The Fat Angel Sings

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss opened their “Raise the Roof” tour at Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center in Canandaigua, N.Y. Their set was heavily comprised of tracks from their latest joint album, “Raise the Roof” released November 2021 – along with a few numbers from their first collaborative effort, 2007’s “Raising Sand“.

Throughout the performance the pair treated the audience to some Led Zeppelin classics starting with “Rock and Roll.” They immediately followed up with a cover of Plant and Jimmy Page’s “Please Read the Letter,” a rocking ballad first featured on their 1998 album “Walking into Clarksdale”. 

The show later featured “The Battle of Evermore” and a performance of Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe McCoy’s “When The Levee Breaks,” both of which Led Zeppelin included on their untitled fourth album released in 1971. The performance was backed by fiddle, upright bass and electric guitar; in line with their recent releases duo added a rustic spin to the Led Zeppelin hits. 

Apart from the Led Zeppelin covers and their collaborative material, Plant and Krauss explored their shared musical inspirations found on “Raise the Roof” with covers of The Everly Brothers, Benny Spellman, Little Milton, Bert Jansch and more.

Last night, The Rolling Stones kicked off their “Sixty Tour” at Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid. The high-energy performance featured a setlist stacked with fan favourites and a live debut of the 1966 tune, “Out Of Time.” The trio’s current tour honours 60-years spent on stage performing as an ensemble. 

The single set performance got underway with the arrival of “Street Fighting Man” off 1968’s “Beggars Banquet”, which was capped with “19th Nervous Breakdown.” Then, the band turned up the heat on an electrifying “Sad Sad Sad” ahead of a crowd-pleasing “Tumbling Dice.” 

A rare moment followed: a first-ever live performance of the 1966 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards penned tune, “Out of Time,” which initially appeared on the London natives’ “Aftermath” studio album. Then, by crowd request, The Rolling Stones blasted to 1978 with “Beast of Burden.” 

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was performed to a sold-out audience of 53,000 ahead of a funky take on “Living in a Ghost Town.” Next, Jagger strutted into “Honky Tonk Women” and followed with band introductions, which included Steve Jordan (drums), Daryrl Jones (bass), Chuck Leavell (piano/organ), Karl Denson (sax), Tim Ries (sax), Matt Clifford (keyboards) as well as Bernard Fowler (backing vocals) and Sasha Allen (backing vocals). 

Richards lead vocals on “Happy” and “Slipping Away” before Jagger broke it down on “Miss You” – his signature dance moves carrying him from one side of the stage to the next. “Midnight Rambler” off The Rolling Stones’ 1969 studio album, “Let It Bleed”, came before a boisterous take on “Start Me Up” with Ronnie Wood leading the band on guitar. 

“Paint It Black” came before “Sympathy for the Devil,” and finally, the band capped the single set performance with their 1968 non-album single, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” After a break from the stage, they returned to deliver their encores, starting with “Gimme Shelter.” Then, for the last song of the band’s Sixty Tour opener, they performed a lively take on “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” 

The Rolling Stones tour kick-off included other memorable moments, like Jagger leading the crowd through “Happy Birthday to You” in honour of Ronnie Wood’s 75th, which occurred on the concert day. Following last night’s rousing performance, the band will pop up in Munich for a gig on June 5th.

Zola Jesus has been making some of the best electronic goth pop around for over a decade, but she hasn’t put out a new album in five years. That finally changes with “Arkhon“, which was made with Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Marissa Nadler, etc) and drummer Matt Chamberlain (Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, etc). Lead single “Lost” is a widescreen number full of pounding drums and a soaring chorus of voices that finds Zola in fine form.

There is a way a voice can cut through the fascia of reality, cleaving through habit into the raw nerve of experience. Nika Roza Danilova, the singer, songwriter, and producer who since 2009 has released music as Zola Jesus, wields a voice that does that. When you hear it, it is like you are being summoned to a place that’s already wrapped inside you but obscured from conscious experience. This place has been buried because it tends to hold pain, but it’s also a gift, because once it’s opened, once you’re inside of it, it can show you the truth. Zola Jesus’s new album, Arkhon, finds new ways of loosing this submerged, stalled pain.

