The Fat Angel Sings

As the years have passed, U2 has maintained a knack for pulling out all the stops with each subsequent burst of activity — so why should their lavish new Las Vegas residency be any different?

On Friday, September 29th, the legendary band will begin its anticipated U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere residency at the groundbreaking new facility in Vegas.

They’ll also do so with a brand new song/music video, “Atomic City,” A news release characterizes “Atomic City” as a 3 ½ minute homage to the magnetic spirit of 70’s post punk with a nod to Blondie, whose pioneering work with Giorgio Moroder inspired and influenced the band. Bono says “It’s a love song to our audience …’where you are is where I’ll be’.”

Atomic City is itself a 1950s nickname for Las Vegas from a time when nuclear fascination swept the nation and the city promoted itself as a centre of atomic tourism due to its proximity to the Nevada Test Site. The “Atomic City” video features a surprise performance from U2 at Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas — the same location where Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. filmed their iconic video for ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ over 36 years ago.

On 11th and 12th November it is that time again. We will once again transform the Brabanthallen in Den Bosch into a music hall. It will be fun with rows and rows of record bins. In addition, there will of course be great book presentations, live performances and exhibitions. The fair takes place in Hall 1 and Hall 7 of the Brabanthallen. So to quickly find your way to your favourite genres and artists, you might want to take a look at our floor plan in advance. Vendors from all over the world, including Europe, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, Mexico and USA will be present. 

It’s been four years since Cherry Glazerr released their resplendent third album “Stuffed and Ready”, but Clementine Creevy has been in no rush. “I’ve spent these years taking a hard look at myself, at my relationships, and writing about it,” she says. “I guess I’m coming to terms with a lot of my bullshit.” Cherry Glazerr have been on the road more often than not since Creevy was still in high school, and when the pandemic hit, she immersed herself in a static existence she’d been deprived of. “When you’re always leaving, you don’t have a great sense of where your relationships stand, romantic or otherwise.

Creevy describes Cherry Glazerr’s ambitious new album, “I Don’t Want You Anymore”, as some of her most personal, raw music to date, a collection of songs that elaborate on this period of self-reckoning. It’s the first she’s produced since Cherry Glazerr’s garage rock debut, “Haxel Princess“, released nearly a decade ago when Creevy was a teenager. That album made Cherry Glazerr a Los Angeles mainstay act, and its follow up, 2017’s “Apocalipstick”, put the band on the national map. Cherry Glazerr’s rough and tumble sound coupled with Creevy’s witty, sarcastic, occasionally self-deprecating lyricism made the band a joy to watch live, their energy unmatched by the coolly detached bent of indie rock at the time.

Creevy describes “I Don’t Want You Anymore” as a “mature” album, moreso in reference to her personal growth than a reflection of the record, which in true Cherry Glazerr fashion is best described as Extremely Fun. To make it, Creevy linked up with producer Yves Rothman, who’s best known for his work with Yves Tumor. “I knew I had to work with him,” she says. The collaboration began with a cover of Metallica’s “My Friend of Misery” and grew into this new record, which Creevy considers to be Cherry Glazerr, fully-actualized. “The songs on this one are songs I’ve dreamed of making,” she says.

Lead single “Soft Like a Flower” exemplifies that growth. A murky guitar riff inaugurates the track, before Creevy’s unguarded vocals enter the mix. She sings of a consuming obsession and is joined on the chorus by longtime bandmate Sami Perez. “I’m high on your something,” they wail. “I like you killing me/ I like you killing me/ I like you killing me.” It’s proudly emotive, what Creevy calls an “Evanescence moment.” “It’s a real ‘losing your fucking shit’ kind’ve vibe,” she says. “I wanted this album to be just heart and soul. Completely exposed.”

