The Fat Angel Sings

A guitarry hybrid of AZ’s edgy rock/soul/r’n’b sound. Grooving good times, acerbic exchanges overheard in the street, shifts in community, the losses you will carry always, dark recesses late at night that echo with a wonder you’ve never felt before. Life! All instruments played by Azita; the wackest, most Azita-harmonious sounding pop album yet.

For those who find the passage of time a one-way process of attrition, here’s good news for you. In the eight years since AZITA’s last long-player her fevered brain has barely rested and the proof is a new album of unbounded physical and mental activity, music and entertainment, entitled ‘Glen Echo’. The worlds of the previous Azita’s have left their unmistakable essence. Her singular conception of pop music – the idiosyncratic songs, singing and playing that have graced seven acclaimed releases – is in verdant recurrence on ‘Glen Echo’, blossoming a new, cutting sharply in the spirit and image of her ever evolving, always questioning style.

Writing and arranging on keyboards since the time of her solo debut, Azita focused on guitars for this set of songs. Not simply for swagger or a fresh approach to soloing but as part of a way to elide expected singer-songwriter tropes, to democratically populate the sound-stage in equal partnership instead. This is a key aspect of the ‘Glen Echo’ sound, one that determined another new choice.

Previous long-players ‘Enantiodromia’, ‘Life On the Fly’ and ‘How Will You?’ were achieved via close work with players and engineers who took the compositions from the demo to a finished form. Invariably though, something would get lost in the transmigration somewhere. With ‘Glen Echo’, Azita comes through fully, jaggedly, most vividly, owning her intention entirely in the dialogue of singing and playing her rock and rhythm and blues.

The lyric sheet is riddled with language that circles, through the many moments of life, aspects of the passage of time, the pre-empted dreams and strangeness of the present and the way we invent an idealized past in response to the changes, guiding the narrative… where? It’s all banded together by AZITA’s wit, equal parts droll and dire, her dispassionate view of fates and outcomes for all of us here together on the planet, textured with unique, cinematic details and sudden dives into a deeply felt, utterly OG sense of soul.

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In ‘Glen Echo’ are a multitude of sounds – all the moments in a life: the good time grooves, acerbic exchanges in the street, shifts in community and generosity, moments of loss you know you will carry forever, reflection upon unknown futures and pasts, the dark recesses late at night that echo with a wonder you’ve never felt before. You name it, AZITA’s got some sweet and sour theme music for it.

Released March 5th, 2021

Written, performed, and recorded by Azita Youssefi

2021 Drag City Records.