The Fat Angel Sings

Formed in London a decade ago, Petrol Girls aren’t just your average paint-by-numbers punk band. The four-piece—Ren Aldridge, Liepa Kuraitė, Joe York, and Zock Astpai—took their name from the Pétroleuses, quasi-mythical lower-class female supporters of France’s revolutionary government the Paris Commune, which seized power in March 1871 and remained there for just over two months. The Pétroleuses were blamed for setting buildings on fire in solidarity with the Paris Commune as it was falling, though there was no evidence to suggest any women had actually committed arson. That didn’t stop a number of them being put on trial, however, with one being executed for her supposed involvement.

It’s a perfect representation of patriarchy at work, but it also illustrates the radical politics that inspire Petrol Girls’ vicious songs. And while the band may not set fire to buildings, those songs are nevertheless utterly incendiary. “Baby” is the band’s third full-length and, sadly, seethes with righteous anger at the state of the world today. Perhaps it’s the title of pre-album single “Baby, I Had An Abortion” that will stand out most, for obvious reasons—not least because of what’s happening with Roe v. Wade in the US right now—but from beginning to end this is a record that doesn’t shy from telling the ugly, sad truth about the mess we’re in. It’s—pun actually not intended—incredibly fiery stuff that walks the walk as much as it talks the talk, marking Petrol Girls out as one of the most important and inspiring political punk acts around today. 

Here, vocalist Ren Aldridge talks us through “Baby’s” 10 tracks. When the revolution comes, you can bet she’ll be right on the front lines.

1. “Preachers”

“Preachers” sets the tone for the direction [Guitarist Joe York] wanted to push the album in musically. It’s based on a very minimal but incessantly repetitive riff, inspired more by electronic genres than rock, eventually building to a more rocking chorus. It also really showcases the more playful approach I wanted to take lyrically on a lot of this record, and kicks back at the holier-than-thou attitude people sometimes give off in radical left communities, which ironically can feel a lot like a church village at times. 

2. “Feed My Fire”

This one’s musically pretty unhinged, switching between stressful verses and an almost comical pop-rock chorus. [Drummer Zock] even got his woodblock in there at one point. And, miraculously, a cellist happened to stop by the studio with his cello, meaning Joe could fulfill his idea for a cello line through the verses. Lyrically, I was playing with the imagery of my fire as something I need to keep burning without it getting out of control and reducing me to ash—i.e. burn out—which I was recovering from as we wrote the record. It’s a reflection of the push, push, push collapse cycle I’m stuck in. The outro is one of my favourite bits on the record—the kind of gospel-style harmonies are so over the top and make it even more unhinged, especially after the totally brutal banshee section before! 

3. “Baby, I Had an Abortion”

All credit to Joe for coming up with the idea of adding “Baby” to this chorus lyric. It’s the absolute cherry on top of this deliberately taunting and defiantly celebratory pro-abortion banger. The idea for this track came directly from confrontations I’ve had with pro-lifers since having my own abortion in 2018. I bumped into a pro-life demo one morning, and found myself screaming “I had an abortion and I’m not sorry!” at them. I continued doing this at counter-demos but it felt too serious, I didn’t want to dignify them with a serious response. 

So the idea for this track pretty much grew from my desire to counter-demo with dance routines and witch costumes! We’ve been using this track and related merch to fundraise for Abortion Without Borders and Brigid Alliance. And the song itself is an attack on the shame and stigma surrounding abortion, which is preyed on when politicians build laws against us.

4. “Clowns”

We built this one up around another one of Joe’s repetitive unhinged riffs. It sounded like a deranged fairground full of clowns to me, so I started messing around with the lyrics to “Stuck in the Middle with You,” but from the perspective of the clowns on the left. It started as a joke but those lyrics actually reworked perfectly to ridicule the political “middle” who act like the left are “just as bad as the right” and denounce any kind of political action as silly or pointless. I also had to think of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army! 

5. “Unsettle”

Despite being built up around another playful riff with disco-beat drums, this ended up being one of the most introspective tracks on the record. It’s something about wanting to change the direction that your life is heading, but worrying what you might lose on the way. 

