The Fat Angel Sings

Toronto hardcore outfit Metz have shared a new single, “Demolition Row.” The track comes as part of a new split 7-inch with UK punk band Adulkt Life. Metz has shared their contribution, “Demolition Row.” We haven’t hear much from the band since the release of “Atlas Vending“, but today’s release makes up for that. The gritty tune comes packed with brooding basslines and gritty guitars, coming together in wavering layers for a perfectly disorienting anthem.

METZ ‘Demolition Row’, an understated, groove-fuelled beast that’s quite unlike anything in their catalogue, is one half of a split single with Adulkt Life out on What’s Your Rupture? March 4th, just over a month in advance of the two bands sharing the stage in London at the Scala on April 10th, 2022.

Modern psych-pop outfit Elephant Stone have shared a video for their new single “M. Lonely.”

The song comes from their forthcoming EP, “Le voyage de M. Lonely dans la lune”, out February 18th. Sung entirely in French, the forthcoming EP sees the English-speaking band embracing a challenge. The release, “M. Lonely,” is a groovy, psychedelic anthem. The accompanying video follows Elephant Stone as they perform along to the tune beneath trippy effects.

“I built this story line about a hermit named “M. Lonely” who is very content in his solitary world until a world event happens that causes everyone else to stay home as well… sound familiar? He sees this as a mockery of him and his choices, deciding instead to build a rocket ship to the moon to be left alone,” Elephant Stone’s Rishi Dhir explains. The story of “M. Lonely” continues across the EP’s four tracks. It moves from the upbeat hooks and dreamy synths on the first two songs to lonely melodies on the last two. M. Lonely “ultimately realizes he was happier back on imperfect Earth with all of its imperfect people,” Dhir explains.

Dhir has helmed Elephant Stone for the last 13 years. Throughout their catalogue, they’ve woven stories of loss, grief, existential crisis, and rebirth.

Their forthcoming EP is a “love letter to Montreal, Quebec, and all of our French-speaking fans around the world.”

Liam Gallagher is back with a new single called “Everything’s Electric.”

Co-written with Foo Fighters Dave Grohl, the track comes from Gallagher’s forthcoming solo album, “C’Mon You Know”, out May 27th. Grohl also plays drums on “Everything’s Electric,” which was produced by fellow Foo Fighters member Greg Kurstin. It’s a pretty classic, raucous rocker that you’re sure to find yourself listening to again and again.

According to a release, “Everything’s Electric” was inspired by Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” Opening with a heavy riff, the punchy tune is a rough rocker. Lyrically, Gallagher delivers lines like, “I hate you/ But I despise that feeling/ There’s nothing left for you here.”

In October, Liam Gallagher teased “C’Mon You Know” with a trailer for the album. It comes packed with clips of live performances by Liam Gallagher. It’s interspersed with shots of the audience singing along to the tune.

“Everything’s Electric” is the first preview of the highly anticipated new album.

Alongside the album announcement, Liam Gallagher teased a huge one-off Knebworth show. The enormous concert will see Gallagher returning to Knebworth on June 4th, 2022. Kasabian, Michael Kiwanuka, Fat White Family, and Goat Girl will join Liam Gallagher for the performance.

“I’m absolutely buzzing to announce that on 4th June 2022 I’ll be playing Knebworth Park,” Liam Gallagher says. “It’s gonna be biblical. “C’mon You Know“. LG x”

There could be a number of reasons for this. Maybe the climate is ripe for this sort of thing, or certain nostalgia star-cycles are waxing at the moment, or perhaps it’s simply that lockdowns have allowed people more time to dig around in the annals of their long-forgotten projects. Whatever the reason, Party Day’s new anthology ‘Sorted!’ comes off the back of similarly comprehensive re-appraisals of the work of acts such as The Stick Figures and Getting The Fear. This Double vinyl that includes their critically acclaimed and highly sought after debut album ‘Glasshouse’ from 1985 and the 1986 follow up ‘Simplicity’. Presented in a gatefold sleeve adorned with the artwork from the “Glasshouse” EP, which features in the Prints & Drawings collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum. With printed inner sleeves and a download code for all 31 tracks on the double CD. Including all tracks from the singles and EP’s plus unreleased recordings.

