The Fat Angel Sings

Kate Stables returns in absolutely masterful form this week as This is The Kit with the new “Careful Of Your Keepers” LP. There are loads of introspective moments, but the way the rich sonics all weave together just creates such an amazing flow. It was produced with Gruff Rhys and he has really added a warmth and focus without detracting from the band’s dynamic. This one really is a proper belter.

“Careful Of Your Keepers” is daring and soft, cutting and warm–a wild feat of complexity and combined dispositions. There’s a shared language of the band’s family experience that is as audible as ever in these recordings, which boast beautiful instrumental performances that still leave the nuanced space required for Stables’ vocals to live at the forefront. Across 10 songs, Stables reflects on the fragility of everything–of situations, relationships, and humans–and what we do to look after each other and ourselves as time rapidly passes. 

Guiding the ship through changing seas is producer Rhys. Stables described his role as being a “tonesetter,” watchful and attentive to the band dynamics while making sure to always follow a hunch for where a new sound could find its place in the recording. “They are so ridiculously talented–and every member is a great producer in their own right–so it was just a matter of trying to capture the magic they make when playing live together,” Rhys says of the recording process. “Their playing is by default so thoughtful and complimentary in terms of respect to each other’s parts and to the integrity of the songs themselves that it creates a beautiful foundation of often cosmic interplay that’s always in aid of Kate’s voice and vision as a songwriter.” 

“Slab” is the new EP from Louisville-based Wombo available digitally on Fire Talk. With past accolades from Bandcamp, Brooklyn Vegan, the FADER, Pitchfork, Paste & Flood, “the band’s expertly executed art-rock sound is complete with droning guitars, frenetic chords, and angular melodies that make it impossible not to get up and move to” (Uproxx). “Slab” continues their perchance for mesmerizing dreamscapes and eerily addictive refrains on this homespun, transitional EP.

“The band’s expertly executed art-rock sound is complete with droning guitars, frenetic chords, and angular melodies that make it impossible not to get up and move to.”

Recorded by Nick Roeder in the band’s hometown of Louisville, Wombo’s new EP, “Slab“, is a loose, instinctual grouping of songs that gradually morph into sonic territory that’s at once familiar to those already indoctrinated with the band’s experimental doses of surrealist escapism; as well as sweeter, stripped-down shapes. Most of the guitar parts from the EP are scratch takes that fit both the dueling energies and intentional imperfections of the songs, with overlaid vocals recorded on the same day. The result is an of-the-moment snapshot of a band that’s both settling naturally into a sound all their own while still remaining in constant evolution. 
 
The trio of Sydney Chadwick, Cameron Lowe and Joel Taylor sound more comfortable than ever, guiding the listener through a cohesive framework of peculiar hymns in a language only they can translate. 

the “Slab” EP out June 9th on Fire Talk Records

Primal Scream are digging into their archives for a new compilation release, ‘Reverberations (Travelling In Time)’ will be released on Friday 28th July. This is the Primal Scream debut album that never was: 16 perfectly crafted pop nuggets weighing in at just under 35 minutes.

This compilation comprises recordings from 1985 to 1986 and includes eleven previously unreleased BBC session recordings, along with all five songs from our first two Creation Records singles.

Out in July, the 16-track, 35-minute set takes a look at the band’s earliest years, comprising singles released via Creation Records between 1985 and 1986, as well as previously unreleased BBC radio sessions that they recorded around the same time.

It marks the first in a series of archive-focused releases that the band plan to put out through their own Young Tiki label. Watch the video for one of the compilation’s cuts, ‘Velocity Girl’, above.

Speaking about “Reverberations (Travelling In Time)”, Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie said: “This music proves we really had something special going on back then. I’m very proud of this album. I’m glad these sessions are finally being released.”

Young Tiki will release “Reverberations (Travelling In Time)” on July 28th, 2023.

It will be available on limited edition clear vinyl (3000 copies), black vinyl (2000 copies), and a special gatefold CD edition (1500 copies), exclusively through the Primal Scream store.

Liam Gallagher – ‘Knebworth 22’ due on CD, Deluxe Box CD, Sun Yellow 2LP Vinyl or Black 2LP Vinyl.

Liam Gallagher will document his triumphant two-night Knebworth Park shows with the release of the live album ‘Knebworth 22’ on August 11th. Returning to the scene of the era-defining Oasis gigs of the ‘90s, the huge audience stretched from fans who had been present some 26 years earlier right through to teenagers relishing the excitement of their first big gig. ‘Knebworth 22’ is a must-have live album for any fan who wants to relive the experience.

