The Fat Angel Sings

The first leg of the tour is now complete and though Peter played many of the songs from “i/o” during the tour this month’s release, The song “So Much“, only had a few outings.

Written and produced by Peter, “So Much” is ‘a simple song’, that features a string arrangement from John Metcalfe and contributions from Tony Levin on bass, David Rhodes on guitar and backing vocals from Peter’s daughter Melanie Gabriel. The song was recorded at Real World Studios, Bath, The Beehive and British Grove, London. This month, the first version you get to hear is the Dark-Side Mix, by Tchad Blake.  It’s the seventh song released, which he’s been doing once each month in 2023 

‘I was trying purposefully not to be clever with this. I wanted to get a very simple chorus but one which still had some substance to the harmony and melody. Something that was easy to digest but still had a bit of character to it.
“So Much” is about mortality, getting old, all the bright, cheerful subjects, but I think when you get to my sort of age you either run away from mortality or you jump into it and try and live life to the full and that always seems to make a lot more sense to me. The countries that seem most alive are those that have death as part of their culture.’

As Peter goes on to explain, there’s a duality to the meaning of “So Much”, which is just as much about revelling in all the experiences and joyous distractions still to be had right now as it is about contemplating the future; ‘The reason I chose “So Much” as a title is because I’m addicted to new ideas and all sorts of projects. I get excited by things and want to jump around and do different things. I love being in a mess of so much! And yet it also means there’s just so much time, or whatever it is, available. Balancing them both is what the song is about.’

“So Much” is the seventh track to be taken from the album “i/o.” This is the Dark-Side Mix, by Tchad Blake.

A big, driving new one from Wolfgang Van Halen and friends now, as they hit the road for UK and Ireland dates with Def Leppard and Motley Crue. Almost seven minutes long but totally flab-free, “Take A Bow” is a stirring, catchy mini-epic of a song – all Alter Bridge-nodding hard rock with a spicy, game-raising solo from Wolfgang. “I feel the guitar solo is really special,” he says. “I played the solo on the original Frankenstein guitar and through Dad’s original Marshall head and one of the original cabinets. It’s straight up what he used on the earliest Van Halen records. It makes me happy to capture some of dad’s history on this song forever.”

The new album ‘Mammoth II’ is out August 4th!

Greta Van Fleet first caught the world’s attention with guitar-forward, energetic explorations of emotion with a noted appreciation for what came before. They’ve shown us some atmospheric textures lately, but on “The Falling Sky” Michigan’s classic wunderkinds rock out like 70s kings – like Led Zeppelin fronted by Jon Anderson, draped in velvet, wandering across desert dunes or similar far-out, photogenic setting. “An unwavering warrior carrying on the endless, eternal, and impossible battle for salvation; these were the elements of symbolism associated with this particular track,” explains guitarist Jake Kiszka. “In essence our fate is sealed, alike the stars that fall from the almighty heavens to the earth. This philosophy is carried through in the story of a bluesman, at the crossroads of the universe.” 

That’s very much the case with the band‘s latest song, “The Falling Sky.” Debuted on Tuesday, the song previews “Starcatcher”, a new studio album due out July 21st, and showcases a snarling lead guitar lead paired with vocalist Josh Kiszka’s screeching howl of a voice:

“Farewell For Now,” another track shared recently and one that celebrates the relationship the band forges with its audience in the live setting:

“Starcatcher” was written and recorded by the band — Josh Kiszka, guitarist Jake Kiszka, bassist/keyboardist Sam Kizska and drummer Danny Wagner — produced by Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb and recorded at RCA Studios in Nashville.

The third single from “The Greater Wings”, Julie Byrne’s first LP in six years, is a solemn, orchestral piano ballad that fixtures her haunted, compelling voice front and center. Written while at an artist residency in Portugal, Byrne found inspiration in soundscapes of creaking docks and tidal flats. Though “Moonless” is a breakup song at its core, it’s also a coastal proclamation of queerness and autonomy. “I’d been learning you by heart / Voices rising through the smoke / Tables caving in / I found it there in the room with you / Whatever eternity is,” she sings, deftly and beautifully. 

