The Fat Angel Sings

When Bob Dylan made his memorable return to the stage in 1974. Joining him were his friends and previous touring partners, The Band—Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel—who had backed Dylan on the just-released album, “Planet Waves”. Though the arena tour lasted less than two months, from January 3rd through February 14th, it spanned 40 concerts in 21 cities, with many dates offering an afternoon show followed by an evening performance. The outing was documented later that year with a 2-LP set, “Before the Flood”. So Announced today for a September release: Bob Dylan “The 1974 Live Recordings”. 27 CDs worth of shows from his 1974 tour with The Band.

“The 1974 Live Recordings“, This New 431-Track Collection Of The Artist’s Arena Performances With The Band, To Be Released Across 27 Discs On Columbia Records / Legacy Recordings, release date September 20th

The Deluxe Box Set Features 417 Previously Unreleased Performances, Newly-Mixed Recordings And Liner Notes by Elizabeth Nelson Also a 3-LP Highlights Box Set To Be Released By Third Man Records, Featuring Songs From The 1974 Run Not Included on Original “Before The Flood” Live Album 

A Never-Released Version Of “Forever Young,” Live in Seattle, February 9th, 1974 (Afternoon Show)

Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalogue division of Sony Music Entertainment, will release “The 1974 Live Recordings” on Friday, September 20, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s return to touring that year. Featuring all professionally recorded shows from the artist’s 1974 performances backed by The Band, With previously-unreleased Bob Dylan live tracks – including 133 recordings newly mixed from 16-track tape, and every single surviving soundboard recording – along with new liner notes by journalist and critic Elizabeth Nelson. 

“Bob Dylan and the Band: The 1974 Live Recordings” includes performances of such classic rock favourites as “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” The massive collection, however, does not include The Band’s own sets during those concerts.

In conjunction with The 1974 Live Recordings, Third Man Records has announced the September release of The 1974 Live Recordings – The Missing Songs From Before the Flood, a 3-LP / 1 x 7-inch set culled from the same recordings, featuring hand selected versions of every song Bob Dylan recorded that was not included on the original 1974 live album. Pressed exclusively on colored vinyl, the set will be available through The Vault, 

 This release represents the first release from Dylan’s vast archives since 2023’s “The Complete Budokan 1978“. His last studio album was 2020’s acclaimed “Rough and Rowdy Ways”. Dylan, who turned 83, on May 24th, is currently co-headlining the 2024 edition of the Outlaw Music Festival with Willie Nelson.

Brandon Flowers wishes he’d written The Waterboys’ ‘Whole of the Moon’. Flowers admitted he’s often “flustered” when he gets asked which tracks he wishes he’d penned himself but having had the time to ponder the question, he opted for the 1998 track and treated fans at London’s The O2 on Sunday (07.07.24) night to the band’s take on the song.

He told the audience: “People ask me all the time ‘What song do you wish you had written’ and I always sort of get flustered in the moment, there’s so much information going on, so many songs that you love, but I have an answer now, it’s ‘The Whole of the Moon’ by the Waterboys”

“We love performing it and we’re gonna play it for you tonight.” The band had initially planned to cover The Kinks’ ‘Come Dancing’ after Brandon “stole” a line from the song for the group’s own hit ‘Bones’, but performing it earlier on their ‘Rebel Diamonds’ tour had fallen flat.

He explained: “I was stealing [a line] from Ray Davies and a Kinks song, ‘Come Dancing’. “Everyone write down on your phones, go home and check out ‘Come Dancing’ by The Kinks, the legendary Kinks.

The band were playing the third show of their six-night residency at the venue and have kept things fresh by mixing up their set list each night. After kicking off with ‘My Own Soul’s Warning’ and the familiar ‘Enterlude’, Brandon teased the audience about their earlier gigs.

Fans sang along enthusiastically as the band barrelled through hit after hit including ‘Somebody Told Me’, ‘Caution’, ‘Runaways’ and closer ‘All These Things I’ve Done’, with spectacular visuals, explosions of confetti and a dazzling laser show all adding to the Las Vegas experience as Brandon and guitarist Dave Keuning prowled the diamond-shaped stage.