“I Don’t Want You Anymore” uses the element of surprise to its advantage; each track is a radical reimagination of what Cherry Glazerr is and can be. “Bad Habit” opens with a spiraling vocal loop that Creevy began recording at home and it expands into a delirious downtempo dance track without ever invoking a guitar. “I can’t wait to play that one live. Whenever I’m free of a guitar and I can just sing… I love having those moments on tour,” she says. The subsequent track, “Ready for You” is sung in funky staccato and the initially spare bassline on the opening verse is eventually overtaken by a massive, staticky guitar riff that reminds you this is, at its heart, a rock album. “At the start of the pandemic, I was writing a lot in the box, what I call ‘computer music’ since I’m technologically challenged,” Creevy says. “It was fun to experiment, but after a while, I just really missed rock. I love rock music – I love how it’s cathartic and brash and sometimes a little dumb.”

Though Cherry Glazerr’s latest offers some insight into Creevy’s private moments, it’s also a humorous album, one she hopes people don’t take too seriously. “This was a really therapeutic record to make, but it’s also self-aware, and I hope, funny,” she says. On “Touched You With My Chaos,” the album’s outright loudest song that begs for a scream-along, Creevy becomes a wildly dramatic narrator, one who slashes the tires of her own car, accompanied by strings and the unexpected squawk of a trumpet. She wrote it after watching Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, and wanted to mimic the sense of desperation the film inspires. “I said that I loved you!” she howls over and over again on the chorus.

You’re not thinking about the work that goes into maintaining them,” she says. Creevy describes Cherry Glazerr’s ambitious new album “I Don’t Want You Anymore“, as some of her most personal, raw music to date, a collection of songs that elaborate on this period of self-reckoning.

Cherry Glazerr upcoming album ‘I Don’t Want You Anymore’, out September 29th on Secretly Canadian.

Molly Burch’s new album follows previously released singles, “Tattoo,” “Physical,” and “Unconditional” each of which demonstrate a vulnerable yet vibrant side of Burch’s matured skills as a singer-songwriter.

Having recently relocated to her hometown of Los Angeles, the beginnings of her latest album came together after Burch found her old diaries from age 13 and younger. Renowned for her captivating vocals and vivid depictions of love and loss, Molly takes on a new form in “Daydreamer”, focusing on the relationship she has with herself as well as the personal highs and lows that inform her self-identity.

“Daydreamer” boasts a sharper, much cleaner production approach and a bit more pop than Burch’s previous records, thanks to producer Jack Tatum. Molly shares, “I had worked with Jack before on our co-written song ‘Emotion’ that we put out in 2020.”

“When deciding who would produce “Daydreamer” I knew I wanted it to be Jack as soon as I started writing. We have similar taste and sensibilities and I look up to him so much.” There are Japanese city pop inspirations, horns, strings, and more ballads, with a throughline of Molly’s masterful, shimmering vocals taking center stage.

The result is music that feels stirring and sweeping, pulling in sounds and influences of the past, while also propelling Burch into a further development of herself as an artist.

They say long live the king and all, but nothing’s ever set in stone. A quarter of a century since his self-inflicted coronation, and self-released debut solo album, Kenny Anderson – DIY pop voyager, ancestral seaside home restorer, squeezebox lothario, Fife for lifer, diamond miner, hijacker of hearts, and the man also known as King Creosote – has released over 100 records (at a relatively conservative guess), collaborated with the likes of Jon Hopkins, KT Tunstall, Beta Band’s Lone Pigeon, and had his songs covered and performed by artists including Patti Smith and Simple Minds. He’s now got a new LP, despite or perhaps because of it all. It’s called “I DES”.

And no, it hasn’t bypassed a songwriter so buoyed by playful lyricism that the title of this latest release is an easy anagram of “Dies”. But bear a couple of things in mind: 1) “I DES” is a reference to KC’s key collaborator this time around – multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Derek O’Neill aka Des Lawson of Blantyre (2014’s From Scotland With Love, 2016’s Astronaut Meets Appleman); and 2) HRH King Creosote has been circling his demise for the entirety of his musakal life. 

