The Fat Angel Sings

Suede’s album “Coming Up” laughed in the faces of everyone who believed that they would be lost following the exit of guitar hero Bernard Butler

“Is it all over for ‘The Best New Band In Britain’?” This was the question that greeted everyone who picked up the July 30th, 1994 issue of UK music magazine Melody Maker. The band in question was Suede, hailed as The Best New Band In Britain on the cover of the same publication’s April 1992 issue, two weeks ahead of the release of their debut single “The Drowners”.

It’s fair to say that journalist Steve Sutherland was significantly more impressed by the London quartet – fronted by flamboyant vocalist Brett Anderson and gifted guitarist Bernard Butler “This is the premier prima donna band we’ve been praying for,” he gushed. “The sons of Bowie’s camp little brothers, Suede are already the future all the rest will be forced to reckon with. Their demo tape is better than any album likely to be released this year.”

Their self-titled debut album, released on March 29th, 1993, became the fastest-selling debut album in the UK in almost a decade, debuted at number one on the UK albums chart, and won the 1993 Mercury Music Prize. As if that were not enough, the album would, in time, be heralded as the foundation stone for a whole new scene, BritPop.

Suede’s classic 1996 album, “Coming Up”, is being reissued for its 30th anniversary across a number of formats including a 5CD set, an exclusive blu-ray audio with Dolby Atmos Mix and an exclusive vinyl featuring Steven Wilson’s new 2026 stereo mix.

The band’s first album recorded without Bernard Butler, “Coming Up” featured a new look Suede line up as Brett Anderson (singing), Mat Osman (bass) and Simon Gilbert (drums) were joined by Neil Codling (keyboards/guitar) and Richard Oakes (guitar).

The album was a critical and commercial success. It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and reached number one in the UK album charts and all five singles – ‘Trash’, ‘Beautiful Ones’, ‘Saturday Night’, ‘Lazy’ and ‘Filmstar’ all reached the top 10 in the singles chart in the UK.

Expectations then were sky high for the Londoners’ second album, “Dog Man Star“. But on May 25th 1994, three months into the recording of the album at Master Rock studios, Bernard Butler took a two day break to get married, without inviting any of his bandmates, which didn’t bode well. Butler returned to the Kilburn recording facility 48 hours later, packed up his guitars, and drove away, exiting the group without a word of farewell to his bandmates.

Somewhat ironically, the band’s final release with Butler in the band, was a non-album single titled “Stay Together”.

The “Coming Up” 5CD deluxe set is widely available and features the original mix on CD 1, Steven Wilson’s new mix on CD 2, non-album tracks on CDs 3 and 4 and “Coming Up at the BBC” (previously a vinyl-only RSD release) on CD 5. Exclusive to this 5CD set is new sleeve notes by music journalist Miranda Sawyer. This comes in seven-inch packaging.

Admiral Fallow are thrilled to announce the forthcoming release of their new album First Of The Birds on Chemikal Underground. The second single to be taken from the album, “The Shortest Night” ,following on from first single “Avalanche“, is out now and available on all digital platforms.

The early sketches of First Of The Birds – their fifth full-length record, a rich and brooding affair – appeared in quiet mornings and spaces, before the songs burst into life with long-time collaborator and producer Paul Savage in Chem19 Studios.

Approaching their twentieth year as a band, and having recently celebrated the 15th anniversary of their much-loved debut album, Admiral Fallow have never made a record in the way they have here, and the resulting work finds a way of both defining and redefining the scope of the group in 2025 and beyond.

On previous records, the band worked and re-worked demos in rehearsals before entering the studio, but here (by both design and circumstance), they had spent less time in one room together as a five-piece and retained an open-ended sense of where the songs would lead and the space they might take up. The rehearsals that did happen prior to recording took place in Louis Abbott’s attic room, where they practised hushed and unplugged. While a number of the songs would eventually find noisier paths of their own, the heart of the album remains in the understated spaces where it began – giving the songs an earthy and organic sense of wonder which feels wholly compelling.

“It comes from us having more confidence to just play together as a group,” Sarah Hayes says of the process behind the new album. “There’s a shorthand to how we work together, and how we experiment now, that has come from being together for so long. I don’t think we could have worked in this way at any other point in the past eighteen years.”

Led by collective spirit and understanding, framing a time of significant change and upheaval, of the myriad ways those things shift the world around us, First Of The Birds” feels something like a revelation.

Admiral Fallow continue to evolve and transform, and in embracing such things, of folding their experiences into the fabric of the band, they’ve produced a record that is at once entirely personal while also feeling reassuringly universal. It thrives within those parameters; a burst of warm light on a new morning.

released October 31st, 2025

DIY indie noise rock, channeling influences from Unwound to Pavement while blending the spirit of DC’s Revolution Summer, 90s post-hardcore, post-punk and melodic indie sensibilities.

