The Fat Angel Sings

Greta Isaac has shared her new single “How Are You Not Freaking Out?’ The songwriter’s gifts seem to find fresh ways to reconfigure familiar tropes in a deeply surprising way, locating new paths of communication.

“How Are You Not Freaking Out?’ is about reaching a fork in the road, and being forced to make certain decisions in your life.

Sharply poetic in its execution, the single is about unleashing frustration, and forcing yourself to stop pleasing other people, and re-frame your life around your own needs.

Written with her friend Orla Gartland,“How Are You Not Freaking Out?’ starts in a tender, almost uncertain way, before growing to become a wild soundscape.

Greta Isaac had a mighty fine year, the Welsh pop star showed a multi-faceted artistry with her excellent EP ‘I Think You’d Hate It here’ this year. The sublime stripped-down ‘How are you not freaking out?’ echoes the feelings of many of us during lockdown, as she attempts to hold on to some semblance of grounding in the midst of the chaos of modern living, muted intimacy giving way to a tidal wave as the fucked-up complexity of the modern life, it was written with her friend Orla Garland.

This song has always felt like a dark, wet, cold suburban neighbourhood. I guess what that brings up for me is the suppression of emotion in a bid to keep up with appearances or to avoid becoming difficult. And even when you’re brave enough to speak up and be truthful about your emotions, and you’re met with resistance or rejection, you can feel lonely, and it can be difficult to trust yourself ever again. To me, this is a song about honesty, anger and resistance.

I wrote ‘NUH UH’ around the same time as ‘Polyfilla’ and ‘5’1′, although the tone and essence of this song could not be more different. ‘NUH UH’ is manic, delusional, desperate and supercharged to the point where I don’t really feel like it’s me who’s singing it when I listen to it. Sonically it feels like the moment you have a ‘spark’ with someone – a spike in energy, your eyes blacken, your skin gets hot and sweaty. I see it in myself and people around me; it looks like we’re all turning into vampires, desperate for human connection and the feeling of being wanted by another person. It’s fascinating.
The artwork, for me, sort of mirrors the transformation that happens when that spark is ignited. Me and Suzie Walsh, my creative director, wanted to create an image that felt like a primal alluring shiny object, to entice someone or something. I’m wearing a dress made entirely of emergency foil blankets by designer Gloria Jane Royer. It reminded me of how a magpie forages for shiny objects that could feel quite mundane to us, but are captivating through the eyes of someone seeking it.

I wrote ‘PAYRI$E’ with Martin Luke Brown and Nova Blue in London last year. I wanted to write something that felt unapologetically brash and loud and demanding. I think for a lot of my life, I’ve made myself smaller in order to accommodate other people. Even when I’ve intentionally made myself bigger, funnier, prettier, it’s been to entertain or perform or to try and facilitate the perfect conditions for how I’m experienced by other people.
I tend to take on a bit of a character when I write, but I wanted to use the process of writing ‘PAYRI$E’ as a way to take up some space for myself and demand more from my life and from my relationships. The outcome is a bit of a mess, to be honest, but the character of ‘PAYRI$E’ just doesn’t have the resources to explicitly ask for what she needs in her relationship.. so I guess she’ll just take cash credit or cheque for now while she figures it out!

This song was pretty cathartic for me to write. I was going through a time in my life when I found myself surrounded by friends, family members, and fleeting encounters that all seemed to be working through difficulties within themselves that stemmed from hereditary trauma and pain.
I think there’s a point in everyone’s lives where you realise that growing up doesn’t just mean leaving home, making advances in your career or gaining independence or even starting a family of your own. A huge part of growing up is healing the child inside of us and accepting that we’re not superhuman. We’re not indestructible. We need care and boundaries. This song is for those who might be struggling with those feelings right now and how even in an adult state, there might be a vulnerable child within us that needs looking after.

“5’1” is the stubborn, angry child in me that doesn’t want to compromise or empathise when she’s met with conflict. The song was a product of losing interest or drive to make a relationship work and how I tend to withdraw and go inward when a situation gets a little too big and overwhelming to manage.

Greta Isaac‘s second EP ‘I Think You’d Hate It Here’ is full of solid gold. Following up on last year’s debut collection ‘Pessimist’, it’s been gathering plaudits from all the right places already. Finally out today, she’s a talent on the verge of something special.

Brooklyn based artist Charlotte Rose Benjamin recently released the single “Slot Machine” ahead of her album “Dreamtina”.

Charlotte Rose Benjamin‘s uplifting new single ‘Slot Machine‘ from her forthcoming debut album, “Dreamtina“, which is set for release on April 22nd. It’s a refreshing and catchy tune ‘Slot Machine’ sews country flecked guitar licks and bouncy percussion with Benjamin’s stream of conscious, her lighthearted and life affirming lyrics laced with a wistful and bittersweet tone pirouettes through the “inbetween” feeling of being between generations. As Benjamin sings, “If I let you play me like a slot machine / maybe I’ll win sometimes.”

