The Fat Angel Sings

Courtney Barnett releases ‘Write A List Of Things To Look Foward To’ off her upcoming album 
“Things Take Time, Take Time” dropping November 12th – a melodic love letter to friends and friendship.

And how we are looking forward to that one!! Courtney took the song’s name from advice given by a friend to get her out of a depressive funk, “I found a deeper communication with people in my life – deeper conversations”, she notes of this new phase. “And a new level of gratitude for friendships that had been there for so long that I had maybe taken for granted”.

the wholesome and heart-warming video by Christina Xing, featuring Courtney as the sender and recipient of a series of gifts and letters.

Courtney Barnett – “Write A List Of Things To Look Forward To” (Official Video) Taken from the new album ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ released 12th November 2021

Fake Fruit the Oakland, California band’s self-titled debut favours spirited punk primitivism and two-minute art-rock tracks—punchy, melodic songs united by nervy guitars and cutting takedowns of modern frustrations. Miraculously, they manage to avoid self-serious posturing, resulting in an occasionally dissonant, frequently delightful album where fun and fury overlap. Rarely does a band’s first record speak with such a trenchant voice.

Fake Fruit has had time to figure itself out: Chief songwriter and frontperson Hannah “Ham” D’Amato originally founded the band in 2016 in New York, then moved to Vancouver, B.C. and restarted as a trio, before finding new footing in Oakland. There, she secured a semi-finalized line-up with guitarist Alex Post, drummer Miles MacDiarmid, and a rotating cast of bassists. By mid-2019, D’Amato, Post, and MacDiarmid had saved up enough to turn a tour tape into their debut LP, tracking the instrumentals in two days spaced a year apart. Now, two years later,their self titled “Fake Fruit” finally arrives via Smith’s label Rocks in Your Head. It’s well worth the wait: In the half-decade since its first iteration, the band has evolved from nomadic experimentation into nascent punk prowess.

Fake Fruit is electrifying. Rhythmic, garage-y riffs ignite “No Mutuals,” propelled by the song’s dissatisfaction with online social etiquette. At its centre is Fake Fruit’s most distinctive asset: D’Amato’s voice, which hits like Courtney Barnett fronting a punk band. “I don’t wanna wait to be christened as cool,” she sings, blowing up the pronunciation of “cool” until it fractures, sounding almost like “cruel.” The final word in “You look like a fool” receives a similar distortion—an eviscerating affectation.

Fake Fruit distill Pink Flag era Wire, Pylon, and Mazzy Star to expound on the absurdity of modern life. Front woman Hannah D’Amato leads the group through three minute clap backs of minimal, moody post-punk.

released March 5th, 2021

Hannah D’Amato– Vox + Guitars
Alex Post– Guitars + Vox
Miles MacDiarmid– Drums
Martin Miller– Bass

David Bowie’s 2001 album “Toy”, which was shelved amid problems with his record label, will receive its first official release as part of the late singer’s latest reissue campaign. A mix of new songs and re-recordings of lesser-known tracks from 1964-71, Toy was recorded live in the studio shortly after Bowie’s 2000 Glastonbury performance. He planned to surprise release it almost immediately, but EMI/Virgin stalled, which some say led to Bowie’s switch to Columbia Records. After a leak in 2011, “Toy’s” official release is set for November 26th. Listen to the re-recording of his third single, “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving,” below.

“Toy is like a moment in time captured in an amber of joy, fire and energy,” said co-producer Mark Plati of the album, which he recorded alongside Sterling Campbell, Gail Ann Dorsey, Earl Slick, Mike Garson, Holly Palmer, Emm Gryner, Lisa Germano, Gerry Leonard, and Cuong Vu. “It’s the sound of people happy to be playing music. David revisited and re-examined his work from decades prior through prisms of experience and fresh perspective—a parallel not lost on me as I now revisit it twenty years later. From time to time, he used to say ‘Mark, this is our album’—I think because he knew I was so deeply in the trenches with him on that journey. I’m happy to finally be able to say it now belongs to all of us.”