Achers themselves came together fast. In 2022, Pat and Sabrina signed up for London’s First Timers Festival before they had songs, a full band, or much of a plan. Pat hadn’t even sung lead before. They found Pavel online, pulled it together in weeks, and played their first show with low expectations. “People were kind and no eggs were thrown,” Pat recalls. That practicality still defines them.

released February 5th, 2026

Achers are:

Sabrina Amade
Pat Smiley
Pavel Borisov
Vicki Butler

U2’s 15th studio LP, “Carnaval De Luz”, is their first collection of original music since 2017’s “Songs of Experience“. In the meantime, they issued 2023’s “Songs of Surrender”, an album reimagining classic songs, then surprise-released a pair of 2026 EPs – “Days of Ash” and “Easter Lily”.

“Roll up, roll up, roll up!” Bono declared in a press release announcing “Carnaval De Luz”. “Bring your purple socks, your broken hearts, your rose-tinted naivety… oh be amazed in the hall of mirrors. There will be loud guitars, deep bass, some ecstatic rhythms and, yes, some silver tears will make an appearance! Cause in the near distance just outside our carnival of light there are all kinds of creatures… the same imagination that brings us our creativity can also bring us monsters. So we make the drums louder. We build a bigger fire. We make our stories wilder and funnier. We make the melodies sweeter and the songs, they better shine, because if the world is in darkness we better not be.”

U2 are too release the propulsive new song “Silencio,” the lead single from their upcoming 15th studio album, “Carnaval De Luz”.

Meanwhile, the Edge described the new album as a “messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs,” adding that it “features the first-ever use of flat-wound strings on a U2 recording. Just saying.”

Across an energetic backbeat, courtesy of drummer Larry Mullen Jr., frontman Bono invokes religious imagery as he struggles with spirituality in the modern world. “Uneasy feeling, I just heard a gunshot / There are things you can get used to or not,“ the frontman proclaims, his voice tinged with both energy and anxiety. Meanwhile, the Edge’s presence if felt throughout the track, with his distinctive guitar tones helping bring “Silencio” to soaring heights.

“Carnaval De Luz” will mark U2’s first collection of new original music since 2017’s “Songs of Experience”. While the nine year stretch seems long, the Irish rockers have remained very busy. In 2023 they released “Songs of Surrender”, an album reimagining many of their classic tunes. That same year, they opened the Sphere in Las Vegas with a residency that ran into 2024. More recently, U2 surprise-released a pair of EPs earlier this year: “Days of Ash”, released to coincide with Ash Wednesday, and “Easter Lily”, which arrived on Easter.

The band collaborated with a variety of artists on the LP, including Brian Eno, Martin Garrix, Daniel Lanois and Ryan Tedder. Still, the biggest surprise is an appearance from Dolly Parton. The country icon duets on the album’s closing track, “Torn,” in what is said to be her “last recorded vocal performance.”

“This album we’ve made, we’ve caught it again, and it’s strong stuff,” Bono said in a recent podcast Drummer Seeks Musicians: The Making of U2 on Wednesday. “As people who’ve heard [the band’s 2026 EPs] “Days of Ash” and “Easter Lily” will hear, this is really the prequel, to both of them.”

“Carnaval De Luz” will be released on November. 13th.

Spanish Love Songs return with a reflective collection created mid-process while writing their next full-length.

Since forming in 2013, the band has grown from DIY roots into one of modern punk’s most vital voices with albums like “Schmaltz”, Brave Faces Everyone, and “No Joy”.

Since 2013, Spanish Love Songs have built a fiercely loyal community one cramped club show at a time. This intimate, powerful connection with their audience is proof that even in an era defined by isolation, people are still yearning for others to stand beside them in the darkness. Dylan Slocum’s lyrics chronicle political violence, climate anxiety, late-stage capitalism and the quiet ways these existential crises seep into everyday life – and just as critically, how moments of love, companionship and shared resilience become the antidote to an increasingly uncertain future. follows the release of instant classics Schmaltz(2018), .

Vocalist, Dylan Slocum, calls these songs “imperfect snapshots,” built in real time with friends and collaborators — including Kevin Devine, Illuminati Hotties, Dan Campbell, and Tigers Jaw.

This release pairs the new EP with their previous “No Joy” – Sessions and Doom and Gloom Sessions, offering us a comprehensive collection.

Sebadoh was formed in 1986 in Northampton, Massachusetts, by Eric Gaffney and Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., The Folk Implosion), with multi-instrumentalist Jason Loewenstein completing the line-up in 1989, and Bob Fay taking Gaffney’s spot in 1994. By 1994, the band had released five albums and more or less changed the pockmarked face of indie rock. Their albums were mostly home recordings, decried for their lack of sharp production, but embraced by fans of Barlow’s intimate songwriting style, which owed as much to Joni Mitchell as Bob Mould. In 1996 “Harmacy”, their breakout sixth album, arrived, finding Sebadoh as conflicted as ever: torn between screaming punk and gentle crooning, replete with highly personal songs guaranteed to bring down even the most super-charged midnight ravers.

