The Fat Angel Sings

“Life can sure be fun/Imagine if I knew this when I was young,” indie rock’s most endearingly  down-to-earth stoner guitar mystic offers near the opening of “Watch My Moves”. Vile remains our era’s great inheritor of the Neil Young/Meat Puppets/Dinosaur Jr. tradition of bending chords, spooling out hypnotic solos, and chilling with your demons until they start feeling like drinking buddies. Kurt noodles, he choogles, he burns and he blazes. He sings about jamming out at home in his underwear, and about listening to “Heart of Gold” while he waits to get on a plane, and about how playing his guitar makes him happy when he starts feeling bad. “Probably gonna be another long song,” he jokes on “Fo Sho.” In a world of immediate-gratification trash, this 73-minute anti-opus is one hell of an argument for taking the long way round to wherever the hell you may or may not eventually end up.

Just listened to the “Square Shells” EP after listening to this one, and Kurt has always been such a journeyman musician in tune with his craft and his influences… His attitude is one of deep appreciation. For music. For community. For family. For being. His music exists somewhere in-between the gritty mortality of the world, and a comfortable dream world re-imagined and personalized. Perhaps, this is what gives some of his tunes a nostalgic and hopeful quality. Kurt’s world is coming alive more and more with each new album, transforming from the lonely, wandering savant of Philadelphia to the beloved family man with collabs and projects under his belt (TWOD); it’s a playful and cozy existence that’s both inclusive and contagious. I really see him honing in onto his own self-assured wisdom with these new singles and videos, similar to the trajectory of “Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze“. Will this album be another shelter (mansion) from the world’s woes?.

Check out the new single “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)” by Kurt Vile off his new album (watch my moves).

Horsegirl broke out of the buzzing Chicago indie-rock scene this year with their own fresh sound. If you’re a fiend for guitars, Horsegirl deliver the clang you’ve been craving — their bang-up debut, “Versions of Modern Performance”, is a blast of top-notch six-string fuzz that brings a sly new twist to the grooves of Pavement, the Breeders, or the Pastels. These three Gen Z women might be too young to get into bars but they’ve got a wide-open future.

The band runs through some of the meatier cuts from their new album (as well as the fan fave “Ballroom Dance Scene”). Nora Cheng opens with her Fender Jaguar, tuned to open E, and then switches to her reliable Ibanez Roadstar II, while Penelope Lowenstein holds down the harmonic interplay and lower frequencies on her Squier Bass VI.

Horsegirl performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded July 16th, 2022.

Songs: World of Pots and Pans Option 8 Ballroom Dance Scene Anti-glory

Nora Cheng – Guitar / Vocals Penelope Lowenstein – Guitar / Vocals Genevieve Reece – Drums

One of the year’s great sleepers: Pictoria Vark, a.k.a. Victoria Park, is already a master of heart-tugging indie-rock vignettes on her excellent breakthrough album, “The Parts That I Dread”. She’s got a clever touch for self-lacerating wit in ballads like “Wyoming,” asking, “Can’t I blame you for everything? Market crashes, mood swings?” “I Can’t Bike” is a long-overdue pedestrian anthem that takes a surprise detour in the final minute for a gloriously out-of-nowhere noise-guitar solo, evoking kindred spirits like Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, and Hop Along. But she excels at quiet triumphs like “Friend Song,” where she looks up at the Iowa stars and dreams of someone left behind in Brooklyn. 

An incredible release from one of the most prolific and talented musicians and songwriters of our time! The sonic range and narrative of this album brings ‘The Parts I Dread‘ on repeat on my listening rotations and leaves openness to the possibilities on what is next for this artist! 

Victoria Park – Bass and Vocals
Gavin Caine – Drums, Percussion, Keys, and Guitar
Jason Ross – Guitar
Lauren Black – Vocals and vocal arrangement on 7
Michael Eliran – Guitar on 1

All music and lyrics by Victoria Park

released April 8th, 2022

Ribbon Stage are a trio from NYC with no small amount of love for the noise pop days of Dolly Mixture and the Shop Assistants. The group does perfectly what only punks playing pop music can do- create chaotic noise in tandem with the sweetest hooks and most sophisticated nihilism. Ribbon Stage makes noise pop so catchy you swear you’ve heard before then can’t get out of your head.

The dream of Olympia, Washington is alive in the form of the wonderful Ribbon Stage. The New York trio harken back to Nineties cuddle-core gods like Tiger Trap and the Shop Assistants. “Hit Me With the Most” is 11 songs in 19 thrilling minutes, quick little shots of blurry noise, pretty, careworn singing, and tumbling drums. Titles like “It’s Apathy,” “Nowhere Fast,”  and “No Alternative” set the emotional tone. But even when their songs sound like they might collapse before the band hits the finish line, Ribbon Stage always power through their angst and boredom to hit the twee-punk sweet spot.

