The Fat Angel Sings

The legendary Keith Richards releases a Limited Edition live EP for Record Store Day 2025, featuring three previously unreleased live tracks recorded in 2022 with the X-Pensive Winos at the sixth annual Love Rocks NYC benefit concert in New York City. Includes the songs “999″, “You Got the Silver“, and “Before They Make Me Run” on Side A, pressed on red vinyl with an etching on the B Side.

For the first time in 30 years, Keith Richards and the X-pensive winos perform live on stage for a charity in New York at the Beacon Theatre on 3/10/22. Last night’s sixth annual Love Rocks NYC benefit concert for God’s Love We Deliver at The Beacon Theatre featured this rare performance from Keith Richards & The X-Pensive Winos. The three-song mini-set from The Rolling Stones guitarist was just one of many highlights in New York City that also included Warren Haynes, Mavis Staples, Melissa Etheridge, Hozier and many others.

The X-Pensive Winos features guitarist Waddy Watchel, drummer Steve Jordan, keyboardist Ivan Neville and bassist Charlie Drayton. With Drayton busy backing Bob Dylan on tour, Richards recruited Will Lee to hold down the bottom end. Love Rocks NYC is typically filled by incredibly tight performances. However there was a much appreciated greasiness and loose feeling as Keef led the group through “999,” “You Got The Silver” and “Before They Make Me Run.”

Last night marked the group’s first performance of a Winos original song (“999”) since 1993 as pointed out by Rolling Stone magazine. Both “You Got The Silver” and “Before They Make Me Run” are Rolling Stones classics recorded for 1969’s “Let It Bleed” and 1978’s “Some Girls” respectively. It was tough to find any audience members sitting down during Keith Richards & The X-Pensive Winos’ performance.

Tracklist
1. 999 (Live), 2. You Got the Silver (Live), 3. Before They Make Me Run (Live)

First time availabe on vinyl, previously only a limited CD release in 1996. Following the departure of Wire’s drummer Robert Grey in 1990 WIR had risen phoenix like from the ashes of the acclaimed UK post-punk band after and were created to fulfil the final phase of Wire’s Mute Records contract

With a more sequence based sound, WIR saw the band breaking all their own rules by creating a new sparse electronic music with Graham Lewis singing most of the vocals and even cannibalising their own catalogue by sometimes sampling their own older material

WIR was, however, not a long-term project and besides completing their only album, “The First Letter”, their only other activities were a very small number of gigs and two multi-artist “conceptual happenings” under the name I Saw You One of these was in Clapham in April 1992 on election night and the other in Vienna in Feb 1993

On that Vienna trip, in addition to playing the gig, the band recorded a radio session for the Austrian national broadcaster ORF which was organised by Peter Rehberg – later the person behind MEGO & sadly no longer with us. This was released in 1996 by Touch on CD and consisted of two long tracks with a running time of almost 25 minutes. Once the short run of CDs had sold out, the rights technically fell to the band, and pinkflag released it – digital only – in 2007 and now released on vinyl for the first time. The remastered 2025 vinyl / CD / digital edition adds a newly recorded, Taylor Swift style re-recording of what is undoubtedly WIR’s most pop moment, the dark brooding shadows of “So and Slow“

The version released here is based on how the band played it live, so, in spite of being instantly recognisable, it does not follow the arrangement of any previously released version

Douglas Dulgarian of the band Tagabow launched his label project, Julia’s War Recordings, with its very first cassette release. The debut was a collaborative EP by friends Jake and Karly, released under their pseudonyms MJ Lenderman and Wednesday.

Wednesday and MJ Lenderman have announced a reissue of their 2021 collaborative EP “Guttering” via Julia’s War Recordings. The six-track project be available on vinyl for the first time on June 20th. Its cover of Greg Sage’s ‘Sacrifice (For Love)’ was later included on Wednesday’s 2022 covers LP “Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ’Em Up”.

“Life is filled with a lot of events that don’t seem as initially important as they turn out to be,” Julia’s War label head Douglas Dulagrian said in a press release. “Sometimes, I’ll look back at a chance encounter or passing interaction years later and realize, ‘Wow, that event was the catalyst for all this change.’ Every journey begins with one step, sure, but I don’t think we ever really realize how much of a journey that little step will cause. It’s funny to think how much “Guttering” changed my life.

It’s a blessing that, for the past ten years, all my favourite bands have just been my friends, and even more of a blessing that, in the past four or five, they’re willing to work with me. I’m proud that this record was the first Julia’s War release four or five years ago. Crazy to think about that. And these days, all these years later, records like “Guttering” and many more have allowed the thing to grow into what it is today: a label of all my favourite bands, and it’s still just all my f*cking friends.

