The Fat Angel Sings

During the period 1986-1989, Wolverhampton’s The Mighty Lemon Drops released three albums for Chrysalis Records, (via its ‘boutique indie’ label Blue Guitar, also home to premium 80s acts The Shop Assistants and Raymonde), and these are now collected, along with a plethora of 1985-1990 period bonus tracks into a handy 5CD set.

After being in a variety of local bands, (including Active Restraint, who actually numbered three of the four Lemon Drops in its line-up), the group came into being in 1985, shortly afterwards issuing an eight-track cassette at their gigs (included in full over on CD4), and releasing their debut single ‘Like An Angel’ via Dreamworld Records at the end of that year. The broodingly magnificent single would actually go on to take pride of place in the following year’s hallowed John Peel Festive Fifty.

The following year was a momentous one for the band; they were invited to provide a track for the legendary NME C86 compilation, After appearing on NME’s hugely influential ‘C-86′ compilation, the band signed with Geoff Travis’ new Chrysalis subsidiary Blue Guitar for their debut album “Happy Head”, a collection of uncluttered songs with a chiming Rickenbacker sound that Sounds dubbed one of the 50 best albums of 1986, warmly received by critics and fans alike. At that time it was commonplace for bands to miss early singles and key tracks off their debut albums, but The Mighty Lemon Drops wisely avoided this trap and with Stephen Street (fresh from his work with The Smiths) on production duties, put out an absolute gem of a record, including fresh takes on ‘Like An Angel’ and its B-side ‘Something Happens’ along with re-recorded songs from their early cassette release.

The album still stands up perfectly today and hasn’t aged a jot, beginning with incendiary second single ‘The Other Side Of You’, the jangle-pop gold of third single ‘My Biggest Thrill’ and a stronger version of that C86 track, the title track ‘Happy Head’. The band drew comparisons with The Velvet Underground (which the day’s music press tended to do with any band who picked up a guitar) and Echo and the Bunnymen, although in truth by 1986 that legendary group would have killed for a dozen songs of this quality. Elsewhere on the record, ‘Hypnotised’ showed a softer side to the band as did ‘On My Mind’ , a beautiful song tucked away in the middle of side two.

1987 brought a non-album single, ‘Out Of Hand’, which is arguably the band’s greatest moment, a swoonsome Rickenbacker-led piece of pop perfection (courtesy of guitarist David Newton), singer Paul Marsh’s vocals never better. It is included here as a bonus track to CD2, which houses the band’s 1988 album “World Without End”. Where “Happy Head” was packed with an adrenaline rush of what was effectively been twelve single-worthy songs, its follow up was more considered and introspective, but every bit as good. The band came out of their comfort zone on the heartbreaking ‘Closer To You’ and the delicate (though it also packed a punch) ‘No Bounds’ , while the album’s two singles, ‘Inside Out’ (which received a lot of daytime airplay on Radio 1) and ‘Fall Down (Like The Rain)’ were far more instant. The group were by now selling out good-sized venues at home and in the USA, where they were a big hit on college radio across the land. The excellent, more urgent single version of ‘Fall Down…’ is included as a bonus track.

The band’s final album release for Chrysalis, (the Blue Guitar imprint now gone), “Laughter”, came just 18 months or so later in the Autumn of 1989, and increased their sonic palette still further. Lead single ‘Into The Heart Of Love’ sounded like a Top 10 hit (but sadly wasn’t) and follow-up ‘Beautiful Shame’ was another great single, and ‘Where Do We Go From Heaven’ reached the US Modern Rock Tracks Top 10; in another world it would have been a huge hit in the UK. The record was probably the band’s most varied, including the stop-start charm of ‘At Midnight’, a live favourite, and other winners like ‘Written In Fiction’ and ‘One In A Million’.

Across the set, there are contemporaneous B-sides, demos and Radio 1 sessions. Key B-sides include ‘Uptight’, the brilliant ‘Wait and See’ (previously only available on the double 7” single of ‘My Biggest Thrill’) and ‘Shine’. There are covers (The Standells ‘Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White’ and The Rolling Stones ‘Paint It Black’ are amongst the handful here) and the session tracks are mainly chosen not to clash with the band’s 2014 single CD compilation ‘Uptight: The Early Recordings 1985/1986’. There are rarities too – the track ‘World Without End’ not only didn’t make it onto the album of the same title but remains unreleased until now, and there are frantic takes on first album favourites ‘Take Me Up’ and ‘Pass You By’, and still so many more. The band only delved into the realm of the extended 12” version twice, with ‘Out Of Hand’ and ‘Inside Out’, both tastefully done and included on CD5.