6. “Fight for Our Lives”

The idea for this song grew directly from the femicide demonstrations I take part in here in Graz, Austria. I’ve painted the place and date of death of so many victims of femicide onto bed sheets to then carry through the streets as banners. Musically, the heaviness of this track reflects the heaviness of the topic; with a stripped back section to make way for the building gang vocal of “You don’t own us” before hitting the choir-like chorus vocal of “We fight for our lives.” 

We were honoured to have feminist musician and activist Janey Starling feature on this track, and specifically wrote lyrics to honour her Dignity for Dead Women campaign and the resulting press guidelines she created to change the way the media reports on fatal domestic abuse. Her strategic and visionary activism against gender-based violence is changing the world, and we’re so grateful to have her on board! Robin [Gatt] made the bass sound really heavy by tuning down to Bb—combined with the guitar sounds, it sounds atonal and gnarly, in contrast to the very melodic bridge and chorus.

7. “Violent by Design”

Thankfully, Janey co-wrote the lyrics to this track with me, as it was both a rhythmical nightmare and politically very challenging in terms of what we wanted to get across. Essentially this track is an attempt to speak from my position as a middle class white woman to other similarly privileged people, and incite us to reject the idea that the police protect us, both in solidarity with communities who are routinely brutalized by the police and in recognition that the police are not part of the solution to violence against women and marginalised genders—they are part of the problem. The trial of PC Wayne Couzens who used his police powers to abduct, rape, and murder Sarah Everard took place during our first week at the studio, and on our last day the news reported that the latest femicide in Austria had been committed by a police officer. Abolitionist feminism now! 

8. “One or the Other”

This track is another great distillation of the musical direction Joe was pushing with this record. It’s fun, incessant, and deranged! It features some very weird effects in the end section, including some great robotic backing vocals from Zock. As a feminist band, we’ve always stood against the gender binary, and this track pushes that idea to challenging binary thinking in general. 

9. “Sick & Tired”

This song is pure catharsis for me, especially the sung chorus at the end. The riff was actually something Joe already had when we were writing our last album, and is a nod to “Restless” from our first record. The spoken vocal on the verses was inspired by Listener, and is an exploration of all the things I’m sick and tired of that are literally making me sick. I was recovering from a pretty serious bout of depression and burnout when we wrote this record, and I truly believe there are a lot of political reasons why I ended up in that state. Mental health is so often individualized, but who is really coping under capitalism? 

10. “Bones”

Joe sent over the guitar for this chorus during the winter lockdown in early 2021 when we were struggling a lot mentally. I really connected to it emotionally, and wrote the chorus lyrics of “Take away the noise and I am bones / Built the rhythms of my life on all this” over the top, encapsulating a lot of what I was feeling at the time. It ended up being a challenging track to finish, but I love hearing all of our voices belting that chorus, and I think, as a reflection on the ups and downs of being a musician, it works as a perfect album closer.

Blondie shared the original demo of their track “Go Through It” that was originally recorded in 1980. It comes from the forthcoming box set “Blondie: Against the Odds 1974-1982“, which is out August 26th via UMe and The Numero Group. It’s the first proper archive from the punk trailblazers, spawned from the two decades worth of material gathering dust in Chris Stein’s Woodstock barn.

The box set includes 124 songs and 36 previously unreleased recordings. There’s the band’s first basement studio session and a bunch of outtakes and alternate versions, including the one we’re hearing today. “Go Through It” made its way onto the A-side of their 1980 album “Autoamerican”, which was a concept album focused on American pop culture.

From first ever authorized and in-depth archive in Blondie’s history, this deluxe 4LP features the very best of the out-takes & rarties from the Super Deluxe Collectors’ Edition, remastered from the original analogue tapes and cut at Abbey Road Studios. Available on 4LP black vinyl with 112 page book featuring an exhaustive look at Blondie’s international notoriety via picture sleeves and regional pressings.

The London trio’s third album is full of hallucinogenic scenes where jazz, prog, electronic, and punk pretzel around each other until it looks like one musical gordian knot.

Black Midi continues to be a genre atom smasher on their third album, “Hellfire“. On each successive record, the group has refused to settle on just rock, jazz, electronic, or punk music. Their 2019 debut “Schlagenheim” was constructed from an unhinged series of improvisational jam sessions, while 2021’s “Cavalcade” then shifted to more closely considered prog-rock night terrors. Black Midi never sticks to one sound, and that’s part of what’s so appealing or confounding about them, depending on who you’re talking to.