“Slot Machine” pairs jaunty guitar hooks with Benjamin’s stream of conscious, lighthearted lyrics about unrequited love and the “in-between” feeling of being a millennial/genZ cusp. Benjamin describes “Slot Machine” as a “Sunday-morning-strolling-through-a-New-England-Beach-town kind of song,” relating it to her hometown of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

The video was shot by Benjamin and frequent collaborator, Hlif Olafsdottir, documenting a leisurely day on a Williamsburg Ferry, a Chinatown arcade,  a Dime’s Square dive bar and their favorite downtown karaoke spot.

“I think there’s a waspy country club vibe that comes to mind when people hear that I’m from Martha’s Vineyard. That definitely exists, but most people who are privileged enough don’t choose to live there in the off season. I always identified more with the towny girls from the movie Mystic Pizza. I had a wonderful childhood, but living on an island can be incredibly isolating. My music has changed so much since I left, but I think I’ll always have a little bit of a twang in my writing because of where I grew up.”

Self produced alongside her bandmates, Nardo Ochoa, Matti Dunietz and Zoe Zeeman, Charlotte Rose Benjamin’s debut album finds her analyzing her identity in correlation to romantic relationships and in comparison to “Dreamtina”, a fictitious namesake for the effortlessly-perfect girl you see and aspire to be. With the news of the album, premiering the pyromaniac-puppet-show video for her song “Satisfied”, calling the song “an irresistible power pop hook, paired with instantly quotable lyrics.”

Previously released songs, “Cumbie’s Parking Lot” and “Heat Stroke Summer”, were released as an a-side/b-side single last Summer, receiving praise calling out Benjamin’s “acerbic wit and penchant for crafting fun and memorable indie rock tunes.” 

‘Human Reciprocator’ is a politically-charged collaboration between Band Spectra (aka disabled musician Robert Manning) and critically-acclaimed Welsh multi-instrumentalist and producer The Anchoress.

Visceral, vicious and sardonic ‘Human Reciprocator’ is a new collaboration between Band Spectra (aka disabled musician Robert Manning) and The Anchoress (aka Catherine Anne Davies). Davies’s voice reflecting the overwhelming tumult of the “toxic news cycle” with a government who sickeningly lie and party while inequality yawns and the use of food banks grow. Skittering into life on a bed of filthy mechanical beats and scurrying analogue synths, it’s inspired by David Bowie‘s Low album and is possessed of the urgency of Cabaret Voltaire. Fantastic stuff !

Catherine says: “Human Reciprocator” was heavily inspired by an overdose on the toxic news cycle, ruminating on privilege and abuse of power in politics, deception, hypocrisy and the slow slide into a Britain steeped in poverty and a cost of living crisis while a political elite bluster and lie their way through a decade in power. Growing up with periods of my childhood relying on free school meals I am increasingly horrified at the proliferation of reliance on food banks while those in power become ever more detached from the realities of the working classes. “Human Reciprocator” is a reflection on the current state of affairs.“

Written by Robert Manning // Catherine Anne Davies
Performed by:
Robert Manning// Synethesizers, drum machine
Catherine Anne Davies// Vocals
Leo Abrahams// Guitar
Gary Alesbrook// Trumpet

released June 30, 2022

Scottish duo Poster Paints includes Frightened Rabbit guitarist Simon Liddell and singer-songwriter (and current Vaselines keyboardist) Carla J Easton they have just announced their debut album and this is the shimmering first single.

This year Poster Paints released a string of wonderful singles including gorgeous lead single ‘Falling Hard’. Marrying spiralling guitars of Simon Liddell with the husky, swooning vocal melodies of Carla J Easton, relentless and irresistible ‘Falling Hard’ chased dreams all summer, in a soaring, lovelorn pop song.

It also contained the slowly unfolding majesty of ‘Never Saw It Coming‘ and the wistfully enveloping ‘Circus Moving On’ , each song taking us on a journey through bittersweet sorrow of parting and loss, juxtaposed with the joy of love. Culminating in the release of their wonderful self- debut album, wrapped with these themes and burnished by the sound of collaboration and Liddel’s distinctive guitars, it reflects a kind of sadness and darkness tinged with a hopeful flickering light that things will work out.

Poster Paints are Simon Liddell and Carla J Easton who have changed their way of working and embraced the “new normal” to make art. Their debut single ‘Number 1’ is an instant anthem. Teenage love, feeling invincible and long hot summers.

It’s the sound of two people exploring. Glasgow indie pop, dream pop and shoegaze – the bands they grew up listening to, and are passionate about.

