The Fat Angel Sings

Four-and-a-half years since Aimee Mann released her ninth studio album “Mental Illness” (2017), the acclaimed singer-songwriter has revealed initial details about its highly anticipated successor. Due in stores November 5th via her SuperEgo Records imprint, Mann’s tenth studio LP “Queens Of The Summer Hotel” was inspired by her recent compositions crafted for the stage adaptation of Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen’s 1993 memoir that examines her psychiatric hospitalization in the late 1960s.

“I honestly felt almost possessed when I was writing this record as I’ve never written so fast and intensely,” Mann explains in an official statement. “I found the material very interesting and obviously really personal. I had specific ideas about what I thought the character’s backstory could be and incorporated a lot of shared experiences to flesh out specific characters discussed in the memoir.”

The 15-track “Queens Of The Summer Hotel” is preceded by the poignant, piano-driven and strings-laden lead single “Suicide Is Murder” and its sobering accompanying video starring James Urbaniak.

“I started to write this song because I’ve known people who committed suicide and friends who’ve had loved ones die from suicide,” Mann reflects. “I think the phrase ‘suicide is murder’ took on a meaning for me as it’s the worst thing to have to deal with in the aftermath. It’s just terrible. Because every person who knows the person who committed suicide will blame themselves in some way for not noticing or stepping in or doing something. They’ll till the end of their days, say, ‘was there something I could have done?’”

Taken from “Queens of the Summer Hotel“, out November 5th, 2021.

There’s a moment in the riveting documentary “Jagged” where Lisa Worden, the one-time program director of influential Los Angeles radio station KROQ, describes the first time she heard Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” the “You’re So Vain” of the ’90s. Station employees tended to listen to music at top volume, she said, and the song was playing at the excited urging of Guy Oseary, who had just signed Morissette to Madonna’s label, Maverick Records.

“Jagged” then cuts to the song’s music video featuring a long-haired, moody Morissette in a desert locale and then looking like a whirling dervish as she fronts a band—and allows the music to simmer and build up through the explosive first chorus. Any plot advancement or commentary pauses; instead, Morissette’s music grabs the spotlight and commands our attention.

It’s a rather excellent and true-to-life replication of how stunning it felt to hear “You Oughta Know” booming out of speakers back in 1995, and a welcome reminder of Morissette’s revelatory presence. “Jagged“, the second film released from the Music Box documentary series Bill Simmons is producing for HBO, does an admirable job capturing the musician’s rise to fame. Using archival concert and news footage, as well as vintage and new interviews, the film focuses on the creation and subsequent success of the multi-multi-multi-platinum 1995 debut album, “Jagged Little Pill“. The documentary ends up both a delightful ’90s time capsule and a sharp analysis of the social and cultural forces that shaped Morissette’s career—for better and worse.

HBO’s “Jagged”, continues the Music Box series, taking viewers to 1995, when a 21-year-old Alanis Morissette burst onto the music scene with the first single off her ground-breaking album, “Jagged Little Pill.” With a rawness and emotional honesty that resonated with millions, and despite a commercial landscape that preferred its rock stars to be male, she took radio and MTV by storm and the album went on to sell 33 million copies.

Like many documentaries, “Jagged” adds positive supporting interviews from music industry executives, journalists, and collaborators; these include her “Jagged Little Pill” producer/co-writer Glen Ballard, Dogma director Kevin Smith and Garbage’s Shirley Manson. Ballard and Manson are especially insightful, with the former describing Morissette’s mindset after moving to Los Angeles in the early ’90s, her career as a teen pop idol in Canada over thanks to being dropped by her record label: “She was looking for someone to be an artist with.”

Smartly, director Alison Klayman amplifies this artistry by foregrounding Morissette’s voice and music. She incorporates plenty of inspiring footage filmed on the “Jagged Little Pill” tour that shows off the singer’s mesmerizing, cathartic stage charisma. Morissette herself also sits for frank and perceptive interviews about her life, music, and creative process. “His big question was, ‘Who are you? What do you want to write about?’ What’s going on for you?’” Morissette said of Ballard as they started working together. “And what a lovely prompt. Nobody’s asked me that—ever.” This nurturing creative environment led to Jagged Little Pill, a record that captured the complicated experience of being a strong young woman coming into her own: finding pockets of joy, mirth and ecstasy while processing trauma, recovering from negative relationships and pushing back against oppressive, male-driven systems.

