The Fat Angel Sings

Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace has shared her first single with her The Mississippi Medicals band. “Back in 2021, I sat down in my office to do some songwriting,” she says. “Not knowing what specifically to write about that day, I challenged myself to write a song similar to whatever the current #1 hit in the world was at the time. I made the challenge to myself without knowing exactly what that song was so I had to look it up, and as it turned out at that moment, the current #1 song in the world was ‘Butter’ by BTS. Now, for those of you not familiar with the song ‘Butter’, it’s about how the singer is ‘smooth like butter’.’Hmmm…’ I thought to myself. ‘If they’re smooth like Butter, what am I?’ And the answer to that question is ‘All Fucked Out’ — not to be confused with ‘All Fucked Up’, mind you.

‘All Fucked Out’ as in zero fucks left to give. The song quickly became a staple in my live set and I’ve taken a couple different previous attempts at recording it, but it wasn’t until Me, Matt [Patton], Mikey [Erg] and Paris [Campbell Grace] got together this past December in Water Valley, Mississippi at Matt’s Studio, Dial Back Sound, that it all came together and the song was recorded the way it was meant to be heard.”

Toronto-born, London-based Tess Parks returns with her third solo album, “Pomegranate”. Released on Fuzz Club Records, Pomegranate is the most widescreen offering from Parks to date, featuring strings, flutes, and synthesizers. First single ‘Koalas’ is a lush slice of swaggering indie-psych that brings to mind The Brian Jonestown Massacre or Beth Orton. 

An emotionally charged effort from the psychedelic vocalist, ‘Koalas’ is the latest single to be released from Parks’ upcoming record “Pomegranate“, due out later this year. By now, the compelling nature of Parks’ vocals should come as no real surprise, but this new track still manages to build excitement for the upcoming release.

A five-year gap further on from his last solo album Humanworld in 2019, former The Only Ones singer Peter Perrett presents an expansive double album in the shape of The Cleansing. Featuring his sons Peter Jr. and Jamie in his backing band, on top of guest appearances from Johnny Marr, Bobby Gillespie and Fontaines D.C. guitarist Carlos O’Connell, it’s an accomplished testament to Perrett’s status as one of the finest songwriters of his generation.

“The Cleansing” doesn’t only match Peter Perrett’s best work but expands it: an ambitious double album comprising 20 songs, with his uniquely narcotic and alluring melodies, gorgeous South London drawl and ravishing rock dynamic now allied to a wider span of musical arrangements and lyrical concerns. 

Peter Perrett – “I Wanna Go With Dignity”, from the upcoming album ‘The Cleansing’, out 1st November 2024 on Domino Record Co.

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