With both artists garnering rabid fanbases over the last four years, the release of this early collaborative EP demonstrates just how far the two have come and showcases the magical spark they had in those early days before the world was watching.

Each release is this little chapter in the book of it all. And that little guy on the cover is the first page.”

“Jellywish” is the fifth studio album from New York indie-folk quartet Florist. Bandleader Emily Sprague explained in a press release that “Jellywish” presents a world where magic is a daily possibility. The LP includes the singles “Have Heaven,” “This Was a Gift,” “Gloom Designs,” “Moon, Sea, Devil,” and the quasi-title track, “Jellyfish.”

“Jellywish” follows Florist’s 2022 self-titled record.

Three years after their excellent self-titled album, and one of our favourite records of the decade so far, New York indie folk quartet Florist are releasing their new album. The group describes it as a “gentle delivery of something chaotic,” with songs that deal with the bigger existential concerns as well as elements of fantasy intertwined. Their sense of delicate beauty remains intact on what was the album’s first single, “Have Heaven,” another wonderful example of their intricate song writing sensibility.

Florist is:
Emily Sprague, Rick Spataro, Felix Walworth, Jonnie Baker All songs written by Emily Sprague

Released April 4th on Double Double Whammy

Allo Darlin’ are back with their first new music in almost a decade, the breezy, wide-eyed ‘Tricky Questions’. It finds vocalist Elizabeth Morris recalling living in Florence having left her home of London. “There’s a piazza, Piazza della Signoria, not far from where I used to live, where the Palazzo Vecchio is. You used to be able to go and walk right up to the sculptures in the Loggia, but I think now they are roped off and a guard watches over them. The city was full of tourists during the day, but after 9pm, they would all go back to their hotels. That’s when the city came alive to me, and it felt like it was just for us.”

Morris added: “I was really thinking about that place when I wrote this song. I wanted to go back there and soak it all up again. Writing about it helped me feel like I was back there, in a place that is timeless. But of course, more than being about a specific place, this song is really about a relationship and how it makes me feel.”

S.G. Goodman has teased a new album, “Planting by the Signs”, with the catchy, propulsive new song ‘Fire Sign’. “After touring relentlessly for 2 years, ‘living like the sun don’t shine / on the same dog’s ass everyday,’ as the song puts it, I came off the road questioning my purpose and choices,” Goodman explained. “People are quick to tell you that you are not working hard enough, but slow in telling you that you are working hard enough. That seems to be up to you, as well as your ‘why?’.

Despite this burnout and other personal setbacks, I found the fire to keep pushing and to make what I believe is my best record yet. ‘Who’ll put the fire out?’ The only person who can put my fire out is myself.”

Goodman recorded “Planting By The Signs” at the Nutt House in Sheffield, Alabama, alongside co-producer Drew Vandenberg (her co-producer on 2022’s Teeth Marks) and guitarist/songwriter Matt Rowan. Bonnie “Prince” Billy appears on a duet, “Nature’s Child”.

“Fire Sign” is taken from S.G. Goodman’s upcoming album ‘Planting by the Signs,’ out June 20th  Slough Water Records / Thirty Tigers

When his cover of This Is Lorelei’s ‘Dancing in the Club’ was released, MJ Lenderman revealed that “Box for Buddy, Box for Star” was the album he listened to the most in 2024. By inviting him to take on the track for the record’s deluxe edition, Nate Amos expresses his own admiration by way of trust: someone like MJ Lenderman could only bring the song’s lonely desparation higher up the surface. Lenderman understands that fucking up your guitar means fucking up your heart, not just the other way round. He’ll slow down the song and draw out the lyrics to make their dissociation feel more personal than situational.

And he will, of course, take pleasure in singing the words “A loser never wins/ And I’m a loser, always been,” lifted as they seem from his own “Manning Fireworks“. More than self-lacerating, though, the cover arrives as a source of comfort, too: being your own worst enemy doesn’t mean you can’t be seen, or find yourself a little less alone.

This Is Lorelei announces “Box for Buddy, Box for Star” Deluxe, a new expanded version of prolific NYC artist Nate Amos’ (Water From Your Eyes, My Idea) critically acclaimed 2024 breakthrough record. The deluxe edition, out April 25th on Double Double Whammy, features collaborations with friends and family. 

Alongside the announcement, This Is Lorelei shares “Dancing in the Club (MJ Lenderman Version)” a reimagining of the album cut that Lenderman has been performing live in recent shows. “Box For Buddy” was by far the album I listened to most in 2024. I had a great time re-recording ‘Dancing in the Club’ with Nate back in December.” says Lenderman. Amos adds “I really loved working on the MJ version of ‘Dancing in the Club’ – Jake is chill af and mad talented. More so than any other song I’ve written this one was dreamt up for others to sing, so it was pretty freaky watching it fall into place with someone like Jake handling lead vocals.”

