The Fat Angel Sings

Songs created in the shadow of terror and loss, but that crackle and pop with defiance “Fear Fear” is a record made for agitating and dancing, for heart and soul, for here, now and tomorrow. It’s a record that explores juxtaposition; that of life and death, acceptance and isolation, environment and humanity, hope and despair, the real world and the digital world. That top to bottom rigour, the complete vision is what makes the second album from Working Men’s Club such a stunning and unique achievement.

Their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, released in summer 2020, was the sound of singer and songwriter Syd Minsky-Sargeant processing a teenage life in Todmorden in the Upper Calder Valley. He was 16 when he wrote some of those songs, now 20, he had to get up and out of the Valley. “The first album was mostly a personal documentation lyrically, this is a blur between personal and a third-person perspective of what was going on. “Fear Fear” documents the last two years. Yes, there is bleakness – but there is also hope and empathy. “I like the contrast of it being happy, uplifting music and really dark lyrics. It’s not a minimal record, certainly compared to the first one. That’s because there’s been a lot more going on that needed to be said.”

Making the busy feel finessed and the dreadful feel magical – “Fear Fear” manages those feats, and then some. Or, as Syd Minksy-Sargeant puts it: “We just set out to make the best-sounding album we could.” 

“Skinty Fia,” the newest song from Fontaines D.C. is out now! The titular track is the latest single from their highly anticipated third studio album, “Skinty Fia“, out April 22nd. The track comes with a Hugh Mulhern-directed music video, which shows frontman Grian Chatten maneuvering his way through a bustling party crowd that slowly morphs into a surrealist dreamscape. 

The band will also be going back on tour across the UK & Ireland in November and December, in addition to their European and North American tour dates starting this Spring.

The album we’ve been waiting to share with you for pretty much a year. Sorry it’s not disco, we lied. It’s an album of terrible lows and even worse highs. We love yous all. Fontaines D.C. x

the new album, “Skinty Fia“, out 22nd April on Partisan Records:

Somewhere along a frayed thread of time, a King Gizzard and a Tropical Fuck Storm convened under the cloak of night for a slumber party of the satanic persuasion…Pumped full of booze and adrenaline, two of psych-rock’s most powerful joined forces for a 20-minute “Hatjam” chockfull of sax skronks, brick-heavy distortion, and punchy riffs. “Satanic Slumber Party” arrives just in time for your possessed pleasure

“Satanic Slumber Party Part 2 (Midnight In Sodom)” from Tropical Fuck Storm + King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Track comes off the three part masterpiece ‘Satanic Slumber Party’.

Directed by Nina Renee (GOODY GOODY GUMDROPS), and Tropical Fuck Storm. Edited and SPX by Sam Mapplebeck, first AD Rebecca Hawkey, Second AD Helena Holmes. Special guest star Bob Kean as Uncle Marty.

Glenn Donaldson has always been prolific (Art Museums, Skygreen Leopards, Vacant Gardens, Blithe Sons, etc.) but he seems to have hit on a mother vein of inspiration recently with his nom de plume The Reds Pinks and Purples. While the USA waits for the “Summer at Land’s End” LP to make it to shops, Donaldson, not constrained by mortal production backlogs went and put out a download only single so fine that it’ll make you forget whatever you just heard. “The Slow Torture of an Hourly Wage” is a song that Morrissey would kill for to bring him out of irrelevance.

Featuring a maudlin harmonica melody that sort of reminds you of “Hand in Glove”, but since the 80’s are 40 years ago and old idols have fallen your mileage may vary.  The fact that Donaldson tosses great shit like this off for free has me questioning the internet economy.  Can someone make this an NFT of this so this guy can get paid?

“As great masters in cataloguing the human condition, Placebo’s unique way of examining both its flaws and beauty finds fertile ground in 2021. Crawling out of the pandemic into a landscape of intolerance, division, tech-saturation and imminent eco-catastrophe, theirs is a voice that has rarely felt more significant to contemporary discourse, and more appropriate to sing these stories to the world. Within the magnetic slow-burn of new track “Surrounded By Spies” no punches are pulled in confronting the erosion of civil liberties, as Brian Molko’s deft lyrical delivery is married to a creeping sense of claustrophobia that fittingly makes the walls feel as though they are closing in from all around.

Placebo released a new track called ‘Surrounded By Spies’.The duo – comprised of Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal – recently returned with their first single in five years, ‘Beautiful James’. It served as a taste of the group’s forthcoming eighth album, the follow-up to 2013’s ‘Loud Like Love’.

Taking to social media Placebo confirmed that they’ll share another new song this month. ‘Surrounded By Spies’. “We had a lot of get-up-and-go, and then everything that happened, happened, so everything is sort of delayed by about two years now,” he said.

“I know it was frustrating for the fans. It was certainly very frustrating for us as well, the interminable wait to put out new music, but at least it was there. We knew we had it.”

Molko comments: “I began writing the lyrics when I discovered my neighbours were spying on me on behalf of parties with a nefarious agenda. I then began to ponder the countless ways in which our privacy has been eroded and stolen since the introduction of worldwide CCTV cameras that now employ racist facial recognition technologies; the rise of the internet and the cell-phone, which has turned practically every user into a paparazzo and spectators in their own lives, and how we have mostly all offered up personal information to enormous multinationals whose sole intent is to exploit us.”

The singer also said that Placebo had switched up their writing process this time around in an effort to “not make it easy on ourselves”.

“I have what I would describe as a boredom problem,” Molko explained. “Stefan [Olsdal, bassist and guitarist] has often said that he’s never met anyone with a lower boredom threshold than myself – and that really influences and informs the way that we work.”

A release date for Placebo’s new forthcoming album ‘Never Let Me Go’ – out March 25th, 2022.