The Fat Angel Sings

Los Angeles four-piece Milly have announced their new album, “Your Own Becoming”, which is set to arrive June 28th via Dangerbird Records. To coincide with the announcement of their first LP since their 2022 debut “Eternal Ring”, the band has unveiled lead single “Drip From the Fountain.” The track is melodic in all of its noise, blending a piercing, mountainous leveling of distortion with a great vocal performance from songwriter/singer Brendan Dyer. “I know, I know, the years fall down,” he sings. “I know, I know, they’re spinning ’round. Still, the dusk holds a broken home.” Together, Dyer, Yarden Erez, Connor Frankel and Nico Moreta have put together a tune that is bulletproof, full of skyscraping riffage and knee-deep in hooks.

“This was the final song we wrote for the record,” Dyer says of “Drip From the Fountain.” “I’m trying to just soak in being a person and enjoying my time and especially observing as much stuff as I can. The dark especially. ‘Time is running out but this moment feels nice’ is truly where my head was at.”

The L.A. band’s latest is set to release on June 28th via Dangerbird Records

DIIV are releasing a new album, “Frog in Boiling Water“, on May 24th via Fantasy Records. This week they shared the album’s third single, “Everyone Out.”

The band collectively had this to say about the track in a press release: “Everyone Out’ utilizes a softer and more textural sonic pallet: acoustic instruments, layered tape loops and synthesizers. The song is emotional and intimate, and could be interpreted as either hopeful or cynical. It may or may not be a character study centering around a quick transition from youthful naivety to bitter disillusionment. This loss of hope may be manifest in a desire to leave society completely or to accelerate its collapse. Or maybe both, or neither.”

Previously the band shared the album’s lead single, “Brown Paper Bag,” in which the band has a fake performance on Saturday Night Live. The video also features Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit. The band had also shared a video for “Soul Net.” The band originally shared the audio of the song last October exclusively via a strange website of the same name, but more recently they shared a video of the song to YouTube.

DIIV is Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, Ben Newman, and Zachary Cole Smith. “Frog in Boiling Water” is the follow-up to “Deceiver”, which came out in 2019 via Captured Tracks. It’s been five years since that album and DIIV spent four of those making the new record, a process that a press release says almost broke the band as they strived to push their sound.

This is also the first album where the band acted as a democracy. “This journey left their relationships with one another fraying, with the many complex dynamics of family, friendship and finances entangled, coupled with suspicions, resentments, bruised egos and anxious questions,” stated the press release announcing the album.

The album’s title was inspired by Daniel Quinn’s 1996 philosophical novel The Story of B. The band collectively explained more about the title in the previous press release: “If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.

“We understand the metaphor to be one about a slow, sick, and overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal. That’s the boiling water and we are the frogs. The album is more or less a collection of snapshots from various angles of our modern condition which we think highlights what this collapse looks like and, more particularly, what it feels like.”

“Spilt Milk” is the second and last studio album by American rock band Jellyfish, released on February 9th, 1993, by Charisma Records. It features a harsher and more ornate sound than their previous, “Bellybutton” (1990). As with “Bellybutton”, “Spilt Milk” was written and co-produced by founding members Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning. Albhy Galuten and Jack Joseph Puig also returned as producers.

Named for the hard work and turmoil surrounding its making, Spilt Milk was recorded after the departure of bassist Chris Manning (who was replaced by Tim Smith) and lead guitarist Jason Faulkner. Guitar duties were instead handled by session musicians Jon Brion and Lyle Workman. Production lasted several months due to the record’s complicated orchestrations, and ultimately ran over-budget.

The album was supported with a yearlong tour that introduced guitarist Eric Dover into the band’s line-up. “Spilt Milk” performed below commercial expectations, Singles “The Ghost at Number One” and “New Mistake” charted .

“Spilt Milk” was the vision of what we set out to do fully realized. Everything Andy and I would stay up late dreaming and talking and fantasizing about we went for on “Bellybutton”, which I was proud of. But on “Spilt Milk” we saw all those ideas seen through to fruition.