The band returned for a four-song encore which featured a tour debut for 2021’s ‘In Another Life’ before timeless classics ‘Mr. Brightside’ and ‘When You Were Young’. Brandon himself then wheeled out his own piano, decorated with a thank you message for fans, as they played out the crowd with ‘Exitlude’.

He also told the audience the gig was a dream come true.

The first official single from Du Blonde since 2021’s ‘Homecoming’, ‘Blame’ tells the story of tells the story of a long-time-coming explosion of rage and defiance in the face of gaslighting within an interpersonal relationship. Recalling the energy and dirt of Ziggy era Bowie, coupled with vocal harmonies reminiscent of ABBA and The Mamas and The Papas, Du Blonde becomes somewhat of a monster, unhinged and anxiety ridden, battling for breath and solid ground in a psychologically destabilising situation. The final lyrical refrain of the chorus says it all; “So next time you want to find someone to blame, you reach into your mouth and you find my name, just remember that I’m something that you created.”

The lyrical and rhythmic fury of the track is offset by the nursery rhyme melodies and humorous delivery we’ve come to expect from Du Blonde. ‘Blame’ proves to be both an extension of “Homecoming” and a foot placed firmly in a new era, one in which the songwriter and performer leans into and explores feelings of rage and injustice with even greater conviction, wrapping it all up with the types of vocal harmonies not seen since her debut, 2011’s ‘Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose’.

released July 8th, 2024
Written, performed, engineered and produced by Du Blonde

Robyn Hitchcock just released his memoir, “1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left”, last week, and now he’s announced a companion album, titled “1967: Vacations In The Past”, which will be out September 13th via Tiny Ghost. In the memoir, Robyn explains why 1967 (when he was 14) was such a formative year for music,

For me, 1967 was the portal between childhood and the adult world, where these songs flickered in the air to greet me like hummingbirds. They’re full of saturated colour and melancholy, just as I was charged with hormones and regret as one part of me said goodbye to the other.

The album features covers of songs from the era, including ones by Pink Floyd, The Move, The Kinks, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Small Faces, Traffic, and more. This cover of the Small Faces’ classic features Robyn’s former Soft Boys bandmate Kimberly Rew.

Forever after, I’ve wandered beneath the dayglo Waterloo Sunset and burned the Midnight Lamp, yearning for that time. A Whiter Shade of Pale, she’s the wan ghost that haunts me in summer twilight, all the way down to the river where the spectre of Emily plays, Ophelia-like, with strands of green waterweed. Look – they’re full of dead minnows! See, now she’s draping wet strips of it over her hair!

I hope enjoy listening to these tracks as much as I enjoyed recording them. Love on ya, Robyn H.

Tiny Ghost Records Released on: 2024-07-08

Katy J Pearson’s new album “Someday, Now” is out in September, and she’s given us another early taste with “Sky.” “‘Sky’ is a special one for me,” she says. “It was a very uplifting one to create and it felt really necessary at the time to write a song about telling myself that I am enough! Writing songs is a bizarre and magical thing and before I started thinking about album three I was pretty scared and felt a lot of doubt but this song really calmed my negative thoughts! I hope it does the same for you toooo!”

Recorded with supergroup Davey, Joel & Huw at Rockfield Studios

Release Date: 20/09/2024

Wishy’s anticipated debut LP “Triple Seven” is out next month, and the latest single is the shoegazey “Sick Sweet.” “This song is about wanting something or someone despite doubts or misgivings,” Kevin Krauter says, “and laying it all on the line to see it through. I was inspired by an Oasis interview asking Liam Gallagher what his lyrics are generally about and he says something to the effect of ‘Just living life’ and ‘Just going for it.’ That’s the energy I put into this song.”

You could call Wishy’s story a lucky one. After prior monikers and iterations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music’s semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together. On “Triple Seven”, Indiana songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites’ musical synergy proves itself to be a rare one–the kind that sounds like someone striking gold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it’s only fitting their much anticipated full length debut is titled “Triple Seven”, where Wishy’s penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally in pillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion.

