The Fat Angel Sings

When Helen Ballentine – who records as Skullcrusher – released her debut EP, a collection of four impressive and intriguing songs titled simply Skullcrusher EP, on Secretly Canadian back in June, it was immediately clear that it marked the arrival of something, and someone, very special. The four songs on Skullcrusher were transportive; dark, dreamy and almost hypnotically enthralling. Their release brought the soft spoken artist from upstate New York to somewhat unexpected international attention. And, for the many thousands who also fell quickly under its spell, today is cause for celebration as two more tracks are unveiled: new song “Farm” and a reimagining of Radioheads’ “Lift” –  both recorded and co-produced with her Skullcrusher collaborator Noah Weinman.

Tim Kreider once wrote, “If we want the rewards of being loved, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Helen Ballentine only just released her self-titled debut as Skullcrusher last year—one of 2020’s best Ep’s, if you ask us—but she’s already grappled with that give and take, struggling with Skullcrusher’s success. Now as then, Ballentine’s music lives up to her moniker by virtue of its devastating emotional honesty, which left her feeling exposed after realizing her debut’s intimate song writing was being parsed by total strangers. “How did I end up here with my old lines on your page? / Sometimes I wish I’d kept them safe / Far away from your gaze,” she sings on her Storm In Summer EP’s title track, later wondering, “If I step into this storm / Is it warm? / Will I find my place?” Ballentine’s song writing remains deeply personal, but her journey is universal, couched in beautiful music that will kill you softly.

The new song by Skullcrusher from the EP ‘Storm in Summer’, out April 9th on Secretly Canadian.

Following a prolific run of garage rock releases and an album and EP with his band Pottery (in which he plays drums), Paul Jacobs presents “Pink Dogs on the Green Grass”. Mastered by Oliver Ackermann of A Place To Bury Strangers, the album is now available via Blow The Fuse Recordings. at 13 songs, Pink Dogs on the Green Grass is a mix of everything — at points sounding like early Deerhunter meets the off-kilter bongos of Paul Simon’s Graceland with the opening track “Christopher Robbins.” The balladry of “Day to Day,” meanwhile, is eerily reminiscent of a freak-folk Devendra Banhart track, with its washed synths, bopping guitar line, and Jacobs‘ halcyon vocals.

I love Paul Jacobs, I think he is a bit of a genius, if Half Rich Loner is anything to go by, then this record will be storming.

Jacobs is a musician with an abundance of talent and a melting pot of influences who knows what he’s going for on every track — or at least he’s good at making it seem like he does. On Pink Dogs on the Green Grass, Jacobs has put himself up there with other psych-rock solo wonders like White Fence, Ty Segall and Morgan Delt.

Written, performed, recorded and mixed by Paul Jacobs

LP/CD available now on Blow The Fuse Records ​ UK street date: June 11th, 2021

Baby FuzZ’s timeline might work a little differently than yours. Welcome to the Future (Season 1) episodically wedges itself between worlds, creating an experience that may weave between expressions, but never an ethos. As the song writing playground for producer Brandon Lowry, this project borrows heavily from glam rock’s persona-building playbook, indie rock’s winking attitude, and an environmentally conscious vegan mindset that spelled doomsday in the months leading up to and during this ongoing pandemic.

“Because of the stupid persona, I can approach dark subjects like death or global annihilation or depression in comedic form or without coming off as didactic. It’s the idea and ethos of hyper pop, but sonically a bit more in the classic glam rock or indie rock department (or whatever genre I happen to be dabbling in at the time),” Lowry explains. 

On this full-length, Baby FuzZ transforms a list of deadly diseases twice, first into a folk punk stomp, and then into its own dance routine and punk rock surprise ending on “We’re All Gonna Die!!!”. Lowry’s persona namedrops an iPhone-wielding Patti Smith on glammy highlight “Before Our Time,” shoves Brian May guitar heroics through “I’m Trying My Freakin Best,” a song transported from the inside of a sad can of Bush’s Baked Beans, and has time to shroud McDonalds and Elon Musk in romantic fog on closer “Acid Night.” All of these shoe hornings should be taken with a large grain of salt, especially when considering Baby FuzZ’s Mother Earth-first mentality. “The present is all that matters, but it’s always second fiddle,” Lowry continues. “I guess what I was trying to do with this album was shake people and say ‘wake up!’ or maybe better yet, shake myself out of some helpless malaise and try to make a difference in the world around me.” Baby FuzZ is welcoming you to the future…before it’s too late.

