The Fat Angel Sings

I’m so excited to share with you the vinyl for my new album!! I put a lot of love into the design and I’m so happy with how everything turned out. The Canadian version is made from 100% recycled material from the re-grind of other projects, so every record will be different and have a unique colour combo which I think is super cool. For the rest of the world, you can pre-order the sea foam green colour!

A little bit about “Fake Happy”…

I wrote this song about a relationship that drifted.. Over the years we grew apart and trying to maintain a connection had begun to feel uncomfortable. I think sometimes we cling (by we I mean ME) onto what’s left of friendships even if our values no longer align and we’ve changed as people. I don’t know if it’s a getting older thing but I’ve come to realize how important it is to focus my energy on the people who support me and are positive sources in my life.

So much love and hugs to Sean Sroka aka Ten Kills The Pack (producing this with me and putting in so much love and care to everything all the time), Graham Walsh (synth and engineer guru), Mike Brushey (drumming like a champ), Gavin Gardiner (engineering skillz), Matt Wiggins (mixing so beautifully), Joao Carvelho (mastering w care).

After three striking 10″ EP’s – Isle of Wight’s Coach Party unleash their debut album. It’s everything we hoped for and more. The production is crisp and clear whilst the playing is of a band that have spent the last few years playing hundreds of gigs / festivals and learning their craft.

Coach Party grew up on the Isle of Wight (“it’s only a matter of time until you meet pretty much everyone else on the Island,” says Eastwood) and eventually crossed paths as avid music fans – working in venues, playing together and meeting at the same gigs. Coach Party eventually formed after Eastwood and guitarist Steph Norris decided to start playing music together; quickly realising that there was something special about the pair’s songwriting and bond, guitarist Joe Perry and drummer Page joined the ranks.

The 10 tracks are upbeat and noisy guitar pop that hints at the debut Elastica album, The Breeders, The Big Moon and Nirvana. It really is that good. The British four-piece Coach Party shared a video for their song “What’s The Point in Life,” which is the latest release from their upcoming debut album, “Killjoy”. 

The video for “What’s The Point in Life” depicts the band living in a fictional post-apocalyptic world as they croon lyrics of taking control of your life while embracing the more mundane, meaningless aspects of it. Of the song, drummer Guy Page says in a press release: “At the last minute, we set out to write an opening track for “Killjoy”, and ‘We’re All Gonna Die’ as it was initially named, was almost fully formed that afternoon. It’s really not a negative sentiment, but is more our way of saying that life is for living. So, do what you wanna do, we’ll do what we wanna do, and then everyone’s happy. We ultimately share the same fate, so make your life your own.”

Musically, Coach Party are inspired by a broad palate of artists, but always find themselves drawn back to Nirvana, Sonic Youth and The Strokes, and contemporary artists like Wolf Alice, The Big Moon and Tame Impala. Ultimately though, Coach Party’s primary drive to write and perform music comes from “the often entertaining struggle of real life.” The band still live and work on the Isle of Wight (Jess at a farm park, Guy in a music studio and Steph and Joe in cafes), and describe life on the island as going “through pretty distinct phases of being a great, and a really frustrating place to live.”

The band previously shared three other songs from “Killjoy” “Born Leader,” “All I Wanna Do Is Hate,” and “Micro Aggression.”

This LP is due out September 8th via Chess Club. The band also have some autumn tour dates coming up.

Nashville-based DIY punk outfit, Snõõper, have shared a Sean McGuirk-directed music video for their new song “Running,” which is the latest release from their new album, “Super Snõõper”, which came out this week via Third Man Records. The band also have some summer and fall tour dates lined up. Check out Super Snõõper’s cover artwork, as well as upcoming performances.

Of the track “Running,” Tramel says in a press release: “‘Running’ was written deep in the pandemic when people began to feel hopeless and everything began to feel really scary. People felt out of control as we watched our country experience the consequences of an unjust system. Most days, all I could do was go for a long walk or run. I think sometimes that’s all anyone can do when things feel out of control. We can always get out of our minds and into our bodies. Move, breathe, jump, put one foot in front of the other.” The music video is an homage to 80s home workout videos, filtered through a kaleidoscopic lens.

