The Fat Angel Sings

Tele Novella is a project out of Lockhart, Texas–a small town lost in time–where their classic and sincere pop songwriting is slowly processed through a loner medieval-tonk machine and then captured on cassette 8-track. Their latest record was the music they wanted to be making all along but didn’t know until it happened accidentally. It’s out now on Kill Rock Stars. 

Along with the release of Poet’s Tooth the band shares a brand new video for the track “Funeral” directed by Vanessa Pla! It all began with a bath. As Tele Novella’s Natalie Ribbons ran the water and listened to a guided meditation, she never anticipated arriving on the other side with an idea for an album, “Poet’s Tooth”. “I ended up sitting in that bath and going on quite a visualization journey,” says Ribbons, who resides in Lockhart, Texas, and performs in Tele Novella with Jason Chronis. “The images and feelings that came over me that night made me feel like I had a power that I had been ignoring and taking for granted for years. It was sad and happy at the same time,” Ribbons continues.

As Tele Novella, Chronis (who performs in the beloved and rekindled indie pop band Voxtrot) and Ribbons (who previously performed in the long-running “Victorian punk” project Agent Ribbons) have spent their past two albums creating “Medieval outsider country” on 2016’s “House Of Souls” and 2021’s “Merlynn Belle“. 

“Poet’s Tooth” – the band’s second album for Kill Rock Stars – steers the duo’s whimsical western-tinted quality into fascinating new directions: cinematic-pop balladry on the autoharp-tinged opener “Young & Free,” gently clip-clopping Americana-folk on “Hard-Hearted Way,” and bass-driven funk on the wry “Eggs In One Basket.” With help from producer Danny Reisch, Tele Novella have crafted their most genre-rich, poetic, and sincere album yet.

“Funeral” by Tele Novella. Taken from their album “Poet’s Tooth”. Out now via Kill Rock Stars.

released October 6th, 2023

Natalie Ribbons– vocals, backing vocals, nylon string guitar and garden weasel.

Jason Chronis– Electric guitar, 12 string guitar, baritone guitar, nylon string guitar, bass, autoharp, backing vocals, aux percussion, piano, organ and other keyboard sounds.

Danny Reisch– Drums, aux percussion, loops, samples and field recordings.

Opening with the acidic “Jesus What A Jerk”, While the band is more effective on the more traditional straightahead rock than on the experiments. While it’s not as cohesive an effort, “Jesus What a Jerk” is probably their best pop song to date. “Some Disenchanted Evening” was The Verlaines third album and has all the brilliance of the band’s previous “Bird Dog“.

Released in 1990, “Some Disenchanted Evening” sees Graeme Downes and co. taking a more traditional rock approach – and one that can be bitterly sardonic at times. The result is eleven tracks, stripped-back to reveal the gossamer beauty that underlies the band. Alongside the cut-and-thrust structure of the songs, “Some Disenchanted Evening” yet again displays the breadth, depth and subtlety of Downes musical ideas.

Trouser Press wrote that “the album’s coda, a piano ballad styled after Randy Newman, is actually the collection’s crowning achievement; harnessing a dapper melody to a bitterly sardonic lyric about failure, it reveals new-found subtlety and clarity in [Graeme] Downes’ writing.

The New York Times called the album “full of complex melodic variations, crescendos and elegant tempo shifts; the music has the theatrical grandeur of a symphony within the confines of rock.

After years of leading the Verlaines as a trio, Downes added a second guitarist to the group for this record, and the results are apparent from the very first moments of the album’s bracing opener, “Mission of Love,” by far the band’s most electrified tune ever. With the strings, reeds and genre exercises largely shelved, this is a true rock’n’roll album (arguably the Verlaines’ first), and Downes rises to the occasion with enough top-drawer material to mark him as one of the best singer/songwriters currently plying the trade. Choice cuts abound, including “This Valentine” (an exhortation for a romantic fool to get over it already), “Stay Gone” (a send-off to a departed lover) and the title track (one of rock’s most effective odes to a raped environment). 

The Verlaines are a New Zealand rock band from Dunedin. Named after the French symbolist poet and fronted by a classical music student, the Verlaines hail from Dunedin, New Zealand, the same hometown as the Chills and the Clean. originally formed in 1981 by Graeme Downes, Craig Easton, Anita Pillai, Phillip Higham and Greg Kerr, the band went through multiple line-ups.

Originally released April 30th, 1990

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have announced the details of their second album release of 2023, “The Silver Cord”. The synth-heavy LP is out October 27th and follows the progressive thrash metal album “PetroDragonic Apocalypse or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation”, issued back in June.

