The Fat Angel Sings

“Forever Is A Feeling“, the follow-up to 2021’s “Home Video“, is coming soon, Having conquered the known world as one-third of indie rock supergroup Boygenius, Lucy Dacus has announced a new solo album, “Forever Is A Feeling”.

The follow-up to 2021’s “Home Video“, as a taste of what’s two come, Dacus has shared two singles from the record, “Ankles” and “Limerence”. Speaking of her mind-set making the album, Dacus says, “I got kicked in the head with emotions. Falling in love, falling out of love. You have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life.”

“I think with this whole record, I wrote songs as things were happening,” says Dacus “A lot of the time, it’s taken years before I can write about something, but this is the first time I felt like I needed to write about my current emotions, for my own well-being, to express to myself what’s going on.”

“Sometimes I’m in the mood where I’m so happy, I wish I could live forever,” she adds. “But I think it’s silly that these people are trying to live forever, because they’re not going to do it. You have a limited amount of time, which should inspire you to just enjoy things. I see people like that, and I feel bad because they live constantly in fear, and I don’t want to live that way.

“Forever Is A Feeling” is set for release on March 28th via Polydor.

Manic Street Preachers have released a new single, the latest cut from their forthcoming 15^th album “Critical Thinking“, due out at the end of this month. A stirring, jangly number titled “People Ruin Paintings“, it follows the release of previous singles “Decline & Fall” and “Hiding In Plain Sight”. The latter was the first Manics single to feature a lead vocal from bassist Nicky Wire.

Writing about the new single in promo materials to accompany “Critical Thinking“, the band explained the lyrical themes and sonic influences behind “People Ruin Paintings”:

“The narcissism of adventurers + explorers, the hypocrisy of the carbon footprint – the empty evangelism of the television travel show drenched in a cynical inverted nihilism. Man’s insatiable addiction to discover and use. The gentle lilt of 10,000 Maniacs. Musically the three of us playing telepathically, referencing thirty plus years of playing together instinctively.”

“Critical Thinking” is the Welsh trio’s first album since 2021’s “The Ultra Vivid Lament”, which became their first Number One album since 1998’s “This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours”. They will embark on a sold-out UK tour later this year with a run of festival appearances following in the summer.

“This is a record of opposites colliding – of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution. While the music has an effervescence and an elegiac uplift, most of the words deal with the cold analysis of the self, the exception being the three lyrics by James (Dean Bradfield) which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs.

The music is energised and at times euphoric. Recording could sometimes be sporadic and isolated, at other times we played live in a band setting, again the opposites making sense with each other. There are crises at the heart of these songs. They are microcosms of skepticism and suspicion, the drive to the internal seems inevitable – start with yourself, maybe the rest will follow.”

For most of the first decade of her career, which began as a lo-fi rising star on the famed New York indie label Matador Records, Cat Power’s mental health struggles had been reported on ad nauseam, often with a judgmental strain typical of the 1990s. She regularly suffered from stage fright as a performer and had a tendency to go off script a tad, sometimes mumbling through lyrics with her back to the crowd or just walking off without warning. Her fans, though, were unusually understanding and supportive for the most part, probably because Chan Marshall’s music was the type that cuts deeper with the empathetic, the introspective, and the vulnerable.

Yes, Marshall has always been a complicated artist best suited for deliberate, reverberating, minor chord confessionals, but she’s also funny, playful, and unashamed (or unaware) of her own coolness. Cat Power was originally the name of her first band, but has become her stage name as a solo artist. The constant evolution of Cat Power’s sound, with a mix of punk, folk and blues on her earliest albums, and elements of soul and other genres more prevalent in her later material.

After opening for Liz Phair in 1993, she worked with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, with whom she recorded her first two albums, A total of 20 songs were recorded in a single day by the trio, all of which were split into two records, making up “Dear Sir “(1995) and “Myra Lee” (1996), on the same day in 1994.