The entirety of “Super Snõõper” was recorded at The Bomb Shelter in Nashville.

Snõõper are Blair Tramel (vocals), Connor Cummins (Guitar), Cam Sarrett (Drums), Happy Haugen (Bass), and Ian Teeple (guitar).

Formed in 2019, Lifeguard are Asher Case (bass, vocals), Isaac Lowenstein (drums, percussion), and Kai Slater (guitar, vocals). At its core, Lifeguard is a punk band. Their music is loud and energetic. It’s also, at its core, visceral and hypnotic. For the Chicago-based trio that can include repetition and blasts of speaker cone-shredding feedback.

Their songs adeptly balance melody and chaos, rhythm and drone. Hooks and noise are held to the same standard. Both have to stick. They’re a young band, but they’ve already found a place at the forefront of an important emerging music community in their hometown. They are quite prolific. In just three years, Lifeguard has put out a full-length, two EPs, and two 7” singles.

On July 7th, Matador Records will release ‘Crowd Can Talk / Dressed in Trenches’, a composite of two EPs by Lifeguard. ‘Crowd Can Talk’ was originally released in the summer of 2022 by Chicago label Born Yesterday, while ‘Dressed in Trenches’ features five brand new and unreleased songs. ‘Crowd Can Talk / Dressed in Trenches’ will be made available on vinyl for the first time (A and B-sides of a 12”) and on CD.

“Crowd Can Talk” and “Dressed in Trenches” are closely related. They were recorded in separate sessions, but at the same studio (Electrical Audio) and with the same engineer (Mike Lust) and within the space of 12 months. Each finds the band refining its voice – honing songs that are succinct, hooky, and propulsive. There’s a newly disciplined attention to detail. Lifeguard write together through collaboration and improvisation, but they’ve learned to streamline their sound, to make each hook, beat, and gesture purposeful.

On each record, there are echoes of underground guitar bands from decades past. This is not record-collector music, though. It’s the product of a present-day community. Lifeguard are, first and foremost, a performing band and the songs are written to stand up in that moment.

“More than old records – before that, before anything – we’re influenced by live shows and people around us,” explains Slater. “The inspiration comes from playing shows with people and having that mind-blown moment of seeing some friend play at Schubas or Book Club,” adds Lowenstein. “It’s happening on these tiny little scales of seeing kids play live and [knowing] this is something new and interesting.”

Eliza Bagg leads a complex musical life: working as a classical opera singer, she has soloed with the New York Philharmonic, performed in Meredith Monk’s opera at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and toured Europe with the legendary John Zorn. While making her own music under the guise of art-pop solo act Lisel, she’s also collaborated as a vocalist with some of the most renowned experimental artists, including Ben Frost, esperanza spalding, Nico Muhly, Julianna Barwick, David Lang, Lyra Pramuk, Daniel Wohl, and Bryce Dessner, all while playing indie rock venues and lovably dingy basements. One day, it’s Lincoln Center or The Kitchen, the next it’s an outdoor LA ambient series. She was always torn between her two worlds, and it wasn’t until she began work on “Patterns for Auto-tuned Voices and Delay” that she discovered a way to merge them together.

“Patterns” comes out of Bagg’s experience as a vocalist singing Renaissance and Baroque music along with the work of modern-day minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. “I developed a vocal processing system that allowed me to change the idea of what my instrument is,” Bagg says of the album’s genesis, a system that combines her virtuosic singing with autotune and delay effects to create a melding of human and machine. After years of using her voice in highly specialized ways (as in singing the music of Caroline Shaw with Roomful of Teeth), Bagg wanted to explore what that level of vocal technicality can do when combined with technology. What results is a full spectrum sound journey through the potential of the human voice; the new Lisel album explores a world of singing that maintains melody as it pushes boundaries. “I rely on my body as an object and resonant instrument,” she says. “Now, what begins inside my body and continues on the computer is one process, and the ideas that result from it are my instrument.”

