The Fat Angel Sings

Curated by the Faces drummer Kenney Jones & newly mastered, the expanded limited edition 3-LP boxset features previously unreleased tracks newly mixed from Olympic Studios session tapes.

“What I really like about this new deluxe edition is the Small Faces finally get to have an input. Immediate originally rushed out ‘The Autumn Stone’ compilation after we’d split into the Faces & Humble Pie. And no one spotted the big mistake on the cover or that songs had been left off! I’ve added an unreleased track and versions newly mixed that have never been heard before, a whole side of acoustic mixes that showcase Steve Marriott’s incredible voice, one side of live songs newly mastered to vinyl at the correct speed & everything is remastered from original tapes, including the Decca tracks. I’ve added songs that me, Ronnie, Mac & Steve loved working on & I got to correct all the errors with the original sound. The box set looks incredible, with gold foil lettering, 3-LPs pressed on 180-gram autumn stone and gold vinyl. There’s a 68-page hardback book which has so much in it, including sleeve notes, interviews, track-by-track details, a feature on our ‘1862’ sessions & pages of rare memorabilia, original artwork & previously unseen photos by our wonderful photographers, including Gered Mankowitz. I’m so pleased Gered is working with me on the album he originally helped design. Which means after 55 years, he’s finally put the Small Faces name on the cover!” KENNEY JONES, 2025

The lavishly packaged boxset will be released on Immediate Records under an exclusive licensing deal from BMG to Kenney Jones’ Nice Records on 11th April 2025, exclusively available from the official Small Faces website on “autumn stone & gold” vinyl. Significantly expanded from the unfinished original LP, the new 3-LP & 3-CD editions will feature previously unreleased & rare versions of Small Faces songs, including stripped-down acoustic mixes which highlight the distinctive & unique voice of Steve Marriott.

Each 3-LP boxset contains a hardback book with an in-depth introduction by Small Faces drummer Kenney Jones, detailed sleeve notes including exclusive features on “lost”Small Faces album ‘1862’, the fall of Immediate Records, a previously unpublished interview with Small Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan, track-by-track recording information, all lavishly illustrated with a wealth of rare memorabilia, photographs and previously unseen artwork made by Mac from the legendary “Small Faces House” at 22 Westmoreland Terrace during 1966. A recent conversation between Kenney Jones and ‘The Autumn Stone’ sleeve designer and Small Faces photographer Gered Mankowitz discussing their time at Olympic Studios and Immediate Records completes the book.

Only 3,000 numbered limited edition 3-LP boxsets will be made available to the SmallFaces fanbase via the official website, of which only 750 will be signed by Kenney Jones and Gered Mankowitz.

Chicago based trio Lifeguard—Asher Case, Isaac Lowenstein, and Kai Slater will put out their debut album “Ripped and Torn” in June, and lead single “It Will Get Worse” has firmly cemented the arrival of a new musical vanguard in the city. Lifeguard have been together since pre-COVID, when they were teens transforming Chicago’s youth DIY scene. Their two previous EPs, “Dressed in Trenches” and “Crowd Can Talk”, quickly established them as torchbearers of a storied, multi-generational musical legacy. Inspired by Television and Dredd Foole, “Ripped and Torn” is renaissance post-punk with a twist of anthemic, post-Y2K bombast. Lead single “It Will Get Worse” ought to be everyone else’s wake-up moment.

The song sounds like the Cleaners From Venus covering Pavement, as metallic, thrashing guitars vibrate through lo-fi, distorted hooks. And, truth be told, who wouldn’t want every song in existence to sound exactly like that? You better get hip to Lifeguard now; the moon is firmly in their sights.

This new Florry single absolutely cooks. “First it was a movie, then it was a book” is a sentence-case dream of rollicking, country-fried rock gravitas. Francie Medosch and John Murray collide into each other, stretching two-ton riffs around organ, pedal steel, and homespun, jammy crescendos. Medosch sings about her life turning into a Hollywood picture that made her sad “‘cos I saw myself in everyone.” “How’d they make a movie like that?” she wails, her voice splitting in two. There’s a Holly Hunter mention in here, and there’s emptiness too. Caught someplace between the Stones’ honky-tonk crashouts, a migraine-addled Wilco, and Sonic Youth’s distorted debauchery, “First it was a movie, then it was a book” is a six-string car-crash heavy on the abandon.

