The Fat Angel Sings

Forged in isolation, “Star Eaters Delight” is a vehicle for returning, not just to civilization, but to celebration. A record concerned with binaries – country vs. city, humanity vs. technology, solitude vs. relationship – the intention is to heal our divisions and realise what matters most.

The album is her second for Sub Pop and sketches wider vistas in her sonic collaboration with producer and accompanist Guy Blakeslee, Neale’s is a voice that has known pain and experienced it but still holds onto self compassion. The palette is more cinematic, still sparse yet riven with more detail. The trademark omnichord is still there on the excellent opening track. ‘I Am The River’ that’s minimal beat and tremulous guitar notes that splatter patterns across a canvas are like Suicide if they were given a wider palette. Framing Neale’s wonderful vocal, her melodic stream of consciousness reminds one of Patti Smith. It is at once personal and universal with a gifted warmth enhanced by a nagging ominichord, hoisted to new heights on the back of a repeated “ba ba da da da do na um” refrain that flows right through you. It’s bloody fantastic.

WIth her exquisitely drawn, character laden songs, and a voice of experience, Lael Neale is opening a fascinating window on her world, a world that craves human touch, longs for nature’s beauty and her spiritual quest to hold onto sovereignty over her own mind. Lael still has a flip phone and there were no screens involved in the creation of her new record, “Star Eaters Delight”. In a time when our devices are constantly flooding us with information. Neale offers “not because I don’t like things, but because I value freedom more.” We are in awe of your power Lael.

The song was written and composed by Lael Neale and produced and mixed by Guy Blakeslee.

Blakeslee says of the song, “‘’White T-Shirt’ dates back a number of years to when I used to follow Lael around LA to all of her barely publicized performances. The song never ceased to silence the chatter in the room. There was nothing I could add to this performance, it’s a raw gem that stands alone and cuts through the noise.”

Lo-fi indie rock on Sub Pop from a singer/songwriter recently returned from LA to her native Virginia, Lael Neale’s 3rd album uses mostly guitars and an ancient synthesizer to work its unpredictable magic. Standing apart from any scene or subgenre, the record gives the impression that each song was written with its own approach; most of those will leave you wanting more. Highlights: “I Am The River,” “In Verona,” “No Holds Barred”

from the album ‘Star Eaters Delight’, out April 21st, 2023 on Sub Pop Records

Falcon Bitch and Gumball are best friends. A testament to their ever-playful attitude—one that pours over into their project, Being Dead, in which the band toes the line between jest and sincerity. The nurturing foundation of these platonic soulmates urges both Falcon Bitch and Gumball to be their full, freaky selves, prodding at the absurdity of the world with slick n’ dreamy strums, gritty percussion, and kaleidoscopic harmonies.

Their latest album “When Horses Would Run” propels us into vivid landscapes: desert planes, dirty basements, lush rolling hills. Being Dead is here to create worlds, grabbing our hand and hauling us outside of ourselves, where we can soak in stories of carefree shoplifters, wayward cowboys, and the final moments of a lonely Buffalo on the range. The album doesn’t linger in one place for too long––instead, it dances alongside the periphery, flickering between Super-8 memories and moments. “Our music is really a slice of our friendship,” says Falcon Bitch. “We’ve lived together and we’re always together and I feel like it’s a palpable thing.”

Being Dead’s previous releases garnered acclaim for their ability to mimic the band’s renowned live shows. Merging surf rock, freak pop, and frantic punk, Falcon Bitch and Gumball’s eclectic influences and energetic pull swells on “When Horses Would Run”, charting the band’s progression within Austin’s iconic music scene.
“When Horses Would Run” is proof that if we search for the beauty between the cracks––and we don’t take ourselves too seriously––there is joy to be found everywhere.

Opener “Great American Picnic” gallops in with a rush of Western rhythms and chanting vocals, cementing the album as a kind of slap-in-the-face call-to-arms; Being Dead is a band that grabs by the scruff of the neck. On “Last Living Buffalo,” they prod at the casualties of America’s insatiable greed, lamenting a tragic lullaby for the last animal left.

