The Fat Angel Sings

Days ahead of Chicago lo-fi outfit Gentle Heat’s latest album “Sheer”, the band offered up “WDYG.” With a nostalgic haze hovering above it and an effortlessly catchy groove, Gentle Heat have unlocked the rare feat of capturing the magic of ‘90s alt-rock. David Algrim’s vocals are reminiscent of Dinosaur Jr. at their poppiest, and fuzzed-out guitars wail underneath the layers of the band’s undeniable influences that make up a familiar yet fresh sound.

In an era of music during which the urge to define and dissect new genres competes only with the desire to ruthlessly consolidate old ones, Gentle Heat is refreshing in their purpose and consistency. Too lush to be relegated to post-punk or indie rock, and more sonically visceral than contemporary shoegaze, the Chicago quintet defies easy categorization in a way that makes their evolution as exciting to watch as it is to hear. By pure force of volume, Gentle Heat creates a sound all their own driven by propulsive rhythms and dissonant melodies. With their newest release “Sheer”, Gentle Heat reaffirms this commitment with surgical efficiency. Even the most formless sounds have purpose; ethereal soundscapes give way to humming, knotted feedback. The addition of vocalist/ keyboardist Sarah Clausen has enabled the project to dive deeper into the ambient aspects of their sound, blending the record into a knotted cohesive piece. On “Sheer”, Gentle Heat pares down their formula to the point that every piece becomes essential and immediate even as they are weaving together layers of sound.

According to guitarist/ vocalist David Algrim, “The idea for this project has always been to create sonically dense music viewed through the lens of pop structure. With “Sheer“, the goal was to refine that concept to its most concise form.”

The result is a dynamic sound as likely to excite seasoned shoegaze listeners as it is to turn new heads in the back of the venue bar. While the line-up has changed since the band’s inception, Gentle Heat has maintained a musical coherence through their four releases that affords the germination of new ideas and fresh sounds while remaining reverent to their past. The synthesis of experience and influences offered up on “Sheer” marks a big step forward for the group, and with it, a momentum that is proportional to the energy of their sound.

At the time of this recording Gentle Heat was:
David Algrim- Guitar, Vocals, Keys
Sarah Clausen- Keys, Vocals
Tim Mack- Drums
Leon Owusu- Bass
Joe Suihkonen- Guitar

7″ Singles 1963-1966′ is a new seven-inch vinyl box set that features The Rolling Stones’ first 18 singles. A second volume will follow next year, which is a new, limited edition seven-inch singles box set that includes reproductions of the first 18 vinyl singles and EPs as issued by Decca and London Records.

The set includes three early multi-track EPs and two versions of both “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Get Off Of My Cloud”, each with alternate London and Decca B-sides.

The box – which features nine top 20 hits and five number ones – includes period-correct picture sleeve art, comes with a 32-page book with extensive sleeve notes by Nigel Williamson, and a set of five photo cards and a poster, all housed in a hard-shell box. All tracks are all remastered by engineer Bob Ludwig.

“7″ Singles 1963-1966″ will be released on 10th June 2022 via ABKCO Records. A second box, “1966-1971“, will be released next year.

There’s always a sense of timelessness to Kevin Morby’s work, like you are listening to one of the best records from the 1970s for the first time. His seventh studio LP (I think we counted that right) began with Kevin Morby absentmindedly flipping through a box of old family photos in the basement of his childhood home in Kansas City. Just hours before, at a family dinner, his father had collapsed in front of him and had to be rushed to the hospital. That night Morby still felt the shock and fear lodged in his bones. So he gazed at the images until one of the pictures jumped out at him: his father as a young man, proud and strong and filled with confidence, posing on a lawn with his shirt off.

This was in January of 2020. As the months went on and the world dramatically changed around him, Morby felt an eerie similarity between his feelings of that night and the atmosphere of those spring days. Fear, anxiety, hope and resilience all churning together. The themes began twisting in his mind. History, trauma and the grand fight against time. Having the courage to dream, even while knowing the tragedy that often awaits those who dare to dream.