Before Our Time – Baby FuzZ ranks love and life only in extremes – there’s no between for this Floridian sonic boom. “Before Our Time,” the glam-shocked single from Welcome to the Future (Season 1), shines with a confident hook that jets away from the verses’ malaise and indifference with rocket fuel. The result is a track that’s vibrant, catchy, and powerful, despite the track’s flintrock line: “if you don’t give a fuck, then you won’t get old.” With that attitude, Baby FuzZ intends to spring eternal.

Acid Night – Driven by smoky ambience and a burrowed sax motif, “Acid Night” is the perfect endcap to Baby FuzZ’s Welcome to the Future (Season 1). Unlike most of Baby FuzZ’s fare before it, it remains locked in a dreamy, downtempo phase for its entire runtime. The result is an anti-capitalist stance that ambles between loving and lucid. With this putting a stop to Baby FuzZ’s first album-length season, there’s no end to the magic that Season 2 could bring. 

released May 6th, 2021

Some records just sound like they were a good time to make. Silver Synthetic self-titled debut is one of them. Tracked to tape across seven sunny May days in 2019 at frontman Chris Lyons’ house in New Orleans, the follow up to their “Out of the Darkness” EP pops and whirrs with low-slung hooks.

Guitarist Kunal Prakash, who also plays in Jeff the Brotherhood, lays out the balance of vibes and pragmatism that fuelled the experience: “At the time it felt like the simplest, cheapest way to get this done and it inadvertently created this relaxed, creative situation that was a windfall of us not having any money.”

With Lyons setting aside his garage-punk roots and indulging in his love of Velvet Underground jangle, smooth-flowing Bob Seger and the interlocking leads of Television’s Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, Silver Synthetic is a suite of supine guitar-pop jams for long afternoons without much to do but hang.

Silver Synthetic is a bit of a left turn stylistically – have these influences been in the background for a while?

Chris: “They were kinda always there for me. Before this band I was playing in Bottomfeeders, and it’s a lot more punk-influenced, garage, psychedelic. I started writing all these songs that are way more laid back. They just didn’t fit. I didn’t know what the hell to do with them. I was like, ‘Woah, I can either ignore this, because I don’t have a place to put these songs, or I can pursue this and see what happens with it.’”

Kunal: “There’s definitely a lot of elements from the canon of rock ‘n’ roll that we’ve all listened to for a really long time. I think we turn each other on to little nuggets here and there. I wasn’t a huge JJ Cale guy before we started playing together but Chris and Lucas [Bogner, drums] are really into that stuff. There’s things like that, which snuck its way into the music a little bit. Especially the minimalistic stuff. There are some newer influences even if it’s old music.”The guitar lines on the record are more complex than the delivery lets on.

Chris: “The songs are so simple, there’s so much room for us to do whatever with them after we have the form down. A lot of the complexity comes from Kunal’s additions. His guitar playing fills in all the cracks.”

Kunal: “A lot of what Chris is doing is strumming open chords. There’s quite a bit of [space] to get some connective tissue in there without it being too busy. Those are the two things we’re trying to balance—adding some nice melodic stuff that helps propel the song, but doesn’t distract from the fact that it’s a song that’s being sung by a singer.”

Kunal: “Chris wrote so many hooky songs and we’ve been playing them for a while, so a decent amount of the solos were half ready to go. For me it’s about serving the song, especially in this context. You’re not going to come in with some crazy wah wah-noise-delay solo or something. To me, a lot of what the songs need feels obvious. You know how when you hear a catchy song for the first time, it feels like you know it? That’s what I want the solos to be like.”

“Silver Synthetic” is out on April 9th through Third Man Records.

How do you combine the lingering dream pop of Cocteau Twins and The Cure with revolutionary lyrics of ‘90s riot grrrl pioneers like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile?