“I shan’t complain,” he rejoices on the album’s most uplifting hymn “Blue Marbled Elm Trees” – a new song also shared today – “I had the best time laughing with my girls / I had the best life offered up / By this blue marble or any alien world.” 

With a suitably beautiful video (directed by Reuben Sutherland) to match, “Blue Marbled Elm Trees” reflects on life, death, the universe, art and love. Always the big stuff with Kenny.  

Elsewhere on “I DES”, there are the previously released songs “Susie Mullen” and “Walter de la Nightmare”, as well as the 36-minute “Drone in B#”. The record’s kaleidoscopic musical terrain plots vibraphones, accordions, e-bows, samplers, ungulates, pipes, scratched records and wine glass-drones across its landscape. But there’s common ground in the wonder of the synthesiser – not to mention Anderson’s singular voice, and his roguish, roving, ever-evolving, gorgeous songs in the key of Fife.

While the record’s kaleidoscopic musical terrain plots vibraphones, accordions, e-bows, samplers, ungulates,

scratched records and wine glass-drones across its landscape, there’s common ground in the wonder of the synthesiser – not to mention Anderson’s singular voice, and his roguish, roving, ever-evolving, gorgeous songs in the key of Fife.

*On both vinyl formats, the 36-minute final track “Drone In B#” will come on a download card, on limited double-disc CD “Drone in B#” is on CD2.

“Axxess and Ace” stood to be Songs: Ohia’s third album release in 1999, Jason Molina is assisted by Geof Comings (Party Girls), Michael Krassner (The Lofty Pillars, Boxhead Ensemble, Edith Frost Band), Joe Ferguson (Pinetop Seven), Dave Pavkovic (Boxhead Ensemble), Julie Liu (Rex) and Edith Frost.

This album was recorded by Krassner at his Truckstop Studios in Chicago. ‘Axxess and Ace’ flickers between Liu’s aching violin and Molina’s intensely personal lyrics quilting the worries and anxieties of the idea of imperfections. It is direct, in the way that love songs can be, recorded almost entirely live and first take.

It is direct, in the way that love songs can be, recorded almost entirely live and first take. The finished product is full of spontaneity and surprise for the listener to enjoy time and time again.

Repressed on colour for the first time in ages!

Marking the two year anniversary of the release of her critically acclaimed album ‘Valentine’, Snail Mail (Lindsey Jordan) will put out ‘Valentine Demos’ EP digitally on November 2nd. Consisting of four early stripped-down recordings of songs from the 2021 album including the previously shared “Adore You” (a working title for “Valentine”), it also features previously unreleased song “Easy Thing”.

Jordan says: “Without further ado, here are the demo versions of some of the songs that would become integral to the making of “Valentine”. A little over three years ago, holed up at my parents’ house in Maryland, with just a minilogue synth, an interface, a mic, and a guitar, I started working on writing my second full length record. I prefer some of the demos to what actually came out on the record because of how intimate and solitary the process was. You can kind of hear me crying in one of them. Maybe two actually haha.”

‘Valentine’, the second album from Snail Mail, was featured prominently in best of the year roundups from New York Times, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and many others. It was described as”… exquisite (…) dazzlingly sharp and passionate” (Pitchfork ‘Best New Music’),“remarkable second album (…) alive with such crackling and revelatory emotion”(The New York Times), “a truly satisfying album of 10 perfectly crafted tracks” (the i) and“doesn’t so much touch you as it does completely eviscerate you” (Crack). On release, ‘Valentine’ landed at #1 on the Billboard Emerging Artist Chart and #61 in the Billboard Top 200 in the US, and entered the Top 40 album charts in the UK and Australia.

the ‘Valentine’ (Demos) EP, out November 3rd on Matador Records

Because “Hold”, Jack Tatum’s fifth album under the moniker Wild Nothing, was writ- ten in the aftermath of new parenthood during the pandemic, it was probably in- evitable that it would be searching and existential music. But during the recording process, the artist known for synth-pop tastefulness used it as an opportunity to reach for a new sonic maximalism and wider set of influences. With contributions from longtime collaborator Jorge Elbrecht, Tommy Davidson of Beach Fossils and Hatchie’s Harriette Pilbeam, first single “Headlights On” features an acid house- worthy bass groove and breakbeat that prove Tatum is playing for the rafters.