The epic sold-out gigs, which saw 170,000 fans descend on Stevanage across the Jubilee weekend, mirroring the Manchester band’s historic duo of gigs in August 1996, cemented Liam Gallagher’s status as a stadium-filling solo act.

Liam Gallagher says of the release: “So we recorded the Knebworth gigs we did last year. We all sound Biblical, turn it up ENJOY, LGx.”

The former Oasis frontman is set to release “Knebworth 22”, which marks the duo of iconic solo gigs he played at the hallowed grounds on 3rd and 4th June 2022. Alongside the announcement comes a live video of Roll It Over, which originally featured on the Oasis album “Standing on the Shoulder of Giants”.

Also featuring on the record are live performances of Liam’s solo tracks “Shockwaves”, “Everything’s Electric”, “Come On You Know”, “The River” and “Once” alongside Oasis classics such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”, “Supersonic”, “Cigarettes & Alcohol”, “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova”.

We’re absolutely delighted to announce that we have a very limited Dinked Archive Edition incoming to celebrate the iconic Cranes. The first in a series of archival releases, the band’s “John Peel Sessions” are collected together for the first time and it’s been a joy to work with the band on a lush package to celebrate. Kicking off this new  “John Peel Sessions 1989 – 1990”, the first in a series of archival releases from the most wonderful Cranes. The sonics they create are pretty thrilling, big reverbs and such space. The reissue is on their own Dadaphonic label and features original artwork by fêted 4AD & v23 sleeve designer Chris Bigg.

Formed in mid-1980’s Portsmouth by the brother and sister duo of Jim Shaw (drummer, keyboardist, guitarist, programmer) and Alison Shaw (vocalist, guitarist, bassist), Cranes first appeared in 1986 with “Fuse”, a self-released and now highly sought-after cassette of demos. Their debut album “Self-Non-Self” followed in 1989, catching the attention of legendary DJ John Peel, who invited them to record two sessions for his show in 1989 and 1990, the second seeing Mark Francombe (guitarist, keyboardist, bassist) and Matt Cope (guitarist) join ranks to form the line-up who would go on to record multiple albums for Dedicated including the much-loved album, “Forever”, which enjoys it’s 30th anniversary this year.

In 2016, Trevor Powers shut the door on Youth Lagoon. “I felt like I was in a chokehold,” he says. “Even though it was my music, I lost my way. In a lot of ways, I lost myself.”

Stepping back from the alias, Powers found personal transformation at his home in Idaho and released experimental tapes under his own name (2018’s “Mulberry Violence” and 2020’s “Capricorn”).

After taking an over-the-counter medication, Powers had a drug reaction so severe it turned his stomach into a “non-stop geyser of acid,” coating his larynx and vocal cords for eight months. “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to speak again, yet alone sing,” he says.

The growth that followed that nightmare narrowed Powers’ focus. Rather than writing about the world at large, he started writing about home. “Family, neighbours, and grim reapers,” laughs Powers. 

With whispers of country, “Heaven Is a Junkyard” is mutant Americana in a world of love, drugs, storytelling, and miracles—held together by Powers’ voice and an upright piano. Recorded in six weeks with co-producer Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Adele, Gil Scott-Heron), “Heaven Is a Junkyard” is a work of absolute devotion. A portrait of the God-haunted American West. And a reminder that there is always love in the tall grass.

Youth Lagoon’s new album “Heaven Is a Junkyard”, out on Fat Possum June 9th.

“Joy’All“ is the swaggering new fifth solo LP from Jenny Lewis. Written in daily instalments throughout the pandemic, it is really funny and secures her space as a contemporary troubadour of the highest order.

“I started writing some of these songs on the road, pre-pandemic… and then put them aside as the world shut down, and then from my home in Nashville in early 2021, I joined a week-long virtual song writing workshop with a handful of amazing artists, hosted by Beck. The challenge was to write one song every day for seven days, with guidelines from Beck. The guidelines would be prompts like ‘write a song with 1-4-5 chord progression,’ ‘write a song with only cliches,’ or ‘write in free form style.’ The first song I submitted to the group was ‘Puppy and a Truck.’” As the days progressed, the assignments kept coming in and Jenny ended up writing a good portion of “Joy’All”.