Stand-out track “Muriel’s Big Day Off” showcases Being Dead’s creative process, where instincts and gut reactions are favored over second-guessing or laborious technicalities. The song tells of a character called Muriel and her best friend Friedrick, who spend their day doing exactly what they want: stomping around town, drinking tea, and shoplifting. It was inspired by a Falcon Bitch and Gumball’s acid trip, where––after drinking wine on their porch and “having a really nice time with a tree”––they returned home, enamoured with the patterns of their fingers on the guitar rather than the way the chords actually sounded.
The result incorporates elements of jazz, with animated piano runs and driving melodies, alongside the band’s tongue-in-cheek lyricism.

“Oklahoma Nova Scotia” closes the album, and points to Being Dead’s lo-fi leanings. It was the one song recorded to tape and despite trying to later cut it in the studio, the band decided to stick with the more organic approach. “For a lot of these songs, we only knew how to play them live and we weren’t sure what kind of form they were going to take,” Falcon Bitch says.

This spontaneous, gung-ho approach marks a refreshing originality in Being Dead. “When Horses Would Run” celebrates the nourishing merriment of friendship, the importance of enjoying the here and now, and creating simply for the hell of it. Here we have a reminder that we can not only move through the burdens of our past, but we can have company––and fun––while doing it. 

Released July 14th, 2023

Since the debut of her first album, “Feels Like”, in 2015, Alicia Bognanno (has been releasing music under the moniker of Bully) has been delivering music that achieves a balance between abrasiveness and vulnerability, raucous and serene.

On “Lucky For You”, she presents her most authentic and assured sense of self. Whereas on earlier releases, her voice remained timid despite bouts of characteristically Bully screaming and tracks were characterized by humble DIY presenting production, on “Lucky For You”, Bully steps forward with her most refined yet unrestrained musicality to date. 

Out of the gate, the opening track of the album, “All I Do,” serves as a bold taste of what’s to follow. A ringing and childishly sweet guitar melody juxtaposed with a punchy, compressed drum beat lays the groundwork for Bully’s rich vocalization to shine through at the forefront of the song, a point further proven by the songs that follow. 

Moving fluidly from track to track, the album thematically and sonically makes its way to a greater point—an epiphany that feels discovered at the end of the album, even if you aren’t quite sure what it is. With each track, a sense of solidarity between Bognanno and the listener is felt, even when there is ambiguity in her lyrical content. The unrestraint in her performance on the album calls the listener to engage with the song, to lean in and relate in whatever way that calls to them.

On some songs, Bognanno is incredibly blunt about the emotions she is experiencing, leaving little room for interpretation on an array of subjects that weigh on her psyche including breakups, the loss of her beloved dog, struggles with addiction as well as the state of our society and her anger towards it. On others, she sings from a place of vagueness, although continually channeling the feelings and thought processes that come with loss and grieving, which ties the album together with an overarching theme. 

The lyrics find that perfect balance between poetically specific and purposefully vague. On “How Will I Know,” she sings, “Feeling melancholy when I start to think of you gotta get out of my head, find something else to do, because there’s no point obsessing over what I would’ve changed, save a couple of things I wish I said but I refrained.” Within the ambiguity of that line, she sings them in such a way that feels prophetic and revolutionary, however generalized or commonplace the feelings she is speaking on may seem. 

With more grit and vulnerability, on “Ms. America” she sings, “I guess everything falls apart, finding hope in a broken heart, all I wanted was a daughter, try my best to raise her right, but the whole worlds caught on fire, and I don’t wanna teach a kid to fight for you and for me too,” allowing herself to bare more honesty and point directly towards personal experience with a poetic edge. 

In the same way she balances two opposing ideas within the construction of her lyrics, Bognanno is also able to do so sonically. Viewing the album in its entirety, Bognanno balances a tenderness reminiscent of popular ’90’s vocalists such as Liz Phair and Tori Amos while packing a punch with her coarse punk vocalization. The specific guitar tone and production of the instrumentation creates a noisy and compressed sound that for one, brings her vocals to the forefront and two, and creates a specific soundscape characterized by an intentional raucous garage rock sound. 