In many ways, Party Day were exemplary of their time. This lot were a hard-working bunch who made enough noise to get noticed far beyond their South Yorkshire home. They dabbled with labels like PIAS, but the band put all their major work out through their own eponymous imprint. In the context of new Optic Nerve collection ‘Sorted!’, that was probably a good thing – I’d imagine retaining some/all of the rights made it far easier to cobble together the tracks from the singles, EP and pair of albums which Party Day issued between 1983 and 1986 (though it should be noted that, due to available space, not all of those tunes make the cut for the vinyl editions here).

This lot were generally understood as a goth band at the time, and it’s easy to see how those who were beguiled by The Cure’s ‘Pornography’ when it dropped in 1982 might have picked up on Party Day in the slipstream of that LP. Tracks like ‘Athena’ are on edge, the band somehow managing to make music which sounds both fidgety and ominous, airy.

The feeling is ramped up further on ‘The Spider’, a cut which is a good example of that sort of campy, crunchy chomp which a lot of groups were delivering post-Birthday Party (as I type this, it occurs to me that the Party Day name might be a nod to Cave, Harvey et al).

It’s the vocals of Carl Firth which at once glue ‘Sorted!’ together and also cement it as a fine period-piece. The way in which Firth chatters away atop these tracks can file Party Day’s music down to a point, but he’s also unafraid to drop the listener into open space. He’ll howl a chorus on one song, but on the next he’ll riddle us from the corner – see how, on ‘Boredom’, his vocals nip between the guitars with pregnant talk of money and parachutes.

They may be goth up front, but one of the things that ‘Sorted!’ reveals is how the backbone of Party Day’s music often harnessed the exploratory edge of the age. It’s easy to see how heads would have been turned at the time by the band’s debut double-A, 1983’s ‘Row the Boat Ashore’/‘Poison’. The wind may whip around these tracks, but at points – particularly at the open and close of the latter cut – we detect a bit of shuffle in the rhythm section which feels almost dubbed-out.

I highly doubt ‘Sorted!’ will be the last archival collection of some small but crucial act to land in our stockroom in 2022. As long as the standard is maintained, I say bring them on.

Beauty School are from the United Kingdom The band hits the nail on the pop-punk head with their song “Pawn Shop Jewels.” Sounding much-like your favourite pop punk hits from the 2000’s, Beauty School is a playlist essential. The song will keep you entertained with technical guitar riffs and a melodic vocal from start to finish. The song even contains a musical breakdown section to take you deeper into your nostalgia. The chorus section of the song is an ear worm that fans will be screaming at the top of their lungs at live shows.

‘Pawn Shop Jewels’ by Beauty School out now on Slam Dunk Records.

Young punk band The Linda Lindas have announced their highly anticipated debut LP, “Growing Up“, due out June 3rd via Epitaph Records. They made it with Carlos de la Garza, father of vocalist and guitarist Lucia de la Garza and her sister, drummer Mila de la Garza, and they told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, “So our dad is our producer. And it was kind of cool, seeing what he does all day, like, ‘Oh, this is kind of cool seeing what you’re doing.’ And it’s like, huh. And then we got to look and we get to be part of it. Yeah. It’s like another side of him, but at the same time, it’s like we get to have so much fun while doing it because we know him so well. I feel like recording with our dad is so much easier than recording with someone we barely know or we don’t know as well as our dad, because I feel like it’s just so much easier to be ourselves and have fun around him than it is to have fun around, I don’t know, someone we don’t really know.”