While “Joy’All” pulls from a bounty of sonic inspiration–from soul to 90’s R&B, as well as country and classic singer-songwriter records the album’s rich and intimate, live sound is the hallmark of eight-time Grammy winning producer Dave Cobb (John Prine, Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell), whom Jenny met by chance while visiting Lucius at the Historic RCA Studio A in Nashville. A natural kinship developed between the two, and with her arsenal of songs that she had demoed on her iPhone ready to roll, Jenny texted Dave and asked him to produce her new album.

“Joy’All” is a beacon of enlightenment that could only come from embracing life, taking the good with the bad; it’s a ten-song overture that invites the listener to find their own path to joy.

A Jason Isbell record always lands like a decoder ring in the ears and hearts of his audience, a soundtrack to his world and magically to theirs, too. “Weathervanes” carries the same revelatory power. This is a storyteller at the peak of his craft, observing his fellow wanderers, looking inside and trying to understand, reducing a universe to four minutes. He shrinks life small enough to name the fear and then strip it away, helping his listeners make sense of how two plus two stops equaling four once you reach a certain age — and carry a certain amount of scars.

“There is something about boundaries on this record,” Isbell says. “As you mature, you still attempt to keep the ability to love somebody fully and completely while you’re growing into an adult and learning how to love yourself.”

“Weathervanes” is a collection of grown-up songs: Songs about adult love, about change, about the danger of nostalgia and the interrogation of myths, about cruelty and regret and redemption. Life and death songs played for and by grown ass people. Some will make you cry alone in your car and others will make you sing along with thousands of strangers in a big summer pavilion, united in the great miracle of being alive. The record features the rolling thunder of Isbell’s fearsome 400 Unit, who’ve earned a place in the rock ‘n’ roll cosmos alongside the greatest backing ensembles, as powerful and essential to the storytelling as The E Street Band or the Wailers.

They make a big noise, as Isbell puts it, and he feels so comfortable letting them be a main prism through which much of the world hears his art. He can be private but with them behind him he transforms, and there is a version of himself that can only exist in their presence. When he plays a solo show, he is in charge of the entire complicated juggle. On stage with the 400 Unit, he can be a guitar hero when he wants, and a conductor when he wants, and a smiling fan of the majesty of his bandmates when he wants to hang back and listen to the sound.

The roots of this record go back into the isolation of the pandemic and to Isbell’s recent time on the set as an actor on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. There were guitars in his trailer and in his rented house and a lot of time to sit and think. The melancholy yet soaring track “King of Oklahoma” was written there. Isbell also watched the great director work, saw the relationship between a clear vision and its execution, and perhaps most important, saw how even someone as decorated as Scorsese sought out and used his co-workers’ opinions.

“It definitely helped when I got into the studio,” Isbell says. “I had this reinvigorated sense of collaboration. You can have an idea and you can execute it and not compromise — and still listen to the other people in the room.”

The first of five focus tracks from the album, “Death Wish,” is about being in love with someone suffering from depression, with a powerful universal undercurrent about the fragility of life and the power and limits of love. That grown-up kind of love.

Musically the track is beautiful and fascinating. Isbell, clearly, has been listening to The Cure and tiny little tracers of post-punk find their way into this song and others. Matt Pence, the drummer and engineer, came into the studio to help with the drum sound. He got a bunch of kits set up and they arrived on structure for “Death Wish.” The kick drum hits on the two, which was weird and disconcerting, even upsetting, until it clicked. Now it feels complicated and intricate, yet never fragile, like the subject of the song itself. As the first track it announces that Isbell is an artist growing, exploring new musical frontiers. The Sylvia Massy-added strings make it big and ambitious, almost like a James Bond theme song.

“Middle of the Morning” was a lockdown song. Melancholy, honest, with those Isbell phrases that will sneak into your vocabulary – ahem, “farmhand’s ghost” – the narrator, who both is and is not Jason himself, describes the feeling of being stuck in place, wheels and mind spinning, feeling like some essential part of yourself lives just outside your reach.

“It was about trying to keep my mind from unraveling over the couple of years there,” he says now.

In “Cast Iron Skillet,” which will be sung by audiences and printed on merch for years to come, Isbell returns to a common theme. He is southern in accent, and family tree, and in musical ancestors, but he uses his art to tear down the worst of the south and try to build a new, better, more loving region in its place. The engine in this song is breaking open the myths and legends he learned, from the small and insignificant to the large and deadly. The characters are murderers and racists, human beings who weren’t always those things, and in between the lines is an author grappling with the forces of nurture and nature.

“I think nostalgia is an abomination,” he says. “I think it is a crime. I think it’s unnatural.”