Shining with catchy bass lines that pique attention, as well as unique drum patterns, purposefully noisy guitar distortion, and subtly layered vocal tracks, Bully is able to achieve a fully formed sonic landscape with cohesive yet thrilling elements scattered throughout.

“Lucky For You” is Bully’s declaration to the world that she is unafraid to let her deepest insecurities and most painstaking experiences bleed out in her music. It’s a fully polished work that distinguishes itself from other albums in its genre, on the basis that Bully was able to present a sense of pure genuineness on it, a characteristic of music that is often an anomaly today.

Bully the musical project led by Alicia Bognanno — visited The Current studio in late September 2023 while out on tour in support of the band’s latest album, “Lucky For You.” Watch the three-song performance above.

Despite its tinge of grunge instrumentation and full-throated riot grrrl vocals, on Bully’s “Lucky For You“, Alicia Bognanno hews closer to the lesser-known Seattle female-fronted bands, with a straight-up rock ‘n’ roll backbone like Kim Warnick of the Fastbacks and Carrie Akre of Hammerbox and Goodness. The album rips into high gear with a declaration of being fed up and “burned-out wasting tears/ I am done” on opener “All I Do”; detours through the melancholy of mourning with “A Love Profound”; gets anthemic about break-ups with fellow Nashville artist Sophia Regina Allison of Soccer Mommy on “Lose You”; and closes with the Red Aunts-esque short and sweet punk “All This Noise” that encapsulates the media view of our fucked up world by asking, “What else is there to do/ When you can’t escape the news?”

From the album ‘Lucky For You’ out on Sub Pop Records on June 2nd , 2023.

Announcing her latest album “All of This Will End” released back in April on Saddle Creek Records featured “Younger & Dumber”.  Indigo De Souza said “I was finally able to trust myself fully,” making her masterful third album “All of This Will End”. Across its 11 songs, the LP is a raw and radically optimistic work that grapples with mortality, the rejuvenation that community brings, and the importance of centreing yourself now. These tracks come from the most resonant moments of her life: childhood memories, collecting herself in parking lots, the ecstatic trips spent wandering Appalachian mountains and southern swamps with friends, and the times she had to stand up for herself. “All of This Will End” feels more true to me than anything ever has,” she says.

Indigo finds recent inspiration from community and stability. “Up until recently, my life felt chaotic,” she says. “Now, so much of the chaos is behind me. I have an incredible community, I love where I live, and I’m surrounded by truly incredible people who are dedicated to deep connection and joy. My music feels like it’s coming from a centered place of reflection.” Opener “Time Back” deals with the necessary forward momentum she cherishes. It’s a song about rising out of struggle, putting things in the past, and moving on where she sings over comforting synths, “I feel like I’m leaving myself behind / And I’m so tired of crying / I wanna get back up again.” The track later explodes with her voice booming over a stunning arrangement. “You can fall into dysfunction or sadness, or allow other people to hurt you and not have boundaries,” she says. “There was a time in my life when that was a lot of what I was doing. I thought this track was a sweet way to talk about coming back to yourself, to your true self.” 

Alongside the all-encompassing emotions captured in the first song, the album is bookended with the heartfelt and nostalgic closer “Younger & Dumber,” which Indigo chose as the lead single. One of the first songs she wrote for the album, the track began as a way of her speaking to her younger self. “While I was writing about the time when my music first started to take shape, it was also the worst time in my life and the most unstable I’d ever been,” she says. “I wrote this song paying homage to a younger self that didn’t know any better. I was flailing through life, trying to make something stick, and coming to terms with being on earth.” The song is her most intentional yet, where she sings, “You came to hurt me in all the right places / Made me somebody.” Though the track starts as a whisper, it slowly unfolds to something cathartic and explosive as she belts out, “And the love I feel is so very real it can take you anywhere.” With the clarity that comes with experience and healing, Indigo treats her past self with immense kindness. It’s her most stunning offering yet.