They’ve also shared the title track, which was written by Lucia, who told Zane, “So I was just sitting in our living room, and it was during the pandemic, it was just at a point when I was just particularly missing everyone. I was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re at this point in our lives where we’re supposed to be figuring out who we are and what we want to do with our life and stuff.’ But it sucked that I wasn’t able to do that with some of the people that are most important to me. I don’t know. It was like you can’t make growing up happen, but you can’t stop it from happening either.

So I was just like, I wanted to sing about it, I wanted to write a song about it because that’s how I found that I wanted to express myself most during the pandemic.” “Growing Up” is accompanied by a cat-filled video directed by Opening Ceremony co-founder Humberto Leon. This video was extra special because I worked with the girls on designing the outfits with Batsheva, styling the looks with Rodarte and Warby Parker. The entire video was a collaboration between me and the girls. By shooting the video on iPhone 13 Pro Max, it created an intimacy with the video that felt like we were listening in on a day in the life of The Linda Lindas.“

Australia’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets will release new album “Night Gnomes” on April 22nd via What Reality? A lot of the album is about trying to work out what the F#@! is going on, in general life and obviously the period of time we’ve all found ourselves dormant in for the past two years. I started reading a few quotes from philosophers because, hey! They might know what’s going on, but mostly it was a bunch of cleverly worded gibberish that was drenched in self turmoil that thankfully, serendipitously, unbeknownst to me was the thing I found comfort in. That nobody has a clue what life is and we’re all winging it as we go!” .

Within 11 seconds of clicking “play” on “Lava Lamp Pisco” it’s instantly apparent why “Night Gnomes”, the latest album from Psychedelic Porn Crumpets might be their greatest offering yet.

The track is a riffy monster that delivers a much-welcome Black Sabbath-style slap to the head. It’s big, shiny, sleek and irresistible. It’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets giving their best and Jack McEwan the band’s fearless leader has the battle scars from the four-second harmonica solo to prove it.

“I hadn’t blown the harmonica in five years. It was just sitting on my desk,” he recalls. “The first thing I did was suck in all this dust, and I couldn’t talk for like a day. Afterwards, the rest of the band was like, ‘You have to scrap that. It’s so cheesy.’ Anyone under 30 hates it, but it has the dad-rock vibe, so I kept it in.”

That devil-may-care spirit is present on each and every song on “Night Gnomes“. With guitarist Luke Parish, drummer Danny Caddy, bassist Wayon Billondana and multi-instrumentalist Chris Young by his side, McEwan bunkered down in his home studio, creating a sonic pastiche that almost sounds like turning the dial on a temperamental old radio every few minutes.

“A lot of these songs are structured from the beginning, but then we add another part towards the end to really keep it interesting, even if it’s just for ourselves,” he says of the project, which was recorded at McEwan’s home studio in and around Perth. “Like on Fleet Foxes’ “Helplessness Blues,” every song has an ending that is completely different than the first part. That was the idea here.”

Hence, distorted synths giving way to and then enveloping the lighter-waving riffage on opener “Terminus, The Creator,” a magnificent string section suddenly appearing on the nostalgic acoustic folk ditty “Dread and Butter” and a dizzying array of sounds linking arms on the title track, which imagines the proverbial creatures frolicking around a campfire in some far-off, mystical forest. “It feels jolly, but it’s also kind of terrifying and disturbing. My girlfriend told me she couldn’t listen to that song,” McEwan says of “Night Gnomes,” adding, “I’ve always liked how some Beatles songs just come out of nowhere, like “Mean Mr. Mustard.” This is our own little jingle that doesn’t fit with anything else on the record.”

On “Bubblegum Infinity,” the Crumpets waded through nearly 50 different variations of the track before a Eureka moment during a rehearsal jam session revealed its final structure. The song itself wound up as a commentary on the often rudderless nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and “taking comfort in the fact that nobody had a clue what was going on,” according to McEwan. “The song used to open with a huge riff that was side chained to the kick drum so it sounded like it was thumping, but then that’s how every Crumpets song starts. I swapped the heavy guitars for acoustics, which made it feel way stronger, both dynamically and sonically. It felt like we’d

Uncovered the clutter which guides the song to build into that chorus and not give anything away beforehand.”

