The Fat Angel Sings

At its inception was a compendium of hymns, how far could I go and how many I could record. Presented here is a selection of unreleased recorded work from the “SAVED!” sessions, which Seth and I began referring to as The Index. Featuring works as disparate as “A Beautiful Life” from the Western-themed children’s show “Howdy Doody” to the puritanical English choral piece “Abide With Me” and the Pentecostal “Running For My Life” — as well as field recordings muttered to one’s self on the porch in the rain, the index features a variety of tones and sources arranged with my special unhinged panache.

A hymn I found lyrics to but could not find music to,: “O Death Where Is Thy Sting,” left me to compose on my own, as is the case with a few other works here and on “SAVED!” — Blind Willy Johnson’s “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole” does not use his music but re-contextualizes his lyrics — draws attention to the complicated history of sacred music, how cultural shifts, oral histories, the advent of recording, systemically forgotten legacies, and appropriation make the origins of so much of this music very difficult to pinpoint; forgotten-ness, a major theme from “SAVED!”. This index also features, for the glossolalia die-hards out there (a small subsection to be sure) the extended version of the tongues recording that appears on “SAVED!” in all its feral weirdness, ending with laughter (??) that I could not control.

Please enjoy. Released February 2nd, 2024, all songs arranged & performed by Kristin Hayter, 

Recorded in Gordon’s native Los Angeles, The Collective follows her 2019 full-length debut “No Home Record” and continues her collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor), with additional production from Anthony Paul Lopez. The album advances their joint world building, with Raisin’s damaged, blown out dub and trap constructions playing the foil to Gordon’s intuitive word collages and hooky mantras, which conjure communication, commercial sublimation and sensory overload.

With the release of her second solo album The Collective imminent, Sonic Youth’s former bassist/vocalist . Musician and visual artist Kim Gordon returns with her second solo album, “The Collective“, which will be released March 8th on Matador. Its lead track, “BYE BYE,” is out now, driven by a snaking bassline which guides us through a haunting packing list.

The Collective: There was a space in Kim Gordon’s “No Home Record”. It might not have been a home and it might not have been a record, but I seem to recall there was a space. Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were played, recorded, the voice and its utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving on the music. We listened, we turned our back to the walls, slithered through the city at night. Kim Gordon’s words in our ears, her eyes, she saw, she knew, she remembered, she liked. We were moving somewhere.

Now I’m listening to “The Collective”. And I’m thinking, what has been done to this space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. I mean, not at all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here. Can I love you with my eyes open? “It’s Dark Inside.” Haunted by synthesized voices bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading in and out, like she says – Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away. Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted, refracted.

That makes the music. This shimmering, airless geology, agitated, quarried, cries made in data, bounced down underground tunnels, reaching our ears. We recalled it – but not as a memory, more like how you recall a product, when it’s flawed.

She sings “Shelf Warmer” so it sounds like shelf life, it sounds radioactive, inside our relationships, juddering, the beats chattering, edgy, the pain of love in the gift shop, assembled in hollow booms, in scratching claps. Non-reciprocal gift giving, there is a return policy. But – novel idea – A hand and a kiss. How about that. Disruption. I would say that Kim Gordon is thinking about how thinking is, now. Conceptual artists do that, did that. “I Don’t Miss My Mind.” The record opens with a list, but the list is under the title “BYE BYE.” The list says milk thistle, dog sitter…. And much more. She’s leaving. Why is the list anxious? How divisive is mascara? It’s on the list. I am packing, listening to the list. Is it mine, or hers.She began seeking images from behind her closed eyes. Putting them to music. But I need to keep my eyes open as I walk the streets, with noise cancelled by the airbuds rammed in my ears. quiet, aware, quiet, aware, they chant at me. What could be going through Kim’s head as she goes through mine?