Creatively re-energized from having these songs pour out of her so quickly, Indigo and her band went to Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios with producer and engineer Alex Farrar, who also worked on “Any Shape You Take. “We just clicked so hard,” she says. “We had such an organic energy flow and we felt really inspired by each other.” Tracks like the pummelling “Wasting Your Time” and the muscular single “You Can Be Mean” highlight the band at their most defiant and locked-in. With lines on the latter like, “I’d like to think you got a good heart and your dad was just an asshole growing up,” Indigo says it’s “about the last horrible guy that I let push me around.” While she lets her band loose in the arrangements, especially guitarist Dexter Webb and drummer Avery Sullivan, these songs come from her own vision. “This time, I was more true to myself and refused to allow other people’s ideas to shape what my songs sound like,” she says. “It also feels really special because Dexter was able to fully express his freaky alien guitar voicings, and played a larger role in the production.” At the same time, Dexter Webb’s guitar work on his 12-string is impeccable, drawing you in with his bright yet melancholy melody lines. It’s hard not to like every song on this album—every minute is worth the listen. 

“All of This Will End” boasts songs that run the gamut of human emotion. There’s pain and sadness, sure, but there’s a triumphant spirit of resilience throughout. Take the single “Smog,” which is exuberant, danceable, and about the exhilaration that comes from breaking out of daily monotony. Elsewhere, she’s introspective, like in the soul-shattering “Always,” which excavates her relationship with her father. But in the single “The Water,” she transforms a childhood memory of visiting her best friend into a meditation on growing up and the fragility of relationships. Over a programmed drum beat, she sings, “I think about what it was like / That summer when we were young and you did it with that guy in his car.” Though she’s no longer as close to that person as she was when they were kids, there’s power in reminiscing.

In many ways, “All of This Will End” has become a personal motto for Indigo. “Every day I wake up with the thought that this could be the end,” she says. “You could look at it as a sad thing, or you could look at it as a really precious thing: Today I’m alive and at some point, I will not be in this body anymore. But for now, I can do so much with being alive.” There’s a peacefulness in acceptance throughout. As she sings on the title track, “I’m only loving only moving through and trying my best / Sometimes it’s not enough but I’m still real and I forgive.” She describes the experience of writing this song as “magic,” as if everything about it from the words and melody had felt timeless and intangible and that she was just writing it down. Like the hues of reds and oranges that her mother painted on the LP cover, “All of This Will End” marks a warmer and unmistakably audacious era for her. It’s a statement about fearlessly moving forward from the past into a gratitude-filled present, feeling it all every step of the way, and choosing to embody loving awareness.

Release Date: April 28th, 2023

The Julia Steiner-led Ratboys have been quietly putting out high quality content for the past dozen years. Their last full length of new material, “Printer’s Devil”, came out at an inopportune moment (February 2020), which makes their return with “The Window” all that more of a moment to celebrate. And celebrate, The Window does well. Whether the spotlight is on Mother Earth “It’s Alive”, being spitting mad “Empty”, or lives well lived “The Window”, Steiner knows no mode other than wearing her heart on her sleeve. Here with a production assist from Chris Walla (formerly of Death Cab for Cutie), every song is a set piece with its own distinct dynamic and every single one of them is fantastic. For a band that already had a well-earned pedigree,

There are approximately 11 very good songs on Ratboys’ newest record “The Window”, but there are two that best illustrate what this band can do better than almost any other on this, or any other, list. “Black Earth, WI” arrived back in March, a few months before the group even announced the album proper, and it immediately entered the pantheon of this decade’s rush on rootsy, twangy indie-rock epics, gliding through its eight-minute runtime like a boozy August night laid bare.

Then, in June, they hit us with the record’s devastating title track. Subdued and sweet, “The Window” is vocalist Julia Steiner at her best, presenting an achingly personal love story through the prism of the catchiest indie rock released this year.

Ratboys are a band of tight hooks and catchy melodies, but it’s the specificity of their song writing that makes the project so endlessly endearing. For a band that arrived so fully formed nearly a decade ago, they continue to outdo themselves with every release. “The Window” will be hard to top, but I don’t think we have any reason to doubt them.

