We’ve had the great news of DMA’S‘ live album, “Live at Brixton”, for a few weeks now, and the anticipation only grows with the release of the live ‘Lay Down’. Already an unquestioned crowd-riler in its own right, the live recording only proves what we already know – that this track, and album, has the power to lift any crowd into a frenzied storm of energy. To be released on March 5th, the album is still available to pre-order, with the option of a limited availability vinyl.
Our first ever show in the UK was the opening slot at Brixton Academy so this is just totally emblematic of the support that has grown overseas we are ever grateful for. It’s still the greatest show we have ever played and we will never forget that night. See you all soon! Stay safe.” DMA’S
On March 6th, 2020 a sold-out audience filled the O2 Academy Brixton’s cavernous space from wall-to-wall. The band played the biggest headline show of their career to date half a planet away from home, yet the show conjured the atmosphere of an intimate homecoming celebration. The O2 Academy Brixton show was immediately hailed as one of the highlights of the band’s career so far, and it has taken on whole new significance given the events that have followed. For many fans it was their final show before live music events were halted.
From early favourites ‘In The Air’ and ‘Lay Down’ to new material such as ‘Silver’ and ‘Life Is A Game Of Changing’ from ‘The Glow’ The show is documented in the ‘Live at Brixton’ album, which will be released almost a year to the day later on March 5th. ‘Live at Brixton’ will be released on a striking smoke-effect pink/orange limited edition double vinyl. Its design was inspired by a flare that was set off during the show. The album offers a chance to reminiscence on the life-affirming power of live shows, and also an inspiring reminder of what we’re all looking forward to returning to.
Oh yes! the New single / animated music video for “Trophy Deer” from Kali Masi is out now everywhere. Their upcoming LP “[laughs]” is drops March 26th via US & Homebound Music in Europe!. If there’s one word that can describe [laughs],Kali Masi’s second full-length album, it’s deliverance. On their new record, the Chicago-based indie punk outfit strives to break out of their personal chains to forge a path we all search for. The album is a collection of ambitious songs, musically and lyrically, centreing around the universal truth that the power and courage to be who we are is and always has been inside of ourselves — rather than in the arms and minds of those around us.
Singer and guitarist Sam Porter shares the earnest narrative of feeling out of place both in your hometown and your own skin, and exploring that alienation as we strive for growth. The wailing guitars and powerful drums complement the urgent calls for clarity and understanding, noting the crushing emptiness of loss contrasted by the bittersweet reminiscence of youth.
Kali Masi have never been a band to hold anything back, and the four-piece stays true to this promise on the new LP. From start to finish, [laughs] is cutting, crucial and honest, with poetic recollections and curses of the past juxtaposed by contemplative acceptance of self in the present. On the new record, the band explores and dissects elements of strained friendships that often go unspoken, sometimes to the point of abandonment beyond repair.
Recording once again with hardcore icon Jay Maas, co-founder of Defeater, Kali Masi crafted another masterful balance of urgency, tension and alluring instrumental harmony. The seconds between tracks will leave you guessing whether to rest or revel, and no matter which you get, you’re always taken by pleasant surprise.
The 10 new songs are for feeling lonely in a room full of familiar faces, as well as for restless nights in the throes of transition and growth. No matter where you are in life, Kali Masi is here with an explosive passion for finding who we are — and celebrating it. Take these songs with you as you cut yourself loose of the snares that once made you feel like a prisoner. With [laughs] crashing through your ears, you will be free.
Kali Masi – “Trophy Deer” (Official Music Video) From their upcoming LP “[laughs]” Out March 26th via Take This To Heart Records / Homebound (EU)
Produced alongside Aaron Dessner (The National, Sharon Van Etten, Taylor Swift), “Collections From The Whiteout” heralds the first time Ben Howard has opened the door to production outside of he and his bands closer confines. ‘Collections From The Whiteout’ marks the London BRIT Award winner’s fourth full-length and is scheduled to arrive on March 26th via Island Records.
