The Fat Angel Sings

Rising UK post-rock band Caroline‘s self-titled debut album arrives this Friday (25th) via Rough Trade and ahead of the release comes the album version of “Dark Blue,” which the band shared a live session version of back in 2020. The band’s self-described mix of Midwest emo and Appalachian folk is fine form on this gorgeous track,

this UK eight-piece caroline’s eponymous debut album often cascades with force like an avalanche, squalling and rumbling on the edge of all-out collapse. At other points they slip back into impossibly fragile moments of quiet – a simple bassline or a rattle of snare the only sound amid a dark sea of silence. caroline know exactly the right balance between restraint and release. These songs are expansive and emotive pieces, their rich palette drawing on a mixture of choral singing, Midwestern emo and O’Malley and Llewellyn’s roots in Appalachian folk.

“Sometimes things sound much better when there’s empty space,” says Llewellyn. “Sometimes you might populate [a song] with too many things and forget that an element on its own is enough.”

Elsewhere on the record the band have employed a collage-like technique, combining snippets of lo-fi recordings from a myriad of different locations – a barn in France, the members’ bedrooms and living rooms, the atmospheric swimming pool in which they also filmed sublime live sessions for ‘Dark blue’ and ‘Skydiving onto the library roof’ – with more traditional group sessions at the Total Refreshment Centre and their studio in Peckham.

The growth that began as a scrappy guitar band above a pub many years ago is still continuing. caroline’s astounding debut album is merely the first step.

The self-titled debut of London-based band caroline sounds like the kind of music you’d hear echoing across the barren wastelands of the post-apocalypse, reminding you of bygone days’ beauty while offering comfort that such beauty can still be found, as long as we have breath in our lungs, and each other. An eight-piece led by founding trio Casper Hughes, Jasper Llewellyn and Mike O’Malley, caroline combine choral vocals, orchestral splendor, rustic Appalachian folk accents and fearless post-rock, crafting sprawling songs that feel sparse, yet maximalist—both cosmic and distinctly of this earth. Tracks like “IWR” and “Good morning (red)” assemble and disassemble themselves in real time, with Oliver Hamilton and Magdalena McLean’s violins lending a particularly palpable emotion to their organic, protean arrangements. Silence is ever-present in caroline’s music, as if they’re constantly aware of not only what we have, but also what we stand to lose. It’s a stunning, life-affirming first full-length. 

One of the brightest hopes are New York City indiepop duo Jeanines’ self-titled debut was a charming surprise and one of the best albums of 2019, a compact, jangly hook machine full of earworm melodies and simple but perfect low-fi production. Alicia Jeanine and Jed Smith are back with Jeanines’ second album, “Don’t Wait for a Sign“, which will be out April 22nd via Slumberland. Check out the wonderful first single.

The wistful “Any Day Now” is a perfect example of what Jeanines do so well, a song lifted by Alicia’s ethereal harmonies and its “la la la” chorus. It clocks in well under two minutes long but will be stuck in your head after the first listen.

Jeanines will be heading to Europe in March to play some festival dates Paris’ L’INTERNATIONAL on 24th March and Madrid Popfest on 26th March.

Florence + The Machine is back with a new single Florence + The Machine has been teasing something, and now she’s shared a new single, “King,” with an accompanying video directed by Autumn de Wilde, which you can watch below.

“As an artist, I never actually thought about my gender that much,” Florence says about the song. “I just got on with it. I was as good as the men and I just went out there and matched them every time. But now, thinking about being a woman in my 30s and the future, I suddenly feel this tearing of my identity and my desires. That to be a performer, but also to want a family might not be as simple for me as it is for my male counterparts. I had modelled myself almost exclusively on male performers, and for the first time I felt a wall come down between me and my idols as I have to make decisions they did not.”

Irish shoegazers Just Mustard are back with a bang, treating their second LP to a Dinked exclusive variant with three A5 prints and inserts.

“Heart Under’, Just Mustard’s second album and first for Partisan Records, is an album that asks you to forget what you know. At every turn, this remarkable record reconfigures and stretches the ideas and ambition of a rock band, and turns a year of lockdown and personal struggles into a breath taking artistic statement.

The music the five friends from Dundalk, Ireland make is strikingly untraditional. Though to look at them, it appears that the band are a five-piece with uniform make-up of a vocalist, two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer, not a single one of them utilises their instrument in a confined or regular fashion.

Irish band Just Mustard will release their second album, “Heart Under” in May, and will be on tour with Fontaines D.C. before that. Check out the danceable first single.

Over four years after their acclaimed debut ‘Wednesday’, the Louth quintet are back with their noise rock and post-punk inspired take on the genre. Their first for Partisan Records, ‘Heart Under’ hears their a-typical instrumentation meet ambitious genre-bending and the post-production expertise of David Wrench.

Limited to 500 hand-numbered copies.

