The Fat Angel Sings

After a decade making the most of improvised recording spaces set in warehouses, trailers and lofts, Japanese Breakfast’s fourth album, “For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)”, marks the band’s first proper studio release. Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills, the record sees front-woman and songwriter Michelle Zauner pull back from the bright extroversion that defined its predecessor “Jubilee” to examine the darker waves that roil within, the moody, fecund field of melancholy, long held to be the psychic state of poets on the verge of inspiration. The result is an artistic statement of purpose: a mature, intricate, contemplative work that conjures the romantic thrill of a gothic novel.

“For Melancholy Brunettes” follows a transformative period in Zauner’s life during which her 2x GRAMMY nominated breakthrough album “Jubilee” and her bestselling memoir “Crying In H Mart” catapulted her into the cultural mainstream, delivering on her deepest artistic ambitions. Reflecting on that success, Zauner came to appreciate the irony of desire, which so often commingles bliss and doom. “I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted,” she says. “I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die.”

The plight of Icarus and other such condemned ones lends “For Melancholy Brunettes” its most persistent theme, the perils of desire. Like light dispersed, its spectral parts take the album’s characters through cycles of temptation, transgression and retribution. On “Orlando in Love” — a riff on John Cheever’s riff on Orlando Innamorato, an unfinished epic made up of 68 ½ cantos by the Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo — the hero is a well meaning poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea and falls victim to a siren’s call, his 69th canto (even in the lofty realm of classical myth Zauner has a soft spot for innuendo). “Honey Water” plumbs the quiet rage of a woman married to an unfaithful man, watching him cede again and again to lust like a base insect perpetuating its own demise.

Sadness is indeed the dominant emotional key of this record, but it is sadness of a rarefied form: the pensive, prescient sadness of melancholy, in which the recognition of life’s essentially tragic character occurs with sensitivity to its fleeting beauty. Zauner finds space enough inside it for glimmers of hope. They are the consolations of mortals that poets before her have called out to and that poets after will continue to rediscover: love and labor, and though they run like tonic resolutions through the record’s many episodes, they sound most saliently on its final song, “Magic Mountain,” an engagement with Thomas Mann’s famous novel of the same name. For her, making any work feels like scaling a mountain, but from the perch of “For Melancholy Brunettes”, she surveys the future. 

released March 21st, 2025

The complete vinyl works of Ozzy Osbourne’s original solo material in a very limited unnumbered black vinyl box set. This unnumbered & unsigned version of ‘See You On the Other Side v2.0’ features 18 albums including the rarities compilation ‘Flippin’ the B-Side’ and new additions of ‘Patient Number 9’ (standard album cover version) and ‘Ordinary Man’. The box also includes ten full-size posters of vintage photos, a gold bat slipmat, and a certificate of Ozzthenticity.

In 2004 the Drive-By Truckers released what would become the best selling album in their illustrious catalog. “The Dirty South” is a concept album that examines the state of the South, and unveils the hypocrisy, irony, and tragedy that continues to exist. The album features live show staples like, “Tornadoes”, “Where The Devil Don’t Stay” and “Puttin’ People On The Moon” as well as rarities like “Goode’s Field Road” and “Daddy’s Cup.”

 In 2004, there was not a better set of songwriters than Cooley, Hood, and Isbell. A band at the top of it’s game on this record 

“The Complete Dirty South” is a band-led rework of the original album. Principal member, Patterson Hood, took the reins and re-imagined this record as it was originally intended. The complete version features re-sequenced audio, three additional tracks, four remixes along with updated vocals. The packaging comes with a perfect bound book featuring liner notes from Patterson Hood, track by track descriptions from Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell as well as never before seen photos along with updated artwork from the late Wes Freed.

