The Fat Angel Sings

Toledo made a splash with their debut album “How It Ends” in 2022. It seems that they’re ready to carry that momentum even further, with a new single “Jesus Bathroom” might just be the catchiest song you hear all month. As the year comes to a close, Dan Álvarez de Toledo and Jordan Dunn-Pilz are making sure they get in on the action before it’s all said and done—and what a way to do it. “Jesus Bathroom” is synth-driven and bubbly, arriving like a grand amalgam of dream pop and the type of indie rock we’ve known, adored and revisited over and over for the last decade. But, even then, Toledo is onto something much grander here.

The turns are punchy, the vocals are saccharine. Caught somewhere between the 1975 and Wild Pink, “Jesus Bathroom” is a perfect three-minute achievement. I’m crossing my fingers that it means a new Toledo album is on the way. The world needs it. 

Released on: 2nd November 2023

NYC singer/songwriter Katy Kirby is on another level right now. Her last two singles—“Cubic Zirconia” and “Table”—have been among some of our favourite tracks of the year so far. Now, she’s unloading another clip of distinctive, stirring beauty. “Party Of The Century” might, based on the title alone, suggest that it’s an anthemic, upbeat song—but Kirby is not the type of musician to let us off so easily. No, “Party Of The Century” is pensive and sublime and harmonic, as the largely acoustic arrangement—packed with violin and folkloric percussion—establishes itself, immediately, as one of the best Kirby has ever proctored.

Co-written with Christian Lee Hutson, the story is one that is as devastating as it is so deftly romantic, as she opens the track with an observation that the one she loves doesn’t want to bring kids into this world, even though they’re so good with kids. “You’re my worst survival strategy, last safety match I’ve got to light up,” she sings. “Happy anniversary, I’m happy as I’ll ever be. And I still wanna make love in this club.” Party of the century? Yes. Song of the year? You could argue that. I certainly will. 

“Party of the Century” from the upcoming album “Blue Raspberry”, out on January 26th, 2024

The fiery lead single from Chicago duo Friko’s forthcoming debut album “Where we’ve been, Where we go from here”, “Crashing Through” does what its title suggests. A sonic drop hits right after a fine-tuned drum fill from Bailey Minzenberger, and it’s a breakdown that arrives as an organic fixture of Friko’s guiding momentum they bring to every song. The harmonics embrace the untapped, energetic potential of a live show, and Niko Kapetan’s singing galvanize saccharine, heavy guitar chords into an oblivion of noise, gang vocals and a wallpaper of distortion. “I haven’t said what I mean to say, haven’t done what I mean to do,” Kapetan wails. “‘Cause every coward looks away from all the light crashing through.” The volume metrics are off the chart, as Minzenberger’s percussion ensconces Kapetan’s worn-in, sandpaper-polished singing like a fence of landmines.

You can pick out familiar components in the band’s work and name them but, how they’re merged together—under the bow of Friko’s finesse and button-bursting energy—arrives untapped, nuanced and dramatic. 

“Crashing Through” previews Friko’s debut album ‘Where we’ve been, where we go from here’ which will be released on 16th February 2024

After years of silently grieving the loss of Richard Swift and Danny Lacy and focusing on supporting other musicians, Jonathan Rado brings his voice—and the voices of his dearly departed friends—to “For Who the Bell Tolls For”. Rado wasn’t planning on turning his musical catharsis into a full album—which is evident in the vast range of sonic variation from song to song—yet he captured the essence of his two beloved friends through comedy, beauty and their love of art. The intention behind “For Who The Bell Tolls For” was an exploration of Rado’s losses and, rather than create a sappy tribute album, he wanted to bring his friends back to life in a way they would have loved. The title track is an anthemic open letter to Swift that surrounds Rado’s complex feelings towards his mentor’s death—layered with trumpets, keys and drums.

The piano melody invokes the vibrancy of Elton John while adding Rado’s productional flair to create a larger-than-life sound. “When you reach the deepest depths / And you take your final steps / You can finally get some rest / Under the ocean,” he sings, hoping for a peaceful afterlife for the acclaimed producer. Yet some of Rado’s remorse creeps in with the line “I was just too blind to see that terrible disease,” he sings as a confession to Swift, who dealt with alcoholism throughout his life.