“Rock Bottom” by Kevin Morby from the forthcoming album ‘This Is A Photograph’, out May 13th on Dead Oceans Records.

Connecting to the themes of family and place, Morby has shot a series of photographs of his day-to-day and the recording process and signed them all for us. Such lush things to have. 

Morby meditated on these ideas. And then, he headed to Memphis. He moved into the Peabody Hotel and spent his days paying tribute and genuflecting to the dreamers he admired. In the evening, he would return to his room and document his ideas on a makeshift recording set-up, with just his guitar and a microphone. The songs, elegiac in nature, befitting all he had seen, poured out of him.

Produced by Sam Cohen (who also worked on Morby’s “Singing Saw” and “Oh My God“), “This Is A Photograph” features musical contributions from long time staples of Kevin Morby’s live band, as well as old friends and new collaborators alike. If “Oh My God” saw Morby getting celestial and in constant motion and “Sundowner” was a study in localized intent, “This Is A Photograph” finds Morby making an Americana paean, a visceral life and death, blood on the canvas outpouring. As Morby reminds us early on, time is undefeated. So what do we do while we’re still here? “This is a Photograph” of that sense of yearning. 

Such a personal set of songs, but Morby’s writing is so smart and universally alluring that when he sings, it’s about collective feeling. Collective joy, collective grief and lots of memory. “This Is A Photograph” is an absolutely fantastic album, and not just because it’s so grounded in his own experiences, but because he’s a brilliantly human songwriter who sure knows how to build some drive.

releases May 13, 2022

When the team at Atlantic Records sat down to compile the soundtrack album from the filmed account of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair, they had their work cut out for them. How could they capture the essence of such a momentous event, one that went on for three days and nights on a recorded album? The “Woodstock” concert film, released on March 26th, 1970 had, after all, run for more than three hours. How could that possibly be condensed onto a record?

The answer was that it could not, so Atlantic put it out as a three-LP set. “Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More”, released on May 11th, 1970, on Atlantic’s Cotillion subsidiary, was embraced by record buyers much as the film had been.

The soundtrack couldn’t really lose. After all, presumably each of the 400,000 attendees would want it as a souvenir copy those sales alone would propel the set to platinum level. But its appeal, naturally, was much wider within a year of the fest, the name Woodstock had already taken on great cultural significance, and the music was of such consistently high quality that any fan of rock and folk music would want to add this one to the collection.

Atlantic Records made a wise decision not to follow the actual sequence of the performances from the festival on the album. Where singer Richie Havens had actually opened the event on Friday, August 15th, here he was relegated to the third position, following John Sebastian’s solo “I Had a Dream”—which captured the spirit of Woodstock so simply and sublimely—and Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country,” used in the film as intro music to set the scene. Most of the acoustic music is relegated to the first two discs before the electric rock, soul and blues take over. Most, but not all, of the real heavyweights are represented—the Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Joe Cocker, Santana and, of course, Jimi Hendrix, the last artist to perform.

For whatever reason, the label included one track by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, “Sea of Madness,” that was actually recorded the month after Woodstock at New York City’s Fillmore East. They wisely included CS&N’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from the festival.

In those days, most listeners played record albums on phonographs that allowed them to stack one disc atop the other, so in order to allow for a relatively uninterrupted stream of music, Atlantic placed side six on the flip side of side one, and so forth. For the cover, the label chose a now-iconic photograph of a drained-looking, blanketed couple embracing toward the end of the event, litter all about them. (They were still together as of 50 years later.)

The “Woodstock” soundtrack raised the bar for rock concert albums, and did so well that Atlantic, to no one’s surprise, released a two-LP sequel, “Woodstock Two”, in 1971. Even then, between the two set, several key acts that played the festival were not included, among them Janis Joplin, the Band, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ravi Shankar, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Johnny Winter.

