The Fat Angel Sings

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and composer Julia Holter releases her new single “Evening Mood” today ahead of her forthcoming sixth studio album “Something in the Room She Moves“, out March 22nd on Domino. With “Evening Mood,” Holter had in mind invoking the love hormone oxytocin, with Dev Hoff’s portamento fretless bass lines and Beth Goodfellow’s soft mallet heartbeat-like drums as foundation. Over the heavily-filtered rhythm section, an array of sparkling voices swim: Holter’s gliding vocals, Chris Speed’s soaring birdlike clarinet, and bright Prophet pads by Tashi Wada.

The “underwater” production style was informed by a heavy dose of Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo, her daughter’s favourite movie at the time, about a fish that turns into a little girl. “I was inspired by the transformability of creatures, and how this malleability works alongside our capacity for love. I wanted everything to feel very liquid,” she says of the song, which features a “heavily filtered ultrasound heartbeat” sent through a phaser. “I wanted it to sound like it was inside the body.”

“Evening Mood” comes via a video by Dicky Bahto featuring dancer Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta.

This is not your average Fat White Family song, with Lias Saoudi detailing his “big brother Tamlan’s circumcision at age 5 without anaesthetic in the mountains of Algeria.”

The video was shot by Tamlan on location in Maillot, the small town from which the Saoudi dynasty hail.

Giving some background to the track, Lias said:

I was sat with my family at xmas. My whole immediate family. My long-divorced parents and their respective partners. My big and little brother. Two dogs. One cocker spaniel named Jarvis, and a French Pitbull called Pepe. Me and my little brother had managed to tidy away our long running blood feud just long enough so that we might enjoy this bi-annual festive reunion. The idea for this reunion – which we refer to as Legends of the Fall after mum’s favourite film, a film about warring brothers that slip in and out of exile – occurred not long after my big brother was deported from China, after having called it home for 15 years. There was a sense of rallying round at that time. Of making an effort to make Tam feel at home. My parents divorce wasn’t pretty. You’d have bet your life at the time that no further Xmas together was remotely possible. I’m proud that as a bunch, we can let by gones be by gones, even if only once twenty years or so has passed.

Both previous times Legends of the Fall has taken place, it’s ended in a serious breakdown of some descript. Usually tearful, with occasional threats of violence and bodily harm. That’s why we opted for bi-annual. You need a fallow year. You need to let the engines cool. This December just past all of the drama occurred off screen, in the preamble to the event itself. Endless crsis talks about the beef I’m having with my little brother. Xmas was a song of peace, as a result. We’d burnt ourselves out already. Anyway, on the second night we’re all sitting around eating sugar watching Rocky IV and this tune came up. Today You Become Man. My big brother started harping on about it. This got me nervous, as I hadn’t (still haven’t) played it to my old man. Tam asked if we could stick it on, I told him I didn’t have the album link. File’s expired. I then sank into a kind of dread, what being a little hash stoned, running it around in my head over and over: did I just make all that up? Fuck. Have I gone too far here? I must have sexed up the dossier at least. Surely. I’m forever sexing up the dossier. This will be the end of it. Out of the will levels. Cheerio Bashir. Fuck.

Before long, in lieu of the recording, my big brother started recounting his experience in full. This was a relief. We’d get straight to the bottom of it.  No festering anxiety to spoil what’s left of Rocky IV. This was earlier than my big brothers usual slot time with the circumcision anecdote. Usually you have to wait until you’re deep in the session before he brings out the big gun. Once you’re lucidly enjoying your night, around 3 or 5am, once you’re totally relaxed, that’s usually when he’ll strike. A matinee performance for the whole family it was then. To my absolute joy, his version matched up to mine almost perfectly, with nominal protest from my dad as to the details. Then a deeper joy, a continuation of the tale which I’d not yet heard. A post script from hell. Several years after the olde worlde, anaesthtic-less gential mutialion/enhancement of my big brother, he was a guest at the ceremony of our younger cousin Amine. According to Tam, after they slice off the mini neck warmer, they place it into a little satchel. Tam made it his business to get a hold of this satchel right after Amine’s moment of truth, then to dance around the room flailing it up above his own grinning head in celebration of this newly minted manhood.

