The Fat Angel Sings

Robertson’s music reflected the journey of his life, from his ancestral roots in the Six Nations of the Grand River, on to the seedy Yonge Street strip of his teenage years, continuing down the Mississippi River, all the while picking up influences and sounds, including country, folk and the blues. When combined with the musicianship of the Band (Robertson, Rick Danka, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, the latter the only surviving member), the resulting sound became what we now know as Americana. 

Robbie Robertson’s early career is distinguished by his tenure in the Hawks, the group of musicians that would later evolve into the Band. In the early 1960s, the Hawks backed the Arkansas-born frontman Ronnie Hawkins, touring the US and Canada and cutting a few studio singles.

As a songwriter, Robertson was among the best, pulling inspiration from the road, troubles with addiction and, in many cases, history books. He rarely sang himself, and only released solo music after the Band had disbanded, but when his bandmates sang the words he wrote, they never sounded better. 

‘The Night They Drove Ol Dixie Down’

If there’s a greater song about the Civil War written by a Canadian, we haven’t heard it.

Robertson had the tune for this song in his head, but wasn’t sure what it was going to be about. He decided he was going to write about the dying days of the Civil War, told from the point of view of a working-class Southerner. Robertson didn’t write the song with any political undertones, instead focusing deeply on the personal narrative. In many ways, it was an ode to his friend Levon Helm, originally from Arkansas, and was intended as a way to showcase Helm’s powerful voice. 

“Robbie and I worked on ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ up in Woodstock. I remember taking him to the library so he could research the history and geography of the era,” Helm wrote in his book, This Wheel’s on Fire. From the stream-of-consciousness lyrics worthy of Faulkner, which take you into the head of Virgil Caine, to that climactic rhythm section and the way it offsets, to the drums, to Helm’s inimitable voice, it’s one of the finest songs the Band ever wrote. It’s also worth noting that Helm never performed the song after the Last Waltz concert in 1976.

‘The Weight’

There are few things guaranteed in life, but one of those guarantees is this: if any band, not even just the Band, closes out a concert with “The Weight,” everyone in the audience will be belting out “take a load off Annie” by the time the chorus hits. With Robertson’s textured lyrics and biblical allusions, as well as its mix of folk, country and gospel, it’s become a standard of the American songbook, one of Robertson’s finest compositions that has been covered by everyone from Aretha Franklin to the Black Keys. It’s the Band’s best-known song for a reason. 

The live version of “The Weight” from The Last Waltz might be more famous, thanks to vocal contributions from the Staple Singers. But the original studio version of Robertson’s mischievous signature song was a blueprint for much of the Band’s best work. Inspired by Robertson’s viewing of Luis Buñuel movies, the soulful roots-rock tune feels more like a short story: the song muses about life’s vicissitudes through the lens of vibrant characters and the use of biblical imagery. With its swinging grooves, bar-band piano and keening vocals from Levon Helm and Rick Danko, “The Weight” is wistfully nostalgic but spiritually uplifting.

‘It Makes no Difference’

The Band had three of the greatest voices in rock ‘n’ roll in its time, and “It Makes no Difference” may be one of the best displays from Danko. Danko’s tremulous voice perfectly captures the heartache and pain in Robertson’s lyrics, which are about a former love. “I thought about the song in terms of saying that time heals all wounds,” Robertson told Rolling Stone . “Except in some cases, and this was one of those cases.” Also, the way Hudson comes out of nowhere at the end on sax? Doesn’t get any better. 

‘Ophelia’

As their career progressed, the Band fell prey to the same foibles that other groups experienced, mainly creative dissension and substance use issues. That didn’t always diminish their creative powers, going by a jaunty Robertson tune like “Ophelia”. Garnished with warm orchestration like horns and woodwinds, the strutting song has a sunny vibe despite downtrodden lyrics: it laments the disappearance of a woman named Ophelia, who seems to have left town for reasons unknown (“Was it something that somebody said? / Mama, I know we broke the rules / Was somebody up against the law?”). Although “Ophelia’s” character is never fleshed out, Robertson’s pleading tone and enigmatic hints make listeners care about her whereabouts – and want to learn more about who she is.

