The Fat Angel Sings

The Gaslight Anthem frontman has announced “Not Bad For New Jersey”, his first solo album of original material in more than five years. The 12-track collection arrives digitally on September 10th via Fallon’s Lesser Known Records, with physical editions following a day later.

Leading the announcement is the newly released single “Pearls,” a reflective heartland rock anthem that finds Fallon grappling with privilege, perseverance and self-worth. “I do think there’s real value in overcoming the odds stacked against you,” he says. “Getting to the point of feeling like you’re actually worth something is one of the toughest mountains to climb.”

Produced by longtime collaborator Butch Walker at his Nashville-area studio, “Not Bad For New Jersey” finds Fallon leaning into a bigger, more exuberant sound than some of his previous solo outings. Drawing inspiration from classic radio staples like Bryan Adams’ “Run to You” and the Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” the album blends power pop hooks with the blue-collar romanticism that has defined much of his songwriting career.

The record also boasts an impressive supporting cast. The Killers’ Brandon Flowers appears on “Love at the End of the World,” while Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen, celebrated avant-garde player Marc Ribot and Grammy-winning songwriter Lori McKenna contribute elsewhere across the album. Walker himself played multiple instruments throughout the sessions, joined by drummer Eric Slick of Dr. Dog.

Elsewhere, Fallon takes inspiration from one of punk rock’s most enduring figures. “Nobody Likes You in New York City” is described as a surprisingly tender tribute to Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone, written from the perspective of his former wife, Vera Boldis.

The new album arrives after a particularly active period for Fallon. In 2023, the Gaslight Anthem returned from a lengthy hiatus with “History Books”, their first studio album in nine years, followed by an extensive international touring schedule. Last week, Fallon performed Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” during Music America: The Songs That Shaped Us, a celebration tied to the opening of the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University in New Jersey.

“I Built You a Tower” marks Ben Gibbard’s return to the studio after years touring the anniversaries of albums from his acknowledged heyday with Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service. With John Congleton on production, he and the band composed the new album as a sort of mission statement for a new era, conjuring up synthpop anthems like “Riptides” while waging war on the lyrical crutches that have made Gibbard a patron saint of cardigan-clad, emo-leaning indie kids for decades.

“The fact that I enunciate, arguably too much, means that I can’t get away with the kind of stuff that Matt Berninger gets away with,” he told The New Yorker. “I’ve been making a conscious effort to break out of a couple of the jails that I built for myself lyrically.”

Hooks aplenty, and Ben Gibbard is still one of the premier indie lyricists even 20 years out from transatlanticism Death Cab for Cutie is one of the definitive indie-rock bands of the century.

After twenty-odd years in the major label system, the band returned to their indie roots and signed with ANTI- Records and they’re back with a brand- new eleventh album titled, “I Built You A Tower”. 

“I Built You A Tower” is the sound of loss, compartmentalization, and then grief bursting out from the seams. It’s also the sound of the growth that comes after falling apart, of acknowledging pain without letting it destroy you. “I see the tower existing on your emotional horizon,” Ben Gibbard states. “You don’t always have to look at what’s inside it, but it’s a reminder that it happened. You know it’s there. You have to face it.”

The band is set to hit the road in the US this summer, kicking off in July and includes a two-night run at The Greek in Los Angeles. This comes on the heels of a historic, sold- out global tour marking the 20th anniversary of the album “Transatlanticism” , and the release of their universally acclaimed, 2022’s “Asphalt Meadow”.

Death Cab for Cutie is an American alternative rock band formed in Bellingham, Washington in 1997. The band is composed of Ben Gibbard, Nick Harmer, Jason McGerr, Dave Depper, and Zac Rae. They have been nominated for eight Grammy Awards. The band’s new album ‘I Built You A Tower’ is out now on Anti Records. 

released June 5th, 2026

After a chaotic start caused by daunting weather conditions, Primavera rallies for a weekend of standout sets spanning every genre, one band Geese. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, when it seems to mainly fall on the rock band Geese. “Qué bonita lluvia” (What pretty rain!), drawls Cameron Winter, Geese’s rakish, tracksuit-wearing frontman, as the first drops of water fall on Primavera Sound’s Occident stage. An hour later, the band are drenched, water pooling on the floor and coating the instruments and musicians. Their set meets the epic ferocity of the conditions: this is an immensely impressive, technically emphatic gig from a young band who justify all hype.

Faced with an hours-long downpour and pernicious winds, Primavera’s infrastructure falters.