Written by Simon Liddell / Carla J Easton, Released by Ernest Jenning Records / Olive Grove Records. Published by Domino Publishing Co.

Andrew Eaton Lewis, is a song writer known for his work in Seafieldroad and as a member of the band Swimmer One, who released a run of impressively sophisticated synth pop records. Last year he covered ‘Find the River’ in a stately fashion for the R.E.M. compilation. His new album “Tourism”, his first for Wee Studio Records, is a set of impressively evocative piano-led interconnected songs inspired by his move from Edinburgh to the Outer Hebrides.

“Tourism” is a collection of songs inspired by that life change – songs about crofts and sheep and dark skies and wild weather, about feeling like a tourist in someone else’s culture, about the ‘mainland’ becoming somewhere on the edge of your experience, about my past and my children’s future, and ultimately about whether we are all just tourists on Earth, on a brief visit from somewhere more permanent that we return to afterwards.

That sense of being out of place bleeds through each rich song suite, Eaton-Lewis’s voice possessing a wistfulness that sails from weathered to falsetto peaks. “The winters can feel endless/but there’s beauty in the darkness” he sings on the bittersweet opener and title track. While the song cycle of ‘A Guide to the Western World‘ and the superlative building ‘Vahalla‘ is riven with a yearning and melancholia that’s reminiscent of some of Nick Cave‘s early solo work. The sense of clarity here, of experiences lived and learnt, and the acknowledgement of the fragility of life makes, this is a record you should invest time in.

Vocals, piano, organ, synths, stamping, clapping: Andrew Eaton Lewis
Guitars: Scott C Park
Live drums: Keith Morrison, Scott C Park
Produced by Keith Morrison at Wee Studio.
Cover image by Andy Yearley.
Cover design by Andrew Eaton Lewis and Scott C Park

New music from ex Swimmer One / Seafieldroad singer-songwriter, now living in Outer Hebrides and signed to Wee Studio Records.

‘Adult pop with heart and brains.’ The Guardian.

released March 18th, 2022

Working with Iron and Wine and penning six solo albums in recent years, prolific artist Johanna Warren recently told Uncut Magazine as the pandemic hit she was faced with the choice, “up sticks from New York to Wales, to a place she had never been, to be with a person with whom she had spent all of two weeks. ‘Or move back in with my parents, and cry every day’.” Johanna Warren chose the former, packed up her bags and moved her life to a small mid-Wales town living in a homestead surrounded by sheep, foraging for herbs, and home-brewing, she divorced herself from the bustle, of the release and tour treadmill of the past three years.

Among the album’s of the year “Lessons for Mutants” is consumed with this change and metamorphosis, but also the imperfections of being human. It was recorded live to two inch tape capturing the performance of each song, taking you on a lyrical journey and shapeshifting through sounds from the scorched grunge of  ‘Piscean Lover’ that’s about holding onto the life raft as everything crumbles around you ” “It’s alright, we’re not ok/ We burn out not to fade away.” she sings, to the raw delicacy of the piano flecked ‘tooth for a tooth’, its touching atmosphere woven with brutal bars which could have been played in a smoke filled 1940’s club and bears more than a passing resemblance to Cat Power.

“Thirst for power, hunger for fame/ Always was a junkie for pain,” sings Johanna Warren on the psych folk strum of ‘I’d Be Orange’. This exploration of masochistic ambition and artistic martyrdom shifts effortlessly from shuffling into an epic chorus line, that captures all the contradictions of the male ego and turns it into a universal moment of self-discovery: hoisted shoulder high on a wave of 60’s harmonies, textures and Warren’s elastic vocal, sitting somewhere between Sharon Van Etten anthem and a love-inspired groove. It’s a superlative piece of songcraft.

“I think it’s a mistake to equate ‘perfection’ with flawlessness. To be human is to be perfectly flawed,” Johanna Warren observes while describing the joys of analogue recording. Her new LP “Lessons for Mutants” was tracked live with a band to two inch tape—a revelatory new way of working for Warren. “Tape forces you to commit to a performance, eccentricities and all. The little glitches and anomalies that we’re tempted to ‘correct’ are often what make a thing magical.”

Warren posses a voice of rich experience and clarity and song writing of depth on ‘Oaths’, she delivers an incredible, spine-tingling vocal performance as she cries to the heavens asking for the weight of sins to be lifted off our backs. As this outstanding torch ballad holds you transfixed in its revelry, pianos steeple and forge like the terrain of her home. It’s a stunning song.

Then there’s the spindling arpeggios and percussive shuffles of breakup ballad ‘Hi-Res‘ that scythes somewhere between the pointed lyricism of Big Thief and the bitter kiss-offs of Bob Dylan. “There’s this unspoken rule in modern music—modern life, really—that everything needs to be Auto-Tuned and ‘on the grid,’” Warren concludes. “This record is an act of resistance against that. There’s beauty and power in our aberrations, if we can embrace them.” 

