The Fat Angel Sings

Jason Isbell released a new live album for Bandcamp Friday, “Live at the Beacon Theatre – New York, NY – February 21 & 22, 2025. One track is streaming now and you have to download it for $10 to hear the rest. What a feast. Jason Isbell has quite the catalogue at this point and it’s cool he draws as far back as DBTs and “Southeastern“. 

Jason Isbell – Vocals, Guitar

Recorded live at the Beacon Theatre in New York, NY on 2/21/25 & 2/22/25

released December 5th, 2025

Silversun Pickups have announced a new album, “Tenterhooks“, due February 6th via New Machine. It was produced by Butch Vig, and the first single is a soaring alt-rock anthem called “The Wreckage.” The band will also be on tour next year. Our seventh studio album is coming your way on February 6th.

“I used to be in love with huge guitar swells, and I’ve fallen back in love with them—just in my older brain,” says Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert of the band’s new single. “‘New Wave’ is a reference to feeling like, ‘This thing is going to hit me’. You’re either going to get in the ocean or lay in the sand. It’s not even up to you. You’re not sure when it’s going to happen, but it’s going to happen. How do you prepare for it?” New album “Tenterhooks”, which was produced by Butch Vig, will be out February 6th.

*Pre-order signed limited blue marble vinyl, signed limited CDs, and more at the SSPU Shop!

Too often, an album comes out swinging so hard at the start that you inevitably overlook the band. Ribbon Skirt, on the other hand, are inventive and self-assured from “Bite Down’s” first seconds to its last. Featuring vocalist-guitarist Tashiina Buswa and multi-instrumentalist Billy Riley, formerly half of Montreal indie rockers Love Language, the duo pack their debut with instinct and swagger. It’s the kind of short, bracing piece of art that disarms listeners with bursts of clarity. Lyrics like “I want to preserve every part that makes me” (“Off Rez”) and “It’s getting harder not to feel so abandoned” (“Wrong Planet”) take on colonization, identity and intergenerational trauma head-on, adding to the urgency of the record. “Bite Down” was released back in April and was nominated for this year’s Polaris Music Prize.

On “Bite Down”, Ribbon Skirt proudly carry the flag for brash and hook-laden Mint predecessors like the New Pornographers and the Organ. If you’re wondering what Canadian artists do better than anyone else in the world, it’s exactly this.

“Bite Down” has been my newest obsession as of recent, I cannot get it off repeat. It feels so effortless in sound without losing any of its depth, especially not so in the lyrical department. Simple, catchy, and impactful, it’s a real treat. craft clever, compelling indie rock that swings between soaring and sludgy, tender and tense. Their songs have roots in the ’90s but the production and arrangements feel entirely modern, with layers upon layers of hooks and melody. The not-so-secret weapon here is Tashiina’s voice, which can go from sultry to snarl to shriek depending on what the song needs, making for a meaty, deeply satisfying record.

Following the success of their MTV Unplugged set in 1994, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page pulled together a band and hit the road. This recording finds the pair on stage at The Shark Tank in San Jose for a show that many considered to be the highlight of the tour.

Over the course of 16 songs, they naturally dive headlong into the Led Zeppelin catalogue. They also find for a few covers, the most surprising of which is a quite wonderful take on The Cure’s ‘Lullaby’ that features Cure member Porl Thompson on guitar. Most importantly, these are inventive and inspired takes on Zep’s original blueprints. They showcase the phenomenal vocals of Plant and Page injects a distinctly Middle-Eastern feel into his guitar. ‘Kashmir’ in particular becomes a stretched-out hypnotic jam that feels at times oppressively heavy, and at others, transcendental. Similarly, the amalgam of ‘Calling To You’, ‘Dazed And Confused’ and ‘Break On Through’ is a phenomenal exercise in virtuosity and composed chaos and showcases a band at the top of its game

This double album showcases Jimmy Page and Robert Plant’s spectacular concert at the Shark Tank Arena, in San Jose, California, on 20 May 1995.

Led Zeppelin’s main songwriters had reformed 17th April 1994 as a part of the Alexis Korner Memorial Concert, held at the Buxton Opera House, in Buxton, Derbyshire. Then, on 25th and 26th August, the duo recorded performances in London, Wales and Morocco, with Egyptian and Moroccan orchestration. The performances aired as part of the 90-minute MTV project “UnLedded“, and were so successful that the two co-ordinated a tour which kicked off in February 1995.