On previous albums, Danilova had largely played the role of auteur, meticulously crafting every aspect of Zola Jesus’s sound and look. This time, she realized that her habitual need for control was sealing her out of her art. “Arkhon” sees Zola Jesus’s first collaboration with producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Mandy soundtrack, Candyman soundtrack) and with drummer and percussionist Matt Chamberlain, whose prior work appears on albums by Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie.

“Arkhon” runs the spectrum from songs whose weight lies in their bare simplicity, like “Desire,” an elegiac piano composition about the end of a relationship that was recorded acoustically in a single take, to towering, groove-oriented tracks like “The Fall” and the tight, interlocking percussion and samples of a Slovenian folk choir in “Lost,” which propel narratives of collective despair and mutual comfort in kind. Through these turns, “Arkhon” reveals itself as an album whose power derives from abandon. Both its turmoils and its pleasures take root in the body, letting individual consciousness dissolve into the thick of the beat. Despite the darkness curled inside reality, there is power, too, in surrendering to what can’t be pinned down, to the wild unfurling of the world in all its unforeseeable motion. That letting go is the crux of “Arkhon“, which marks a new way of moving and making for Zola Jesus.

From the upcoming album Arkhon out on May 20, 2022 on Sacred Bones Records.

Grace Ives comes up for air on her latest record, “Janky Star”. The queen of charmingly claustrophobic beats, some of the angular synths, and punchy percussion from 2019’s “2nd” resurface in her singles. However, she pairs this ear candy with pensive gaps that give her a chance to catch her breath. While she’s ornate as ever on tracks like “Loose,” other singles like “Lullaby” are mellow in comparison as her vocals melt into a shimmering laze of electro-pop. The themes Ives touches on are as complex as her composition, as she discusses sobriety, overdoses, escapism, attempting to slow down, and trying to find solid ground in a world that never stops spinning.

“Janky Star” is the new album from pop-polymath Grace Ives, following 2019’s critically acclaimed “2nd”.

The 10 tracks are full of punchy synths and unconventional rhythms, but Ives uses the quiet spaces in between to honestly reflect on her ongoing struggle to find stability and happiness. Touching on sobriety, overdoses, and the desire to escape from the realities of modern life, “Janky Star” focuses on the rewards of slowing down and finally finding a home for herself in the ever-shifting world.

S.G. Goodman was raised in Western Kentucky on the Mississippi River Delta in a strict church going family of row crop farmers. Her debut solo album “Old Time Feeling”, co-produced with fellow Kentuckian Jim James, showcases S.G.’s otherworldly voice, which soars above a sonic blend of gritty guitars, bottomland grooves and plaintive balladry. Goodman has a new album due this week,

S.G. Goodman turns the sleepless nights spent yearning over unrequited love into a delicate delve into her psyche on her latest album, “Teeth Marks”.

The first three singles from the Kentucky singer-songwriter’s follow up to 2020’s “Old Time Feeling” feature a delicate finger-plucked electric guitar and subtle southern influence. It feels like pressing on a bruise as she revisits old wounds, comes to terms with an emotionally unavailable lover, and recalls it all through fragmented details like the dead birds they prayed over in the park.

With the first glimpse of the record already packed with so much raw emotion and intimate half-hushed confessionals, it’s clear that the rest of the album will be just as tender-hearted.

“All My Love is Coming Back To Me” the new album ‘Teeth Marks’ out 3rd June: via Verve Forecast.

Horsegirl are three friends who make music in a basement. It’s true, and they want you to know that, not because they’re shy about the attention they’ve received as indie rock’s latest breakthrough, but because the Chicago trio of Penelope Lowenstein, Nora Cheng and Gigi Reece want you to know that they’re having fun. They’re accomplishing that in the way that only passionate teenagers can: professing their admiration for Kim Gordon, painting T-shirts haphazardly, and throwing riffs against the wall until they unfurl into songs. The end product of those basement hangs, “Versions of Modern Performance,” impressively combines noisy, punk-minded influences that congeal into a wondrous concoction of post-punk, no-wave, early shoegaze, and more. While inspired by the ’80s and ’90s cadres of emergent indie rock’s noisier actors, Horsegirl’s sound is singular, curious and glossed.