The foreboding darkness that coated Ben’s second record I Forget Where We Were and thinly veiled its follow up Noonday Dream, isn’t so evident on Collections.. These are songs written from headlines scanned, or news stories scrolled past. Ben has taken those snippets and let his curiosity take control, creating an aural scrapbook that reverberates with tape loops and guitar FXs.
There are sounds akin to Brian Eno, Durutti Column and Steve Reich in there, but also Neil Young and Townes Van Zandt. It’s a million miles away from Ben’s multi-platinum selling debut, but a path plotted from Ben’s then to his now isn’t so far removed.
The door was also left open to some new players too. Yussef Dayes, one of the UK’s most innovative young drummer/producer’ especially in the field of jazz features, as does Kate Stables from This Is The Kit, James Krivchenia from Big Thief, Kyle Keegan from Hiss Golden Messenger, and the aforementioned Aaron Dessner lent his hand too where needed. Long-term guitarist to Ben’s band, Mickey Smith, remains a reassuring presence. Rob Moose, a long-standing arranger of strings for Bon Iver and a collaborator to Laura Marling, Blake Mills, and Phoebe Bridgers is also present, peppering the mix.
Ben Howard has announced his fourth studio album will be available on Limited Edition Transparent Double Vinyl, Ben Howard – “What A Day” – from ‘Collections From The Whiteout’ New album out 26th March,
We’re excited to announce our debut album “Bright Green Field”, out Friday 7th May! Here’s the first single ‘Narrator’ , This is the debut album we’ve always wanted to make and without a doubt the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done. We can’t wait for you to hear the whole thing. And especially to be able to play it to you in person……. ‘Narrator’ features the fantastic Martha Skye Murphy on vocals. The music video is directed by Felix Green. The track was inspired by the 2019 film A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the song follows a man who is losing the distinction between memory, dream and reality and how you can often mould your memories of people to fit a narrative that benefits your ego. Martha Skye Murphy, the track’s guest vocalist, made the point that the unreliable narrator is, more often than not, a male who wishes to portray women as submissive characters in their story. After some discussions with Martha she thought it’d be a good idea that she play the part of the woman wanting to break free from the dominating story the male has set.
One of the most hotly anticipated albums of 2021 is incoming. While the title of Squid’s debut album conjures up imagery of pastoral England, in reality, it’s something of a decoy that captures the band’s fondness for paradox and juxtaposition. Within the geography of Bright Green Field lies monolithic concrete buildings and dystopian visions plucked from imagined cities. Squid’s music – be it agitated and discordant or groove-locked and flowing – has often been a reflection of the tumultuous world we live in. Following two instant sell-out EPs, their debut album is due 7th May on the legendary Warp label, unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. A colossal new force in UK music.
Written in early 2020 and recorded during the intense delirium of a summer heatwave, ‘Bright Green Field’ sees the U.K. five-piece transcend genre, blending together alternative rock, post-punk and experimental electronics into a debut impossible to predict.
‘Bright Green Field’ is a joyous and emphatic coming of age record that’s agitated, discordant, groove-locked and flowing, amplified through dystopian Britain, science fiction and cyberspace – a reflection of the tumultuous world we live in. First single ‘Narrator’, is available now, ricochets from funk strut to screeching chaos via the melodic touch of guest vocalist Martha Skye Murphy, and comes accompanied by an expansive video by Felix Green.
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Joe Strummer was one of those essential artists whose reputation far exceeded the widespread recognition he achieved in life. When he passed away from a congenital heart defect at age 50, he was known mainly for his roles he played in the Clash, Big Audio Dynamite, the 101ers and his solo band the Mescaleros, and yet despite having established an insurgent attitude and a musical palette that spanned punk, dub, funk, and rockabilly, his solo catalogue always seemed to take second place to the iconic outfits with which he’s been forever identified. There’s a clear irony in that distinction, given that Strummer was an outspoken individual who continued to channel social and political causes fearlessly and tirelessly throughout his career.