This release captures an incredible performance from that tour. Featured, are both new material and middle eastern-influenced covers of Zeppelin classics such as “Kashmir”, “Black Dog”, “Ramble On”, “Since I’ve Been Loving You”, “No Quarter” and more. Also included is a unique cover of The Cure’s “Lullaby”.

This recording came from a FM Broadcast from a concert in San Jose, California.

Indie cult favourites The Wave Pictures have unveiled their latest single, “Sure and Steady,” a charming precursor to their highly anticipated album, “Gained / Lost“. Set for release on 27th February via Bella Union Records, the album promises to be a distillation of the DIY spirit that has guided the trio for nearly three decades.

Following the Burroughs-inspired dreamscape of the lead single “Alice,” “Sure and Steady” shifts the focus from dreams to memories.

The Wave Pictures say: “Sure and Steady” is like Lou Reed if he’d grown up in the East Midlands. This song is a memory song, rather than a dream song. Like Proust with his Madeleines, this is a song about flapjacks. This is also a song about other people’s mothers and how they are so different from one’s own mother. This song is like a photograph.”

“Sure and Steady” is the second single from The Wave Pictures new album “Gained / Lost”, due out 27th February 2026

The elemental joy of making music and the pleasure of pure sound lie at the heart of the new album, joy and pleasure distilled into it’s essential essence by David ‘Sheddiebrek’ Tattersall (guitar and lead vocals), Franic ‘Hot Fudge’ Rozycki (bass) and Jonny ‘Huddersfield’ Helm (drums).

Arbor Labor Union was born from a peach tree in Georgia in the American south. They play psychedelic, repetitious, and joyful rock and roll music. Arbor Labor Union follow up their 2023 album, “Yonder“, with a new EP for the new year. The record brings a new dose of Cosmic American rumble. Title track, “Out To Pasture” is toasted by the afternoon sun; rolled in twang and tied to a driving rhythm that’s an excellent continuation of what they’d been harnessing on “Yonder“.

Stretching out from purple dawn “Patch of Violet” to cicada twilight “Spittle of the Morning Moon” like Whitman laying on his back observing the dew drop worlds collected on shards of green swords “hidden in a drop of dew”, to the topographic map of the stars as witness/ dull mirror ,reflecting the constellation of the human body “zodiac man”. To the cloud disappear / cloud evaporate canned heat boogie hymnal of Clear View. The prayer is answered and the sun pokes the light through again. A voice in the forest calls out blindly. She lets her hair down and answers, calling him back to her in the way she knows how. A CSNY seasoned skillet of guitar fried taters “repunzel”.

releases January 2nd, 2026

“Out to pasture” indeed. More bound and freer than ever. From the stump again to sky, Arbor Labor Union. As the leaves fall. 2025 AD.

Baked in boogie and broken on the road, the new EP tacks their turbulence into the Crazy Horse winds. The new EP pairs with a December tour with Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band. “Out To Pasture” lands January 2nd.

Amanda Bergman has today announced that she will release her third album “embraced for a second as we die” on 16th January via The Satchi Six & Arketyp. Following her return with the video for ‘Grasp’ earlier this month, she has today also shared lead singles ‘Mexico’ and ‘is this how you said you’d be gone’ Speaking of ‘Mexico’ Amanda says:
“‘Mexico’ captures the essence of a lot of the music I’ve loved and listened to over the years.

It’s about the internal push and pull between self-erasure and adaptive surrender — a tension I believe many of us experience in intimate relationships, whether healthy or damaging.”

Speaking of ‘is this how you said you’d be gone’ Amanda says”:
“‘is this how you said you’d be gone’ is a song about the stunned stillness after sudden loss, how loss and grief sometimes rearranges your life, and its very infrastructure. Some relationships – even when someone has died or drifted away – can feel just as vivid,

Sometimes even more so, than those still present. For me, the inner conversations I have with my dad and grandma, for example, can feel as real as birdsong, even though they are long since gone. I’ve stopped questioning it and instead learned to use it – not unlike how I’d honour my children’s fantasies, not for their content but for their truth. Sometimes the body and the mind agree on a kind of truth that logic can’t touch.”
Embraced for a second as we die follows up 2024’s “Your Hand Forever Checking On My Fever” for which Amanda won two Swedish GRAMMY awards, ‘Lyricist of the Year’ and ‘Singer/Songwriter of the Year’.