On “Hellfire“, the London group embodies the phrases yelped by vocalist/guitarist Geordie Greep at the beginning of the record: “There’s always something… an odd twitch, hearing loss, a ringing noise, new flesh.”

The band’s Geordie Greep explains in a press release: “‘Sugar/Tzu’ imagines that in 2163 it’s possible to see a championship fight between two 600 lb men. Albeit in a so-called ‘Leadweight’ division. The fight is between Sun Sugar and Sun Tzu; the latter being a fan of the Chinese general, hoping to channel his strength; and the former looking to continue the lineage of Sugar Ray Robinson, Leonard etc.

“Present at their battle is a young boy who stands just over three feet tall. At ringside, he briefly exchanges a glance with Sun Sugar, who, in perhaps an attempt to inspire, comes over to the boy and shakes his hand. It is then revealed, as the contender walks back to the action, that the boy is in fact a killer. He takes a small pistol from his little jacket and shoots the man in the back, honour be damned. The boy believes this not to be a cruel act, but a virtuous one, with his interference giving the audience an ultimate, rare entertainment.

“As Sun Sugar hits the deck, the crowd cheer and scream, believing this only to be the result of a particularly vicious shot from Sun Tzu.

“There is a little joke here. It is regular for a boxing audience to bemoan an early stoppage, the official stepping in to save a fighter who could’ve gone on. And while there is the surface agreement of most that ‘it was the right thing to do,’ there seems to be often left unsaid the fact that we actually do want to see a brutal knockout. And in the split second where these one-shot, punch-perfect, coma-inducing blows do occur, there is an undeniable rush. The boy in this story feels he is a hero for giving the crowd what they all really want. This is not to say the song is a critique of boxing or anything of the like—I love the sport—but it is an interesting and rare phenomenon worth exploring.”

The title track prominently features an ominous pipe organ, which is reminiscent of the soundtracks for deadly Roman gladiatorial games. This type of tension ratchets up throughout the album’s 38-minute runtime while influences drop on the listener in waves, with bits of early Genesis, Captain Beefheart, and ’70s jazz-fusion icons Magma tumbling over each other as each track is revealed in full. 

The concept for the album is set during a war with vivid military characters serving as the nervous mouthpieces of each track. The subject matter of each song is on the seedier side—“The Defence” and “Dangerous Liaisons” are from the perspective of a brothel owner and hired killer, respectively. World War I and Dickensian poetry feature prominently as influences for Greep, and his delivery remains truly alien. “Still” is the most melodic the dark album ever gets as it contorts and changes shape.

It’s a modern mutation on a traditional strain of ’70s rock and jazz jamming, but Black Midi remain mostly appealing three albums into their ascendant career. It’ll be intriguing to see what they mutate into for their fourth effort.

Los Angeles indie band Goon have been staying busy, debuting a new line-up earlier this year with their “Paint By Numbers, Vol. 1” EP, and sharing a Bandcamp exclusive “Six Covers” EP in support of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. Last month they returned again with another new single, “Angelnumber 1210,” alongside news of the band’s sophomore LP, “Hour of Green Evening”, out July 15th. Today they’re back again with the record’s second single, “Ochre,” along with an accompanying video.

“Ochre” is a bit of a different take on the placid suburban soundscapes found throughout “Hour of Green Evening”. The band’s latest effort is more sparse and nocturnal, capturing the surreal unreality of a sleepless night (“I wandered out of bed / Cause there’s a firing line in my head / And it worked for a minute / Open my evil eye”). In this setting, frontman Kenny Becker and company find an alluring moon-lit beauty, conjured via haunting vocal melodies, the rhythm section’s playful swing, and a sweeping piano solo from Spoon’s Alex Fischel.

Becker explains of “Ochre”, “This track centers around anxieties and depression. Like that feeling when you’re laying in bed wide awake at 3 am and your mind is racing so much that you just have to get up and walk around.

To me, the ‘arrow’ refers to the inevitable passage of time. Knowing that every moment will eventually pass, and therefore just trying to focus on the present. This was an especially fun one to record because it’s the only Goon song so far that swings. Also, our brilliant buddy Alex Fischel plays piano on this track, and he totally improvised that piano bit at the very end.