The band revealed little else besides the seven-song track-list and cover art in its social media announcement of the album. One thing we do know, however, is that the album will arrive in both standard and extended editions. This falls in line with KGLW’s move over the past several years into lengthier compositions, inspired by the band’s jam-friendly approach to group song writing. Singer/guitarist Stu Mackenzie said prior to the release of 2022’s “Omnium Gatherum” that the band had entered its “jamming period,” a trend that extended into this year’s return to thrash on “PetroDragonic, which featured lengthy, multi-part songs.

The other piece of information Gizzard supplied to fans in the post, the album cover, hints at a Kraftwerk influence. The band’s six members appear in all-black outfits, donning matching red sunglasses, and are walled in by a fortress of vintage synthesizers. Other in-studio photos posted by the band earlier this week, in which just about every member is shown playing some sort of synth, also hit at the significance of that aesthetic on the album.

“It’s definitely more synth-y,” said guitarist/vocalist Joey Walker  which compared it to 2020’s pandemic-assembled dance record “Butterfly 3000“. “You could draw comparisons in many ways, but just in the nature of us being in the same room and playing and writing together, it’s vastly different than “Butterfly.”

“The Silver Cord” also completes another yin-yang album cycle for King Gizzard. The stylistic chameleons often jump radically from one genre to the next, just as the synth-heavy “Butterfly 3000” preceded the jam-focused “Omnium Gatherum“, with plenty more examples going back through two dozen prior albums.

“I probably wouldn’t use the term ‘companion piece’ myself because I’m thinking of it like they are two records with completely different DNA and completely different personalities,” Mackenzie said of “The Silver Cord‘s” relationship with its predecessor.

 “The Silver Cord“, available for pre-order October 12th

A. Savage the Parquet Courts frontman has made “Several Songs About Fire” in Bristol, supported by singer/composer Jack Cooper and Welsh firebrand Cate Le Bon, who recently lent her production skills to Wilco’s phonetically-intricate “Cousin”. Savage’s topics sprawl from meditations on family and friends to indictments on modern society and nostalgia for a dangerous, masculinized Old West.

If it is anything, “Several Songs About Fire” is meticulously planned out: A brooding, flippant, precocious album that, in its best moments, roars to life in flickers of swelling guitars, burning harmonics and ingenious witticisms. At times, though, the album’s kindling fails to keep it alight, and it fades low under the weight of its own erudition. Andrew “A.” Savage’s voice is unmissable, iconic and, dare I say it, generational. So few singers or poets have soundtracked my life more viscerally than he has, be it via his 2017 debut “Thawing Dawn” or, honestly, anything he’s made across 11 years fronting Parquet Courts.

He hops from genre to genre with swift deftness, signalling a familiarity with musical stylings from ‘90s Brit-rock on the brash, lively “Elvis in the Army” to acoustic ‘60’s folk on the softly contemplative “Hurtin’ or Healed.” His lyrics are colourful and heady, hinting at the sort of lone-wolf singer-songwriter persona Savage is working toward. There’s no doubt that Savage has the ability to tap into real musical profundity, the kind you can’t fake or half-ass. And, when he moulds that depth correctly, the results are mountainous.

His singing, it’s gritty and harbouring chaos even when it’s presented as subdued and gentle; when he croons across tracks like “Eyeballs” and “Buffalo Calf Road,” you can hear the punk atoms coalescing with a rewarding branch of delicacy.

Savage had this to say about “David’s Dead” in a press release: “What can I say about the song ‘David’s Dead?’ Well I can tell you that it’s a portrait of the block in New York City that I called home for over a decade, each line sort of a tally of things that had changed in that time. I can tell you that David’s passing made some of those changes much more evident than they were before. I can tell you that the last time I saw David I bought him both a black coffee and a can of Crazy Stallion, and that we drank a coffee together on my stoop, but I said ‘see ya later’ when he cracked open the tallboy.”