It’s a lovingly curated box set with extensive sleeve notes by guitarist and song-writer David Newton, and very complete in that it includes every note that the band released officially in the period covered and a lot of extras that will be fascinating to fans of the group.Dave has also contributed to a high-profile new book, Whatever Happened To The C86 Kids? by Nige Tassell, which is bound to generate renewed interest in the band.

Inside Out… is a fitting (and overdue) retrospective of a much-loved band. The new five-disc boxed set anthology celebrating the recordings of The Mighty Lemon Drops, between 1985 and 1990 for Chrysalis Records imprint Blue The set featuring 83 tracks on five discs, including the albums “Happy Head”, “World Without End” and “Laughter” plus non-album singles, B-Sides / bonus tracks, US radio mixes, previously unreleased demos and rare session recordings.

Inside Out 1985-1990 was released on 25th November 2022 via Cherry Red Records.

High Vis were formed in 2016 from the ashes of some of the UK’s best hardcore bands. Gild-toothed frontman Graham Sayle’s anguished lyrics about life in working class Britain were familiar to fans of Tremors’ full-throttle thrash, but alongside his former bandmate Edward ‘Ski’ Harper and veterans of Dirty Money, DiE and The Smear, High Vis sought to transform that energy and intensity into something entirely new.

Like scene-mates Chubby and the Gang did by pulling in unlikely source material from classic doo-wop or Micromoon have by combining everything from psychedelia and metal into their high potency mix, High Vis’ 2019 debut album, “No Sense No Feeling” showed the band were never going to be constrained by any sense of genre rules or regulations. Its claustrophobic rattle bore traces of Joy Division, Bauhaus, Crisis, The Cure and Gang Of Four lurking in the shadows. 2020’s synth-driven EP, Society Exists, was further evidence of the band’s restless creative MO.

High Vis’ second album “Blending” sees them open their viewfinder wider than ever before. Alongside longstanding favourites such as Fugazi and Echo and The Bunnymen; Ride and even Flock Of Seagulls were shared reference points as the band worked on the album together.

From the anthemic sweep of opener “Talk For Hours”, through the title track’s psychedelic swirl and “Fever Dream” baggy groove, it sees High Vis’ sound blossoming into something with an unlimited richness. The hazy drift of “Shame” or the melodic jangle of “Trauma Bonds” may take them until uncharted waters, but they still have all the power and bite that made “No Sense No Feeling” so remarkable. Lyrically, the album represents another leap forward too. Talking frankly about poverty, class politics, and the challenges of everyday life, Sayle’s lyrics have always addressed the downtrodden and discarded communities across Britain slipping below the waterline. This time around, Sayle’s lost not of that social consciousness, but he’s looked at himself and his own emotional landscape, and in the process created something that feels more universal, that reaches a hand-out to people and ultimately gives a message of hope.

“To me, the lyrics are less selfish,” reflects Sayle. “In the past, I couldn’t see past whatever was going on with me. It’s about accepting things and being open to conversations and learning to talk to people rather than just thinking that we’re all doomed.”

The song “Talk for Hours” is a prime example of that. Born out of an afternoon meeting up with an old group of mates “repeating the same thing and not actually learning anything about each other” it offers to actually break the cycle and to listen and speak frankly about shared feelings and experiences. “Trauma Bonds”, meanwhile, traces the broken lines of those living in lost communities, but ultimately realises that despite our shared scars, there’s still hope to move on to a better future.

“The message of the album is you’re not who you’re told you are,” Sayle summarises. “You’re not your class background. Whatever it is, you’re not that. Don’t resign yourself to thinking you can’t be this and you can’t be that.”

It’s a vitally important message right now, and one that could be the motto for not only “Blending”, but for High Vis themselves.

The title track High Vis’s new album “Blending”

After years spent living on opposite sides of the Atlantic world events threw Laura Mary Carter and Steven Ansell of Blood Red Shoes back together into what has become the must fruitful era of their 17 years together.

“It’s been a loooong time since we both lived in the same city”, explains Steven. “I mean we actually wrote this album in LA at Laura’s place, then came to the UK to record it…and then everything went nuts”.

Realising very quickly that they wouldn’t be able to release the album or tour until the world returned to some kind of normality, the band found their energies quickly spilled over into other projects. Laura-Mary started a podcast, Never Meet Your Idols, with her best friend in LA, interviewing everyone from Zack Snyder to Mark Lanegan to Chvrches. It is now about to start its third season. Steven started applying his love of electronic music by writing and producing other alternative artists like Circe, ARXX, Aiko and XCerts, racking up millions of streams in the process.