I shot this video using a junky little point and shoot camera made in 2009. To me, its lo-fi digital grittiness feels very fitting with the introspective and longing vibe of the song. All the songs on this album correlate pretty strongly with specific times of day. I always pictured “Ochre” occurring somewhere in that formless, transitional moment between night and day, where everything is like hauntingly blue.

“Hour Of Green Evening” out everywhere on July 15th.

Fonteyn—a.k.a. singer-songwriter Suzanne May, has a knack for crafting sepia-tone sunshine pop that shamelessly, satisfyingly evokes one of her idols: Carole King. But a new visual for “Girl on a Motorcycle”—directed by May and Julianne Brough edited by May—shows the UK-born, Salt Lake City–based musician embodying another legend: Marianne Faithfull. 

“Girl on a Motorcycle’ is an homage to the 1968 film of the same name,” says May. “The song seeks to capture the quirky, ethereal tone of the film while at the same time give the feel of a motorcycle engine chugging along. The video is heavily inspired by the imagery of the film and the lead character, played by Marianne Faithfull, and her bewitching performance.”

In the original film, Faithfull’s character, Rebecca, ditches her husband via motorcycle to reconnect with a lover. For Fonteyn, the theme of freedom is paramount: “Girl, rebellion is the only thing that’s keeping you alive,” she sings in the track. “Girl, like a little mouse inside your cage until you ride.”

“Girl on a Motorcycle” is the third single off Fonteyn’s forthcoming EP “Trip the Light Fantastic”.

It was only meant to be one show. If you’ve been following the Pavement reunion, you’ve probably heard Stephen Malkmus—the band’s fetishized chanteur—temper the significance of reunion número dos. He’s right, of course. They agreed to a Spanish sojourn, Primavera Sound, in order to shoot the breeze with old friends (Yo La Tengo, Dinosaur Jr., and Kim Gordon were among the alternarock greats from the stacked line-up) and, as Malkmus half-joked before anything further was announced, “I’m staying in a hotel right across the street, and I have immediate entrance, and there’s beer on tap anywhere I walk, and everyone likes me and stuff.” 

Asserting his trademark disinterest maintains self-preservation for both himself and his bandmates should the calls of “nostalgia bait” start to percolate. Thankfully, that’s not been the case. Indeed, unlike the perfunctory reunions of some of their peers , Pavement’s is off to an uncharacteristically auspicious start. “Originally we were going to play one show and then see if we fell in love again,” they told Primavera’s radio program, but with shows in 13 countries booked throughout the fall, it looks like the third iteration of Pavement gets the honeymoon that never was.

The “Harness Your Hopes” official music video, directed by Alex Ross Perry and starring Sophie Thatcher. “Harness Your Hopes” is featured on the upcoming re-issue of the ‘Spit on a Stranger’ EP, out April 8th on Matador Records.

The Mountain Goats continue to be highly prolific and consistently great. The indie folk vets’ latest LP was produced by Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, and band leader John Darnielle says, “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.” Sounds like a very Mountain Goats-y concept, and the recently released lead single finds the band’s trademark sound in great shape.

When I write an album that revolves around a theme, it usually takes two or three songs before I notice what’s going on. There’s always one song that becomes the ‘might as well dive all the way in’ song and on “Bleed Out” that song was “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome,” written while watching a French action movie way past my normal bedtime. Once I had the chorus of this one I started asking myself the kinds of questions that usually end up shaping the album: What if I just wrote all the songs on guitar? What if I leaned into the up-tempo ones? In recent years I shy away from the fist-punch no-brakes anthemic style but here I figured, you know, no point just wading around in blood if I’m already in knee-deep.

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

Taken from the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, this fantastic clip of Campbell introducing U.S. TV audiences to a very english rock band “The Cream.” It took place on July 14th, 1968 when the then-32-year-old singer was the summertime host for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It’s a show that’s perhaps most famous for the flash-bomb explosion that damages Pete Townsend’s hearing forever, but the Smothers Brothers have always featured musical turns. Buffalo Springfield, Donovan, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Steppenwolf all guested on the show.

Cream (guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker) were promoting their third album and were no strangers to U.S. audiences either collectively or individually. The British classic rock supergroup’s 1966 debut, “Fresh Cream“, and then 1967 follow-up, “Disraeli Gears“, The latter included “Sunshine of Your Love,” which became a huge breakthrough hit when it was released as a single in January 1968.