On Mitski’s previous two albums, 2018’s “Be the Cowboy” and 2022’s “Laurel Hell“, the songwriter filled every open space with buzzing effects, disco rhythms, and bright synthesizers—as if to drown out the feelings of loneliness and isolation with the company of flashy sounds. “Bug Like an Angel,” the leadoff track from “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We”, opens with nothing more than the spare strum of an acoustic guitar, which until its ascendant chorus backed by a choir, is the barest her music’s ever sounded. 

Sometimes, Mitski says, it feels like life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” Mitski says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have, after I die, so that I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We”, will continue to shine that love long after she’s gone. Listening to it, that’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.  

Love is always radical, which means that it always disrupts, which means that it always takes work to receive it. This land, which already feels inhospitable to so many of its inhabitants, is about to feel hopelessly torn and tossed again – at times, devoid of love. This album offers the anodyne. “This is my most American album,” Mitski says about her seventh record, and the music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. But “maybe it’s beyond witnessing,” she says. At times, it feels like the album is an exercise in negative capability – a fearless embodiment and absorption of the pain of other bodies. When I ask her what the album would look like, if it were a person, she says it would be someone middle-aged and exhausted, perhaps someone having a midlife crisis.

But through the daily indignity and exhaustion, something enormous and ecstatic is calling out. In this album, which is sonically Mitski’s most expansive, epic, and wise, the songs seem to be introducing wounds and then actively healing them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like the light from a distant star.    

Mitski wrote these songs in little bursts over the past few years, and they feel informed by moments of noticing – noticing a sound that’s out of place, a building that groans in decay, an opinion that splits a room, a feeling that can’t be contained in a body. It was recorded at both the Bomb Shelter in East Nashville and the Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles.

The album incorporates an orchestra arranged and conducted by Drew Erickson, as well as a full choir of 17 people – 12 in LA and 5 in Nashville – arranged by Mitski. And for the first time, it felt important to Mitski to have a band recording live together in the studio, to create this new sublime sound. Working with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland, the album has a wide-range of references, from Ennio Morricone’s bombastic Spaghetti Western scores to Carter Burwell’s tundra-filling Fargo soundtrack, from the breathy intimacy of Arthur Russell to the strident aliveness of Scott Walker or Igor Stravinsky, from the jubilation of Caetano Veloso to the twangy longing of Faron Young.

Mitski has always known how to write music that creates a lush and shimmering atmosphere while simultaneously piercing directly into a listener’s heart. “The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We” sees the artist in her most boundless state thus far, with dramatic orchestral swells on tracks like “Bug Like An Angel” and “When Memories Snow” paired with searingly intimate lyricism on “My Love Mine All Mine” and “I’m Your Man.” After considering retirement a few years ago, this album is a stunning declaration that Mitski isn’t going anywhere.

“Good intentions that you keep / Don’t change the fact that you’re a beast,” sings Sunny War on the rollicking “No Reason.” Her fascination with duality and oxymoron predates her ascent as one of Americana’s most exciting voices (she named herself “Sunny War,” for folk’s sake). “Anarchist Gospel” just refines her thesis on the contradictory essence of human nature even as it refines her blues-rooted sound.

Here, with Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Margo Price) at the production desk and a slew of guests on the track list including Allison Russell and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, War’s LA busker roots collide with a slicker Nashville sensibility that can lull you into a false feeling of security.

Get caught up in her smooth alto and you might not notice the weighty core of hopelessness and surrender at the heart of “I Got No Fight,” or the apparent children’s choir backing her on…wait a minute, is that Ween’s “Baby Bitch”? No matter who shows up with her in the studio, of course, Sunny War remains a beast of a country blues guitarist—technically dizzying, but also loose, jaunty, and fun all at once. 