The first album in over six years from American songwriter Julie Byrne is a testament to patience and determination, the willingness to transform through the desolation of loss, the vitality of renewal, and the courage to rise, forever changed. For nearly a decade, Byrne has moved through the world as a characteristically private artist largely outside the public eye. A self-taught musician that has committed her life to her work, she now emerges from a deeply trying and generative period with the most powerful, lustrous, and life-affirming music of her career, “The Greater Wings”. While they hold the plasticity of grief and trauma, the songs are universally resonant, unbridled in their devotion and joy, held up by the love and alliance of a chosen family.

“My hope for “The Greater Wings” is that it lives as a love letter to my chosen family and as an expression of the depth of my commitment to our shared future. Being reshaped by grief also has me more aware of what death does not take from me. I commit that to heart, to words, to sound. Music is not bound to any kind of linear time, so in the capacity to record and speak to the future: this is what it felt like to me, when we were simultaneous, alive, occurring all at once. What it has felt like to go up against my edge and push, the love that has made it worth all this fight. These memories are my values, they belong with me.”

Byrne leans further into atmospheres both expansive and intimate; the lush, evocative songcraft flows between her signature fingerpicked guitar, synthesizer, and a newly adopted piano, made wider by flourishes of harp and strings. It is the transcendent sound of resource, of friendship that was never without romance, of loyalty that burns from within like a heart on fire, and the life force summoned in unrepeatable moments — raw, gorgeous, and wild.

The latest offering from ANOHNI and the Johnsons ahead of their anticipated next album My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, “Sliver of Ice” is a slow-burning affair shouldered along by a flowing, soulful guitar and patient snare drum. Inspired by some of the last words that Lou Reed said to ANOHNI before he passed away in 2013, she opted to capture his explanation of how, in the final months of his life, the “simplest sensations had begun to feel almost rapturous.” “A carer had placed a shard of ice on his tongue one day and it was such a sweet and unbelievable feeling that it caused him to weep with gratitude,” she said in a press statement. There’s something genuinely indescribable about what kind of power and emotions ANOHNI’s most recent offerings conjure, but I can safely say that—just like lead single “It Must Change”— “Sliver of Ice” is delicate, beautiful and meticulous.

“Sliver Of Ice” by ANOHNI and the Johnsons from the upcoming album ‘My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross’, out July 7th on Secretly Canadian and Rough Trade.

Singer songwriter Holly Humberstone has officially announced her highly anticipated debut album “Paint My Bedroom Black”, set to arrive on October 13th via Darkroom/Geffen/Polydor Records.

Alongside the announcement, Holly has released “Antichrist” and “Room Service” today, the double A-Side singles that serve as the first tastes of “Paint My Bedroom Black”. “I feel like two different people half the time,” she said. “I love everything I’ve released, but the biggest challenge is always to make something I feel I haven’t done before, that reflects new parts of me.”

Always inspired by her environment and how that affects her sense of self and identity, from her parent’s Haunted House to flat-shares in London with The Walls Are Way To Thin, “Paint My Bedroom Black” represents Holly’s coming of age, growing from unknown singer at her parent’s piano to the most exciting alternative pop stars of her generation.

Holly will perform songs from “Paint My Bedroom Black” in the US for the first time at her recently announced show’s this summer.

Dark Horse Records releases Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros iconic “Live at Acton Town Hall” concert, remastered by Grammy Award Winner Paul Hicks (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, George Harrison) and available on 2LP clear vinyl and CD. Recorded on November 15th, 2002, the concert was a benefit for striking firefighters and would be one of Joe’s last performances (he passed away a month later.) The performance features a 3-song reunion with Strummer’s former bandmate from The Clash, Mick Jones, who reunited on stage for the first time in almost twenty years. It would also be their last time on stage together. Vinyl is packaged in a gatefold sleeve featuring never-before-seen photos from the show, plus new liner notes from former Fire Brigade Union Secretary Andy Gilchrist, who introduced the band at the show and led the strikes Joe was supporting.