Amanda describes “Embraced…” in short as a display of “love as resistance. Across relationships – romantic, familial, ancestral – love is portrayed as/assumed to be the only force that still feels real amid chaos”. The title alludes to the theory (“whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter”) that the brain releases a flood of DMT in our final moments. She says, “embraced for a second as we die” isn’t about death so much as it’s about that imagined moment of clarity – the second when everything, for once, makes sense. For me, that’s the image. In my own search for answers, there’s also a kind of realisation – or maybe comfort – in knowing that, okay, whether I choose to become a pirate or a Buddhist, there’s still a pretty good chance it’ll all end the same way anyway”.

The album was written by Amanda and the music arranged by her and her partner Petter Winnberg with the intent in mind of the live recording reaching its full potential and making up most of the final product. This was then recorded in two sessions at Atlantis Metronome – the old ABBA studio in Stockholm.

On her new album, Amanda Bergman tries to grasp the present moment as it unfolds. The personal and the political, the quiet little moments, a world seemingly on the verge of implosion. But also the passage of time, people who disappear, love as an act of resistance, and the strange mix of euphoria and despair that comes from simply being alive right now.

Ellie O’Neill is an artist from Co. Meath, Ireland. Her music weaves a rich, diverse and tender landscape, traversing raw and intuitive explorations of intimacy and loss, friendship and queer identity. On December 11th , Ellie will release her debut single ‘Bohemia / Little Sister’ on vinyl as a very limited edition pressing (x100) of hand-stamped, hand-numbered 7-inch via St. Itch.

It has been a good year for the Meath singer songwriter Ellie O’Neill. Last March she took to the Other Voices stage in a show that was broadcast featuring Maverick Sabre and Morgana.

Since then she has been steadily increasing a fanbase that appreciates the sincere and honest approach to music creation. Her songs range from grungy, big-hearted confessionals to two-chord reveries, accompanied by experimental guitar tunings and dynamic, grounded vocals.

In recent months, she has toured widely, opening for Adrianne Lenker, John Francis Flynn, and Tucker Zimmerman, as well as performances at Greenman, OtherVoices, and Pitchfork London. Her highly anticipated debut LP is due this year.

The Cure have a new concert film, The Cure: The Show Of A Lost World. The film will be screened in cinemas beginning December 11th. The film documents the band’s live show at London’s Troxy on November 1st, 2024 – release day for their “Songs Of A Lost World” album – where they performed the album in full for the first and only time in front of an audience of 3,000.

On 1st November 2024, The Cure’s widely acclaimed Grammy-nominated album ‘SONGS OF A LOST WORLD’ was released. The night of the album’s unveiling, The Cure performed the record in full for the first and only time at London’s Troxy in front of 3,000 fans. As a recut, remixed and 4K remastered film of that night’s full 31-song show. Directed by Grammy-nominated Nick Wickham, with new surround sound mix by Robert Smith, the film will be released on Thursday 11th December in cinemas worldwide for a limited time only. Initially formed in 1978, The Cure has sold over 30 million albums worldwide, headlined the Glastonbury Festival four times, and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. They are considered one of the most influential bands to have ever emerged from the UK.

Welcome to the last Uncut of 2025. But as we bid farewell to the old year, a new one beckons – in this instance, our annual preview showcasing many of the sure-to-be highlights of the next 12 months. You’ll find a slew of interviews with the likes of Courtney Barnett, Bill Callahan, Altın Gün, Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam, The Lemon Twigs’ Brian D’Addario, White Denim’s James Petralli, Buck Meek, Buzzcocks’ Steve Diggle, The Delines’ Willy Vlautin and more, There are also reports on fresh stirrings from the Stones, Stevie Nicks, The Cure and Alabama Shakes. All of which, I hope, whets your appetite for new music in 2026.

This month’s debuting cover stars, The Damned, who next year celebrate their 50th anniversary. For our cover story, the band revisit their formative years – an opportunity for some quality larks, of course, but it’s also a warm tale of enduring camaraderie and a testament to the vision of their fallen co-founder, guitarist and songwriter Brian James. There’s plenty more inside, of course – from Laura Nyro to Dry Cleaning, Dionne Warwick to James, The Byrds to the Arctic Monkeys.