Tatum produced the rest of the record on his own, partially out of necessity, due to the challenges of the pandemic. The songs were eventually brought to Adrian Olsen at Montrose Recording in Richmond to begin recording drums and filling in the gaps. While largely a product of isolation, “Hold” also reflects the things Tatum has learned from collaborators, both on previous records and during his acclaimed work with Japanese Breakfast and Molly Burch. The rest of the record was mixed by Geoff Swan, who listeners might know for his work with Caroline Polachek and Charli XCX. Swan put Tatum’s vocals high in the mix, and throughout the album, he embraces playful vocal processing like never before.

Tatum moved from Los Angeles back to his home state of Virginia about five years ago in search of a scaled-back lifestyle. The relatively suburban environment—and the occasional regret it inspired—proved to be great artistic fodder. It’s the para- dox of modern America—the suburbs are supposed to be stultifying to art, but they are so full of human desperation perfect for dramatizing. On “Suburban Solutions”, he presents an anti-jingle with an acidly bright synthesizer melody, imploring you to sign on the dotted line, put your feet up, and embrace sweet oblivion.

Adding to the song’s menacing cheeriness is a chorus-sung bridge, made with as- sistance from Molly Burch and Tatum’s wife, Dana, It was loosely inspired by the classic Martika song “Toy Soldiers” and the long-ago pop craze for children’s choirs, and he embraces the trend’s less-than-stellar reputation. By design, “Hold” dwells in uncertainty and fear, but in a package that encourages meditation and a bit of fun. “In the face of the pandemic, I think being a parent really forced my hand,” Tatum said. “I felt that I had no other choice but to have a positive outlook on the world. Because if I were to give in at any moment and say, “Oh, everything is horrible,” then I’ll feel as if I’ve lost and I’ve given up on my son being able to thrive in this world.”

Wild Nothing new album ‘Hold’ out October 27th, 2023.

As the front person of celebrated indie band Cymbals Eat Guitars, guitarist and singer Joseph D’Agostino spent over a decade setting autobiographical, emotionally vivid lyrics against a backdrop of soaring and compositionally ambitious rock. After 4 critically acclaimed LPs that solidified D’Agostino’s reputation as a gifted songwriter, he chose to break from his long-term band and debut a new project: Empty Country. On 2020’s selftitled debut, D’Agostino’s storytelling lens shifted away from personal narrative and toward fiction; psychopaths, apparitions and deplorables populated a bleak and uncanny parallel version of American dystopia. Empty Country’s sprawling and sonically adventurous arrangements filled out by collaborating musicians including Rachel and Zoë Browne (Field Mouse), Kyle Gillbride (Swearin’), Zena Kay (Angel Olsen), and former CEG drummer Charlotte Anne Dole ranged from luminous jangle-pop to scorching emo-punk to narcotized Americana.

“Empty Country II”, the project’s 2nd full-length, is a thrilling expansion of that world. D’Agostino pushed himself to new places as a songwriter, crafting a collection of short stories set to music that grapple with the biggest questions now hanging over America gun violence, the addiction epidemic, and generational hopelessness among them. In 2020, he’d moved from Philadelphia to small-town New England to be closer to family, and his new locale, coupled with the dread of lockdown, inspired him to return to the haunted world from the first LP. “It’s pretty jarring to leave a city where you can safely assume you’re aligned with your neighbours on many political and social issues for somewhere more rural and conservative,” says D’Agostino, noting the Trump flags and Blue Lives Matter hood wraps that dot his new dirt road residence. Across the new album’s 9 tracks, D’Agostino introduces us to a bevy of characters: 3 generations of West Virginia clairvoyants, crushed by the weight of their secret knowledge; a group of drag queens and misfits in early ‘80s New York City; a pill mill doctor’s daughter who dabbles in necromancy; a convicted killer; a bullied kid injured and alone in the forest as night falls. Through the stories of these characters, “Empty Country II” delivers an engaging and deeply moving rumination on time, family, and the disintegration of America. Despite the stoicism of its storytelling, “Empty Country II” cuts the darkness with beauty, humour, and an earnest belief in the transcendent power of rock music.