Geese have stopped playing and masses of people are breaking apart, scattering in different directions. A torrential downpour has beset the first day of Barcelona’s Primavera Sound 2026, but groups of devoted fans are still gleefully singing the band’s choruses: a “Like a sailor” here, a “Doctor! Doctor!” there. Nobody knows it yet, but Geese have, in effect, become the day’s headlining act, as every set that was supposed to follow over at the main stages will be cancelled

If there was a whiff of disaster about Primavera’s first big night, then by morning it mercifully dissipates. Another standout was Rilo Kiley are an early Friday highlight, the American indie rockers having reunited a year ago, nearly two decades after disbanding. There’s an amiable middle-agedness to their vibe these days, playing songs written by their younger selves; their sound is crisp and unfaded. Jenny Lewis, in yellow sunglasses, radiates New Age cool.

Ty Segall has maintained an inexhaustible release schedule for nearly two decades now, and he’s just announced yet another addition to his behemoth catalog with “Chrome”, his 18th solo studio album. Following last year’s detour into nostalgic pop-rock on “Possession”, Segall’s latest is billed as one of the garage-psych destroyer’s heaviest records yet, and that comes through on the ripping lead single “Black Paint.”

The album is out on Aug. 28th via Drag City, and just for kicks he’ll also drop a new EP, “Love Fuzzz“, on the same day.

Where Segall performed, recorded and mixed “Possession” alone, he flipped the script for “Chrome”, enlisting his tried and true touring band of Mikal Cronin, Emmett Kelly, Ben Boye and Evan Burrows and Bitchin’ Bajas’ Cooper Crain to track the album live. Wand drummer Burrows is credited for some songwriting apart from the full-band tracks, alongside other returning collaborators Matt Yoka and Ty’s wife Denée.  

On “Black Paint,” Segall submerges the bright melodies of his last dispatch in thick, dark riffs. In keeping with the meticulous production standard that he’s sharpened since last year with work for White Fence, Annabelle Chairlegs and Upchuck, every screech and sputter in the flood of distortion hits hard. The same head-banding sessions gave rise to the “Love Fuzzz” EP, which includes a slowed stoner metal take on the song of the same name from 2012’s “Twins” and “My Pet Guru,” billed as “hypnotic art psych fried-kraut air.”

Ty Segall is back with the whole band on board, and their rocksplosion is too vast for just one album! That’s why there’s a full-length called “Chrome” LP AND an EP called “Love Fuzzz” dropping at the same instant! They hail from oppositional planes from the rock and roll spectrum – one a spiffy pop-and-punk rock album and the other, a slo-mo, doom ‘n dirge EP. If tend toward fragility, focus on which side of the universe you want rocking your world, but if you’re ready to roll with your rock, have we got a bundle for you! “Chrome” and “Love Fuzzz” united as one! Before you tie one on, you might want both Ty’s in hand. Together they’ll take you through a dark night of the soul you’ll never forget.

Ty Segall, precleared for flight in full rock congress with the band (Ben Boye/Evan Burrows/Mikal Cronin/Emmett Kelly), shifts “Chrome”. Songs of massive riffs, swung, tightly arrayed lines of fuzz and distortion, twin-guitar attack-and-parry, endopic keyboards kicking, precise and thudding power, a rhythmic core on the march in full band energy. The songs are lyrically allusive trips, dark passages in the labyrinth, everything in the air bristling collectively, as minds collide.

Ty Segall’s album “Chrome”, out on LP/CD/CS from Drag City on August 28th, 2026.

Jeff Tweedy performing live in the KEXP studio. This lineup just keeps getting better every time I see them perform, and the songs from TO seem to keep evolving in the live setting. KEXP always has such a top notch sound mix. Worth watching!!!! In my opinion the songs from “Twilight Override” really have to be seen live. Really great performances.

Recorded April 2nd, 2026.

Songs: One Tiny Flower 00:41 New Orleans 06:39 Out In The Dark 10:30 Lou Reed Was My Babysitter 14:35 Jeff Tweedy – Guitar, Vocals Spencer Tweedy – Drums, Vocals Sammy Tweedy – Synthesizer, Vocals Macie Stewart – Guitar, Strings, Vocals Sima Cunningham – Bass, Vocals Liam Cunningham – Guitar, Vocals

From the heart of the Australian psych scene… country pop rainbow rockers Babe Rainbow return with their 7th studio album “Acid And Honey” recorded on a houseboat in Amsterdam and zen master Mullarky’s Malibu ranch… Exciting dance beat production backs wailing Babe Rainbow vocals on solid skanking hip-hop hard rocking finger funky sounds. Pressed in ‘Acid & Honey’, 180gm Black & Gold pinwheel vinyl, and housed in a euro-style card sleeve, with a gold foiled embossed sticker. Limited to only 250 copies with our signature, numbered obi strip.

