more well-rounded as a result,” James Cox adds. 

Lyrically, Cox drew heavily from a difficult year, both personally and in terms of facing up to a weighty news cycle. A general sense of malaise, isolation, unease and a desire for growth in spite of it all permeates ‘Reason Enough’ – an album which strikes a satisfying balance between existentialism, soul-searching, and a discerning brand of indie-rock. Can’t wait to see this translated to a stage – their live shows are something else, and we’ve got the battered boots & purple bruises to prove it!

Crows have arrived. ‘Reason Enough’, their third studio album, is the one the band have taken the longest to write. Partly because they had to fit the exercise around working full-time jobs, but also because of the freedom that was afforded to them around this specific project, which takes the post-punk four piece’s historically adrenaline-fuelled sound into fresh territory. Though the band’s punk spirit remains intact, sonically, they’re more refined and cohesive than ever; it’s the most mature Crows have ever sounded, without compromising any of their intrinsic grit. Following 2022’s ‘Beware Believers’ and their 2019 debut ‘Silver Tongues’, ‘Reason Enough’ lands September 27th 2024 via Bad Vibrations / Fuzz Club.

For the occasion, James Cox (vocals), Steve Goddard (guitar), Jith Amarasinghe (bass) and Sam Lister (drums), swapped their usual rehearsal space, a small studio in Homerton, East London, for the cavernous walls of a “weird little studio” – as Goddard puts it – in Stroud, Gloucestershire. More specifically, a former Catholic church and convent where the band parked themselves up in the crypt, which was more conducive to inspiring the foundations for ‘Reason Enough’. “Having a more relaxed approach this time around meant we could explore different stuff,” Goddard says. “We don’t want to sound the same as we did before – this is our third album, we have to move on. And so we fucked around a bit more.”

Armed with dozens of ideas, they returned to London in a bid to finesse them all alongside Mercury Prize-nominated producer and master of the polished indie record Andy Savours (Black County, New Road, My Bloody Valentine). The result: a concise, 10-track album which goes a long way to show Crows’ sonic versatility. It’s more melodic work than what Crows have previously done, “rather than being all-out punk”, as Goddard puts it. “It feels less lo-fi, cleaner and more well-rounded as a result,” Cox adds.

Lyrically, Cox drew heavily from a difficult year, both personally and in terms of facing up to a heavy going news cycle. “I went pretty unhappy with the lyrics and vocals,” he says. “I wanted to moan a bit. If the last album was angrier, this one is definitely sadder.” Indeed, a general sense of malaise, isolation, unease and a desire for growth in spite of it all permeate ‘Reason Enough’ – an album which strikes a satisfying balance between existentialism, soul-searching, and a discerning brand of indie-rock: “We’re doing the same thing, but a lot better. This is Crows in high definition.”

“Balances aggression with moments of introspective beauty… Crows’ most cohesive and fully realized work to date. ★★★★” The Line of Best Fit. “The tightest and broadest they’ve sounded, with punk sensibilities wrapping themselves around arena-ready post-punk propulsion. ★★★★” DORK

“A captivating return that levels-up in every direction… This will get under your skin immediately. 9/10” Clash Magazine, “The most melodic, hook-filled and engaging record of their career. ★★★★” Louder

To celebrate the release of ‘Reason Enough’ the band will be hitting the road starting next week for a run of UK/EU ‘Reason Enough’ tour

New album ‘Reason Enough’ out September 27 2024 via Bad Vibrations