The Fat Angel Sings

Two years ago, English post-punk quintet Squid took the world by storm with “Bright Green Field”, their big, dystopian, guttural debut record. Ollie Judge, Louis Borlase, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivell and Anton Pearson are one of the most-uncompromising and level-headed acts around, and their follow-up “O Monolith” is a grand, meticulous achievement of iconoclastic funk, doomsday amalgams and charismatic, glossy noise.

Our Record of the Week is “O Monolith”, the jacked up return of Squid. If you loved the first record (and its preceding EPs), you’ll love this. If you don’t know them yet, you’ll still love this! It is full of curious and bright eyed sonic trips and changes of pace. It’s hugely ambitious and has such great energy.

Teeming with melodic epiphanies and layered sounds, Squid’s second album “O Monolith” is a musical evocation of environment, domesticity and self-made folklore. Like its predecessor, 2021’s critically acclaimed, UK number 4 album “Bright Green Field”, it is dense and tricksy – but also more warm and characterful, with a meandering, questioning nature.

Expansive, evocative and hugely varied, “O Monolith” retains Squid’s restless, enigmatic spirit, but it still holds surprises for those familiar with “Bright Green Field”.

Full of adrenaline, haunted murmurs and trumpets blazing into Dadaist entropies and punk poetics, “O Monolith” cements Squid’s magnitude. To celebrate the album’s release, we caught up with drummer/vocalist Ollie Judge and guitarist/bassist/vocalist Louis Borlase and got the history behind all eight tracks.

“Swing (In a Dream)”
Ollie Judge: We started writing this one the day after we got back from Green Man festival in 2021. We played a secret set on the Sunday and arrived there on the Thursday, so we were feeling quite fragile the following Monday in the writing room. Initially I really didn’t like the track, but that’s the beautiful thing about being in Squid, you’ve just got to trust that something you might not be that keen on to start with will end up being something you all collectively love. The track is about a dream I had, I was in the painting “The Swing” by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, I looked down at my phone as it ran out of battery and my phone charger fell into some water, then I realised the whole scene was flooding. The lyric “And all they’ll do is scream” is a pretty dark one, I was imagining what the future will look like as the climate totally annihilates everything. It brought to mind the dream scene in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor is in the playground and the nuke destroys everything. It’s basically a climate crisis anxiety song, which feels extra weighty as I’m currently looking at news about the wildfire smoke from Canada drifting down to New York.

“Devil’s Den”
Louis Borlase: In Summer 2021 we briefly rented a tiny studio space in Bristol, behind Stokes Croft. It wasn’t very soundproof and we got told off and ended up moving out. Devil’s Den started as an idea for two guitars called “Nines.” It ended up becoming the track that made us understand how Woodwind could help shape the album. We were writing the extra parts a couple of weeks before recording at Real World whilst doing the mammoth drive from Montréal through upstate New York.

Judge: I initially wanted to write this song about another dream I had. The dream was set in an alternate universe where emails were stored in plastic bags underneath peoples desks at work. I don’t know why I didn’t pursue that, It sounds interesting. Anyway… this was around the time that my parents were leaving the UK and moving to another country. I grew up in a town called Chippenham in Wiltshire, and I was feeling like I needed to write something about the place I grew up in. The Devil’s Den is the entrance to a burial chamber in Marlborough. There’s a folk tale that people used to put water in the hollows of the stone and the devil would come drink it in the night.

“Siphon Song”
Borlase: This one is about seeing buildings on a screen on fire, the internet and compassion fatigue in an age of 24 hour news. Could it be the weirdest track on [O Monolith]? There’s a bit at the end where we used a drone machine of Dan’s which required 5 hands to slowly pitch each Oscillator to the chord that the choir were singing at the end. I think it’s fair to say we are all inspired by Laurie Anderson, I was stoked for a track with a vocoder and choir. It took me ages to try and create the THX style choral glissando you hear at the beginning. I reckon It’s gonna be fun to do this live.

“Undergrowth”
Borlase: The first track we started writing post the release of [Bright Green Field] in 2021. The track took a few little twists and turns before writing including a guest freestyle from Chicago legend Sharkula when we were last doing a tour of the states.