Featuring Mari Softie (Ratas del Vaticano, Tercer Mundo, Exotica, and Pobreza Mental) as well as scene stalwart Jolie M-A (Juicy II, Boys Online) and vocalist Anni Hilator.

released October 21, 2022

In almost direct comparison to Heirloom’s darkness, Los Bitchos are instrumental surf that makes you feel like you’re on a permanent holiday. They’re the kind of band you’d want following you around during an LA car-chase movie.  It’s just so good… positively charismatic. It’s a first date with instant chemistry. It’s a high school party where nothing too stupid happens. It’s the moment on the dance floor when you forget you’re in a crowd. Good vibes become compulsory when you put this on.

A uniquely inventive instrumental dance-rock band with a international background and a truly worldly sound, Los Bitchos have an absolute riot on their debut, mixing up everything from Eighties teeth-metal to Colombian cumbia, to surf-rock and psychedelia, to disco and funk.

Their music is playfully exotic but also invitingly lived-in, the sound of finding your voice in the flow of the world, and unlike a lot of instrumental music, they keep the listener’s enjoyment front and center by orchestrating each of their two-to-three-minute ditties for maximum pop impact, so songs like “The Link is About to Die” or “Pista (Fresh Start)” have just as many memorable hooks as thick grooves or hot solos. 

Released February 4th, 2022

On the eminently relatable-to-me “Boat Songs“, Ashville, North Carolina’s MJ Lenderman sings about Jackass, various sports legends (Jordan, Brady, and Marino all get shouts here), and the fucking log ride and the spinning swings at Six Flags Over Texas, all the while managing to make things feel warm, alternately poignant and funny, and deeply affecting. Like our other current guitar heroes Enumclaw, Lenderman has a gift for making easy, seemingly tossed-off jams feel like heart-on-sleeve anthems that you’ve known forever.

MJ Lenderman plays guitar in the great Asheville, North Carolina band Wednesday (see their must-hear covers EP from this year, “Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘Em Up”. On “Boat Songs” he’s a self-described “beat-down rodeo clown” whose neo-miserablist everybro mien brings to mind the Neil Young of Zuma if he was a Southern fisher-dude who had a few too many strong, drunk opinions about college football coaching hires. The mosquito-bitten “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat” sounds like the Band if they recorded for Drag City, while “Tastes Just Like It Costs” is a zen mountain of stanky lo-fi guitar slop.

The best song is “Hangover Game,” which uses Game Five of the 1997 NBA finals as a lens to explore the way our lives can merge with our most cherished myths in ways that are kind of fucked up. 

Following their recent “First Five” EP The Natural Lines have announced the release of their self-titled debut album, “The Natural Lines”, out 24th March via Bella Union Records. To accompany the announcement the band have shared an entertaining video for first single and album opener “Monotony” featuring celebrated American comedian, actress and TV host Nikki Glaser playing a somewhat unconventional therapist. Commenting on the song and video frontman Matt Pond says: “Over the last few years, I’ve tried to focus on my breathing—to try to and be a better singer, to try and be a better person. But it’s hard to sit still and slow down when the world seems so unruly.

“Monotony” is an anthem about the daily tightrope—searching for the right path between passion and apathy. All the while, I’ve been working with Nikki Glaser. Her fearlessness is contagious. Since she never hesitates to tell me what she really thinks, I thought it made perfect sense for Nikki to portray my therapist in the video.” 

Sometimes, a change of view can transform a person’s world. On ‘Don’t Come Down’, the artist formerly known as Matt Pond PA can be found with his “shoulder on the concrete” of a pavement, scoping out the world anew. This granular realignment of perspective serves as an open door to the debut album from The Natural Lines. At once clearly Pond’s work yet a huge leap forward in its measured songcraft, melodic immediacy, collaborative detail and wryly questioning lyrics, the result is a gorgeous album of intimate reflections from a relocated, renamed, revivified talent.

Car troubles inspire ‘No More Tragedies’, the album’s standout second track, where he wryly details his desire to dampen his twinned impulses to take pictures of license plates blocking his parking space or take bricks to said car windshields. Warming melodies and harmonies soothe his rage, a balance maintained elsewhere on the album.

A need for connection underpins the lilting ‘Alex Bell’, where Matt’s lyrics playfully reference the inventor of the telephone over a plaintive cello and bubbling keyboards – evidence of the album’s carefully nurtured arrangements. With nimble sequencing, ‘My Answer’ follows with a question: do artists really need to get messed-up to create? Matt may not have the answer, he admits, but he articulates the question beautifully, channelling the influence of Blue Öyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ into a song of fleet, melodic electric-folk drive.

