The Fat Angel Sings

“I’m just a fire,” Emily Wells sings on her album “Regards to the End”, her ethereal warble floating over a backbeat of drums. “Burn everything in sight.” And so she does, in a new body of work that smolders and scorches, wounding and illuminating in equal turn. The polymathic composer, producer, and video artist explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience—as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn—in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.

Wells, is a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a classical background in violin, often thinks in terms of an ensemble while composing. Along with a roster of contributors including her father, a French horn player and former music minister, she builds the songs on “Regards to the End” from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, string instruments (violin, cello, bass), and wind instruments (clarinet, flute, French horn). The music is numinous in part because the listening experience is a resoundingly bodied one. Life—unsanitary, beautiful, persistent, brief—swells inside of every note.

“Quietly transfixing” composer / producer Emily Wells is known for her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation, “a master of blending the worlds of classical and electronics” (NPR) and “dramatic, meticulous and gothic songs”

released February 25th, 2022

Produced, Written, Arranged, and Recorded by Emily Wells
On this album Emily performs: Vocals, Guitars, Synths, Programing, Drum Programming,
Violin, Viola, Cello, Piano, Bass

Enumclaw, the rising rock four-piece and recent best of new rising act out of Tacoma, Washington, shared one last single ahead of their debut album “Save the Baby” before its release this week. Our fifth preview of the album after “2002,” “Jimmy Neutron,” “Cowboy Bepop” and “Park Lodge,” “10th and J 2” is out now alongside a music video. One of the last tracks on “Save the Baby”, “10th and J 2” is also quietly one of the album’s best, a gleaming, twang-tinged strummer in which Aramis Johnson fights to safeguard his self-belief, even in the face of anxiety, isolation and doubt.

Over Eli Edwards and Ladaniel Gipson’s steady low end, Johnson and Nathan Cornell interweave warm acoustic chords and distant pedal steel, setting these heartland rock sounds against Johnson’s aspirational lyrics: “You should have it quoted / Say it all the time / I will be, I will be / Who I’m destined to be,” he sings, his heart set on running down that dream.

Enumclaw’s new single “10th and J 2” off of their forthcoming debut album “Save the Baby.”

Following on from Hutson’s breakthrough 2020 release “Beginners”, a record that saw him catch the corners of Phoebe Bridgers’ starlight, “Quitters” puts Bridgers back in charge of production, this time splitting duties with Conor Oberst. Taking cues from Elliot Smith and sharing the same downcast and detached musical DNA, they kept the recordings intimate, capturing the warmth and diaristic confessionality of Hutson’s performance.

But it’s Hutson’s lyricism that really lifts “Quitters”. Full of cutting insight, self-deprecation, considered wit and loaded imagery, he can illuminate a scene with the turn of a few words. “I’m peeking through the bandages, to see if I can handle it”, he sings on “Endangered Birds”, while on “Teddy’s Song” he paints a glowing portrait. “Asleep with the radio next to the bed on the floor, ‘cause it sounds like my parents talking through the door.” His lines are evocative, instantly accessible and intuitive. While his use of first-person often has him playing the punchline, his delivery is so inclusive you always feel like you’re in on the joke. 

released April 1, 2022

Produced by Phoebe Bridgers & Conor Oberst

With a melancholic breakup ballad turning into a global success, Inverness native Katie Gregson-MacLeod, was little known outside the Scotland folk and indie scene. On 4th August, Gregson-MacLeod posted a one-minute clip of herself singing a stripped back piano ballad called “complex,” a song she’d written in an evening about the strange dysmorphia that comes with wholeheartedly loving someone who will never quite love you back the same way. The next day, the snippet had received the full TikTok treatment, generating thousands of views by the hour. By the weekend, she remembers, “it was very clear everything had changed.” The world was singing the words along with her—everyone from teenagers making duet videos to the likes of Gracie Abrams and Adam Melchor—crowning Gregson-MacLeod as the next writer in line for the throne of social media’s favorite sad song anthems.