This will be the first time the concert has been properly released with full packaging on vinyl, with its extremely limited previous incarnation as a Record Store Day exclusive in 2012 featuring just a DIY-inspired clear sleeve, and the first time it has ever been released 

American singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels made her debut in 2021 with the pleasant and quirky sounding “Excelsior!” and takes some extra steps on her even better second album “Bystander”
Johanna Samuels is not yet very well known, but she has been working in a small circle for a while. Her beautiful debut album “Excelsior!” deserved a bit more attention in 2021 and the “Bystander” released this week the album deserves that, because “Bystander”, made together with Bonny Light Horseman Josh Kaufman, this is not only an excellent album, but also an album that sounds different from most of the other albums in the genre.

During her darkest moments, while writing in isolation, her old friends in the band Bonny Light Horseman offered to take her out on tour in early 2020. “They re-contextualized music for me all over again,” she says. Observing a truly kind and compassionate music community brought Samuels out of herself even more. Inspired by conversations with producer Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, Bob Weir, Cassandra Jenkins) on the road, Samuels took him up on his offer to produce her new songs and retreated to Isokon Studios in Woodstock, NY in the summer of 2021.

Johanna Samuels writes songs full of melancholy, but they often sound surprisingly sunny. They are songs that draw on the past and the present and that are not averse to influences outside of American roots music.

She really is a great talent Johanna Samuels. released June 23rd, 2023

Gillian Welch has unfortunately hardly been productive in the past twenty years, but before this she made a pile of beautiful albums, of which the “Time (The Revelator)” released in 2001 is in many ways her best album. When Gillian Welch left the Berklee School Of Music in the mid-90s in Boston, Massachusetts in the early ’90s, where she shared a love of ancient folk and bluegrass with fellow student David Rawlings. , no one was waiting for her music, Welch mainly influenced by old folk and bluegrass.

After college, the pair moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where they caught the attention of none other than producer T-Bone Burnett, who helped Gillian Welch get a record deal. T-Bone Burnett produced her 1996 debut album “Revival” and was also featured on Hell Among The Yearlings, released two years later.

Both albums came at a time when the love of old folk and bluegrass was reserved for a relatively small group of music lovers. However, that changed with the success of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the soundtrack to this film, on which Gillian Welch could also be heard. 

At that time the music she was playing began to rise around the turn of the century, so Gillian Welch was suddenly prominently in the spotlight. All her talents come together on the 2001 release “Time (The Revelator)”. It is a very soberly coloured album with mainly influences from Appalachian folk and bluegrass, but it is also an album full of beautiful songs, in which the characteristic voice of Gillian Welch plays the leading role. On that album on which the unique Gillian Welch sound comes into its own. It’s a pretty sobre album, because there’s not much more than two acoustic guitars, a banjo, the voice of Gillian Welch and the occasional backing vocals from David Rawlings on the album, which was produced by Rawlings and T-Bone Burnett.

Originally released July 31st, 2001

Two years ago, the Brooklyn quintet—vocalist Cameron Winter, guitarists Gus Green and Foster Hudson, bassist Dom DiGesu and drummer Max Bassin—exploded onto the scene with “Projector”, a daring, awing debut that everyone in music circles became (rightfully) obsessed with—to some degree or another. With an artillery of post-punk, stadium anthems and energetic, Y2K garage rock, Geese perfected a sound that is as meticulous as krautrock and as titanic as cowboy chords set ablaze by 10-foot-tall amplifiers. Fast-forward to 2023, and the band’s second offering “3D Country” obliterates any notion of a “sophomore slump,” as the Brooklynites have crafted an ambitious, intricate and far-ranging LP of seismic proportions.

Standout tracks like “Cowboy Nudes,” “Crusades” and “Mysterious Love” dazzle in how unbound to each other they are. Surfing between remnants of Squid and the Rolling Stones, Geese never linger too long in any artifact they may decide to hold up to the light. It’s all vignettes of brief experimentation that coalesce into a greater vision: No influence is off-limits, nor is what Geese may begin to transform their palette into. The centerpiece of the album is the seven-minute concerto “Undoer,” which combs through trash-rock textures, abrasive drums and soloing axes while Winter cuts glass with a piercing octave that is as noble as it is spell-binding to witness unfold in real time.

All at once theatrical, vicious, heartfelt and daring, “3D Country” is a brilliant, miraculous assemblage of stone cold rock ‘n’ roll.

“3D Country” out now on Partisan Records and Play It Again Sam