The Fat Angel Sings

Recorded in March of 2022 at Brooklyn Steel, this live album goes a long way in expressing both the charms and limitations of Will Toledo’s bedroom-pop project over a decade since its inception.

There was a brief moment where it seemed like Car Seat Headrest might have been poised to be one of the biggest indie bands to emerge from the last decade. This was in 2016, and to that point they’d hit every checkpoint you’d want a buzzy mid-2010s project to hit on both a critical and fan-based level, thanks largely in part to to-be classic LPs like “Twin Fantasy” and “Teens of Denial“.

Prior to 2016, Car Seat Headrest’s creative engine Will Toledo embodied a new kind of indie star. Like noted contemporary Alex G, Toledo was a wellspring of creativity, releasing music that felt raw, and a pace that felt almost frenetic. Uploaded to Bandcamp in 2010, his first album featured a note that would define his shy, withdrawn, vulnerable persona: “I probably would not have been able to make this album if I had thought anyone was going to listen to it,” wrote Toledo. This was bedroom pop promised. 

But after 2016 and a deal with Matador Records, people were listening, and what’s come since has been mystifyingly sparse. “Teens of Denial” his 13th release in seven years. But in the seven since, the band has released only a single album of original material .

Which brings us to today and the band’s latest release. The nearly 90-minute record, which captures shows played at NYC’s Brooklyn Steel in support of their 2020 LP “Making a Door Less Open“,  The band chooses to include from that record on “Masquerade” is one of its most perplexing aspects. A live LP should play as part greatest hits, but sometimes it can be risky to leave that up to the creator. when they do reach deep into their bag of actual greatest hits, there are some truly inspiring moments. They make us wait a bit, but the opening riff to “Fill in the Blank” hits as hard as ever, a reminder of how good this band can sound when they’re running on all cylinders. Ultimately, the highlights probably won’t surprise you: the dance-floor thrum of Twin Fantasy’s “Bodys,” the swelling “Something Soon,” the digressive brilliance of “Beach Life-in-Death.” Sure, for the most part these are pretty faithful renditions of Car Seat Headrest favourites.

At the very beginning of the opening track of Sufjan’s tenth studio LP, he softly murmurs the couplets “Goodbye evergreen / You know I love you / But everything heaven sent / Must burn out in the end”. It’s a sentiment that’s poignant enough in and of itself, but, upon learning that the record is dedicated to his late partner Evans Richardson – something the artist only shared on the day of its release – these words assume a near heartbreaking significance. Although ‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me?’ is the most direct summation of the album’s mournful vulnerability, this thread is one that’s delicately weaved throughout its ten tracks – a sonic tribute to the pain of having lost, and the beauty of having loved in the first place.

A tough year for Stevens, as he continues to recover from Guillain-Barré syndrome and learns to walk again, with “Javelin” dedicated to his partner Evans Richardson, who died in April. Stevens’ tenth solo LP leaned hard into his singer-songwriter smarts, privileging the chamber-folk of 2015’s “Carrie & Lowell” over more conceptual tricksiness. Mostly played and assembled by himself, “Javelin” was nevertheless a many-layered, ineffably moving masterpiece.

On “Javelin”, there are more sonic flourishes than his early, folkier turns, but this is still where he whispers in your ear stories of the pain of heartbreak and the resiliency of the same heart to carry on. And just when you think he’s alone, a chorus joins him, as on “Everything that Rises,” to remind you that no one is truly alone. 

‘Javelin’ by Sufjan Stevens, released on CD, LP & Digital October 6th, 2023

One-time Smog collaborator Sarabeth Tucek returns after a decade away with a double album that works best when it’s spiky, In a year of auspicious comebacks, the return of American singer songwriter Sarabeth Tucek – now operating as SBT – was an easy one to miss. But the first album in 12 years from the former Bill Callahan backing vocalist and Bob Dylan support act was a stealth classic. Tucek’s a Los Angeles resident, but it was her Manhattan, New York upbringing that often informed the epiphanies of double album “Joan Of All”, its skinny, grimy chugs indebted to Lou Reed.