“People were just listening to it over and over again,” she recalls of “Complex” first blowing up. But while this kind of virality is thrilling, it can also be an overwhelming amount of pressure. “When I released the (demo) version, I got messages and comments telling me that I said certain words different and breathed in different ways from the original video.”

“It just happened that the song that blew up for me was one that I was very proud of.” She says that she’d only written “complex” a few days before posting it after a fresh wave of emotions about a previous relationship caused her to revisit that period in her life. As is the case with so many of the best songs, she remembers that writing it was a blur, the words pouring out of her quickly. Though she had no plans to release it—maybe, she concedes, it could have been a deep cut on an album a few years down the line—the Internet had other ideas. Three weeks after the initial clip, Gregson-MacLeod released “complex (demo),” a one-take version of the track featuring just vocals and a soft piano, recorded at an Edinburgh studio in her native Scotland.

Gregson-MacLeod’s rise has been stunning, but it’s also been extremely well deserved. “Complex” is in and of itself a stunning piece of song writing, but perhaps most important is that the song’s success came on the heels of years of hard work from Gregson-MacLeod that put her in all the right places once the right time came.

As Blondshell, Partisan-signed New Yorker Sabrina Teitelbaum is channelling honesty and rage, picking up the baton from alternative music’s greatest women.

Blondshell, the alias of her latest project, is a vehicle for female rage. When she wiped the slate clean and announced her debut single, “Olympus”, the caption of her Instagram post read: “It’s the music I’ve always wanted to make but was too scared to”. But what is fear when there are scores to settle?

Without the pandemic, Teitelbaum doubts Blondshell would have come into being. “I learned a lot,” she says. “I was so scared to spend extended periods of time alone, and when COVID happened, just like everybody, I had to. I think I can look back on myself with a lot more compassion because of it.” And at the end of it all, Sabrina Teitelbaum is a woman who is unafraid to ask for what she wants.

“I’m going back to him / I know my therapist’s pissed,” she plainly declares on her song “Sepsis”, an admission of defeat. The treatment she accepts in a relationship spreads through her self-worth like rot as she tries to untangle the riddle of herself through the lens of someone else. “And I think I believe in getting saved,” she sighs in a streak of masochism, “Not by Jesus, validation in some dude’s gaze / And I think I believe in getting saved / Holy water pull my hair right from the base.” But there came a point where Teitelbaum couldn’t force herself to swallow this long-brewed resentment. She’s spitting it out.

So Blondshell doesn’t represent a persona? “No.” Her lyrics are unambiguous. “I was never able to write figuratively,” she admits. “That concept is so hard, like, people who write metaphors in their music. I think it’s awesome, but it’s just not my skillset. My songs are all pretty literal.”

When writing the songs for her upcoming debut as Blondshell, she didn’t have sprawling ideas or an excess of material that needed whittling down. In a cautious and considered way, she dealt with her emotional upheaval track by track – guided by sheer instinct. But without the encouragement of producer Yves Rothman, a close collaborator with Yves Tumor, she doubts that the album would have arrived at all. ‘I think we make a lot of space for each other,”

Maggie Rogers‘ last album “Heard It in a Past Life” came out in 2019, and today the musician has shared news of its follow-up titled “Surrender“, arriving July 29th. The album, which was recorded in Electric Lady Studios in New York, Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios near Bath in England, and Rogers’ parents’ garage, finds the songwriter giving in to harmonic emotional buzzing.

The announcement came with an album trailer directed by Rogers and Michael Scanlon. In it, Rogers recites a poem. “When I’m angry or in love, I feel it in my teeth. Strange harmonic buzzing. Cuts through my hands. My jaw. My breast bone,” it begins. The video matches her recited words about relinquishing power to emotion with close-up images of Rogers, New York City traffic, and bright explosions of light, with the black-and-white montages recalling Andy Warhol’s work. What I assume is snippets from the forthcoming album break through between her spoken word, presenting collisions of guitar and powerhouse vocals.

It takes a combination of raw talent and deep introspection to birth an album like Maggie Rogers’ “Surrender”. Full of collaborations with artists as varied as Rogers’ old pal Del Water Gap and late-night bandleader Jon Batiste, the album never settles on a direct muse, but flits between radio-friendly rock and early girl-power pop.

