The Fat Angel Sings

Hovvdy never really seem in a hurry to go anywhere fast. Since 2014, the Austin duo of Will Taylor and Charlie Martin has made frill-free rock music on a shoestring budget—they’ve shouted out both the convenience and happily strange compression that comes from recording songs in their iPhone voice memos—that centered on repetition and spacey simplicity. They make quiet compositions that plumb the cavernous depths of romantic and existential disillusionment with little more than some fuzzy guitar strums as accompaniment, but to hear them tell it, that started out of necessity rather than design.

There’s an unnamable edge to memory, an agitating pleasure in reviving the thorniest parts of our past. To remember what’s painful, or banal, is to protect against the slog of the mundanity of growing up. It’s within this blurry psychological terrain that indie-pop duo Hovvdy thrive. Austin Texas duo Will Taylor and Charlie Martin sing longingly of what’s lost and what remains, of the small moments that can epitomize a life: driving alongside your significant other in silence, watching YouTube videos in bed, playing catch with your friends in the front yard. This may sound like typical indie-rock adolescent fetishizing, but the candid reflexivity in Hovvdy’s songwriting and instrumentation guards against oversentimentality. They’re not stuck in the past; they’re moving forward, craning their necks back to see what’s been left behind.

Taylor relayed a brief anecdote about his friendship with Martin. “One time we got lost in the woods and had to stick together to make it out,” he said. “It ended up being really fun. That’s pretty close to how things are with us always.” That kind of relationship, where a potentially terrifying mishap turns into a fond memory thanks to mutual support and a shared sense of playfulness, drives Hovvdy’s songwriting ethos. They don’t panic when they lose sight of the path; they just keep going, sure that whatever happens, they’ll remember it well.

True Love

On their fourth album, “True Love”, Taylor and Martin tame the tremors of youth by embracing their adult commitments. “Even though it’s hard to/I will surely move along,” goes a line on the album’s opener, “Sometimes,” summoning a mantra I’ve likely employed a dozen times over the last year. On “One Bottle,” Taylor laments the distance he feels from his partner while he’s on the road: “If it rings you know it’s me/Talking, words can’t tell you how I miss you.” Even when Hovvdy root into the present, the memory of easier times infects their experience, staining the songs with sanguine ambience. “True Love” doesn’t so much shirk nostalgia as re-contextualize it, transfiguring well-worn memories from longings into lessons.

In a departure from the lo-fi minimalism of 2016’s “Taster” and 2018’s “Cranberry”, “True Love” flaunts a more dappled and spirited production, an enthusiastic verve also heard sporadically on 2019’s “Heavy Lifter”. Co-produced and engineered by Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver), “True Love” is full of joyful piano and bright acoustic guitars, a soundscape as crisp and lush as a beer on a late summer’s night.

Hovvdy use these warm backdrops as canvases to explore personal growth. “Hue,” an ode to Taylor’s new-born daughter, revels in the insecurity of parenthood: “Am I strong enough for two?/Can I love me like I love you?” On “I Never Wanna Make You Sad,” Martin tries to “lift up” his partner from the depths of his own low. In Hovvdy’s world, vulnerability is cherished and honesty is paramount, though a refrain of “we’ll be alright” or “I love you so much” usually resolves any lingering tension.

On “True Love“, generalization occasionally replaces emotional acuity; sing-along hooks substitute for more daring forays into sound or subject. And while Taylor and Martin’s earworm melodies and vocal charisma are satisfying, the record’s resolutory definitiveness sacrifices the delightful ambiguity found throughout their catalogue.

released October 1st, 2021

Heavy Lifter

Heavy Lifter, the third album by Austin “pillow core” project Hovvdy, suspended in the moment between first discovery of love and first brush with heartbreak. Will Taylor and Charlie Martin dig through the detritus of youth with frank empathy for the people they used to be. They sing of leaving a small town and “moving to the coast” as though it’s the solution to their problems, and not another problem waiting to happen. They sing to a “friend” they’d clearly like to be more than a friend.

“Cathedral,” the record’s lead single and best song, finds emancipating joy in the realization that it is “brighter than before, outside” of a repressive church. The song begins in a pew, bent into a posture of prayer; it ends with the cathedral’s doors flung open. Vowing on the chorus to “never come back here” and instead “stay with our friends,” Taylor and Martin repeat the words in a kind of ecstatic chant. “Feel Tall” makes literal the personal growth that first love can inspire: “Any little thing you want, any little thing at all/Want to make you feel tall.” On “Watergun,” expressions of devotion tilt from the naive proclamations of a little kid toward a newfound, grown-up understanding of love as an act of service. A promise to “gladly dry the dishes” lands with exceptional poignancy.

