The Fat Angel Sings

Cassandra Jenkins is quite simply one of the best songwriter-storytellers currently making music. Hers is a specific and singular corner of the Great American Songwriters, artists like David Berman, Adrianne Lenker, Jeff Tweedy and Sufjan Stevens. They’re artists connected by a sense of immediacy, not just in the writing – which is precise, evocative, brutal at times, pitch-back funny right when you need it – but by their delivery, by the way they sing with an immersive, total belief that carries you through their songs. These are the artists and songs that sneak up and really live with us forever, and on “My Light, My Destroyer”, Jenkins joins their ranks.

What’s most remarkable about “My Light, My Destroyer” is it captures an artist at an exciting leap in her evolution. So much about the album feels of-a-kind with its predecessors; field recordings and found sound permeate, narrative song writing crashes into heady, swirling compositions. Jenkins sings with what can only be described as a power- whisper (think Sufjan Stevens, Annie Lennox, Margo Timmins or YHF-era Tweedy), her vocals up close and intimate but subtly confrontational. But it all feels bigger here, more finely honed, bolder and richer than her previous work and than her peers.

Born and raised in New York City, Jenkins has been touring and performing since she was a child, self-releasing her early recordings before releasing breakthrough “An Overview on Phenomenal Nature” in 2021.

On “My Light, My Destroyer”, many of the songs are devoted to specific feelings, and to really getting inside those feelings as opposed to getting inside a narrative arc. Lead single “Only One” is one example, as Jenkins’s asserts that a moment, or a song, can be wholly myopic; it can embody a singular feeling, and provides no answers.

Songs like “Devotion”, “Delphinium Blue”, “Clams Casino”, “Echo“, and “Only One”, speak to the liberating quality of focused observation, even to the point of disillusionment. “There’s this idea about disillusionment that I’ve held onto,” she says. “I really appreciate disillusionment as a process to discover new, unexpected outcomes. We let go of expectations this way. Expectations hold us back. It’s easy to focus on jadedness or disappointment but I actually see it more as freedom.”

One of our favourites has released a new record from Ontario’s— Caylie Runciman aka Boyhood has quietly dropped a short but super sweet new EP, and today she shares the beautiful, dreamlike video for title track “Shells“. With a Video by Monika Kraska. Runciman elegantly touches on new-wave, dub, lo-fi, and sweeping pop nostalgia as she weaves an eclectic, deeply moving collection of perfect pop songs 

Written & performed by Caylie Runciman, Released November 22nd, 2024

Mike Gordon’s debut album as Mk.gee, “Two Star & The Dream Police“, is a ground breaking fusion of pop, rock, and soul. Hailing from New Jersey, the 26-year-old musician redefines familiar genres with his unique approach to sound, incorporating unconventional tones, tempos, and textures. His distorted guitar riffs and soulful vocals, reminiscent of Prince, cut through murky, experimental mixes, creating a captivating sonic landscape that refuses to conform to traditional boundaries.

Despite his experimental tendencies, Gordon demonstrates a mastery of melody, crafting intricate and engaging pop songs from seemingly chaotic compositions. “Two Star” is both innovative and accessible, offering a fresh take on contemporary music while retaining a timeless quality.

While Gordon has been releasing EPs and mixtapes since 2017, it was his collaboration with Dijon on the latter’s debut album, “Absolutely”, that introduced him to a wider audience in 2021. Their dynamic live performances, characterised by Gordon’s frenetic guitar playing and Dijon’s charismatic stage presence, exemplify the creative synergy between the two artists. Dijon credits Gordon with pushing him to new creative heights, infusing his music with a newfound rhythm and freedom. “Absolutely” marked a significant evolution for Dijon’s sound, with Gordon’s influence recognized as invaluable to the project’s success.

“Eels” is the second studio album by American rock band Being Dead. It was released on September 27th, 2024, through Bayonet Records. Arriving over a year after their debut studio album “When Horses Would Run”, the album was met with universal acclaim from critics. The trio, consisting of Juli Keller, Cody Dosier and Nicole Roman-Johnston, was formed in Austin, Texas. Their music seems “bare-bones”, it includes a variety of “unexpected” instruments, such as “Mellotron, banjo, Casio drums”. With a recurring theme throughout the record was “motion” as it is “constantly changing” and “speeding along”.

Being Dead knows how to make an entrance – within the first several seconds of “Eels”, the duo’s new record, the bright, hard-strummed guitar line on “Godzilla Rises” conjures cinematic immediacy, a creature emerging from the depths of the ocean in campy, freaky stop motion, fittingly so. Being Dead’s records are mosaics, technicolour incantations, each song its own self-contained little universe. And while the dreamlike “Eels” probes further into the depths of the Being Dead’s psyche, it is, most importantly, in the 16-track record that is genuinely unpredictable from one track to the next: a joyous and unexpected trip helmed by two true-blue freak bitch besties holed up in a lil’ house in the heart of Austin, Texas.

The bands ability of “writing great songs” but to push their music into “interesting, unexpected places”. “Eels” is a compilation of “sharp zig-zags and even sharper hooks”

Recorded, produced, and mixed by Fine. There must be something in the water in Copenhagen, where for the past few years a cohort of rising artists have been making sublime, hyperreal songs in singer-songwriter mode, but from an electronic background. Some members of this scene transmute guitar music through MIDI, giving their pastoral landscapes a freaky sheen; others apply classical training to homespun electroacoustic R&B. These loosely connected artists meet somewhere between the Danish countryside and the uncanny valley, capturing different angles of the “real world” as mirage: shimmering, bending, retreating.