While not quite as daring as its predecessor, “Heard It in a Past Life”, the album still delivers as an honest expression of the singer’s desire to be taken seriously as an artist. Perhaps Rogers said it best in “Anywhere With You,” one of the album’s breakout hits: “All I ever wanted is to make something fucking last.” This time around, she has.

‘Surrender’ – the new album by Maggie Rogers, available July 29th, 2022

The eight songs on the Norwegian musician Jenny Hval’s latest album, “Classic Objects”, are purposely dreamlike. They are more atmospheric and rhythmic than narrative and follow tangents into unexplored places. As both narrator and protagonist, Hval starts in a waking state and then lets the songs float away into unknown territory. The results suggest our primal urges and our conscious thoughts are out of balance. “Life could be a dream”, as the Chords sang us so long ago on “Sh-boom”. But then it wouldn’t be real. Hval implies that we need to find a way to incorporate our dreams into our everyday life but to be wary. Hval’s ethereal voice suggests that her art serves a higher purpose. Her role is that of a doula to help the listeners release their inner selves. The specifics of her experience help ground us.

Norwegian musician and novelist Jenny Hval releases her new album “Classic Objects” a map of places; past places, like the old empty Melbourne pubs Hval’s band used to play in, public places Hval missed throughout lockdown, imagined, future places, and impossible places where dreams, hallucinations, death and art can take you. It is interested in combining heavenly things and plain things.

“Classic Objects” is Hval’s version of a pop album. Every song has a verse and a chorus. There are interchangeable moments of complexity, interesting melodies throughout, and a feeling of elevation and clarity in the choruses. Heba Kadry mixed it to sound as though it’s played through “a stereo in a mysterious room.”

‘Year of Love’ by Jenny Hval is taken from new album ‘Classic Objects’, out now via 4AD records.

Performers Vocals Jenny Hval Keys and vocals Jenny Berger Myhre Bass Håvard Volden Keys Johan Lindvall Drums and percussion Kyrre Laastad Guitars Daniel Meyer Grønvold

S.G. Goodman has a distinctive voice that is not conventionally pretty. It serves her alt-Goth country tales of life and love well. Her Tennessee drawl and warbly delivery provide grit to the demonstrative values expressed. Her sentiments come across as nastier and more personal than anthemic.

Goodman’s not preaching on “Teeth Marks”. She observes the world around her and sees that too many people waste their lives or at least don’t spend their time wisely. The good life would involve centreing one’s life around the love of another human being instead of one’s job. Goodman is a queer Southerner who has received her share of abuse because of her sexuality. Her focus on romantic love seems to come as a defense mechanism. She’s enough of a realist to know that it’s not always a positive experience. Sometimes, love hurts, as in the title song “Teeth Marks”. Just because one may love somebody does not mean the other person will love you back.

S.G. Goodman gazes off into the distance as she begins the first song in this Tiny Desk session, rocking her body from side to side, connecting with a force inside and also just out of reach: maybe it’s something in her past or the image of a person she holds dear, or maybe it’s simply fierce, ragged hope. “I see all my love coming back to me — I can see it!” she wails in her piercing, haunted soprano. Her band revs its engine beneath her as she testifies about a rock and roll epiphany. As drummer Stephen Montgomery and bassist Mark Sloan push the rhythm harder and guitarist Michael Ruth lays down some pure-energy riffs, she squeezes her eyes shut and bears down on her guitar. Music, Goodman’s songs show us, is a route to both survival and transcendence. A proud and ever-questioning Southerner who invokes Tyler Childers, Dolly Parton and her own Kentucky accent in her between-song banter,

Goodman released her debut album “Old Time Feeling” early on in the pandemic and her astounding “Teeth Marks” released in June of this year. Goodman’s songs cultivate a direct gaze as they confront grief and stump for understanding. The two others offered here, “If You Were Someone I Loved” and “Space and Time,” show the breadth of expression she and her band achieve with their feet firmly planted on the ground of grassroots rock, the kind that echoes from bar stages and garages in Hickman, Kentucky, and countless small American towns like it. Goodman’s stories and her sound are very particular, but she’s a hero with big arms, an ordinary woman learning how to keep on keeping on. You can see it, that engagement and resilience, in every moment of this performance.