His instrumentals, especially a frequently-wielded acoustic guitar, swell and ebb with a feeling of utter talent, folksy and thought-out without veering nihilistic. His dips into sonic maximalism are triumphs (All Hail Ms. Le Bon!), and his breadth of musical styling is undeniably impressive. Savage embraces his precocity rather than veiling it in an honest, Silver Jews-y way that mostly reads experienced rather than egomaniacal. “Several Songs About Fire” is a bold creative endeavor, and one I think I can deem a triumph. At its peaks, it is capacious, melancholy and beautifully indicative of the human desire for connection and meaning. It is also, at times, simpering and molasses-y, when Savage has proven he knows how to succeed without shackling himself to those tropes. When it burns low, its ashes are suffocating—but when it flares, it blazes high, “Several Songs About Fire” is exactly the type of solo record you should want from someone like Savage; it’s got sonics not too distant from those of Parquet Courts, but there are intricacies and small details that make it obvious just how dense of a world he’s built on his own. It’s the perfect spectrum of push and pull, “Several Songs About Fire” is a bold creative endeavor, and one I think I can deem a triumph. At its peaks, it is capacious, melancholy and beautifully indicative of the human desire for connection and meaning.

Alt-rock legends Sleater-Kinney are back with their first new record since 2021’s “Path of Wellness”. “Little Rope” is set to released on January 19th of next year via Loma Vista Recordings. Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker have returned with their 11th studio album and, perhaps, their most ferocious and emotional yet. Part of the album was conceived after Brownstein’s mother and stepfather were killed in a car accident last year, and that tragedy proved vital to the backbone of the record’s thematic spectrum.

“Little Rope” was produced by John Congleton, and lead single “Hell” arrives as this loud, unfettered volcano of rock ‘n’ roll that traverses across several distortions and melodies. Through racing guitars and piercing, confident and unrestrained vocals, “Hell” is big, bold, ferocious and plainspoken. “Hell don’t have no worries, Hell don’t have no past,” the track rings out. “Hell is just a signpost when you take a certain path.”

Tucker said that “Hell” wrestles with many injustices while “dropping us in a place and a time and a feeling and an emotion of helplessness and frustration. And revelation: of how much control we had conceded at that present moment in time.”

The Ashley Connor-directed and Miranda July-starring music video for “Hell” releases January 19th, 2024

Johnny Marr has announced that he’ll be releasing a best-of compilation album, ‘Spirit Power: The Best of Johnny Marr’, due out on November 3rd via BMG Records. The album will feature some of Johnny’s favorite recent songs, as well as two brand new tunes, including the album’s lead single, “Somewhere”, .

Personally curated by Johnny, ‘Spirit Power’ will celebrate his past decade of output, focusing on highlights from the string of solo albums he released between 2013 & 2022. Joining those tracks are previously-released singles “Armatopia” & “The Priest,” as well as a 2015 cover of Depeche Mode’s “I Feel You”. For the deluxe 2xCD version of the album, fans will also get to hear a handful of previously-unheard demos & rarities.

Arriving with a cheerful, green-screen-heavy music video, “Somewhere” captures the sense of melody & jangly, poppy goodness that Johnny has spent decades honing-in on. With uplifting lyrics about dreams waiting to come true to boot, it conveys his optimism, as well as his skills at writing anthemic rock bops…

Personally curated and compiled by Johnny Marr, ‘Spirit Power: The Best Of Johnny Marr’ encompasses music from across his four widely acclaimed solo albums released over the last decade (2013’s ‘The Messenger’, 2014’s ‘Playland’, 2018’s ‘Call the Comet’, 2022 double album ‘Fever Dreams Pts 1-4’), non-album single releases ‘Armatopia’ and ‘The Priest’ (w/ Maxine Peake). The collection also includes two brand new studio recordings ‘Somewhere’ and ‘The Answer’.

We recorded this song at a hotel in Omaha. Mari and I were on tour with a day off. We invited Anna to come play around with us. Anna and I palled around a few years ago, connecting over our mutual love of Lucinda, so it just seemed right. She rode up with her keyboard strapped to her bike. Mari had her pedal steel for our set on that run of shows. I played my big bass vi and gave us an easy beat to feel along it. We all sang. I love this recording, for all y’all who got a rock n roll heart.

XO,
Hannah

released October 6, 2023

Mia June, a 19-year-old singer/songwriter from Australia. I know we hear so often that someone is a wunderkind, a prodigy, etc., etc., and part of what I love about Mia June is that she’s wise about her years, not beyond them. Like, take her E.P. title: “Don’t Forget Your Bags”. It’s funny because what she means by “bags” is “baggage,” you know, as in: emotional stuff. But as people age out of teenagehood and into the “real world” of adult loneliness, tedium, aimlessness, alienation, pointlessness, boredom, etc., they kinda, like, forget who they were when they still believed they might amount to something. It’s like Johnny Cade said, with his dying breath, “Stay gold, Ponyboy.” But Mia June is Ponyboy, herself, and she’s smart enough to know the threats of that “real world” are, in fact, real, and hefty, and coming for her. Heck, by the time Biggie was 21 he had already proclaimed he was ready to die. It’s a hard world out there.

