The Fat Angel Sings

Noah Kahan made his debut on Saturday Night Live last night (December 2nd), performing ‘Dial Drunk’ and ‘Stick Season’ from his third album, “Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever)”. Watch a replay of the performance below.

Following the release of his sophomore album, Noah continued to write and record, unlocking a new level of himself as an artist and songwriter. Rife with fluttering guitar melodies, inviting vocals, and homey imagery of the Northeast on the verge of changing seasons, it represents a massive turning point for him. Kahan’s relationship with his career was altered, his conviction for storytelling and a pursuit of a more organic sound that aligned with the folk music of his upbringing had firmly arrived.

Back in June, Kahan released an expanded version of “Stick Season” featuring seven additional tracks, including a version of ‘Dial Drunk’ with Post Malone. Last month, he was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2024 Grammys.

Released 09/06/2023

In just two years, Brooklyn quintet Geese have exploded onto the scene with daring, auspicious rock ‘n’ roll that so many folks have become obsessed with. With an artillery of post-punk, stadium anthems and energetic, Y2K garage rock, Geese perfected a sound that is as meticulous as krautrock and as titanic as cowboy chords set ablaze by 10-foot-tall amplifiers. While their recent sophomore album, “3D Country”, Geese returned soon after with an EP of extra portions. The five songs on “4D Country“, which include a slightly re-imagined version of the OG title track, are all vignettes of a grandness that cannot—and could never be—contained within the confines of one singular album.

Geese are, all at once, vicious, theatrical, heartfelt and awing. Tunes like “Jesse” and “Art of War” capitalize on the experimental, seismic chaos the five-piece have perfected, while “Space Race” finds vocalist Cameron Winter going absolutely bonkers on the upswing. Predictable textures and tones are just not in the cards for Geese; every song they make is meant to put you in a tailspin.

Brooklyn 5-piece Geese have detailed their anticipated sophomore album “3D Country”, via Partisan Records. Co-produced by the band and James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Shame), the album’s 11 tracks are an explosion in both scope and vision for the group.

The new album “3D Country” out now on Partisan Records and Play It Again Sam:

I don’t think anyone was doubting it, but Beach House’s leftovers are, somehow, better than most folks’ first choices. After putting out their magnum opus “Once Twice Melody” last year, they couldn’t let 2023 ride through without placing some kind of imprint on it. Hence the release of “Become”, a collection of five outtakes from the “Once Twice Melody” sessions. They don’t arrive like demos, though, as Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally are just as moving, captivating and cosmic as ever. EP centerpiece “Holiday House” goes toe-to-toe with 95% of “Once Twice Melody“, while “Black Magic” is some of the best guitar-focused dream pop Beach House have ever made.

Of course, the duo doesn’t reinvent the wheel with “Become”. To be a Beach House appreciator is to understand that they are firmly in their own lane and are dominating the road ahead. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a cliché for a reason, yet Legrand and Scally always seem to make it feel gorgeously fresh.

Four decades into their career, Yo La Tengo have such a sprawling and versatile discography that it’s no surprise their most beloved records, from 1997’s “I Can Feel The Heart Beating As One” to 2013’s “Fade”, are ones that make an effort to streamline their sound while eloquently fusing different styles. Aside from it being their first album of wholly new material since 2018’s “There’s a Riot Going On”, that’s another reason why “This Stupid World” feels like another pivotal moment in a career full of them. On paper, a lot of “This Stupid World” sounds doomful, or at least weathered by the passage of time. But more often than not, it’s a record that’s thrilling in its aliveness: “This stupid world, it’s killing me,” goes its enveloping mantra. “This stupid world is all we have.”

With its innate energy and some of the group’s strongest song writing in years, “This Stupid World” is the band’s heaviest and most immediate album in years. Back are the chugging bass line and feedback-laden theatrics that have made the trio such a beloved staple in the indie American fabric where they continue to defy rock and pop construction norms.

Ratboys’ 2020 LP “Printer’s Devil” marked the first time the group’s current line-up of Julia Steiner, David Sagan, Sean Neumann, and Marcus Nuccio – wrote an album collaboratively from start to finish, though the entirety of their first headline tour was then cancelled due to COVID. Now for their fifth studio album, the Chicago band recruited producer Chris Walla, who helped realize the widescreen ambition of their tenderly infectious and heartfelt brand of so-called “post-country.” Though “The Window” deals with themes of grief and isolation, the music’s joyful aliveness radiates through not only the band’s tight performances but Steiner’s lyrics, whose unflinching honesty and immediacy spins the white noise of confusion into pure love. “I love this feeling,” she sings looking back on the band’s early days on ‘I Want You” (2010)’. “Burning all my blank CDs never meant so much to me.” In the present, it somehow still feels like the start of forever.

Ratboys “No Way” sounds immediately familiar, as though it’s a song I’ve known for 20+ years but haven’t heard in about 17 years. It’s brand new, but the “it all comes rushing back” happens anyway. I’m not sure what song or songs I’m trying to remember. Is it a particular chord change, something specific about the guitar tone, something about how it swings from loose and casual to emphatic and cathartic? The Ratboys are working firmly within genre here – indie rock with a little alt-country flair – so this kind of mild deja vu is par for the course. The charm of “No Way,” and certainly what makes it interesting beyond mere recognition, is in how the band sound very excited to have written this kind of song.