SET LIST “All My Love Is Coming Back To Me” “If You Were Someone I Loved” “Space And Time”

MUSICIANS S.G. Goodman: vocals, electric guitar Michael Ruth: electric guitar Mark Sloan: bass, vocals Stephen Montgomery: drums

Black Country, New Road barely waited a year after putting out their acclaimed debut, For the first time, to follow it with Ants From Up There. Just ahead of its release, singer/guitarist Isaac Wood left the band, citing mental health issues, and while his loss will certainly be keenly felt going forward, his presumably final statement with the band is a glorious whirlwind, 58 minutes of ambitious, anthemic art rock and chamber pop that captures your heart and doesn’t let go. “I’ve kind of accepted that this might be the best thing that I’m ever part of for the rest of my life,” bassist Tyler Hyde says. “And that’s fine.”

Black Country, New Road‘s sound is bold and progressive, unconcerned with imitation or revivalism. The six-piece paint classical and jazz instrumentation on a deconstructed rock canvas, layering atop nuanced lyricism that conveys sharp narratives and achingly-sincere emotions.

It’s a heady combination, but one that makes a riveting antidote to their post-punk peers’ seemingly-endless obsession with aping genres that lived and died 40 years ago. It’s hard to overstate just how good “Ants From Up There” is. It’s not quite Black Country, New Road’s masterpiece, as the band are too young and raw for it to be that perfect. However, it’s tough to find much fault with it. The sprawling nature of the tracks, especially the final two, makes for staggeringly compelling listening.

The disregard for conventional structure and instrumentation, combined with the adroit, sincere lyrics, makes “Ants From Up There” one of the richest and most emotionally-honest albums released by a young British band for quite some time. In a world that seems content to reanimate the past perpetually, Black Country, New Road are daring to dream up something different.

Leeds’ Yard Act are one of the UK’s most hotly-tipped acts right now. The sudden rise of Yard Act during the pandemic isn’t something I think anybody could have expected. In less than three years, a band of anti-capitalist, sonic experimentalists became major label darlings during a time when the live music industry was nonexistent. On their debut full-length “The Overload”, they’ve managed to craft a distinct sound that’s refreshing enough that any comparison sounds a little farfetched but also recalls most eras of post-punk’s history at one point or another.

Go on the band…From: Leeds, UK, For fans of: Do Nothing, John Cooper Clarke
Yard Act will have you in stitches with their fiercely humorous lyricism which they couple with the catchiest post-punk grooves around.
You’re going to love them: “We’re gonna knock through the kitchen wall though, even though it is a lovely bit of Tudor”, Yard Act frontman James Smith stabs on one of 2020’s greatest indie singles ‘Fixer Upper’, it’s comedic genius as he assumes the role of a proud two homeowner disgruntled with the world around him. Going by the incisive and equally impacting other airings so far, this band are reinvigorating modern post-punk with a much-needed sense of humour.

The outlandish storytelling and deadpan delivery frontman James Smith transforms Yard Act from just another indie band to exciting propositions. Songs like “Fixer Upper”, “Peanuts” and “The Trapper’s Pelts” are satirical takes of life in West Yorkshire, neoliberalism, and a fictional obituary to a bloke called Graeme, all tightly delivered over unrelenting guitars and bass lines.

Many of the current successful indie rock and post-punk bands are still harkening back to the genre’s period of mainstream success in the 2000s. Yard Act definitely occupy a similar place in the genre to Black Country, New Road, Mush, or Black Midi in keeping the “post” in post-punk going through rampant experimentalism. However, Yard Act have songs that are more accessible to a mainstream audience than much of that scene.

Bill Ryder-Jones of The Coral and Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, Working Men’s Club) have both produced Yard Act tracks released this year, so they’re in very good hands.