Judge: This tune is inspired by the episode of Twin Peaks where Josie Packard’s spirit goes into a doorknob in the Great Northern Hotel. Shout out to all you Peak-Heads out there… Does her spirit still live in the Great Northern? The high pitch whistle you hear in The Return indicates so! I guess it’s about my fear of what happens after you die, but explored in the playful scenario of being reincarnated as a high quality oak chest of drawers. Like Louis said, this was the first tune we wrote, and I really wanted to continue down a kind of funk/trip-hop route for the whole record, but the monolith took us elsewhere.

“The Blades”
Borlase: This one started as a live breaks jam, Ollie chopping away to Laurie’s beat on the Digitakt drum machine. When we pulled back the electronics at one point to loop the idea we’d reached, we realized it could be far more all-encompassing a track and became one of the longest on the album. A tryptic!!

Judge: I’ve said before, but this is my favorite tune we’ve ever written. It’s an amalgamation of past, present and future Squid all in one. It went through so many different iterations and I’m glad it ended up like this. It started as a kind of choppy Battles-esque song with no lyrics, to a kind of Arthur Russel-ish, 10-minute, soft funk ballad. We’re super happy with the video for it, featuring an amazing actor called Charlotte Richie.

“After The Flash”
Borlase: This one went by the name “Rochdale” for ages because we started writing it at a great studio there called Voltalab. We had the intention of stopping and writing in several of the stops on our Fieldworks Tour of new music in 2021, and ended up coming back to the studio the following year to continue working on the song. There’s a demo of it somewhere where it gets heavier and features Tortoise-esque marimba, but we can’t remember where we put it…

Judge: I’d love to hear the marimba demo of this. I remember it sounding incredible. Maybe one for the 10th Anniversary, glow-in-the-dark, grass-scented LP reissue.

“Green Light”
Borlase: There’s always a track we write and get excited about at the last minute before going in the studio. For O Monolith, it was “Green Light.” Were we starting to feel a tad proggy because we knew we were going to Real World [Studios]? Possibly. A highlight of the album for me is the Van Morrison moment of Woodwind glissando in the middle of the tune.

Judge: I agree with Louis here. The woodwind part in the middle of the song is the best part of the album hands down. I love it when artists put one amazing bit in a song but only for about 20 seconds, it makes going back to that song a little bit more special.

“If You Had Seen the Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away”
Borlase: This was another one started in Bristol in the middle of Winter. Inspired by the Romans’ introduction of new Rats to Britain, the rhythmic tick of a car indicator, and executed by the amazingly versatile voices of Shards.

Judge: This one was a bit of a behemoth to write. There’s about five different time signatures in it and it’s probably the most packed-to-the-brim tune we’ve ever written. At one point in the song it basically becomes an ensemble of about 14 people… Us, choir and two percussionists. It’s one of those songs that if you think too hard about it, it’ll start to make less sense. You just gotta let goooooo maaaannnnn.

It’s a reflection of the outsized progression of a band always looking to the future. Like its namesake, “O Monolith” is vast and strange; alive with endless possible interpretations of its inner mysteries.

“O Monolith” is out now via Warp Records.

“Are we having fun yet? Living in the grey zone”? The Toads ask the question and already know the answer. There’s many a wry smile, often packed with gallows humour, shared on the Melbourne groups’ debut album “In the Wilderness” (out June 9th on Anti Fade and Upset The Rhythm). Navigating the dross of modern life, whilst keeping one foot in a dream is the key to their nervy post-punk scuffle. Featuring members of The Shifters, The Living Eyes and Parsnip you’d be forgiven for guessing what The Toads sound like, but their mordant step and minor-key enchantment makes for an intriguing parry.

After playing some formative shows, including a debut at Jerkfest in 2022, The Toads set about recording five songs mid-year for a tentative EP. Realising the songs were too long to fit on a 7”, they booked in another recording session the following September to extend the EP to 12”. Two tracks’ chords structures were fleshed out with new melodies and arrangements, and by this point The Toads were surprised to find they had an album’s worth of material.