It’s apt then that Strummer’s solo career should finally get the focus it deserves with “Assembly”, a long-overdue compilation that boasts both career highlights — three live unreleased Clash recordings are, on their own, well worth the price of admission — film score contributions, three tracks recorded with the Mescaleros, a moving take on Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” and, of special note to collectors, a heretofore unreleased version of “Junco Partner,” a song that dates back to Strummer’s initial efforts with the 101ers and rendered here as an earnest acoustic home recording.
‘Assembly’ is the first new Joe Strummer title to be released on Dark Horse Records. Designed as a new starting point to Joe Strummer’s back catalogue, it includes 13 tracks from Strummer’s solo career, along with two live versions of the classic Clash songs “Rudie Can’t Fail” and “I Fought The Law” and a previously unreleased acoustic version of Junco Partner – making a total of 16 tracks. Other tracks come from Strummer’s extensive solo catalogue including tracks from his three albums with ‘The Mescaleros’.
The late Clash frontman Joe Strummer is getting new solo best of, Assembly, on March 26th via Dark Horse Records that collects his work with The Mescaleros and more. One of the rarities included on the album is a never-before-released acoustic version of “Junco Partner,” a blues song first recorded in 1951 by James Waynes, that Strummer played with his first band, The 101ers, was recorded by The Clash for Sandinista! and he continued to play through his days with The Mescaleros.
This acoustic version, just Joe and his guitar, was discovered on a hand-labelled cassette tape in the Strummer archives.
Founded in 1974 by George Harrison Dark Horse Records has long been a home for Storytellers and Troubadour’s, words that can be used to describe Joe Strummer, making Dark Horse Records to perfect home to appreciate and expand Strummer’s incredible legacy across, music, politics, and culture.
Package includes new written forward by Jacob Dylan
Tracklist: 1. Coma Girl 2. Johnny Appleseed 3. I Fought The Law (Live) 4. Tony Adams 5. Sleepwalk 6. Love Kills 7. Get Down Moses 8. X-Ray Style 9. Mondo Bongo 10. Rudie Can’t Fail (Live) 11. At The Border, Guy 12. The Long Shadow 13. Forbidden City 14. Yalla, Yalla 15. Redemption Song 16. Junco Partner (Acoustic)
My 2xLP Record Store Day release “All These Perfect Crosses” will be available digitally on 2/26/21 on Partisan Records. Accompanying the release, we’ve partnered with Neighborhood Comics to create a standard and deluxe print edition of Andrew Greenstone’sAll These Perfect Crosses comic. To celebrate, we’ve released two versions of “Calvary Court” (full band and piano versions), which is one of a number of songs illustrated in the comic book. You can pre-order both editions now below.
The vinyl is still available in some stores, check your local record shop. Huge thanks to Andrew Greenstone for creating something so cool around these songs, and to Neighborhood Comics for making us the first release on their publishing imprint. Stay Positive.
‘All These Perfect Crosses is a collection of songs that came from the sessions for Faith In The Future, We All Want The Same Things, and I Need A New War. For Craig, these three records are one body of work, and the songs on this collection are pieces of that larger narrative. For various reasons, these songs didn’t appear on the records they were recorded for, but they still tell a part of the same story: modern people trying to make it through, to keep their heads above water, to live past their mistakes, to survive.
Truth in advertising: Iron Butterfly’s first album was titled Heavy. The 1968 Atco Records release introduced the band’s dense sound fusing hard rock and psychedelia with a set of original songs plus a reimagining of Allen Toussaint’s “Get Out of My Life Woman.” While three-fifths of the band left after that debut, Heavy nonetheless began Iron Butterfly on a journey encompassing four studio LPs, one-off tracks, and live sets through 1971. Now, that journey has been lavishly chronicled on a recent box set from Cherry Red’s Esoteric Recordings imprint. The 7-CD Unconscious Power: An Anthology 1967-1971 brings together has all of the pioneering band’s original albums plus bonus tracks and rare mixes to offer a full immersion into Iron Butterfly’s heavy world.