“Yer Funeral” closes out the album in a wordless eulogy that begins as a simple organ ballad and builds into a grand symphony of memory resurrected through a display of Rado’s multi-instrumental talents. Unsurprisingly, the most melancholic track references Swift writing “Yer Mom” on the side of a barn in a yard sale painting. A silly joke between friends turned into a moving ballad is exactly what Rado hoped to accomplish by bringing his unique perspective to the concept of a classic tribute album. Although he writes some incredibly thoughtful lyrics throughout the album, “Yer Funeral” is the most beautifully painful arrangement on “For Who The Bell Tolls For” altogether. After all, Jonathan Rado’s strength has always been how he expresses himself through his instruments; letting them speak for themselves on the languid seven-minute song feels like a fitting final goodbye to his loved ones. Hemingway also said: “Everything you have is to give,” and Rado gave his friends’ souls one last chance to be a piece of his art from beyond.

On Friday, December 1st, a years-long prophecy will be fulfilled. Kevin Patrick Sullivan—known to many as Field Medic—will release his highly anticipated new album, a record first announced seven years ago when, at a gig, he prefaced “Do A Little Dope” with a single promise: The song will have its official studio release in 2023, on a forthcoming collection entitled “dope girl chronicles”. The album is a labour of immense love from Sullivan—both in service to the lore of Field Medic and to the listeners who’ve been supporting him for a decade. The songs were written around the same time “dope girl chronicles” was first teased on-stage, but this chapter is not a spur-of-the-moment construction of brand-new tracks meant to bring a fable to life. No, these songs are of a special moment in Sullivan’s creativity. Written through the headspace he was in in 2015 and 2016, tracks like “dope girl,” “cemetery,” and “cement” are as affixed to the legacy and legend of dope girl chronicles as Sullivan is himself. The songs all share a common thread of relationships, not crafting an orbit around sobriety and mental health like Sullivan’s recent releases

Lyrically, “dope girl chronicles” is as gut-wrenching, evocative and clever as ever; a black light inspection of Sullivan’s own psyche. You don’t write a song like “do a little dope”—and center a record around it—without a keen sense of gallows humour. And yet, there’s a hopeful throughline running throughout the record, focused most squarely on the titular “dope girl.” Never has Sullivan’s lyrics painted such a cozy scene. “Tell me, what am I supposed to do when you’re kissing me awake?” he sings on “clear thoughts of morning,” before adding a swift “my love, her eyes go unadorned and see right through me.” Some moments are downright silly in their domestic bliss, such as the opening line of “silver girl,” where Sullivan muses: “Girl, your command of language has got me sprung, you express yourself just like Joan Didion.” So much of the Field Medic catalogue features Sullivan working through things internally, so it’s nice to find him shifting the perspective here.

“dope girl chronicles” is unlikely to upend anyone’s year-end lists. It might well be, by its very nature, destined for a lifetime as a companion piece to its predecessor, something for the real OGs that might need to be rediscovered years down the line. Its very existence is evidence of Sullivan’s many devout fans holding him to a promise he made seven years ago. It might not have been a promise he truly intended on keeping, but it’s pretty incredible he got the chance to make good with an album that routinely delivers the best of what Field Medic has to offer.

released December 1st, 2023

Canadian indie-rock outfit Ducks Ltd. continues to explore the balance between anxiety and joy on their second full-length album. Carrying on the good work of their debut “Modern Fiction” back in 2021,

“Harm’s Way” recalls the swoonsome, jangly indie-pop of bands like The Go-Betweens and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever.

Ducks Ltd. make inviting and frenetic guitar pop for when life feels overwhelming. While the band’s songs are ostensibly breezy, a palpable anxiety boils underneath that communicates something deeper about everyday existence. On their latest album ‘Harm’s Way’, the Toronto duo of Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis hones in on interpersonal and societal collapses, urban decay, and the near-impossibility of keeping a level head when everything around you seems to be falling apart.

The band wanted to bring ‘Harm’s Way’ to life in a new city, with an outside producer, and with some of their favorite musicians. Working with producer Dave Vettraino, they enlisted a marquee cast of Windy City collaborators to round out the tracks on Harm’s Way, including: Macie Stewart (Finom); Marcus Nuccio and Julia Steiner (Ratboys); Jason Balla (Dehd); Nathan O’Dell (Dummy), Margaret McCarthy (Moontype), Rui Gabriel (Rui Gabriel/Lawn), and Lindsey-Paige McCloy (Patio).

‘Harm’s Way’ is Duck Ltd.’s most intuitive and organic album yet, the result of keen observation, self-possessed song writing, and a collaborative spirit. Building on the successes of their previous releases, the deeply relatable album displays a band operating at a nuanced, lyrical and musical best.

“Hollowed Out” is a lush, definitive evolution for Ducks Ltd.. Known for their brand of jangle pop and brilliant melodic guitar playing (a la Flying Nun or Sarah Records), Ducks Ltd., are in their fullest form here with Macie Stewart providing string arrangements and Julia Steiner and Margaret McCarthy on backing vocals. A song about living with decline (inspired by a Toronto sinkhole), its bright, indelible catchiness serves in contrast to its lyrical unease.