Roger Manning, 

The press described “Spilt Milk” as being “as compelling a homage to the Beatles and the Beach Boys as there is”, but one that is “so heavy on production sleight-of-hand that the melodies sometimes collapse beneath the weight of the sound.” Though he criticized the album for being “frustratingly derivative”, he praised its “sprawling production and loving performances”

Manning and Sturmer collaborated with Ringo Starr for his 1992 solo album “Time Takes Time”. They were then invited to work with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Wilson and Jellyfish only had one song-writing session that was unproductive. Manning described the experience as “utterly surreal”. After their sessions with Starr and Wilson, the band was dedicated to making their next album “their masterpiece”

An expanded deluxe edition of the album was released by Omnivore Recordings in 2015

This five-disc 66 track round up of pretty much everything recorded by early 70s Glam hard rockers Geordie. Including their four official studio albums – ‘Hope You Like It’, ‘Don’t Be Fooled By The Name’, ‘Save The World’ and the rare ‘No Good Woman’ – plus a fifth disc of re- recordings by vocalist Brian Johnson.

With the UK hit singles ‘Don’t Do That’ (No.32), ‘All Because Of You’ (No.6), ‘Can You Do It’ (No.13) and ‘Electric Lady’ (No.32).

In Germany ‘All Because Of You’ hit No.30 whilst ‘Can You Do It’ reached No.22 and ‘Electric Lady’ No.32 and they also scored German hits with ‘Ain’t It Just Like A Woman’ (No.43) and ‘Black Cat Woman’ (No.36).

The 20-page booklet comes complete with a detailed history of the band plus loads of pictures of all relevant record releases including many overseas issues to get the collectors updating their “Wants Lists”!

You can’t talk about Geordie without mentioning vocalist Brian Johnson who went onto fame as the frontman of AC/DC whom he joined in 1980 and debuted on the mega-selling ‘Back In Black’ album.

Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the latest release in the Todd Rundgren Archive series, “All Sides Of The Roxy 1978”. In May 1978 Todd Rundgren performed a series of concerts at The Roxy Theater in West Hollywood, California with a band comprising members of The Hello People (Bobby Sedita, Larry Tasse, Greg Geddes & Norman Smart) along with keyboard player Moogy Klingman, bassist John Seigler and drummer John “Willie” Wilcox.

The highlight of this residency was a concert on the 23rd May 1978 which was the largest concert simulcast on American FM radio at that time with an estimated audience of over ten million listeners. Hosted by the legendary DJ Wolfman Jack (himself the inspiration for a song on Rundgren’s “Something Anything” album), Todd tore through a wonderful set that included material from both his solo albums (including the recently released “Hermit of Mink Hollow”) and his work with Utopia. He was joined on stage by such illustrious company as Daryl Hall & John Oates, Stevie Nicks, Spencer Davis, Rick Derringer and Kasim Sulton (of Utopia).

This three disc clamshell boxed set includes the entire set from the 23rd May concert over two discs, along with a third disc comprising other soundboard recordings made by Todd during his residence of shows at The Roxy. This release also features an illustrated booklet and is a welcome addition to Esoteric Recordings’ Todd Rundgren Archive series.

Sweet, Wild and Vicious: Listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground by Jim Higgins

Greg Kot, writes
“I didn’t think we needed another book on Lou Reed or the Velvet Underground until I read “Sweet, Wild and Vicious. by Jim Higgins who contextualizes Reed’s life and aesthetic in a way that illuminates the world he created between the headphones. His recordings finally get the book they deserve. An essential addition to our understanding and appreciation of Reed/Velvets.“

“Bite Down”, the Merge Records debut of Rosali, finds acclaimed songwriter and guitarist Rosali Middleman in the midst of transition. Written after moving to North Carolina from her longtime home of Philadelphia, “Bite Down” is a searching, hungry record by an artist who is resolved to bite down on life, in all its horror and joy.

She is joined here by Mowed Sound David Nance (bass, guitar), James Schroeder (guitar, synth), Kevin Donahue (drums, percussion) and in studio by Destroyer collaborator Ted Bois (keys). “Bite Down” is Rosali’s second album working with Mowed Sound, and there is urgency and ambition in their collaboration a band pushing each other not just to expand on what they’ve already done together, but to break through into altogether new territory.

It’s hard to talk about Rosali’s music. Songs that reach outward like this, but then constantly disarm with their intimacy. Songs that long for a sense of peace and songs that want romance, all on equal footing in the same plot of earth? Performed wild, but always centered around the incredible lyrical calm that is Rosali’s voice.