The San Diego band was formed in 1966 by Doug Ingle (vocals/organ), Jack Pinney (drums), Greg Willis (bass), and Danny Weis (guitar) with Darryl DeLoach (vocals) joining soon after. But the personnel shifts had only just begun; within months, Jerry Penrod replaced Willis. Pinney left to return to school with Bruce Morse and then Ron Bushy stepping in for him. The Ingle/Bushy/Weis/Penrod/DeLoach made a powerful noise at venues such as The Whisky A-Go Go and was signed by Atlantic Records to its Atco subsidiary.
Heavy, on CD 1 here, is presented in both its mono and stereo mixes in an expanded edition also including a single recorded in 1967 but not released until 1970 in Europe: “Don’t Look Down on Me” b/w an early version of the album’s “Possession.” The closing “Iron Butterfly Theme,” a brisk, instrumental mini-suite, best encapsulated the group’s ambitions. But those ambitions didn’t have time to flower as Weis, Penrod, and DeLoach all opted to move on near the end of 1967. (Penrod and Weis went on to join Rhinoceros, also recently anthologized by Esoteric.) Enter guitarist Rick Davis (a.k.a. Erik Brann) and drummer-turned-bassist Lee Dorman.
The new four-piece unit recorded the band’s signature song and album, 1968’s In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida. While the title was a misheard version of “In the Garden of Eden,” there was no mistaking the thunderous epic’s success. Clocking in at seventeen minutes, the Doug Ingle composition took up the entire second side of the original LP which reached No. 4 on the Top LPs chart and became one of the best-selling albums of the era. The apotheosis of psych-rock excess and heaviness, “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” provided a showcase for the band members’ virtuosity (including a three-minute drum solo from Bushy) and was charged with electricity and immediacy. Bushy recalls in the liner notes here that “we listened to [the playback] and we were blown away. All we did was re-record Doug’s scratch vocals and overdub the guitar solo, and we were done.” The single version made it to No. 30 on the Hot 100; in the years since its release, the LP has been certified 4x Platinum in the United States. CD 2 of the new box has the stereo album plus the single versions of “Vida” and “Iron Butterfly Theme.”
How to follow up such a momentous release? Iron Butterfly released Ball in 1969, and the album actually bested its predecessor’s performance on the Top LPs survey, reaching a No. 3 berth. Whereas Ingle had written all of In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida other than one track (Brann and Dorman’s “Termination”), Ball was a more well-rounded group effort. Ingle’s four solo compositions were bolstered by one collaboration with Bushy (“In the Time of Our Lives”), one full-band effort (“Soul Experience”), one with Brann and Bushy (“Real Fright”) and another with Dorman (“In the Crowds”) while the solo Brann penned the closing “Belda Beast.” The additional compositional voices led Iron Butterfly’s sound to mature, and the overall album was more melodic than fans might have expected. It didn’t have much singles success, though, with the grooving, cosmic “Soul Experience” going to No. 75 and the much darker “In the Time of Our Lives” only making No. 96. Four single sides are added to the album for the presentation here.
Erik Brann made his departure from the band after Ball, and the remaining members brought in two guitarists to replace him, Larry “El Rhino” Reinhardt and Blues Image’s Bruce Pinera. But before another studio album was released, Atco immortalized the four-piece line up’s sets from their hometown of San Diego, with additional material recorded at a St. Louis gig. An even longer “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” again occupied one whole side of vinyl, with the other side featuring songs familiar from all three prior albums. Whereas In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida and Ball only had dedicated stereo mixes, a unique mono mix was made for Live. The album was a commercial hit, hitting No. 20 on the Top LPs chart. Both the stereo and mono mixes (the latter in its CD debut) appear on CD 4 of the box.