Also available as a Bonus discs in the “Brilliant Adventures”  box set will feature alternative versions, proposed B-sides, and the “Tibet Version” of “Silly Boy Blue” recorded in 2001 with Philip Glass on piano and Moby on guitar. A third disc comprises “Unplugged & Somewhat Slightly Electric” mixes of 13 Toy tracks. alongside remasters of Black Tie White Noise, The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Hours, the rarities compilation Re:Call 5, and a live album recorded at BBC Radio Theatre in 2000.

The legendary previously unreleased album is available as A special edition 10″ Vinyl set.

For the fourth instalment of the Jim Beam Welcome Sessions, Mercury Prize-winning alt-rock act Wolf Alice take to London’s Union Chapel’ for a sepulchral performance of their “Blue Weekend” single, ‘Lipstick on the Glass.’

The Jim Beam Welcome Sessions is an ode to the special relationship between artists and the venues they cut their teeth in. Inspired by Jim Beam’s welcoming spirit, each episode of the multi-year partnership will see an artist return to an independent venue close to their heart. The series launched with a performance from Brit Award-nominated artist Jack Garratt, who returned to London’s Village Underground for a divine multi-instrumental rendition of ‘Time.’

In July, Grammy-nominated Irish act Fontaines D.C. return to beloved North London independent music venue, The Lexington, home to the band’s first shows outside their native Ireland. For the third instalment, Swedish singer-songwriter José González took to Berlin’s The Michelberger for a beguiling performance of his single ‘Valle Local.’

London based rockers Wolf Alice take to the Union Chapel (where lead singer Ellie Rowsell sang in the choir growing up), the film is a gesture of reverence to the space as well as a celebration of the live music experience. “We wanted to play ‘Lipstick on the Glass’ for its melodic grandeur that we hope pays homage to the space we are in. It’s a privilege to play here and something we will collectively remember forever” – Ellie Rowsell, Wolf Alice, A reclaimed 19^th-century Gothic church, for an uncanny take on their Blue Weekend song ‘Lipstick on the Glass’.

The Jim Beam Welcome Session reunites artists with a venue that occupies a special place in their heart. “As performers, there are just some venues that you connect with musically and emotionally,” explains vocalist Ellie Rowsell. “That can be rooted in memories of seeing live music there or the spectacle of the space, but it’s also the people that make it what it is.”

Of their decision to perform at Union Chapel, the band explain: “It has Incredible acoustics and is visually very beautiful and for Ellie a sense of nostalgia who grew up nearby and even did an annual Christmas concert with the local community choir here.

“We wanted to play ‘Lipstick on the Glass’ for its melodic grandeur that we hope pays homage to the space we are in. It’s a privilege to play here and something we will collectively remember forever.”

Lala Lala, the project of Chicago musician Lillie West, shares a new track “Prove It,” the latest single from her upcoming album, “I Want The Door To Open”, out October 8th on Hardly Art Records. Next month, West will perform a string of record release shows before embarking on a UK, European and North American tour in 2022. “Prove It” is contained and polished, with West singing over sparse guitars before the track reaches its percussive climax. “‘Prove It’ is a song about insatiable people and the idea of ‘good’ vs ‘bad,’” says West. “It’s about lack of control. Even though this song is accusatory, I relate to the person I’m talking to. I think sometimes when we criticize other people we’re also talking about ourselves.

Additionally, Hardly Art presents Open the Door: Find Your Keys and Unlock Total Serenity, an infomercial for the album. Created by Sarah Squirm and Will Duncan, it features testimonials from CHAI, Sasami Ashworth, Camilo Medina (Divino Niño), IAN SWEET, and more. Watch “Open the Door: Find Your Keys and Unlock Total Serenity“

Following the release of “Colour Of The Pool” and “Diver,” “Prove It” is accompanied by a beautiful essay by renowned poet, essayist, and critic Hanif Abdurraqib:

“What I crave, what I have always craved, is a collection of songs that make me feel like they are surrounding me in preparation for a season. Not a good season or a bad season, but a season that I can identify as both. This, I’m sure, has to do with me being a product of the Midwest. Where, at least for now, there are still distinct and palpable shifts from month to month, almost as markers of time.