The best song from the Band’s 1975 album, “Northern Lights – Southern Cross”, was inspired by Hamlet’s ill-fated lover, Ophelia. Helm’s vocals on this are so perfect, so essential, that the song will always be associated with him. He continued to perform this song well after the Band’s breakup, right up to the end of his life. Even throat cancer couldn’t keep him from belting this one out.

Gives you chills watching him strain his remaining voice to nail this. 

‘The Shape I’m In’

A tragic song in the tragic history of the Band. Robertson wrote “The Shape I’m In” based on what he saw as Manuel’s losing battle with depression, drugs and alcohol. Manual, the lead singer on this song, would eventually take his own life, giving the lines “Out of nine lives I spent seven. Now how in the world do you get to heaven?” an extra sense of poignancy.

‘Up on Cripple Creek’

A song about a trucker, with a tempo and groove perfect to listen to during long, overnight hauls. Robertson, in his continuing attempts to capture the everyday goings on of the everyman, wrote this country-funk romper about a driver who’s headed to see his girl, “Bessie,” in order to drink, gamble and God knows what else. Of note: it’s one of the earliest songs to use the clavinet, which was made a funk standard by Stevie Wonder a few years later. 

‘This Wheel’s on Fire’

A highlight of 1975’s The Basement Tapes, “This Wheel’s on Fire” actually surfaced first as a Band song. Freckled with psychedelic flourishes, Danko’s slightly alarmed vocals, and Garth Hudson’s mad-scientist-in-a-lab keyboard effects, “This Wheel’s on Fire” demonstrated the forward-thinking approach of the Band at this stage of their career. Fittingly, “This Wheel’s on Fire” has remained a pop culture staple for decades; Brian Auger and the Trinity with Julie Driscoll, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Kylie Minogue have all covered the song.

‘Acadian Driftwood’

One Robertson’s historical classics, this one about the expulsion of the Acadians during the North American conflict of the Seven Years’ War. It’s the northern version of Robertson’s Civil War ballad “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” and even if it has been criticized for taking some creative liberty with the facts, it’s earned its place in the Canadian songbook along the likes of Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” One of Robertson’s most evocative compositions. 

‘Stage Fright’

One of the greatest songs ever written about the act of performing, full of anxiety, cynicism and a sort of Sisyphean angst. But after going through all that, including some major key changes and an impressive organ solo, “Stage Fright” ends back where it begins — but with a narrator who is ultimately triumphant. 

‘King Harvest (Has Surely Come)’

With their 1969 self-titled album, the Band not only avoided a sophomore slump – they perhaps even eclipsed their debut. Robertson certainly exhibited sharp songwriting on the LP, with one highlight being the album-closing “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)”. 

Robertson was always obsessed with tales of the working man, and nowhere is this captured so well as on “King Harvest,” which is told from the point of view of a poverty-stricken farmer who is desperately depending on his crop coming in. “There’s a lot of people who think, come autumn, come fall, that’s when life begins, it’s not the springtime, where we think it begins, it’s the fall, because the harvests come in,” Robertson said of the song to author Craig Harris for the book The Band: Pioneers of Americana Music.

‘Fallen Angel’

Robertson didn’t rush into making a solo record after parting ways with the Band. But when he did emerge more than a decade later, he went all-out, teaming up with producer Daniel Lanois and collaborating with artists such as U2, Maria McKee, and Ivan Neville. The resulting self-titled album is ambitious and cinematic, distinguished by the gauzy highlight “Fallen Angel”. Co-written with Martin Page and featuring guest vocals from Peter Gabriel, the single is a heartfelt, aching tribute to Robertson’s one-time bandmate Richard Manuel, who died by suicide in 1986. The lyrics brim with grief, anger and resignation, but maintain a moving emotional tenderness.

