The Fat Angel Sings

North Carolina fuzz-guitar collective Wednesday have announced their debut Aotearoa headline dates, gracing local stages at Pōneke’s Meow and Tāmaki Makaurau’s Whammy Bar this summer. Incredibly prolific since launching their 2018 debut album “Yep, Definitely”, the US quintet helmed by songwriter / guitarist Karly Hartzman are touring down under following the recent release of their fifth studio long player “Rat Saw God” via Dead Oceans — which prompted Pitchfork to gush “Their outstanding new album is why they’re one of the best indie rock bands around”.

Wednesday is fronted by singer and guitarist Karly Hartzman who, alongside guitarist MJ Lenderman (a rising song writing star in his own right), bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis, will bring their raucous and rousing live set to fill these intimate venues with a truly unique wall of noise.

“Rat Saw God”, the follow-up to “Twin Plagues” and Wednesday’s Dead Oceans debut, is a triumph of razor-sharp focus, churning intensity, and natural ambition. By this point, the group is so in sync that it sounds like they’re carrying stimuli through the same nervous system while eliciting different responses. For all the darkness that the album digs into, what it drags along with it is never a lack of clarity. On the contrary, these mostly coming-of-age tales, lived or otherwise absorbed, seem to have sharpened so many human senses: Karly Hartzman is acutely aware of irony, especially as it pertains to religion, and, on songs like ‘Bull Believer’, fuses allegory and truth to striking effect. Her descriptions never feel overbearing or exaggerated, but heightened in their reality, zoning in on the blurry space between pain as an experience and tragedy as a story. The blood stays fresh on the page but the pain takes on different dimensions; comedy is an unintended consequence, not an antidote. It all blends together in ways that are immediate, glorious, and totally arresting.

The band are touring in support of their 2023 album “Rat Saw God”, which garnered unanimous praise from across the board with its tales of life in suburban America, both winning hearts and breaking them in equal measure. Wednesday’s sound may have echoes of the best parts of the 90s, but truly is a musical blend all their own, with their wild mash-up of shoegaze, alt-country, emo, and grunge.

With songs that tell stories of stomach pumping, nostalgic small-town bike rides, drugs, and Mortal Kombat, the band’s fifth album is, as perfectly put by NPR, “distinctly, youthfully, chaotically American”, while Uncut gifted it a near perfect score and praised its ability to match horror with humour.

Wednesday’s live shows are reported to be distorted, dangerous, and fearsome affairs, with squalls of fuzzed out pedal steel melding with duelling guitars, pummelling bass, and cacophonous drums, all cut through like a knife by Karly Hartzman’s unmistakable vocal.

Threading emotionally disarming autobiographic narratives through passages of stormy shoegaze distortion, frazzled grunge riffage and lilting alt-country, the ten songs on “Rat Saw God” illustrate everyday epics drawn from the suburban backwaters of the US south. Possessors of an impressively un-Googleable band name, don’t miss Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap / pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis 

released April 7th, 2023

Karly Hartzman – Guitar & Vocals
MJ Lenderman – Guitar & Back-up Vocals
Xandy Chelmis – Lap Steel
Margo Schultz – Bass
Alan Miller – Drums

Mitski — “the most alluring and enigmatic musician in indie rock” (Rolling Stone) — announces her new album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We“, out September 15th on Dead Oceans, and presents its anthemic lead single, “Bug Like an Angel.”  In this album, which is Mitski’s most sonically expansive, epic, and wise album to-date, 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. The album is full of the ache of the grown-up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything, and everyone, is crying out, screaming in pain, arching towards love. 

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 Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles, and incorporates an orchestra arranged and conducted by Drew Erickson, as well as a full choir of 17 people — 12 in Los Angeles and 5 in Nashville arranged by Mitski. 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.

Lead single “Bug Like an Angel” finds the divine in the ordinary, in the boozy drowning of sorrow. The narrator sings from the strange comfort of rock bottom: “sometimes a drink feels like family.” And suddenly, that choir of angels sings: “FAMILY!” This first track introduces a cosmic paradox: “The wrath of the devil was also given him by God.” This is an album in which dark and light exist in the same gesture, the same broken prayer. Like the Buddha inviting the demon Mara in for tea, The Land embraces brutal, daily pain — the necessary toll of transcendent love.

“The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” reads as a dramatic title, but stress the second to last word and you hear the beginning of a question. The songs on Mitski’s seventh album sound like that, too: bold yet tentative, elegant yet knotty, drawing you in with their organic beauty until you realize you’re stranded in the dark alongside her, wondering what awaits us.