Released in the wake of The Folk Implosion’s Top 40 hit “Natural One,” “Harmacy” became Sebadoh’s first charting album in the U.S., and yielded the hit “Ocean.” Interview said, “Harmacy” is nothing short of a masterpiece.” The New Yorker called it a collection of “perfectly crafted, honest (read: ambiguous and emotionally twisted), impassioned songs about love and hate.” Harmacy” was hailed as one of the best albums of 1996 by Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and NME.

releases November 20th, 2026 via Sub Pop Records

Poet laureate of the neo mod vanguard Kai Slater and the Sharp Pins returns with a 6 track mini LP.

“An Elephant Eye” A Frozen Girl; and an Umbrella Man walk into an Icebox. All have been shoveled out of a Jungle-den and are covered in Mud Fleas. The Umbrella Man has been Dolt-ing around on the Machinery for Years. . .knowing it Hasn’t-Really-Rained since he threw his last Bacchanal. He thinks he owns birds; he just listens to them really. The Frozen Girl keeps away from him but moves Incredibly slow given the Circumstances. . .she’s been trying to tie her shoes for 700 years.

The Buoyant Eye-ball, defying all Man Physics, Miraculously Phases himself All the way to the outside of the Icebox; Barreling through the Crisp air. He then comes to a Grinding halt before a Ginormous Totem pole of Speckled flesh, Grey and exceptionally thick, Wrinkling like telephone Wire. He quickly realizes that’s where the rest of his Body went. The only thing that’s missing is his Trunk. But he’s learned to communicate Decently Well without it. . .Using Semiotic chains of Eyelid-signifiers. . .An Eyeball shaped hole has been Burnt into the Icebox but the Frozen Girl won’t know for another 53 years and by then Big-Pants won’t even be in. The Umbrella Man doesn’t particularly so much as Notice and think its smells a lot like Burnt toast. He says he’s off to the Cemetery.

What do Them Three have in common anyway? Well they all Dig Pins; they also all Exist because of Him. And, Starting today, are Perpetually Entrapped in 10 millimeters divisions of Black resin upon a Circular Plain. I want to hear them cry and shout, You might say, because we are all Up-standers. But all crying and shouting Ourselves into the Icebox. . .Your Ears will Eat anything.

If the last time you engaged with Matt Berninger’s songwriting was through the most recent National albums, “Get Sunk’s” backstory and overarching mood will sound familiar. In 2020, the frontman struggled with a long period of writer’s block and depression that informed 2023’s “First Two Pages of Frankenstein” and its surprise companion, “Laugh Track.” But while Berninger’s second solo album, the follow-up to his gorgeously refined 2020 debut “Serpentine Prison”, emerged from a similar headspace, the sinking here happens deeper in his subconscious, words slipping out of the blurry space of memory, sleepiness, or a complete breakdown. Working with producer Sean O’Brien and a cast of musicians including Booker T Jones, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), and Julia Laws (Ronboy), he keeps himself right on the edge.

“In 2023, after 10 years of living in Los Angeles, Matt Berninger (along with his wife and teenage daughter) moved to Connecticut. This change of scene suited him; he began to spend his days outside, painting, reading, smoking weed and listening to music, much of it his own. He wrote lyrics all over old baseballs, and arranged dust-covered items in his barn into strange and surreal works of art. It felt good to be creating and to understand why he loves what he does.

Throughout his work with The National, Berninger is known for his contemplative narratives in which characters peer over the cliff’s edge. He has always been forthcoming about his own mental and emotional pitfalls. “Our hearts are like old wells filled with pennies and worms,” he explains. “I can’t resist going down to the bottom of mine to see what else is there. But sometimes you can get yourself stuck.” In 2020 he went through “a long period of writer’s block and self-disgust. I just got sick of of asking myself ‘Why am I like this?’ ” For him, identity is amorphous and ever-evolving, and stretches beyond individuality. This is the driving force of his second solo album “Get Sunk”.

Under water, everything moves in slow motion and Berninger saw his creative voice slipping away. But sometimes we have to drown to remember how to breathe. “Get Sunk” is the inhale, bringing blurry memories to the surface.”

Matt Berninger new solo album, “Get Sunk”. Working with producer Sean O’Brien, the National frontman enlisted the help of of friends and musicians including Booker T Jones, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Julia Laws (Ronboy), Kyle Resnick (The National), Garret Lang, Sterling Laws, Mike Brewer (Nancy), Walter Martin (Walkmen), Paul Maroon (Walkmen) and Harrison Whitford. The results are more dynamic and less carefully gracious than his solo debut “Serpentine Prison“, which makes it a sea worth diving into, even if you know, more or less, exactly what you’re gonna get. You can stare at one thing forever – it’s nothing till you feel it rush through your bones