‘Breakin’ the Rules’

For his second solo album, Robertson worked with dozens of musicians, including the Rebirth Brass Band and multiple horn sections, to craft a collection of songs indebted to jazz and the music of New Orleans. “Breakin’ the Rules” skews minimalist, for good reason: it’s a gorgeous, crestfallen collaboration with The Blue Nile – Paul Buchanan contributes vocals and guitar, while Robert Bell chimes in with bass and drum programming – that meditates on an unhealthy relationship which needs to end. “Breakin’ the Rules” also appeared in the 1991 Wim Wenders movie Until the End of the World.

Ghost Dance

Robertson weaved references to his Mohawk and Cayuga heritage into his art on his 1994 solo album, which he recorded with a collective of musicians called the Red Road Ensemble for a TV documentary the Native Americans. “Ghost Dance” is particularly stunning. Although sonically an echo of his gorgeous, glacial solo work with Daniel Lanois, thematically the song is a powerful statement on reclaiming – and preserving – identity, tradition and heritage in the face of violent oppression: “They outlawed the Ghost Dance / But we shall live again, we shall live again.

‘Somewhere Down the Crazy River’

Robertson’s primary role in the Band was as a songwriter, not a singer, so after the group broke up, he had something to prove on his self-titled solo album. “Somewhere Down the Crazy River” is the best of that output. In this beautiful, hypnotic and largely spoken-word piece produced by Daniel Lanois, Robertson conjures the image of the river and recounts his days living in Arkansas with Helm, back when “time stood still.” And on the chorus, he proved that he could not only still write a catchy hook, but that he could sing. Martin Scorsese also directed the music video, continuing the director and songwriter’s work together from “The Last Waltz” and kicking off a lifelong collaboration between the two. 

“RIP Robbie Robertson. A good friend and a genius. The Band’s music shocked the excess out of the Renaissance and were an essential part of the final back-to-the-roots trend of ‘60s. He was an underrated brilliant guitar player adding greatly to Bob Dylan’s best tour and best album.” – Steve Van Zandt

Robbie Robertson was a titanic figure in my life. The Band was a huge and soulful influence in my world from eleventh grade on, and his songwriting resonated so strongly and will forever. I feel that The Band collectively invented an entire style of music that continues to flower to this day.

Fairport Convention always thought long and hard about the musical style – but we were stopped in our tracks by a new record from Bob Dylan’s backing group. “Music From Big Pink” by The Band had an immediate influence on Fairport when it appeared in July 1968, as well as on the rest of the London underground scene. After a couple of years of acid-fuelled, occasionally pretentious and increasingly predictable output from San Francisco, New York and London, here was something completely refreshing. The Band had short haircuts and dressed like funeral directors. They played a synthesis of American roots styles very unpretentiously. There was rock and roll, country, gospel, Apalachian, soul, jazz, folk and blues in there – and they mastered all of it. Not bad for Canadians. Many British bands started writing in the slow 4/4 time of The Band’s signature tune “The Weight” – but never quite captured the elusive swing and looseness» – Richard Thompson

‘Don’t Look Back’ is the fifth studio album from Philadelphia-based indie poppers Hurry, which was formed as a splinter group from emo band Everyone Everywhere by its bassist Matt Scottoline in the mid-2010s. Hurry’s aesthetic of melodic, Nineties-influenced power pop is polished to perfection on these ten tracks.

August is the month of power-pop, and no band is doing it better than Hurry. Their upcoming LP “Don’t Look Back” is an immaculate stretch of rock ‘n’ roll, as it arrives like a collage of ripping Byrds melodies and late-‘90s chart-topping sensibilities. Singles “Beggin’ For You” and “Parallel Haunting” are all-timers we’ve had on repeat for weeks, and we can’t wait for everyone to see what vocalist Matt Scottoline and co. have brought to the table on the rest of the album. Delicious horns, glossy guitars and poised singing comes aplenty on “Don’t Look Back”, making it a standout project in a sea of many, many great rock records hitting our libraries this summer.