Sleater-Kinney have released a new three-song EP called “Frayed Rope Sessions”. As the title suggests, it features alternate versions of tracks from “Little Rope”. Check it out, along with a mini-documentary featuring Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker,

Brownstein and Tucker recorded the “Frayed Rope Sessions” EP with producer John Goodmanson at the same studio where they made the “Little Rope”, album Flora Recording & Playback in Portland, Oregon. Proceeds from the Bandcamp sales of the EP will benefit Noise for Now.

Our “Frayed Rope Sessions” EP is out now on all streaming platforms, and the mini doc with each performance and song breakdown is up on our YouTube channel now. Check out the renditions of “Say It Like You Mean It,” “Hunt You Down,” and “Untidy Creature”: https://i.sleater-kinney.com/FRSessions

We wanted to step back into these songs, reimagine and revisit them, both for ourselves and for the listener. The different arrangements expose the songs anew, getting at their core or the outer edges. Frayed Rope was a way for us to travel through the songs and perhaps arrive at a different destination.

Following the previously released single ‘Ruined,’ ‘Sadness As A Gift’ sees Lenker at her most familiar and warm, a track that is both utterly timeless, yet sounding new and surprising on every listen. The aliveness of Adrianne’s voice keeps her poetry aloft. She sings in a circle completed by guitar, piano, violin, and all voices. “The seasons go so fast // Thinking that this one was going to last // Maybe the question was too much to ask.”

On “Bright Future”, Adrianne Lenker, a songwriter known for turns of phrase and currents of rhyme, says it plainly, “You have my heart // I want it back.” Documented with analogue precision, what began as an experiment in collaboration, became proof Adrianne’s heart did return, full to the brim, daring her into the unknown.

During the high vibrance of autumn 2022, the Big Thief band member got lucky. Everyone could come. Three musical friends, “Some of my favourite people,” had space in their busy touring schedules to join her at the forest-hidden, analogue studio, Double Infinity. The musicians – Hakim, Davidson, and Runsteen – were known to Adrianne but newer to each other. “I had no idea what the outcome would be,” she recalls. The result? “It was magical,” she says. Adrianne’s musical risk became “Bright Future”, the studio’s first album, a 12-track telling of a journeyed heart.

“Bright Future’s” co-producer and engineer, Philip Weinrobe, prepared the studio. He has been Adrianne’s partner on previous solo albums, but this was something new. Adrianne did not intend to make an album. They would instead explore the songs with no expectations. Even with an open outcome, from the start, Phil wanted to capture the sessions with the purest, technical honesty. He rolled onto Double Infinity’s old cherry wood floors an Otari 1/2 inch 8-Track and Studer console. To fill the air of the 150 year-old main room, Adrianne wanted piano, guitar, and violin. Mat Davidson plays them all. “I’ve known Mat a long time,” she says, “It doesn’t matter what instrument, his spirit just pours through.” At 17, Adrianne met Nick Hakim. She trusted her friend of 15 years to bring his sensitivity to the piano. “The way Nick would hold my songs, he would put every ounce of love.” Adrianne first met Josefin Runsteen in an Italian castle, and sought the classically trained violinist and percussionist’s “magnetic and contagious” energy. “She has such fire.” In addition to instrumentation, they made a chorus, adding carefully measured vocal harmonies. The sessions impressed and enchanted Adrianne. “I think the thing these people have in common, they are some of the best listeners I know musically. They have extreme presence.”

The shelter and ease of the woodland Double Infinity studio is an element of the recordings. “It felt like everyone’s nervous systems released,” she says. “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.” As a result, “Bright Future” has the best qualities of thoughtful engineering with the spontaneous swim of a field recording. There are details to savour, fingertips on strings, felt pads nodding in the piano, the harmonies a few steps back, all smoothly laid to tape. It comes together to allow Adrianne’s songs to be as they are, unarmoured and light-footed.

Admirers of Adrianne’s solo music and Big Thief will find on “Bright Future” her reliable talent captured in stunning, magnetic clarity. In the company of parlour instruments, Adrianne’s modern melodic and lyrical inventions create new traditions. Her vocal flights at times outwit gravity, then land, guiding along an earthly path. The wholeness of the un-spliced recordings preserves a time of musical friendship during a golden season. The album also features the original recording of the now-beloved Big Thief song ‘Vampire Empire.’ Although they recorded for only some days, in Adrianne’s recollection, “It felt like we were together forever.”