“I think it is the amount of voices on I Want The Door To Open that make me feel comforted, encased, prepared for that moment I know so well where the warmth fades and the darkness comes a little earlier and then, abruptly, a lot earlier. And I don’t mean voices as in different people, I simply mean the multitudinous nature of the choir of sound that one voice can offer. Take, for example, the end of ‘Diver,’ a song that swells and swells until it fades, leaving behind only the residue of voices that echo until the song’s exit, fading right into “Photo Photo,” where the same bursts of choir reappear as the song’s spine. 

“I’m saying I like an album that might make me feel less alone, the kind of alone that many of us became acquainted with in newer and sharper ways in the early darkness of the past year, and that some of us might be revisiting in the early darkness of the fall, and the winter, and beyond. I Want The Door To Open is an album that is immense, though not particularly loud. Its volume is in its tenderness, thoughtful arrangements, and elements of surprise, the things that leap out at you when you think you are hearing one song that becomes another song in its final act, a trick this album pulls off alarmingly well, every time. Take, for example, the pulsing heartbeat in ‘Color Of The Pool’ that gives way, right at the last minute, to a fluorescent blooming of horns. “It’s a magic trick, in a way. Making these songs that are not often long in minutes in seconds feel like mini-suites. Like rooms you don’t want to leave. 

“Speaking of a room I don’t want to leave, I firmly believe that I have maybe given up and given in for good. The inside is where I wanna be whenever the fragile ecosystem we’re all tumbling forward in starts to go south again. And if that is going to be the case, then I require albums that are generous enough to make the inside feel like the outside. An album that feels like a gathering, like a warmth creeping in through a window, no matter the weather. An album that feels like a park, bursting with friends and strangers, shouts and laments. I think this is the one for all of my internal and external joys, sadnesses, anxieties, and the small survivals that open up the door to all of the larger survivals to come.”

West co-produced I Want The Door To Open with Yoni Wolf of WHY?. It features contributions from Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, poet Kara Jackson, OHMME, Sen Morimoto, Christian Lee Hutson, Kaina Castillo, Meg Duffy, Will Miller, Gia Margaret, Josiah Wolf, Adam Schatz, and former tourmate Ben Gibbard. 

“Just when we thought we’d arrived at a conclusion, [West] pulls out the rug again: A euphoric sax bursts in (courtesy of Adam Schatz), playing one freaked-out bent note that never wants to be caught, multiplying itself back into inscrutability.” – Pitchfork on “Color of the Pool”

“[‘Color of the Pool’ is] enveloped in effervescent synths and visceral harmonies” – Stereogum

“‘DIVER’ introduces us to I Want The Door To Open in beautiful, memorable fashion.” – PAPER

“Featuring baroque instrumentation and a soaring crescendo, [‘DIVER’ is] a warm introduction to [I Want the Door to Open].” – The FADER

Early this summer LA’s La Luz announced a much-anticipated fourth album, with the self-titled La Luz set for October 22nd on long-term label Hardly Art. Recorded at Linear Labs Studio in Los Angeles with the help of the eclectic producer Adrian Younge, La Luz fearlessly launch themselves into a new realm of emotional intimacy with a collection of songs steeped in the mysteries of the natural world and the magic of human chemistry that has found manifestation in the musical ESP between guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland, bassist Lena Simon, and keyboardist Alice Sandal. 

Following the critically-acclaimed trio of singles “In The Country, “Watching Cartoons” and “The Pines” comes a new lyric video for their latest song, “Oh, Blue.” A heartfelt ballad that somehow manages to land between time zones, between genres, into a place of lush melody and a feel that is timeless. The group shares that the song is “a love song from a long distance.

About the kind of longing that keeps you in a constant daydream.” The lyric video was directed by the band. 
La Luz international headlining dates in support of their self-titled record for the US, UK, and EU have been announced.  