“Beggin’ For You” by Hurry from the album ‘Don’t Look Back’, out August 11th 2023 on Lame-O Records.

Oakland singer/songwriter and experimentalist SPELLLING is following up her 2021 masterpiece “The Turning Wheel” this August with “Spelling & The Mystery School“, a collection of tracks that surf between minimalism, glitchy percussive rhythm and hypnotic pianistic patterns.

Spellling, the moniker of the Bay Area experimental pop mastermind Chrystia Cabral, returns with “Spellling and the Mystery School,” a collection of richly envisioned new versions of songs from throughout her critically-acclaimed discography, via Sacred Bones. Recorded with her touring band (est. 2021), these reimagined studio tracks follow Cabral’s spellbinding career — from her 2017 breakthrough debut “Pantheon Of Me”, to 2018’s multidimensional synth-based project Mazy Fly, and her expansive third album, 2021’s “The Turning Wheel”, breathing new life into the extravagant orchestrations she’s written and produced entirely herself. 

“With this album, I wanted to capture the ways that these songs have morphed; Cabral says of Spellling er the Mystery School. “They’re like my children all grown up in a different stage of their lives, and I wanted to celebrate that:’ 

Full of mysticism and drama and haunting, evocative exploration, The gravity of SPELLLING’s song writing is immense and, in turn, she makes left-field pop music that is both alien and ambitious. Cabral’s hypnotizing voice is enveloped in a newly fleshed-out sonic universe of dreamy strings (Del Sol Quartet and Divya Farias), haunting piano Jaren Feeley, driving trip-hop percussion Patrick Shelley and bass Giulio Xavier Cetto, shredding electric guitar Wyatt Overson, and drama-intensifying background vocals Toya Wil-lock and Dharma Moon-Hunter. Overall, the album encapsulates the transportative Spellling live experience through which Cabral, with her idiosyncratic stage presence, conjures up a spiritual sense of communion and vulnerability among her audience. “I want people to feel like there’s alchemy happening and to be aware of the magical parts of sound,” she explains. “Like, this really did come out of thin air:’ 

“SPELLING & The Mystery School” is on our radar because, after teaser singles “Cherry” and “Under the Sun,” it’s shaping up to be one of the best things she’s made—which says a great deal, given that “The Turning Wheel” was one of the very best records of 2021. 

Cabral plans to bring her otherworldly live set through a special performance with Atlas Obscura this summer, held at Children’s Fairyland, a historical children’s amusement park in Oakland that her own mother used to frequent as a child. There, she will unravel her mythical songs that inter-rogate ideas of self-concept and political history, aided by the backdrop that will no doubt bring out her music’s other dimensions of playfulness, innocence, curiosity, and joy.

“SPELLLING & The Mystery School” out August 25th on Sacred Bones Records

Chicago rockers, Ratboys, have announced their sixth studio album, “The Window”, and the band have shared a music video of its new single, “It’s Alive!” The Window is due out August 25th via Topshelf Records. The music video was directed by John TerEick.

This album from quartet Ratboys is by far their best to date. “The Window” is not just an ambitious, poised masterwork; it’s the product of a decade-old band being so far in their own bag that they can’t do anything but sock certified dingers. Early singles like the title track, “It’s Alive!” and “Black Earth, Wi” are some of the best rock tracks of the year already, but album cuts like “Morning Zoo” and “I Want You (Fall 2010)” are so gorgeous and layered that you’d think a 10-piece band made them. Orchestral in attitude and precise in execution, “The Window” is a record that demands your attention and excitement. It’s vocalist Julia Steiner’s strongest outing to date, and the rest of the band—Dave Sagan, Marcus Nuccio and Sean Neumann—have never felt more in-sync with each other. 