Chicago’s Horsegirl signed to Matador when members Gigi Reece, Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein were all still in high school and hadn’t played very many live shows. But their songs, indebted to Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500, Flying Nun bands and The Raincoats, already feel like those of a seasoned band. Adding to their indie rock bona-fides: they made the album at their hometown’s famed Electric Audio studio with producer John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., The Breeders). “It’s our debut bare-bones album in a Chicago institution with a producer who we feel like really respected what we were trying to do,” the band say.

Horsegirl stopped by SiriusXM’s studios while in NYC last week to chat about their upcoming debut album and to record a short set. That included this excellent, low-key cover of Au Pairs’ 1981 song “It’s Obvious.”

Horse Girl performs “It’s Obvious,” cover by Au Pairs. Horsegirl’s debut album ‘Versions of Modern Performance,’ out June 3rd on Matador Records.

This stunning 1995 broadcast recording, Made in the wake of the “Outside” album. Following David Bowie s critically well received and commercially successful “Black Tie, White Noise” album, released in April 1993 Bowie s first solo-effort of the 1990 s – he explored new directions on “The Buddha of Suburbia“, ostensibly a soundtrack album of music composed for the BBC television adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s novel.

Only the title track had been used in the TV drama, although some of his themes for the series were also present on the album. It contained more of the new elements introduced on “Black Tie White Noise“, and also signalled a move towards alternative rock. The album was a critical success but received a low-key release and only made No. 87 on the UK charts. Then, in September 1995, Bowie released “Outside“, which re-united him with Brian Eno on a quasi-industrial collection, originally conceived as the first volume in a non-linear narrative of art and murder. Featuring characters from a short story written by Bowie, the album achieved UK and US chart success, and yielded three Top 40 UK singles. In a move that provoked mixed reactions from both fans and critics, Bowie chose Nine Inch Nails as his touring partner for the “Outside” Tour, visiting cities in Europe and North America between September 1995 and February 1996. In December 1995, Bowie appeared on a special, extended edition of Chanel 4 s “the White Room” music show, on which he – alongside his band, made up of Carlos Alomar and Reeves Gabrels on guitar, Gail Ann Dorsey on bass and vocals, George Simms, Peter Scwartz and Mike Garson on keyboards and Zachary Alford on drums, played a quite extraordinary set lasting just short of an hour in length.

Clearly and understandably wishing to promote the new record, the band performed several tracks from such with a smattering of cuts from previous releases, although not the obvious choices, this time preferring to perform less known songs, making the entire concert something of an unusual event for Bowie fans. Previously unreleased on CD, this recording is now available on this new release, certain to delight enthusiasts of this truly great composer and performer from across the globe.

TRACKLIST: 1. Introduction 1:46 2. Look Back In Anger 4:56 3. The Hearts Filthy Lesson 5:36 4. The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty) 5:24 5. Under Pressure (Take One) 2:35 6. Under Pressure (Take Two) 4:37 7. Hallo Spaceboy 7:54 8. Boys Keep Swinging 3:15 9. Jump They Say 3:42 10. We Prick You 5:23 11. The Man Who Sold The World 3:51 12. Teenage Wildlife 7:27

Joan Shelley is a songwriter and singer from Louisville, KY. Often joined by guitarist Nathan Salsburg, she has shared shows with the likes of Jake Xerxes Fussell, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Daniel Martin Moore, the Other Years, & Michael Hurley.

I want to explain these songs / I want to leave them unexplained. We’ve all been working with a lot of silence. I was tired from touring, remembering the long drives across the midwestern plains at dusk, against the pale yellow sky seeing the black outline of the horizon with the occasional silhouette of a little farmstead, a corn crib or windmill, beyond, a breaking society, beyond, the aches of a world in pain.

A powerful tugging between apparently opposite things, hopelessness and resilience, isolation and togetherness, all at once. A deep connection to our homeplace, to staying, a complex reckoning with family, with the past, with the rubble, with the wind taken out of everyone’s sails, with new life and constant death.

We returned to the feral tree farm. Raising goats, chickens, listening to birds, watching the river, growing a child. A deep clean spring. So I started reaching out. Bringing in.

I wanted these people I admire to be close to me in the game, in the tangle of my emotions, in my unaddressed fears, I wanted them woven into my tapestries, which are songs, , because I am only a bird on a branch echoing others, embellishing the present with past inventions.
Let the new world come around. Together we shook these things out of the rug, our shared anxieties, our guilt, our joy, discomfort and heartbreak. We asked and were asking of each other.