The idea of power—who possesses it, who wields it responsibly, who abuses it—is one of Jagged’s compelling (if sobering) themes. Early on, it focuses on Morissette’s pre-Jagged Little Pill life in Canada, including a stint on the cult Nickelodeon TV show You Can’t Do That On Television and her career as an ’80s teen pop phenom. Like many child stars, she dealt with adults acting inappropriately—she recalls being hit on starting at around age 15 and developed an eating disorder after having her weight scrutinized. The matter-of-fact way Morissette describes being deprived of food is horrifying; at one point, she recalls sneak-eating cheese slices on a video shoot and being chided the next morning for the supposed indiscretion.

Much later, “Jagged” addresses the debauched and piggish road behaviour of her Jagged Little Pill-era touring band, which included future Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and current Jane’s Addiction bassist Chris Chaney. While the musicians were protective of Alanis, they didn’t necessarily always extend the same respect to her fans. In modern interviews, the two men confessed that the band had a dedicated room in venues for women who had backstage passes doled out by a guitar tech. “The hypocrisy of what her music and message was—and here you have us, like, scoundrels trying to get laid,” Chaney said. Morissette was unsurprisingly not happy when she found out about their callous shenanigans.

“It did feel disrespectful to me,” Morisette says. “Some of the behaviour just didn’t match my mission or my value system at all. But I’d only grown up around men. So I just thought, ‘Okay, well, are you going to replace them with five other men that are going to do the exact same thing—and it won’t sound as great?’”

If anything, these enraging moments amplify why her music was so important—not just to the world at large, but also for her own comfort and solace. In “Jagged”, Morissette says as much: “The point in my writing these songs—I was not writing to punish I was writing to express and get it out of my body, because I didn’t want to get sick.” What follows soon after is a section once again referencing her teenage popstar days: Morissette broadly discusses having what she later came to understand was nonconsensual sexual encounters—and says nobody listened to her when she tried to tell them what happened. “Women don’t wait,” she says, addressing people who question why women don’t report sexual assaults right away. “Culture doesn’t listen.” It’s both heart breaking and infuriating that what she describes is so familiar.

Jagged cuts deep when unpacking the hypocrisy and obstacles Morissette faced while making her voice heard. Her honest song writing and unfettered stage presence inspired legions of young women—yet “Jagged Little Pill” was initially dismissed by labels for being “too in-your-face, too emotional.” Radio stations still wouldn’t play two songs in a row by female artists, and men dominated the journalistic writing around Morissette’s music and persona.

To underline this point, “Jagged“ specifically highlights press quotes from the time that emphasize Morissette’s so-called anger, hold her pop music background against her, or insinuate that Glen Ballard was the real song writing star. “It’s still an instinct to diminish any woman who isn’t willing to participate in the little box that’s been carved out for her in society,” Shirley Manson so succinctly puts it in the film.

As Jagged premiered at TIFF, Morissette distanced herself from the documentary, releasing a statement via her management saying the film “includes implications and facts that are simply not true” and noting, “While there is beauty and some elements of accuracy in this/my story to be sure—I ultimately won’t be supporting someone else’s reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell.” It remains unclear what details are incorrect, leaving plenty of question marks as to what happened after filming wrapped.

“Jagged” does make it crystal clear that Morissette’s narrative is far more complex than many gave it credit for at the time. More important, the film argues successfully that she’s one of the most important songwriters of the last few decades, in no small part because she remains committed to cultivating her craft.

In fact, “Jagged” ends with Morissette performing a wisdom-packed new song, “Ablaze,” that’s directed toward her children. “Jagged Little Pill” cemented Morissette’s stardom, but she’s never forgotten that staying true to her inner self and vision remains her best creative compass. “There were a lot of women at that time,” Manson says about the ’90s, and name-checks Fiona Apple, Missy Elliott, and Courtney Love. “There were so many of us. But Alanis proved to the world—and the music business—that we were viable.”

10 new songs that capture the raw, idiosyncratic rock and roll spirit and lyrical beauty that epitomizes a classic NYCH collaboration. Recorded this summer under a full moon, in a restored off-grid 19th century barn high up in the Rockies, the Horse was right at home and the album’s stunning love songs, reflective ballads and powerhouse rockers naturally burst into life.

The film of the same title -“Barn” captures this legendary band in their element – in the wild, their easy humour, their brotherhood, their humanity, and of course, the music, live, recorded in their unique spontaneous way. A Blu-ray of the film directed by Daryl Hannah, will be available as a stand-alone release.

The special edition vinyl contains 6 behind-the-scenes photographs from the “Barn sessions“. Available as a numbered first pressing, the Deluxe Box set contains the special edition LP, CD and Blu-ray of the film “Barn”.