“Rocky Top Ballads” is the debut album of Copenhagen singer/songwriter and producer Fine. Woven around Fine’s voice, with guitars, drums, samples, and synthesisers, the album visits both country and folk moods but with an underlying electronic world counter weighing.

released June 7th, 2024

All songs written and produced by Fine

Eindhoven will once again dive into two days of the best of psych, dystopian visuals and vinyl. For those who love everything fuzz, reverb, and drone, we’re excited to announce a collaboration with London-based indie label Fuzz Club for a new edition of the Fuzz Club Festival. Join us on Friday, May 9th, and Saturday, May 10th, with performances by Goat, Rose City Band, MIEN, New Candys, and many more!

With many more to be announced, the first wave of names includes: Goat, Rose City Band, MIEN, New Candys, Black Market Karma, ERRORR, MAQUINA., Smote, Kombynat Robotron, Pretty Lightning, Floral Image.

Fuzz Club is a London-based independent record label established in 2012 that has since become a crucial catalyst in the international psych community. Under Fuzz Club and its recently-launched Bad Vibrations and Rubber Duck imprints, they are home to the likes of The Jesus and Mary Chain, Night Beats, Tess Parks, Crows, The Men, ORB, The Telescopes, Elephant Stone, Beans, The Vacant Lots, C.O.F.F.I.N and The Underground Youth, to name a few. They have also previously released music by the likes of The Black Angels, A Place To Bury Strangers, Holy Wave, Dead Skeletons, Alan Vega, Anton Newcombe, Sonic Boom and many more. Over the last few years, their cult following has expanded thanks to an ongoing series of deluxe, highly sought-after King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard official live bootlegs. After hosting various events and festivals in London in their earlier years, in 2018 they launched the first Fuzz Club Festival held at the Effenaar in Eindhoven. A now-annual two-day celebration of fuzz, reverb and drone, previous editions have brought together music lovers travelling to attend from nearly 40 different countries.

Pretty Lightning have announced their new album ‘Night Wobble’ and shared the lead single ‘Glade Runner’ Their sixth full-length to date and second instrumental record arrives February 21st 2025.

The newly-announced ‘Night Wobble’ LP is a set of downtempo, repetitive grooves that course through dusty spaghetti-western psychedelia, Tuareg-derived desert-blues, library music and progressive. It’s always cinematic but shot through with trippy, off-kilter moments that bring a sense of alien to the widescreen panoramas here – this is an “oozy, woozy cowboy groove”, as they put it.

On lead single ‘Glade Runner’, they add:

“The first single ‘Glade Runner’ marks the middle of the trip. We’re halfway through the woods, have crossed some muddy ditches and already made it through the rather earthy part of the journey. We´re now in the glade and just about to reach the portal, from where we take off or sneak even deeper into the forest, you never know.…”

Pretty Lightning will play next year’s Fuzz Club Festival on May 9th-10th at the Effenaar, Eindhoven, NL

Like many important bands, Seattle quartet Versing got their start in college radio—Tacoma’s KUPS. The group’s main songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Daniel Salas served as alternative music director there, where he met guitarist Graham Baker, drummer Max Keyes, and bassist Kirby Lochner. Now Versing are poised to spread their coolly combustible brand of rock on those said airwaves…and beyond if the world knows what’s good for it.

Baker, Keyes, Lochner, and Salas have risen through Seattle’s competitive rock ecosphere with nonchalant élan. They cheekily titled a previous album “Nirvana“, but never mind the bleach: Versing isn’t emulating Sub Pop’s most famous artist. Rather, these four twentysomething aesthetes are forging an exciting sound that finds a golden mean between lustrous noise and ebullient melody.

With Versing, songwriting is obviously crucial, but much of the pleasure in “10000” comes from its guitar textures. They’re swarming, yet also spiky and agile. Gently chiding the Seattle music scene’s self-seriousness while acknowledging Versing’s playfulness and irony, Salas says, “There’s a ‘let’s just fuck around and see what comes out,’ aspect of what we do, which I think is uncommon for Seattle bands.” Versing’s freewheeling attitude has paradoxically resulted in “10000”, an engrossing album that’s impossible to feel ambivalent about.

In the age of streaming platforms and social media, stimulation is easy to come by. “Real Pleasure”, however—the kind that feeds our soul rather than draining it—is in shockingly short supply. The second LP by Thus Love is full of that kind of nourishing euphoria. It swoons, shakes, and swaggers with a combination of grit and sensuality that’s been hard to locate in music lately. It’s called, fittingly, “All Pleasure”. 

The album came out of a period of dizzying growth and transformation for the group. When they began work on it, vocalist/guitarist Echo Mars and drummer Lu Racine were still reeling from the runaway success of their 2022 debut “Memorial” a set of lush, elegant post-punk that brought praise from The Fader, the NME, and the Guardian—along with processing the departure of the founding bassist. 

With “All Pleasure”, the band re-formed with new bassist Ally Juleen and guitarist/keyboardist Shane Blank. The group convened in a barn in the woods that Mars had transformed into a recording studio, and kept one rule at the forefront: “If it’s not joyful, don’t do it.” What emerged from that mission is a stunningly gorgeous album, full of big, arcing melodies and a range of kinky stylistic twists that will surprise listeners who know the group just for “Memorial’s” chorus-drenched 80s style psychedelia. “Birthday Song” gives grungy glam rock with a transcendent hook that underlines Echo’s lyrical tribute to communal joy. “Get Stable” transmutes existential panic into sharp-angled punk pop. 

The anthemic title track is something like the album’s mission statement, paying tribute to the power of joyful creation. Mixed by Matthew Hall and Rich Costey and mastered by Bob Weston, “All Pleasure” was recorded as live as possible, capturing the sheer infectious ecstasy that comes from sharing space together and making a divine racket. Put on “All Pleasure“, tap into the energy that Thus Love is putting out, and you just might find an escape.