The Fat Angel Sings

Regularly hailed as one of the greatest live bands in existence, Queens of the Stone Age will headline Victorious Festival on Friday night!

Join Josh Homme, Troy Van, Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore as they rip through an incredible live set. Expect classics like “No One Knows'”, “Go With The Flow” and “Little Sister”.

Get ready for a mind-blowing set packed with raw energy, and heavy hitters to start the festival weekend off with a bang!

“It’s deliberately very succinct and straight to the point,” says Courting’s Sean Murphy-O’Neill of the band’s latest, and third, album. “We wanted to keep everything incredibly direct – to hit everyone in the face and leave.”

“Lust for Life, Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’ is an album full of dualities, contrasts and contradictions. It contains some of the most straight-up pop music the band have ever made, but it’s also arguably their most experimental work to date. It is fun and silly, peppered with in-jokes, references, and easter eggs, but it is detailed, deeply considered, and masterfully produced and mixed. “It’s meant to feel very contradictory and confusing but it’s also fully realised,” Murphy-O’Neill says. “It’s a real culmination of things. ”

The album title may be a sprawling mouthful but it belies its contents, with this containing just eight perfectly considered and pristinely executed songs. “I’ve always wanted a big, ridiculous title,” says Murphy-O’Neill. “I love albums that have a very self-important vibe. “Lust for Life” is such an overused title but it’s a great one. It could be referencing so many things, from Iggy Pop to Lana Del Ray and maybe that’s kind of its whole schtick – it’s as equally as influenced by 70s proto-punk as it is modern pop. It just all melts together. Everything we do is like a collage. We just take all the things we like and blend them together.”

This is what has made the Liverpool band – made up of Murphy-O’Neill, Sean Thomas, Joshua Cope, and Connor McCann – such a unique proposition in recent years. Over three albums and one EP in just three years, they have shown they can do unashamed indie bangers with as
much flair as they can pull off jittery hyperpop or innovative electronic rock. “It’s equally gratifying to write something that is as big and stupid as it is to write something really weird,” says Murphy-O’Neill. “As a band we exist in those two separate worlds at the same time.”

Encompassing, as well as delivering, such distinct sonic worlds is one of the things that has made the band such an arresting outfit. For 2024’s “New Last Name”, the band went big and theatrical, overloading on style, themes and ideas, by turning the album into an ostensible play. So this time they wanted a smaller approach. “I was bored of overthinking that kind of stuff,” says Murphy-O’Neill. “I just wanted to make something immediate. There’s no shit around it. It is what it is. Something more initiative focused.”

However, as is always the case with Courting, a great deal of thought has gone into this record despite its immediacy and direct hit approach. In many ways, it’s a record that came to Murphy-O’Neill as a complete package in his head and then it was just a case of piecing it together. “We had the title and the artwork idea before we had the songs,” he says. “But I knew what all the songs should be called, how many songs there should be, how they should be structured, and then I just made songs that fit into that. I don’t really know how to write a song for an album that doesn’t serve a purpose.”

Further themes around duality are reflected via this approach too. The album artwork is black and white (two colours) and features two figures on a motorbike (two wheels). The even number of eight tracks is also crucial. “All of the songs on the album have a twin song, symmetrically,” Murphy-O’Neill explains. So, the opening ‘Intro’, with a beautiful motif of looping strings, is repeated on the album’s closer ‘Likely place for them to be’ but this time played with a sharp buzz of electric guitar.

The album’s second track, ‘Stealth Rollback’ is a literal rollercoaster of a song that runs the gauntlet from Prodigy-esque rave via Death Grips-like noise before landing on something more akin to an experimental reinterpretation of The Small Faces. “I think the cliche for me would be starting a song off very peacefully and twisting it into something harsh and electronic,” Murphy-O’Neill explains. “So we started it incredibly harshly and just kicked everyone in the teeth.”

‘Eleven Sent (This Time)’ is about as breezy and infectious a piece of melodic indie pop as you’re likely to come across all year, while ‘Pause at You’ sounds like it may have come out of a NYC loft in the early 2000s. Agitated guitar melds with a killer bassline groove to produce a
bouncing and invigorating piece of dance punk that, in true Courting style, then mushrooms into something else for its soaring chorus. ‘Namcy’ is a perfect example of how in the midst of an album so bursting with variety, the band can also produce just a straight-down-the-line and simply undeniably great rock song, with guitar lines and melodic hooks that will bounce around your head for days.

The two-part narrative of ‘Lust for Life’ represents a song that Murphy-O’Neill is very proud of. “I think it might be the best song we’ve ever written,” he says, of the six-plus minute track, which shifts from an eerie, sparse, almost Berlin-era Bowie opening segment, but with mangled auto-tune, before shifting into a different beast altogether. “It’s about a credit card scam,” he explains.