“This ‘Director’s Cut’ is the way it was always intended to be heard” – Patterson Hood

Originally released June 16th, 2023

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DBT 2004
Mike Cooley, Patterson Hood, Jason Isbell, Brad Morgan, and Shonna Tucker

GUESTS
David Barbe, John Neff, Clay Leverett, The Minor Hill Singers (featuring Kimberly Morgan) and The State Line Chain Gang

Jesse Colin Young, a singer-songwriter and leader of the ’60s band the Youngbloods, has died at the age of 83. It is with dismay that I’ve learned of the death of Jesse Colin Young, founder and leader of The Youngbloods, one of the great folk rock groups along with The Byrds and The Lovin’ Spoonful, he of the good looks and a beautiful voice is High on a Ridgetop now letting his Light Shine…

According to a press release by his publicist, Young “died in his home in Aiken, South Carolina, yesterday afternoon.” During a career of more than five decades, Young released dozens of albums; his latest, the solo LP “Dreamers”, arrived in 2019. Young was born Perry Miller on November 22nd, 1941, in Queens, New York. The folk-rock singer-songwriter and bassist was a founding member of the Boston-based folk-rock band the Youngbloods, which he cofounded in 1965.

The band reached No. 52 the next year with “Grizzly Bear,” written by Youngbloods member Jerry Corbitt. In the summer of 1967, the band released “Get Together,” written by later Quicksilver Messenger Service member Dino Valenti under his real name Chet Powers, with Young on lead vocals.

The song – also known as “Let’s Get Together” and “Everybody Get Together” – became a favorite of the hippie era, covered by the Kingston Trio, We Five (who had the first charting version of the song), Jefferson Airplane and the Dave Clark Five.

Nirvana later used the song’s famous line – “Come on, people, now / Smile on your brother / Everybody get together, try to love one another right now” – at the start of the song “Territorial Pissings” from their “Nevermind” album.

The Youngbloods’ version of the song became the standard. Even though its initial 1967 release stalled at No. 62, the single was reissued in 1969 and reached No. 5.

The band’s third album, “Elephant Mountain” from 1969, remains a highlight of its career. Its opening song, “Darkness, Darkness,” about the Vietnam War, was written and sung by Young from the perspective of a soldier. Robert Plant later covered “Darkness, Darkness” and received a Grammy Nomination for his version of the song in 2002’s Dreamland.

In 1971 the Youngbloods broke up and Young launched a solo career that included more than a dozen records over the decades. While Young’s biggest solo single, “Higher & Higher,” stopped outside the Top 100 in 1977, his albums remained steady sellers throughout the ’70s. Eight solo albums that decade hit the charts, with 1975’s “Songbird” reaching No. 26 in the USA charts.

In 2012, after being diagnosed with Lyme disease, Young retired from making music. But he started performing again four years later with his son, which led to the release of “Dreamers” in 2019.

For the Geeks, Richie (BOC) Castellano, Andy Ascolese, Christopher Clark and Matt Beck, the self deprecating band name turned out to be something of a joke. On us. It would be hard to find a more capable bunch of musicians. This live album is a snapshot of an unforgettable event, a rejuvenated artist which explores his musical roots with a band of young virtuoso musicians who are able to breathe new life in classic songs that truly need no introduction to the fans!

The entirety of this live recording reproduces original Yes material. “Perpetual Change” is taken from The “Yes Album” (1971). The self explanatory title confirmed what we had already learned. Yes had a continually evolving musical style. Just like Yes did on the original album from which it first appeared (again, The Yes Album), Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks open with ‘Yours Is No Disgrace’.

‘The Gates Of Delirium’, based on Tolstoy’s “War And Peace” has to be one of the most energy sapping songs to do live. How do you mirror the chaos of battle and its aftermath – depicted on the original recording – onstage? Listen and learn.

Elsewhere, Yes favourites, ‘Close To The Edge’,’Starship Trooper’, ‘Roundabout’, ‘And You And I’ and others get another moment in the sun. The very fact that none of these live performances are in any way disappointing is testament to the skill (and indeed stamina) of the Geeks.

The most identifiable aspect of Yes was always their singer. ****

Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks Live is a 2 CD set release. There is also a DVD, and triple vinyl package.

Legendary Yes vocalist/songwriter Jon Anderson launched his partnership with The Band Geeks with a US National tour in Spring 2023. The plan was to perform solely classic Yes tracks from their 70’s repertoire, including: ‘And You And I’, ‘Starship Trooper’, ‘Heart Of The Sunrise’, and epic works like ‘Close To The Edge’, ‘The Gates Of Delirium’, ‘Awaken’ and others!