‘In The Wilderness’ is a beguiling record, full of twists and turns. It’s arch, resilient, thoughtful and straight-at-your-head catchy to boot. It’s fitting that the title track “In The Wilderness” draws this record to a close, being the peak of their invention so far. Drums pound and tumbling bass-lines sprint among the crisply stabbing guitar phrases and soaring horns outro. It’s a survivalist epic of hard-worn wisdom, ambling and restless. “I open up the door trying to get all of us through” sings Miles, becoming progressively more dizzy and despondent.

There is a sense of toughing it out that never falters though and this is the essence of what The Toads do best. They push onwards into the darkness and keep their appetite, pulling us all into the light. Messy and raucous, it’s really great fun and totally going to be a most played record for us over here.

The Toads’ “In the Wilderness” will be out June 9th through Anti Fade Records (AU) and Upset The Rhythm (UK).

Decisive Pink is the new collaborative project from Kate NV and Angel Deradoorian, and it is an absolute pop dream! “Ticket to Fame” just bubbles from start to stop; breakneck speeds, pops and clicks, squelching beats and two amazing voices that sound like something from anywhere between 1981 and 2029! It really is ludicrously good fun.

Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV are Decisive Pink – “Ticket To Fame” is their highly anticipated debut. After teasing the single ‘Haffmilch Holiday’ the duo amassed a rapturous response, with The Guardian calling it “a space-age-dancefloor swoon that brings to mind Kate Bush’s Waking the Witch” and the New York Times highlighting the single as “substantive and thoroughly hypnotic”. On their first LP they do not disappoint, calling on Kate NV’s experimental pop leanings and Angel Deradoorian’s taste for atmosphere and otherworldliness, Decisive Pink have created a playful and abstract album designed for escape and enchantment.

Electronic pop at it’s finest, the debut points to the fact that life is a puzzle, but you can still get a lot from living it. ‘Destiny’ is a smart take on the nature of belief, built on a question-and-answer format, where Angel plays a role as the seer, and Kate the enquirer. The poppy beat is reminiscent of Talking Heads’ ‘The Great Curve’, from Remain in Light. There again, it could be a sinister take on Will Powers’ ‘Kissing with Confidence’. The synth squeaks, squelches and toots sound like the timid affirmation of the initiate.

“Ticket to Fame” is also unashamedly romantic in atmosphere and tone. Romance is to be found in the simple pleasures, such as listening to a blackbird on the instrumental ‘Rodeo’, where warm synths, a melancholic guitar pattern and hissing rhythm combine with some vocal snippets to form a soothing contemplation. Then there is ‘Ode to Boy’; a perfect pop track. The walking into the room of “more than just an ordinary boy” (doubtless “drunk with fire”) allows a set of initially different, and shortened synth patterns to build to a glorious affirmation of the power of love.

Boston-based rock duo Mediocre arrives with their debut EP showcasing their unique blend of post-punk, garage rock, and indie pop.

On “To Know You’re Screwed”, the Dangerbird debut EP from queer West LA rock duo Mediocre, Piper Torrison (She/They) and Keely Martin (She/Her)  immediately get to twisting the lyrical knife. With the opening line, we find out, “To Know You’re Screwed is to Know a Lot,” an indisputable statement, before even getting to the punchline: “and I’m a motherfucking genius.” She’s got a head full of ways it could all go wrong–but there’s an out! “Don’t worry babe, it’s all self-taught/ could be all wrong anyway.” It’s a once-in-a-generation sentiment, from Socrates on down to Operation Ivy: all I know is I know nothing. Here, Mediocre hints, all I know is I am nothing. It’s when the chorus hits that you realize the song is a mantra of abstaining from such anxiety: “Push it away, I push it away/ and I save it for the next day.” A blistering opening statement of elemental, edge-of-your-seat rock ‘n’ roll at its most honest.

Released April 7th, 2023

All songs written by Piper Torrison and Keely Martin

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are back with “Dragon”, another razor-sharp cut from the band’s upcoming thrash metal album. “PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation” is out June 16th on KGLW.

The nine-minute epic carries the same unmistakable thrash style that the band is trying to reconnect with, but around the five or six-minute mark there’s also the reminder that King Gizzard has entered its “jammy period.” Unrelenting guitar riffs continue to molt and mutate through multiple choreographed movements, with the titular “Dragon” evolving with every chugging power chord.