Having worked together on Laura–Mary’s forthcoming solo mini album “Town Called Nothing” and restless from the lack of touring, the duo started jamming out in rehearsal rooms, which led to the light-speed writing, recording and release of the impossibly-titled “Ø” EP in the summer of 2021. Which concludes what the band call an “off year”.

And that brings us back to “Ghosts on Tape”. It appears that like David Lynch’s The Lost Highway, nothing is linear in the world of Blood Red Shoes. Written and recorded before their most recent EP, “Ghosts on Tape” is a huge jump into new terrain for the band. Musically and emotionally their most mature work, it is a complex, imaginative, and very gothic development on their sound. Musically, it leaves almost no trace of their former selves.

“We’ve always been outsiders right from the very beginning” says Steven. “This album is really about us asserting ourselves as our own little island”, he adds. “We have made an entire career out of being told what we are “not”, of being rejected, of not fitting in, and this album is us deliberately pushing into all of our strangeness, emphasising all of the things that make us different”. Obsessed by true crime and murder podcasts, many songs on the record are told in character and explore the dark psyche of those at the pinnacle of outsiderdom: serial killers. “Ghosts on Tape” paints a picture of a dark and unsettling world. It is the sound of a unified and confident duo who know exactly who they are, even if the wider world doesn’t really get it. The sound of two people who have spent their entire adult lives making music together and who, more than ever, are finding new pathways for their creativity.

“Ultimately this album is an invitation”, explains Steven. “It’s us saying, this is our world, these are our darkest thoughts and feelings – our ghosts – caught on tape. You are welcome to join us. Come and embrace the strange”.

The album from BLOOD RED SHOES.

released January 14th, 2022

Written and performed by Laura-Mary Carter and Steven Ansell

Chester indie-pop trio Peaness release their long-awaited debut album “World Full Of Worry” through the band’s own label, Totally Snick Records. The album is a total joyous nugget of wholesome and charming indie pop with songs that stick in your head on first listen. For those that miss Allo Darlin, Heavenly and Girls At Our Best and need a new band to obsess about. Bring on summer and roll on the good times.

Whenever I hear a Peaness song I always think it’s really good and must be their best song… until I hear another and find it’s just as good if not better. Great band!

New single “How I’m Feeling” taken from their debut album “World Full Of Worry” out May 6th. Directed, filmed and edited by Marieke Macklon.

Damian O’Neill is the founding member and guitarist of Northern Irish punk-pop legends The Undertones. He’s also an accomplished multi-instrumentalist. composer and co-founder of the Dimple Discs label.

The long-awaited third solo album from multi-instrumentalist Damian O’Neill (The Undertones, That Petrol Emotion, The Everlasting Yeah) is an exquisitely inventive collection of largely instrumental tracks, mixed by veteran producer Paul Tipler (Stereolab, Placebo, Julian Cope, House Of Love). The title “an crann” is Irish for “The Tree”, a symbol of growth and inspiration.

As Damian himself explains…”If someone listened to this record without knowing anything about me, they’d probably never guess that I started life in a punk band. I unashamedly wanted to present instrumental pieces that are emotional, evocative and personal and offer to the listener textures and layers of music that can be melodic, childlike and even melancholic at times. There’s obviously Irish folk traditional influences as well as French, Japanese, American and British. I’m playing virtually all the instruments myself, with added percussion on a couple of songs. It was recorded mainly at home over the last couple of years in the loft of our house on a laptop with an array of instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, bass, organ, vibraphone, toy marimba and glockenspiel, melodica, mouth organ, squeezebox, kalimba, bells and various percussion and human voices.”

released November 25th, 2022

Following the huge success of their top 3 debut album in 2020, one of the UK’s finest bands, Sea Girls, release their enthralling, highly-anticipated new album “Homesick” on Polydor.

A band well and truly into their stride, “Homesick” sees Sea Girls, Henry Camamile, Rory Young, Andrew Dawson and Oli Khan, deliver thirteen measures of guitar driven pop brilliance including 2 bonus Deluxe tracks. A deeply personal record, lead singer Henry Camamile returned to his childhood home in Lincolnshire at the wake of the pandemic, finding himself having to address and reflect on events from his past, both good and bad. A cathartic process, Henry leaves nothing to the imagination with his astute storytelling and candid lyrics. Delving into some of his darkest moments, the uplifting album comes as a sense of relief, a gratefulness for survival. Lyrically raw and packed to the brim with hooks, the band step into new realms with an added sense of maturity and a bigger ambitious sounding record.