I can think of few weirder things that might happen to you at age five then getting shipped form northern England to Kabyle for this. It’s kind of like alienation squared. Once you rotate back to Huddersfield, who have you got to share your experience with? At least the little lads in Maillot have got each other, they’re brothers of the olde worlde chop. The chop is part of their collective identity. It doesn’t mark you out as utterly unique, as somehow outside everybody else. My brother is one of those people that turn everyhtng into a joke. His sense of humour is abstract in the extreme. Sometimes I wonder if he’s pathologically incapable of taking anything seriously. Reality is there to be laughed at, and little else. That’s not to say he’s devoid of empathy, it’s just his basic way of computing the world is through ridicule. There’s no off button. I wonder if his making abstraction his homeland truly began with the absurdity in the high Atlas? And in turn, given that I only became an artist pretty much because my big bro told me to when I was 11, is it where a large part of my own leaning into the strange begins? What made Tam inevitably made me, growing up in umpteen different places, one constant was your big brother. I tried to emulate him in everything. Maybe I’m clutching at straws there. Appropriating his suffering. I don’t know. I’m certainly commodifying it. One’s thing for sure though, if you had to choose one of the three Saoudi brothers with whom to fight a war, you’d choose Tam each time. If we’re talking a frontline roll, at least.

New album “Forgiveness is Yours” is out April 26 via Domino Recordings.

Broadcast present two new albums for 2024: “Spell Blanket – Collected Demos 2006-2009”, and “Distant Call – Collected Demos 2000-2006”

“Spell Blanket” comprises songs and sketches drawn from Trish’s extensive archive of 4-track tapes and MiniDiscs.  It features demos from 2006-2009 that the late Trish Keenan recorded on four-track and were potentially for the group’s fourth proper studio album (Trish died on January 14th, 2011.) That’s to be released May 3rd via Warp Records ,The recordings lay the groundwork for what would have been Broadcast’s fifth album, offering a window into Trish and James’ creative process during the post-Tender Buttons period from 2006-2009.

Then on September 28th (which would’ve been Trish’s 56th birthday), “Distant Call”, in contrast to “Spell Blanket“, is a collection of early demos that were worked into finished productions appearing on Haha Sound, Tender Buttons and The Future Crayon singles/EPs from the era, as well as two songs discovered by Broadcast co-founder James Cargill after Trish’s passing: “Come Back To Me” and “Please Call To Book” which were “her response to Broadcast’s 2006 ‘Let’s Write A Song’ project, where fans were asked to submit lyrics on a postcard which would then be worked into a finished song.” .

“Distant Call” is a closing of the door on Broadcast and will be the last release from the band.

“Spell Blanket” – Collected Demos 2006-2009 will be released via Warp Records on May 3rd.

“Distant Call” – Collected Demos 2000-2006 will be released via Warp Records on September 28th.

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds have announced new album “That Delicious Vice” which will be out April 19th via In the Red. It’s their first album in eight years, and the first with a new trio line-up of the band which now features multi-instrumentalist Mark Cisneros (ex-The Make Up) alongside long time drummer Ron Miller.

Kid Congo, effortlessly cool guitar goon for The Bad Seeds, The Gun Club and The Cramps returns with his Pink Monkey Birds in tow. Combining pulpy garage pop, slide-guitar country and latin rhythms, “That Delicious Vice” is a riot from start to finish and also notably features a melding of the minds between Kid Congo and Alice Bag, something latently desired by any LA punk fanatic. Released by In The Red, “That Delicious Vice“, will prove impossible to put down, and possibly quite tasty.

“Because Mark is playing guitar, sometimes we have songs with two guitars,” says Kid, who has over the years spent time in The Gun Club, The Bad Seeds and The Cramps. “And then sometimes, he plays bass on a bass six [i.e. — the electric bass version of the mariachi instrument, the bajo sexto]. So, that is a new development. We lost a member and decided to try to do it as a three piece — more space, you know?”

The first single from the album is “Wicked World,” a duet with fellow L.A. punk legend Alice Bag. “Yeah, we were around that ground zero, that tight circle of friends,” says Kid, “But there was a lot of cliquiness going on, even though the scene was so small. Everyone knew each other, but I was more with The Screamers and she was more with The Bags and the punk thing. You know, I was more arty farty!” 

Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief is releasing a new solo album, “Bright Future”, via 4AD. Now she has shared another song from it, “Free Treasure.” It was shared via a lyric video.

In 2020, Lenker released two solo albums, one simply titled “songs” and another simply titled “instrumentals”, via 4AD. “Bright Future” Philip Weinrobe co-produced the album, which also features contributions from Nick Hakim, Mat Davidson, and Josefin Runsteen.

In the autumn of 2022, Lenker was pleased that three of her friends (“some of my favourite people,” as she describes Hakim, Davidson, and Runsteen in a press release) had the time to take a break from their own music careers and join her at Double Infinity, an analogue studio in a forest. The three musicians didn’t really know each other that well. “I had no idea what the outcome would be,” Lenker admits, but says the results turned out well. “It was magical,” she says.