Most of those omitted artists were finally represented on the four-CD boxed set of Woodstock performances released by Rhino Records on the fest’s 25th anniversary in 1994, and on the even more expansive six-disc set from 2009.

For the 50th anniversary in 2019, Rhino produced a huge, 38-disc boxed set containing nearly every note played at the 1969 festival. The set, limited to 1969 copies, included 432 tracks, 267 of which had never before been released. It quickly sold out.

A singer, songwriter, and author whose incendiary music has sound-tracked all three seasons of the Netflix show Sex Education, Ezra Furman has for years woven together stories of queer discontent and unlikely, fragile intimacies. Her new album ‘All of Us Flames’ widens that focus to a communal scope, painting transformative connections among people who unsettle the stories power tells to sustain itself.

Ezra says: Big day, my darlings. Our new song “Forever in Sunset” is here, with a beautiful music video accompanying it, AND I finally get to tell you that we are putting out a new album August 26th

Produced by John Congleton in L.A., ‘All of Us Flames’ unleashes Furman’s song writing in an open, vivid sound world whose boldness heightens the music’s urgency. The record arrives as the third instalment in a trilogy of albums, beginning with 2018’s Springsteen-inflected road saga “Transangelic Exodus“and continuing with the punk rock fury of 2019’s “Twelve Nudes”.

This is a first person plural album, Furman says. It’s a queer album for the stage of life when you start to understand that you are not a lone wolf, but depend on finding your family, your people, how you work as part of a larger whole. I wanted to make songs for use by threatened communities, and particularly the ones I belong to: trans people and Jews.

New Album ‘All Of Us Flames’ Out August 26 On Anti Records + Bella Union.

“Half a Human” is a collection of six songs created between two different worlds. While the architecture of each was constructed during sessions for 2020’s “The Main Thing“, the tracks came to life when the band began trading the material back and forth remotely throughout the pandemic. They found new ways of working together as they further explored the emotional landscapes they’ve been perfecting for more than a decade, and in taking stock of themselves and the uncertainty of their future, “Half a Human” helped them arrive at a new thesis statement for the band.

New Jersey’s Real Estate have seen it all, The band are the closest thing to the power pop and jangle current renaissance. Since their first album in 2009, The suburban sky-gazers have survived the acrimonious departure of a disgraced founding member, been welcomed onstage by Special Agent Dale Cooper, The band have five flawless albums under their red blazers. With a timbre that can most aptly be described as—and I’m reluctant to use the word as such breezy, their feathery pop textures are accessible enough for your parents, while their Tom Verlaine–indebted guitar lattices endear and intimidate peers.

Real Estate have their formula locked and loaded, avowed abiders of the “if it ain’t broke” platitude—and isn’t that what jangle pop is all about? Finding a new way to tell an old story. 

Real Estate – “Half a Human” EP,’ out now on Domino Record Co.

Wilco have announced a new album, “Cruel Country”, and shared its first single, “Falling Apart (Right Now),” via a video for the new song. “Cruel Country” is due out May 27th via the band’s own dBpm label. The album is due out the same weekend as the band’s Solid Sound Festival in North Adams, MA and they will perform the album at the festival. The black & white “Falling Apart (Right Now)” video showcases the band in the studio working on the song.

As its title suggests, “Cruel Country” embraces the band’s Americana side. “There have been elements of Country music in everything we’ve ever done,” says frontman Jeff Tweedy in a press release. “We’ve never been particularly comfortable with accepting that definition, the idea that I was making Country music. But now, having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making Country.”

Wilco—Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Pat Sansone, and Nels Cline recorded almost everything on the album live in the studio together, with minimal overdubs, recording at the band’s own The Loft recording studio in Chicago. “It’s a style of recording that forces a band to surrender control and learn to trust each other, along with each others’ imperfections, musical and otherwise,” says Tweedy. “But when it’s working the way it’s supposed to, it feels like gathering around some wild collective instrument, one that requires six sets of hands to play.”

