The Fat Angel Sings

New York City’s GIFT release ‘Illuminator’, a record imbued with a dynamic fusion of genres and widescreen pop production techniques. Vocalist/guitarist TJ Freda says “It’s our second album, ‘Illuminator,’ is out today. It’s surreal to think that just a year ago, we were still reworking song structures and writing lyrics for almost every track on ‘Illuminator.’ Today, it’s no longer just ours—it’s yours. Time is such a complex concept. How do you truly live in the moment while also anticipating what’s ahead?”

“Illuminator” is the long-awaited payoff of GIFT’s ever-growing musical and human chemistry. And while nods are apparent to early Captured Tracks sound, GIFT are shepherding those elements into wondrous new vessels for the present moment – sleek, often danceable and frequently mesmerizing.

“A year passes in the blink of an eye—people drift in and out of your life, you fall in and out of love, and the days, months, and years slip away faster than you can grasp. It’s like watching your life unfold from a distance, surrendering to the relentless pace at which it all flashes by. ‘Illuminator’ is about light—physical light, the speed of light, the way it radiates.

The word itself means something or someone that illuminates, that concentrates or reflects light. It’s a state of being. We aimed to create something raw and honest. This album is a true reflection of who we are, in this very moment.”

“All Pleasure” takes the post-punk of Thus Love‘s debut album through increasingly surprising detours, including glam rock and punk, the kind that provide the deeper stimulation difficult to find in the digital age. The album was recorded in a converted barn, where a visceral live aesthetic evoked the whirlwind success they had recently experienced.

The Brattleboro, Vermont breakthrough outfit Thus Love releases a new album ‘All Pleasure’ out November 1st and share their new single ‘Birthday Song’ out now! The new single finds the band roaring back to life with a grungy glam salvo that boldly celebrates their new era.

Vocalist/guitarist Echo Mars shares the following: “‘Birthday Song’ is a simple song about friendship and how we sometimes don’t give those kinds of platonic relationships the respect and care they need to thrive.” “When it came time to select the first single, ‘Birthday Song’ felt like the perfect way to introduce the new version of Thus Love and our new friends, Ally and Shane.”

‘Birthday Song’ comes with a video directed by Augie Voss & Benni Shumlin, shot on location in Southern Vermont.

off their sophomore album “All Pleasure“, out November 1st on Captured Tracks.

Originally performed live for a special film screening in London’s Barbican back in 2015, “Music For William Eggleston’s Stranded In Canton” was composed by Spiritualized leader J Spaceman and his sometime bandmate and guitarist John Coxon. A drugged-up, narcotic cosmic blues marvel that takes its time to unfurl and reach its conclusions, their score now receives a physical release almost a decade later.

“Stranded in Canton” is a black-and-white film portrait of Memphis in 1974, shot in bars and on street corners, showing Eggleston’s friends carousing, playing music and firing pistols into the night sky. It is raw, greasy, Quaalude-y and hot. Jagged and intimate, the film is a handheld window into a different world; “Hogarth on Beale Street” as writer Richard Williams describes it in the album’s liner notes.

Razorlight embrace the nervy rock of their early work on 2024’s “Planet Nowhere”. Twenty years after their debut “Up All Night”, Razorlight Their new album is the group’s fifth and first to feature the classic Razorlight line up in over a decade. Along with lead singer Johnny Borrell, returning are guitarist Björn Ågren, bassist Carl Dalemo, and drummer Andy Burrows, all of whom left the band around 2009/2010 and who returned around 2019.

Produced by founding Killing Joke bassist Martin Glover, aka Youth, “Planet Nowhere” finds Razorlight digging into the kind of melodic post-punk that made albums like 2006’s “Razorlight” and 2008’s “Slipway Fires” unexpected delights. Here, cuts like “Zombie Love,” “U Can Call Me,” and “Scared of Nothing” have a refreshingly loose, off-the-cuff vibe, as if the band jammed each song into shape in a basement.

Elsewhere, tracks like “F.O.B.F.” and “Cyclops” nicely illuminate the group’s long-standing influences, evoking a blend of Mott the Hoople’s ’70s, pub-friendly glitter rock and the more contemporary, dance-punk style of the Strokes. With “Planet Nowhere”, Razorlight have made an album of catchy, no-nonsense anthems that capture the fizzy, garage-rock swagger of their best work.

Once you’ve had a brush with death, it’s hard not to throw caution to the wind and do what you want rather than what’s expected. In 2022, Chuck Prophet was diagnosed with lymphoma, and for a few weeks it was an open question if his doctors would be able to treat his condition and restore him to health. Good luck was on his side, and he recovered sufficiently to return to making music.

While he was pondering his mortality, Prophet indulged his passion for classic cumbia recordings, revelling in the pleasures of the slinky Latin rhythms. He decided to celebrate his new lease on life by making an album with Qiensave?, a cumbia band from Salinas, California, that he’d been jamming with, and 2024’s “Wake the Dead” certainly puts his work in a new light, though it isn’t as radical an experiment as one might imagine.

The smart, unpretentiously literate storytelling of Prophet’s lyrics mesh well with Qiensave?’s grooves, and the band puts their own stamp on the music without forcing the tunes into a place they don’t want to go. The Latin flavors are an integral part of this music, and the musicians (¿Qiensave? were joined by members of Prophet’s road band the Mission Express for these sessions) can shape-shift into Sir Douglas Quintet-style Tex-Mex and norteño-infused shuffles with easy grace, with a dash of Farfisa-fuelled garage rock for seasoning.