Iron Butterfly premiered its new line-up on Metamorphosis, initially released in August 1970. Producer Richard Polodor helmed the album including the earthy single “Easy Rider” which peaked at No. 66 on the Hot 100. The Steppenwolf/Three Dog Night producer urged the band in a more eclectic direction, with most of the songs written by Bushy, Dorman, and Ingle. The musically shifting “Shady Lady” (with Bill Cooper guesting on pedal steel) and the mellow, sitar-flecked ballad “Slower than Guns” introduced the lyrics of Robert Woods Edmonson to the band. Metamorphosis was a success, peaking at No. 16, and it’s remembered today for Pinera’s early use of a talk box on the closing “Butterfly Bleu.” The 14-minute opus didn’t repeat the success of “Vida” but showed that the group hadn’t strayed too far from its heavy jam roots. Yet only one studio recording followed Metamorphosis: the 1971 non-LP single “Silly Sally” which incongruously paired the band with southern soul producers Dave Crawford and Brad Shapiro. Its funky, Memphis-style brass immediately set it apart from Iron Butterfly’s past recordings. A fascinating curio, this rare cut has been appended to Metamorphosis.
Esoteric’s box is rounded out with a reprise of Live at the Filmore East, originally released as a limited edition on Rhino Handmade in 2011 and featuring the classic line-up of Brann, Bushy, Dorman, and Ingle. It boasts four power-packed sets (one of which is incomplete due to technical issues on the first two songs) from the much-missed New York venue as recorded on April 26th and 27th, 1968.
Iron Butterfly called it a day after a 1971 European tour. Brann and Bushy reformed the band three years later and went on to release two more albums under the band name in 1975 on the MCA label. Both were released on CD in 1995 and again in 2008. Brann, Bushy, Dorman, and Ingle reunited in 1988 for Atlantic Records’ 40th anniversary celebration, but today, Bushy and Ingle are retired. Dorman died in 2012. (Sadly, DeLoach, Brann, Dorman, and Reinhardt are also deceased.) Touring versions of the group have been performing since 1974 with just a couple of breaks (1985-1987, 2012-2015). The most recent line up was led by Ron Bushy until his retirement.
Unconscious Power: An Anthology 1967-1971 is one of the most beautiful packages from Esoteric yet. Designed by Phil Smee, it most closely resembles the label’s past Animals and Andrew Gold boxes, with a sturdy, rigid slipcase housing a box with mini-LP replicas of the original albums. These all have spines, and Ball, Metamorphosis, and Live at the Fillmore East are in gatefolds. Original back cover artwork has been adapted for these sleeves. A squarebound 64-page booklet has Mike Mettler’s copious liner notes (drawing on fresh interviews with Ron Bushy and Mike Pinera) and annotation as well as a lengthy history of the band and many images such as single sleeves, promotional photos, advertisements, posters, and more. A foldout poster tops off this definitive collection which has been remastered by Ben Wiseman from the original Atco tapes.
Whether that power was unconscious or otherwise, Iron Butterfly certainly had it. The band even influenced a certain other foursome on Atlantic Records – once their opening act – whose name balanced the heavy and the light. This anthology packs a mighty punch.
Iron Butterfly, Unconscious Power: An Anthology 1967-1971 (Cherry Red/Esoteric QECLEC72744, 2020)
South-London’s Bleach Lab only released a handful of songs so far but the level of quality these tracks provide are already pretty stunning. Just take the wonderful “Heartache Of The Season …” or the magnificent “Never Be”. The weight of emotional turbulence slowly sinks in with every second, and so do the gracious guitar fabrics, that echo the opaque sonic worlds of Mazzy Star and the Cocteau Twins. In a turbulent world a sound like the one of Bleach Lab feels like a much needed musical equivalent of catching your breath, turn off all internet devices and just enjoy the moment. Here’s what the band had to tell us about their hopes for 2021:
“We hope/pray that gigs will return to normal at some point in the new year. We miss gigging so much and can’t wait to play our music live again. We spent a lot of time in lockdown working on new music and really look forward to getting back in the studio. We also can’t wait to spend more time together again over a cold beer!”