Teaming long-term producer Larry Hibbitt with Grammy Award winning Producers Jacknife Lee, Jonny Coffer and Cass Lowe to co-produce the record, Henry reflects on the process: “Imagine us locked down in the studio in rainy Brixton working with the producers remotely on the album in California’s Topanga Canyon. That clashing of worlds is the sound of this record, the DNA. Making an album this way, remotely and 5000 miles apart, was a crazy idea and shouldn’t have worked, but it did”

Sea Girls, one of the most exciting guitar bands to have emerged in recent times,are the torchbearers for the next wave. Delivering sing-along anthems for the masses, the band’s journey is well and truly on its way.

released October 13th, 2022

“The Lost Duets” are the Delines on a desert vacation: mariachi influenced horns, pedal steel, and accordion are the back drop for the first ever Delines duets between lead singer, Amy Boone, and songwriter and guitarist Willy Vlautin. Welcome to the world of romance Delines style.

“We both love singing duets,” says guitarist and songwriter, Willy Vlautin. “I’ve written a few but so far they haven’t fit on any of our records. The wrong place at the wrong time sorta thing. The Golden State leans on our cowpunk roots but I brought it to the band when we had already drifted away from that sound. My Blood Bleeds The Darkest Blue has a real Lee Hazelwood/Morricone orchestrated desert feel to it but at the time we were working on The Sea Drift, songs set along the Gulf Coast, so that one didn’t fit either. But once we had The Sea Drift done we recorded the duets as a present to ourselves. Both are songs we really love but songs left orphaned along the way and we thought we better give them a proper home.”

The Delines are:

Amy Boone-vocals
Cory Gray-keyboards, trumpet
Sean Oldham-percussion
Freddy Trujillo-bass
Willy Vlautin-vocals, guitar

Tucker Jackson: pedal steel
Jenny Conlee-Drizos: accordion

releases October 6th, 2022

John Mellencamp showed a propensity for deftly writing about hopes, dreams, and values of average working folk during “Pink Houses” in 1983. Two years later, he expanded upon that theme with “Rain on the Scarecrow” and “Small Town” from the excellent “Scarecrow”. One of the singer/guitarist’s most successful albums, it spun off five top 30 pop singles and fared even better at Album Oriented Rock radio. Drummer Kenny Aronoff really proves his mettle here. Special guests include singer Rickie Lee Jones and slide guitarist Ry Cooder. 

What’s inside: The 2-CD+LP+Blu-ray+7” vinyl in the Super Deluxe edition box set comes with a lift off lid. It includes the remixed and remastered original album which sounds stronger than ever, a Blu-ray with Dolby Atmos and hi-resolution stereo mixes, a half-speed mastered LP and 7” single of “Small Town.”

Among the rare and previously unreleased demos, rough mixes, and other songs: “Carolina Shag” and “Smart Guys” would’ve made worthy additions to the original release, “Small Town” (acoustic) is riveting, and fun covers of tunes popularized by the Drifters and James Brown (“Under the Boardwalk,” “Cold Sweat”) find Mellencamp sharing vocal duties with his touring band. Additionally, there is a poster, art cards, a booklet with an essay by Rolling Stone’s Anthony DeCurtis and a new Mellencamp interview. 

Originally released in 2012, “A Postcard from California” marked the solo debut album from Al Jardine, co-founder of the Beach Boys.

After previously being released digitally, the album has been made available in an expanded and remastered edition on CD today, December. 9th. It features two bonus tracks: “Waves of Love,” highlighted by one of the last-recorded vocal tracks from Carl Wilson, and “Sloop John B (A Pirate’s Tale),” which Jardine first released to accompany his acclaimed children’s book of the same name.

“I can’t believe it’s been twelve years since “Postcard” came out and I thank everyone involved in the production and creation of this album to help me get my songs out there,” said Al Jardine in a statement. “Brian’s advice to aspiring young songwriters has always been ‘finish your songs’ so I took it to heart and I hope everyone who has listened to “A Postcard from California” feels my excitement and enthusiasm for this great land and sea of ours and our need to protect it forever. Thank you for all your support over the years, it is greatly appreciated and I will continue to dedicate Postcard to all the pets we love and who love us back!”

As you might imagine, Jardine was joined in the studio by a number of his musical colleagues for this effort:

“A Postcard from California” was largely penned by Jardine who enlisted a slew of his famous friends to help him bring this album to life, including Alec Baldwin, David Crosby, Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley of America, Flea, Glen Campbell, John Stamos, Neil Young, Richie Cannata, Stephen Stills, and Steve Miller. The album also served as a reunion of sorts for The Beach Boys as it brought Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston, along with a lead vocal by Carl Wilson, together on the song “Don’t Fight The Sea” several years before the band would reunite for an album and tour in celebration of their 50th anniversary in 2012. Jardine’s sons, Adam and Matt Jardine, also sing on the album, which was co-produced by musicians Stevie Heger and Scott Slaughter.