“Joan of All” is more exciting when SBT leans into weirdness. “13th Street #1” recalls her best work, spiky narrative cadence sparking against taut, Lou Reed rock, made explicit by lyrics about listening to his Coney Island Baby. Shame it isn’t joined by alternate version “13th Street #2”, as the album would be stronger with more of Reed’s gimlet-eyed relentlessness.

Sarabeth Tucek emerges from a decade-long hibernation with this new double-album “Joan of All” under the new moniker SBT – a longtime nickname given to her by the many musicians she has worked with throughout her career. After retreating from the fevered pace of the record business to concentrate on other creative endeavors, Sarabeth began to piece together the music that would eventually become her most ambitious, personal project yet – the sprawling double-album “Joan Of All”, via her own freshly-minted imprint Ocean Omen.

Sarabeth Tucek officially broke onto the music scene 2003 performing a series of spellbinding duets with Bill Callahan on the acclaimed Smog album “Supper”. This was swiftly followed by a memorable appearance in the prize-winning Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary DiG! Sarabeth also contributed material to their 2005 EP release, “We Are the Radio”. One of Sarabeth’s compositions covered by the band on that EP, “Seer,” would later be retitled and released in 2006 as Tucek’s debut single, “Something for You”, which became Steve Lamacq’s Single Of The Week on BBC Radio 6 Music.

Her self-titled debut album produced by Luther Russell and Ethan Johns hit stores the following year and garnered rave reviews in the press, leading her to supporting Bob Dylan and unfaltering support at the BBC. In 2011, Sarabeth followed up her extraordinary debut with a raw, uncompromising album entitled “Get Well Soon”, praised as an unflinching meditation on the subject of grief.

Out of Andy Fletcher’s passing, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore grasped a strange new imperative for Depeche Mode: after over 40 years in a band together, Gahan told us, “We had to find a way of becoming friends.” Strengthened by shared grief and renewed purpose, “Memento Mori” became the best Depeche LP in many years, a monumental reassertion of core electro-rock values, with cathedral-sized tunes and stainless engineering by 2023’s go-to producer, James Ford (Blur).

The rumours are true, new Depeche on the way. The band begun work on the album in the pandemic in 2020. The result is “Memento Mori”, their follow up to “Spirit”. 

“Personally, I’ve never been happier,” Jason Williamson recently told MOJO, but his herculean annoyance at UK life – “on this melting tyre of depression” – was as pointed as ever on the Mods’ latest album their 12th electropunk tirade. Williamson taking aim not just at his rulers, but his “white bloke aggro band” contemporaries.

Sleaford Mods performing live on KEXP from The Triple Door. Recorded April 19th, 2023

Songs: UK GRIM On The Ground Pit 2 Pit Force 10 From Navarone Tilldipper Mork n Mindy DIwhy Tory Kong Jobseeker Tweet Tweet Tweet Jason Williamson – Vocals Andrew Fearn – Music

Sleaford Mods – Full Performance (Live on KEXP)

The album distills my years of musical, political, and artistic life with these genre-breaking songs,” says The Raincoats’ Gina Birch of her first-ever solo album. “It’s a personal diary using sounds and lyrics, full of fun, rage, and storytelling.” That about sums it up. Producer Youth has a way of coaxing the best out of artists, creating a comfortable atmosphere that allows them to be themselves, and it’s clear that he and Birch hit it off. “I Play My Bass Loud” is terrific, funny, whipsmart, angry and never less than entertaining — a protest album that doesn’t forget to dance. Songs play like signboards, but feel more inclusive and defiant than didactic, even on a JAMC-ish, hissing force-of-nature song like “I Am Rage.”

Forty-six years after she’d co-founded The Raincoats, painter/ video-maker/post-punk pioneer Birch’s solo debut was a vigorous low-end manifesto, a celebration of feminist energy and bass moves (Youth co-produced, with heavy reggae accents). The vibes were righteous throughout, as Birch hymned Pussy Riot, denounced stilettos, roped in Thurston Moore for the Breeders-ish anthem “Wish I Was You”, and corralled five female bassists for the suitably rousing title track.