Bleach Lab originally hail from Buckinghamshire and released their debut single back in 2019 – a simpler time for many of us. The sense of loss and change that permeates much of their music seems rather poignant in today’s world, evoking a sense of reflection that has become familiar to many.
19th March will see the release of the band’s new EP, which explores the feelings of grief associated with the loss of a close family member and the dissolution of a long-term relationship. Their new single, Old Ways, explores the sense of anger that loss can entail. On the track, singer Jenna Kyle’s sorrowful yet elegant vocals take centre stage amongst a soundscape of intricate drumming and yearning guitar lines.
The south-London quartet offering charming storytelling and jangly melodies This band are not to be missed, so discover them now before it’s too late.
Toronto power pop band Pony have announced their debut LP “TV Baby”, out on April 9th via Take This To Heart Records. The news arrives alongside their new single “Couch,” which follows their previous track “WebMD.” “Couch” has a gloriously nostalgic pop/rock feel that would be right at home in the trailer of a teen movie circa the Clueless era. The video takes us back even further with an intro straight out of an ‘80s low-budget religious broadcast, which eventually goes awry and features a guest appearance from the Zodiac Killer.
TV Baby, the debut LP from Toronto power-pop act Pony, feels like it’s programmed from a different era. Driven by vocalist/guitarist Sam Bielanski’s sharp vocal tones and flashy, driving rhythm, the band combines cheeky 1980s style with 1990s self-reliance and modern production sheen for an experience caught between worlds. It’s hooky and vibrant, but don’t mistake exuberance for extroversion. TV Baby is an album dedicated to the indoor cats, the introverts, and those who value their independence above anything else.
Bielanski, along with close friends Matty Morand (Pretty Matty) and Lucas Horne, have taken a piecemeal approach to worldbuilding here. They’ll take you to the band computer, where Sam’s frantically typing symptoms into a search bar into “WebMD,” where body horror meets sugar-rushed guitars. Next comes a thorny survey of the “Furniture,” fuzzy and scuff-marked, before letting you crash on the “Couch,” a pop-punk ode to discovering new parts of yourself while the world rolls past. When others are present in this internal monologue, like those hurt and driven to “Cry,” they’re greeted with the same maximalist pop-rock. In Pony’s gig economy, riffs beat out the rear-view mirror. Saddle up alongside them and your joyride is guaranteed.
Watch the video for “Couch” and preorder the album PONY – “Couch” (Official Music Video) From their upcoming album “TV Baby” Out April 9th via Take This To Heart Records
There’s a certain beauty within Angie McMahon’s music that’s always present, but never quite the central focus of her work. It’s something that underlays the potent emotion of her earliest work in 2017 – “Slow Mover’s” strange mix of uplifting ache; “Keeping Time” soaring choruses – right through to her 2019 debut record “Salt”, an 11-track collection of songs that encapsulated AngieMcMahon’s charm as both a musician and storyteller in a similar vein to some of her biggest comparables and influences – Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks.
However, this remarkable and almost unexplainable pocket of beauty is something that really reaches a fever pitch in Angie McMahon’s live show, at the points where her live band step away for a moment and leave Angie alone in the spotlight. It’s here where Angie becomes her most brilliant; the lyricism and storytelling that underpins her work’s emotional richness entering the forefront to the point where you can’t brush it away or focus on anything else – you simply have to stand there and take it all in.
