The Fat Angel Sings

Growing Stone is songwriter Skylar Sarkis from Rochester, NY, It’s not every day you hear someone who’s mastered the quiet and the loud the way Skylar Sarkis has. When he’s not busting eardrums with his punk band Taking Meds, he’s embracing sad, sombre singer/songwriters like Arab Strap, Smog, Sun Kil Moon, Sparklehorse, Mount Eerie, and Leonard Cohen with his solo project Growing Stone. 

“Death of a Momma’s Boy” is his second album under the name Growing Stone album and best yet, with gentle acoustic guitars, gorgeous string and horn arrangements, some light drumming, and deeply pained, personal singing and song writing from Skylar. It’s an album he wrote entirely sober, and says it’s “about feeling the actual pain, not feeling the consequences of avoiding it.”

Musicians:
Skylar Sarkis: vocals, bass, guitar, harmonica, percussion, piano, drum programming
Jimmy Montague: drums, keys, cello, viola, violin, lap steel, percussion
Matt Battle: drums on track 6
Jacob McCabe: trumpet on tracks 2 and 5

All songs written by Skylar Sarkis except track 8 which was written by Warren Zevon

released June 28th, 2024

Martha Skye Murphy is both a rookie and a veteran, as “Um” is her first proper album but far from her introduction to making music. She has EPs, singles, collaborations, and an electronic opera (Postcards Home) dating back to 2016, and her impressive résumé goes back even further than that; she sang on a Nick Cave song that sound-tracked the opening credits of John Hillcoat’s The Proposition when she was just nine years old. (She again collaborated with Cave in her teens when she sang on 2013’s “Push the Sky Away.)

Meaning shifts throughout Martha Skye Murphy’s debut album ‘Um’ with songs that meld moments of baroque beauty with crashes of electronic noise, employing textures that are by turns organic and artificial, hi-fi and lo-fi. Collaborations with the likes of Claire Rousay and Roy Montgomery are finely intertwined with the fruits of rigorous studio sessions with producer Ethan P. Flynn.

Lyrically Murphy conjures images inspired by everything from Ancient Roman hand-binding torture to a Fred and Ginger tap routine. A deep sense of longing and echoes of lost, distant memory haunt the record.
On the album, the artist says she wanted “the listener to feel
disoriented, erotically charged by the intimacy of a bedroom, then catapulted into a desert.”

released June 14th, 2024

Produced by Martha Skye Murphy & Ethan P. Flynn

After making the “Waiting Around” EP with multi-instrumentalist Laura Wolf as Lilts last year, John Ross returned to his main project, Wild Pink, and signed with Fire Talk Records in early 2024. To celebrate, they released the three-song EP Strawberry Eraser, and christened the accomplishment with “Air Drumming Fix You,” a pairing of diner jukebox-gentle drum machines and synthesizers with cresting saxophone scales and a spumante pedal steel—all while Ross sings about “shitting my pants in a VR world,” “baby breath” and someone, as the title aptly suggests, air-drumming Coldplay’s “Fix You.” Through vignettes of quick humour, however, come sharp lines that’ll gut you on the spot. “I guess the good life didn’t look like you thought it might” is going to be a lyric that sticks with me for a good while, especially, maybe forever. Too, “Unconscious Pilot” is another reverb-heavy slice of alt-folk that mangles itself into sublime, bulky distortion. It’s not as melodic as “Air Drumming Fix You,” but it doesn’t need to be—the fortune is all in the gloomy chords and cavernous singing from Ross. “What if the soul is real?” he ponders. “And it gets lost on the way to the next deal? What a nightmare, knowing you’re out there dead and scared and there ain’t a thing I can do.” Most of us didn’t know that an all-time great record like “Dulling the Horns” was on the horizon, but it was nice to live in “Strawberry Eraser” for a while—letting ourselves be enraptured by fluttering saxophones and weighty guitars, as if a jazz ensemble accidentally stumbled into a noise-band’s rehearsal. It all culminates in a storm of flanged strumming, as John Ross declares: “I hope it’s nothing.”

Though Wild Pink are known for their collaborations — among which include Julien Baker, Ryley Walker, Jasmin WIlliams, Ratboys’ Julia Steiner, and J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr.— “Strawberry Eraser”, a new EP and first for Fire Talk showcases Ross unadorned and singular, reinforcing him as “a truly gifted songwriter, one able to contain vast vistas within single songs” (Under the Radar). With spaced-out synths and saxophone, it conjures open and unexplored terrains, a natural extension of Wild Pink’s “vast and swooning” (The FADER) sound.

released March 21, 2024

Rain Parade’s seminal debut album, “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip”, is set to receive a deluxe 2xLP reissue. Originally emerging from the late 70s and early 80s Los Angeles scene known as the ‘Paisley Underground,’ the band’s music blended Californian and UK psychedelic rock influences with a punk/DIY edge. The album, originally released in 1983, quickly gained international recognition for its distinctive sound, with standout tracks sung by core members Matt Piucci and Steven Roback.

This deluxe edition of “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip2 includes the original ten-track album on the first LP, alongside a bonus LP filled with demos and live recordings, offering fans an even deeper dive into Rain Parade’s early work. Tracks like ‘Talking In My Sleep’ and ‘Look Both Ways’ remain timeless, showcasing the band’s ability to merge dreamy psychedelia with raw energy. Rain Parade’s influence on 80s and 90s guitar-driven music is undeniable, with artists like Ride’s Andy Bell citing them as a major inspiration. This reissue, coupled with their upcoming UK and European tour, reaffirms the band’s enduring legacy in the psychedelic rock landscape.

Nine years on from the release of his seminal Grammy, Brit, Ivor Novello and Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut album “In Colour“, musician, DJ and producer Jamie xx announces his long-awaited second album “In Waves”.