What distinguishes this record is the sparkling optimism Hovvdy carry with them. They don’t long to escape, but to accept the good with the bad. Hopeful energy thrums through cuts like “Keep It Up” and “Mr. Lee,” which mine mundanity for joy. The album is not without grey moments of post-adolescent malaise—particularly the devastating “Pixie”—but Hovvdy veer away from self-destruction, instead homing in on connection and intimacy.

These songs are grand, inviting backdrops. This is the record’s greatest strength, and also where it stumbles. Hovvdy remind me of many artists I’ve loved, But with the exception of a few skittering, programmed drums, they don’t innovate on the sound of last decade’s indie pop as much as imitate it. The lack of specificity in their song writing means that they never quite eclipse their influences.

But the real gut punch arrives at the record’s end, in the final verse of “Sudbury.” As the singer dreams of graduating from “front yard catch” to the Texas Rangers, he recites the street address of a childhood home. That house, and the patch of yellow-green grass that made sports stardom feel possible, couldn’t belong to anyone else. Taylor and Martin are at their finest here, trading the ubiquitous for the unique, declaring who they were and who they wished to be.

released October 18th, 2019

Cranberry

If there’s anything you’re nostalgic for, Hovvdy’s second album, “Cranberry”, is likely to dredge it up. It’s not that the Austin duo invokes a particular time or place—Will Taylor and Charlie Martin aren’t revivalists, and they don’t seem to hold any sentiment for a mythical teenhood. It’s more that their music simulates the mysterious function of memory itself. Foggy, warm, and wistful, it sounds like faded time. With two drummers who now take up the guitar and synthesizer as needed, Hovvdy share an instinctual melodic sensibility, While their debut, 2016’s “Taster“, itched a little with a distortion-shrouded anxiety, sounding occasionally like Weezer , “Cranberry” focuses the act’s emotional palette to a steady, gentle longing. Hovvdy sound surer of themselves than before, and that confidence gives them more room to be vulnerable.

“Yesterday I woke up outside/Saw you for the very first time,” goes the album’s opening couplet on “Brave,” conjuring up the delightfully surreal image of someone coming to in a clearing and falling for the first stranger they see. On “Truck,” Hovvdy build a swaying chorus out of a little self-effacement: “If there’s trouble, I will run from it/All the time.” It’s a little strange: Here’s a song about shirking responsibility, and maybe feeling guilty about your failure to be there for someone else, and yet the vocals fall over the guitars as gently as ash from a distant forest fire. Hovvdy pull this trick a lot. They write lyrics that hint at some kind of danger or urgency, then sing them as languidly as possible. That dissonance gives their songs a magnetic pull: You’ll want to go back to them to see what you’ve missed, to try to read more deeply between the lines.

A similar ambiguity hovers around the album’s instrumentation. “Truck” weaves slide guitars into the mix so subtly they barely register on the first few listens, and the relatively upbeat “In the Sun” boasts a flute sound that definitely came from a keyboard but at points could almost pass for the real thing. On “Float,” the repeating sound of a cymbal bleeds into the song’s grain; “Thru” confuses guitars and synthesizers so readily it’s difficult to tell where the strum of an electric six-string ends and the wash of a digital instrument begins. All the details another band might tease out, Hovvdy subsume into their music’s overall texture.

released February 9th, 2018

Taster

Both Taylor and Martin were drummers before Hovvdy, and neither has been playing guitar all that long, which they’ve said has made their instrumentals naturally “minimal.” But after an EP and a split with the similarly minded Austin band Loafer, they’ve figured out how to make those limitations work to their advantage. Their debut album “Taster” reissued in remastered form by beloved Brooklyn indie rock label Double Double Whammy—rarely accelerates past a snail’s pace, but the interlocking pieces are deceptively complex. they stack simple riffs in idiosyncratic ways, and in the process put together 11 songs that are far more compelling than the sum of their parts.

That’s perhaps most evident on “Can’t Wait,” one of the record’s more straightforwardly catchy moments, which weaves together at least three loosely interlocking guitar riffs over the course of its three minutes. Played by a different band, it’d feel like a rip of Weezer’s across-the-sea balladry, but Hovvdy’s take is a little more austere. A lazily drawled acoustic guitar and a barely on-beat lead make the scuzzy main riff feel a little dizzier than it would otherwise. Piling uncomplicated parts on one another until it resembles something like a pop song is a surprisingly sophisticated trick—and one they’re able to keenly repeat throughout “Taster“. Each song seems like it should topple over under its own weight, but it never does.