Although “Dear Sir” is considered Marshall’s debut album, it is more the length of an EP. Cat Power’s first full-length release, “Dear Sir”, spotlights Chan Marshall’s demanding but rewarding song writing. Her distinctive blend of blues, country, folk and punk creates songs like the dark, noisy “Itchyhead” and “Rockets,” which mixes tension and hope, and tops it with Marshall’s earnest, expressive vocals. Though the album needs the listener’s complete attention, “Dear Sir” more than keeps it with nine of Marshall’s searching meditations on life.

The 1996 album “Myra Lee” presents a more diverse and fully developed version of Cat Power’s music, ranging from the winding, acoustic menace of “Enough” to the sinewy rock of “We All Die.” Introspective epics like “Great Expectations,” “Faces,” and “Wealthy Man” use churning tempos and spiralling guitars to convey Chan Marshall’s melancholy musical vision, but gentler songs like the trembling cover of Hank Williams’ “Still in Love” and originals like “Top Expert” and “Ice Water” are parts of the picture as well, adding warmth and roundness to the album. As always, Marshall’s yearning voice lends extra emotion to her songs, whether it’s her clear, soaring vocals on the new version of “Rockets” or her distant, half-heard moans on the final track, “Not What You Want,” which sounds genuine to the point of eavesdropping. This raw, overheard sound infuses “Myra Lee” with a sonic honesty that matches the album’s heartfelt song writing.

After she signed with Matador Records, and released a third album of new material with Shelley and Foljahn, “What Would the Community Think”. The album was produced by Shelley and again featured Shelley and Foljahn as backing musicians, and spawned a single and music video, “Nude as the News” about the abortion she had at the age of 20.

‘Nude as the News’ For many people, this was the entry point into the Chan Marshall experience. It’s from the 1996 album “What Would the Community Think”, which is actually the third Cat Power studio album, but one that came hot on the heels of her first two releases, “Dear Sir” and “Myra Lee”. This was the best song she’d written up to this point and fit very snuggly among the other Matador Records heroes of the moment, including the aforementioned Phair (before her venture into pure pop), as well as Pavement and Guided By Voices. 

As for the fiery lyrics: “Jackson, Jesse, I’ve got a son in me / And he’s related to you / He’s related to you / He is waiting to meet you.” For a long time, it wasn’t clear what metaphor vs reality was here and whether it mattered. But Marshall did eventually reveal that the song was inspired by an abortion she’d had at the age of 20, and thus, the reality did matter quite a bit.

Unlike some of her “cool” Matador label-mates, who were content to leave every lyrical choice open to interpretation, Cat Power seemed compelled to tear down any barriers of artifice in what she was doing. As a result, her fans usually connected with her songs on a much more personal level.

Where her previous works were an urgent, aching mix of punk, folk, and blues, “Moon Pix” is truly soul(ful) music: warm, reflective, complex, and cohesive. For this album, Marshall moved the recording sessions for the album to Australia

Marshall had relocated with her then-boyfriend, musician Bill Callahan, to a rural farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina. After experiencing a hypnogogic nightmare while alone in the farmhouse, Marshall wrote six new songs that would go on to make up the bulk of her following album, The critically acclaimed “Moon Pix” released in 1998, Her voice, of course, is the singularity, even as it has evolved from the whispery, yearning mystery of the early records to the wiser, smokier confidence of the later ones. “Moon Pix” was well received by critics, and along with an accompanying music video for the song “Cross Bones Style”, helped her gain further recognition.

‘Cross Bones Style’ The visuals from the music video, directed by Brett Vapnek, are hard to separate from the tune at this point, but it doesn’t hurt that no one has ever looked cooler on film than Chan does on here, sort of casually head-bobbing her way through the whole thing like the girl at the party that is DJing later and does not suffer fools (the video was supposedly inspired by Madonna’s ‘Lucky Star’ video from 1983… but it kind of feels more like a post-apocalyptic parody of it).