That song does a lot to me. I find it quite touching.” That song, and this album as a whole, feels like a real milestone moment for the band. “We’ve hit expectations but we’ve also subverted them,” Murphy-O’Neill says. “It does feel like an end to something, but I’m not really sure what. It’s really all come together on this one and maybe that’s why it feels final. I don’t know if it’s the end of an era but it feels like everything that I’ve ever done has all culminated together in this one record.”

The debut album of the South London five-piece is aptly titled “WOOF”., and it’s a microcosm of their live show: rambunctious and odd and best when it’s loud. But the real tension that keeps “WOOF”. afloat is that, like their live shows, you can never quite tell if you’re in on the joke. And that’s because, as hard as they go, Fat Dog songs are also kind of silly.

Take “King of the Slugs,” the seven-minute lead single: Over a thick, acidic bassline, Love rants and raves about his titular royalty status. He barks it out, and the band crests to a drop. But instead of a punkish release, they veer into a melody that sounds like it was pulled from a Klezmer band (for my music theory nerds: it’s the fifth mode of the harmonic minor, traditionally used in Klezmer).

Halfway through the track, Love chants “the wall,” and the song accelerates like a demented, half-awake polka. “King of the Slugs” takes the path of most resistance from its start to end, tumbling through tempo changes and halftimes like the town drunk. But still, it’s dance music, warped through Fat Dog’s perverse, vampiric sensibility. The “WOOF”. opener, “Vigilante,” commences with a timpani hit and Love bellowing, “It’s fucking Fat Dog, baby!”

The South London five-piece Fat Dog released their debut album, “WOOF“., in September via Domino Recordings. The brand new track, “Peace Song,” features a children’s choir.

Love monologues over a villainous orchestra, proclaiming that he “watched the first man draw blood from the second man, saw the first death and the failure of flesh.” It’s so cinematic and macabre that it crests into irony. Still, they churn out a hook from all that verbose nonsense. Almost every track on “WOOF”. follows this pattern. They layer up synths and strings until they’re comically grandiose, and then the band snaps into a bouncy hook. The build-up is just hot air. When they drop, they mean business.

When the album was announced, the band shared its lead single “Running,” via a music video. Then they shared its next single, “I am the King,”  The album’s next single, “Wither,” was released via a music video inspired by ’90s video games .

Love produced the album with James Ford and Jimmy Robertson. Influences mentioned in the press release include: Bicep, I.R.O.K, Kamasi Washington, and the Russian experimental EDM group Little Big. 

“A lot of music at the moment is very cerebral and people won’t dance to it,” says Hughes. “Our music is the polar opposite of thinking music.” Joe Love fronts Fat Dog and the band also features Chris Hughes (keyboards/synths), Ben Harris (bass), Johnny Hutchinson (drums) and Morgan Wallace (keyboards/saxophone).

This week, New York-via-Chicago-based rock trio Horsegirl announced a new album, “Phonetics On and On”, and shared its first single, “2468,” via a music video. They also announced some tour dates. “Phonetics On and On” is due out February 14th, 2025 via Matador.

“Phonetics On and On” is the band’s second album and the follow-up to 2022’s “Versions of Modern Performance.

Horsegirl is Penelope Lowenstein (guitar, vocals), Nora Cheng (guitar, vocals), and Gigi Reece (drums). In the fall of 2022 the band relocated to NYC for Lowenstein and Reece to attend NYU. In January 2024 the trio returned to Chicago to record the album at The Loft, with Welsh singer/songwriter Cate Le Bon producing.

Taken from ‘Phonetics On and On,’ the new album from Horsegirl out February 14th, 2025 on Matador Records.

The Weather Station (the project of Toronto-based singer/songwriter Tamara Lindeman) is releasing a new album, “Humanhood”, on January 17th, 2025 via Fat Possum. This week she has shared its second single, “Window,” and announced some new tour dates. Linderman co-directed the song’s video with Philippe Léonard.

In a press release, Lindeman says the video was “filmed on the island of Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs, Quebec late one night with a battery powered projector, with many attempts to get that one perfect take. Philippe’s note to me was ‘you are the window.’”

Previously The Weather Station shared the album’s first single, “Neon Signs.” Lindeman co-directed the “Neon Signs” video with Jared Raab .

“Humanhood” follows 2021’s “Ignorance” and 2022’s companion album, “How Is It That I Should Look At the Stars”.

Linderman co-produced “Humanhood” with Marcus Paquin, recording it in the fall of 2023 at Canterbury Music Company. The main backing band on the album is drummer Kieran Adams, keyboardist Ben Boye, percussionist Philippe Melanson, reed-and-wind specialist Karen Ng, and bassist Ben Whiteley. The album also features Sam Amidon, James Elkington, and Joseph Shabason.