Prophet also had the good sense to not try to bend his lyrical voice too far to suit the songs. His knack for social commentary in tracks like “In the Shadows (For Elon)” and “Sally Was a Cop” (which he co-wrote with Alejandro Escovedo) works very well in this context, while the open-road tale of “Sugar into Water” and the bittersweet romance of “Give the Boy a Kiss” are less weighty but every bit as effective. And the closing track, “It’s a Good Day to Be Alive,” is a thoughtful testimony to the small things that make life worthwhile; it’s not sugary and is all the more effective for it. It’s the sort of thing that might not occur to a songwriter unless he had to seriously consider the prospect of not facing another morning, and along with the Latin flavors, that’s what makes “Wake the Dead” worth hearing — it’s fine work from a great songwriter who is following his passions while he can, and that makes it special.

Chelsea Wolfe is the latest artist to perform a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR, offering a stripped-down, four-song set showcasing tunes mostly from her latest album, “She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She”.

The singer is known for combining gothic rock, doom metal, and folk into a sound that is uniquely her own. Accompanied by long time collaborator Ben Chisholm on piano, Wolfe played acoustic guitar on two of the songs (“Whispers in the Echo Chamber” and “Flatlands”), while setting it down for the other two tunes (“Dusk” “Place in the Sun”). Her voice sounded ethereal throughout the 15-minute concert.

Of the four songs, only the set-closer “Flatlands” was not from “She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She”. Wolfe reached back to 2012’s acoustic album “Unknown Rooms” for that performance.

Wolfe added a few personal touches to her surroundings: “Not long after her arrival, Chelsea Wolfe carefully arranged a handful of objects on the Desk in front of her — a dagger, a chalice, a pentacle and flower — all inspired by the Magician tarot card, which symbolizes new beginnings.”

The Tiny Desk Concert is a fitting precursor to Wolfe’s recently announced “Unbound” EP, which offers stripped-down versions of songs from “She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She”. The five-song effort, which arrives November 15th, contains all three of album’s tunes that she performed for NPR, as well as “The Liminal” and “Cellar Door.”

Wolfe recently launched a UK/European tour, which runs through a November

The Dirty Knobs, the band fronted by founding Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, have released their third album ‘Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits’ . The group treads similar sonic ground as Petty & the Heartbreakers, with influences including 1960s British rock, The Byrds, heavy blues and Southern boogie.

That being said, Campbell says that he made a concerted effort to create songs that didn’t mimic the music of his late friend and band mate. “[Tom and I] grew up in the same area, have the same inflections,” Mike notes. “And I noticed that, so I tried, and I think successfully, to filter a lot of that out and try to find my own voice. Of course, some of it comes out ’cause it’s in my DNA.”

Regarding how The Dirty Knobs differ from The Heartbreakers, Campbell says, “It’s a four-piece band. There’s no keyboards, just two guitars, bass and drums, and we turn the guitars up a little bit to fill out he sound…So it’s a little more over-amped maybe.”

Mike Campbell made his bones as the lead guitarist for one of the great working bands in rock & roll, so it should come as no surprise that the Dirty Knobs — the group that’s become his main gig since the 2017 death of Tom Petty and the subsequent disbandment of the Heartbreakers the band are hitting a groove three albums into their career. “Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits” arrives two years after “External Combustion“, which appeared two years after the group’s 2020 debut, “Wreckless Abandon”. During those four years, the Dirty Knobs underwent some visible changes — Campbell’s name went on the marquee for “External Combustion” original guitarist Jason Sinay was replaced by Chris Holt, who makes his debut with the band here, as does former Heartbreaker drummer Steve Ferrone — which isn’t turbulence so much as what a working band does: they persevere.

On “Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits”, the Dirty Knobs sound rougher and richer than they did before, expanding upon the roots they laid down on their first two records. All of Campbell’s signatures remain in place, not just from the Dirty Knobs but from the Heartbreakers, too: the group graft psychedelia upon the heavy blues crunch that’s their specialty. The slight studio trickery and willingness to float away on the Byrdsian chime of “Innocent Man” make “Vagabonds” a lighter, livelier affair than its predecessors, yet the Dirty Knobs still drive headfirst into down-and-dirty rock & roll: “So Alive” barrels forth on a heavy blues buzz, “Shake These Blues” stomps like a greasy “Jean Genie,” while Chris Stapleton and Benmont Tench help “Don’t Wait Up” boogie with abandon.

Campbell does drift into serious territory, such as on the bruised ballad “Hell or High Water,” but the fact that “Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits” ends with the riotous drinking song “My Old Friends” is telling: ultimately, the Dirty Knobs are about having a good time, all the time, a dynamic that this record achieves.

New album ‘Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits’ available now

Jesse Malin has long been one of New York City’s best kept secrets. A rock troubadour from Queens, he forged a sound rooted in punk, and rounded out with the melodic grace of a Tom Waits song about carnival rides. He began making noise in the 1990s with his band D Generation. But it was Ryan Adams who helped Malin develop the sound he has been known for since 2003’s brilliant “The Fine Art of Self Destruction“. There he found his voice, and he wrote songs that moved from fiery rockers to slow burns, and dealt with topics like lost love, lost faith, and the power of hope.

It’s his music that fans have now long leaned on during the most difficult of times, turning to the inherent optimism that can be located even in the darkest of tunes.

Now he has been forced to do the same. Last year he suffered a paralyzing spinal stroke that left him unable to walk. Since then he had been in Buenos Aires, undergoing experimental treatments that now have him able to move with the assistance of a walker.

Argentina is Jesse Malin’s latest single, out now on Wicked Cool Records.