Jon Anderson said: “It’s true, I never left Yes in my heart and soul… ever!! Too many amazingly powerful memories… And of course the music never left me…So here I am, still wanting to sing the songs again, and bring My true feelings to the lyrics… Melody and lyrics has always been my passion…I sing them now with an older and I hope wiser state of mind…I’ve been wanting to have that feeling again…of performing the songs I lived for, and the music I helped to create and design, with the sound of the band of old around me once more…The first time I heard the Band Geeks I truly freaked out – they sound just like the classic Yes of the seventies, the Yes that I know and love…”

The Band Geeks are an amazing group of players and Jon’ voice sounds better than ever at 80 … quite unbelievable!

A 2CD+DVD Audio / Visual record of the hugely successful set Jon Anderson and this amazing band delivered through 2023 and 2024!

“Enter Now Brightness” sees artist Nadia Reid stretch further away from the folk sound with which she first garnered acclaim, floating around a sophisticated indie pop area. Her fourth album, the writing process was a therapeutic way for Reid to untangle rage and pain into cathartic, alternative rock centred highs.

“Enter Now Brightness” feels different for Nadia. It is an album, she says, of departure and questioning, that has reminded her how song writing can be “the most useful thing to do with pain and joy and thoughts and feelings and anger.” That through music we can find great change. “I’m so much better off now that it exists,” she says. “Now feels like a new time.” On this record, Reid moves ever further from her earlier folk inclinations, establishing a sound that is distinctly her own. “Enter Now Brightness” is a record of poise and great beauty, the sound of a cellular shift, of pain giving way to tenderness and joy. It takes its title from a passage in a book Reid was reading from a line that seemed to call out to her from the page: ‘Brightness entered the study.’ “It was the image of opening the curtain, or turning the light on, or of standing in the wings of a theatre and waiting to go on stage. It’s the idea of life beginning now.”

“I wrote this in Tenerife and it turned out to be quite hooky,” Nadia Reid says of “Hotel Santa Cruz,” the latest single from her new album “Enter Now Brightness”. “It’s just a series of questions. I feel quite moved at the end, with the line ‘You are everything I’d like to be’. I always give myself goose bumps when I perform that line. But I’m not sure who I’m referring to.”

The official music video for ‘Hotel Santa Cruz’ by Nadia Reid, from the upcoming album ‘Enter Now Brightness’

The latest issue of Record Collector homes in on Bob Dylan in 1965 and the music he made and the festivals he played that year that caused the teensiest bit of a fuss. Richie Unterberger examines Dylan’s seismic movements and output and detects early tremors circa 1963-4. Elsewhere, we talk to Dionne Warwick about some songs she recorded round about 1965 written by Bacharach & David – you may be familiar with them. We speak to the group behind the biggest selling UK album in the year before punk – that’ll be The Stylistics – and to Chuck Prophet and Blancmange. Separately, of course.

On March 17th, 1979 you could buy ‘Squeezing Out Sparks’, it is arguably both Graham Parker’s best album and one of the high points of the late seventies. Parker’s previous releases were not so well received commercially so Parker took his band the Rumour and his new work to a new label and producer, this was now a time of make or break. Recently Elvis Costello had just made commercial inroads with some of the same concepts he’d been exploring back on “Heat Treatment” and “Howlin’ Wind“, yet according to the revealing liner notes The Rumour was failing to catch fire on the new material until producer Jack Nitzsche told them to get serious and play the songs for what they were.

The result was an album of such brute force that Parker has yet to better it, and it became his breakthrough in the year of Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces and Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp! Fed by genuine anger and the energy of the ascending New Wave, the songs on ‘Squeezing Out Sparks’ burn everything from Hiroshima, “Discovering Japan” to the drug-infested bar scene and the wanna-be hipsters crawling through it, “Saturday Night Is Dead” to abortion in all its contradictory facets (“You Can’t Be Too Strong”) rumoured to be about a relationship with a Sydney radio DJette.