Sure, she’ll admit it. “I’m a sci-fi nerd,” she says, with a laugh. “I’m a Blade Runner and Battlestar person. I love things that explore how society interacts with machines.” Recently, her thoughts have focused on the hovering feeling of apocalypse along with the question of our own obsolescence. It was only a matter of time before she absorbed the capabilities of technology into her own music. Through experiments with Ableton, she realized she was making music that was more expressive of humanity, not less. “We are tempted to see rapid technological change as an impediment to the traditions that ground us. But I feel our connection to ancient forms can be amplified and transformed by this new reality, not lost.” Bagg says.

While making “Patterns”, she dove first into Renaissance polyphony and chant. The music of Hildegard von Bingen, Thomas Tallis, and Carlo Gesualdo is a familiar world to her. Starting with Renaissance and Medieval singing styles and idioms, she added processing and electronic world-building to bring out new, expressive qualities of those styles. From there, she improvised in these styles, fed the performances into Ableton, and incorporated modern day hyperpop (like SOPHIE) and ambient electric sounds and aesthetics – as she says, “I am going for a maximalist sound, but my sources of inspiration also include minimalists.” From Philip Glass to Charli XCX, Carl Stone to Grimes, “Patterns” makes radical connections.
Yet, it was important for Bagg to maintain the spiritual origins of these vocal techniques. As she describes it, “The album uses layered singing as a pathway to spirituality, as it has been throughout history.” “Patterns for Auto-tuned Voices and Delay” stands within those traditions, using voices to transcend the cerebral and overwhelm the listener, all while evoking a unique set of references that span 500 years. 

released February 17th, 2023

bar italia, is the London trio of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton, the band have announced details of their new album ‘Tracey Denim’, which will be released on CD on May 19th, and on LP on 8th September, on Matador Records.

‘Tracey Denim’ was recorded and produced by bar italia with mixing from Marta Salogni. It features the single “Nurse!” which was released in March to acclaim, and described as “a hypnotic post-punk ballad” (The Guardian) and “narcotically arresting” (Pitchfork).

bar italia play a headline UK tour in May, and have announced further UK tour dates for November. They also appear at festivals this summer including Primavera Sound Barcelona & Madrid, Latitude, Midi Festival and End Of The Road.

Over the last two years, bar italia have released two albums, an EP and several singles on Dean Blunt’s World Music label, leading to much word-of-mouth, sold out headline shows, and festival performances at Pitchfork Music Festival London, by:Larm, OUT.FEST, Le Guess Who?, and End Of The Road.

released May 19th, 2023

2023, bar italia under exclusive license to Matador Records

Alaska Reid shares one final single ahead of the release of her beautiful new album “Disenchanter”. The touching “French Fries” is an intimate, heartfelt “story song about the evolution of a friendship” that opens the album, and sets the emotional tone for the rest of the journey.  Alaska Reid hails from a frontier city in Southwestern Montana whose population lingers around 8,000 residents, and while Reid now works in Los Angeles, she can’t give up her hometown. Her career began here, where she sang in basements, churches, and gyms before starting her first band, Alyeska. Soon talent, and her parents’ minivan, drove her to tour further west. Now, Reid splits her time between the coastlines and the mountainous West, splitting what time she can between the two and working in both cities. “I’m interested in the effects of place on songwriting and the idea of regional writing,” she says. “I like to think I’m in a healthy relationship with it, where I’m still really inspired by my hometown, but I’m not trapped by it.”

Alaska Reid shares another magical highlight from her A. G. Cook-co-produced new album, “Disenchanter”, coming in July on Luminelle. Come for Alaska’s touching, heartfelt story told from the perspective of her mom in the ’80s, stay for the spiky guitar solo.

Ask Reid how she’d define her sound and she’ll hesitate before landing on “Mountain Pop.” In 2020, she released Big Bunny, a project indebted to a coming-of-age chasing rabbits, throwing bottles in the creek, and kissing in damp old houses. Similarly, “Disenchanter” is as much a collection of stories as it is a collection of songs. Reid’s father is a writer, and she grew up in a robust literary community, counting novelists like Graham Greene as some of her greatest sources of inspiration. “I love country music because I love storytelling,” Reid says. “Every track on this album has an element of my autobiography in it, but the dosage varies. I write composite characters, or characters based on friends, squirreling bits of fiction in with truth.”