In the last decade or two, you generally know what’s coming when you hit play on a new Neil Young record. You know there will be a few sweet lovestruck hymns that sound as if they’re being played in dusty Old West saloons or around campfires. All those elements are in play in “Barn”, but the crucial difference is the presence of a reconstituted version of Crazy Horse, with recurring Young sideman Nils Lofgren replacing the retired Frank “Poncho” Sampedro. Young first reconvened his on-again, dismissed-again band for 2010’s underwhelming “Colorado“, but maybe they all just needed time to warm up. On “Barn“, cut in just a few days at a log-cabin structure in Colorado, the thunderous and ornery side of Young and the Horse revs up again, and sonically, at least, it’s akin to running into an old friend you haven’t seen face to face since the pre-pandemic days.

Take, for instance, “Heading West.” One of those look-backs at his youth and his parents’ breakup, it’s not nearly as detailed or fleshed out as previous narratives from “Don’t Be Denied” to “Born in Ontario.” But with his electric leading the way, the music is cranky and clankety, and drummer Ralph Molina can still hit his kit hard. “Canamerican,” where Young revels in his newfound ability to vote in this country (and for Joe Biden), and “Change Ain’t Never Gonna,” one of his apocalyptic rants, also summon up the old Horse rumble, down to those spooky, ethereal harmonies by Molina and bassist Billy Talbot.

Likewise, “Welcome Back” has a muted, slithering beauty, like an older, more sombre “Cortez the Killer,” and “They Might Be Lost,” with another narrator awaiting the arrival of something foreboding, plays like a lyrical older companion to “Powderfinger.” Young’s softer, more maudlin side rolls out in “Song of the Seasons” and “Tumblin’ Through the Years,” the inevitable paeans to his wife Daryl Hannah and their new life together, and damn if Young’s voice, especially its upper register, hasn’t aged shockingly well. The rollicking “The Shape of You” is awfully goofy, but that falsetto in the chorus is the sound of someone in love and unafraid to embarrass himself in public while expressing it.

At times, you miss the splatter of Poncho’s rhythm guitar, and you also wish Young had taken another shot at his lyrics, which can feel a little cringy and first draft (“Before your computer turns on you/And walking through the garden/You remember something you’ve been through/And mingle with the stars in the sky”). But even more so than on Colorado, Lofgren’s contributions and his musical interplay with Young—his jabbing guitar on “Change Ain’t Never Gonna,” piano parts here and there–recall what he also brought to Tonight’s the Night. 

The deluxe edition of Barn includes an hour-plus documentary about the making of the album (also available as a separate Blu Ray). Directed by Hannah, credited as “dhlovelife,” it’s almost like a webcam: We see the four men wander in and out of the barn, tune up their instruments, turn Young’s request for cold beer into a vocal warmup exercise, play the songs, make small talk between takes, and celebrate Talbot’s 76th birthday with cake and candles. It’s Get Back without people walking out in frustration or mentioning Eric Clapton. You’re struck by how up there in their years they all look —  Young himself turned 76 last month. But in light of how many of Young’s peers are retiring, no longer writing new songs or, alas, dying, seeing and hearing these weathered veterans summon up some of that old power is about as reassuring as heritage rock gets in 2021.

Musicians:
Neil Young: guitar, piano, harmonica, vocals.
Billy Talbot: bass, vocals.
Ralph Molina: drums, vocals.
Nils Lofgren: guitar, piano, accordion, vocals.

Produced by The Volume Dealers – Neil Young and Niko Bolas, the album will be available on vinyl (special edition), CD, cassette and Deluxe Box set.

Following the release of ‘Great Spans of Muddy Time’ in March, I’ve decided to release a new EP called ‘Alternate Lands’ on 26th November. The material on ‘Spans’ was largely left untouched in its crushed and saturated format, having been salvaged from cassette tapes after losing session files in a hard drive failure, whereas ‘Alternate Lands’ takes sketches first started on those same tapes and reimagines their potential.

Although these songs were crafted in the same time period as ‘Spans’, I’ve taken them in a direction that resonates with where my head is at currently, while also signposting to the way my sound is heading for the next album. Across the three original tracks here, the production is more full and direct than at any point in my career, favouring upfront vocals and solid rhythms as opposed to hazy atmospherics.