Isbell says “Save the World” was the hardest for him to write and record, going through several drafts and changing perspective. It is the hardest to listen to as well, describing the moment another school shooting hits the cable news ticker or the newspaper headlines. It’s not about a victim of the crime, or even anyone adjacent, merely worried parents trying to raise children in a world where something like this could happen. This is songwriting as journalism, very sophisticated journalism, and the music reflects the lyrics. There’s no reverb. No crutch. Everything feels bone dry, like the song is being played only for you.

“This Ain’t It” is a romp, with a live vocal take and live guitars except for the overdubs on the outro. This is the 400 Unit in a room playing, wings spread in flight, more southern sounding than anything Isbell has written in years. The spirit of Keith Richards is all over this track and the best part about the terrible fatherly advice being given here is that the father in the song, a totally untrustworthy narrator, really believes what he is saying. 

Jason Isbell – Vocals, Background Vocals, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Baritone Guitar, Electric Slide Guitar Derry deBorja – Acoustic Piano, Electric Piano, Organ, Accordion, Synthesizers, Therevox, Tack Piano, Background Vocals Chad Gamble – Drums, Percussion, Congas Jimbo Hart – Electric Bass, Bass Ukulele Sadler Vaden – Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Electric 12 String, Acoustic 12 String, Background Vocals —

Special guests: Amanda Shires – Fiddle, Background Vocals Mickey Raphael – Harmonica on Strawberry Woman

releases June 9th, 2023

After recently releasing the critically-acclaimed Plains album (“I Walked With You A Ways”) with Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, Jess Williamson’s “Time Ain’t Accidental” is the sound of a woman running into her life and art head-on. With a vocal dynamic kindred to Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, Williamson blends the emotional immediacy and story-telling of traditional country with the artful, wholly honest transmissions of songwriters like Townes Van Zandt and Terry Allen.

In the three years since her last album, 2020’s “Sorceress”, Jess Williamson has lived a lot of life. She went through a heavy breakup, found herself single for the first time in nearly a decade, and began figuring herself out alone in Los Angeles. She reconnected with an old acquaintance in Marfa and struck up a new relationship; she now splits her time between the two towns.

JESS : “Time Ain’t Accidental” is one of those lucky songs that I wrote really fast in one afternoon. The chorus talks about reading a collection of Raymond Carver short stories. The song is like a short story itself. It’s the true story of a day. It captures that feeling of the beginning of something where you’re just so excited and you don’t know if it will become something or not. When I wrote that song, it was celebrating this sweet beginning and not needing it to turn into anything or knowing if it would, and that being some of the beauty of it too. I’m just appreciating this moment.

The album’s reckoning with loss, isolation, romance, and personal reclamation signals both a stylistic and tectonic shift for Williamson: from someone who once made herself small to an artist emboldened by her power as an individual.

“Time Ain’t Accidental” is the new LP from Los Angeles Based, Texan musician Jess Williamson. Her voice is absolutely sublime; rich and effortlessly warm. Personal but relatable, she transcends generations of country vocals; this really is a special one.

WILLIAMSON: I had had really long relationships, and here I am single for the first time in nine years and it’s COVID dating. [Laughs] I tried it. I was raw from the breakup. It felt like being thrown to the wolves. It felt like: “These people have no context for me, and I have no context for them.” Everyone is judging each other and ghosting each other. It really didn’t align with my way of relating. It felt like an experiment. It was interesting, but it was very short-lived for me. I felt belittled by the whole process, if that makes sense. I felt unseen, the way I want to be seen by someone I’d potentially be dating. It was a weird way to be witnessed.

Thankfully, though, it did birth the song “Hunter.” I would hear people talk about “I’m just dating people, I’m not in a relationship,” so I thought, “OK, maybe that’s what I’ll do.” What I learned from attempting to do that was, that’s not interesting to me. What’s interesting to me is love and real connection. So that lyric “I’m a hunter for the real thing,” I learned that about myself by trying it a different way and realizing it was boring and unfulfilling. I would rather be home or with my friends than whatever this is.

WILLIAMSON: That is to be determined. I’m about to go on tour and we’ll be playing some songs that will hold a new meaning for me now. Ultimately I think the answer to that question — “Are my love songs lies now that the love is gone?” — is no, they’re not lies. It’s a funny thing to sit with though. I wrote these devotional love songs about loving someone forever. I have a song on Cosmic Wink called “Forever,” that’s what I reference on “Chasing Spirits.” The lyric is “There’s the one about forever and/ Loving you in a past life/ Or whatever.” I said all that. That’s on the record — literally. [Laughs] I went on the record with talking about loving someone across lifetimes.