Though Reid’s principle instrument is guitar, she worked on “Disenchanter” with A. G. Cook, whose synths and the duo’s combined array of pedals allowed Reid to explore her pop inclinations after she recorded each track live at home in both Montana and California. “I have my road dog arsenal from playing tons of live shows, so most of the songs have at least one guitar with my personal chain in homage to my live set up,” she says. “We’d then layer combinations of A. G.’s pedals onto the track, and the contrast between them mirrors our respective musical approaches.”

Like the songwriters Reid is most inspired by (she namechecks Joni Mitchell alongside Paul Westerberg and J Mascis) “Disenchanter” narrates a landscape of emotional states, some lived and others borrowed. “I read a lot of fantasy, and there’s a character I was introduced to called the Fiend Folio, who can absorb the power of magical objects by coming in contact with them, and in turn, drains the magic from them, disenchants them,” Reid says. “Maybe it’s morbid, but a writer takes an experience and turns it around and around, looking for what makes it worth paying attention to, what makes it enchanting, and in doing so, drains some of that magic and metabolizes it into something that belongs to them.” While Reid might consider herself a disenchanter, her work also does the inverse: it finds magic in everyday, passing moments, and memorializes them into something worth remembering.

released July 14th, 2023

Their 1992 debut “Ferment” offers many beautifully fuzzy moments, a commendable, textural entry into the crowding shoegaze canon. But where “Ferment” cocoons the listener in mellifluous mysteries, their 1993 sophomore effort “Chrome” sheds the debut’s abstract trappings. It barrels past any hypnagogic vagueness, with crystalline focus, into a bigger sound that’s more visceral and immediate. With “Chrome“, Catherine Wheel showed the world they didn’t quite fit that shoegaze label they were so quickly filed under.

Vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson, guitarist Brian Futter, bassist Dave Hawes and percussionist Neil Sims formed Catherine Wheel in seaside town Great Yarmouth, on the east coast of England, for one simple reason—to make music. Laser-focused on their craft and devoid of rock star ego or ambition, Catherine Wheel were refreshingly authentic. They had no interest in manufacturing a look or sound to become more commercially viable.

“It was all about the noise…the sweet cacophony that we could create without having to have the usual paraphernalia of a rock band, which none of us liked,” Dickinson recalled during a 2008 interview.  Bassist Dave Hawes explained, “The main thing I remember when going to record “Chrome” was that we didn’t just want to make “Ferment” 2. And through continually touring between “Ferment” and going into record “Chrome” we had evolved into a harder sounding band. It just seemed a natural process and so “Chrome” turned into a harder sounding album and I think Gil Norton was the perfect producer for us at that point of time. Steering clear of artifice and employing a more direct approach to production (versus “Ferment”), the band pulled in ex Pixies producer Gil Norton, studio mastermind behind many 4AD bands, including the Pixies, Throwing Muses/Belly, and Pale Saints. Despite this change, “Chrome” still drips with the balmy atmosphere of “Ferment” testament at least partly to the ongoing influence of Tim Friese-Greene, producer of “Ferment” (and electric organist on “Chrome”).

Spurred by the success of their debut, Catherine Wheel grew more confident in their rich, guitar-driven sound and booked recording time at London’s infamous Britannia Row Studios  where Joy Division had recorded “Closer” Built by Pink Floyd, the storied space undoubtedly fuelled the band’s determination to make a record that stood out.

“Chrome” takes off with an adrenaline-lifting, soul-baring jolt of reality. In album opener, “Kill Rhythm,” Rob declares, “Shout—the secret’s out.” Continuing the sentiment, “I Confess” follows. And it begins to seem this album is all about facing those skeletons in the closet.

But “Crank,” the album’s powerful first single, reminds us that reality is subjective and we can’t help but create shelter in our minds—“I build my canopy of steel / It fulfills my sense of real / A chrome protection.”

Feeling much fuller and epic than its under-four-minute runtime, “Crank” represents the kind of radio-friendly crescendoing rock perfection that few bands actually attain. Intense, emotional and memorable, “Crank” is the song that baits, as any single should. The track “Ursa Major Space Station” was named after a guitar effects pedal, while “Fripp” was named after King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp.

