The Fat Angel Sings

“If you were here i’d be home by now” is the debut album by Vancouver shoegaze band Smush. The record opens softly with a gently picked indie rock melody accompanied by an equally soft and inviting voice. This lasts for about a minute before a shriek of feedback and thrashing guitars decimate the short lived peace. In an instant the soundscape Smush invokes becomes fully realized. I love the way the vocals don’t increase in intensity as the instrumentation absolutely does. It’s almost like being guided forward by a soft hand into a hazy netherworld.

The angelic voice becomes a lifeline as we are plunged beneath wave after wave of fuzz. The lyrics of the opening track “if we didn’t cry” are some of the most heart-breaking of the album and set the tone early. ‘As tears fill up my eyes / it would be sadder / if we didn’t cry / each time we say goodbye.’ if you were here carries as heavy an emotional weight as it does musically.

A wonderful album that explores the legacy of both Slowdive and Sonic Youth, dipping into several other genres, serving a pleasant surprise or two while managing to remain coherent from the first track to the last. Catchy melodies are seamlessly intertwined with walls of sound while the often delicate vocals go hand in hand with the crackle and fuzz of the instruments exploring the more noise oriented realms of alternative rock. Genuine emotion with a hint of unpretentious nostalgia. 

Immaculately produced but still full of vibe, this is a total new fave. With levels of guitar sludge, plus the more abstract sample based tracks give this a whole other dimension.

released June 15th, 2024

bass/vox: Emily Borrowman
guitar: Atley King
drums: Jay Christie

Following 2022’s Rough Dimension LP, Noel Skum – aka Andrew Clinco of Drab Majesty – made the radical leap of expanding his psychedelic post-punk vehicle VR Sex into a fully collaborative five-piece band. To christen the new group’s camaraderie, they booked a block of studio time in Glassell Park, swapped skeletal iPhone demos, and “did that classic thing of a band making the exact record they want without any interference.” Working 12-hour days, they banged out the basics in a week, then tracked the rest over a month, fine-tuning it with flourishes, FX, and amplifier experiments. Hard Copy is the result – 10 tracks of sneering psychedelic punk streaked with Chrome-damaged freak-outs and snotty power pop harmonies chronicling sex doll love affairs and glue-sniffing fatales.

Mixed by guitarist Mike Kriebel – an accomplished engineer with dozens of credits across the punk, goth, and garage underground – the album is dense, rich, and spatial, spurred by Clinco’s muse of “reckless abandon.” Shadows of Chrome, Stickmen With Rayguns, Japanese psych, and loud- quiet-loud grunge anthems flicker here and there, but ultimately VR Sex’s mode is more sardonic and saturated, oscillating between ripped leather riffing and space echo meltdowns. Banning plug-ins was a mission statement, with most instruments tracked direct into the board, then guitars added via a daisy chain of amplifiers, panned and mixed and matched for maximum intoxication: “My goal is always to load up every take with as much sound as possible in one pass.”

Lyrically, the record revisits the project’s perennial fascinations: twisted lust, cheap thrills, dirty money, doomed delinquents, and ruined romance amid the creeps and cracked dreamers of gritty city voids. The title refers to the uncanny valley between “facsimile and the real thing, and the illusion that one is better than the other – when both come with their own menu of delights and demonic pleasures.” Hard Copy” embraces extremes and outliers, delusion and perversion, the conflicted dimensional depths lurking in every exploded heart: “I can be ugly / I can be strong / I can be proper / I can be wrong / I can be lovely / or I can be gone / the thing that will haunt you is still hanging on.”

Guided by San Francisco musician Andy Pastalaniec, Chime School pays homage to the formative jangle of The Byrds by way of early Primal Scream and The Springfelds; the production and pop sensibility of Biff Bang Pow! and The Razorcuts; and the spirit of great singles labels like Creation, Postcard and Sarah – Although it would have ft with any of those labels, Chime School found a natural home with Bay Area indie stalwart Slumberland Records, releasing a self-titled debut in 2021, and a follow-up 7″ single in 2023, to broad acclaim.

The anticipated follow-up LP “The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel” is as stellar as we could have hoped for – deeper, richer and evolved in every way. While still joyfully packed with janglepop gems, “Paisley Hotel” takes a turn toward the winsome melancholy of groups like East Village, The Go-Betweens, and The Loft, and represents a leap forward in production, composition and arrangement. “The first record was a bit manic. I was trying to stuff so many years of influences into thirty brisk minutes. With “Paisley Hotel” I chose a more condensed palette, and I feel I’m getting closer to the sonic vision I had from the beginning.”

Taken from the album “The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel,” out August 23, 2024 on Slumberland Records.

Few classic rock titans have figured out how to reinvent their old songs as effectively as Robert Plant. Together with Alison Krauss, the former Led Zeppelin frontman offers another take on the Memphis Minnie blues tune, reimagining it as an exotic, elemental dirge. Plant’s husky vocals lend an air of desperation to the performance, while Krauss’ evocative violin work nods briefly to Zeppelin’s “Friends” before propelling the song to a climactic rootsy stomp.

A singer-songwriter who wrote for the Judee Sill in her early 1970s heyday was compared to Asylum label contemporaries like Joni Mitchell, Sill was the first artist signed to David Geffen’s label Asylum Records. She released her first album, “Judee Sill“, in 1971, followed by “Heart Food” in 1973. Both albums were critically acclaimed, but were not commercially successful though her music had stronger spiritual overtones. This nearly forgotten performance reveals a true talent that deserved so much more during her short lifetime. Judee Sill grew up in a very troubled home and came through it with some truly great music to tell so many stories that many of the more sentient listeners will appreciate.