Austin, Texas band Sun June has a new record on the way. “Bad Dream Jaguar” released in October via Run For Cover Records, marking their first proper follow-up to 2022’s “Somewhere”. Lead single “Get Enough” is a dynamic, expansive folk-pop track that lends an unhurried, gorgeous instrumental to Laura Colwell’s dreamy vocal affectation.

The first two minutes of Sun June’s third album, “Bad Dream Jaguar”, is a reverie – Laura Colwell’s voice floats above a slow-burn, sparse synth, conjuring a tipsy loneliness, a hazy recollection, a disco ball spinning at the end of the night for an empty dancefloor. Sun June’s music often feels like a shared memory – the details so close to the edge of a song that you can touch them. And as an Austin-based project, their music has also always felt strangely and specifically Texan – unhurried, long drives across an impossible expanse of openness, refractions shimmering off the pavement in the heat.

But on “Bad Dream Jaguar”, Sun June sound with the back drop of Texas is replaced by longing, by distance, by transience, and a quiet fear. “Drag me down with the weight, it’s a drug. I never get enough,” Colwell sings. “Even the sky looks menacing. I stayed awake for 48 hours, and it’s all I can do to be lonely. Me and you.” Affixed with Beatles references and psychedelic flair, “Get Enough” is a low-key gem that quickly morphs into a twangy, experimental stunner.

‘Get Enough’ is about spring-time mania, justifying delusions, and losing it but still loving it (Macca forever). It was written when Laura and Stephen [Salisbury] were bouncing back and forth between Texas and North Carolina, each unsure of where life was headed,” the band says about the track. “For the ‘Get Enough” video we wanted to lean into Texas kitsch.

With the album release via Run for Cover, the group—rounded out by vocalist/guitarist Laura Colwell, guitarist Michael Bain, bassist Justin Harris, and drummer Sarah Schultz—on each track, which range in subject matter from unsettling unconscious recollections, to their complicated feelings about their home state, to ultimately “letting go of desire for structure” .

“Most of us are transplants, but we’ve become Texans whether we like it or not. We liked the images of fake cowboying and Texan expanses beneath a busy flight path, and we thought it fit a song that’s about being pulled in different directions and wanting competing things. Visually, we were inspired by “Punch Drunk Love”. We bought a big blue suit and used 1970s anamorphic lenses to distort the image and bend the light.”

Sun June’s records have always been deceptively airy soundingin the face of melancholia, belying its densely textured founda-tion in a sense of ease. The layers on “Bad Dream Jaguar” don’t tangle but they float, sheaths of divergent and luminescent sonics hanging together as the sun goes down, darkness seeping in.

The record exists in the chasm between giving up and going all-in. And a flicker of quiet confidence powering through, a small hopeful glow at its core. 

Trio HotWax have shared their new single ‘Drop’ and confirmed they will be supporting Royal Blood on their forthcoming UK and US dates. The new track was mixed by Alan Moulder (Foo Fighters, Wet Leg) and marks the Hastings trio’s first new music since the release of their debut EP ‘A Thousand Times’.

Despite being younger than Fever to Tell and Sea Change, The British rockers from Hastings though officially forming in Brighton Tallulah Sim-Savage, Lola Sam, and Alfie Sayers have already earned the praise of Karen O and Beck
Their much-hyped debut EP “A Thousand Times”, which has already taken on cult status among fans of alt-rock, With the band’s second EP “Invite me, kindly” unleashed upon the world, HotWax is gearing up for a string of US tour dates

The release is accompanied by a UFO-themed official music video directed by Josh Quinton, “My aim for this video was to create an explosive & exciting journey through the band members’ brains that matches the exhilarating energy of the song, whilst also fusing their own personal style with my love for trashy 70s B movies and 90s kids TV,” said Quinton in a press release. “I wanted to use the symbolism of space travel to represent the band’s momentum and fresh landing into the world whilst adhering to a strong DIY ethos and reaching maximum altitudes of fun.”

“We didn’t overthink the first EP,” Tallulah says of their impressive debut project, “A Thousand Times”. “But on these songs we really went into more detail.” For example, HotWax tinkered with their bass-led sound. “We tried to even it out a bit and add more lead guitar parts,” she says. The aim, according to Lola, was simply to pare the production back: “This EP is a lot more raw—super dry, no reverb—than the last one.”