“We didn’t get bogged down in technical terms, and he never placed pressure on us in that way. With Chris steering the ship, we were free to go off on little creative expeditions and come up with parts and ideas we’d never imagined,” Nuccio says in a press release.

The spontaneity of the instrumentals are matched with the songwriting and lyricism of the band. “The album is sonically diverse, shifting wildly from track to track and flexing everything from fuzzy power pop choruses to warm country twang to mournful folk,” according to the press release.

Ratboys—composed of members Julia Steiner (guitar, vocals), Dave Sagan (guitar), Marcus Nuccio (drums), and Sean Neumann (bass)—ventured to Seattle to work with producer Chris Walla (Death Cab for Cutie, Tegan and Sara, Foxing) when making “The Window”. The album was almost fully crafted before heading into the studio, but Walla pushed the band to expand their vision, adding unexpected instruments such as rototoms, talkboxes, and fiddles.

“The Window’s” opening track, “It’s Alive” is an ode to “the overarching feeling of the world spinning on beneath you while you’re stuck in one place,” according to Steiner.

The album includes “Black Earth, WI,” a new song the band shared in March 

The cassette-only release marks the duo’s first new music since 2016’s “Ugly Laugh” LP.

On their new EP “No Fun”, Crooks & Nannies make music for people who like seeds in their watermelon and orange juice with plenty of pulp. It’s Madel Rafter and Sam Huntington’s first release in seven years (since their 2016 LP “Ugly Laugh”), and the West Philly duo make their comeback with six fresh-squeezed, emo-tinged songs with gobs of texture and twang, all about transformation and interpersonal connection, with all the beauty and messiness that comes with it. 

When Rafter sings about intrusive thoughts on the crunching, careening “control,” you can feel the fine line between composure and chaos in every blown-out beat of the drums. Then there’s “Sorry,” which Huntington wrote in one sitting in the midst of coming out as trans; the version that appears on the EP builds on vocals from her original demo, captured in a moment of deep vulnerability. The two know their way around a hook and a quiet-loud dynamic, and as singers, they’re not afraid to wring the raw emotional juice out of a breath until their voices shake.

In addition to those songs and the title track, “No Fun” includes three cassette-exclusive songs that showcase the duo at their most exploratory; “Liquor Store,” for one, with its synths and wind chimes, and “3am,” which descends from guitars and double vocals into a scramble of skronky horns and dance-punk drums. You can stream the non-cassette-exclusive tracks below, and read through a track-by-track commentary by Rafter and Huntington, who were kind enough to take us through all the nooks and crannies of the latest Crooks & Nannies.

1. “Liquor Store”
Madel Rafter: When I was 21 I was at the liquor store with a person I was dating, when they got a gnarly nosebleed. The security guard wouldn’t let them leave until they showed their ID, I guess to make sure we weren’t pulling some kind of elaborate on-command nosebleed scheme in order to drink underage. I thought it was really silly, so I wrote a song about it. 

2. “control”
Madel Rafter: I wrote “control” in 2017 while struggling with consistent intrusive thoughts. I wanted to capture the feeling of walking through an art museum and holding all of your muscles tightly because if you don’t, you might give into some crazy impulse and do something really, really bad, like pull a painting off the wall and put your foot through it. The lyrics talk about wearing a mask for the world to conceal internal negative thoughts, and worrying about being “bad to the bone” and ugly inside. On the façade, the song feels humorous, but I often use humour as a way to soften the blow of darker sentiments. Sonically, we took an approach that feels almost sing-songy at the top, but gets progressively more chaotic, fast, and emotionally blown out as the song progresses.