Marshall has said that ‘Cross Bones Style’ was written after she met two children in Africa who were forced to sleep in trees at night after their parents, involved in the diamond mining trade, had been murdered. Then again, the song has also been grouped in with several others from “Moon Pix” that Chan reportedly wrote in the immediate aftermath of a fever dream she had one night at a farmhouse in South Carolina. Whatever the inspiration, the song is certainly dreamlike and hypnotic, with a haunting chorus that hints at mighty Cat Power feats still to come.

From the backwards drum loop on “American Flag” (borrowed from the Beastie Boys’ “Paul Revere”) to the fluttering, smoky flutes on “He Turns Down” to the double-tracked vocals and crashing thunderstorms of “Say,” “Moon Pix’s” expressive arrangements mirror the songs’ fine emotional shadings. Marshall is sunny on the quietly hopeful “You May Know Him,” 

It’s why she’s spent half her career as a covers artist,  “The Covers Record” (2000), a collection of sparsely arranged cover songs recorded with members of Dirty Three,  On the “The Covers” Record, Chan Marshall continues her evolution into a remarkably expressive interpreter of songs; her earlier covers of Pavement’s “We Dance” and Smog’s “Bathysphere” are among her most distinctive performances. This collection includes songs originally by Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, Moby Grape, Michael Hurley, and Anonymous. Marshall’s sparest album yet, “The Covers” Record uses guitar and piano as the only foils for her malleable, emotional voice. These tools are more than enough to turn the Stones’ anthem “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” into a bluesy, slinky version emphasizing the song’s tension and frustration as much as its jaded sexiness, and “Kingston Town” from a reggae standard into a hymnal reflection. Marshall’s gentle version of Hurley’s “Sweedeedee” and plaintive reading of the Velvets’ “I Found a Reason” recall the quietest, most spiritual moments from “Moon Pix”. 

The track ‘He War’ “I’m not that hot new chick / And if you won’t let me run with it / We’re on to your same old trick.” Appearing on 2003’s “You Are Free” album, ‘He War’ is a bitter breakup song with a 1993 Liz Phair-ish guitar lick but a very 2000s vocal style. The cadence of the quoted bit above, in particular, reveals Chan’s longtime love of a good hip-hop couplet, delivered with the appropriate F-U attitude of a Missy Elliott chorus.

The music video for ‘He War’, directed by Brett Vapneck, makes some interesting choices, too, showing the demise of the singer’s relationship not through the usual miming of fights or tears but through a beach holiday spent an arm’s reach apart.

“You Are Free” (2003),  her first album of original material in five years featuring guest musicians Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, Additionally, she performed eleven covers during a Peel session broadcast on June 18th, 2000, that included own interpretations of Bob Dylan’s “Hard Times in New York Town” and Oasis’s “Wonderwall”.

Cat Power can be pretty funny and light-hearted, To explain how serious ‘Maybe Not’ sounds, consider that The National took a shot at covering the song in 2017, and even they didn’t have the gravitas to get it quite right. 

The standout track on “You Are Free”, ‘Maybe Not’ is a worshipless hymn—a meaning-of-life duet sung by duelling angels (Chan harmonising with herself), seemingly pleading with another lost soul to turn toward something more hopeful, even if they have to create a new path from scratch: “Listen to me, don’t walk that street / There’s always an end to it.”

It was followed then by the soul-influenced “The Greatest” (2006), recorded with numerous Memphis studio musicians. Unlike her previous releases, which featured sparse guitar and piano arrangements, “The Greatest” was described by Marshall biographer Sarah Goodman as her first “full-blown studio record with sophisticated production.

‘Lived In Bars’ I considered selecting the title track from 2006’s “The Greatest“, but pretty as it is (and popular; it has by far the most streams of any other song on the record), ‘The Greatest’ is sort of a grand reconfiguration of ‘Moon River’, and a bit less interesting than this song, which starts out as a typical sort of slow, sad Chan ballad before left-turning into one of the warmest tunes in her entire catalogue, greatly aided by the presence of the Memphis Rhythm Band.