It’s something that really shone in this video filmed with her in 2018, where Angie – amidst a tour with Canadian musician Leif Vollebekk – stripped back the then-unreleased If You Call to its most subtle and remarkable, backed by the greenery of Victoria Park florist/plant store Green Bunch. With the production of the single’s recorded form replaced by only gentle piano, guitar and Leif Vollebekk’s devastingly-beautiful vocal cries, the moment is something that can draw you to tears from the get-go, even an entire year following its original release:
As it turns out, the acoustic live cover was the catalyst for the now-arriving “Piano Salt EP”, a stripped-back collection of tracks from her 2019 debut LP Salt, along with a few covers too. “The version of “If You Call” on this EP was recorded by Pilerats in Perth when we toured Australia with Leif Vollebekk,” she explains. “It was this wonderful day where we set up inside Green Bunch, a lovely plant shop/cafe, and filmed and recorded the duet. That was probably the seed being planted for this EP, because by the start of this year I was practising new versions of other songs off Salt too and was able to find a place for all of those with this release.”
The full collection of tracks that form “Piano Salt” ahead of its official release tomorrow, October 2nd. It’s a gentle seven songs that really flesh out this aforementioned beauty that swirls around Angie McMahon’s work when its stripped back to its most raw and subtle, indulging in the richness of Angie’s vocal and how she’s able to turn the emotions of Salt – and a few other special songs too – into potent, devastatingly beautiful moments that encapsulate Angie’s talents as one of Australia’s most brilliant songwriters and vocalists.
It opens with a swirling, piano-backed cover of Soon that feels almost like a modern-day reimagining of classical music, and its ability to tell stories and emotions even at music’s most minimalist and acoustic. This trait really shines amongst Piano Salt. When Slow Mover is pulled back to its most subtle, the soft sense of cathartic release that floats amongst the single’s cries are replaced by an almost-haunting presence that on a surface level, makes you feel the track’s lyrics underneath a new emotional lens. Keeping Time provides a similar moment – a favourite of Angie’s catalogue that many would associate with their introduction to the Melbourne musician painted in an entirely new light – while the EP-closing Pasta aches in a way that’s conveyed in the original, but emphasised this time around.
The EP also gives the opportunity for Angie McMahon to shine in another area she’s long-adored: covers. “It’s been a real treat to release second versions of some songs, and have an excuse to do more covers too,” she says. “I love covers.” Her Isol-Aid set early on in the festival’s existence seemed to encapsulate the whole event’s beauty , and a big part of that came through two covers that Angie performed; one of Bruce Springsteen’s The River, and the other of Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die.
TheBorn To Diecover is a highlight of the EP, joined by a video also premiering today, filmed The Perch Recording Studio, Castlemaine. It’s a cover that pays tribute to Lana’s distinct performance style, and how she – like Angie – are really capable of highlighting this deep sense of emotion through their work. “This cover of Born to Die was just so fun to play. I love the way Lana sings, so deep and emotive, and I wanted to pay tribute to that way of performing because it has inspired me as an artist in the way I write and sing my own songs too.”
The whole EP – and the covers included within it – are a coming full circle moment for Angie too. “Piano is the first instrument I learnt and the one that made me first love singing. My favourite piano song when I was young was k.d lang’s cover of Hallelujah. So this EP feels like a return to my piano-cover-loving inner kid,” she explains. “It’s been a really nice creative opportunity to recreate the feeling of some bigger songs off my first record, give them a new life, and cover some of my favourite songs too. It gave me something to do when we went into quarantine.”
The end result is something remarkably brilliant.
This is a mixture of footage from my home in lockdown, when everything went slow, and the Hozier tour that I joined in November last year, when everything was moving so fast. We were travelling around America, my sound engineer Jono and I, following the Hozier bus and having our own adventures every day. I’m so grateful he kept the go pro on for that month, and that the audiences were so warm, and that I have a safe and comfortable home to slow down in now. Thank you to our friend Lewis Parsons who edited all of this together so flawlessly. this version of Soon almost made it onto the Salt record, there has been a band version and a piano version floating around for a while, and in the end we decided on the band version. It’s so nice to be able to bring this one out now, and I hope it connects with people.
“Slow Mover” by Angie McMahon under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings Ltd Released on: 2017-10-09
The Fat Angel Sings 