Mia says ‘Don’t Forget Your Bags’ is an ode to my adolescence, the people I have met during it that have formed the person I am, things I have experienced, good and bad, yearning, confusion, anxiety, love, anger and growing. I don’t want to forget anything in this journey from childhood to adulthood. I hope this EP will serve as a reminder of all of this, and to never ever forget my bags.

Try not to forget your bags, people.

YES, one of Rock’s most innovative progressive bands enjoyed a long run with several line-ups. To date, they remain stationary even if shy of most of the original line-up (excepting Steve Howe, who maintains the last vestige of YES with as much agile care as possible). The band has 23 studio albums, many of those well loved.

The Yes Album, Yes’ classic third studio release from 1971, that showcases their great musicianship, harmonies and unique songwriting, is getting a Super Deluxe Edition, with a newly remastered version along with rarities, two previously unreleased concerts, and fresh mixes by Steven Wilson, including an immersive Dolby Atmos Mix. The expanded box set contains 4-CDs, a Blu-ray disc, and an LP, arriving on November 24th, 2023, via Rhino Records.

The Yes Album is the third studio album by English progressive rock band Yes, released on 19th February 1971 by Atlantic Records. It was the band’s first album to feature guitarist Steve Howe, who replaced Peter Banks in 1970, as well as their last to feature keyboardist Tony Kaye until 1983’s 90125.

The band spent mid-1970 writing and rehearsing new material at a farmhouse at Romansleigh, Devon, and the new songs were recorded at Advision Studios in London in the autumn. The album was the first by the band to feature all-original material. While the album retained close harmony singing, Kaye’s Hammond organ, and Chris Squire’s melodic bass, as heard on earlier releases, the new material also covered further styles including jazz piano, funk, and acoustic music. All of the band members contributed ideas, and tracks were extended in length to allow music to develop. Howe contributed a variety of guitar styles, including a Portuguese guitar, and recorded the solo acoustic guitar-piece “Clap”, live at the Lyceum Theatre, London.

The Super Deluxe Edition includes Wilson’s newly remastered version of the original album on the CD. The LP is a new AAA cut by Bernie Grundman from the original master tapes. One of the two previously unreleased concerts from 1971 was recorded just a few weeks before “The Yes Album” was released, while the second was recorded six months later during the band’s U.S. tour. These performances include live versions of songs from the album, such as “Starship Trooper,” “Yours Is No Disgrace” and “Perpetual Change,” as well as songs from 1970’s “Time and a Word“.

Guitarist Steve Howe made his debut with the progressive rock band on the album. In the October announcement, he said, “The Yes Album” represents to me the invention of 70’s Yes. This was aided by leaving outside material off the record and heavily investing in the influences we brought together, particularly the arrangement skills and utilizing the available best technology. Our adventurism shows in the originality of the music and lyrics, as none of us had done anything quite like this before.”

The album was a critical success and a major commercial breakthrough for Yes, who had been at risk of being dropped by Atlantic due to the commercial failures of their first two albums.

Anderson also reflects on the original. “It’s wonderful to know that 50 years later our music is still appreciated. It was a ‘make or break’ time for the band on many levels. The harmony within the band was really special at that time, and it came through in the music.”

The reissue of “The Yes Album will feature a collection of rarities, the Steven Wilson remixes from the Panegyric reissue, the original album, as well as a mono mix of the original album (a promo release), previously unreleased live track cuts, and a Dolby Atmos mix of the album by Steven Wilson contained on the Blu-ray. Other things promised include a previously unreleased and unnamed instrumental, as well as an alternate take of “Starship Trooper”.

On November 24th, YES will reissue “The Yes Album” in a 4CD/LP/BD Box that celebrates the album’s 50th Anniversary. (Let’s hope that this kind of reissue continues on through)

Also, on October 6th, a new singles compilation to be called “Yessingles” will be released with 12 singles from the band over their popular span of time. It is being issued on DD and vinyl LP, but may be issued on CD in time.

A brand-new compilation featuring the band’s A-side singles for the first time on vinyl. Includes: “Roundabout”, “Owner of a Lonely Heart”, “Starship Trooper” “Life Seeker” and more!

Since its inception in the late 1960s, Yes has consistently pushed the boundaries of rock music, carving a path into new and uncharted sonic landscapes. Rhino is introducing a new collection that is the first to feature rare single versions of the band’s biggest hits on vinyl.

