The Fat Angel Sings

After two EPs that made them a regional success in Ireland, the alt-rock quartet moved to London to record their debut LP, “Madra” the Irish alt / rock collective NewDad release their debut album, “Madra” on Fair Youth / Atlantic. Awash with spiralling guitars and a hypnotic bassline, singer/guitarist Julie Dawson finds inspiration in TV show Euphoria, as she ruminates on the destructive relationship of characters, Rue and Jules: a storyline that she herself gravitated towards.

“Madra” meaning “dog” in Irish is an 11-song, guitar-stacked visceral outing, as singer/guitarist Julie Dawson embarks on a journey of self-exploration, self-sabotage, and reflection. Soaked in dysfunction, “Madra” searches for solace in pain, tackling themes of bullying (‘Where I Go’), self-medication/depression (‘Madra’, ‘Let Go’), destruction (‘Change My Mind’, ‘White Ribbons’), co-dependency (‘Nosebleed’) and resistance (‘Nightmares’). The album artwork, photographed by Irish creative, Joshua Gordon, shows a broken doll that serves as a metaphor for the album’s themes of fragility and vulnerability.

The album finds NewDad reconnect with their musical roots, digging deep into the shoegaze/rock sonics that sound tracked their formative years (the band cite Pixies, The Cure and Slowdive as some of their biggest early influences), together with glimmers of indie/pop that harks back to their earlier material: ‘Waves EP’ (2021) and ‘Banshee EP’ (2022). Written in their home city of Galway, Ireland, before the band moved to London this year, and recorded at the legendry Rockfield Studios (Black Sabbath, Queen), the album has been produced by NewDad’s long-time collaborator Chris Ryan (Just Mustard) and mixed by Alan Moulder (The Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Wet Leg).

Bound together by Julie’s ghostly vocal – a vessel for her weighty, introspective song writing –“Madra” firmly marks NewDad as one of Ireland’s most promising debut guitar bands.

Their breakthrough 2022 EP, “Banshee”  Now the band have signed to Atlantic Records, NewDad are primed to become a Stateside sensation with their first full-length

By the time NewDad released their hotly tipped debut LP “Madra”, the group led by Julie Dawson had begun engaging with the material in a different way. The album, which arrived at the end of January via Atlantic Records, was completed in February of 2023.

Its diaristic nature and heart-on-sleeve lyricism made it an intense personal reflection of Dawson and her bandmates’ world at a particular moment in time. But by the time “Madra” was released, the group wasn’t necessarily in the same mental headspace as they were when they wrote these songs. It taught Dawson to detach from her work, to view creation as something fleeting, temporary, and ultimately, for her listeners.

Imbued with the ethereal vocal harmonies of Cocteau Twins and the gothic jangle of The Cure, “Madra”, the debut long-player by Galway-based indie band NewDad, channels Julie Dawson’s ghostly voice into a nocturnal spirit walk that guides listeners through the melancholic realm of dream-pop and more than earns its spot among the best albums of 2024.

With plays on BBC Radio 1, 6Music and KEXP under their belt, and their anticipated third album released in January, Manchester’s Chemtrails are gearing up for a big year in 2024.

The post-garage-punk and psychedelic power pop anomaly Chemtrails return with their third album – their boldest yet with a more danceable and rhythm-driven style, armed with their trademark fuzzy guitars and playfully sinister melodies. Working with producer Margo Broom (Fat White Family, Goat Girl) this time around, the group has traded in their DIY approach for a more hi-fi studio sound, remaining just as raw and wild as ever, but with a whole new level of focus and intensity.

The post-garage-punk and psychedelic power pop anomaly that is Chemtrails started out as the DIY bedroom recording project of romantic partners Mia Lust and Laura Orlova, evolving into a full band in 2016. Their uncanny talent for blasting out weird but irresistibly catchy pop songs was quickly noticed by Swedish label PNKSLM Recordings, who signed them just after their first gig — at Trans Pride Brighton. After relocating from London to Manchester in 2019, Lust and Orlova joined forces with a ferocious new rhythm section, putting the final piece of the puzzle into place. With Ian Kane on bass and Liam Steers on drums, the Chemtrails machine is now souped up with a turbocharged rhythmic engine, propelling the hook-filled songs to new levels of raw power, as the band sashays between sleazy punk, frantic krautrock and sardonically sassy grooves.

Served on a bed of twangy and fuzzy guitars, primitive synths and polychromatic pop, Mia Lust’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics tackle alienation, the absurd, the human condition, the impending apocalypse and, occasionally, her place in the world as a transgender woman. The band cites their biggest influences as Pixies, Blondie, Oh Sees, Fat White Family and sixties psych and garage punk, but what has always held the whole project together is the endless supply of catchy melodies, delivered with the band’s relentless excitement and energy.