“The Main Thing” is out now on Carpark Records / Royal Mountain Records.

The American Analog Set were never quick movers. Hailing from Austin, one of the spiritual homes of American alt-rock, the songs from their debut album “The Fun of Watching Fireworks” onwards seemed to develop in a haze of their own making. Using similar indie-rock stylings to the likes of American Football, Modest Mouse and Yo La Tengo, the band made gorgeously tired dream pop that was always hushed and carefully considered. By the time of their 2005 swansong “Set Free” they had perfected a brand of almost Motorik pop that seemed to exist in a sonic field perfectly suitable for warm and lazy afternoon listening.

For listeners used to the nuanced delicacy of their old work, “For Forever” may come as a bit of a shock at first. Opener ‘Camp Don’t Count’ is built around a dirty old riff that is as near to opposite their earlier, fluffy, machine-washed sound as possible. By the time Andrew Kenny’s voice emerges it has a progressive urgency. On album highlight ‘Screaming For Vengeance’ his voice is slathered in reverb and fronts up a driving motorik track that, in another universe, could be Metallica or Black Sabbath. But in The American Analog Set’s hands it’s still, decidedly indie-rock. 

They still blend guitars with organs and Rhodes piano. And they still take their time over everything  – intros are long and dreamy, building up a bedrock of sound before Kenny deigns to grace us with his presence.  

According to the liner notes, the album was made between 2015 and 2019. By my calculations it is now nearly 2024 and so I’m not exactly sure of how this gestation period has worked. It figures, though, that a band that takes their time over their compositions may also be tardy in releasing them. Whatever is the case, American Analog Set have somewhat lost the box-fresh innocence of their early work and become a more troubled and moody proposition.

The similarity is that it holds this mood throughout. They never really cheer up, and if anything they grow darker as the album progresses. The title track makes everything around it sound concise  – a twelve-minute slow builder that heads deep into Codeine territory with its spindly, wintery guitars.

The American Analog Set  are such a nuanced band that it doesn’t take much to blow their sound slightly off course. Rather than a predictable lurch into electronica or an attempt at pop, they’ve simply toughened their sound up leaving everything else pretty much unchanged. Whether “For Forever” is strong enough to give them a second chapter as successful as the likes of American Football have enjoyed is for history to decide, but for fans of early late-90s / early-00s indie rock here is another band working out of time, doing their own thing, and coming up with striking, immersive results.    

Shane MacGowan, the lead singer and songwriter of trailblazing Celtic punk band the Pogues and one of the all-time great frontmen, has died aged 65 following a long period of ill health. A family statement said he died at 3.30am on 30th November, and was described as “our most beautiful, darling and dearly beloved”.

His wife Victoria Mary Clarke wrote in a statement on social media: “Shane will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life … I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him.”

In December 2022, MacGowan was hospitalised with viral encephalitis, and as a result spent several months of 2023 in intensive care.

The Irish songwriter was a one-of-a-kind presence onstage with a poet’s flair for lyricism, MacGowan sought to bring the power of Irish folk music to the rock scene, with his writing drawing from literature, mythology and the Bible. “It became obvious that everything that could be done with a standard rock format had been done, usually quite badly,” he told the NME in 1983 as were getting off the ground. “We just wanted to shove music that had roots, and is just generally stronger and has more real anger and emotion, down the throats of a completely pap-orientated pop audience.”

He frequently wrote about Irish culture and nationalism and the experiences of the Irish diaspora, reclaiming the racist “Paddy” stereotype – or reinforcing it, depending on who you asked. Early in his career, he often performed in a union jack suit – but in Julien Temple’s 2020 documentary, Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan.

His dedication to his craft earned him the Ivor Novello songwriting inspiration award in 2018, following five albums with the Pogues and various solo releases. The Pogues’ highest-charting song, “Fairytale of New York”, a duet with Kirsty MacColl, reached No 2 in 1987 and became a yearly Christmas classic.

Irish president Michael Higgins was among those paying tribute, writing: “His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history. MacGowan was born on 25 December 1957, near Tunbridge Wells. His parents were Irish immigrants residing in Kent who moved around the south-east of England. His whole family was musical: MacGowan said he learned a song a day from family on his mother’s side and gave his first performance aged three. “They put me up on the kitchen table to sing and the song went down very well,”

The young MacGowan was noted for his literary gifts and received a scholarship to Westminster school but was expelled for possessing drugs in his second year. As a teenager he considered joining the priesthood – but then he found punk. “I was happy during punk. Incredibly happy,” MacGowan told Vox. “You call it chaos. I don’t regard it as chaos. I regard it as natural living.”