The collection boasts new artwork created exclusively for the album and features 12 songs that have resonated with generations of devoted fans. “Yessingles” moves chronologically through the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s career, starting in 1971 with the group’s first Top 40 hit, “Your Move,” and ending in 1984 with its smash, “Leave It.” In between, Yessingles touches on the band’s different eras, ranging from intricate prog-rock tapestries like “Starship Trooper” and “America” to the unforgettable soundscape of its chart-topping sensation, “Owner Of A Lonely Heart.”

With a discography spanning over five decades, Yes’ influence on rock remains immeasurable, and “Yessingles” reaffirms the band’s status as the most enduring, ambitious, and virtuosic progressive band in history.

The title will be pressed on 140g-weight black vinyl LP, and a special edition Splatter colour LP that will be made available through record stores. This set is being produced by Rhino Entertainment.

Coming in September, a newly remastered 3CD edition of the classic 1971 Family album “Fearless”. Featuring 24 bonus tracks,

Family’s Roger Chapman, discusses the new Cherry Red Records special 3-CD release of the British progressive rock band’s 1971 album “Fearless” remastered plus bonus tracks and BBC recordings. He also shares stories about the subsequent album “Bandstand”, both with the late John Wetton, before his time with King Crimson, Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, and most notably Asia. Chapman mentions a John Wetton tribute event and shares a pair of songs from his latest solo album “Life in the Pond”, and his guest vocalist appearance with the duo The Sinclairs: Rat Scabies of The Damned and Billy Shinbone of Flipron.

Featuring vocalist Roger Chapman, guitarist John ‘Charlie’ Whitney, drummer Rob Townsend, bassist and vocalist John Wetton and multi-instrumentalist John ‘Poli’ Palmer on vibes, keyboards and flute, ‘Fearless’ was released in October 1971 and was the first album to feature new member John Wetton following the departure of John Weider following the band’s second US tour in 1971 and the UK Top Ten hit single ‘In My Own Time’.

The album was one of Family’s finest and reached the UK Top 20 upon its release; featuring such strong material as ‘Spanish Tide’, Burning Bridges’ and ‘Between Blue And Me’. The first time I heard Family on AM rock radio station playing “Larf and Sing” from “Fearless”. The vocal arrangement on Poli Palmer’s composition is so unique, and the remastered version captures that very well in stereo, along with Poli’s flute.

Poli did a demo of it as his home and brought it to the Olympic recording studio in London and we performed it there. John Wetton and Roger did the barbershop vocal stylings, then Poli put the lead vocal on afterwards. That vocal arrangement was a great idea, and it is such a good song.  

Poli was one of the instigators in that musical league with the synthesizer, which he would bring on the stage along with his vibes. As people changed in the band, we took their influences to propel the band to somewhere else. Everyone was an equal partner in the band, very democratic, making it very creative as we toured the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and the U.S. we toured two or three times. We did well in New York and Los Angeles, but once we got out into in the middle of the country, our recognition was hit or miss.

Charlie Whitney and Roger wrote this song and so many songs for the band, since the first album, “Music in a Doll’s House” in 1968. We clicked together. His real name is John Whitney, but we had so many Johns in the band that we decided to call them by different names. John Whitney became Charlie, John Wetton became Ken, and John Palmer became Poli.

The chorus on “Spanish Tide,” that Roger and Charlie co-wrote sounds like a predecessor of what John Wetton would bring to Asia’s debut album a decade later, a bit faster on “Only Time Will Tell.” 

Before the “Fearless” album was the summer hit single of 1971 “In My Own Time,” with a marching beat, and is one of the bonus tracks on this new 3-CD collection.

The second disc of the new set begins with 1971 BBC sessions in the studio and the recording is so professional in sound. It opens wonderfully with “Procession/No Mule’s Fool.”  it was a very nice version. It includes John Weider, yet another John who played bass for the group before John Wetton joined. On this song he played violin. John Wieder had been in Eric Burdon and The Animals before joining Family.

The BBC concert on the third disc features . “Drowned in Wine” is so powerfully dramatic. Chapman says that was also powerful on stage and a big favourite with fans because it is explosive. Fortunately, my voice hardly gave out. If I got a little hoarse, people really wouldn’t know if I was hoarse or not. With my range, I could rock it out or sing a breathy love song ballad.

This new three-disc edition of this classic album has been newly remastered from the master tapes and also includes 24 bonus tracks drawn from the ‘In My Own Time’ single, BBC Sessions and “In Concert” performances, plus an illustrated booklet with new essay and reproduction poster.