I also chose to include a cover of one of my favourite songs by Robyn Hitchcock, ‘Autumn Is Your Last Chance’. Hitchcock has always been influential on my music, perhaps more in spirit and feeling than as a touchstone for sound. My cover was recorded direct to cassette around the time of making ‘Spans’ and blends my love of Hitchcock’s compositions with the sort of sound world that people may associate me with.
As for the artwork, I wanted something that was conceptually similar to ‘The Floating Feather’ by Melchior d’Hondecoeter that we used for the cover of ‘Spans’. Further delving into the archive of the Rijksmuseum revealed a painting of shocking compositional similarity by the painter Herman Henstenburgh, favouring lighter pastel shades instead of the dramatic contrasts of d’Hondecoeter’s work. This distinction seemed to mirror the relative lightness found on ‘Alternate Lands’, altogether offering a different vision of the same psychic landscape.  

Released November 26th, 2021

Witch Fever’s latest music video, ‘Bully Boy’, continues to bring unapologetic chaotic energy. The band pulled inspiration from The Witch Trials but through a paradoxical colourful lens. 

Lead vocalist Amy Walpole shares the following about ‘Bully Boy’: “We wrote ‘Bully Boy’ after we played a gig where the guitarist from one of the support bands shouted at us on stage to take our tops off. For us ‘Bully Boy’ is our combined rage about these experiences funnelled into one track. The alternative music scene is still very much a ‘boys club’ leaving female and non-binary people vulnerable to misogynistic and sexist behaviour, and we are always challenging this. “Bully Boy” is cathartic, and empowering in its anger.”

The video is our collective cathartic response to countless examples of sexist and misogynistic behaviours that female and non-binary people in the entertainment industry fall victim to. Our hope is to challenge these behaviours and empower anyone watching to feel the same cathartic relief we do.

‘Bully Boy’ is the closing track on Witch Fever’s debut EP, “Reincarnated” (out now via digital / out 3rd December on vinyl). Witch Fever will be performing in-store at Rough Trade East on 4th December 

Famed indie band from Ealing, London, release their sixth album, We are delighted to announce we will be releasing our next album ‘As I Try Not To Fall Apart’ on 18th February 2022. It is available to preorder now through our store on limited edition coloured vinyl, standard vinyl, and CD, with discount bundles available, along with some exclusive new merch – link in bio. The first single, of the same name, is out now on all platforms, with a video live on Youtube. We will also be embarking on a huge tour of the UK and Europe from March 2022,

“I Don’t Want To Go To Mars” has all the distorted bombast of White Lies best anthems neatly packed into a short story,” Charles Cave says. “The song follows a character seemingly being herded off Earth to live out a sterile and mundane existence on a newly colonised Mars. Fundamentally the song questions the speed at which we are developing the world(s) we inhabit, and what cost it takes on our wellbeing.”

Accompanied by a new vid put together by the band, they say, “Although the song wasn’t due an official video, we felt the strong imagery of the lyrics really leant itself towards a visual accompaniment. Using old archive footage, an iPhone, and our very own DIY spirit, we have pieced together a visual narrative to run alongside the song. A full force rebuttal of a concept that’s stalked people around the world for generations now; that the grass will be greener on the other side – of the galaxy.”

Release: 18th February 2022

Girl Ray, the London three-piece comprising Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss, share a rework of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s classic “Murder On The Dancefloor” as their festive offering this year with all proceeds going to the Hackney Night Shelter (www.hwns.org.uk)

The band, who have weaved their signature sound into the track – a highlight during their recent festival appearances – said the following:

“Murder On The Dancefloor” has always had a special place in our hearts – it was forever etched into our memory when a few years back at a post-show karaoke session in Bristol, I over-excitedly shoved the microphone to Iris’ lips when it was finally our turn to sing, chipping her front tooth in half for the remainder of the tour. Since then it has of course remained our karaoke song, and a favourite at our DJ sets. When we were looking for a song to cover for this year’s festival seasons, it seemed a natural fit. It became one of our favourite parts of our live set, and we thought it would be only right to record it in honour of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s truly perfect pop song.”

Song produced and mixed by Mike O’Malley
Performed by Girl Ray released December 2nd, 2021

Montreal born Scottish Grenadian Canadian, Allison Russell, is a mother, a musician, a poet, a writer – a mixed-heritage, queer, black woman. Her winding musical path – from her first work in Canadian roots band, Po’ Girl, to Birds of Chicago, her band with her partner JT Nero to her recent collaborations like Our Native Daughters (Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Amythyst Kiah). 

Outside Child, says Russell “is about resilience, survival, transcendence, the redemptive power of art, community, connection, and chosen family.” Singing about this on “Nightflyer,” Russell ponders the healing power of motherhood, using the track’s wide-open expanse to convey the strength she didn’t know she had. Here, the line “I am the mother of the evening star / I am the love that conquers all” is “the most defiantly triumphant, hopeful line I’ve ever written…that’s about the birth of my daughter and how that transformed me.” Though they had a fraught relationship, Russell remembers how she’d crawl underneath the piano and listen to her own mother play. “I would hum along with her,” Russell recalls. “She said I was humming before I could talk. I was able to feel some kind of comfort or love or connection in a way that she couldn’t verbally or physically express – but I could feel in her music that there was love in her.”