It was recorded over 2 weeks at Fidelitorium, the renowned studio belonging to R.E.M. producer Mitch Easter. Legendary recording engineer John Agnello, whose previous collaborations with Cymbals Eat Guitars resulted in their 2014 high-water mark, “LOSE”, brought his trademark clarity and nuance to the process, helping “Empty Country II” crackle with a vital energy that imbues these stories with genuine lifeforce. Dole returned on drums for the record, her virtuosic performances lending raw power and immediacy; her twin brother Patrick joined on bass.

The group’s chemistry and deep personal history are palpable, allowing them to approach the record’s complex story with subtlety and dynamism. “FLA,” a gripping portrait of a queer tour boat pilot in the Florida Keys pining for their absent lover, was arranged from the ground so the group could incorporate Easter’s timpani. D’Agostino considers it a high point of his lengthy discography and lauds that song’s harmonica solo as “my favorite 30 seconds of music that I’ve ever been a part of.” “Empty Country II” also features some of D’Agostino’s most danceable songs like “David,” a tribute to D’Agostino’s late friend David Berman. Featuring a lyrical tapestry of Silver Jews references and surreally beautiful images, head-nodding Philly soul grooves collapse into cosmic freeform jazz-inspired sections, ornamented with inventive hand percussion, marimba flourishes, and toe-tapping piano chords.

On “Bootsie,” a runaway girl from West Virginia explores the crumbling, glorious 1980s New York City of Paris is Burning, finding community in a scene of drag queens who offer her a new way of thinking about what makes America and rock music great. Inverting the chorus of the Talking Heads’ “Heaven,” the lyrics of “Bootsie” celebrate the underdogs and misfits: “Hell is the place where everything happens / The band’s playing all the songs ever written at once / Shape the chaos, make your little story / Baby, this life’s perfect purgatory.”

Though “Empty Country II” is a record about the forces that drive Americans apart, it’s also imbued with empathic love and an understanding of what binds people to family and country in spite of the darknesses we encounter. The concept of a Great American Rock Album might scan as outdated in 2023, but with this sprawling and uncompromising epic, D’Agostino and Empty Country shatter ambivalence and confront the horrors with a community-minded sense of cautious optimism. “We may be staring into an abyss,” says D’Agostino. “But we’re all staring together.”

From the album, “Empty Country II”, released via Get Better Records/Tough Love on November 3rd 2023.

Brooklyn-based duo The Vacant Lots are dropping their new single ‘Evacuation’, the third to be lifted from their incoming ‘Interiors’ LP out October 13th on Fuzz Club Records. Arriving off the back of recent singles ‘Amnesia’ and ‘Damaged Goods’, ‘Evacuation’ sees a blistering disco-on-downers dance beat shot through with lacerating guitars and icy detached vocals.

The Vacant Lots’ Jared Artaud says of the track: “Evacuation2 is about internal conflicts and the duality of love and loss within a relationship. Looking inward and carving out the pain was a mantra for the whole album. You get this moment in time and space to translate complex feelings into the work. It cuts both ways. You’re creating something out of necessity that can also be shared with other people to inspire them or make them feel less alone. That’s what I’m after.”

Brian MacFadyen adds: “This track immediately resonated with both of us early on in the ‘trading demos’ phase of writing the record because of its primitive and raucous aesthetic. It taps into the original DNA of the band.”