Of Davidson, Lenker says: “I’ve known Mat a long time. It doesn’t matter what instrument, his spirit just pours through.” Lenker has known Hakim since she was 17. “The way Nick would hold my songs, he would put every ounce of love,” she says. Of the trio of collaborators, Lenker adds: “I think the thing these people have in common, they are some of the best listeners I know musically. They have extreme presence.”

Summing up the recording of “Bright Future“, she says: “It felt like everyone’s nervous systems released. Once we were IN the song, somehow we just knew. No one stopped a take. We didn’t listen back. I only listened after everybody else left.”

We are very pleased to introduce you to “As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again” our ninth studio album, out June 14th on our very own YABB Records.

We know that June is a ways away; in the meantime, please set aside 20 minutes of your day to find a comfortable place to either sit or lie down and feast your ears on “Joan in the Garden,” the last song on what is our first intentional double album. The song also features Mike Mills of R.E.M. on piano and backing vocals.

For over 20 years, The Decemberists have been among the most original, daring, and thrilling American rock bands. Their distinctive brand of hyperliterate folk-rock set them apart from the start, releasing nine full-length albums that are unbound by genre and highly ambitious. Now the beloved indie band is back with their first new album in six years, “As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again” – not only the longest Decemberists album to date (and their first intentional, proper double-LP) but also their most empathetic and accessible, its 13 songs like semaphores of mutual recognition for our fraught times and faint hope.

Reuniting with producer Tucker Martine (R.E.M., Neko Case, Sufjan Stevens) who began working with the band on “The Crane Wife”, the album features R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, The Shins’ James Mercer and Lizzie Ellison on background vocals. Songwriter Colin Meloy will tell you proudly, is the best Decemberists albums and perhaps the ultimate realization of 22 years of work.

In many ways, “As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again” feels like an aptly titled renewal for The Decemberists. The first full-length release on YABB Records, the band’s own label, after a run of nearly two decades with Capitol. As they were once, here are the Decemberists again, now an independent band empowered by singing stories that sound instantly familiar and convey some bit of hard-won wisdom.

Official audio for “Joan in the Garden” from The Decemberists’ upcoming album, ‘As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again,’ out June 14th

Melbourne four-piece Parsnip who have recently announced details of “Behold”; their new album, set to be released 26th April on Upset The Rhythm, are back with a new song, “Turn To Love.” This time around the band looks to the spiritual for divine inspiration. The track expands on an English translation of a poem by Indian saint Mirabai, featured in “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda. Parsnip’s energetic, DIY punk sound collides with Mirabai’s message of love being the key to finding the divine, a sentiment echoed in the song’s closing lines.

The music video for “Turn To Love” is just as eclectic as its inspiration. A burst of colour during the chorus evokes the transition to the magical Land of Oz. Influences from photographer Serge Lutens, the Oskar Schlemmer Triadic Ballet, Yohji Yamamoto’s fashion campaigns, and even costumes from the Ziegfeld Follies and American circuses (1870s-1950s) all come together to create a visually stunning accompaniment to the song.

Of the track Parsnips Paris Rebel Richens says “Imagine what the world would be like if everyone stopped for a moment or two every day and fixed their attention on the heart. All anyone really wants is love. This song is a plea, for everything that you do in the outer, the most profound changes must be made within. It is not a weakness, if anything, choosing love is courageous and wise.”

Following the runaway success of his last LP, “Boy From Michigan”, which crashed the UK Top 10 back in July 2021, legendary singer-songwriter John Grant returns with his hugely-anticipated sixth album, “The Art Of The Lie”.

Grant today announced his new album “The Art Of The Lie” due for release 14th June via Bella Union . To accompany the announcement Grant has shared a trailer for the album which features the funky first single ‘It’s A Bitch’ with a 70s and 80s synth laden groove and housing a deeper message,

Commenting on ‘It’s A Bitch’ Grant says: “It was a blast making this track which is just about having fun with words, synths and dope rhythms and bass lines and also making fun of post-COVID malaise. Plus, people get to ponder what a ‘hesher’ is. I loved going to the arcade in the 80s and watching smokin’-hot heshers hold court while playing Tempest, Stargate, Robotron and Asteroids, and while also blasting Iron Maiden and Rush on their Walkmans.” 