Lyrically, the record revels in the overwhelming confusion and regret bound up in interpersonal relations. “In My Head” tells a surreal tale of romantic pining, describing scenes in small jagged snippets, like a conversation that takes place “on the gulf in that screened-in room.” On “Try Hard,” they perform a clever autopsy of the failures of a past relationship (“You could not call your dad back then/Forgot his name again/I never did try hard”). It’s relatively standard stuff for this sort of downcast rock music, but the beauty is in its lack of resolution. All conflicts remain unsolved there are only events, no answers.

Taylor and Martin have jokingly referred to their music as “pillow core” over the years, which is fitting for “Taster” both in its downy sonics and fragmented lyricism. As they flit through various half memories and upsetting realizations, it feels like the thoughts that spin through your head as you lie in bed late at night, waiting for sleep to overtake you.

‘Taster’ April 15th, 2016

Hovvdy’s music has a mysterious depth. On the surface, the Texas duo makes cheery folk-pop with acoustic guitars, grand piano, crackling drums, and vocal melodies as soothing as a weighted blanket. Charlie Martin and Will Taylor’s early work veered toward remnant of Duster or a lo-fi Weezer, with lyrics that latched onto love and longing and letting go of the past because they were, regrettably, growing up. On last year’s “True Love“, they embraced their emergence into adulthood by reflecting on parenting, marriage, and memory. As immaculate as the music sounded, and as earnest as the lyrics were, their “Life Is Good” ethos wore thin.

Their new four-song EP, “Billboard for My Feelings” adds new dimensions to their work, building upon the template of “True Love” and homing in on their deceptively sophisticated sound. It’s not that they’re taking bigger risks or straying from their preferred themes. Instead, they’ve refined their approach by leaning into their most playful inclinations, prioritizing texture and melody over narrative stability, broadening their simple yet spacious arrangements with small, striking details: a guitar pluck here, a string stab there, a wide-bodied backing vocal that bleeds into a bit-crushed tom. Their music is filled with unexpected moments that encourage you to stop moving, sit back, and take it all in.

Reunited with renowed producer Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver) and multi-instrumentalist Bennett Littlejohn, Hovvdy expand their compositions with strings and keys and the occasional banjo, the tension rising and falling with the subtle addition or subtraction of an instrument. “Everything” opens with a reversed string loop before paring back to chugging acoustic guitar and Taylor’s gentle crooning. Amid the twinkling arrangement, he senses that certain doors have closed in his life: “Before the sun leaves/Go outside and dream/About the places that I’ve heard of/I won’t live to see.” There’s an optimism to his words, a realization that the world in this moment may be as expansive as it ever will be.

Emotional incongruities weave throughout the EP, imbuing each song with an unresolvable tension. “Hide,” a mesmerizing highlight whose syrupy cadence and tempo sound like little else in Hovvdy’s discography, describes sleepless nights and self-doubt, little devastations that arise despite our best efforts to guard against them. And even though Hovvdy still aim for good times and deep connection, they now acknowledge that sorrow and uncertainty can creep into even the most joyful experiences. On “True Love“, the duo seemed intent on shutting out these thoughts, holding greater space for gratitude, empathy, and forgiveness. But the emotional ambiguity of “Billboard for My Feelings” gives way to a richer, more complicated set of perspectives, communicating through melody what’s too elusive to say otherwise.

released May 27th, 2022

Slack Times are a trio of musicians from Birmingham, Alabama, who cite shared influence from the likes of Yo La Tengo, R.E.M., and The Feelies jangle pop band featuring Chris McCauley (guitar, vocals), Will Stewart (guitar, vocals), and Stuart Norman (guitar). They craft melodic, guitar-driven songs that draw from a range of shared influences including early Athens, Georgia pop. . After releasing two EPs in 2021, “Up Here” and “At The Blue Melon Rendezvous”, the band are teaming up with Meritorio Records to combine both those releases with six new songs in a vinyl compilation, “Carried Away”.

Ahead of the record’s end of June release date, this week the band shared the title track “Carried Away’s”

The new compilation includes six brand new songs plus the eight songs included on their previous EPs, The album will be available digitally and on vinyl via Meritorio Records.

Opening with a beautiful country-licked guitar line, “Carried Away” is a track that seems to teeter between genres, Clocking in just seconds over two minutes, Carried Away is also delightfully simple, the guitar line runs almost throughout, the drums hit an easy rhythm and barely stray from it, and atop it all Chris McCauley bemoans his own inaction, wistfully noting, “I didn’t put up a fight”. This is musical simplicity at its finest, effortlessly excellent song writing.