“Box for Buddy, Box for Star” (Deluxe) is out April 25th, 2025 on Double Double Whammy

Star 99 is Saoirse, Chris, Thomas and Jeremy. On their sophomore LP, “Gaman”, Star 99 are still making punchy, exhilarating songs while pushing beyond – though not necessarily past – the twee sensibilities of their 2023 debut “Bitch Unlimited”, making way not just for the confrontational nature but the poetic nuances of their song writing. As Saoirse Alesandro and Thomas Romero trade vocals, revealing the core emotions that bind their songs – insecurity, resentment, isolation, often fuelled by the fire of generational trauma – you get less of a sense that these are separate people bringing songs than just two friends, in a band, facing similar strife’s – and getting through them. Which is, definitionally, the art of gaman.

Star 99 is reminiscent of Nebraska’s Tilly and the Wall, or maybe they’re not at all. Why the need to compare everything? Take a chance and seek out Star 99, get off the couch, live your life, fun is still there to be had, and Star 99 seems to know where it is.

released March 7th, 2025 LAUREN RECORDS

Great Grandpa released two albums at the tail end of the 2010s, both of which were among the best albums of the year. Plastic Cough is arguably the best album to end with a lengthy song about a zombie uprising that begins while you are incredibly stoned. “Four of Arrows” is an even better album with no zombies-related songs we can recall.

Great Grandpa’s music sounds so splendid, the lyrics so fantastically poetic, it’s easy to undermine their intimacy. “It’s closer when I see you, damn,” goes the hook on ‘Emma’, a highlight on their latest album “Patience, Moonbeam”, and they return to that damn for a cathartic explosion on the single ‘Doom’. The band’s first album in six years yearns and plays around for a sense of euphoria, and even if it sometimes falls short – of the feeling, not reeling you in – their synergy achieves a kind of unburdening that feels like a gift.

“All dark things in time define their meaning,” Al Menne sings on ‘Kid’, making Pat and Carrie Goodwyn’s mournful lyrics sound tenderly affirming. “And fold sharp ends/ Into their mouths.”

released March 28th, 2025

After releasing their sun-kissed, soulful debut “Evil Joy” in 2021, Fust – now a seven-piece featuring songwriter Aaron Dowdy, drummer Avery Sullivan, pianist Frank Meadows, guitarist John Wallace, multi-instrumentalist Justin Morris, fiddlist Libby Rodenbough, and bassist Oliver Child-Lanning – decamped to Drop of Sun to record “Genevieve” with producer Alex Farrar, with whom they reunited for their astounding new album, “Big Ugly”. Named after an unincorporated area in southern West Virginia, around which Dowdy’s family has deep roots, the record is conflicted yet aspirational: homey while grappling with the mystery of home, hopeful when hope rests between the promise of a new life and relenting in old, slow, ragged ways. As the title may suggest, it wrings beauty out of the most unexpected places, honing in the band’s knack for making small feelings appear monumental – that is, closer to their true experience.

“The enormous, long river of storytelling, fed by ancient headwaters, shoring up time, bounded by landscape and people and witness to the beauty and anguish of each. Deconstructed ballads and reveries of drunk ghosts, obtuse and palatable superimposed. The relatable not just accompanied but defined by the very weird. Kitchen-table images from a spotty memory, beater cars mystically lifted, characters coming and going, old friends on the porch. In this town everyone knows each other, knows each others’ business, and everyone’s got strange trouble. Big Ugly is beer-fisted radio country from a post-verbal hermit; “Oh what country, friends, is this,” a line from “Twelfth Night,” uttered by Viola after being shipwrecked on an unfamiliar shore, one that might hold new life or prove to be another disappointment. Nobody moves.

The voice is home, but home is a mystery. We get older and learn nothing, our world barely recognizable. We help each other out. We stay in a place that is losing its future, whether out of commitment or despondency. Big Ugly is Southern mountain rock, Southern lit, made and dedicated to the inextricable entity of land and people, to visions of community and utopia and testament to erosion. The country is a steady drum beat and fried guitar. The language is a dream.”

Performed by
Aaron Dowdy: guitar, vocals, and synth
Avery Sullivan: drums and percussion
Frank Meadows: piano and percussion
John Wallace: guitar and vocals
Justin Morris: guitar, pedal steel, vocals
Libby Rodenbough: fiddle and vocals
Oliver Child-Lanning: bass, vocals, dulcimer, and synth

With help from
Alex Farrar: guitar and lap steel (4)
Dave Hartley: synths (5, 6)
Jacob Bruner: horns (3, 11)
John James Tourville: pedal steel (1, 3, 5, 8, 11)
Merce Lemon: vocals (8)

released March 7th, 2025