3. “Sorry”
Sam Huntington: “Sorry” is the first and only song I’ve written entirely in one sitting. I recorded a demo immediately afterward, and the final vocal is still the take from that demo. It came to me in 2018, at an incredibly overwhelming and unstable time in my life—I had recently made the decision to stop ignoring the fact that I was transgender, but was struggling to grapple with what that meant for me personally, and was feeling a lot of frustration toward myself for not having figured it out. Simultaneously, I found myself single for the first time in years and without the self-understanding to forge structures and supports I had, until that point, found in other people. I was in over my head, looking for strength in the wrong places, and having an increasingly difficult time seeing a future for myself.

4. “Cantaloupe”
Madel Rafter: Every day I thank god for autocorrect, because I can’t possibly remember how to spell the title of this song. “Cantelöpe” has been arranged and recorded in a number of different ways. It started with only acoustic guitar and vocals, and despite our best efforts to add other instrumentation, this song always feels best with a lonelier arrangement. It’s about longing. Wanting to feel softer and kinder. To break down walls, to accept love and affection others are trying to give. This is the last song I recorded before my voice changed from HRT. It’s funny and special to listen to a past, sadder me, who feels like a different person in many ways.

5. “3am”
Sam Huntington: I wrote “3am” a couple years back, shortly after our previous single “Sorry,” and they deal with similar themes. In both, I hear myself struggling to stay afloat—grasping frantically for confidence in the face of what felt, at the time, like an impossibly hostile world. In “3am,” however, I hear a shift away from isolation and toward community.

As I pulled myself out of desperation and reconnected with friends, I began to see my own value reflected back at me through those relationships. The anger and frustration I had been directing inward was beginning to shift toward a more deserving—if incredibly vague—target: the world in general, with all of its cruelties and injustices. I had not yet learned to care for myself, but had found a buoy in my care for others and felt fiercely determined to protect them.

Madel is one of the first people I came out to, and hearing their voice on “3am” makes so much sense to me. I wrote all the lyrics, but the song has a conversational quality and we wanted to lean into that by trading lines. As far as sound, we went for a mixture of punk and disco, hoping to simultaneously emphasize the visceral frustration, as well as the warmth and communal focus of the lyrics. The cherry on top was a raucous horn duel in the bridge, between Madel on sax, and their dad, John, on trumpet.

6. “No Fun”
Madel Rafter: There was a man I saw a few years ago at an arcade in Philadelphia, sitting with an unwavering gaze on a Jurassic Park pinball machine. He had a big plastic cup half full with quarters on a stool next to him. He was set up before I got to the arcade and still staring at the game when I left. When I wrote “No Fun,” I was feeling really checked out of the world. It’s about feeling insular and lonely, rejecting other people’s attempts at connection but not being quite sure why.

The newest solo effort from Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek is a truly wondrous sight to behold. As a follow-up to his 2021 album “Two Saviors”, “Haunted Mountain” is a wide landscape of rock ‘n’ roll. Meek might not be the centre of attention while sharing a stage with his Big Thief bandmates, but on “Haunted Mansion” he has the legs to explore every type of mood he can conjure. With three teaser tracks out already, the singer/songwriter has already proven that his solo work is daring, contemplative and spiritual. From the bluesy guitar leads on “Haunted Mountain” to the pensive balladry of “Paradise,” Meek is on another level. Beyond August, as far as folk-rock records in 2023 go, “Haunted Mountain” is the one we’re most excited about. 

“Paradise”, was the second single from Buck Meek’s record “Haunted Mountain”, is out now Buck says, “Sometimes when you half-hear something spoken, something unspoken inside the words is revealed. Your mind fills in the blank, finishes the sentence, infers deep meaning – though you still can’t fully explain it. Jolie Holland sent me some of the lyrics for this song, about feeling in awe of the vastness within a loved one, and I wrote it thinking about how love often feels too big to comprehend, like death, or life after death, or space.”