The Songs; Jesus Was A Crossmaker, Enchanted Sky Machines, The Kiss, The Phoenix, Lady-O, The Lamb Ran Away With The Crown, Down Where The Valleys Are Low

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney’s shift as the biggest band in the world is a memory, and those kinds of numbers will not happen again (it’s telling that the arena dates in support of “Ohio Players” were downsized to us-yet-unscheduled ‘intimate’ venues). But with a dip in commercial fortunes often comes artistic freedom, and this twelfth album fizzes with the joy of its creation, which saw the duo travel the world, indulging in what Carney called “fun shit” and roping in wish-list collaborators such as Beck and Noel Gallagher.

The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney long ago dropped the pretense of operating as a duo, and “Beautiful People (Stay High)” sounds like a big-budget alt-rock anthem befitting its seven credited co-writers, most notably Beck. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: The “na na na” backing vocals and auxiliary brass and keyboard contributions elevate the song’s funky blues-rock strut. It may not be a literal arena-sized banger, but it’s the work of a band that proudly busted out of the garage a long time ago.

Inspired by their sideline in riotous DJ parties, the masterstroke was getting rid of any song they deemed “too mid-tempo or sad”, and the resulting album is a floor-filling blast, from the hairy funk of “This Is Nowhere” to the heart-racing soul of “Beautiful People (Stay High)”. Screw the sales, let’s dance. 

Former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell’s third album with his band the Dirty Knobs is more of the same rootsy rock ‘n’ roll he’s been digging since the mid-’70s. “Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits” doesn’t rewrite any rules; often it pays tribute to its heroes – from the Byrds to ’60s electric blues to, yes, Petty – without getting too complicated. In their simplicity, Campbell and the Knobs achieve nirvana.

After decades of serving as Tom Petty’s right-hand man, former Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell has spent his past three solo albums finding his own voice as a singer and bandleader. He sounds confident in his new role on “Dare to Dream,” a languid, quasi-psychedelic rocker full of droning guitar licks and Campbell’s nasally sneer, which sounds more than a little bit like his late partner’s. A guest vocal from Graham Nash further solidifies the song’s ’60s pop-rock bonafides.

New album ‘Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits’ available now

A predictably fiery epitaph for the incendiary Detroit proto-punk quintet, this significantly belated Bob Ezrin-produced third studio set perfectly captures the revolutionary spirit of the original 5.

Tragically, both guitarist/prime mover Wayne Kramer and drummer Dennis Thompson ultimately predeceased “Heavy Lifting’s” release, but the album (largely co-written by Kramer and vocalist Brad Brooks) is positively livid with vitality, as big-hitter guests (Slash, Tom Morello, Vernon Reid) bring contemporary metal heft. And the jams? Kicked out.

MC5 posthumously released “Heavy Lifting” a whopping 53 years after their sophomore album, 1971’s “High Time”. That massive gap explains why Wayne Kramer’s latest star-studded endeavor often bears little resemblance to the band’s glory days. Nevertheless, the late bandleader sounds invigorated across the project, especially the Tom Morello-assisted title track, a raucous slab of metallic funk that evokes the sound and fury of both collaborators’ heydays. A fitting farewell to one of rock’s undisputed heavyweights.

‘Heavy Lifting’ is the new studio album by Detroit’s punk rock pioneers, MC5. Led by MC5 founding member Wayne Kramer and produced by the iconic Bob Ezrin, ‘Heavy Lifting’ signifies a momentous occasion – the release of new MC5 music, a staggering 53 years since their last album in 1971. ‘Heavy Lifting’ features an all-star lineup of guest musicians including Slash, Tom Morello, William DuVall (Alice in Chains), Vernon Reid (Living Colour), Tim McIlrath (Rise Against), and many more. Bonus CD & LP: Disc 2 / LP 2 contains previously unreleased live recordings from the MC50 tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of ‘Kick Out The Jams’.

Little Feat’s swampy rendition of Muddy Waters’ blues staple is a combination of the familiar and the novel. The band extends its decades-long history of collaborations with Bonnie Raitt, who duets evocatively with classic-era percussionist Sam Clayton in his first-ever vocal turn. You’d never know it from his confident, gravelly, talk-sung performance — which, when combined with Scott Sharrard’s sizzling slide guitar, makes for a modern blues masterclass.

The veteran band’s first album in a dozen years is a record of blues covers made at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis. As such, “Sam’s Place” takes comfort in the past, with Bonnie Raitt assisting and the songbooks of Willie Dixon, Little Walter and Muddy Waters tapped for maximum impact. Little Feat draws more inspiration from classic blues than their self-made musical stew, but the rewards here are plentiful.

Little Feat have composed an album that’s their love letter to the blues entitled, ‘Sam’s Place.’ “Long Distance Call” plus many other blues classics are on this album.

“Long Distance Call” was written by blues legend, Muddy Waters. It has Sam Clayton and Bonnie Raitt on vocals, Scott Sharrard on Dobro, Fred Tackett on acoustic guitar, Tony Leone on drums, and Michael “The Bull” LoBue on harmonica. The album also features Bill Payne on piano and Kenny Gradney on bass.

The ‘Sam’s Place’ album has Sam on lead vocals for the entire record. The album was recorded in Memphis, TN at Sam Phillip’s Studio. It’s got classic blues songs by legends such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, plus a new original song called “Milkman” that was written by Sam, Fred and Scott.

“I’ve always loved Little Feat and this new incarnation of the band is bringing some serious heat, cred and new blood to their enduring legacy. Every Feat fan loves us some Sam. I’m so glad he’s now gotten a chance to step out front and center and put his spin on these wonderful blues songs. I loved singing “Long Distance Call” with him, always one of my favourites, and Scott slayed on slide. Know you’ll enjoy hanging out with us at Sam’s Place!” — Bonnie Raitt