Dying breath, wind-breath, singing breath shared beyond the language song, strings and brass, heartbeats and drums, wooden and stone breath, water and light, non-human breath, written breath, the little breaths of a newborn thing. Now I sing some of these songs to my daughter. Soothing her discomforts. Especially “completely,” she likes to hear that one. How it goes from low to high.
How it goes from song into silence, and back again.
Do you know that line of Wendell Berry’s “make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came”? 

releases June 24th, 2022

From “The Spur” out June 24th

So, heads up. I got this idea to write a bunch of songs where they were all up tempo mini-action movies. Plots, characters, heists, hostages, questionable capers, getaway cars, all that stuff. Gas pedal glued to the floor. Eventually, as you might guess I wanted at least one song where the tempo relaxed a little and that’s the title track but otherwise buckle up. We hid out in the woods in Chapel Hill and made this album with nobody knowing about it.

Proper secret-soldier style. It has been pretty hard keeping this under our hats, we are really proud of what we got here. Alicia Bognanno (of Bully) produced & played with us, and the great Shani Gandhi mixed.

The album is called ‘Bleed Out’ and will be out on August 19th via Merge Records. The first single is “Training Montage” which does what it says on the tin, and you can pre-order the album now…

“Training Montage” by the Mountain Goats from their new album ‘Bleed Out’ coming August 19th, 2022 on Merge Records.

Los Angeles psych-rock band Hooveriii (pronounced “Hoover Three”) have announced the July 29th release of their new album “A Round of Applause”.

Though created in large part by founder Bert Hoover, Hooveriii has grown to include Gabe Flores (lead guitar and vocals), Kaz Mirblouk (bass and synths), James Novick (synths), and Owen Barrett (drums).

Prior to delving into “A Round of Applause” — Hoveriii’s second album through The Reverberation Appreciation Society —the band had stuck to a routine of issuing about two releases a year (including singles, live albums, etc.). After the rise of a certain five-letter word that starts with a C, they realized that time really shouldn’t be taken for granted. Finding additional inspiration via Nick Cave, who once said that dabbling with new ideas continues to fuel his near-50-year career, the band decidedly took a different approach with their new album and gave themselves the freedom to explore in the studio.

Today the band shares the first take of the album by way of “A Round Of Appluases” opening track, “See.” The band’s Bert Hoover notes, “‘See’ is about trying not to take life for granted. Some things are easier said than done. It’s our first song to feature Anna Wallace singing along with us and it came together rather seamlessly. It was a pretty bare bones jangle jam until the band filled it with ear candy.” The video was filmed on 16mm at the Trona Pinnacles in Trona CA. Conceived and co-directed by the mighty Nikki Houston and Owen Summers it features aliens stranded on earth try to find their way home until things go very wrong.

The end result is “A Round of Applause“, an expansive and even, at times, experimental record. Whereas 2021’s “Water for the Frog”s was akin to a jam-band record — most of its seven songs are about five minutes long (including a closing track that lasts nearly 10) — “A Round of Applause” could be considered their “pop” album. Occasionally paying homage to the Canterbury scene, the band consider it to be a palette cleanser of sorts. “I am not really a playlist guy or a singles guy,” Hoover admits. “I’m really into the album experience. … So yeah, we made a pop record. But also, to me, this record is very progressive as well, and I think that that provides a nice balance.” HE previously referred to “Water for the Frogs” as the band’s equivalent of Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. Playing with that idea he says “A Round of Applause” is the kindred spirit of Lust For Life.

Hooveriii derived the album title from the late-‘80s Roky Erickson song “Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play.” “That’s too much of a mouthful,” Hoover qualified. “My title, “A Round of Applause”, just came one day, and we were like, ‘Yo, that sounds like a Gentle Giant record.’”

Reflecting the mostly lighthearted and uplifting record, “A Round of Applause” closes cheekily — but not sarcastically — with the sound of people clapping. Hoover adds graciously: “We’ve been lucky so far. I don’t think we really have a, you know, ‘bad song.’ ” Maybe one will, someday. But Hoover doesn’t dwell on that; after all, his band has more records to make — and time is of the essence. 

Hooverii have confirmed their first U.S. tour in support of “A Round of Applause“. The dates kick off July 23rd.