“La Luz’s new single “In The Country” is an extremely cool piece of spectral, shimmering folk-rock. It’s full of eerie, layered harmonies and reverb-drenched surf-guitar notes, and it absolutely nails its out-of-time pop-psychedelia sound.” [“In The Country”] –  Stereogum

“La Luz create a vibrant and balmy atmosphere on “In The Country”, with warm guitars and Cleveland’s tender vocal. The fuzzy and chirping electronic additions do indeed sound something like cicadas in the nearby trees – or perhaps something further flung like intercepted alien broadcasts.

Either way, La Luz are settling back, pushing aside any obligations, and taking it all in, purely enjoying being “In The Country” – and with this song they invite us to join them in repose and enjoy the summer air.” Beats Per Minute 

“Known for reverb-heavy guitar licks, a tasteful deployment of dynamics and singular harmonies––a range of emotive “oohs” and “ahhs” that vacillate between haunting melancholy and revelrous mirth––the band (Shana Cleveland-guitar, Lena Simon-bass, Alice Sandahl-keys) has crafted a lush, earthy and undeniably psychedelic collection of songs for La Luz. And the record is also the band’s most personal.” [“Watching Cartoons”] – WJCT

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Colleen Green is releasing a new album, “Cool”, on September 10th via Hardly Art. She then shared its third single, album opener “Someone Else.”

Green had this to say about the song in a press release: “This song is about double standards within a relationship, and how they can go both ways. It’s about coming to terms with you how you actually feel about something and taking responsibility for how that affects you. It’s about taking back power in a one-sided relationship and not letting someone else dictate your happiness. It’s about choices and the act of making them.”

Colleen Green’s “Cool”, which features official videos for “I Wanna Be a Dog,” “It’s Nice to Be Nice,” and “Highway,”  along with the track “Someone Else,” is out now on all DSPs and LP/CD/CS formats from Hardly Art Records. LPs ordered through Hardly Art Mini Mart, select independent retailers in North America, the UK, and EU will receive the vinyl on cool, cloudy smoke vinyl.

Previously Green shared Cool’s first single, “I Wanna Be a Dog,” via a video for it. Then she shared its second single, “It’s Nice to Be Nice,” via a video for it featuring Green performing the song on a sailboat.

Cool is Green’s fourth album and the follow-up to 2015’s very well-received I Want to Grow Up. Green co-produced the album with Gordon Raphael, which was mixed by Brendan Eder.

You can now watch Colleen Green’s “Highway”, a new standout from Cool, her Hardly Art release, directed by Ben Kettleson.
Green says of the track, “The newest in a long line of my songs that use driving and being in cars as allegory. Living and touring on the west coast for 10 years, I grew to dislike the highway. It represents so many things that I hate about myself and about humanity/society in general. Not having a car for over a decade helped make me a much calmer person. When I’m on the bus or walking, I am stress-free. I don’t have to talk and I don’t have to worry about anything. I love being able to look all around me and notice beautiful, simple things. When people are on the highway, they’re going too fast to notice any kind of beauty, and they have a whole mess of stressors to deal with. Country roads represent freedom and serenity. Something I appreciate about where I’m from and where I’m now living again is that there are many different ways to get to a place. Even though LA is a huge city, there’s pretty much only one way to get anywhere and it’s very confining.” 

The album was recorded at various Southern California studios: comp-ny (Glendale), Tenement Yard (North Hollywood), and Cosmic Vinyl (Los Angeles). Frida Claeson Johansson mastered Cool at Svenska Grammofonstudion in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Leeds’ very own trio Peakes are getting Dinked for their debut. The Edition includes an exclusive bonus CD, signed prints, and a sticker sheet featuring sketches from band member Molly Puckering. ‘Peripheral Figures’ brings their synth and electro-pop sound into stranger territories, hearing them add shoegaze, ambient techno, and trip pop into their sound from influences including Grauzone, Portishead, and Haruomi Hosono. The CD features a hand-picked selection of ten tracks from their previous EPs and singles.