‘Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky’ is the third full-length album by Brighton’s acclaimed indie types Porridge Radio. Following their Mercury Music Prize nominated album ‘Every Bad’, the album sees singer and songwriter Dana Margolin searching for a balance between the joy, fear and endlessness in her life through infectious indie anthems. 

“Back To The Radio” by Porridge Radio from the forthcoming album ‘Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky’ out May 20th on Secretly Canadian.

The Cocteau Twins frontwoman Elizabeth Fraser, who has undergone a slight re-emergence in recent years, will release her first new music in more than a decade on Record Store Day via a “finally finished” 12-inch vinyl EP featuring five songs by Fraser and her partner Damon Reece.

Not much is yet known about Fraser’s new music with Reece, though at least one of the songs appears to have been previously released, though possibly in a different form. The first of the EP’s five tracks is “Underwater,” the same name as an electronic single Fraser released in the U.K. in 2000.

And two of the other songs “Golden Air” and “Make Lovely the Day” appear to have been performed by Fraser during her rare sets at the U.K.’s Meltdown Festival in 2012, along with “Underwater,” in appearances that had been billed as mixing new music from an anticipated solo album with Cocteaus classics.

The new music will be the first released by Fraser since her one-off 2009 single “Moses,” a song she’d written with Reece with their friend Jake-Drake Brockman that was released following Brockman’s death that year in a motorcycle crash.

The EP’s release comes after Fraser has become more musically visible in recent years.

Sun’s Signature is a 5 track EP of music by Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins) and Damon Reece (Spiritualized, Echo & the Bunnymen, Lupine Howl). Pressed on black vinyl, housed inside a single sleeve jacket and printed inner sleeve.

Set to release an EP on Partisan Records in April under the name “Sun’s Signature.”

Limited to 3,700 copies, it will be available exclusively in store on Saturday April 23rd, 2022.

Prince’s 1995 album The Gold Experience (his first to be credited to that unpronounceable squiggle) will be reissued for Record Store Day 2022 a special 2LP gold vinyl edition being made available for this year’s Record Store Day.

The album features the UK number one single ‘The Most Beautiful Girl’ in the World’ and this reissue does indeed include that song after the resolution of a legal dispute. Two further singles, ‘I Hate U’ and ‘Gold’ were both top 20 singles in Britain. In fact, ‘Gold’ peaked at number 10 and was therefore Prince’s last top ten single in the UK, in his lifetime, if we don’t count the reissue of 1999 .

It was a confusing time for the record-buying public. Prince was in dispute with his label, had an enormous hit (‘The Most Beautiful Girl In The World’) on his own NPG Records label and wrote ‘Slave’ on his cheek. The chart-topping single was issued in February ’94 but “The Gold Experience” wasn’t issued until September 1995. In between the album “Come” was grudgingly put out, along with the rather good single ‘Letitgo’.

It’s a little surprising that there’s no word of a retail black vinyl to go with the CD reissue but we’ll see what happens. Meanwhile the video to ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” has been newly-restored to HD and you can watch it above.

Glenn Donaldson and  The Reds, Pinks & Purples are one of those very few Prolific musicians where you literally Can make a Leap of Faith and Buy the Album Sight unseen before you even listen to A Few Seconds of The First Song. I Did, It’s that Good. Frankly Questioning the Beautiful Poetic Janglers Style and Music output at this point… if your into Indie-pop… is like Questioning whether it’s going to Rain in the Month of April. If it had anything to do with Glenn’s Song writing Capability, it’d rain Everyday 

Earlier this year, The Reds, Pinks and Purples released the wonderful new album “Summer at Land’s End” and they’re already back with a follow-up EP.

Glen Donaldson is in a bit of a prolific run. Under his moniker of The Reds, Pinks and Purples, he’s released four albums in four years, with the most recent arriving only last month. Along the way, he’s released a smattering on non-albums singles as well and this weekend he returns with a three song EP. Per usual, the tracks capture the bright, meditative guitar-pop we’ve grown accustomed to hearing from Donaldson with all of these frequent releases and these tracks are just as sunny as any of his most recent output. Sheets of guitar hit like tender shoegaze moments over his otherwise blissful, pastel tones that offer up a warm, cozy feeling that is as inviting as the kitchen-pop style would suggest, or as his Bandcamp reads, it’s “the echo pop of twilight.”

His vocals billow like a breeze, easing from his mouth with such delight and his delivery as consistent as his output. Harmonica finds its way through the acoustic guitar haze as well, giving more pop textures to the title track as steady drumming holds the beat. Fuzzing organ and keys give the songs some added weight and again give a richness to the texture that bristles with a slight buzz giving it more dream-like qualities and underlying themes that tie each track together. “We’re starting over again” he croons on the last track, but really there is no need. Donaldson has hit a stride of creating brief, wonderful tunes that will remarkably always fit a pattern and provide a sense of charm and ease. The most comfortable groove that wraps you like a blanket as you stare off into the perfect blue sky on an epic stretch of grass.