By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitar lessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by trade and often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up in a scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkites instead found themselves writing melodies in their heads while driving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier, more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, their music oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock.

The subject of their songs create a loose web of vignettes and snapshots, capturing Krauter and Pitchkites in a whirlwind couple of years — exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embryonic project, making sense of their musical pasts while forging a musical future alongside one another, each of them on a journey of self-acceptance and self-understanding. Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, “Triple Seven” is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discovery with the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albums that inspired it. 

releases August 16th, 2024

We are beyond happy to announce that our second album ‘The Good Kind’ will be coming out on November 8th!!! We’ve been sitting on this news for a while now so we’re over the moon to be sharing it. There’s so much to say about this record, but for now we hope you enjoy our newest single “Something About Me Being A Woman” , The expression of hard-fought optimism encapsulates “The Good Kind”, an album exploring themes of sexuality, relationships, community, and illness. Our Girl’s trademark dynamics permeate the record, from heavy guitars and soaring lead lines to ear worm choruses and intimate vocal moments. Filled with warmth and honesty, “The Good Kind” is a celebration of determination – of choosing to recommit to what matters, against all opposition. “A lot of the songs are about taking setbacks and turning them into superpowers” says drummer Lauren Wilson.

“I only realised then, when I thought it out loud,” begins singer/guitarist Soph Nathan on ‘Relief’, the first single released from the album, “And I feel better now”. This song is aptly named, invoking a long-awaited exhale – the feeling of finally emerging from a long and lonely period of uncertainty and self-doubt. Beginning with a single airy strum, Nathan’s reverb-drenched guitar attaches itself to Joshua Tyler’s grounding bass chords, as Wilson’s quietly insistent drum beat throws its weight behind Nathan’s words of reassurance: “You’ve gotta see it to believe it/ Well, I see it in you already.”

This song speaks honestly to the life-giving importance of queer community. From the warmth and immediacy of her delivery, Nathan could be comforting a friend. But as ‘Relief’ builds from that cautious opening to a determinedly, driving force, it becomes clear: these aren’t empty platitudes. Nathan believes in you, because she’s learned to believe in herself.

This sentiment is at the heart of “The Good Kind”, recorded at Rockfield Studios and produced by alt-rock legend John Parish (PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse), Fern Ford (The Big Moon, Prima Queen) and Soph Nathan herself. For Our Girl, it mirrors the long and winding road to their sophomore release, and the lasting rewards of trusting in the process.

All three members recall moments of magic in the studio with Parish and engineer Joe Jones, who embraced the band’s spirit of experimentation and helped them to channel their electrifying live character onto tape. But despite these propelling creative moments, Our Girl struggled to fully realise the album exactly the way they wanted. “The way we work best is so based on feeling, and an instinct when we’re together,” says Wilson. “We see ourselves as a live band: that’s how we began, and where we feel fully realised,” says Nathan. Having not had an opportunity to play the songs live yet, the trio poured hours into making demos and rehearsing the songs, eventually arriving at Rockfield Studios almost “over-prepared”, says Josh. However, having recorded it under time pressure, all three members concluded the two-week session feeling as though some essential component had escaped them.

After hearing the recordings back, “It was the first time that we’ve all been on such different pages,” Nathan says, admitting that she even entertained painful thoughts of abandoning the project. Instead, Our Girl dug deep to reconnect with what had kept them together. It was a conscious decision to recommit to making the music they knew themselves to be capable of. “We all had to rediscover our connection – to the album, and to each other,” Wilson says.

Newly determined, the band spent six weeks with Fern Ford of The Big Moon at her home studio, pulling apart the Rockfield takes and recording more. Nathan recalls her bodily feeling of relief as they reopened and recommitted to the project “I couldn’t quite believe it” says Nathan “I felt a freedom I hadn’t experienced before. Fern really made that space for us and it was a real relief to be able to take the reins together”. With Ford’s help, Nathan took to the production, striving after the warm, comforting sound she’d envisaged. It was new territory for Nathan – but the attempt felt true to Our Girl’s shared ambition and commitment to breaking new ground.