The sound of Peakes has always been steeped in isolation, crafting hymnal electro-pop that floats, weightless and suspended, over the world they move through. Using the lens of nostalgia as a kind of refuge, their synth-led dreamscapes defy any sense of time and place: their sound is both current, yet transportive like a memory.
 
Since their formation in 2017, vocalist Molly Puckering, synth-player and producer Max Shirley and drummer Pete Redshaw, have been solidifying what it means to be Peakes. With a smattering of EPs and singles laying out their statement of intent, each one a run-up growing in momentum, their trajectory was clear: get into the studio and bring the music to the stage. This was the plan for the Leeds-based trio in 2020 – until the world stopped. No one could have predicted that touring and recording, an artist’s lifeblood, would grind to a global halt, and PEAKES could never have predicted that in a year defined by impossibilities, they would make their debut album, Peripheral Figures.
 
“I think last year, when you had everything taken away from you, it made it easier to try something new,” says Molly. Having released their four-track EP ‘Pre-Invented World’ on the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic, amidst the world’s disorder, their music fell into a void: the appetite for new music had understandably dried up, and there was nothing Peakes could do to change that. So rather than dwell on it, they took a step back and returned to the drawing board and went back to basics, learning to fall in love with music again through the purest sense of creation.

Written by Molly Puckering & Maxwell Shirley Produced by Maxwell Shirley Mixed by Tom Carmichael Live Drums by Peter Redshaw Additional Guitars by Josh Hunnisett & Chris Milnes

Dinked Vinyl Edition Details:
• Coconut & baby blue marbled coloured vinyl. *
• Bonus ‘Re-Invented World’ CD of 10 tracks from previous EPs/singles. *
• A5 sticker sheet of singer Molly Puckering’s sketches. *
• Signed press shot prints. *
• Numbered Dinked sticker. *
• Limited pressing of 300. *

Before Taylor McCall left his home state of South Carolina to enroll at Montana State University, he hustled all summer to trade in his flat-bottom fishing boat for a drifter he would haul out west. As an avid outdoorsman, a fishing guide seemed like a logical next step. While waist-deep in crystal clear fly fishing waters—a dream for many—another calling was tugging at his sleeve.

Accompanied by his father on the 28-hour drive back home to South Carolina, McCall remembers his father asking “What’s next?” His parents knew he played guitar, as it had been gifted to him by his grandfather when he was only seven years old. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna make an album,’” McCall says “And that’s not the answer anybody would want to hear—he thought I was crazy.”

In a symbolic exchange, McCall sold his drifter boat to fund what would become his first album: “Summer Heat “(2017). His parents had never heard him play outside of his bedroom and were surprised by the poised artist who performed for the first time in January 2018. By September of that year, the young artist signed a publishing deal with BMG Records. “It’s been very fast,” he shares. “I guess my first stab at it landed at a good mark.”

Humbly understated, the 24-year-old artist’s Music City story is more like a fairytale when contrasted with the often harsh reality of chasing musical dreams in Nashville. Yet, his confidence carried him well into the scene. “Even a gambling man wouldn’t say the right thing to do here—leaving school to pursue a music career having never sung in front of anyone before in my life, not even a cover song set,” he laughs. “I had to write all the material, everything was so new and fascinating because until then, I had never even thought of doing this.”

Moving to Nashville as a performance novice took some warming up. Even now, upon the release of his sophomore full-length, “Black Powder Soul”, McCall admits that part hasn’t gotten easier. He has established a few meditative guidelines to ease his anxiety as he approaches the stage, but when he’s up there it feels like another world. “It took a lot for a shy bashful guy like me who didn’t even want to read aloud in class back in the day to go ‘Hey, I’m gonna go be in the center of the room,” says McCall. “It’s a wild dynamic.”

McCall credits his astonishing breakthrough to the supporters who propped him up along the way. One of those is the sought-after producer Sean McConnell whom McCall calls “a complete Godsend.” He adds, “I don’t take that lightly, meeting a soul like his.”