The sixth album from Still Corners is “Dream Talk”. Beautifully arranged, elegant and wistful, “Dream Talk” is a set of ten carefully crafted classic songs.  From the autumnal opener “Today is the Day” to the hot summer night finale of “Turquoise Moon”, Still Corners have created a sound that is focused, stylish and seductive. Tessa Murray says, “The genesis for a lot of these songs came from dreams.  Every night I would write down the dreams I could remember. 

While recording I would pull out my book of dreams and sing over various looped phrases Greg had been working on, the repetitive nature of the looping and singing almost felt like going into a trance.  A lot of the songs came from that process, it was fun and what I thought were sort of ramblings ended up surprising us with their various meanings and imagery.”

Still Corners new album “Dream Talk”, out April 5th 2024 on Wrecking Light Records.

The debut album by Soft Loft, titled “The Party and the Mess,” comprises 12 tracks released in March 2024, in a standard 12″ black vinyl edition, as well as in a limited special edition featuring a coloured eco- mix vinyl accompanied by a poster and digital formats. Soft Loft is a safe haven, an attitude, a way of life. It’s where the broken and the imperfect are embraced and celebrated. Soft Loft is non-hierarchical. Soft Loft is where reality is transmuted into dreams and dreams back into reality. Judgement is suspended here. Because vulnerability is the gateway to connection. Anything goes, as long as it’s heartfelt and it flows. Soft Loft is a collective of musicians dedicated to creating safe spaces using sound.

“The Party and the Mess” sounds like an intimate conversation between dear friends, and you, as the listener, are allowed to listen in on it. There’s also something about the ease with which everybody is playing, and how the individual instruments weave together to support the voice and the emotions that it channels – it feels so damn good. If there is a single word to describe this feeling, or what it evokes, this word is probably trust! And not just any ol’ trust, but a deep and unconditional one.

The material was produced by grammy-nominated Gianluca Buccellati (Arlo Parks, Biig Piig, easy life, Lana Del Rey) and cut in a snowed-in studio in Engelberg. It was written in all sorts of “safe spaces” created by the band, one of which happens to be a cozy little house in Ticino, the Italian- speaking part of Switzerland. Cut off from the outside world, often for days at a time, they would get lost in music and the bottomless well of late night conversations, and the magic would just happen.

This past weekend, Neil Young took to his Neil Young Archives website to announce the upcoming record, which was recorded in 1969 with Crazy Horse. The album is due to arrive on June 28th via Reprise Records, ‘Early Daze’, showcases the band’s unique style at the end of the 1960s, capturing the essence of their live performances and their contribution to the evolution of rock & roll.”

This new collection of Neil Young & Crazy Horse’ earliest recordings include several original versions that have not been released before, and along with the 7-inch Mono mix that was released in 1970 that includes a guitar outro not on LP version not on original LP version.

‘Early Daze’ comprises 10 songs, including a total of six unreleased tunes from Crazy Horse’s early line-up of guitarist Danny Whitten, drummer Ralph Molina, bassist Billy Talbot, keyboardist Jack Nitzsche and Young. Songs like ‘Everbody’s Alone’, ‘Cinnamon Girl’ and ‘Birds’ will receive releases with different mixes. Also among them are some of the first incarnations of songs such as ‘Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown’, ‘Winterlong’, ‘Wonderin”, ‘Look At All The Things’, ‘Helpless’ and ‘Down By The River’, which had remained previously unheard until now.

Fans of Young have been anticipating the release of “Early Daze” since he first alluded to the project in his 2012 autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace. 

Since January 2014, Billy Joel and his band 20,000+ fans pack the Madison Square Garden to enjoy a rotating list of classic tunes from the native New Yorker’s (Hicksville, on Long Island) enormous catalogue of singles and LP cuts. Many fans have attended dozens of the concerts.

The Billy Joel MSG shows are often marked with surprise guests by fellow classic rock legends, who have joined the Piano Man for one or two songs. Sometimes, they join Billy on one of the tunes from his enormous catalogue; other times, he teams with them on one of their big hits. Either way, they’re a highlight of a concert filled with many such moments. Another piano legend, Chick Corea who was once part of Miles Davis’ band before establishing his own jazz fusion band, Return to Forever, joined Billy on his jazzy standard, “New York State of Mind.”

Of his home away from home, Joel has said, “Madison Square Garden is the centre of the universe as far as I’m concerned. It has the best acoustics, the best audiences, the best reputation, and the best history of great artists who have played there. It is the iconic, holy temple of rock and roll for most touring acts and, being a New Yorker, it holds a special significance to me.”

Joel has played one show per month at Madison Square Garden, an unprecedented run of sold-out shows. The July 18th, 2018 concert was his 100th all-time performance at the Garden, dating back to his first concert there in December 1978. (His monthly residency began January 27th, 2014, and concludes on July 25th, 2024.)

