The Fat Angel Sings

Philadelphia power-pop group 2nd Grade release their new album “Easy Listening” this Friday and here’s one last nugget before they share the whole thing. “Teenage Overpopulation” is a jangly earworm that namechecks everyone from Justin Bieber to Tommy Stinson. “Easy Listening” is our third release with 2nd Grade, and they just keep getting better. This album covers everything from teenagers, Seinfeld, telecasters, Liv Ullman, you name it.

Power pop is alive in the year 2022 and we hope it sticks around, we’re having fun.

“2nd Grade Is The Best Part Of The 2022 Power-Pop Renaissance”
—Uproxx

“You’ll come for the soaring choruses, perfect middle-eighths that glide into tight solos, and raging hormones, and then stay for the nods to Bergman and Seinfeld.”
—Brooklyn Vegan

“…the supergroup of some of Philly’s finest indie-rock stylists have crafted an adventure of an album, traversing the highs of rock-stardom, the lows of celebrity loneliness and a pervasive sense of ennui that can only be cut by righteous riffs.”
—Paste Magazine

releases September 30th, 2022

The Band:

Catherine Dwyer— guitar, vocals
Peter Gill— vocals
Francis Lyons— drums
Jon Samuels— guitar
David Settle— bass, vocals

Winter’s glittery, holographic image takes on a darker shade in the grooves of their 4th album, “What Kind of Blue Are You?” The record sees Samira Winter return to the kind of hooky shoegaze of her early recordings. A darker, more world-weary perspective informs the honest and emotionally unguarded lyrics. Sonically, What Kind of Blue... is Winter’s greatest achievement yet. Texturally,, bellowing fuzz and wirey guitars evoke a new sonic territory. Tracks like “Atonement” (ft. Hatchie), “Good” (ft. Sasami) and “Fool” claw, scrape and wriggle their way into your ear.

Out in October, the new album from Brazil-born, LA-based songwriter Samira Winter features collaborations with SASAMI , Joo Joo Ashworth (Froth), and members of Hatchie, who help “Atonement” shimmer with shoegazy riifs and a grooving bassline.

Produced by Joo Joo Ashworth (Sasami, Automatic, Dummy).

“Lose You” by Winter out via Bar/None Records

Neil Young has announced a new album with his band Crazy Horse, titled “World Record”, that will be out November 18th via Reprise Records. They made it with Rick Rubin at his Malibu recording studio Shangri-La, and it’s “a cohesive vision that spreads positive energy while not flinching from our present situation.” Young noted on his website, “Real magic lasts and we think we have it.”

On a recent episode of Jack White’s Broken Record podcast, Neil said the album features “unheard-of combinations of instruments.” Maybe just for Crazy Horse, though. Opening track “Love Earth” is a gently rollicking song featuring the unheard-of combination of piano, acoustic guitar and drums as Neil encourages us to embrace nature, envisioning a world where “The sky was blue and the air so clean / The water crystal clear / We lived by the sun and had it all / We were livin’ the dream.”

“World Record” is an almost double album, pressed on three sides of a double album, with an etching on Side 4. 

The Super Deluxe Edition features newly remastered versions of ‘Carl and the Passions – “So Tough”‘ and ‘Holland,’ plus ‘Holland”s ‘Mount Vernon and Fairway (A Fairytale)’ EP (complete with its original instructions to “please listen in the dark”) and boasts an unreleased live concert recorded at NYC’s famed Carnegie Hall on Thanksgiving 1972, the first-ever release of a complete Beach Boys concert from this era with the original setlist. Also including the entire previously-unreleased Thanksgiving 1972 Carnegie Hall concerts, a variety of bonus material, and for the first time ever, a reproduction of Brian Wilson’s EP ‘Mount Vernon and Fairway (A Fairytale)’ on 7-inch, the format it was originally released on as a companion to ‘Holland.’

Not known for their rhythm-and-blues vibes or their rocking, soulful heft, The Beach Boys left some of the surf behind to welcome South African singers and musicians Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar to the band just in time for Carl Wilson to take the lead of the Boys as Brian Wilson was slipping onto the shores of depression and into more ruinous forms of disassociation. With more of a slow, 1970s FM anthemic rock feel (“Sail on Sailor”) than anything teen-focused, the ruminative tracks from “Carl & the Passions” and “Holland” are great reminders of what gorgeous, familial harmonies can sound like when put through middle age’s tests. 

The vinyl box is available to pre-order on its own or as a limited edition set with lithographs. A variety of abbreviated versions are also available to pre-order, including a 2LP + 7″ EP set, available with or without a limited edition reproduction of the original ‘Holland’ promotional book telling the story of the making of the album; a 2CD deluxe edition; and digitally.

‘Sail On Sailor – 1972’ highlights ‘Carl and the Passions – “So Tough”‘ and ‘Holland’ with a bounty of unreleased outtakes, live recordings, demos, alternate versions and mixes, instrumentals, and a cappella tracks.