‘Living Proof’ A favourite song from “The Greatest” There was the feeling that you were seeing Cat Power as something entirely new, the latest exciting signing to the Stax label circa 1966. ‘Living Proof’ is a perfect soul anthem and probably the most feel-good song Marshall has yet written.

And yet, at the same time, it’s also defiant, strong-willed, not taking shit. Where once a younger Cat Power might have been asking for living proof and leaving it at that, she is now providing the response to her own call. “You’re supposed to have the answer / You’re supposed to have living proof / Well I am your answer, I am living.” 

Matador released the DVD film “Speaking for Trees“, which featured a continuous, nearly two-hour static shot of Marshall performing with her guitar in a woodland. The set was accompanied by an audio CD containing the 18-minute song “Willie Deadwilder”, featuring M. Ward also on guitar

A second album of cover tracks, “Jukebox”, was released in 2008.  Recorded with her recently assembled “Dirty Delta Blues Band”, which consisted of Judah Bauer from the Blues Explosion, Gregg Foreman of The Delta 72, Erik Paparazzi of Lizard Music and Jim White of Dirty Three, the album featured the original song “Song to Bobby”, Marshall’s tribute to Bob Dylan, and a reworking of the “Moon Pix” song “Metal Heart”. 

‘Metal Heart’ is an enduring fan favourite among the Cat Power lifers, ‘Metal Heart’ is fairly unique in that it’s been recorded by both the green and seasoned versions of Chan Marshall, first on her 1998 record “Moon Pix” and then ten years later on “Jukebox”. The original scattershot guitar version is among the sadder songs of the entire 1990s, a trusted mixtape closer for a soon-to-be ex: “How selfish of you / To believe in the meaning of all the bad dreaming.”

The 2008 self-cover is no less sad but decidedly less resigned to staying in that state perpetually. Marshall sounds a bit more pissed off than crushed, and the accompaniment is now driven by confident piano chords and some more refined electric guitar embellishments. When she sings, “I once was lost, but now I’m found / Was blind, but now I see you,” the older, wiser Cat Power is slamming a door and walking away, not collapsing into a heap. Hearing the two versions back to back is really more powerful than hearing either on its own.

There’s a reason every Cat Power fan finally decided to try introducing their parents to her music through this album. It’s mature, it’s melodic, it’s palatable, but it’s not remotely a sell-out attempt or a reach beyond her comfort zone. It’s just sad to think that this album was recorded during a difficult period in Marshall’s life, considering what a wonderful, life-affirming listen it remains almost 20 years later.

 Chan also released “Dark End of the Street”, an EP consisting of songs left over from the Jukebox sessions.

In 2012 she released Marshall’s ninth studio album the self-produced “Sun”, The album features prominent electronica elements and arrangements, which Marshall incorporated into the “really slow guitar-based songs” she had originally written Consequence of Sound, “Sun” was praised as a unique album and received a four-star rating. 

‘Manhattan’ This 2012 track isn’t your typical New York City anthem, although it does evoke the sense of a city that’s still humming a bit at 3am. The rhythm, punctuated by just a few recurring notes on the piano, is not energised but definitely mesmerising, as Marshall repeats that “you’ll never be, never be, never be “Manhattan” probably because you can’t afford to live there anymore.

“There’s this beautiful Langston Hughes poem about the Statue of Liberty—or that mentions the Statue of Liberty,” Cat Power explained “I’d had this song in my head for a long time.” The piece is a tribute to both the legendary poet and her own ideas of what the word “liberty” means in the modern hyper-capitalist context.

“Ruin” The lead single from “Sun”, released in 2012, ‘Ruin’ is the only track on this album to feature a backing band (the Dirty Blues Band), as Marshall opted to play all the instruments on the other songs, not feeling like the full band sessions had clicked.

If the rest of the Dirty Blues Band recordings sounded remotely as good as ‘Ruin’, it’s hard to imagine why they were scrapped, but alas, we were all wise enough by this point to trust in Cat Power’s better instincts. And she did at least recognise that this song deserves its place on “Sun”, serving as a nice companion piece to ‘Manhattan’.