When the pandemic began, and the world shut down, so did the process of creating for Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam. In its place was a domesticity that the singer hadn’t felt in a long time, and although it was filled with many rewards, making music was not one of them. Reflecting on that time;

Beam notes:
“I feel blessed and grateful that I and most of my friends and family made it through the pandemic relatively unscathed compared to so many others, but it completely paralyzed the songwriter in me. The last thing I wanted to write about was COVID, and yet every moment I sat with my pen, it lingered around the edges and wouldn’t leave. This lasted for over two years.” The journey back began with a recording session in Memphis to record a handful of Lori McKenna tracks for the EP Lori with friend and producer Matt Ross-Spang.

The cathartic experience reconnected Beam with his love for making music, and soon enough the paralysis had passed, and he was finishing lyrics and booking studio time for what would become “Light Verse”.

“Light Verse” was recorded with engineer and mixer Dave Way at his studio Waystation high up in Laurel Canyon (with an additional session at Silent Zoo Studio with a 24-piece orchestra), with a host of talented musicians joining Beam: Tyler Chester, Sebastian Steinberg, David Garza, Griffin Goldsmith, Beth Goodfellow, Kyle Crane, and Paul Cartwright. And, Fiona Apple joined Beam on vocals for the duet “All In Good Time.” Beam lyrically once again takes focus on a series of both fictional and personal insights, filled with desperate characters and wide-eyed optimists, offering promise and a dose of heartache, tears and laughter, life and love. Taking stock in the album’s title, he jokes, “Light Verse” is a form of poetry about playful themes that often uses nonsense and wordplay, and it’s my first official Iron & Wine comedy album!…. Just kidding….”

While true this may be Iron & Wine’s most playful record, Beam says the title mostly reflects the way the songs were born with joy after the heaviness and anxiety of the pandemic. Where recent records like “Beast Epic” or “Weed Garden” gave air to the disquiet of middle-aged frailty and brokenness, these songs trade that for the focus acceptance can bring. Moment by moment, they delight in being pointed or silly (or both) and attempt beauty over prettiness.

“Light Verse” arrives April 26th, and it’s Iron & Wine’s seventh full-length overall and fifth for Sub Pop Records. Fashioned as an album that should be taken as a whole, it sounds lovingly handmade and self-assured as a secret handshake. Track by track, its equal parts elegy, kaleidoscope, truth, and dare.

La Luz have a new album, out via Sub Pop Records on May 24th, 2024!, Available on CD, band exclusive “black ice” with white splatter vinyl limited to 500 copies, and “Luzer Edition” on limited orange vinyl!

All preorders include limited edition newspaper, featuring side-splitting comics, plant facts, a crossword puzzle, horoscopes, coupons, space madness, and more!, “I was in a dream, but now I can see that change is the only law.”

With a credo adapted from science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, an album title from a collection of metaphysical poetry, and an expansion in consciousness brought on by personal crisis, guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland learns to embrace a changing world with unconditional love on “News of the Universe“, the new full-length from California rock band La Luz.

“News of the Universe” is a record born of calamity, a work of dark, beautiful psychedelia reflecting Cleveland’s experience of having her world blown apart by a breast cancer diagnosis just two years after the birth of her son. It’s also a portrait of a band in flux, marking the first appearance for drummer Audrey Johnson and the final ones from long time members bassist Lena Simon and keyboardist Alice Sandahl, whose contributions add a bittersweet edge to a record that is both elegy for an old world and cosmic road map to a strange new one.

Unashamedly vulnerable, unabashedly feminine, and undeniably triumphant, “News of the Universe” is another knockout record from a band so reliably great that it has perhaps led people to overlook how pioneering La Luz really are: women of colour in indie music forging their own path by following their own artistic star into galaxies beyond current musical trends, always led by an earnest belief in the cosmic power of love and a great riff. Never is that more true than on “News of the Universe”, which might be La Luz’s most brutal record to date but also their most blissful. After everything, how could it not?