This collaborative process speaks to a wider theme – when choosing to carve out their own creative path, the band leant more on each other, and on friends and other musicians: Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa helped bring the title track ‘The Good Kind’ to life in its early stages, whilst Nathan’s partner and friends including Marika Hackman and Art School Girlfriend joined the rallying cry at the end of “Relief”. There’s evidently real joy to be found in taking ownership of your own creative vision, and also trusting friends to share that vision with you.

Using songwriting as a processing tool, many of the songs reflect Nathan’s own experiences, expressed with her trademark precision and lyricism. ‘Absences’ is about the frightening “absence seizures” she suffered through childhood, culminating in an epileptic fit at age 17. Such private, often lonely struggles with chronic health issues are a theme of “The Good Kind”, as well as the moments of solace within them; ‘What You Told Me’ evokes the relief of feeling that weight lift, however briefly.

Through the process of making “The Good Kind”, Our Girl learned to trust themselves, persevere with the harder path and recognise it as the only one worth travelling. Deciding to chase after the sound they wanted ended up being the most empowering moment of their career thus far, and it paid off: “The Good Kind” is their most confident, moving and fully realised work yet.

‘The Good Kind’ We’re over the moon to announce that our second album will be coming out on November 8th via Bella Union Records

From the rubble and ashes of punk a new youth cult was emerging. Divinely inspired by Bowie, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk, a new tribe the press started labelling New Romantics, or Futurists, discarded punk’s old-hat claims towards authenticity and protest, in pursuit of glamour, make-up, dressing up and dancing. Their home was The Blitz Club, a tiny wine bar at the edge of Covent Garden and what went on there between 1979 and 1980 would genuinely change the world. The other name for this cult? Blitz Kids.

The music of London’s Blitz Club is celebrated with a new box set curated by Rusty Egan the man who, with Steve Strange, started the weekly club which sound tracked a transition from the gloom of the UK in the late 70s into the new decade of the 1980s with the sounds, sights and glamour to go with it.

The Blitz was birthing the next wave of British pop stars. A young Boy George ran the cloakroom, its host and doorman was a young Steve Strange, soon-to-be the frontman of Visage, Spandau Ballet played their first gig there and on a given night you might find yourself dancing next to a member of Ultravox. Fashion designers in Regency ballgowns mingled with secretaries in rubber, post boys dressed as Biggles danced next to art school kids dressed as Pierrot. David Bowie assembled his extras for the ‘Ashes To Ashes’ video from the Blitz kids. Mick Jagger was refused entry. 

Strange would work the door/front of house, while Egan handled DJ duties in the club. The pair had originally met briefly backstage at an early 1978 gig, in Wales, with Rich Kids – the short-lived post-punk band put together by ex-Sex Pistol bassist Glen Matlock and featuring Egan on drums, Steve New on guitar and Midge Ure on vocals. The band split, and at 19 and 21 respectively, Strange and Egan started the club in a wine bar in Covent Garden called Blitz (having started out at Billy’s in Soho the year before).

“The ethos was that everybody in that club could be heroes, just for one day and my DJ set lists at the Blitz were designed to make YOU the star – on the dancefloor, at the bar or just standing there in your finest on a dreary Tuesday night,” remarks Egan of the innovative music he has compiled for this new box-set.  “You could be whoever you wanted to be – your life was going to be great and the ‘80s were here.  The late ‘70s had been so grey and drab and I wanted the music I played each week to instantly transport you somewhere else – maybe to Europe with a few film noir references or to Japan via some exciting new electronic sounds.  Of course there were lots of robotic vocals sung in German, Russian, French and English too.”