Florry become a paradox across seven minutes, twisting off the cliff like an avalanche in one ear yet skyscraping towards something far above sea level in the other. This is everything I want rock music to sound like in 2025.  

Daughter of Swords is the solo project of North Carolina singer-songwriter Alex Sauser-Monnig (they/she), who has also released music with bands Mountain Man and The A’s. Their solo debut, “Dawnbreaker,” was a hushed folk record released in 2019; in the years since, Sauser-Monnig found a new understanding of self, personally and musically.

Across the last several years, Daughter of Swords’ music has grown thornier, an unpredictable and knotty tangle of technicolor synths, heady guitar, bubbling rhythms, a sheen enveloping songs about raw human intensity writ large – crushes, desire, anger, alienation, the horrors of late-stage capitalism, the cascading paradigm shifts it seems we’re all hurtling toward.

Enter Alex, Daughter of Sword’s sinewy sophomore solo record due out this spring via Psychic Hotline. Recorded at Betty’s, Sylvan Esso’s Chapel Hill studio, “Alex” was built out by Sauser-Monnig’s longtime friends/collaborators Amelia Meath (Sylvan Esso, Mountain Man, The A’s), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso, Made of Oak), TJ Maiani (Weyes Blood, Neneh Cherry), and Caleb Wright (Hippo Campus, Samia).

There’s a sharp cerebral tension between the stories at the core of these songs and the electrifying, playful buoyancy of the sound, the wink with which Sauser-Monnig can deliver a withering observation. Reckoning with pleasure-seeking, boundary-breaking, and their place in the world, “Alex” heralds a fresh chapter of exploration and liberation for Sauser-Monnig, yielding the truest representation of their identity via song yet.

A reassessment of inner systems, and relationships of all sorts — with art and creativity, with other humans, with gender – happened in tandem with Sauser-Monnig’s interrogation of the late-capitalist culture that makes life for working artists an inequitable grind. Forced out of their habitual ways of thinking and being, Sauser-Monnig found new energy in dissolving old limitations—be they about the music business or their concept of gender—and exploring in uncharted territory. Their priority became maximizing the mood of each track, borne out in “Alex’s” layers of synthetic textures and unorthodox flourishes.

“Alone Together,” the standalone single released this past fall (hailed as “a playful blast of candid indie rock” by Stereogum and “a crushing hum” by Paste), was the first preview from this fresh chapter of exploration and liberation, from the kinetic collection of new work that makes up “Alex”. Written from the POV of someone freshly single and alone and building a new sense of identity, “Alone Together” follows that confident new sense of self and emotional protection as it bends under the physical need for sex, connection, and closeness. That specifically fresh, raw form of desire – and the peculiar sense of aplomb that comes from newfound freedom– appears throughout the record, stringing together a gritty, kaleidoscopic and unpredictable tilt-a-whirl of high-octane guitar rock colliding with some folk song sensibilities.

“I feel strange/But it’s just a natural reaction/To a world coming apart at the seams,” they sing in “Strange.” These personal excavations led Sauser-Monnig to a clear personal mission, which they explain succinctly: “I refuse to let the state of the world deny me the ability to live in joy, while also trying to show up for others.” 

released April 11th, 2025

Vocalist/guitarist Spencer Peppet, drummer Mic Adams, and violinist Andrea Gutmann Fuentes came up together in the same Cincinnati scene. Adams and Gutmann Fuentes had a history playing together pre-Ophelias, and her joining the band came via a cold-call from Peppet when they were teenagers. Adams’ drumming talent landed him in more than a few bands across the city, including Peppet’s before they graduated high school. “I’m very grateful he said yes to that,” she says. “I didn’t realize we were friends for that long before the band started,” Adams adds. “The Ophelias kind of… made us friends,” Peppet replies, to which Adams calls it a classic “I know all of the people I know through music” situation.

On “Ribbon“, the Ophelias are full of joy. A song like “Black Ribbon” pairs Andrea Gutmann Fuentes’ chilling violin with a grieving, sluggish chord progression from Spencer Peppet—both of which build upwards into this chunky, synthy, full-band explosion of noise, while Peppet vocalizes through the chaos in the eye of the storm, examining the genesis of a new queer relationship. “Some kind of desire that I cannot categorize,” she sings. “You’re a Springsteen song, dark sky in overdrive into the warm night.” On “Soft and Tame,” write a heartbreaking homecoming lament. “Giving up love in the South of Ohio, I hate it here, in the in-between,” Peppet sings out. “I wanna feel safe, I wanna feel seen. The curve of the hills when the sun is gone, a knot in my throat, another fucking song.”