“Ahh my sweet baby Dragon is here fresh out of hell’s womb, summoned by the humans at the end of their pitiful road,” drummer Michael Cavanagh said. “It’s hard, fast and here to disrupt the natural order and annihilate everything in its path, so turn it up Sammy!”

Arriving alongside the track is an engrossing music video from long time collaborator Jason Galea. Using retro video equipment, the visual accompaniment gives off a nostalgic late-’90s vibe that was even inspired by PlayStation 1, throwing it back to a time when budding headbangers Stu Mackenzie, Joey Walker, and Michael Cavanagh were falling into metal.

“Over the last two months I dusted off my music video computer to slay the 10 minute ‘Dragon,’” Galea said. “I wanted to explore a harsh distorted visual palette using my live visual setup mixed with PS1 cutscene inspired animation and studio footage I filmed of the band.”

As King Gizzard prepares for this second foray into thrash metal, following 2019’s acclaimed “Infest the Rats’ Nest”, the band is also re-releasing its 2020 concert film “Chunky Shrapnel” to theaters. Captured during the band’s 2019 tour of Europe and the U.K., the shows heavily feature songs from the band’s ecologically-themed heavy metal concept album.

The film was originally scheduled to premiere in March 2020 but was thwarted by the pandemic. 

By the time of their fifth album, 1977’s “Deceptive Bends”, English art-rockers 10cc had split into two creative factions. Though initial recording sessions with all four core members had begun in October 1976, tensions between the band’s members had escalated so much that Kevin Godley and Lol Creme departed to pursue their own recording career as a duo. Godley and Creme were also in the midst of pursuing business opportunities that had opened up after the pair had invented the Gizmotron, a small mechanical device that could be attached to an electric guitar to create polyphonic synth-like sounds

The group now down to the nucleus of Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, and with the addition of drummer Paul Burgess, forged ahead with recording “Deceptive Bends”, an album that showed the band moving in a poppier direction.

“They’d developed the Gizmo and were making an album that featured it,” explains Gouldman today on the catalyst of Godley and Creme’s departure.

“And that album turned out to be a triple set album. We had commitments to record and go back on the road, but they were more interested in doing that album, and also at the same time, they kind of got tired and bored of the whole writing, recording, rehearsing, going on the road thing, whereas to Eric and me, it was fantastic as we loved doing that.”

Recording sessions resumed at the group’s own Strawberry Studios South in Surrey, England and continued until March 1977. The group decided to release a single, “The Things We Do for Love” just before Christmas 1976, so that the public and fans could hear a preview to the upcoming album. The song initially was poised to feature a darker subject matter than the more uplifting theme it ended up with.

“When we were writing it, Eric wanted to write something about suicide,” affirms Gouldman. “And I said I didn’t think it was a good idea to write a song on that subject or that it fitted musically with the melody that we had. But that feeling Eric had didn’t last long and he sort of saw the light quite quickly.”

For 10cc, it became a firm middle finger to the press who in the aftermath of the Godley/Creme split had been mocking the band as “5 CC.” The change from the melancholic minor key to the more uplifting major key played a key element in the song’s appeal to the masses.

“That’s a sort of device I’ve employed quite a lot in my songwriting,” reveals Gouldman. “Even when I when I was writing songs in the ’60s for The Hollies and Herman’s Hermits, I always liked that idea, which I admit, I was inspired to use from The Beatles.”

Once recording sessions wrapped up, the pair again tapped the creative art team of Hipgnosis who went to work on designing the cover art. “What we did was we first told them a title that we had for the album,” explains Gouldman. “Then we let them listen to the album and they spent like two or three weeks listening and getting into it. Then they came down to the studio and sort of turned the studio into an art exhibition with all these different concepts and we ended up picking one that we felt suited the mood of the album. I always felt that they reflected visually what we were doing on the record.”

Out of the album’s nine tracks, the album’s closer, the experimental opus “Feel the Benefit” is particularly noteworthy. The eleven-and-a-half-minute piece which is divided into three parts — 1- “Reminisce and Speculate”, 2- “A Latin Break” and 3- “Feel the Benefit” — snakes its way through tempo changes and diverse stylistic flourishes and evokes a Beatles-esque spirit throughout.

Released in April of 1977, “Deceptive Bends” released Two further singles from the album; “Good Morning Judge” and “People In Love”.