This new Rosali album is real good, and while this particular tune doesn’t fit it, talking about the album does allow me to share a new theory I’m cooking up in my head thanks to listening to music from the 90s a lot more than I’d care to admit, but anyways, here it is: we have all underestimated the impact Natalie Merchant had. Not a slight in any way, just noticing it more and more. Anyhow This is such a perfect closing track to a really solid record. Love that for us.

Active for the past nine years singer/songwriter Nick Carpenter’s artist project has long been a vessel of raw connection and uncompromising self-expression – wrapped, of course, in some insanely catchy melodies and cathartic performances. Through four-plus records and tours with Lewis Capaldi, FINNEAS, and most recently Holly Humberstone, Medium Build has brought his unfiltered heart and soul to the masses – and while statements like this always sound unnecessarily hyperbolic, his latest music really is some of his best.

Having released his first major label EP last year (the six-track “Health” is a tender, brooding, sun-kissed daydream worth everybody’s time), Medium Build is now on track to release his first major label album: “Country” is set to release April 5th via slowplay / Island Records, and will feature the stunning singles “In My Room,” “Crying Over U,” “Cutting Thru the Country,” and “Knowing U Exist.” Technically it is fifth studio album, “Country” is filled with Carpenter’s “goddamn DNA” – he explains, “I wanted “Country” to have a human touch. I want “Country” to be something you love with and dance with and cry with and sleep with and lean into.”

In all honesty, I’d love to spend some time unpacking each and every one of “Country’s” songs at some point I want to dive into “Cutting Thru the Country,” the album’s emotionally-charged third single, released back in February.

A dramatic and heated folk rock fever dream, “Cutting Thru the Country” is a spirited, sweltering release of pent-up energy, inner tension, and fiery emotion: Carpenter churns and charges his way through three intense minutes of chorus-less reckoning, singing about cross-country drives (several of which he took during the making of this album) and all the heavy, inescapable thoughts and feelings that cloud the mind on those trips. Passion and urgency combine into a furious, visceral eruption as Medium Build goes big:

“In August, while I was driving from Alaska to Nashville, I started a little poem,” Carpenter says of this song. “I wanted it to feel like an Earl Sweatshirt song. Just bars, no chorus, no melody. We found an old keyboard and plugged it in. Found some wild tones and I did like 6 takes of the vocal. Probably the easiest tune we made on the album.”

That ease translates into an all-consuming experience as Medium Build dwells unapologetically in his depths, coming to an impassioned climax as he sings, “Nothin’ is forever and I don’t even know, that’s just how it goes, that’s just how it goes, people get sick, yeah, everybody knows, everybody knows, that’s just how it goes…” – a line that, without fail, always sends shivers down my spine.

The fun thing about discovering an artist a decade into his career is that there’s several hours’ worth of Medium Build music for me to dive into, and I’m still catching up. Nevertheless, there’s not a shred of doubt in my bones that “Cutting Thru the Country” is a very special song: An unrelenting explosion of angst, roaring vocals, and turbulent energy – with plenty of cinematic guitars and propulsive drums, to boot – that comes to life as a three-and-a-half minute cleanse; a freeing, white-hot release of all our stress, all that weight we’ve been carrying inside, and all those heavy emotions that don’t have an easy way out.

Dehd have announced their fifth studio album, “Poetry”. The new album is out May 10th via Fat Possum. Watch the music video for “Poetry’s” lead single, “Mood Ring,”

Would appreciate the temperature rising so I could make good use of this song, which deserves open windows and a drive where you manage to inadvertently speed.

“Poetry” follows Dehd’s 2022 album, “Blue Skies”. They worked on the new album while on a road trip that took them to Taos, New Mexico, and the Puget Sound. “Eating, sleeping, breathing, living—our only purpose was to write,” singer and bassist Emily Kempf said of the experience in a press statement. Dehd finished the album at Chicago’s Palisade Studio with co-producer Ziyad Asrar.

“Mood Ring” leads the Chicago trio’s first studio album since 2022’s “Blue Skies“

Dehd’s “Light On,” off of their new album ‘Poetry’, due out May 10th, 2024, on Fat Possum Records.