Songs like “Phone Machine” and “High Tea,” which are essentially about untangling uncomfortable feelings. The former conveys the pervasive sense of confusion that accompanies young adulthood via its frantic DIY production. “I was just messing around with amp settings in Logic and we came up with the riff,” Lola says. “It sounded a bit like a phone machine.” The latter, on the other hand, covers darker territory. “It’s about the two people you love the most arguing and not really getting along,” Tallulah says of “High Tea.” “Sometimes you just have to spit out the doubt that it causes you.” 

The trio will also be supporting Royal Blood on their forthcoming UK and US dates, They will also play two of their own UK headline shows at Colours in Hoxton on September and Manchester Deaf Institute on the following night 

The debut EP ‘A Thousand Times’ is out now.

Cat Power and Iggy Pop have shared a cover of “Working Class Hero” from the new compilation “The Faithful: A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull”, which will be released this weeky (Marianne Faithfull initially took a crack at the John Lennon track for her 1979 album, “Broken English”). The new covers collection also features Lydia Lunch, Bush Tetras, Peaches, Shirley Manson, and more, and all proceeds from the release will be donated to Faithfull, who’s been recovering from long COVID.

“Marianne has lived a life,” Chan Marshall said in a statement. “She is a queen to all who know her, and all who adore her! Her framework of contributions to the world of music is unmistakable! Every time I hear her gorgeous vocal sway, I am moved, I am closer to permanence. In a world of dizzying, new fizzling arrows of song and voices, Marianne has always struck the bullseye of my heart and soul. I adore her like no other. A true Dame, beyond words. Royalty forever.”

In 2020, news came that Marianne Faithfull was deathly ill from Covid. The virus was at a murderous high then and it affected her in the worst way possible, causing her to lose consciousness, necessitating a rush to an intensive care unit where she was intubated with little hope of survival. “All I know is that I was in a very dark place,” Faithfull said “Presumably, it was death.”

Faithfull survived, but the intensity of the virus, combined with her underlying condition of emphysema, compromised her lungs to the point where she may never be able to sing again. That left her with a double whammy – the potential loss of any fresh source of income and the steep cost of recovery from long Covid. While her situation has been deeply concerning for many fans, one of them actually decided to do something about it.

Tanya Donelly, who helped form the bands Throwing Muses, the Breeders and Belly, came to Faithfull’s music from a very different angle. When she was growing up, her parents played Faithfull’s 60s recordings, back when her voice had a light quaver and her music a folk tinge. For the tribute, Donelly paired with the harmony trio Parkington Sisters on a cover of “This Little Bird”, a major hit for Faithfull in 1965. “Her voice on that song was very much a part of my childhood,” Donelly said. “I also sang it to my kids as a lullaby.”

Despite the delicacy of Faithfull’s original recording, Donelly detected a tug of sadness in it. “Her singing in that song has that sweetness and that darkness,” she said. “She’s a master at balancing the two.”

“I wanted to come up with something that would make as much money for Marianne as possible,” said Tanya Pearson, who heads the Women of Rock Oral History Project, which chronicles the work of female rock musicians. “I considered organizing a benefit concert, but at the time the pandemic was still going.”

Instead, she decided to try to create a combination tribute/benefit album featuring stars covering songs Faithfull has famously recorded. “The easy part was finding musicians who were willing to donate their time and effort,” Pearson said of the project, which began more than two years ago. “Finding a label to forgo any profit was a lot harder.”

After much searching, Pearson finally found a small label called In the Q, which this week, in conjunction with Bandbox, will issue a double vinyl set titled The Faithfull. The package, which will also be available on streaming services, boasts 19 tracks by stars such as Shirley Manson, Cat Power, Iggy Pop, Peaches, the Bush Tetras and more. Though most of the artists involved are women, Pearson said that was solely due to the industry contacts she has through the Women of Rock Oral Oral History Project.

“The Faithful” is out on 8th December.