Haunting closer ‘Involvus‘ is riven with the tenuousness of human frailty and failure, the piano bars housing Warren’s meditative clarity as she muses on  the ill-fated love story of Orpheus and Eurydice, fleeting, tragic and captivating, its a wonderful wave goodbye.

released October 7th, 2022

Music and lyrics by Johanna Warren

Johanna Warren – Guitars, vocals, piano, flute, organ, glockenspiel
Raven Bush – Violin
Mike Collins – Ooh la la las on Track 1
Chris St. Hilaire – Drums and bass on Tracks 6, 8, 9
Chris Jones – Drums, percussion, ooh la la las
Tom Sansbury – Bass, synth, ooh la la las

Body Type‘s debut album, “Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising”, appears to have been largely overlooked in many end of year lists but their ability to imbue earworm melodies into kick ass groves, post rock/grunge/indie sounds is unmatched this year. The Australian single ‘Sex & Rage’ skitters on a bed of serrated riffing, kick-ass, quick-fire drum fills and the naggingly brilliant vocal dexterity of Sophie McComish consumes the doggerel of desire, angst, and euphoria in a hook-laden plea for exuberance and actual excitement in the face of boredom and stunted digital consumption.

‘The Brood’ jumps in feet first with frenetic rhythms and swaggering vocals as the band join hands and ask what’s your resistance to letting go? ‘Buoyancy’ is urgent visceral and careers down the highway on a bed of body popping percussion, vocal sparring and fantastic choruses riven with cool as f#ck vocals, are you ready for lift off? .

Body Type‘s ‘Sex & Rage’ , lifted from their awesome debut album “Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising”, skitters on a bed of serrated-edged riffing, kick-ass, quick-fire drum fills. Riven with the nagging, brilliant vocal dexterity of Sophie McComish that consumes the doggerel of desire, angst, and euphoria in a hook-laden plea for exuberance and actual excitement in the face of boredom and stunted digital consumption. Australian group Body Type have the kind of artful melodic hooks of the Breeders, but all processed in a withering knowing delivery faintly redolent of early Courtney Barnett. But really they’re just Body Type and they’re bloody great!

Dirty Honey were still unsigned when self-released single “When I’m Gone” hit number one on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs chart in 2019. The song, which has racked up over 13 million streams on Spotify, introduced rock radio to a band that sounds a lot like their musical heroes, Guns N’ Roses, with a dash of Aerosmith, The Black Crowes, and even Led Zeppelin. 

While the vocal similarities between lead singer Marc Labelle and Axl Rose are unmissable, Dirty Honey retains the essence of their influences rather than ripping them off, resulting in original-feeling grooves like “When I’m Gone”.

The Dirty Honey debut LP is available now!

These Michigan retro-rock revivalists saw your “Led Zeppelin cosplay” jokes and raised you some strings. Everything about Greta Van Fleet’s second full-length is more expansive: the instrumentation, the song lengths, the budget, the fantasy-realm absurdity, the physical range of Josh Kiszka’s Valhalla-seeking shriek. Working with top-drawer producer Greg Kurstin (Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters, Adele), Greta Van Fleet leaned into their proggiest, heaviest instincts — jettisoning the dopey folk-rock detours (““You’re the One””) that bogged down stretches of their 2018 debut, “Anthem of the Peaceful Army”. They sound more natural in this cinematic space, allowing guitarist Jake Kiszka to orchestrate riffs on a bigger scale (like on epics “Age of Machine” and “The Weight of Dreams”). Sure, nothing about “The Battle of Garden’s Gate” is particularly original — but who cares? Few bands recycle the past with such flair and finesse.

In “Heat Above“, from the 2021 album “Battle at Garden’s Gate”, the band infamous for sounding too much like Led Zeppelin air some of their other classic rock influences, most notably those in the prog space. The save-the-worldism that was too sticky and blunt throughout their debut album, “Anthem of the Peaceful Army” (2018), is here polished into something glam, exultant, and deliciously over the top. 

Their instrumentation will put you in mind of Rush, their presentation of Elton John, and their lyrics of The Guess Who on this years-in-the-making single that represents Greta Van Fleet at their best.

The Led Zep-lovin’ boys from Michigan blew away the Covid cobwebs, Is there anything more comforting to men of a certain vintage than the crunching guitars and wailing vocals of classic rock?

Not for me. This year, the genre transported me back to a musical era of sheer joy and wild, creative spirit; a time when musicians were as interested in letting the good times roll as saving the world. A time of bands like classic rock revivalists, Greta Van Fleet.