McEwan is particularly proud of the dreamy “Sherbert Straws,” which he says “actually has some dynamics in it rather than having nine elements in the same spectrum as my vocals that I’m trying to constantly mix in and out of the track.” The song descends from the proud lineage of Australasian rock acts such as Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra to whom McEwan professes devotion. “When we formed back in 2015, we marvelled at how these awesome bands from around here could self-release music on vinyl and create their own stories. There wasn’t any waiting for labels to come knocking. It was all DIY and we loved that concept. We’re still holding right onto those coattails and we’re getting dragged as far as we can,” he jokes.

For all of its varied vibes, the album never skimps on massive rockers sure to delight Psychedelic Porn Crumpets fans across the world in 2022. “Acid Dent” thrashes with abandon, but actually offers a slight concession to advancing age. “When we were younger, we were carefree and living tall, “McEwan says. “You get home with a handful of stuff in your pocket from whatever festival and just munch all of it, until you wake up in the morning so scattered. If we kept carrying on this way, we’d wind up in mental institutions by 35. So this is a nice little story about slowing down a bit.”

“Bob Holiday” pays homage to classic riffs McEwan remembers from his youth, like Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” “We’ve been trying to emulate that sound forever,” says McEwan, who also played in a Rage Against The Machine cover band when he was younger. “I also thought ‘Bob Holiday’ was a really strong name — like, if you were called that, you’d be able to do anything.”

The album comes full circle with the one-two closing punch of the instrumental “In Dreams, Out” and “Slinky/ Holy Water,” touching again on the thumping drums, acoustic guitar flourishes, washes of sound and strange noises introduced on the opening track. With the pandemic having provided McEwan the chance to “get my life together and get healthy,” not to mention move 200 meters from his favourite pub, he and his bandmates will soon be onto their next musical adventure. But exploring the undiscovered territory of “Night Gnomes” has already made a major impact on its creators.

“I have no idea what I’m doing half the time,” McEwan says. “It’s like, plug in, record. Why does this sound like shit but this other thing works? I needed five albums to get to this point of revealing some golden nuggets of information about dynamics, production and exploring new sounds. Everyone finds fault in their own work, but that’s probably what makes us want to keep creating.”

Sarah Tudzin of illuminati hotties, she’s about to head out on tour with Fenne Lily, and ahead of that she’s shared this upbeat new single. “‘Sandwich Sharer’ was very much written at the precipice of unknowns – I was seeking a teammate at a time where I felt swayed by nostalgia for youth as opposed to the reality of the momentum of life,” Sarah Tudzin says. “And it feels so good to be close to someone who knows you so well it’s like you finish each others’… sandwiches.”

The official visual for illuminati hotties’ new single “sandwich sharer” out now on Snack Shack Tracks/Hopeless Records!

Los Angeles-based singer and songwriter Yael Kaufman has released a new EP as Yes Kid, “Lighten Up“. It was produced by illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tudzin, and it should appeal to fans of hers and Rilo Kiley, as well as those who like catchy indie rock seasoned with a little emo and pop-punk. “I had just started therapy and found out that I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder,” said Kaufman “At the time, I was in a constant swing of anxiety highs and drained lows. It was exhausting. So I guess the name ‘Lighten Up’ is sort of a joke. I really hate when anyone says that to me, you know? Haha. But my days actually were lightening up a bit, so I guess the joke’s on me! I was finally having some good days alongside the rough ones. I guess I sort of feel like this EP takes you through all of that – high highs and low lows, all those things you’re forced to contend with when you really look inward, yada yada yada.”

LA-based singer and songwriter. New Single ‘Too Much Feeling (Not Enough Screaming)’ out now!

Released February 2nd, 2022