“Carried Away” is out June 24th via Meritorio Records.

Molly Payton is a New Zealander living in London. ‘Slack’ is her debut mini-LP. Payton takes her influences from classic rock of the 1960s and 1970s to make her epic indie rock. Despite only being 20 years old when she recorded this, her voice has the sound of someone who’s been making records for some time. 

Debut mini-album from 20 year old London-based singer songwriter New Zealander Molly Payton. Produced by Oli Barton-Wood (Nilüfer Yanya, Porridge Radio, Sorry) and Jimmy Hogarth (Sia, Amy Winehouse). Lead cut “You Cut Me So Much Slack” is a real 90’s style gem that is part grunge and part Lush.

“Slack”, out now

The original riders on the psychedelic storm get their own minds blown by the leaders of the new psych rock movement on this stellar tribute to The Doors!.

Features performances by The Black Angels, The Raveonettes, Clinic, Psychic Ills, Sons Of Hippies, Elephant Stone, Dead Skeletons and more!,
Incredibly innovative and unique versions of The Doors’ classic tracks including “L.A. Woman,” “Riders On The Storm,” “Light My Fire,” “Love Me Two Times” and others 

Purple Pyramid Records, focusing on progressive rock as well as psychedelic music, has been long-time home to releases by Yes, Rick Wakeman, Steve Howe, Santana, Amon Düül II, Nektar, Brainticket, Tangerine Dream, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. 

released June 3rd, 2022

Cheersquad Records & Tapes are super pleased to bring you ‘Visualiser’, the haunting first single from the debut EP ‘Hell on Bent Street’ by Melbourne musician Georgia Knight, coming out digitally on Friday, June 3rd.

“Quietly seething… Like indie-goth-jazz. I love it.” – Jodi Phillis (The Clouds)

Melbourne’s Georgia Knight has a singular and uninhibited style which sits at a cross-section of genres with influences spanning Sparklehorse, Sandy Denny and Dirty Three. Belying her youth, her music has some of the darkness that’s been synonymous with Melbourne music, since Nick Cave and co held court at St Kilda’s Crystal Ballroom in the late ’70s. Indeed, former Wreckery frontman and original Bad Seed Hugo Race is a recent collaborator. It is a darkness which feels very real. Not for Georgia any tongue-in-cheek dolefulness. Her music may share some of the ramshackle qualities of some of her inner northern contemporaries, but the discord seems more-deep rooted. Her music, guitar-based, and vibrantly electric despite its pared back nature, is elemental with a rootsiness grown from the crumbling bitumen and ageless bluestones of Melbourne’s inner city streets.

Georgia says about “Visualiser“: “There were a few Pixie’s references flying around when we recorded “Visualiser“, and I ended up redoing all the vocals through a Leslie (spinning) speaker to trip it out even more. I wrote it about going further into loneliness to take hold of it. When we first started recording it was mostly lyrics and just a couple of chords, and Nick walked in with the bass riff which became the main part of the song. He’d borrowed a p-bass from the guy Murray who owns the building, and liked it so much he ended up convincing him to sell it.”

The video for ‘Visualiser’ was shot at Carlton’s iconic La Mama Courthouse Theatre, and sees Georgia alone, dancing abstractly and cathartically to her own song. Georgia says about the concept she had for the video: “I always really liked poking around backstage in places like that, seeing all the stuff you need to make a fantasy come to life, so the video is based on that. It’s shot in three takes, as a little story about a character who is this kind of scurrying big-headed stagehand. Left to its own devices in the theatre, it totally gives in to delusions of grandeur. Like if the phantom of the opera was never discovered.”

To capture a feeling of urgency and escape, her atmospheric EP, which will come out later this year, was recorded live during a short run of recordings. Inspired by the Dirty Three to go freely where the song goes, the arrangements came together in the studio. The powerful 3-piece of Georgia Knight on guitar and vocals, Nick Finch (Cash Savage and The Last Drinks, Graveyard Train) on bass and Holly Thomas (Freya Josephine Hollick, Quivers) on drums were recorded live by Alex O Gorman at Purple Wayne Studios in Melbourne.

Georgia says of this period: “I was listening to a lot of Dirty Three, Kate Bush and PJ Harvey around then. I love PJ’s record ‘Stories of the City, Stories of the Sea’; it sounds totally conjured up from and for a place. I had started playing her perfect song We Float, in order to get inside it, and it felt so good playing it with Holly and Nick that we put it on the EP.

I tracked a few extra vocals and guitars at Soundpark in Northcote. Around that time I’d also started doing some session work, and Idge from Soundpark got me listening to Sparklehorse, Spencer P Jones and a lot of Lee Hazelwood.”