Billy Joel, who turned 75 on May 9th, has enjoyed a remarkable career that includes 13 Top 10 singles (and 23 that went Top 20). Superstars have joined Joel elsewhere and he, himself, has appeared at other stars’ shows.

Elvis Costello At first glance, the two may seem like a mismatched pair but both came to prominence in the ’70s and they were Columbia Records label mates for a decade. At Joel’s final show of 2023, he was joined by Costello to perform a favourite by each, “Pump It Up” and “Allentown.”

Thirteen songs into the Sunday night concert, Joel welcomed Billy F. Gibbons to the stage, and the ZZ Top legend didn’t disappoint the sold-out crowd, performing not one but two of the band’s favourites, “La Grange” and “Tush.” During the former, when Joel solo’d with a boogie-woogie piano, Gibbons, born offered the equivalent of a “we’re not worthy” salute.

A few months after founding members of Foreigner Mick Jones and Lou Gramm reunited onstage during the band’s 40th anniversary tour, the pair was this evening’s surprise guests, performing two of their massive hits, “Cold as Ice” and“Urgent.”

The “Gangster of Love” has appeared a couple of times during the Piano Man’s residency. At this holiday concert, Steve Miller offers the audience their choice of either “Living in the USA” or his 1973 #1 smash, “The Joker.”

The unlikely pairing of the legendary singer-songwriter and the then-24-year-old wowed the audience for a pair of hits. Joel’s “You May Be Right” was released a full 12 years before Myley Cyrus was born in 1992; the trio perform a lively version here. And there’s another surprise: Cyrus then belts out “Rock and Roll,” more than holding her own on the Led Zeppelin classic.

Did you know that Joel gave the induction speech for Mellencamp’s entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018? The pair has enjoyed a solid bromance over the years and on this night Mellencamp performed his 1984 hit “Authority Song” to a grateful crowd.

Billy dug deep into his vast catalogue to perform “Big Man on Mulberry Street” from his 1986 album, “The Bridge“. Sting’s singing style is perfect for the jazzy number as the pair trade lead vocal chores.

They may seem like strange bedfellows, but AC/DC’s repertoire has long been featured on Billy’s setlist. On this night, Johnson was still AC/DC’s lead singer and he offered up an unbelievable version of one of the band’s signature tunes. When introducing Johnson, Joel says, “A couple of years ago… I saw maybe the best band I ever saw in my life.”

Paul McCartney & Wings’ “One Hand Clapping“, one of the most bootlegged live albums in musical history will finally receive a proper release. The recordings, from August 1974, took place at London’s Abbey Road Studios when Band on the Run was enjoying a seven-week stint at #1 on the U.K. album chart, as the band were filming a video documentary and possible live studio album.

Despite overwhelming demand for newly recorded material from the biggest band in the world at that time, “One Hand Clapping” was never officially released. Fifty years later, the wait is over: it arrives June 14th, 2024, via UMe.

A 2-LP + 7” package features an exclusive vinyl single of previously unreleased solo performances recorded on the final day of the sessions in the backyard of Abbey Road Studios. These include the unreleased track “Blackpool,” The Beatles’ iconic “Blackbird,” Wings B-side “Country Dreamer,” and cover versions of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” (the first song Paul played to John Lennon when they met in 1957) and Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” and “I’m Gonna Love You Too.”]

Opening with an instrumental jam that would become the “One Hand Clapping” theme song, the album features live-in-studio renditions of Wings mega-hits “Live and Let Die,” “Band on the Run,” “Jet,” “My Love,” “Hi, Hi, Hi,” “Junior’s Farm.”

From the April announcement: Filmed and recorded over four days and directed by David Litchfield, the release of “One Hand Clapping” is a historic moment for Paul McCartney fans. Over the years, various parts of “One Hand Clapping” have been bootlegged with varying degrees of success. Some of the material has also appeared on official McCartney releases. However, the 2024 release, which features the original artwork designed for the project, including a TV sales brochure for the unreleased film at the time, is the first time the audio for the film—plus several additional songs recorded off-camera—will be officially issued.

“One Hand Clapping” showcased Wings‘ new line-up, fresh off their return from Nashville, where they recorded the classic single “Junior’s Farm.” Following the sudden departure of Denny Seiwell and Henry McCullough the previous year on the eve of recording the Wings masterpiece Band on the Run, Paul, Linda, and Denny Laine were now joined by guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton. Additionally joining the band in the studio were orchestral arranger Del Newman and saxophonist Howie Casey, who had previously played with Paul in Hamburg and would go on to join the Wings touring band.