“Paradise”, the second single from Buck’s record “Haunted Mountain”,

Slowdive’s 5th record is exactly what the title suggests: an exploration into the shimmering nature of life and the universal touch points within it. while there are parts of this record that could sit neatly next to the atmospheric quality of 1995’s ‘Pygmalion’;

Slowdive’s “the slab” is the latest addition to a new era which has seen the band rocket into the 21st century with as much panache and grace as their self-titled did six years ago. The third single off of “Everything Is Alive” is typically—and delightfully—woozy, an aura of quiet suspension permeating its rhythmic bones. “the slab” was intended to be heavier than many of the songs on the record, and it has a notable pull to it; deeper instrumentals and thick sonic textures add weight to the track, creating a loud, prowling soundscape. Over five, sprawling minutes, the song’s intensity increases to a distorted pinnacle before fading quicker than it came. It’s a spacey, moody closer to the eight-track album set to arrive next month.

‘Everything Is Alive’ also manages to break down the boundaries of what’s come before it. spanning psychedelic soundscapes, pulsating 80’s electronic elements and John-Cale-inspired journeys, the album lands immediately as something made for 2023 and beyond.

For a genre that is often thought of as divisive, and often warrants introspection, here Slowdive show their craft as the masters of it by pushing it outwards, beyond the singular; the end result being a record which feels as emotional and cathartic as it is hopeful.

Slaughter Beach, Dog released a folky new single “Strange Weather” today. It comes with backing vocals from Erin Rae. Slaughter Beach, Dog have released a new easygoing indie folk song, “Strange Weather,” alongside the announcement new tour dates coming up in the fall. According to band leader Jake Ewald, “Strange Weather” is about “doing your very best to disappear from yourself. Hiromi Kawakami and Jason Molina live in here. I think Jia Tolentino, too. Trying to hold light in your hand. Certainly as a bad prank that unfolds across decades. Sometimes all I get is sha-la-la. Thanks to Erin Rae for lending us her amazing voice here – I remember listening to Putting On Airs in the van after a show some years ago and the whole tour melted away for a minute. An honor to finally share the mic with you, ER. If I saw the light, would I know?”

“Strange Weather” by Slaughter Beach, Dog Lame-O Records 2023

The fifth song to arrive from Ratboys’ forthcoming record, “The Window”, is, possibly, the very best. “Morning Zoo” is the post-country masterpiece that will surely become a definitive track of 2023 when it’s all said and done. The violin that Abby Gundersen injects into the instrumental is mesmerizing and unreal, and it perfectly compliments vocalist Julia Steiner’s twangy, precise and zoomed-in vocals—as she examines her own anxieties and the weight of being in a band at a time when it’s becoming harder and harder to find successful longevity. “How long does it take to find the peace that I want?” she sings. “And how long must I wait to decide that it’s over? Well, I don’t know.” Though it juxtaposes greatly with the epic, mountainous unfurling of “Black Earth, Wi,” “Morning Zoo” glitters just as brightly, perhaps even more so. 

Written & Performed by Ratboys Produced by Chris Walla “Morning Zoo” is taken from Ratboys’ ‘The Window’, out August 25 via Topshelf Records

Last month, MJ Lenderman released one of the song’s of the summer, “Rudolph.” Cut to a few days ago, and the Asheville singer/songwriter is giving his own accolade a run for its money with “Knockin.” The track is a perennial live show favorite that appeared on his 2021 EP of the same name but, this time around, it’s a hi-fi update of a not-so-new song, and it’s just as good as anything Lenderman has made, maybe better—depending on who you ask. “Knockin” is a blistering country-rock stunner that puts one thing at the center of attention: Lenderman’s uncanny ability to absolutely shred. With Xandy Chelmis’ pedal steel and a mountain of percussion backing him up, “Knockin” takes on a life of its own.

Lenderman’s lyricism is at an 11 here, too, as he makes a play on Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” while keeping up his trademark fusion of earnestness and poetic humor. “Loneliness is simple, not much else is,” he waxes. “Her love for me is real, she gives me what she has to give. She gave me wings and I caught blight.” 

Title track from MJ Lenderman’s brand new EP ‘Knockin,’ out August 20th via Dear Life Records Digital Editions