Slower tracks like “Fripp” and jangly dreampop moments (“Strange Fruit” and “Show Me Mary”) reveal the breadth of Catherine Wheel’s songwriting abilities. “The Nude” The crushing yet seductive single sends my heart soaring before letting it sink. I’ve rode this comedown so many times, I assure you it’s worth it.

Few rock records sound like this; there are only a few songs on Teenage Fan Club’s “Bandwagonesque” and Sugar’s “Copper Blue” that resemble “Chrome’s” gentle, blushing form of aggression, which generates songs as harsh and menacing as the title track and songs as celestial and full of dread as “Fripp.” Where many shoegaze bands would resign themselves to 2-3 monochromatic notes, Dickinson’s vocal melodies are dynamic, vivid, and exhibit an astral quality; they burn, shimmer, and glow against these songs. “Chrome” bears many of the hallmarks of early 1990s rock, I’d argue it’s a quintessential rock album that holds its own, independent of time. Some bands focus on the formula of commercial success. Others pay mind to their craft. For the fortunate few who know Catherine Wheel, we’d tell you it’s the latter that lasts. The album cover photo was shot in an indoor swimming pool by Storm Thorgerson of the Hipgnosis design company. In 1999, the cover of this album appeared as the cover of the Hipgnosis/Thorgerson retrospective book “Eye of the Storm”: 

Melody Maker described “Chrome” as “a tighter, more robust affair” than “Ferment” and “perhaps the ultimate Catherine Wheel album”. NME called it “a triumph”. Happy 30th Anniversary to Catherine Wheel’s second studio album “Chrome”, originally released July 20th, 1993.

This re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1993 Fontana UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl. Re-issue Released18/08/2023

Thanks to Albumnism:

“Stay Positive”, was the bands 4th studio LP, was released 15 years ago today. We wrote a lot of the songs during the touring for “Boys and Girls in America“. It was a very busy time and we made the most of downtime in backstages, hotel rooms, etc. We recorded it with the fantastic John Agnello and used the same studios as we had for “Boys and Girls“. In some ways, those records feel like companion pieces. It also features some cool cameos by Patterson Hood, J Mascis, Ben Nichols and Doug Gillard. The day it came out we were in the UK and did a show at Rough Trade East to celebrate.

Released in 2008, “Stay Positive” is the most sophisticated The Hold Steady have ever sounded, Where every song on previous sets felt unfinished and open-ended, these tracks are sheen-polished and almost slick. These 12 songs are full of near-cinematic rock dynamism and expertly rendered sonic effects. The insider jokes are abundant in both lyrics and music, and the E Street Band’s Darkness on the Edge of Town epic rock is channelled to alternately stunning and irritating degrees.

Craig Finn’s words and melodies have grown in depth without losing their immediacy. On album opener “Constructive Summer,” has huge guitars there’s a twist: the protagonist is an American adult male trapped in adolescence, living in nowheresville; he seeks something worth remembering from all the blackouts and wasted life — the romance of myth is displaced by false promises dictated by fear and self-deceit. He raises a toast to “…Saint Joe Strummer/I think he might have been the only decent teacher/Getting older makes it harder to remember/We are our only saviors/We’re gonna build something this summer.” The chorus offers a confusing, jokey chanted chorus (à la the Adolescents) that adds dimensionally to the loss here.

“Navy Sheets” references four tracks on Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” “Dy’er Maker,” “The Ocean,””The Crunge,” and the song itself from “Physical Graffiti“.

But the piano in the wonderful “Sequestered in Memphis” channeling the E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan — is very effective; it introduces the tune before a B-3 and a tenor saxophone move against the guitars to create an unholy union between story-song and mid-level punk anthem.

After hearing “Sequestered in Memphis” on Later… With Jools Holland, I was hooked.

“Constructive Summer” is one of the best summertime songs ever written

But Finn and company save two of the best tunes for last in “Joke About Jamaica” and “Slapped Actress.” Their drama, raw and incessant energy, and musical sophistication all come together in two songs that are less studied and calculated. There is an uneasy balance between “finished” big-time rock and the wily, playful freedom of “arena rock in my basement”; humor is maintained amid the darkness and Finn’s self-referential mythology unwinds itself into even greater insight. Irony abounds, finally, in that even if it’s the Hold Steady’s least enjoyable recording, “Stay Positive” will break this band big time.