In 1997, the album was reissued and remastered on CD and included bonus material comprised of the three B-sides that appeared on the album’s three official released singles.

Over the last three decades, Kristin Hersh’s prolific career has seen her heralded queen of the alternative release.

“One of indie rock’s most fascinating figures” Hersh has released over 20 records solo, with Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE to date. The author of an acclaimed memoir — based on her teenage diary about a particularly eventful year, titled “Rat Girl” (“Paradoxical Undressing” in the UK). It saw Rolling Ston magazine name it one of their “25 Greatest Rock Memoirs Of All Time”. A publishing first, she later released her ‘Crooked’ (2010) as a ground-breaking book that included the album, artwork, lyrics and an exclusive essay, something that was further explored with Throwing Muses album ‘Purgatory/Paradise’(2013). Her latest book “Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt” chronicles the pairs deep friendship and their time touring together.In 2018 Hersh announced a new partnership with Fire Records that made possible the release of her tenth studio album, ‘Possible Dust Clouds’. “I’m thrilled to find some like-minded teammates in the shifting paradigm of the recording industry.

Together, we can do a lot more damage than we could ever pull off alone, and damage is what’s called for when an old guard is falling. This is gonna be a swell party.” Kristin Hersh‘Possible Dust Clouds’ is a highly personalised gem delivered as a futuristic rewriting of how music works, a melodious breeze with a tail wind of venomous din. Enveloping the juxtaposition of the concept of ‘dark sunshine’, a brooding solo record created with friends to expand her off-kilter sonic vision; a squally, squeaky mix of discordant beauty. Feedback and phasing gyrate from simply strummed normality, imagine Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine cranking up a Dylan couplet.

Kristin Hersh’s new album is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, sitting plush with layers of all-consuming strings and mellotron. It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts and inspirational thinking; an elegant piece of personal reportage, a home movie caught in time.

“She’s still as powerful a presence as she ever was.” Pitchfork “The prodigious output and commitment to quality is pretty staggering, but then Kristin Hersh is a very, very special musician.” The Quietus “Throwing Muses became a byword for college-rock feminism in the late 80s, largely because of Hersh’s uncompromising impressionist poetry of emotional anguish, subjugated womanhood and mental illness.”

Released back in 2013, the album was the third full-length LP to be released by the band, and featured fan favourites including “Unbelievers”, “Step” and “Diane Young”. Now, a decade after its launch, Koenig has listed the reasons why he thinks the album “still means something to people”.

The frontman took to social media in May to discuss the impact of the album, and provide fans with an insight into the writing and recording process the band went through at the time.

Ezra Koenig reflected upon Vampire Weekend’s “Modern Vampires Of The City” album, a decade after it was first released. Is ten years old. Wild. Good occasion to slam a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee and reflect,” he began. “Rostam [Batmanglij] and I spent about a year writing and recording this album before we moved into the final phase…

“It was far and away our most ‘studio album,’” he continued. “Modern Vampires Of The City” didn’t have songs like ‘A-Punk’ or ‘Cousins’ which began as riffs and started to come to life in the practice room. This is an album of more deliberate composition and detailed, patient recording.”

He also recalled how he felt listening to the instrumental versions of both “Don’t Lie” and ‘Diane Young’ for the first time, writing: “I remember when [Batmanglij] played me the beat for ‘Don’t Lie’ for the first time. That drum pattern and descending chord progression on the organ moved me deeply. I started singing the vocal melody almost immediately.

“I similarly remember hearing his first instrumental of what became the heart of ‘Diane Young’. That music was exciting and it took me a long time to write lyrics that I thought were worthy of it.”

According to Koenig, it was the composition and production from Batmanglij that made the album monumental to their discography, and is the reason why the release “still means something to people ten years later.”

‘Modern Vampires Of The City’ the Third Vampire Weekend album saw the band back on form. They sound like they are having fun again. The songs are pure pop and instant. ‘Step’ is an absolutely beautiful piece of r&b-infused slow-pop demonstrating Koenig on top lyrical form, while the likes of ‘obvious Bicycle’ and ‘Hannah Hunt’ see the band continue down the slightly more downbeat (but still uber catchy) route. Perfect pop for 2013.