The Fat Angel Sings

The Ophelias composed of Spencer Peppet (guitar & vocals, she/her), Mic Adams (drums, he/him), Andrea Gutmann Fuentes (violin, she/her), and Jo Shaffer (bass, they/she) have announced their new EP, “Ribbon”, out April 12th.

The Ophelias started amongst Peppet, Adams, and Fuentes in high school, with Shaffer joining in 2019. Although they began as an “all girl band,” they now identify as joyfully queer and trans. “Ribbon” finds the band fully in the adult world for the first time. Its songs explore spaces between right and wrong, good and bad, friend and enemy. Experiences that can’t be compartmentalized: the glowing in-betweens. 

“Black Ribbon” is the most synth-heavy and shoegaze-y track, and explores the newness of a queer relationship. Over swelling, emotive instrumentation, Peppet captures the rush of unpredictable romantic feelings: “Some kind of desire // That I cannot categorize // You are a Springsteen song // Dark sky in overdrive into the warm night.” The accompanying video, directed by Shaffer and Peppet, is stunning, featuring the band and fuzzed-out, Midwestern imagery that visualizes the track’s mood. 

The Ophelias are now spread across the States, reconvening in New York or Cincinnati to record and prepare for touring. They released their first album “Creature Native” in 2015, followed by 2018’s “Almost” and 2021’s “Crocus”. Throughout “Ribbon”, The Ophelias’ sound moves between genres, finding the niche between indie rock, folk, and pop. Fuentes’ violin sweeps cinematically through the EP, and Peppet’s emotive vocals work in tandem as she sighs, belts, and gasps from one song to the next. Adams and Shaffer stay locked in as the rhythm section, with both purposeful drive and intentionally placed embellishments.

The band members have a cerebral awareness of one another that only comes with years of collaboration. “What distinguishes The Ophelias in a field of indie auteurs is the dynamism of the quartet, whose other members… know exactly how much space to take up at any given moment.”

“To me, Lou stood out. The real deal! Something important to American music and to all music! I miss him and his dog.” – Keith Richards In honour of Lou Reed’s birthday, Keith Richards has recorded a cover of “I’m Waiting for the Man.” The digital single & music video are out now and featured on the upcoming album “The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed”, which includes newly recorded covers from Keith Richards, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Rufus Wainwright, Lucinda Williams, Maxim Ludwig & Angel Olsen, Rickie Lee Jones, Mary Gauthier, Bobby Rush, Automatic, The Afghan Whigs, and Rosanne Cash.

This special collection will be released by Light in the Attic Records and available on Vinyl & CD at fine independent record shops worldwide on Record Store Day (April 20th). It goes without saying that the legendary Lou Reed was a true rock ’n’ roll pioneer. From The Velvet Underground’s debut in 1967 all the way through the end of his days, Reed sang truth from his heart. He lived life to the limit—and then some. “The Power of the Heart” is a tribute to Reed’s freedom of expression with covers spanning his ground breaking years with the Velvets into his majestic solo career. Each track is a glorious extension of the Rock ’n’ Roll Animal’s soul, ever adventurous and avant-garde.

Annie Clarke returns with a new St Vincent album “All Born Screaming“, which is released on April 26th by Virgin Music/Fiction Records. Her first fully self-produced album, is St Vincent at her most primal.

Clarke’s seventh album, features guests including Cate Le Bon and Stella Mogzawa. Even have Dave Ghrol on drums.

‘Broken Man’ comes from “All Born Screaming”, the new album arriving April 26th.

Louisville rockers White Reaper released a new album, “Asking For A Ride”, at the top of 2023. They spent some of last year opening for Weezer on their indie rock road trip, and guitarist Tony Esposito got to shred at a Bengals game in the fall. Today, they’re releasing a cover of the Sound’s “I Can’t Escape Myself,” which kicked off the English band’s 1980 debut album “Jeopardy”.

“We wanted to put something out and we didn’t have an album yet so we covered a song that we love,” Esposito said in a statement. “We’ve done this before and we’ll probably do it again. The Sound is a really great band and you should check them out if you’re unfamiliar.”

Guitarist Hunter Thompson added, “The sounds we made sound so much like The Sound, you’re gonna have trouble differentiating our sounds from The Sound’s sounds.”

White Reaper’s cover of “I Can’t Escape Myself” by The Sound

For the first time, William and Jim lay down the definitive story of The Jesus & Mary Chain.

For 5 years after they’d swapped sought-after apprenticeships for life on the dole, brothers William and Jim Reid sat up till the early hours in the front room of their parents’ East Kilbride council house, plotting their path to world domination over endless cups of tea, with the music turned down low so as not to wake their sleeping sister. They knew they couldn’t play in the same band because they’d argue too much, so they’d describe their dream ensembles to each other until finally they realised that these two perfect bands were actually the same band, and the name of that band was The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The rest was not silence, and picking up those conversations again more than 40 years later, William and Jim tell the full story of one of Britain’s greatest guitar bands for the very first time – a wildly funny and improbably moving chronicle of brotherly strife, feedback, riots, drug and alcohol addiction, eternal outsiders and extreme shyness, that also somehow manages to be a love letter to the Scottish working-class family.

We’re really grateful to the Reid brothers for collaborating with us on an exclusive mix CD of influences. Half compiled by William, half by Jim.

Uncut – April 2024 featuring Pink Floyd, With his SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS band, Nick Mason is on a mission to save the potent, foundational music of Pink Floyd. In doing so, he aims to reassert the Floyd’s historic creative path from three-minute pop fantastias and cosmic-progressive freak-outs to the transitional epiphanies that led to “The Dark Side Of The Moon”. “In Pink Floyd, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing half the time,” Mason tells us. “What we did have was an abundance of ideas.”

The Beach Boys: From three brothers wrestling on their front lawn to the miraculous creation of numerous pop masterpieces, a new photobook chronicles The Beach Boys’ Californian dream, in their own words and pictures. As Brian Wilson remembers, “We were one of the biggest things going”…

Away from her day job with BIG THIEF, ADRIANNE LENKER has developed a parallel career as a solo artist, whose intricate and vulnerable folk songs mine deep, emotional truths. In New York, she talks to Uncut about creation, catharsis and connection. “In a way, it’s like one song that I’ve been writing since I was 10 years old…”

The Beach Boys, Adrianne Lenker, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Shabaka Hutchings, Townes Van Zandt, Wayne Kramer, Damo Suzuki and more

When Richard Thompson began writing songs for his latest album, “Ship to Shore”, the artist was instinctively drawn to his own musical roots, employing them in the service of fashioning a deep and diverse 12-track collection that pulls from various styles, genres and eras, but remains unmistakably Richard Thompson. There’s the rumbling, Motown-style rhythm that propels “Trust,” and the straightforward riff-rock of “Turnstile Casanova.” The drone-y “The Old Pack Mule,” an “old man’s song” that takes musical cues from 1600s-era European music, and “Life’s a Bloody Show,” an ode to “snake-oil salesmen and hucksters” that floats on a glammy, cabaret-like melody that’s “almost like a parody of a Noel Coward song, or something from Berlin in the 1920s,”

Thompson says. “I liked the idea of having a strong base to work from and reaching out from there,” he says. “And I think of my base as being British traditional music, but there’s also Scottish music, there’s Irish music. There’s jazz and country and classical. As far as I’m concerned, once you establish your base you can reach out anywhere. It’ll still be you ringing through, wherever you decide to go musically.”

Released on May 31st via New West Records, Ship To Shore is Thompson’s follow-up to his 2018 studio album “13 Rivers” and his 2021 memoir Beeswing.