He began drinking as a child when his family gave him Guinness to help him sleep, and suffered from the effects of drug and alcohol abuse, but argued in 1990: “Self-abuse, or whatever you wanna call it, is also incredibly creative.”

He first gained recognition in 1976 when a photograph of him with a wounded ear at a gig at the ICA in London was printed in the NME with the headline: “Cannibalism at Clash gig”. Then known as Shane O’Hooligan, MacGowan formed his own punk band, the Nipple Erectors – later the Nips – and made a demo for Polydor produced by Paul Weller.

MacGowan and late-joining Nips member John Hasler, formerly of Madness, would break away from the fracturing group in the early 80s to come together with members of the Millwall Chainsaws to form Pogue Mahone – a corruption of the Gaelic póg mo thóin, or “kiss my arse”. They changed their name to the Pogues partly as a result of BBC censorship, and gained a reputation for their fierce live performances.

The band drew rave reviews for their debut album, 1984’s “Red Roses for Me”, but the group struggled to capitalise on its success owing to its highly combustible line-up – which sometimes saw the Clash’s Joe Strummer fill the absent MacGowan’s shoes. They released two more classic albums in 1985’s “Rum Sodomy & the Lash”, produced by Elvis Costello, and 1988’s “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”.

“Hell’s Ditch”, released in 1990, was the band’s fifth album and the last to feature MacGowan as a member. After collapsing en route to support Bob Dylan in 1988, he was diagnosed with hepatitis and told he would die if he did not stop drinking spirits.

MacGowan moved from Thailand to Tipperary and formed the band Shane MacGowan and the Popes, who recorded two studio albums. He would rejoin a full Pogues reunion in 2001, which lasted until 2014.

In the late 2000s, “Fairytale of New York” began staging a perennial resurgence in the Christmas singles chart thanks to the rise of downloads and later streaming.

MacGowan’s last album was the Popes’ “The Crock of Gold” in 1997, although since 2015 he had been working on an as yet unreleased album of covers and originals with the Irish band Cronin. Among his final artistic output was The Eternal Buzz and the Crock of Gold, a lavish art book which was praised by critic Waldemar Januszczak for MacGowan’s “demented, wild, fascinating, scabrous kind of energy”. Copies of the book were sold for £1,000 each to raise money for MacGowan’s care.

MacGowan is survived by Clarke, whom he married in 2018. They met when MacGowan was 24 and she was 16. He also once said he fathered a son, born around 1991. “I wouldn’t wish myself on any kid as a father,” he told the Telegraph. He is also survived by sister Siobhan and father Maurice.

In one of his final interviews, with the Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone, MacGowan insisted that despite his reputation for having a death wish, he wanted to live. “Of course I like life,” he exclaimed.

Expect in-depth interviews with the greatest artists, articles on your favourite records and memorabilia, the most comprehensive reviews section, as well as RC’s unique listings pages of items for sale.

This month’s cover stars couldn’t be more stellar and tinselly for Christmas, being the glam class of 1973: Slade, Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Mud, Elton, Bowie, Bolan and Wizzard. Over 16 pages, we celebrate the 70s glamsters in all their flamboyant, colourful glory and discover their more monochrome 60s roots, via interviews with some of the members of the bands about the time Before They Were Famous. Plus, we present a “pre-glam” discography from when the household names operated under such strange monickers as The Elastic Band and At Last The 1958 Rock And Roll Show.  

As well as including a fantastic vinyl-related calendar it’s a seasonally hefty doorstopper of an issue this month, with a bumper crop of features. We reassess Kate Bush’s second album, on its 45th birthday, and deem it worthy of reinspection. We meet the Last Monkee Standing, Micky Dolenz. Cat Power tells us about her new Dylan covers album. Slowdive talk shoegazing and becoming critical faves. We enter the whole wide world of Wreckless Eric, rehabilitate croon prince Bobby Darin and present a book of paintings of Britain’s record shops. 

We also list RC writers’ recommended albums – new and reissued – of 2023, the ones to spend your Xmas tokens on. And we review new albums and reissues from R.E.M., Bryan Ferry, John Wetton, Peter Gabriel, Trevor Horn and last month’s cover stars, Madness, plus new books from Glen Matlock and JJ Burnel, films on John Lennon and The Birthday Party, singles by Dave Davies and Johnny Moped and concerts from The Hollies, Hawkwind, Deacon Blue and more.