La Luz – the band led by Shana Cleveland – has announced the May 24 release of their new album, The LP marks their first for Sub Pop. La Luz shares “Strange World,” the first single off of “News of the Universe”. “It’s been a strange and difficult few years, and at moments, I have found myself rushing to move forward in time, to leave the present and escape to whatever is next,” says Cleveland.  “The best advice a friend gave me during a time when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed and battling consecutive panic attacks was to go outside, take my shoes off, and sit with my feet on the earth. This seemed to slow the universe down in a way that made it feel easier to handle. So this chorus is something of a mantra to myself ‘we’ll be fine, just take your time.’”  The video was shot by Vanessa Pla and features Cleveland on a bike delivering the La Luz Observer newspaper whose headline reads “News of the Universe”  .

La Luz will be touring North America, Europe, and the UK in support of “News of the Universe”, and the first run of dates will kick off May 23 in Barcelona. 

Sonically, the record is all urgency. Songs trip over themselves as if trying to outrun the apocalypse: the breathless pitter-pattering of toms on “Strange World,” the title track’s finger-tangling opening riff drenched in murky distortion. An atmosphere of doom hovers hazily over the Sgt. Pepper-esque baroque pop song “Poppies,” on which Cleveland sings of a wavering orange idyll about to be set ablaze by the late summer sun. On the similarly kaleidoscopic “Dandelions,” she figures the yellow flowers for unsuspecting “little suns” soon to be “turning into moons” as the season marches on. The synthesized sounds used on the band’s last record, 2021’s La Luz, to mimic the languid buzz and crackle of a summer’s day in the countryside have been cut adrift in space—now they are silvery comet tails, dapplings of space dust, showers of stars.

But for every moment of fear, there is one of pure ecstasy. Shimmery chamber pop song “Blue Moth Cloud Shadow” puddles into a twinkly organ-driven reverie; “I’ll Go With You” starts out with the record’s sludgiest riff before turning into its prettiest song. “Always in Love” is a real power-of-love ballad that serves as the record’s centerpiece and is capped off by a fiery and jubilant guitar solo, Cleveland’s own “November Rain” moment.

A documentary on the life and music of Phil Lynott, “Songs For While I’m Away” tells the story of how a young black boy from working class 1950’s Dublin became Ireland’s Greatest Rock Star. As lead singer of Thin Lizzy, Phil Lynott was a songwriter, a poet, a dreamer, a wild man. Told extensively through the words of Phil himself and focusing on some of his iconic songs, the film gets to the heart of Philip, the father, the husband, the friend, the son, the rock icon, the poet, the dreamer.

Thin Lizzy rocks Australia outside the famed Sydney Opera House in this October 1978 performance. The line-up, consisting of Phil Lynott, Scott Gorham, Gary Moore & Mark Nauseef, performs an array of fan favourites including “Jailbreak”, “The Boys Are Back In Town”, “Bad Reputation” & more. Featuring remixed audio and cleaned up picture, this show captures Thin Lizzy at the top of their game.

Utilizing numerous songs from both the Thin Lizzy and Phil Lynott solo catalogue, along with interviews with Lynott (archival), friends & family, “Songs For While I’m Away” traces Lynott’s life from growing up in 1950’s Dublin to becoming Ireland’s premiere rock star, while also gaining insight into his family life.

“Songs For While I’m Away” features interviews with his wife Caroline, daughters Sarah & Cathleen and Thin Lizzy bandmates Scott Gorham, Darren Wharton, Eric Bell & Midge Ure. Additional interviews come from James Hetfield (Metallica), Huey Lewis, Adam Clayton (U2), Suzi Quatro & more.

