The Fat Angel Sings

Dream Wife have returned with their “unapologetic” new single ‘Leech’. ‘Leech’ is the first piece of new music Dream Wife have shared since the release of 2020’s second album ‘So When You Gonna…’. vocalist Rakel Mjöll said it is “definitely kickstarting a new era” for the trio.

“It was really important that ‘Leech’ was the first song we shared because it’s such a heavy statement,” she explained. “The lyrics are incredibly truthful and personal. It’s a collective shared experience between the three of us, as we look backward as well as forwards.”

A press release explains how Dream Wife “wanted to write something that feels like letting an animal out of a cage” with ‘Leech’. “It’s an anthem for empathy,” the statement from the band continued. “For solidarity. Musically tense and withheld, erupting to angry, cathartic crescendos.” They added that the “push and pull” of the track “calls out the double standards of power”, noting that “nobody really wins in a patriarchal society – we all lose”.

“When we write, it’s very intuitive,” guitarist Alice Go said. “The anger that the lyrics encapsulate, we all felt that, and we channelled those feelings into the song. The contrast and tension in the song come from us simmering on things, then letting it out.”

Mjöll added: “The lyrics were all written in one go. It’s one of those songs where it’s been sitting inside of you for a while and everything then just comes pouring out. There’s a lot of anger in that song, but it also champions the idea of being empathetic towards each other and yourself.

“It’s about allowing yourself to feel anger, feel solidarity and feel giddiness. The song goes through such a range of emotions – it was never going to be bubblegum pop. It’s an honest and raw rock banger.”

‘Leech’ poured out during the first wave of post-pandemic festivals Dream Wife played last year, with the band inspired by “the excitement of the scene starting up again and being around the beautiful community atmosphere that is a music festival”.

“As a live band, there was a real euphoria that came from coming back to festivals again,” Go said. “It reminded us that this is what we do, and we were suddenly able to reconnect with people after such a long time away. It gave us context again. We’d been missing that for so long.”

With their “swaggering” second album – released at the start of the pandemic, Go said it “definitely felt important to re-establish” the band and to “come back with an unapologetic heavy-hitter”. “We’re going back to what this band is about, which is those primal elements,” the guitarist – who also produced the track – explained. “This track is about doing the live show proud but elevating it as well.

“There’s a confidence to how we’re manifesting our music now. It’s something that had to come from within rather than externally. It took being away from the live scene for us to realise that that’s what it’s all about for us. It’s a moment of return on a lot of levels for us, but it really does feel like a new era.”

“The song is about community,” Mjöll continued. “It’s about taking care of that community and looking inwards.”

“Fuck those who call themselves a friend and don’t lift a finger,” she sings towards the end of the song. “If we’re not upholding our community, if we’re not showing up for community, then who are we?” the singer said of that line. “We’re not here to point fingers either. It’s shared healing. It’s empathy.”

‘Leech’ takes influence from PJ Harvey’s 1993 album ‘Rid Of Me’ as well as the work of punk poet Patti Smith. “The lyrics had been written for ‘Leech’, but we didn’t know how to really emphasise their power,” Mjöll said. Then it turned out all three of us were separately listening to ‘Rid Of Me’ when the track was being formulated. That whole album is very raw. PJ Harvey’s music never takes over the words, but the words never take over the music either. It always has this beautiful balance, and that’s what we wanted for ‘Leech’.”

According to the band, ‘Leech’ feels “different” to other Dream Wife songs, and it certainly doesn’t pull its punches with lyrics like, “Do you use and abuse your power to the young women that listen to what you say?”. Still, the band have no nerves about sharing it. “I think it’s so exciting. It’s true, it’s raw, and it’s rock,” explained Mjöll. “I’ve had it with being polite.”

She continued: “You have to be excited about what you do and also a little bit timid. That’s when you know it’s a good song. I remember I was definitely timid when we released ‘Somebody’ just because of the lyrical content, but that song has given us so much in return.” ‘Leech’ is something of a spiritual follow-up to ‘Somebody’, as the band take their own personal experiences to create a “call for solidarity”.

The band can’t say anything yet about a possible third album, but they’re “really excited” about what happens next. “Vague, ambiguous, exciting things to come,” promised Go.

Earlier this year, Dream Wife supported The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park, which the guitarist described as being “quite surreal”. “I’m still in awe,” added Mjöll. “They played for two-and-a-half hours and were doing high-kicks for most of that. I was amazed by the energy. It was almost superhuman – we need to step up our game!”

When Dream Wife first came onto the scene, there was a real lack of female, queer and non-binary voices in rock and the industry surrounding it at the time. When their second album ‘So When You Gonna…’ charted, it was the only album in the UK Top 20 produced solely by a female-identifying person, producer Marta Salogni.

Now, acts like Witch Fever, Cassyette, Crawlers and Nova Twins are all breaking through. “There’s more of a platform for artists who aren’t necessarily part of a major label to have a voice and say what they want to say without that being filtered,” Mjöll said. “Nova Twins started around the same time as us, but they’re finally getting the attention they deserve. Their place on the Mercury shortlist was such a cool, impactful thing.”