“The Art Of The Lie” is Grant’s most opulent, cinematic, luxurious album yet and confirms Grant’s status as a modern electronic auteur. Grant likens the musical flavours of “The Art of the Lie” to the sumptuous Vangelis soundtrack for Bladerunner or the Carpenters if John Carpenter were also a member. While undeniably a John Grant record, nestling humour into tragedy, bleeding anger into compassion, there is a musical ambition and nerve to ‘The Art of the Lie’ which offsets its most political and personal moments.

“The Art of The Lie” was produced by Grant and Grammy-nominated producer Ivor Guest who is perhaps best known for his work with Grace Jones and Brigitte Fontaine. The album features an array of celebrated musicians including Dave Okumu, Seb Rochford and Robin Mullarkey.

Additionally, Grant has announced news of an extensive UK & EU tour in October and November.

John Grant began thinking about “The Art of The Lie” in the Autumn of 2022. Earlier that year, John had been introduced to Ivor Guest, producer and composer at Grace Jones’ Southbank show, the finale of her Meltdown Festival. They began talking about two records Guest had worked on, ‘Hurricane’ for Jones, ‘Prohibition’ for Brigitte Fontaine. “Grace and Brigitte are two very big artists for me,” says Grant. “I love the albums he did for them. ‘Hurricane’ is an indispensable piece of Grace’s catalogue.” An idea was sparked. “I said, I really think you should do this next record with me. He said, I think you’re right.” 

The hard juxtaposition of beauty and cruelty makes for compelling listening on Grant’s sixth album, a record that ties childhood trauma to hardened adult after-effects, twinning both to the political malaise of America 2024, a country being drawn to the precipice of its own destruction. “We were allowed to feel like we belonged for a couple of seconds,” says Grant. “Not anymore.” 

“This album is in part about the lies people espouse and the brokenness it breeds and how we are warped and deformed by these lies”, he says. “For example, the Christian Nationalist movement has formed an alliance with White Supremacist groups and together they have taken over the Republican party and see LGBTQ+ people and non-whites as genetically and even mentally inferior and believe all undesirables must be forced either to convert to Christianity and adhere to the teachings of the Bible as interpreted by them or they must be removed in order that purity be restored to ‘their’ nation. They now believe Democracy is not the way to achieve these goals. Any sort of pretence of tolerance that may have seemed to develop over the past several decades has all but vanished. It feels like the U.S. in is free-fall mode.”

Softcult are back with another new single “Spiralling out”, which comes after having previously released “Haunt You Still”, and at the end of last year “Heaven”, title track of the new EP that they will release on May 24th. Formed of twin siblings Phoenix and Mercedes Arn Horn, based in Canada the duo Softcult have had a busy few years touring extensively with the likes of Incubus, Movements and MUSE, as well as releasing a trio of excellent EPs:

The band made up of Canadians Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn released their brand new third EP “See you in the dark” last year, which came after releasing “Year of the Snake” months ago and “Year of the Rat” in 2022. With their shimmering guitar tones, swirling FX and atmospheric dual vocals, Softcult provide their listeners with welcome moments of respite from the pressures of everyday life. With tracks that touch on issues of body image and self esteem, to anthems that advocate for gender equality and anti-capitalism, the duo’s musical ethos is rooted in a desire for a better world than the one we currently exist in. 

British musician Lucy Rose released a third album, “No Words Left”, back in 2019. It garnered the strongest critical acclaim of her career and culminated in a sell-out show at London’s Barbican theatre. It was a record that ruminated in a sort of hushed reverence, emotionally charged and deftly delivered.

Lucy had planned to spend some well-earned time at home in the record’s aftermath, having toured relentlessly since her late teens. She’d balanced that precariously spinning plate by forming her own record label too, Real Kind Records, putting out new records by artists she admired and thought deserved her due care and attention. With both plates spinning, she managed to catch them just before the pandemic ensured her plan for some rest and recuperation became an enforced reality. She welcomed her first child, Otis, in the summer of 2021. All was well until she was diagnosed with a rare form of pregnancy induced osteoporosis.

With a life being lived upside down, and only now without the indignity of excruciating pain, making music wasn’t seeded top of Lucy’s priority list. Any fleeting thought of writing a new record, or even sitting down with a guitar or at a piano, took a back seat to building up the strength to walk and care for Otis. As her confidence started to rebuild, so did her usual inhibitions in the making of music. Inspired by a trip to America with friend and rapper Logic, she later worked with renowned producer Kwes to finish the record.

“This Ain’t The Way You Go Out” is an album constructed from the ashes of despair, nurturing the tiniest of green shoots and giving life to something that had looked otherwise spent. It’s a new era for Lucy, and an era in its purest, truest sense. An artist re-awakening herself to the power of music, and having a lot of fun in the process of its discovery and delivery.