From the heart of the Australian psych scene… rainbow rockers Babe Rainbow return with their 7th studio album “Acid and Honey” recorded on an op shop acoustic on a houseboat in Amsterdam and finished at zen master Mullarky’s Malibu ranch. Exciting country-pop beat production backs wailing Babe rainbow vocals on solid skanking hip-hop hard rocking finger funky sounds. The first single  “Polymucalsaccharide’ is just something Perry Farrell says and it means “drool, like you’re dribbling cos the truth is once you hit the road you don’t remember the good shows, they’re just like every other show”

New album “Acid and Honey” out July 16

British sibling duo Penelope Isles have announced a new album, “3” on Bella Union, and shared its lead single, “Thinking Seat,” via a music video.  The fittingly titled “3” is the Brighton-based band’s third album and is due out September 25th . Check out “Thinking Seat” below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

The new album follows 2021’s “Which Way to Happyand” 2019’s “Until the Tide Creeps In“. Not only has it been five years since Penelope Isles’ last album, it’s also been three years since their last live show. In that time, the duo have been busy with solo projects—Jack with Cubzoa and Lily with My Precious Bunny (who released “A Moment in My Eyes” in May; Jack has also toured with CMAT on guitar.

“Penny Isles is such a big part of our personalities,” says Jack in a press release. “So it was about time we got back to it.”

The album features Joe Taylor on drums and was recorded live in the studio, at Black Bay Studio on the Isle of Lewis off Scotland’s northwest coast. Prior to that, the album was written on a monthlong surf trip to Lagos, Portugal.

Out on September 25th.

In a world increasingly shaped by disposable content, Chat Pile answer with something defiantly real and organic, a mentality that permeates “Who Loves The Sun“, their third full-length record. Since the band’s formation just over six years ago, the Oklahoma City-based quartet Chat Pile has grown from a scrappy passion project into one of the defining heavy acts to emerge from the 2020s underground. Ray B. (vocals), L. Manhole (guitar), Stin (bass), and Cap’n Ron (drums) create a crushing, crass, and cathartic take on noise rock that captures a raw, undeniably human essence in an age marked by technological overreach and the cold state of society. Nothing about “Who Loves The Sun” feels synthetic.

Whereas their debut album “God’s Country” depicted a particularly American flavour of dread, and the follow up “Cool World” showed a cruel planet defined by global systemic violence, “Who Loves The Sun” peels the skin back on how collective indifference defines this new century. Spanning imagery of coastlines devouring cities, dead-end jobs, and submission to data-driven inauthenticity, the album dissects the apathy-bloated state of 21st-century existence as a slow-motion apocalypse.

As with much of Chat Pile’s work, Oklahoma City itself looms over the album like a character, its sprawling isolation, economic contradictions, and underlying sense of decay embedded in the fabric of the record. The perfect allegory for the thematic essence of Who Loves The Sun is the photo embossed on the record’s cover, where Devon Tower, a glassy, largely vacant monolith, looms high above the Oklahoma City skyline while a burnt-out home or storefront envelops the foreground.

The album remains lyrically and sonically confrontational, but Chat Pile approached the songwriting with hooks in mind, drawing on melodic tones of pre-2000s indie rock, alt-rock, and new wave. From the blood-soaked vocal passages of “Christabel ’26” to the eerie trip-hop pulse of “Same Rules,” “Who Loves The Sun” is deeply human despite its allusions to a dying, divided .

“This Mirror Weighs a Ton”, Interpol’s first album in four years and debut for Partisan Records, finds the band turning inward while continuing to move forward. Across the record, reflection, distortion and perception become a lens through which familiar shapes are refracted into something slightly alien, as if seen through a different kind of light. 

Alongside the announcement of their new album ‘This Mirror Weighs a Ton’, and accompanying singles “This Mirror Weighs a Ton” and “See Out Loud”

Within it. Nothing feels imposed. Instead, the additions deepen the band’s language of restraint, atmosphere and tension. At its centre remains the creative relationship between Paul Banks, Daniel Kessler and Sam Fogarino, a partnership now approaching three decades and defined by intuitive alignment and momentum that continues to generate new possibilities. The result is an album that feels expansive, uncanny and alive with forward motion, not a reinvention but an evolution that allows Interpol to continue transforming without losing their identity.

“This Mirror Weighs A Ton” / “See Out Loud” is a study in duality, with Interpol moving fluidly between familiarity and departure. The title track unfolds from a skeletal progression into something vast and textural, built from warped bass, a wordless female voice and a sense of motion that feels tidal, bending the band’s familiar language into somewhere more expansive and unfamiliar. By contrast, “See Out Loud” carries the DNA of Interpol’s earliest work, sharp, propulsive and direct, while complicating it through layered vocals, shifting perspectives and a rare lead vocal turn from Kessler. Both tracks reflect the interplay between structure and spontaneity that defines “This Mirror Weighs a Ton, expanding Interpol’s world through fresh textures while keeping the instinctive chemistry between Banks, Kessler and Fogarino at the center. The double single is accompanied by two visualizers directed by Nick Steinhardt.