Featuring 17-year-old MJ Murphy on misty backing vocals, the softly insistent ‘Don’t Come Down’ is an album centrepiece, detailing a need to see things anew. Like The Flaming Lips writing a classicist piano ballad, the twinkling ‘Artificial Moonlight’ finds Matt writing late at night, illuminated by the lights from streetlamps. Finally, ‘Mahwah’ closes the album on a note of arrival. 

Recorded with close collaborators and friends over a period that saw Pond make vital adjustments to his life, its stealth emergence reflects his desire to set a fresh pace for himself and come from somewhere new, somewhere more open.

the self titled debut album by The Natural Lines, released 24th March 2023 via Bella Union:

Oregon singer-songwriter Margo Cilker’s debut album “Pohorylle” is a real gem of a record! Every one of the nine songs on the release sparkles with wit, emotional depth, and a winsome sense of humor. Cilker can be blunt or coy. Even when dealing with serious topics, she understands the cosmic absurdity of living in a dangerous world where the hazards lie inherent in the beauty of nature, and love can leave one (literally) with a broken arm as well as a broken heart.

Consider the opening line to the first track of “Pohoryille”, “That River”. Without explaining who’s telling the story, the protagonist immediately observes, “That river in the winter / It could fuck me up.” This isn’t Joni Mitchell‘s stream one could skate away on as her love affair dissolves. If she’s not careful, this river could do the runaway protagonist serious bodily harm. The song concerns a woman absconding from a relationship. She’s heard that “fortune favors the bold and the far from home”. The character is willing to take risks. The dangers are real. Cilker’s forebodings do not predict a positive or negative result as much as they portray a cliffhanger world where either one may happen.

While it is unclear whether Cilker deliberately alludes to Mitchell’s frozen river, it seems likely as the Oregonian slyly references other classic songs on different tracks, especially “Tehachapi” with clear winks and nods to Little Feat’s “Willin’” and “Flood Plain” whose plaintive acoustic guitar lines suggests Bob Dylan and the Band‘s version of “I Shall Be Released”. On other cuts, such as “Kevin Johnson”, Cilker purposely keeps the details generic as the song consciously evokes traditional Appalachian folk music to skewer its championing of the common person. Although she hails from the Sunset state, Cilker sounds like a Southerner with an affected twang in her voice.

The song’s simple martial melody and non-specific particulars reveal how biases are passed on and its depressing consequences for all, including the title character. He ends up crying like everybody else without ever understanding why.

Seattle’s Sera Cahoone produced the record. She recruited a first-rate Northwestern indie rock/freak folk band to accompany Cilker that includes Jenny Conlee (The Decemberists) on keyboards, Jason Kardong (Son Volt) on pedal steel, Rebecca Young (Jesse Sykes) on bass, Mirabai Peart (Joanna Newsom) on strings, Kelly Pratt (Beirut) on horns, and the album’s engineer John Morgan Askew (Neko Case, Laura Gibson) on various other instruments. Cilker’s sister Sarah also provides vocal harmonies, which adds to the record’s country vibe, especially on such songs as “Chester’s” and Barbed Wire (Belly Crawl)”.

It’s unclear to what the album’s title,“Pohorylle”, refers. The mystery is further enhanced by the cover art of a woman alone at the beach on a cloudy and foggy day. The lone female struggling to find her place in a murky world is a common theme that runs through many of the songs, most specifically on “Brother, Taxman, Preacher”, which highlights the sexism in contemporary society. If the singer were only male, she would have many more options in life. Cilker humorously addresses the topic, but her criticisms are pointed and right on the mark. She croons, “And I wish I was a preacher / I could tell you who to love / I could tell you who to vote for / Who to pity, who to fuck / I wish I was a preacher / I’d know what it means to know everything.”

Cilker may be just a woman, she sings, but she knows enough to understand that limits her role in the larger world. Several other songs offer specific examples of women who have been held back or worse because of their gender.

From the forthcoming LP, “Pohorylle”, on Fluff and Gravy Records (US) and Loose Music (EU)

Jensen McRae offers possibly among the most exciting indie debut’s of the year with “Are You Happy Now?” Her story is effortlessly 2022, a viral Phoebe Bridgers parody spurring widespread interest in her original music. Her songwriting is the same, striking a chord with younger crowds through relatable, straight-shooting lyricism and gorgeous vocals. 

The 24-year-old’s stark folk songs centre on lone guitars, with bluesy grooves and linear narratives delivered in second person. Yet the most striking similarity is the way McRae enunciates, mumbling through verses with a shy aloofness, embellishing odd vowels and images before belting choruses with glaring urgency. 

McRae’s soulful voice stands tall and center throughout the album, acting as the perfect vehicle to deliver her moving songwriting to the forefront. Frequent comparisons to Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell are warranted. There’s a fair share of fine musicality on display, bridging gaps between folk-pop and R&B with McRae’s striking delivery.  

debut EP ‘Who Hurt You?’