‘Sail On Sailor – 1972’ 5LP + 7” EP Super Deluxe Edition box set arriving November 18th.

New music comes today from Titus Andronicus! check out a lyric video for “Baby Crazy” just ahead of the release of their seventh studio album, “The Will to Live” Titus frontman Patrick Stickles describes “Baby Crazy” as “a user’s guide for the album,” and hopes that listeners might gain

“a richer listening experience… or they can just tap their foot to it, whatever works.”

With “The Will To Live”, Titus Andronicus invite listeners on a journey from fear to faith, from anger to acceptance, from grief to gratitude, all chasing the mythical ideal of Ultimate Rock. Drawing on maximalist classic rock epics from Who’s Next to Hysteria, the band have crafted their richest, densest, and hardest-hitting album to date, matching the sprawl and scope of their most celebrated work while also streamlining their ambitious attack to greater effect than ever before.

“The Will to Live” was produced by Titus Andronicus singer-songwriter Patrick Stickles and award-winning Canadian producer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Leonard Cohen, The Whole Nine Yards) at the latter’s hotel2tango recording studio in Montreal. “It may strike some as ironic we had to go to Canada to record our equivalent to Born in the USA,” says Stickles, “but the pursuit of Ultimate Rock knows no borders.”

The album comes packaged with gorgeous triple gatefold artwork

The forthcoming seventh studio album by Titus Andronicus, ‘The Will to Live,’ available September 30th from Merge Records.

Bonny Light Horseman’s anticipated sophomore album finds them focusing more on original material than their debut LP — which was largely made up of old folk songs — was, and the new single “Someone To Weep For Me” has that same timeless old soul as the standards.

Bonny Light Horseman’s debut was a folk masterclass, re-imagining centuries-old standards with effortless grace and wonder. Those Grammy-nominated, list-topping songs not only suggested renewed possibilities for aging songbooks but also marked the arrival of a trio fully capable of reorienting the wider folk landscape. “Rolling Golden Holy” marks their return with preternatural beauty, charm, and imagination. This is a band working at the edge of modern folk. The band thrives in rendering fresh wisdom and insight from old models, whether scraps of ancient songs or the spark of entwined voices. Theirs is a space created for sharing, learning, risking, singing, and playing as one.

The new album is the band’s testament to interdependence, partnership, and trust at a moment when we crave such connections so much. Anaïs Mitchell, Josh Kaufman and Eric D. Johnson as a trio fully appreciate what they have found in one another through Bonny Light Horseman; on “Rolling Golden Holy”, we get to live inside that magic, too.

The forthcoming album Rolling Golden Holy, out 7th October 2022 with 37d03d Records.

Bruce Springsteen has announced details for his upcoming soul-covers album, “Only the Strong Survive”, and released the first single, an upbeat, joyous take on Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do).”

The Ron Aniello-produced album will be released on November 11th. There will be two duets with Sam Moore (one of Springsteen’s biggest influences, as a member of Sam & Dave), on it.

According to a press release, the album features “contributions from The E Street Horns, full string arrangements by Rob Mathes, and backing vocals by Soozie Tyrell, Lisa Lowell, Michelle Moore, Curtis King Jr., Dennis Collins and Fonzi Thornton.”

Springsteen says in the press release, “I wanted to make an album where I just sang. And what better music to work with than the great American songbook of the Sixties and Seventies? I’ve taken my inspiration from Levi Stubbs, David Ruffin, Jimmy Ruffin, the Iceman Jerry Butler, Diana Ross, Dobie Gray, and Scott Walker, among many others. I’ve tried to do justice to them all — and to the fabulous writers of this glorious music. My goal is for the modern audience to experience its beauty and joy, just as I have since I first heard it. I hope you love listening to it as much as I loved making it.”

The new album “Only The Strong Survive” is coming November 11th celebrates 15 soul music gems from the legendary catalogues of Motown, Gamble and Huff, Stax and many more. This 21st studio album from Bruce Springsteen will be available on CD, 2LP and all digital services.

This is the album’s track listings, along with the song’s original artists:

“Only the Strong Survive,” Jerry Butler
“Soul Days (featuring Sam Moore),” Dobie Gray
“Nightshift,” The Commodores
“Do I Love You (Indeed I Do,)” Frank Wilson
“The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” The Walker Brothers
“Turn Back the Hands of Time,” Tyrone Davis
“When She Was My Girl,” The Four Tops
“Hey, Western Union Man,” Jerry Butler
“I Wish It Would Rain,” The Temptations
“Don’t Play That Song,” Aretha Franklin
“Any Other Way,” Jackie Shane
“I Forgot to Be Your Lover (featuring Sam Moore),” William Bell
“7 Rooms of Gloom,” The Four Tops
“What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” Jimmy Ruffin
“Someday We’ll Be Together,” Diana Ross & The Supremes

The album cover says “Vol. 1,” so presumably Springsteen plans to release at least one more album in this vein.