The concert has previously been released in a variety of forms over the years on VHS, Laserdisc and DVD. This version features cleaned up video and remixed audio from multi tracks, presenting the show in the highest quality that has been made available. Key to this version is the discovery of 5 additional performances from the concert that have never been officially available. Because there are noticeable quality differences in the visual of the original concert and the ‘lost’ tracks, they are available to view separately on the disc and also available to view in sequence with the main concert. The CD features the show in its performance order.

Left us on this day (March. 08) in 2009: contemporary Mississippi blues musician Willie King (heart attack, age 65); he reluctantly began his music career late in life, having first worked as a sharecropper, moonshiner & traveling salesman; he became active with the civil rights movement, which inspired him to write socially conscious blues songs – he described his music as “struggling blues” because of its focus on the “injustices in life in the rural South”; it wasn’t until 1999 that he started recording – Born on a cotton plantation in Prairie Point, Mississippi in 1943 the son of poor sharecroppers, Willie was drawn to the blues at an early age. He made his first guitar out of bailing wire when he was seven and has been playing ever since. Cotton picker, moon shiner, juke joint owner, civil rights activist and social worker,

His 2000 releases ‘Freedom Creek’ & ‘I Am The Blues’, were the first of six albums; he largely shunned fame, preferring to keep his performances close to home at Bettie’s Juke Joint in Mississippi; Willie was the primary subject of the film ‘Down in the Woods’ & also one of the artists profiled in Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Blues: Feels Like Going Home’ documentary…

“Down in the Woods” is a DVD about the life and music of Alabama bluesman Willie King. The film takes viewers on a journey into the world of Willie King, a backwood, juke-joint musician who lives and breathes the blues every moment of his life. The DVD is a fascinating collage of Willie King’s life and many activities, illuminated with searing live performances and encounters with his family, friends, fellow musicians like T-Model Ford and music experts such as Peter Guralnick. It enables the viewer to experience what it is like to be a bluesman living in the Alabama Black Belt, “down in the woods.”

Willie now is one of the most popular blues musicians around. He played big stages and festivals but always returned to his beloved Old Memphis, a small and mostly African-American community in rural Alabama where he lives in an old trailer and preaches the blues at house parties and in ramshackle juke joints. Willie spent much of his time supporting his local community and teaching young people the traditional culture and survival skills passed on to him from his people’s share cropping and slave ancestors. Willie King is one of the true innovators of the blues in the tradition of Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker. His music is powerful, an exciting, danceable mix of rural blues, soul and boogie, all in his own distinctive style. King’s lyrics are often political, fighting racism and a voice for poor blacks in the South. He preaches a message of peace, togetherness and social justice for all people around the world.

It’s with that framing we welcome another “Darkness” tour show to the Live Archive series and complete the Capitol Theatre trifecta with the release of Passaic 21/9/78. It’s the final show of a three-night stand that would be the last small-theatre residency Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band would ever play in the Northeast. Let’s not forget these shows were something of an anomaly at the time, coming after a trio of gigs at the Palladium and the statement-making, three-night stand at iconic Madison Square Garden in New York City, both just a New Jersey Transit ride away.

Bruce was already many times bigger than the Capitol Theatre capacity, but his home state of New Jersey lacked an arena-sized venue until Brendan Byrne opened in 1981. The Passaic shows were a gift to those who lived across the Hudson River and especially fans on the Shore. When Bruce asks during the 21st show how many folks in the house are from Asbury Park, the roar is considerable.

The first night of the Passaic run was the legendary September 19th radio broadcast which spiked sales of blank tape in the tri-state area . That show and the more relaxed second night on September 20th, are both essential titles in the Live Archive series. Now, the equally enthralling final concert joins them.

Night three strikes an appealing balance of intensity and looseness, some of which can be attributed to its proximity to Springsteen’s 29th birthday, which would take place in two days’ time. The fans want to celebrate it and Springsteen lets them: he plays to the crowd and the crowd gives it right back in what might be the most interactive Darkness tour performance to be professionally recorded.