Where the latter is locked into the mythology of one specific place, ‘Ruin’ is a travelling song, name-checking a dozen destinations over a skittery, slightly unnerving piano line; you imagine Marshall looking out the window of a tour bus in Soweto or Calcutta and reflecting back on that apartment back in Manhattan; the trivial annoyances of the young American urban professional: “Bitching, complaining and some people ain’t got shit to eat.”

After twenty-two years with Matador, Cat Power left them and signed with Domino records a year later for her 10th studio album, “Wanderer”,  It was her first to not be released on Matador Records since 1996. According to Marshall, Matador were not happy with the recordings for “Wanderer”, they wanted her to re-record it and make it sound more commercial.

Cat Power’s Chan Marshall releases albums so infrequently that when they arrive, they’re an event — and the six years between “Sun” and “Wanderer” were certainly eventful for her. Creative differences with her longtime label Matador led her to release “Wanderer” on Domino Records. These are the kind of life-changing events that, with any luck, make a person stronger. If “Wanderer” is anything to go by, Marshall must be unstoppable. 

“Black” Our lone selection from 2018’s very good “Wanderer” album. This one has all the earmarks of an overlooked gem with a long shelf life ahead of it. “Wanderer” generated most of its press from Chan’s angry break with Matador Records, her overdue collaboration with Lana Del Rey (‘Woman’), and a cover of ‘Stay’—a song that always sounded like Rihanna was covering a Cat Power song to begin with.

‘Black’, though, is just a wonderful haunting folk number about death, plain and simple, starting right out of the gate with Marshall summoning the image of “La grande faucheuse”, the angel of death in French mythology. The lyrics revisit those dark days from her past and the people who helped her through, some of whom then couldn’t save themselves: “How was I to know “Black” would have turned from me to you?” 

Marshall released her first live album in November 2023, With the project, “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert”. Chan’s recreation of the Bob Dylan 1966 concert at Manchester Free Trade Hall, although early bootlegs mislabelled the concert as being recorded at the Royal Albert Hall.

“Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert,” on which she looks back at the beginning of the “revolution” sparked by the man she calls “God Dylan.”

“Bob [Dylan]’s lyrics taught me how to have critical thinking, because I was always trying to figure out what he was talking about,” says Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power.

Recorded last November at London’s Royal Albert Hall, “Cat Power Sings Dylan” documents Marshall’s song-by-song re-creation of a storied gig Bob Dylan played at age 24 on May 17th, 1966 — the performance where he so scandalized an audience of British folk purists that one of them called him Judas for having committed the sin of going electric.

“It’s one of the great moments in rock ’n’ roll history,” which actually took place at the Manchester Free Trade Hall but became known as the Royal Albert Hall concert due to a mislabelled bootleg. “And not just in the heads of Dylan freaks. This was really a time when something shifted in the culture.”

Dylan — then touring Europe with the Hawks (later known as the Band) between the release of “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde” — met the “vehemence of the left-wing folkies” with his own righteous indignation. “I don’t believe you,” Dylan famously replied to the cry of “Judas,” adding, “You’re a liar,” before turning to his band and telling the musicians, “Play it f—ing loud!” Those songs are what Marshall, who’d been booked at the historic London venue, wanted to showcase by replicating the legendary concert, which divided 15 now-classic Dylan tunes — including “Visions of Johanna,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and all 10 verses of “Desolation Row” — into halves: the first acoustic folk, the second electric rock. That she’d be doing it in the location where the original happened only in myth provided an appropriately Dylanesque layer of obfuscation.

“Bob’s lyrics taught me how to have critical thinking, because I was always trying to figure out what the f— he was talking about,” says Marshall, we’re going to keep the focus on Chan Marshall, plucking a selection of her original tracks spanning the past 30 years.