Interpol last week they shared its third single, “Iron City.” “This Mirror Weighs a Ton” is Interpol’s first for Partisan after previously being on Matador for much of their career.

Interpol’s core members are Daniel Kessler, Paul Banks, and Sam Fogarino. “This Mirror Weighs a Ton” is the band’s eighth album, and the follow up to 2022’s “The Other Side of Make-Believe”, 2019’s “A Fine Mess” EP, and 2018’s “Marauder” full-length.

Andrew Wyatt (ROSALÍA, Charli xcx) produced the album, recording it in his studio in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. David Fridmann (Sleater-Kinney, MGMT) mixed the album. The album cover features an artwork by Addie Wagenknecht, which is currently held in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection. “This Mirror Weighs a Ton” is the first Interpol song since “PDA,” from their 2002 debut album “Turn On the Bright Lights”, to feature vocals from Kessler.

Of working with Interpol, Wyatt says in a press release: “I wondered what it would be like to keep the parts perfectly legible, because everyone in that band writes such great parts. And to add some different spatial dimensions to it.” Wyatt says. “It was something almost a little bit more like chamber music—the musical ideas bear scrutiny without needing the sonic treatment of it to carry all the weight. It was also nice to add a trick or two I picked up over a couple decades of making pop records.”

“This Mirror Weighs a Ton” by Interpol, from the album “This Mirror Weighs a Ton“, out August 28th, 2026 on Partisan Records:

In an age of algorithms, Westside Cowboy are pure-spirited proof of the magic that can only come from human connection. Just three years on from forming in Manchester, starting a band for the fun of it without so much as a plan to even play a gig, the quartet – Jimmy Bradbury (vocals, guitar), Reuben Haycocks (vocals, guitar), Aoife Anson O’Connell (vocals, bass) and Paddy Murphy (drums) – have crafted perhaps the year’s most exciting debut by simply figuring out what feels good, and following it into the horizon.

Having won the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition in 2025, the hotly tipped four-piece band from Manchester perform their new single ‘Kick Stones (The Boys)’ from their upcoming debut album ‘It Goes On’.

“It Goes On” is the debut album from Manchester-based four piece Westside Cowboy, produced by Loren Humphrey. It may well be one of the best records of 2026. Instant golden songs for a new generation.

In an age of algorithms, Westside Cowboy are pure-spirited proof of the magic that can only come from human connection. Just three years on from forming in Manchester, starting a band for the fun of it without so much as a plan to even play a gig, the quartet have crafted perhaps the year’s most exciting debut by simply figuring
out what feels good, and following it into the horizon. There’s an urgency of feeling to “It Goes On” that could only ever really happen with a young group’s debut record

Manchester, England four-piece Westside Cowboy are releasing their debut album, “It Goes On,” on August 21 via Island Records. Now they have shared its second single, “Pin Up Boys,”

The band collectively had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Pin Up Boys’ was written a year and a half ago using an acoustic guitar, a drum machine sample pad and some screwdrivers as drumsticks. It is by far the longest serving song on the album and the one that we have played the most live, which was a blessing and a curse when we came to record. After realising this song was set in its ways, we thought the recording should be a somewhat faithful version of the live performance. We hope you get something out of it.”

Jack Shep directed the song’s video and had this to say about it: “Westside Cowboy’s performance style is so energetic and distinct. They clearly have a mountainous future ahead of them, and it was awesome to work with young people at the precipice of starting something really special together. In the video we wanted to capture the band’s dynamism, through a spotlight. We follow this fixed, malevolent spotlight chasing our hero (played by the band’s mate, Will) as he tries to escape its gaze. As he runs, he manages to escape, splitting into a new spotlight with a new version of the band. The whole thing begins to buckle and shatter.”

Westside Cowboy previously shared the album’s lead single, “Kick Stones (The Boys),” via a music video. “Kick Stones (The Boys)” was one of our Songs of the Week.

Westside Cowboy is Reuben Haycocks (guitar, vocals), James (Jimmy) Bradbury (guitar, vocals), Aoife Anson O’Connell (bass guitar, vocals), and Paddy Murphy (drums, vocals). They’ve been gathering momentum and attention due to earlier singles, such as “Can’t See,” which made our Songs of the Week list last November. They have also supported Geese and Black Country, New Road on tour.