The July 1968 double LP “Wheels of Fire” continued their commercial success. The second disc was a live album recorded in San Francisco earlier that year. The studio side included another huge hit, “White Room” which became their only Top 5 single.

In the broadcast, Campbell introduces “The three guys you are about to meet were at one time considered to be the finest studio musicians in England. They were considered the cream of the crop of their profession so they figured they were so much in demand that they started their own thing. Ladies and Gentlemen… The Cream!” Cream would break up just four months later.

The contrast of “Greetings” and “Barely” succinctly represents the overarching spirit of Gulfer, now in their tenth year as a band whose proclivities range from rousing punkish anthems to technical and exploratory indie rock. In its opening seconds, “Greetings” boasts inventive drumming and playfully intricate guitar to set the scene for a song that attempts to unpack the abundant contradictions and debaucheries that comprised our youth. There’s a hint of personal introspection in the lyrics, but singer/guitarist Vincent Ford avoids explicit resolution in favour of open-ended narration.

On “Barely” the band’s impressionistic side emerges with an upbeat, pithy composition bookended by droning atmospherics. Exploring the transactional nature of so many of our relationships, singer/guitarist Joe Therriault uses “Barely” to speak on attempts at reciprocity of kindness that ultimately fall short in our over-transactionalized world.

released July 15th, 2022

written by Gulfer:
Vincent Ford
Joseph Therriault
David Mitchell
Julien Daoust

A new limited edition Grateful Dead CD box set, “In And Out Of The Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81, ’82, ’83,” will showcase six previously unreleased concerts recorded at Madison Square Garden between 1981 and 1983.

Due to release September 23rd, “In And Out Of The Garden” will consist of a 17 CDs in a custom box featuring artwork by Dave Van Patten, with detailed liner notes by award-winning music journalist David Fricke exploring the band’s connection to New York City. The box set will be numbered and limited to 12,500, and a truncated three-CD version featuring just one concert from 3/9/81 will also be available along with digital downloads of both versions.

“As Jerry Garcia famously said, Madison Square Garden was ‘juiced.’ It had an energy unlike any other venue the Grateful Dead played, particularly of this size, owing to the symbiotic relationship between the Dead, the Dead Heads, and New York City itself, says Grateful Dead legacy manager and archivist David Lemieux. “The Dead didn’t play the Garden until 1979, almost the midpoint of their performing career. but once they got rolling, they made it a home away from home, playing 10 shows in the next 15 years. These performances from 1981, 1982, and 1983 are six of the best the Dead played at the Garden, any of which could have been released on their own. We’re thrilled, though, to allow these six complementary shows to be housed together, each one its own story, its own event, but all contributing to the story that is the entirety of the Dead’s 52 show run at Madison Square Garden.”

The recording captures an under-appreciated era of ’80s Dead when the addition of keyboardist Brent Mydland added fuel to the band’s already blazing fire. Mydland’s powerful voice and spirited keyboard playing brought new energy to old songs like “The Wheel”, “Truckin’”, and “Eyes of The World” and inspired the band to break out long-neglected rarities like “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” and “Crazy Fingers”.

The concerts featured in the collection were recorded between the release of 1980’s “Go To Heaven” and 1987’s “In The Dark” during a time when the band continued to write and road-test new compositions. Four songs that would ultimately end up on “In The Dark” are featured on the recording, including “Touch Of Grey”, “Hell In A Bucket”, “Throwing Stones”, and “West L.A. Fadeaway”, plus the B-side, “My Brother Esau”. Get a taste of the upcoming archival release with audio of “Feel Like A Stranger” from March 9th, 1981. “Since its debut in 1980, ‘Feel Like A Stranger’ offered the Grateful Dead another song with plenty of room internally to stretch out,” Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux wrote. “By a year into its life, the song often went to nearly 10 minutes, and often opened shows. This rendition from March 9th, 1981 is driven with the controlled chaos that is the Grateful Dead at their best.”

“In And Out Of The Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81, ’82, ’83” was mastered by Jeffrey Norman and features newly restored and speed-corrected audio by Plangent Processes. 

“In And Out Of The Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81, ’82, ’83″ Box Set