“Cruel Country” is a concept album of sorts, one that loosely chronicles the history of the United States. “It isn’t always direct and easy to spot, but there are flashes of clarity,” Tweedy explains. “It’s all mixed up and mixed in, the way my personal feelings about America are often woven with all of our deep collective myths. Simply put, people come and problems emerge. Worlds collide. It’s beautiful. And cruel.”

Tweedy adds: “The specifics of an American identity begin to blur for me as the record moves toward the light and opens itself up to more cosmic solutions—coping with fear, without belonging to any nation or group other than humanity itself.”

“Cruel Country” isn’t just about history, but also comments on the troubled times we’re currently living in. “More than any other genre, Country music, to me, a white kid from middle-class middle America, has always been the ideal place to comment on what most troubles my mind—which for more than a little while now has been the country where I was born, these United States,” says Tweedy. “And because it is the country I love, and because it’s Country music that I love, I feel a responsibility to investigate their mirrored problematic natures. I believe it’s important to challenge our affections for things that are flawed.

“Country music is simply designed to aim squarely at the low-hanging fruit of the truth. If someone can sing it, and it’s given a voice… well, then it becomes very hard not to see. We’re looking at it. It’s a cruel country, and it’s also beautiful. Love it or leave it. Or if you can’t love it, maybe you’ve already left.”

Wilco also recently announced a massive 20th anniversary reissue of their 2002 album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” that features a whopping 82 previously unreleased tracks, including a 2002 live recording of “Reservations,” which they shared when announcing the reissue. They also performed the album’s “Poor Places” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The reissue is due out September 16th via Nonesuch Records.

The band’s annual Solid Sound Festival will take place this May, featuring Japanese Breakfast, Sylvan Esso, Hand Habits, Iceage, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, among many others. Their last studio album, “Ode to Joy”, came out in 2019 via dBpm. 

The dynamic Chicago rock band Wilco returns with its 12th studio album, the first of its kind. “Cruel Country” is the band’s exploration of the genre they’ve often been defined by but, until now, never fully embraced. The double album features 21 Jeff Tweedy-penned tracks, made almost entirely of live takes, created with all six members together in The Loft for the first time since the 2011 release “The Whole Love“. “Cruel Country” will be available as a digital download on May 27th.

Black Midi have announced a new album, “Hellfire”, and a North American tour. Check out Gustaf Holtenäs’ video for new song “Welcome to Hell” below, along with the dates and the album art, which was, once again, designed by David Rudnick. If “Cavalcade” was a drama, “Hellfire” is like an epic action film,” the band’s Geordie Greep said in a press release.

The band released that second album, “Cavalcade“, last year, followed by “Cavalcovers”, an EP featuring covers of Taylor Swift, King Crimson, and Captain Beefheart.

In a press release,

said: Almost everyone depicted is a kind of scumbag. Almost everything I write is from a true thing, something I experienced and exaggerated and wrote down. I don’t believe in Hell, but all that old world folly is great for songs, I’ve always loved movies and anything else with a depiction of Hell. Dante’s Inferno. When Homer goes to Hell in The Simpsons. There’s a robot Hell in Futurama. Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jewish writer who portrays a Satan interfering in people’s lives. There’s loads!.

If you preorder from select retailers you’ll receive one bonus 7” Flexi out of 6 possible songs, past and present, that we performed live at Electrical Audio – recorded by Steve Albini. 5 of them have been chosen already but the 6th, which is available from the BM and Rough Trade Webstores,

‘Hellfire’ is our Third Album for @roughtraderecords is out July 15th – Produced by Marta Salogni, Co-Produced by Max ‘Sizzle’ Goulding

New Album ‘Hellfire’ is out 15th July.