Fuentes’ violin rips through the noise of the track with a paradoxical, piercing delicacy that renders “Soft and Tame” into a brand new register of beauty. “Ribbon” flourishes like a full-length, setting its own in-betweens ablaze with emotionality arriving mercilessly from every angle. Few bands cater to my tastes so distinctly—Ohio representation, Springsteen mentioned, queer as a three-dollar bill—but the Ophelias are not like other bands. Hearing “Dust” live in a near-empty Columbus venue in April was one of my most cathartic nights of the year.

released April 12th, 2024

Spencer Peppet – guitar, vocals, piano, synth, songwriting
Andrea Gutmann Fuentes – violin
Mic Adams – drums, percussion, gang vocals
Jo Shaffer – bass, gang vocals
Calvin Lauber – additional guitar

John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory and Special Guests “Power To The People – Live at the One To One Concert, New York City, 1972” 12″ Yellow Vinyl, Lennon’s final full-length solo concert

The EP features four tracks from the 1972 Madison Square Garden benefit shows, including three previously unreleased performances

On August 30th, 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, along with the Plastic Ono Band, Elephant’s Memory, and special guests, headlined two historic One to One Benefit Concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City. These performances, held before a combined audience of 40,000 people, raised over $1.5 million to support schoolchildren with special needs.

These were John Lennon’s final and only full-length solo concerts after leaving The Beatles. Produced by Sean Ono Lennon and mixed and engineered from the original tapes by Paul Hicks and Sam Gannon, this extremely limited edition EP features four tracks from the afternoon and evening concerts, including three previously unreleased performances. Available exclusively for Record Store Day 2025, the EP is pressed on 180g yellow vinyl.

Rough Trade to release limited edition 7-inch singles boxsets to celebrate label’s formative years (1978-1993). Orders via the Rough Trade webstore include a free pin-badge set featuring original artwork.

Having consistently released music by innovative, visionary, and transformative artists, Rough Trade have been defining record collections since their first release in 1977 (RT001 saw the shop help French punks Metal Urbain put out single Paris Maquis), continuing to release cutting edge albums and tracks right up to, and including the present day, with their current roster boasting the likes of Amyl & The Sniffers, Pulp, Jockstrap, Anohni, Dean Blunt, Sleaford Mods and many more.

Now, to mark 45-plus years of the label, its co-MDs Jeannette Lee and Geoff Travis have indulged in a rare retrospective look, personally putting together two boxsets featuring some of their favourite singles released by Rough Trade during its formative years. Accompanied by new sleeve notes featuring the pair’s recollections, impressions and opinions, these limited-edition collections are no bog-standard trawl through the back catalogue but a personal look at the hits, gems, bangers, growers, underrated classics and more. Chronicling Rough Trade’s emergence from behind the counter of the West London shop of the same name in the late 1970s, the first boxset in the series fizzes with the daring, Do It Yourself attitude that underpinned punk and subsequent musical expressions that surrounded the label’s birth.

“Typically for Rough Trade there wasn’t a strategy,” says Jeannette of her and Geoff’s enduring partnership at the heart of Rough Trade Records. “We just jumped in and hit it off. So, we’ve stuck together!”

Contents:

Augustus Pablo – Pablo Meets Mr Bassie B-side Mr Bassie Special! RT002 1978

Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster B-side 78 Revolutions A Minute (78RPM) RT004 1978

Subway Sect – Ambition B-side Different Story RT007 1978

Swell Maps – Read About Seymour B-sides Ripped & Torn and Black Velvet RT010 1978

The Raincoats – Fairytale In The Supermarket B-sides In Love & Adventures Close To Home RT013 1979

Cabaret Voltaire – Nag Nag Nag B-side Is That Me (Finding Someone At The Door Again?) RT018 1979

The Pop Group – We Are All Prostitutes B-side Amnesty International Report On British Army Torture Of Irish Prisoners RT023 1979

Young Marble Giants – Final Day Second track on A side Radio Silents B-side Cakewalking RT043 1980

The third in the ‘psychiatric trilogy’ of albums by Luke Haines (The Auteurs, The Servants, Black Box Recorder) and Peter Buck (R.E.M). Recorded in Portland Oregon, USA foot-down-to-the- floor- throttle-out style. Expect to sail through churning psychedelic excursions that ask for clarity on questions like…

Have you ever been cold called by someone claiming to represent the Pink Floyd research group? Have you been stranded on the moon with Papa John Philips? (and then realised you were out of drugs). Can you count your nervous breakdowns on the paws of more than two dozen cats? Does it feel like all you ever do is answer questions? Yes? No?