Jamie xx has been nothing if not patient. His first new album since 2015’s masterwork “In Colour” has been a long time coming, with numerous festival appearances, one-off singles, co-productions, and life experiences arriving along the way. Though it reveals a more expansive sound than his earlier work, “In Waves” also feels like a belated response to the pandemic. The urgency and ecstasy of the dancefloor is unavoidable, and with lively samples and widescreen collabs from the likes of Honey Dijon, Robyn, The Avalanches, and his xx bandmates, “In Waves” is a passionate, vivd request to treat each other right and revel in the freedom of dance.

Across 12 tracks including “Baddy On The Floor”, his joyous summer collaboration with club culture icon Honey Dijon, Jamie xx replicates the emotional crescendos and thrilling volatility of an almost mystical night out and features further collaborations amongst others Panda Bear, Oona Doherty and his The xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim. Created over a four year period ushered in by his much-loved 2020 Essential Mix and peppered with periods of self-reflection, a global pandemic, the blinking re-emergence into the strobe light and a newly discovered love of surfing as escapism, it’s an album that’s on course to eclipse the heights of its globally acclaimed predecessor. 

This is the album that finally made me love Clairo. This record has so much character, so much love put into the production and song writing. I didn’t catch her on tour, the stage design and production for the shows was some of the coolest and most understated ever . Claire Cottrill and her team created an unforgettable little world around this album and it’s been a delight to return to over and over again.

American indie-pop luminary Clairo returns with third album, “Charm”, co-produced by Clairo and Leon Michels (of The Dap-Kings and El Michels Affair). Evoking balmy summer evenings and tête-à-têtes in plush conversation pits, “Charm” is a collection of warm, 70’s-inspired grooves that move lithely between jazz, psychedelic folk and soul.

“Charm” is an incredibly warm, refreshing, and just genuinely sweet album thanks to the standout production from Leon Michels. Michels brings huge 60s and 70s inspired instrumentation to the table, elevating Cottrill’s songwriting to the level it probably deserves to be on. There’s clearly so much fun and experimentation that happened in the studio peppered all over Charm. “Juna” and “Add Up My Love” are two personal standouts, but I really don’t think the album has any skips.

Is it their best? Not exactly. But it’s Duster, I’ve been obsessed with this band for over a decade at this point. So much so that I dug for every precious demo and unfinished record I could. Duster’s mostly untitled “Christmas Dust” and found a hand-scrawled forgotten cassette “On The Dodge.” I’ve scoured the internet for every Duster-adjacent music project I could find.

Now in 2024, Duster is a smash cult hit band; a household name for a certain slightly-disaffected Gen-Z TikTok user. And you know what? Duster rules. They absolutely deserve the success they’ve garnered, even if it feels like a total algorithmic fluke. Seeing them again last month was maybe even more surreal than the first time. At 31, I felt like one of the oldest people there, dumbfounded by people cheering and taking out their phones en masse to film the blisteringly loud “Echo, Bravo” from Stratosphere.

Right. “In Dreams”. Duster very suddenly dropped their fifth album this year (their third since reuniting, “Remote Echoes2 doesn’t count, those are old demos recompiled). What can I say? It’s more Duster. Which means it’s among one of the best albums to come out this year.

This record still so underrated. “Under Sound” easily wins ‘best bass guitar tone of the year’ from me. Every track on this thing is just so relentlessly heavy and crunchy in the best possible way. but the way the drums cut through such tone-heavy guitar and bass production feels like such an accomplishment.

I’ve been completely obsessed with this record for the past few days. While it might appear on the surface like a straight-forward emo-tinged alt-rock record, “Under Sound” is an incredibly focused and groove-packed endeavor. The production is stellar, featuring one of the most perfectly mixed snare-drums I’ve heard on a fuzzy rock album in a long time. It might sound arbitrary to point out, but making sure the drums crack through the massive guitar and bass tone on a record like this is a true accomplishment.

There’s clearly so much love and inspiration packed into “Under Sound” that I keep picking up on each listen. The opening riff of “Further From My Start” could slot into Deftones’ 2003 self-titled record just as easily as the title track could fit into Codeine’s “Frigid Stars” from ’91 (albeit with some slowing down, of course). All of this is just to say that Prize Horse doesn’t quite wear their influences on their sleeves as much as they reconstruct their influences into alt-rock couture.

All songs written and performed by Prize Horse
Guitar/Vocals – Jake Beitel
Drums – Jon Brenner
Bass – Olivia Johnson

released February 16th, 2024

Earlier this year, New York’s Babehoven opening up for Greg Mendez in Chicago. Their vocalist (and main songwriter) Maya Bon came on stage, and in a raspy whisper, delivered the tragic news that she had lost her voice the previous day. She apologized profusely, and said that they’d try to perform a few songs, but she couldn’t sing a full show on her own. Then she made an unexpected offer to the crowd: if anyone was feeling brave, they could come up and sing a Babehoven song of their choice while the band backed them, karaoke style. No one wanted to go up at first, but after a couple of songs with Chicago local Hemlock filling in, someone from the crowd mustered up the courage to try. A young woman, maybe in her early 20s, shyly attempted to sing, a little off key.

The whole crowd clapped and cheered her on. A couple more folks came up to sing additional songs, and then finally opener Mia Joy joined, along with Greg Mendez himself, to wrap up the set. It was a funny, weird, sincere show full of kindness and encouragement from the Chicago crowd and fellow performers, and ended up being one of the most memorable shows I went to this year.

“Water’s Here In You” is not only a reminder of that touching memory, but a beautiful folk-tinged soft rock album to boot. It’s a lovely record.