“It is amazing to see other artists openly talking about what it is to be a woman or a non-binary person in music,” Go added. “It’s amazing that that conversation can be elevated and continued.”

“Community is everything,” continued Mjöll. “If you’re doing this alone, how incredibly boring would that be?”

Dream Wife’s ‘Leech’ is out now via Lucky Number. 

“The first three are innocent in a way, because we didn’t have an audience when we were making them,” Oberst says. “But from “Lifted” on, I was definitely aware of an audience. “Lifted” was well-received right away, and then everything happened with “Wide Awake” and “Digital Ash.” Those two albums came out simultaneously. And their lead singles – “Take It Easy (Love Nothing),” from the austere, remote “Digital Ash”, and “Lua,” from the warm, folky “Wide Awake” – debuted in the top two slots on the Billboard Hot 100. “First Day of My Life,” also from “Wide Awake”, would later be voted the Number One love song of all time by NPR Music’s reader’s poll.

Bright Eyes had officially broken through. It was a heady, exciting time, but also fraughtand tense, both because of the band’s careening new fame, and because of the state of the world. When Bright Eyes made their Tonight Show debut in 2006, they chose to perform none of their shiny new hits, instead delivering a searing, harrowing rendition of their caustic anti-Bush anthem, “When The President Talks To God.”

These days, Oberst is still amusing himself by messing with the extremes Bright Eyes baked into this era’s releases, extremes that reflected the polar, with-us-or-against-us, fractious feel of the times. The reworked “Digital Ash” tracks, originally so clean and elegant, are, on the companion EP, full of “harmonica and mandolins – folky vibes,” Oberst says. While the analogue sweetness of the “Wide Awake” songs have been put through a detached nihilism filter. 

I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005) – A Companion EP (2022)

released November 11th, 2022

When Dominic Angelella sings, “Know that it never was my goal to play a supporting role,” he means it. The Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter’s claims to fame include stints in Hop Along, touring with Lucy Dacus and MewithoutYou, and session work on a few notable hip-hop records. But before all that, he maxed out a credit card to chase his own dreams of rock stardom in several bands he led. Gear, studio time, and traveling all add up.

Those ambitions didn’t quite pan out to the level he might’ve hoped when he was younger. It took time, but Angelella, 36, is cool with that. He’s a little older now, and he realized his definition of success has evolved. So, in early 2020, he grabbed a guitar and penned another song, “Supporting Role,” about accepting his lot. “There’s a pressure in our society to monetize everything,” he tells MTV News. “Sometimes, you gotta eat, but looking back on that era with a new perspective is really what that song’s about.”

A new perspective like, “I’m living a life and it’s special,” as he says, can be healthy for any musician who’s grinded away for years as Angelella has. His latest album, “Silver Dreams Don’t Move Me”, is out Friday (November 11), full of character studies, rural travelogues, and nostalgic meditations on precisely that kind of special life. He took the LP’s title from a lyric by Daryl Hall, of Hall & Oates fame, from a tune in the artist’s more obscure, experimental back catalogue, where two halves of the brain speak to each other.

Released November 11th, 2022

The Orielles have shared the video for ‘Darkened Corners’, the latest track to be taken from their recently released album “Tableau” which was released last month.

A tempo shifting, autumnal slice of super mellow motorik pop music, the band said about ‘Darkened Corners’:

“Darkened Corners” is one of the collective favourites of the album for us. Its musical narrative best describes emotionally what creating this record felt like for us. We wanted to create this kind of Krauty, super rigid and formulaic first part where everything happens in these repeated cycles. Then as the song starts to turn darker we created this spiralling passage where you should feel like you don’t really have a sense of time of where home is moving into this intense manic phase as Sid puts it the drums try to break free from the old ways into this blissful new world.

With “Tableau”, The Orielles are now three albums into their career, three albums that sound like they were made by three completely different bands. On their newest offering the gang from Halifax ditch the solar-powered cosmic funk of “Disco Volador”, for shadowy experimental pop, where their influences melt, mutate and merge until they’re completely unrecognisable, like visions from a dream

A lot of this tune had to be thought about thoroughly, we spent hours in Sid’s living room counting beats and tried to go really heavy with motiffing and ostinato. The lyrical inspiration comes from content comes from a Lee Friedlander exhibition Ez went to whilst in Berlin.”

The track is accompanied by a stunning video co-directed by the band with regular collaborator Neeam Khan Vela.

Bass, Vocals, Farfisa, Synths, Percussion, and Lyrics by Esme Hand-Halford Drums, Vocals, and Percussion by Sid Hand-Halford Guitar, Vocals, Percussion, and Wurlitzer by Henry Wade String Arrangement by Isabella Baker

The Orielles, released on Heavenly Recordings.

Uncut magazine also goes deep into a trove of rare and unreleased Hunky Dory material
in the company of David Bowie’s friends, bandmates, and collaborators. All copies
of the issue also come with two exclusive Hunky Dory art prints.