Also featured is Paul’s much loved solo song “Maybe I’m Amazed,” reworked extracts of Beatles’ classics “Let It Be,” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Lady Madonna,” the Moody Blues hit “Go Now” with Denny Laine singing, and a Paul solo piano version of the Harry Akst/Benny Davis Tin Pan Alley classic “Baby Face.” The sessions were produced by Paul McCartney.

“One Hand Clapping” serves as a celebration of the enduring legacy of Paul McCartney and Wings. It captured a moment when Wings had found and defined their signature sound

The former Magazine and Bad Seeds bassist floats through an imagined past for one of his most enjoyable solo albums. It’s a blast.

For his 10th solo album, former Magazine and Bad Seeds bassist and all-around cool cat Barry Adamson looked to the past for inspiration. He was still in a reflective mood, having published Up Above The City, Down Beneath The Stars, the first volume of his memoirs, in 2021, but Cut to Black is not the soundtrack to the book, but instead an alternate history. 

“I started to imagine my life without me in it,” Adamson says. “An author-as-observer, looking down upon this Murky World during that time and making a record of what I found there.” It’s a look at the early history of pop music and pop culture, starting with the death of Sam Cooke — murdered in a motel in 1964 in South Central L.A. — and explores forwards and backwards in time from there, with Adamson’s style and wit in sharp focus as usual.

As he’s done on previous albums he takes elements of classic rock n’ roll, soul, R&B, gospel and jazz and filters them through modern production techniques. Barry clearly had a lot of fun making this one and that comes through loud and clear on the listener’s side, and songs like “Amen White Jesus,” “One Last Midnight,” “Manhattan Satin,” “Was it a Dream” and “The Last Words of Sam Cooke” are a blast.

the brand new album ‘Cut To Black’ released 17 May 2024.

It’s been an undeniable joy to witness the thrilling progression of the ever-evolving, rowdy wonk-pop peddlers – Crack Cloud. from the unbridled rumpus of their debut ep, through the cinematic exhilaration of previous dinked, ‘Pain Olympics’, all the way to 2022’s beguiling ‘Tough Baby’, the Calgarian’s approach has never faltered. 

They’ve changed tack and direction as and when the mood takes them, and, when it does, they take these wild shifts in their galloping stride. so, whether it’s Zach Choy’s unhinged snarl, slamming cadences from the rhythm section, or perfectly plinked pianos, the dynamic transformations all feel like an intrinsic part of the Crack Cloud experience. 

With more ideas tumbling from their sleeves than can be contained within the depths of the mariana trench, crack cloud are yet again the pace setters that we should all be keeping an eye and a pair of ears on as they burn off into the shimmering horizon of ‘Red Mile’. 

Hannah Frances returns with a dense and daring new album, “Keeper Of The Shepherd”, that has been awarded Best New Music by Pitchfork. At times raucous and toiling, and at times hypnotizing in its softness, “Keeper of The Shepherd” is a careful excavation through the ruins of Frances’ past as she carves out what’s been lost and buried, praising the possibility of a life more whole. This album is a rebirth in every sense of the word, showcasing Frances’ virtuosic song writing, arrangement, and musicality, while displaying a deep and churning emotional vulnerability.

Frances reveals some of her hardest truths confronted over the last several years, giving name to the disquiet that is often kept hidden – grief spurred by the death of her father, internalized patriarchal harm from years of religious trauma, and a collection of hollow, shorn relationships. “How can I be deeper within myself?” is the question Frances seems to return to across “Keeper Of The Shepherd”.

On “Floodplain”, over dancing acoustic guitar and shimmering violins Frances bellows “How long have I kept you? / How long have I kept the light on? How long have I been gone?” On “Vacant Intimacies” a tumbling and explosive anthem that highlights Hunter Diamond on saxophone, Frances pleads for a release from the patterns born from past wounds, as she urgently repeats “grasping to the absence/haunted by the lack”. “I just feel like I gave myself away and erased myself in love,” she says. Death too returns to Frances across “Keeper”, haunting and all encompassing. “Death is a husk/holding the shape of my life,” she sings on “Husk”, with such steady assuredness, and no trace of fear.

There is no singular way Frances grips us with her guitar, or her storytelling. Her voice is colossal in its strength, piercing, warm, and always poised to embrace, even in its quietest expression. The momentum is constantly moving and shifting across “Keeper Of The Shepherd”. By the end, we’re left nearly breathless, shaken by all the ways in which she’s managed to hold tight to a feeling, and fling one song into the next.

It’s hard work Frances has done here, unearthing the muddled mess of loss and dizzying displacement. In the end, the gift she gives herself is a gift we too might find in our listening: permission to release yourself from the burden of your past, the clinging weight of what no longer becomes you, and feel yourself open up, wide and gaping, with a song hurdling out of your throat. “Keeper of the Shepherd” is both a prayer and a shield. We are carefully freed from the ruin of what’s hurt us, and kept safe, here, in a shining landscape more vast than we ever could have imagined.