The Blitz Club quickly became the place to be and be seen and would regularly host designers, artists, and especially musicians, or aspiring musicians. Many of what would soon to become British pop’s most innovative early Eighties exports would be there on a regular basis, including the Blitz Club’s cloakroom manager Boy George, Sade, Spandau Ballet, Billy Idol, Ultravox, Visage, Adam And The Ants, Bananarama, Marilyn, Gary Numan, Siouxsie and Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

Spandau Ballet actually played their first gig at the Blitz Club (the Christmas party!) in early December 1979. Gary Kemp recalls: “The Blitz Club, with Steve Strange’s curated ragamuffins and Rusty Egan’s electro soundtrack, was the engine room for the ‘80s. Spandau Ballet was forged from that heat. We were determined to make our own advances into the new culture we wanted to lead. Vinyl was just one of our mediums. Here are the tunes we danced to, planned over, posed and gazed to. Energy poured out of this backing track.”

As well as a host of electronic classics, this new “Rusty Egan Presents Blitzed!” box-set includes many hard to find extended remixes and edits from artists like Grace Jones, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk (a scarce promo edit of the Düsseldorf band’s seminal track ‘Radioactivity’ is included).

This release is available as a deluxe 4CD set (66 tracks) and across four vinyl LPs (36 tracks). Both including extensive sleeve notes by The Guardian’s chief rock & pop critic (and occasional SDE reviewer) Alexis Petridis as well as an introductory essay by Rusty Egan.

“Rusty Egan presents Blitzed!” will be released on 28 June 2024 via Demon Music.

Most of the writing of Naima Bock’s second album, “Below A Massive Dark Land”, was a solitary affair. It may not sound like it – it’s made up of strong, purposeful arrangements with a huge host of musicians, filled with cradling space and warm light. This will also come as a surprise to anyone who has seen Naima perform in the time since the release of her 2022 debut “Giant Palm”, which was undoubtedly a communal experience. But there’s power in the solitary, too. “Giant Palm” was arranged with collaborator Joel Burton, but going this one alone in search of something that was truly hers, Naima found she was capable of more. “After me and Joel stopped working together”, she remembers, “it was an impossibility to even fathom doing arrangements myself but then I started learning violin and it was possible”. Finding that she could go it alone was incredibly powerful for Naima: “I think I needed it, to be able to feel proud of something”. Beyond the writing process, however, the record is not a stark, stripped back affair. “Below…” still has the majesty that made “Giant Palm” so remarkable.

Having tugged the first record down from the skies and spreading it across the earth, Naima finds a newfound vocal power and confidence born from hundreds of hours on stage, and the music sounds fuller, more tangible, and no less enveloping. This can be heard on the album’s lead singles: “Kaley” feels fresh and surprising in its rug-pull choppiness but is distinctly Naima in its swinging, jubilant choruses. The accompanying “Further Away” takes a different tack, drawing you in with its simplicity. Finally, the hazy, luxurious beauty of “Feed My Release” draws on the sepia-toned traditions of The Roches, John Prine and Loudon Wainwright III and imbues them with the kind of stark confessional song writing of Mount Eerie.

These are ambitious, rich arrangements that reach deeper and darker lyrically than “Giant Palm”.

“Below a Massive Dark Land” was predominantly produced by Jack Osborne (Bingo Fury) and Joe Jones, and recorded at The Crypt in north London, with additional production and arrangement by Oliver Hamilton (caroline, Shovel Dance Collective) and Naima herself. Six of the tracks on “Below…” were mixed by Jason Agel, with the remainder done by Osborne and Jones.

Sony Music in Japan are celebrating the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 album “Born in the USA” as a special 4CD deluxe edition unavailable anywhere else!

The 4CD set features the original album on CD 1 (the 2014 remastering) and the a full live show at the Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey on 22nd August 1985, on the three bonus CDs.

The classic “Live 1975–85” box set album featured a couple of “Born in the USA” songs from 19th and 21st August 1985 Giants Stadium shows but none from 22nd August, and while this whole show has technically been available as a download and on CD-R via the ‘Live Bruce Springsteen’ Official Live Archive Series, this is the first time it’s been released ‘properly’ on CD anywhere in the world.

The four CDs are actually ‘Blu-spec CD2’ discs but rest assured these are fully compatible with standard CD players. This release is presented as a deluxe seven-inch Features cardboard with a photo book and a booklet (see image above).

This Japan-only “Born in the USA” 40th anniversary 4CD set will be released on 25th September 2024 via Sony Music Japan.