First new Country Westerns’ song since their 2020 Self titled debut, which Pitchfork included in their Top 35 Rock Albums of 2020 list.
Country Westerns are a three-piece band with a two-man engine: Joseph Plunket is an Atlanta hardcore kid turned singer-songwriter whose first solo gig was opening for Cat Power. He went on to lead Brooklyn alt-country legends The Weight during the height of NYCs mid-00’s garage rock bonanza and played bass for King Tuff and Gentleman Jesse. Brian Kotzur is a swaggery metronome who drummed for Silver Jews and was a close collaborator of David Berman.

released November 10th, 2022

Fleet Foxes returned with a new single titled “A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen” featuring Brazilian musician Tim Barnardes. The blossoming folk tune was written for for the documentary “Wildcat” that’s out December 21st. The film, directed by Melissa Lesh and Trevor Beck Frost, details the story of young veteran Harry Turner whose life is changed after venturing into the Amazon. He meets Samantha Zwicker who runs a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center and begins to care for an orphaned baby ocelot.

Fleet Foxes songwriter and vocalist Robin Pecknold detailed his motivation for the track: “I was inspired by how the film employed unconventional means to arrive at something universally moving, and was struck by all the collisions inherent in the film’s conceit—between species, between hemispheres, between individuals, between the psychological and the natural. In hotel rooms and in borrowed studios, on time stolen from a world tour, I put this song together. It was an honor to be asked to make a song that could serve as an end-cap to this unique and affecting story and to collaborate with Tim again.”

“A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen” Performed by Fleet Foxes featuring Tim Bernardes Written by Robin Pecknold

Last week, Destroyer (the project of Dan Bejar) shared a new song, “Somnambulist Blues,” which features Sandro Perri and is out now via Mexican Summer’s Looking Glass series. Bejar also shared a Spotify playlist of songs which have inspired the new single.

In a press release, Bejar states: “I come back to Sandro’s music as something to sing to at the crossroads moments of my life in music. There is something about the landscape Sandro lays out—it’s a world in which things become imminently singable. A lotta room to roam, and all of it good.”

Looking Glass focuses on the human condition as reflected through chance and destined encounters. Mirroring the tenets of Mexican Summer’s ten plus years of supporting adventurous music, Looking Glass looks inward to artists close to the label’s core, and outward to familiar names not far from the family tree, to encourage discovery, diversity, and collaboration.

Destroyer’s latest album, “Labyrinthitis”, came out in March via Merge Records.

For nearly 60 years, John Cale has been reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. “Mercy”, Cale’s first full album in a decade, moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronic torment toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future with the help of some of music’s most curious young minds. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; “Mercy” is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind. 

The Former Velvet Underground member John Cale announced the release of his first new album in a decade, “Mercy”, which will be out on January 20th, 2023 via Double Six/Domino Recordings. He shared a video for a new album single, the Weyes Blood collaboration “Story Of Blood” .

In a press release, Cale states: “I’d been listening to Weyes Blood’s latest record and remembered Natalie’s puritanical vocals. I thought if I could get her to come and sing with me on the ‘Swing your soul’ section, and a few other harmonies, it would be beautiful. What I got from her was something else! Once I understood the versatility in her voice, it was as if I’d written the song with her in mind all along. Her range and fearless approach to tonality was an unexpected surprise. There’s even a little passage in there where she’s a dead-ringer for Nico.”

“Mercy” also features musical contributions from Animal Collective, Sylvan Esso, Laurel Halo, Tei Shi, and Actress. Cale previously shared the album track “Night Crawling.” 

Amber Arcades, the project of Dutch musician Annelotte de Graaf, announced the release of a new album, “Barefoot on Diamond Road”, which will be out on February 10th, 2023 via Fire. She shared a new album single, “Just Like Me.”. 

In a press release, de Graaf elaborates on the new single: “I wrote this song when I had just moved to Amsterdam, right before the lockdown. It was a sequence of extremes; we lived dead center, at first we couldn’t go out of the house without being in a huge crowd of people, then overnight it felt like an apocalyptic ghost town. The song is about the tension between togetherness and being alone that comes with living in an urban environment. The need for both but then often not being quite satisfied with either.”

Regarding the album, she adds: “This record really reveals parts of me and my relationship with being a musician and making music. It’s like a reckoning, more in the moment, realizing how important it is to do things for the right reasons and how that can change your process into one that embraces what exists, including yourself.

“I worked with Ben Greenberg who also produced my first record. I kept track of him over the last couple of years. He’s been working on a lot of film music, and these songs felt quite filmic. I wanted that big atmosphere, that’s why I approached him. I had this idea of a harp, a cello, classical instruments. To be honest, I was just kind of bored with guitar music.”

De Graaf released her previous album, “European Heartbreak”, in 2018 via Heavenly. The new Amber Arcades “Barefoot on Diamond Road” released through Fire Records on: 2023-02-10