A song this catchy, a song this easy to click into emotionally, a song that sounds like it’d be fun to play for an audience who knows the words to the chorus. It’s a song that approaches a breakup from two valid positions at once, gracefully moving from befuddled shrug to bold declaration that this sort of thing won’t happen again, or at least with them.

released August 25th, 2023

Written by Ratboys

The comeback album of multi-hyphenate Trevor Powers who performs under the moniker Youth Lagoon—was more than worth the wait. “Heaven Is a Junkyard” taps into a similar kind of emotional dream-state that “The Year of Hibernation” did 12 years ago and challenges the space that Powers’ own creativity can hold. Pushing the boundaries of experimental electronica and Americana singer/songwriting, Powers speaks generously of the place he was raised in. “Heaven Is a Junkyard” is a soulful, ambitious chapter for Youth Lagoon. While the singles were quiet novellas that sprawled with grace, the hidden gems on the album—like “Little Devil from the Country” and “Deep Red Sea”—tap into the wondrous energy that Youth Lagoon is synonymous with. “Heaven Is a Junkyard” is a necessary dossier of masculinity, brotherhood and birthright. 

new single “The Sling” off of his new album, Heaven Is a Junkyard, out on Fat Possum June 9th.

Fortunately, Indigo De Souza has not been constrained musically either, because her third album sounds just as rough, uninhibited and quirky as the previous two. Also on “All Of This Will End”, the American musician easily switches between indie pop and indie rock, but where she sometimes missed the mark on her previous two albums, the quality of the songs on “All Of This Will End” is a lot higher and more consistent. The American musician has a new band and is working with producer Alex Farrar, who has provided a quality boost.

Indigo De Souza opts for an overwhelming start on her third album. The first six tracks on “All Of This Will End” don’t make it to the three-minute mark, and they all sound pretty full or even overwhelming. The music of Indigo De Souza sometimes had a lo-fi character on her first two albums, but album number three has a pretty full production.

It does not mean that the predicate lo-fi no longer applies to the music of the American musician, because the songs on “All Of This Will End” can also rattle pleasantly. In the first six tracks of her new album, Indigo De Souza pours out a lot of good ideas about the listener. These are partly wrapped in mainly electronically colored songs, but the musician from North Carolina does not shy away from the sturdy guitars either.

They are quite catchy songs that Indigo De Souza comes up with, but fortunately her songs also remain wonderfully stubborn, with here and there a musical derailment and of course the occasional out-of-control vocals of the American musician. This time it goes in multiple directions musically, but just like on her previous albums, Indigo De Souza gets away with it easily.

I don’t even find it that easy to explain what I like about the songs of Indigo De Souza, but with “All Of This Will End“, the American musician convinced me almost immediately. It is the merit of the excellent songs, but also the merit of the whimsy in the music of Indigo De Souza, which ensures that her songs can also brush against the hair and stimulate the imagination.

After the short tracks at the beginning of the album, Indigo De Souza takes more time for her songs on the second half of the album, she shows more often that she is an excellent singer and proves once again that she can also work far beyond indie pop and indie rock, for example with the particularly beautiful psychedelic country song “Younger & Dumber”, which is quite far removed from the songs with which the album opens.

For the third time in a row, Indigo De Souza shows that she is full of quirky talent, which flourishes even more on “All Of This Will End” thanks to better songs and a somewhat less dark view of life, which ensures that the great songs of the American musician impose themselves even more emphatically than those on her previous albums. 

When a DIY band signs with a top-tier indie label, fans often worry whether the previous scrappy charm can still be captured amid a more traditional music business arrangement. Fortunately, Matador has proven to be the right home for experimental indie pop duo Water From Your Eyes, one of the few young bands of today that live up to the genre’s moniker. Delivered in deadpan, Rachel Brown’s introspective lyrics find humour in the chaos of life, while multi-instrumentalist Nate Amos’ polyrhythmic sounds complement the frenetic wordplay of “Barley” and the sardonic closing track “Buy My Product.” “Everyone’s Crushed” marks an exciting new era in the indie big leagues for the duo, showing its expansive range.

On “Everyone’s Crushed”, The Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes continues to carve out a distinctive path with a refreshingly original album that feels much more like a storming debut than their sixth full-length.

Nate Amos and Rachel Brown started writing music together in Chicago, 2016, over a conversation about Power, Corruption & Lies. Since then, Water From Your Eyes’ evolution has amassed a back catalogue which capably covers a ridiculously broad range of genres, from electronic dance, folk, jazz, beat poetry, indie rock and more. Their breakthrough album, 2021’s “Structure”, hinted at great things to come with a killer combination of silliness and fatalism intertwined with left-field pulsating rhythms and deadpan lyrics. 

“Everyone’s Crushed” feels much more than the culmination of these past releases though, with confident strides toward a sound that is uniquely their own: an electrifying bricolage of industrial polyrhythms, chunky bass lines, ambient drones, synth strings and neat microtonal mini-riffs, all sliced, diced and repurposed into unconventional song structures. In short, “Everyone’s Crushed” swells and swoons with an experimental sound that is both beautiful and violent, and like nothing else you will hear this year. 

Water From Your Eyes the new album ‘Everyone’s Crushed’ out now on Matador Records.