The albums:

• Dear Sir (1995)
• Myra Lee (1996)
• What Would the Community Think (1996)
• Moon Pix (1998)
• The Covers Record (2000)
• You Are Free (2003)
• The Greatest (2006)
• Jukebox (2008)
• Sun (2012)
• Wanderer (2018)
• Covers (2022)
• Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (2023)

‘Living Proof’ A favourite song from “The Greatest” There was the feeling that you were seeing Cat Power as something entirely new, the latest exciting signing to the Stax label circa 1966. ‘Living Proof’ is a perfect soul anthem and probably the most feel-good song Marshall has yet written.

And yet, at the same time, it’s also defiant, strong-willed, not taking shit. Where once a younger Cat Power might have been asking for living proof and leaving it at that, she is now providing the response to her own call. “You’re supposed to have the answer / You’re supposed to have living proof / Well I am your answer, I am living.”

This will be the last new music from us as Porridge Radio and marks the end of the band. The songs on this EP are an important part of “Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me“, and mean as much to us as the 11 songs on the album. We are excited for you to hear them. This band has been our life, we’re family now. When Dana Margolin started working on the fourth Porridge Radio album, there was something different in how the songwriter approached creativity. The recording sessions for the “Clouds In The Sky” album resulted in a vast amount of material, more than made sense for one album. Therefore, Dana carved out an EP’s worth of material that didn’t slot neatly with the cohesive themes/sounds of the album.

These tours will be our last, thanks so much for listening. With love, Dana, Georgie, Sam and Dan.

The opening track ‘Machine Starts To Sing’, and the EP title ‘The Machine Starts To Sing’, nods to an idea that began to exist as a tangent from the rest of the material, where Dana contemplates finding comfort in cold and dystopian places. However, this is balanced out by tracks such as ‘OK’ and ‘Don’t Want To Dance’, which are warmer and more tender, yet also feel separate from the laser focused vision that existed for the album.

Ultimately, the EP acts as an extension of the “Clouds” album, showcasing more sonic journeys and exploration of themes, while also not disrupting the cohesion of the album as a single entity. If anything, both the LP and EP are a stamp in time of a band at the top of their game in terms of using the studio as an instrument to express themselves. 

Releases February 21st, 2025 Limited cassette release on our bandcamp, pre-order now

“Machine Starts To Sing” EP Produced and mixed by Dom Monks Recorded at Bert Jansch Studios

Eric Clapton’s new album, ‘Meanwhile’ features 6 never-before-heard tracks. The album includes collaborations with Jeff Beck, Van Morrison and more. “Meanwhile“, expected from Bushbranch/Surfdog Records . The 14-track collection includes six new tracks and eight previously released singles, including today’s initial preview, which doubles as a first-time release, “One Woman.” flirts with Clapton’s affinity for rock reggae, kicking up a similar genre-bending approach to historic passes at past classics. 

Limited information on “Meanwhile” was granted via a press release, apart from a fully-fledged track-list that lists Clapton’s LP contributors: the late Jeff Beck (“Moon River”), Van Morrison (“The Rebels,” “This Has Gotta Stop,” “Stand and Deliver”), Bradley Walker (“Always On My Mind”), and Judith Hill, Simon Climie, and Daniel Santiago (“How Could We Know”). 

 “Meanwhile” will arrive after Clapton’s 2018 holiday release, “Happy Xmas“, a predominantly blues-leaning set that came two years after “I Still Do”, the musician’s 2016 release via the independent Bushbranch Records/Surfdog Records, which climbed the charts and earned critical reception, in part due to recycled classics; J. J. Cale’s “Can’t Let You Do It” and “Somebody’s Knockin,” Bob Dylan’s “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” traditional “I’ll Be Alright” and others. 

News of the forthcoming LP coincides with Clapton’s return to South America, touring the region for the first time in 13 years. 

This 3CD set includes recordings all three concerts.

The raw production captures the essence of a live experience, giving listeners a powerful snapshot of a significant moment in punk history. A document of the last days of the band left to run adrift by absent management on a label that didn’t really understand, in a country that arguably felt more threatened than it did excited by the prospect of the group. Vital, primal and compelling are all words that can be used to describe the audio here.