The follow-up to 2022’s “Laurel Hell” is both her warmest and most challenging effort to date – not even handing out the questions to you, let alone any answers, but moving with multitudes – and so the first to vividly capture the ostensible contradictions and chilling intricacies that have long been a mark of her song writing. Though the songs don’t quite explode or follow conventional paths the way some of her older material did, this is the least detached Mitski has sounded. Even the most dissociative songs sound alive, making the loneliest thing burn brightly and beautifully.

For hardcore Mitski fans, each of the singular artist’s releases are akin to a prophetic message. But there’s something about ‘The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We’ – her seventh album – that felt particularly ecclesiastical. Be it the orchestral swell of ‘Heaven’, the ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ essence of ‘I Don’t Like My Mind’, or the choral backing vocals peppered throughout, it’s as if she crafted the record with a spellbound congregation in mind. Which, given the record’s rapturous reception, isn’t too far from the truth. Utterly enveloping and borderline transportive, it’s a hauntingly beautiful handling of hope amidst sorrow.

In January this year, Damon, Alex, Dave and Graham came together at Damon’s West London studio to discuss the possibility of recording a new album. No-one in that room could have imagined what was to follow…

Six months; one surprise album announcement; 10 songs; 4 tiny warm-up shows; one lost (and found) gold tooth; a knee injury; two transcendent Wembley Stadium shows; one newly-famous Scottish lido; a global livestream; one European tour seen by 2 million fans; and one critically-acclaimed studio album later… blur have topped the charts once again eith their new album “The Ballad of Darren”

A divorce album in all but name, “The Ballad Of Darren” strikes a similar melancholic chord as “13”, the turn-of-the-millennium album from Blur. The difference of nearly 25 years makes a considerable difference: there’s a collective heft to the album that stems from a band that reconvenes with the knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, a group that recognizes their peculiar chemistry. After dispensing with the barbed rush of “St. Charles Square,” Blur spends the rest of the record floating on a melancholy sea, never succumbing to its sad undercurrent but always aware of its undertow. 

Damon Albarn is not one to rest on his laurels and so, when Blur agreed to this summer’s rapturously-received pair of Wembley Stadiums shows, he quietly began work on what would become Blur’s ninth studio album, later bringing the band and producer James Ford in to finish and record ‘The Ballad of Darren’ in a matter of months.

As such, there’s an easiness to these songs that comes from four childhood friends acting on chemistry and instinct, buoyed by an innate understanding of each other’s musical quirks. A band with a legendary knack for elegiac, suckerpunch ballads, ‘…Darren’ is bursting with the sort of melodies that only Albarn could concoct (plus a glorious wink to their cranky, rowdy side in ‘St. Charles Square’), all held aloft by a quartet who proved they could still make magic, all these years later.

the new album ‘The Ballad Of Darren’

Singer, songwriter, and DJ Romy — one-third of UK outfit The XX recorded three critically lauded albums with her band, but in 2023 was finally ready to share her own 11-song debut solo album, “Mid Air”. A gorgeous recording about celebration, sanctuary, and salvation on the dance floor that doubles as a postcard to the queer clubs that provided comfort and connection, the album’s standout is “Loveher”: Right from the start, we catch the soft-spoken Romy politely requesting to “turn it up more,” as she launches in. You can feel the scope of her love for her new partner as they cut loose on the dance floor, yet are still a little reserved, wanting to hold hands under the table for a private moment of bliss.

While Romy came out long ago, it’s rare to find an artist who is so candid about her own life and shares her unique perspective. This was an exceptional track released in 2023.

“I don’t mean to be the last one standing / only meant to be the next best thing” are the damn-near-perfect opening lines to The New Pornographers’ “Cat and Mouse With the Light,” a simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking vignette of a relationship not meant to be. Neko Case takes the lead on this prismatic pop gem, and by the time she gets to the chorus with “I can’t stand that you love me,” you’ll also fall hopelessly head-over-heels.

Official audio for The New Pornographers’ song “Cat And Mouse With The Light” from the new album ‘Continue as a Guest’ out now on Merge Records.

If “Nothing Left To Lose,” the first single released from “Fuse”, Everything But The Girl’s first new album in nearly a quarter-century, is anything to go by, the duo is picking up both right where they left off and smack dab in the centre of our current musical epoch. That track is a soulful banger with gobs of sub-bass that stick to the ribs and flickering synths that briefly reveal the trysts and break ups happening in the darker corners of the dance club. The rest of the record follows suit, while sliding easily into lush ambient tracks suffused with cloudy memories.

The world hardly deserved the return of Everything But The Girl this year. But Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn’s surprise new album “Fuse” was a balm for the soul in 2023. The album’s first two singles foregrounded the more club-ready aspects of their musical personality. But “Fuse’s” third single, “Run A Red Light,” burrowed deep into the melancholic heart of their best work. Watt and Thorn have always been first-rate balladeers, with a particular flair for chronicling the highs and lows of urban nightlife. “Run A Red Light” is a masterclass of the form: a portrait of reckless, drug-fuelled arrogance given a hauntingly beautiful turn by Thorn’s velvet-textured voice.