Tom Waits has announced plans to reissue a series of his Island Records albums from 1983 through to 1993, capturing a decade-long chapter of the musician’s recording career. The release cycle begins on September, with the arrival of Waits transformative creative Breakthrough “Swordfishtrombones” (1983), its sprawling sequel, “Rain Dogs” (1985), and the trilogy-completing, tragi-comic stage musical, “Franks Wild Years” (1987).

Tom Waits middle-period albums–released on Island Records have all been newly remastered from the original tapes and will be reissued on CD and 180g vinyl this fall via Island/UMe. It’s 40 years to the day that “Swordfishtrombones” will have been released, ushering in a new and critically acclaimed musical era for Waits and his longtime song writing and production partner, Kathleen Brennan. The epic song-cycle, “Bone Machine” (1992) and the under-appreciated Waits (with Robert Wilson and William S. Burroughs) musical fable, “The Black Rider” (1993), will follow early October.

The campaign has been personally overseen by Waits and Brennan. Ahead of their physical releases, all of the albums are available to stream now featuring the newly remastered audio.

All the re-issued albums were mastered by Chris Bellman, who worked alongside Waits’ longtime audio engineer, Karl Derfler. As mentioned in the press release, “Swordfishtrombones” was sourced from the original EQ’d ½” production master tape, while “Rain Dogs”, “Franks Wild Years”, “Bone Machine”, and “The Black Rider” came from ½” flat master tape. Bellman also remastered the audio to better the listening experience. 

More from the July announcement: Waits went from ‘70’s-era “bluesy, boozy” wordsmith and melodist with seven albums behind him to sound sculptor, miner of the subconscious, abstract orchestrator, sonic cubist—while retaining his innate lyricism, melodic invention, humanity. A rough analogy: Picasso switching from exquisite literal depictions to pouring his brain and id out onto canvas. Waits was still painting, in other words, but the frames were made of blood and bone and feathers and old carburetors.

Working with experimental composer Francis Thumm, and taking inspiration from the music of found-object composer Harry Partch—plus Waits’ friend, Captain Beefheart—the renowned singer-songwriter reinvented his sound, album by album. As he put it in a 1983 interview: “I tried to listen to the noise in my head and invent some junkyard orchestral deviation—a mutant apparatus to drive this noise into a wreck collection.”

1983’s “Swordfishtrombones” (the title a winking tribute to Beefheart’s magnum opus, “Trout Mask Replica“) was a Waits-arranged pastiche, a variety of atmospheres from different sound planets. There is the warped, marching-army-ants music of “Underground,” an impressionist chant about people living below cities, but there was also the poignancy of the spare piano ballad, “Soldier’s Things,” the good bar yarn, “Frank’s Wild Years” (pre-figuring the musical of the same name), and the raggedy anthem to neighbourhood chaos, “In the Neighborhood.” Yet the album was rejected by his long-standing record label, Asylum Records.

Waits was fresh off a 1982 Academy Award nomination for the “Tin Pan Alley”-style songs for Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart”. Island Records founder Chris Blackwell promptly signed him and released the album, the first Waits produced. It earned rave reviews from Spin, Rolling Stone and the New York Times.

“Rain Dogs” came next—written in a Lower Manhattan basement and recorded in New York City. Waits and Brennan moved there in 1984, when Brennan suggested it might be good for creativity. She was right. The 53-minute, 19-track album was a kind of mutant, late 20th century musical “Canterbury Tales” with a shape-shifting band. There were banjos and marimbas and bowed saw and parade drum and howling horns (and Keith Richards and Marc Ribot) on this rollicking, rough-hewn opus—and Waits was using his voice in increasingly weird-and-wild ways. The songs were stories, sagas, laments, breakdowns, character studies, comedies, cabaret numbers, and the moving anthem, “Downtown Train,” which was later covered by Patti Smith and Rod Stewart.