Just ask Mercedes and Phoenix Arn Horn, the twin sisters who have spent Canada’s lockdown in their home recording studio, making music and building their latest project, Softcult. Their debut EP, “Year Of The Rat”, arrives this Friday (16th April), and it might be the dreamiest record to fire up a rebellious spirit that you’ve heard in a long while.

Opening with the anti-misogynist ‘Another Bish’, Softcult take a deeper look at the language we use towards women. The soaring chorus of “I won’t sit, I won’t stay/ Roll over, obey/ I’m just another bish that you’ll never tame” is delightfully empowering in a way that can be traced back to their ‘90s influences. The bonding of hazy guitars, drums and a solid bassline give modern dream pop a sharper edge with its deeply satisfying sound.

This DIY aesthetic is used to Softcult’s advantage throughout Year Of The Rat, stepping out from the often over-polished pop-rock of many artists on the scene today, while also showing expertise at what they do. Written, produced and recorded entirely by Mercedes and Phoenix, it’s a shining example of what artists can achieve when they have their creative freedom.

Moving into ‘Gloomy Girl’, we come to the true highlight of the EP. Here, the duo deal with the theme of depression and the effect it so often has on our relationships with friends and family. Opening with the killer line “Hang my head until my neck breaks”, it’s the unfiltered representation that we need in new music. Skilfully capturing the feeling of guilt in the chorus with “I should go out and see the sun/ Yeah, I know/ I should go out and be more fun/ But I don’t”, Softcult have a showstopper on their hands with ‘Gloomy Girl’.

Without stopping to rest, they move straight into ‘Take It Off’; this is where Softcult hit their stride of evoking a relatable feeling of anger through even the dreamiest songs. Opening with the lyrics “You don’t want a girlfriend, you just want a doll/ buy her pretty dresses, take her to the mall”, here they rage against the objectification of women. This is the song that will really catch the attention of the listener who can relate to being treated like nothing more than a body.

While the final two tracks from the EP don’t stand out in quite the same way as the others, ‘Young Forever’ and ‘Bird Song’ are still a strong testament to the musical skill of Mercedes and Phoenix Arn Horn. While they do take a different musical approach to their punk rock heritage, their insightful and often biting lyrics succeed in feeding the fire that was set by feminist pioneers decades ago, and their music feels more and more relevant to the modern listener. Year Of The Rat is a strong debut on the whole, that sets Softcult up for a meteoric rise.

thanks Vicky Greer for the words

Toronto band, Packs who have just signed to Royal Mountain Records (Mac Demarco, Alvvays) and Fire Talk (responsible for stuff like Dehd, Mamalarky and Pure X) – they’re today sharing “New TV” .

The new single, which premiered at The FADER, comes just ahead of their debut LP, “Take The Cake” (out May 21st )which has found comparisons to Sonic Youth, Vivian Girls and Pavement with tips from Stereogum, So Young, NPR, Gorilla vs Bear, BPM and Brooklyn Vegan.

A lot of time spent in quarantine means a lot of time spent in front of a TV screen, which means, for me at least, a lot of time spent thinking about what it would look like to someone watching me stare at what is essentially a piece of furniture for hours on end, and the resulting range of facial expressions it elicits. This idea seems to be one of the themes unpacked in Pack’s “New TV” video, as we watch an incredibly comfy Madeline Link’s emotional reactions to a fixed but unseen item in front of her while her non-diegetic voice sings with the energy of someone lazing out for the umpteenth day while awaiting the CDC’s go-ahead for her to hit the road with her band again. It feels a bit lazy to label it slacker rock, but I can’t think of a better term for a song about cathodic indolence.

PACKS are fronted by Madeline Link who acts as the primary songwriter behind the project. Much of the music and new album investigates the turbulence of late adolescence and coming of age in life. It deals, in part, with the quandaries of adult life: at times feeling directionless, dealing with the ups and downs of relationships, processing loss and ultimately, trying to find your place in an expensive city which can quickly consume you. Their sound defintely has an early 90s indie/Slanted & Enchanted feel, but Link really gives it another dimension with her voice and sense of melody.

From “Take The Cake” out 5/21 on Fire Talk / Royal Mountain.