After signing with BMG, he wrote consistently on his own, and sometimes with a small circle of trusted collaborators. His manager recommended he get in the room with McConnell. “As clueless as I am, I had no idea who he was,” McCall laughs. The first time they sat down together, they wrote “So Damn Lucky,” which would become the second-to-last track on the 14-song McConnell-produced collection. After two long years of meeting talented people with varying approaches, McConnell’s demo of that track confirmed McCall had finally landed in the right place. “When I heard the demo, I knew that’s exactly where my sonic landscape was in my head,” he shares. 

For McCall, “Black Powder Soul“ feels like a fully-realized arrival point. Previous EPs including his self-titled 2019 release were a step in the right direction but failed to satisfy his artistic appetite. Though this LP is not his first, the artist considers it his debut. “The other two projects felt like getting a quick fast food meal, and this is like a steak dinner,” he laughs. “If you’re gonna go out once, you want to eat the maximum.”

Black Powder Soul is not necessarily a concept record. But the intentionally crafted project pieces together hidden heirlooms that paint a fuller picture of the artist and the legacy that led him here. 

The album begins at the same place as his artistry—with his grandfather, who gifted him his first guitar. McCall remembers him as a “good ole country man who wore overalls and chewed tobacco.” Not long after he sent the guitar, the Vietnam vet was diagnosed with terminal cancer, likely from the agent orange that was absorbed into his brain and lungs while overseas. 

While at a family funeral, an old Slave Gospel song came on and McCall’s ears perked up. “I never knew those recordings of my grandfather existed,” he says. He tracked down a family history who presented a 12-song collection. Only one song featured his grandfather singing. Halfway through making this record, McCall played it for McConnell who began to cry upon first listen. “Then of course I started crying,” he says. “ I was like, ‘Do you think this is the right option?’ It took me two years before I could even listen to this sound bite and show it to him. And he was like ‘Dude, this has to be on a record.’”

Because his grandfather passed away while McCall was still young, there is no way he would have known that his grandson would go on to become a musician. “Old Ship Of Zion” is both a thematic tone-setter and a touching tribute to McCall’s earliest musical influence. “I felt his presence in there one day and thought ‘If the world is going to hear this first project, then my grandfather is gonna be the first person they hear.”

The clip of his grandfather singing “Old Ship Of Zion” became the opening prelude for Black Powder Soul. Vintage-styled, the gravelled vocals haunt the listener as they begin their journey through the album. “I’m proud to have turned it into like a piece of folk art,” says McCall. “The art itself represents the sonic landscape. That’s the frame and the bow around it. But the middle part of this record is not my grandfather.”

Conceptually, McCall placed the track listing as a Biblical chronology. “It’s almost like being born, getting thrown into hell, and then going on to heaven,” he explains. “Then this in-between music is like all the shifts you’ve got to deal with to get the ride on the boat, as they say.”

The slow-burning rock ballad “Hell’s Half Acre” is the beginning of that descent. Checking in from the depths, “South of Broadway” showcases the upside of McCall’s lack of classically trained instrumentalism. Blending banjo with screeching eclectic guitar may be considered off-kilter. Yet, it evokes the chaos of McCall’s intended “crazy circus vibe.”

From the depths of hell, McCall’s brooding “Highway Will” exhibits expressive vocal breadth and wisdom well beyond his years. Bless my heart, I can’t stand still / Devil don’t kill me, then the highway will, he sings.

To have this record in my hand shows me and hopefully to the world one day that in three years time —it doesn’t matter if it’s 11,12 years—but you can go from not knowing anything about anything to releasing an album you’re really proud of,” says McCall. “If you really give yourself to something and really are obsessed and passionate just for the love of something, it can happen.  But it’s also if you’re lucky, first and foremost, because I look at making music these days as a discipline, and an amazing privilege.”

From wading in a creek to recording original music in an air-conditioned studio, McCall’s winding journey is just as unlikely as it is serendipitous. With equal parts reverence for inherited musical traditions and a pioneering spirit, McCall created a uniquely Southern, yet transcendent soundscape.

“I’m just blessed that when I’m dead and gone someone will have my piece of projects sitting on their record collection on their mantle one day,” says McCall. “You can’t take me away.”