Then take a trip down to the river…to blow your mind. This album is also available on vinyl and digital formats. Beat Poetry For Survivalists is the new collaboration between Peter Buck & Luke Haines. ‘Jack Parsons’ is the first single and track from the new album.

‘Going Down To The River…To Blow My Mind’ features Peter Buck – Electric guitars, 12 string guitars, acoustic guitars, Luke Haines – Lead vocals, Fuzz guitar, synth and recorder, Scott McCaughey – Bass, Moog Bass, Mellotron, Backing Vocals, Linda Pitmon – Drums, Percussion, Backing vocals. With Morgan Fisher on piano.

They will be playing live shows in the UK to support the album throughout August 2025.

“I know now that I can’t make good” was a startling first line back from Justin Vernon. Five years separated him from 2019’s i, i and the fatigue that settled within him during its touring cycle, and that meant opening Bon Iver’s book back up by shutting some self-deceptions down. This fall, Vernon unveiled “Sable”, a three-song EP written, produced and released under the Bon Iver name and a brilliant callback to the “For Emma, Forever Ago” era.

On “S P E Y S I D E,” he admits “nothing’s really happened like [he] thought it would.” Not in the interim between releases, but in general. He “can’t rest on no dynasty,” the future’s been incinerated from his “violent spree,” even his lyrics (or grievances, depending on how you interpret the word “book”) are a “waste of wood.” The track tells the tale of regret, guilt, and the shame of faded dreams. Yet, accompanied by minimalistic instrumentation and a gentle tenor, Vernon pleads for a shot at redemption:

“Maybe you can still make a man from me / Here on Speyside quay / With what’s left of me.” On “Things Behind Things Behind Things” and “Awards Season,” we get a more matured Justin Vernon, a writer content with the slow reward of regrowth after a period of endless endings. The EP is a celebration of a name growing from one voice to many, as Vernon worked with Jim-E Stack and Rob Moose to bring them to fruition. It’s some of the strongest work he’s ever made. 

The three songs that comprise Bon Iver’s new record “Sable”, emerged from a long-gestating breakdown. Justin Vernon finally found the time to unpack years of built-up darkness just as the lockdown began. While there are the usual collaborators on this record providing pedal steel (Greg Leisz), fiddle (Rob Moose), saxophone (Michael Lewis), and trumpet (Trever Hagen), “Sable”, is largely defined by Vernon’s voice and guitar. The dense layers of i,i are nowhere to be found, as Vernon bears the weight of these songs largely on his own. It’s a retreat and reset.

released October 18th, 2024

A new album from The Divine Comedy is on the way. ‘Rainy Sunday Afternoon’ is described by Neil Hannon as “a melancholy orchestral pop album”. To be released September, The Divine Comedy will release a new album called “Rainy Sunday Afternoon”.

It was recorded at Abbey Road in the autumn of 2024 and is the band’s first studio album since 2019’s “Office Politics”. Not that Neil Hannon hasn’t been busy, since then…There was the excellent 24CD box set “Venus, Cupid, Folly & Time” and Neil recently contributed the original songs to the film ‘Wonka’. 

Neil Hannon says: “My musical output is, for better or worse, a representation of my personality. A good chunk of that personality revels in the rumbumptious; celebrates the silly. And I made ample use of that for the Wonka songs”. He continues, “I have, though, like everyone, a darker, more melancholy side. And for one reason or another it has been much in evidence of late. I needed to use this album as an outlet for those feelings. To work through some stuff. Mortality; memories; relationships; political and social upheaval. Everyone should get to make an orchestral pop album once in awhile. It should be available on the NHS.” 

The 11-track album is available to pre-order now from the band’s official shop as a 2CD deluxe with bonus disc ‘Live in Paris & London’ – a collection of deep cuts and fan favourites from 2022’s celebratory career-spanning shows. 

“Rainy Sunday Afternoon” will be released on 19th September 2025.