Amidst all the hand-wringing about setlist variations in recent times, the Darkness tour largely stuck to its core set and didn’t offer a great number of changes from show to show. That ignores the fact that when there were multi-night stands like Passaic, Bruce not only made surprise additions (usually covers, ), but in the days leading up he prepped special material for the run. At the Capitol Theatre this included the return of deep cuts like “Meeting Across The River,” “Incident on 57th Street,” “Kitty’s Back,” and even “The Fever.”

Those older songs were clearly a nod to long time fans from the area, but the key setlist-change feature of the Darkness tour was its rock ‘n’ roll jukebox covers: the exceptionally capable E Street Band regularly performed foundational rock songs like “Rave On,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “Summertime Blues.” With rollicking reverence, it’s obvious how much pleasure Springsteen got from taking each golden nugget for a ride.

September 21st, 1978 was a hot day in New Jersey and the Capitol Theatre was surely warm and sticky when Springsteen kicked off the evening with Jerry Lee Lewis’ “High School Confidential.” This is one of nine performances of the song that year, and marks its first appearance in the Live Archive series.

Later in the first set, we get another Archive series debut cover, Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,” featuring great baritone saxophone from Clarence Clemons and a spirited vocal from Springsteen that includes the fitting lyrical rewrite, “deep in the heart of Passaic.”

Those are but two highlights in a sterling opening set that also includes the work-in-progress “Independence Day” and an interesting “Prove It All Night.” Max Weinberg drops the beat at the 1:07 mark, and in Jon Altschiller’s detailed mix we hear just how important Clemons’ triangle playing is to the rhythm and tone of the song’s enchanting prelude. Mix inspectors will also likely be pleased with the placement of Danny Federici’s fader throughout the show compared to other ’78 releases.

Set one ends with the perfect pairing of “Meeting Across the River” into “Jungleland.” If we needed further confirmation of Springsteen’s commitment to his performance, we get it in two signature, heightened “Jungleland” vocal lines, as he reaches to his upper range to punctuate “dress in the latest rage” and “desperate as the night moves on.”

Given how well it worked the night before, the second set opens with a very early “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” again complete with fake snowfall and Springsteen doing his best Darlene Love imitation at the end. Clemons’ fine percussion playing and some impressive flying cymbal work from Weinberg mark an excellent “Because the Night,” one of five unreleased original songs featured in the 21st set along with the aforementioned “Independence Day,” “Fire,” “Point Blank” (in a version with great glockenspiel from Federici and piano from Roy Bittan) and “The Fever.” While our familiarity with those songs means we take their inclusion for granted in a 1978 show, if five unreleased originals were to appear in 2024 sets, we’d be soiling ourselves with glee.

The second set features epics, too, including a long “Kitty’s Back,” in which Bittan turns in a solo that’s among his modern-jazziest ever, accented by more cymbal shimmering from Weinberg. Bruce eventually presents the audience with a choice between “The Fever” and “Incident on 57th Street,” but lucky them, he then plays both.

“The Fever” brings another memorable vocal moment, when Springsteen goes on an epic, Van Morrisonesque run through “But I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I — I’M GONNA BE ALRIGHT” at 6:15. Brilliant. As nature intended, “Incident” flows directly into “Rosalita,” and after vamping on the Village People’s “Macho Man” following the introduction of The Big Man, this deeply satisfying second set comes to a close.

The encore is a victory lap and maintains the energy of the main set with more vocal gems like Springsteen putting an exclamation point on his first utterance of “Baby we were BORN TO RUH-UH-UH-UN.” He elects to close the three-show homecoming with the night’s fourth cover, perhaps the most beloved encore song yet to be played in Passaic, Gary U.S. Bonds’ “Quarter To Three.” Led by Clemons’ wailing saxophone, the version runs some ten minutes before Springsteen and the band finally wave goodbye.

After they leave the stage, someone (promoter John Scher perhaps?) takes to the microphone to say, “It’s been a wonderful three nights. A great way to help Bruce celebrate his birthday.” True, but the real gift of Passaic is the recordings the Record Plant Mobile Truck made of all three nights.