Like later-period Billie Holiday or Joni Mitchell, her vocal tone has acquired a gorgeous, lived-in quality that suits the dissolute disposition of the song’s protagonist. And Watt’s production has never felt more sympathetic, knowing precisely when to hover and when to bump. A perfect soundtrack for the 3AM of the soul, literal and otherwise.

After 40+ years and countless hits, Depeche Mode is still hungry to push their sound forward, not content to “just be a greatest hits band,” as guitarist/lead songwriter Martin Gore said earlier this year. When the rumblings of new music surfaced, the anticipation was massive, and their fifteenth album, “Memento Mori”, did not disappoint. “Ghosts Again” captures the group where they are today — now, and for the first time, a duo, following the death of founding member and keyboardist Andy “Fletch” Fletcher in 2020, shortly before album recording was set to begin.

The track is a powerful groover, with rich lyrics that combine to evocative effect. With so much that happened within the family, it’s beautiful to see these legends continue to grow, evolve, and just get better with time — ever finding grace in darkness.

Even “Old Death” is a seven minute odyssey/autobiography disguised as a pop song, in which Charles Bissell (of indie rock heavyweights The Wrens) reflects on the opportunity cost of two decades spent perfecting, yet never releasing, the sequel to The Wrens’ near-mythologically revered 2003 album “The Meadowlands”. The ensuing years brought a battle with cancer, mental health struggles, the breakup of a band of brothers, and the underestimation of Father Time. Bissell released some music during that time, but promised a lot more. “Old Death” was worth the wait.

Like any great protagonist, our hero is relatable, vulnerable, courageous, broken, whole, and lovable. And like all great epics, the parable of “Old Death” is one I’ll keep close to heart. I’ll sing this song from the top of my lungs, I’ll remember to put away my futile devices, and I’ll hold my kids tight while they’re still young.

The first new music in 20 years from Charles Bissell, the singer-writer-producer of the Wrens, his first release since the landmark album “The Meadowlands”.

released November 17th, 2023

Few albums this year balanced the sweet and sinister quite like “Endless Pursuit”, Temple of Angels‘s debut album. Melodically, the Austin Texas band resembles a dream pop outfit from the dark side of the moon, reared on Sisters of Mercy’s gothic romance and My Bloody Valentine’s glorious mess. Simultaneously, their spring-tight rhythm section, a byproduct of its members’ hardcore roots, provides the structure and counterbalance necessary to keep those euphoric soundscapes aloft. (Don’t miss the balancing act on “Tangled In Joy.”) One of the more pleasant surprises regarding a genre I’m not as familiar with, but always looking for gems from. And this group is a gem. 

Formed in 2017 in Austin, Texas, Avery Burton (guitar/vocals), Patrick Todd (drums/vocals), and Cole Tucker (guitar) had all played in various hardcore and punk bands around town for years, but were keen to explore the dreamier, moodier music they enjoyed as well. After recording a few demos, they recruited Bre Morell (vocals) to be their lead singer. The new group self-releasing two EPs–2017’s Temple of Angels and 2018’s Foiled–and a single on Funeral Party Records in 2019, and were soon performing with the likes of Beach Fossils, Iceage, Narrow Head, and Turnover as well as at festivals like Levitation and Not Dead Yet.

Abetted by some of the most in-demand producers and engineers of the moment—Will Yip (Turnstile, Citizen, Title Fight) handled the mix—Temple of Angels have given us radiant guitar music suitable for punks, goths, bloomers, doomers, and everyone in between.

“Love As Projection“ is the new album by Frankie Rose, It’s her fifth studio LP and second for Night School following the reissue of her interpretation of The Cure’s “Seventeen Seconds“. Frankie Rose has forged an enviable musical legacy, from playing with bands like Crystal Stilts and The Vivian Girls but on “Love As Projection“ she takes a bold step into electronic pop production. A sumptuous recorded statement, it dances in ecstasy and broods on the tumult of the western world’s decay in equal proportion. At the heart of the album is glowing, confident songwriting, resplendent in hooks and choruses but still touched with an optimism undimmed.

A newfound creative freedom goes hand-in-hand with meticulous studio tooling on Frankie Rose’s fifth album, “Love As Projection”, a lush and exquisitely rendered record that stretches from pounding new wave anthems to slickly produced bursts of elaborate electropop. The album’s ten tracks dip in and out of atmospheres but never stray from Rose’s ethereal sensibilities or her unifying retro-futurist musical vision. The synths ripple, her voice soars, and sometimes, like on “Come Back,” it all comes together at the point of ecstasy.

released March 10th, 2023