Knight entered the scene as a teenager, having attended folk festivals with her parents as a kid. She started playing in an indie act and at the iconic Corkman pub sessions whilst studying sculpture at VCA.

After fronting alt-country band The Hot Springs, Georgia Knight began performing solo; songwriting, finding her voice, and performing on other artists recordings and sharing line-ups alongside Darron Hanlon, Cash Savage, Ben Salter, Cable Ties, Hugo Race, Maple Glider, Angie McMahon and Blake Scott (Peep Tempel).

“In the same emotively revealing style as Angel Olsen, Bruce Springsteen and Big Thief, Georgia Knight’s disarming howls operate on a higher plane than anything else you’re likely to stumble across.”

In November 2014 The Jesus and Mary Chain celebrated three decades of their incendiary cult-classic debut album, ‘Psychocandy’, with a run of tour dates in which the infamous Scottish group played the album in full for the very first time in the band’s history. As part of the ‘Psychocandy’ tour, the Mary Chain descended on Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom – a legendary venue down the road from where the Reid brothers grew up in neighbouring East Kilbride – and tore through the songs that would propel them to worldwide acclaim upon ‘Psychocandy’s” release in 1985.

The Barrowland performance – an equal-parts deafening and blinding assault on the senses – was cut to vinyl by engineer Noel Summerville and originally released in 2015. Fast forward to 2022 and the ‘Live at Barrowland’ album is now being reissued by Fuzz Club Records. Released May 27th, the 2022 reissue comes with new artwork and on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket with a booklet glued inside that features pages of photos from the tour as well as an interview with the Reid brothers and Alan McGee. 

The influence that ‘Psychocandy’ and its pioneering sonic belligerence had on popular music cannot be overstated. Taking bittersweet pop melodies and tearing them up apart through the medium of buzzsaw guitars, ear-piercing feedback and an unapologetic hostility towards their listeners, the band’s breakthrough album experimented with noise in a way that had never been done before and would inspire for generations to come.

The ‘Live At Barrowland’ LP captures ‘Psychocandy’s complete 14 tracks in a live setting and in all their boundary-pushing and feedback-ridden glory. The CD and digital versions of the reissue – including the download card that comes with the vinyl – also feature seven bonus tracks taken from the prelude set on the night, including such fan-favourites as ‘April Skies’, ‘Head On’ and ‘Reverence’.

We all know Glasgow loves Liam Gallagher, and it turns out he loves them right back. Liam Gallagher headlined the second day of TRNSMT Festival , and had the crowd in the palm of his hand.

The rockstar’s connection with the city is no secret – Oasis rocketed to fame after being signed following their serendipitous gig at King Tut’s – and it’s stayed just as strong through the years. Liam the saturday night’s headliner has long since proclaimed his love for Scottish fans, and now it was time for the big reunion as he declared to the crowd “Scotland I’ve missed ya!”

Liam performed hits from both solo albums as well as Oasis classics like ‘Wall of Glass’, and ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’. He then launched into an encore which included ‘Roll With It’ and ‘Live Forever’ before signing off with ‘Wonderwall’.

And he doubled down on his love of Glasgow later on Twitter. Sorry, everywhere else – we’re his favourite. Later, when someone asked him to rate the crowd last night, he responded “TBF you can’t beat Glasgow I’m sorry if I upset other folk I’m not really but that crew are Gangsta”.

TRNSMT Festival, Glasgow Green, Glasgow, Scotland, September 11, 2021

The complete TRNSMT Festival plus different songs from Reading. Soundboard recordings.

It’s been 17 years and we’re reissuing “No Wow!” We had Grammy Award-winning mixer Tchad Blake take it for spin and on June 3rd, you’ll be able to get 3 different versions of it on vinyl The original, the Tchad Blake mixes & deluxe. The limited edition deluxe double LP includes both the original and Tchad Blake mixes on black-and-gold smoke vinyl, has a gold foil gatefold LP jacket, an exclusive 5×7 print and a four-page booklet. This beauty is available for pre-order in our new webstore,

You can also stream Tchad’s new mix of “No Wow” today and watch the accompanying video directed and edited by Sally Walker-Hudecki using her own Super 8 footage and the original “No Wow” video shot by Kenneth Capello.

​We’re also returning to our roots and performing “No Wow” in its entirety as a two-piece in both NY and LA! These are our only headline shows planned for this year and the first two shows are sold out, so be sure to get tickets for the 2nd shows we’ve added before they’re gone.

 The Kills – No Wow (The Tchad Blake Mix 2022) – (Domino Recordings)