On January 14th 1978, the Sex Pistols ended their fateful US tour at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco.

The set list included ‘God Save The Queen’, ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘Holidays In The Sun’ and ‘Anarchy In The UK’. The raw production captures the essence of a live experience, giving listeners a powerful snapshot of a significant moment in punk history.

On January 10th 1978, the Sex Pistols continued their fateful US tour playing at the Longhorns Ballroom, Dallas. The set list included ‘God Save The Queen’, ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘Holidays In The Sun’ and ‘Anarchy In The UK’.
A document of the last days of the band left to run adrift by absent management on a label that didn’t really understand, in a country that arguably felt more threatened than it did excited by the prospect of the group. Vital, primal and compelling are all words that can be used to describe the audio here. Until their return as a live entity in 1996, everything that followed their short, fateful tour of America in January 1978 was simply a parody of what had been.

Until their return as a live entity in 1996, everything that followed their short, fateful tour of America in January 1978 was simply a parody of what had been. With concerts finally released in full and correctly sequenced for the very first time – “Live In the USA 1978” takes us back to the moment the creative force that was Sex Pistols imploded

Our new track, “Greyhound” is out today – It’s about a musician’s love/hate relationship with touring. It’s the pain and heartache of being away from the people closest to you, but at the same time the rush and romance of travelling the world and playing shows with your friends.

Palace have kicked off 2025 with their new single, “Greyhound”, which is the first to be taken from their forthcoming EP and the first release via their new label Palace Presents.

Coming out on the band’s own label Palace Presents, the release marks the group’s move to establish an independent creative home as a vehicle for their future work and projects and is accompanied by an exclusive limited edition 12” vinyl release and apparel capsule collection

Palace Presents started in 2016, initially as a monthly night we put on at The George Tavern in East London. The legendary pub and its near 700 year old walls became a spiritual home for us as we were able to present bands and artists we loved and were inspired by to and within a community,” Wyndham said of the collective hub.

This is the first track from our upcoming EP, out on April 1st by the same name.

Jethro Tull have announced that they will release their 24th studio album, “Curious Remnant“, through InsideOut Music . After two consecutive new Jethro Tull album releases in 2022 and 2023, another collection – ‘Curious Ruminant’ – is unleashed on the 7th March 2025. Consisting of nine tracks varying in length from two and half minutes to almost seventeen minutes, this is an album of mostly full band music. Amongst the musicians featured are former keyboardist Andrew Giddings and drummer James Duncan, along with the current band members David Goodier, John O’Hara, Scott Hammond and, making his recording debut with the band, guitarist Jack Clark.

At the same time the band have shared a new video for the album’s title track, a digitally animated affair handled by Costin Chioreanu who had previously created the band’s video for RökFlöte’s Ginnungagap.

“Here we go again,” says Ian Anderson. “Have I said that before? Life in old dogs and with a little introspective rumination.” Although not a concept album like 2002’s “The Zealot Gene” and 2023’s “RökFlöte” the new album features nine new tracks which very much hark back to the band’s classic 1970s sound, not least the epic near-17-minute “Drink From The Same Well”..

Some of the songs are developed from unfinished instrumental demos made some years ago. Apart from the signature flute solos and melodies, accordion, mandolin, acoustic and tenor guitars feature on several tracks too, so the subtle backdrop of acoustic and folk rock serves to remind of the Tull heritage of the 70s.

“Curious Ruminant” will be available on several different formats, including a limited deluxe ultra clear 180g 2LP + 2CD + Blu-ray artbook and limited deluxe 2CD+Blu-ray artbook. Both of these feature the main album, alternative stereo mixes & a blu-ray containing Dolby Atmos & 5.1 Surround Sound (once again undertaken by Bruce Soord of The Pineapple Thief), as well as exclusive interview material. The limited deluxe vinyl artbook also includes in 2 exclusive art-prints. The album will also be available as a special edition CD digipak, gatefold 180g LP + LP-booklet