“Franks Wild Years”, the album, is based on the Waits musical of the same name, performed with Waits in the lead role by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater (directed by Gary Sinise) during the summer of 1986. Recorded mostly in Hollywood, the idea for “Franks” came from the “Swordfishtrombones” spoken-word piece in which a used-furniture salesman (Frank), suffocating in middle-class existence with a “spent piece of used jet trash” wife and her blind Chihuahua, Carlos, burns down his house. With smoking rubble in his rear-view mirror, he hits the freeway with the parting quip, “Never could stand that dog.”

Waits and Brennan developed this into “Frank” as an accordion player escaping the mythical town of Rainville for a calamitous but noble journey to Las Vegas and New York, in search of stardom. In the end, broke and bewildered, Frank—“a guy who stepped in every bucket on the road,” as Waits put it—dreams his way back to Rainville, while freezing on a park bench in St. Louis. Until he suddenly wakes up and finds himself home in the saloon where it all started.

Waits’ vocal character varies wildly throughout the work’s 17 songs, and is no more impressive than when the gruff, growly singer turns to impeccable Sinatra-esque phrasing on the Vegas number, “Straight to the Top.”

“It closes a chapter, I guess,” Waits said when “Frank Wild Years” was released. “Somehow the three albums seem to go together. Frank took off in “Swordfishtrombones”, had a good time in “Rain Dogs” and he’s all grown up in “Franks Wild Years.”

“The Black Rider” is an extraordinary melding of the art of three extraordinary persons: Waits, experimental director Robert Wilson, and the late legendary writer, William S. Burroughs.

It’s is a nearly hour-long rabbit hole of grim narratives, hellacious carnival barking, fragile ballads, the eerie declamation of Burroughs poetry recited by both the author and Waits, and instrumentals. The “house band,” dubbed “The Devil’s Rhubato,” makes liberal use of horns, viola, cello, oddball keyboards, train whistle, contrabassoon, and sinister bass clarinet. The flavor of the music falls between the extremes of the poignant serenade, “The Briar and the Rose,” and Burroughs’ spooky “Tain’t No Sin,” which features a lyric that inspired Waits’ overall approach to the project:
“’Tain’t no sin to take off your skin / And dance around in your bones… ”

“Bone Machine” was a success—released in 1992 to universal critical acclaim, followed by a GRAMMY® for “Best Alternative Music Album.” Waits co-wrote half of the album’s sixteen works with Brennan, and special guests included David Hidalgo, Les Claypool (bass), and Keith Richards (who co-wrote “That Feel.”)

Recorded in Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, Calif.—described by Waits as “just a cement floor and a hot water heater”—the album was a radical redesign of Waits’ soundscapes and writing technique. The songs weren’t composed—they sound more forged, hammered, chiseled, bent. Waits and Brennan seem to have conjured the record out of dirt, cracked pavement, broken tree branches, and bird song. Their move to a rural area of Northern California heavily influenced the ideas and music of the record.

Some of the press: Musician: “a raw-boned masterpiece.” New York Times: “Nothing short of breathtaking.” Chicago Tribune: “bursts with color and emotion.” Washington Post: “His finest album.” New Musical Express: “Scary, mournful, morbid and easily one of Tom’s best.”

Waits called the songs on “Bone Machine” “little movies for the ears.” He sometimes wrote them entirely from a percussion pattern, which he played on an array of largely homemade instruments.

Mortality is a recurrent theme, from “Dirt In the Ground” (“We’re all gonna be. . .”) to “All Stripped Down,” “The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me” (a tale of contemplated suicide), “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” the rambunctious paean to childhood, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up,” and certainly the broken-hearted, confessional classic Waits ballad, “Whistle Down the Wind,” which was beautifully covered by Joan Baez. Waits explained at the time: “Yeah, ultimately, it will be a subject that you deal with. Some deal with it earlier than others, but it will be dealt with. Eventually we’ll all have to line up and kiss the devil’s arse.”

At long last! The five Island Records releases from Tom Waits finally get reissued – ‘Swordfishtrombones’, ‘Rain Dogs’ and ‘Frank’s Wild Years’ are out 1st September with ‘Bone Machine’ and ‘The Black Rider’ released 6th October.