Stripes is a Brooklyn-based indie rock band led by singer/songwriter Izzy MK, operating within the blurred boundaries between jagged post punk and jangly indie rock. The band got their start while Izzy was living in Tucson, debuting with their first album “520” in 2019 and following with their 2021 home-recorded album, “How Should I Know?” Since then, Izzy relocated to New York and reformed the band with a new line-up, Riley Morgan on guitar, Mitchell Davis on bass, and Dave Possehl on drums.

Along the way, they also brought out more of their original punk edge, returning this year with their third full-length album, “Running + Hiding”, followed by a pair of new singles, “Operation: No Hell” and “So Fucked.” They’re back with another new track, “Forever, It Won’t Change,”.

“Forever, It Won’t Change” is equal parts catchy and disheveled, sporting all of the frayed edges of a garage rock rager alongside a rush of wiry hooks. The track’s verses buzz along in an acid-fried haze, laced with stabbing guitar lines and Izzy’s bleary vocal melodies. The tension builds to a breaking point before exploding outwards with the chorus. All of the knotted guitar lines quickly unspool into jangly and jagged pop chords, sprawling out beneath a massive sing-along melody. The resulting track is an unstoppable garage pop machine, steamrolling along with desperate, wild-eyed intensity until it crashes down into silence in it’s final moments.

The single cover also features Luna, a beloved canine friend of Stripes. “She embodies the yearning of the track; she’s an intensely emotional dog,” Izzy says. Possehl adds of the track, “We yearn for love and security in the same way a dog yearns for a tennis ball.”

The Horrors have a new album, “Night Life”, dur for release March 21sst, 2025 via Fiction Records. Now they have shared its third single, the seven-minute long “Lotus Eater.” The band collectively had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘Lotus Eater’ has had several past lives. It was one of the first songs from the “Night Life” sessions that we felt really excited about—Rhys’ original lyric had a feeling that made me think of ‘5 Years’ by David Bowie, and I started to build on the idea.

“A lotus eater lives in a state of blissful ignorance, and the song to me describes the moment of coming back to reality. We wanted it to have a feeling of both melancholy and euphoria, letting go of the past and starting again. “The spoken word section was improvised in the studio, and the mid-section of chopped-up electronics came from Amelia’s world of synth programming. It feels almost like a sister track to ‘Sea Within a Sea’ in some ways, and it’s one of our favourite songs on the new album.”

Previously the band had shared the album’s first single, “The Silence That Remains,” Then they shared its second single, “Trial By Fire,” via a music video.

“Night Life” will be the band’s first new album in eight years and features a revised line-up. The Horrors’ last album was 2017’s “V“, although in 2021 they released “the Lout” and “Against the Blade” EPs.

The band still features vocalist Faris Badwan and bassist Rhys Webb, but those founding members are now joined by new members Amelia Kidd on keyboards and Jordan Cook (of the band Telegram) on drums. Original member Joshua Hayward also plays guitar on the album. Absent are original members, keyboardist Tom Furse (who left the band in 2021) and drummer Joe Spurgeon.

Badwan and Webb began working on demos in Webb’s North London flat, with recording done in Los Angeles with producer Yves Rothman (Yves Tumor, Blondshell). The album was then finished in London along with guitarist Hayward. Kidd also contributed remotely from Glasgow.

Featuring performances from Caribou, Father John Misty, Black Country, New Road, Geordie Greep, John Maus, These New Puritans and more. End Of The Road Festival have announced the first wave of musical acts set to appear within the line- up for their forthcoming 2025 edition.

Descending upon the scenic pastures of Larmer Tree Gardens once more over three days in late August, today the beloved and long-running Dorset event have revealed Caribou, Father John Misty, Self Esteem and Sharon Van Etten as headliners of their looming edition with Black Country, New Road, Emma-Jean Thackray, black midi alumnus Geordie Greep, John Maus and These New Puritans among a slew of further notable and wide-ranging acts. With many more performers yet to be announced, full weekend ticketing options for End Of The Road Festival 2025 are available to purchase now.

Clarissa Connelly’s world reads like an intoxicating fantasy – set against a windswept Scandinavian landscape where sacred sites reverberate with ancient melodies and pre-Christian myths loom large. Connelly – a graduate of Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory alongside Astrid Sonne and ML Buch adapts this world for her third album: a wintry prog-pop opus that pulls at the tension between her awe at life’s beauty and existential fear.

Weaving new myths from old – including a 16th-century lament sung from the perspective of a dancing rose flower “Wee Rosebud” Connelly reimagines the theatrical mysticism of Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Enya as icy etherealism, with her crystalline voice leaving its frozen impression long after the final track has rung out. It’s a modern epic.

released April 12th, 2024 on Warp Records