There are many ways to tell a story: Words are only one. Allison Russell, long a light of the Americana scene, recovers her own saga of abuse, escape and recovery in a song cycle as enriched by its multifaceted musical vocabulary as by her poetic lyrics. “Oh my Montreal, can I dream of you tonight,” she begins in her radiant alto, slipping a French verse into a chanson that begins “Outside Child’s” journey from childhood sexual abuse to a fugitive adolescence to healing in the arms of chosen family and rock and roll. Recorded in community with her Nashville people, including her partner JT Nero, Yola, Erin Rae and the McCrary Sisters, these songs touch down in country, gospel, blues, folk, Caribbean diasporic rhythms and troubadour balladry as she unfolds her story like the squares of a quilt threaded with her tears and her blood. The album ends with another wanderer’s chanson, transformed through Russell’s narrative into the kind of anthem sung around a fire in a city alley: “Where in the world are the joyful motherf******? Show ’em what you got in your heart.

Released May 21st, 2021

Half Asian / half Latinx. Two sisters, a cousin, and their close friend. The Linda Lindas channel the spirit of original punk, power pop, and new wave through today’s ears, eyes, and minds.

The Linda Lindas caught everyone’s ear this year with the to-the-point track “Racist Sexist Boy” an instant punk classic due to its unfortunate relatability and its punchy energy. The four-piece has opened for both Alice Bagg and Bikini Kill, and has released their self-titled debut EP. Since then, The Linda Lindas haven’t stopped putting out excellent songs. Today, they share the new single “Nino,” which is about a badass cat.

Inspired by band member Bela’s cat, the new single follows their other cat ode, “Monica,” that was written for Bela’s Siamese cat. According to the band, “If you listen carefully there is a real-life, remarkably talented cat named Lil Dude playing piano on it. (We have the footage!)” I wish I had cats worthy of their own songs, or rather a cat in general…

The new single is from their forthcoming 2022 release.

The 16th installment of Saddle Creek’s Document series comes from allie—the mononymous creative moniker of Nashville-based singer/songwriter Allie Cuva (she/they).

After spending time in various musical projects around Nashville, Cuva was recruited as the touring/session drummer for Cavetown—an experience that would prove pivotal. She returned from a lengthy run of shows feeling inspired, restless, and more certain than ever that she had something to express. “I got home and felt very removed and strange, and music was a way to start trying to make sense of it,” Cuva explains. That desire fuelled the writing of allie’s debut EP, 2020’s “Junior Coder’s Experiment“, and its release began to reveal a path not just to catharsis, but also to self-discovery. “Putting the EP out under the Allie moniker ended up really illuminating some of the more subconscious feelings I was having about myself and my gender identity,” Cuva says. “I realized I’d always been trying to get a fuller sense of the picture, but the art really helped me touch on things that I was about to confront in a much more direct way. I started doing research, and seriously considering changing my pronouns, identifying as transgender and nonbinary, and undergoing hormone replacement therapy.”

Cuva describes this decision as a choice to begin a lifelong journey, but it would start with the closing of a different chapter. “My long time partner and I were no longer compatible,” Cuva says. “We didn’t want to separate—it wasn’t a matter of lack of love—but we realized that was the right thing for us as individuals.” The end of the relationship led Cuva to throw herself into writing, resulting in her debut album “Maybe Next Time“, which was released in August of 2021.

While “Maybe Next Time” might be considered a breakup album, on “cast iron // infinite jesters” Allie explores other complex corners of relationships and human connection. On a-side “cast iron” Allie explores her interpretations of the philosophical language and sentiments of certain people in her life. The repeated phrase “I know what you really mean” is not intended to be patronizing, but rather is meant to illuminate the fact that we as humans are often confused/misled about why we think, speak, believe, and act the way we do. As Cuva describes it, “Oftentimes, there are clearer, more sober ways to represent ourselves, and I’m interested in that journey.”

B-side “infinite jesters” is a consideration of the impact of a new, quickly-developing intimate relationship. “Though my favourite relationships have been fortified over many years,” Cuva explains, “I further realized in writing this song that some relationships can be particularly impactful from their near inception. In other words, a lot of good can happen quickly if we’re open to it.” 

Releases January 14th, 2022 on Saddle Creek Records