The Fat Angel Sings

Atlanta trio Omni will release their latest and greatest album, “Souvenir” for Sub Pop Records. Following their previously released singles, “Exacto” and “Plastic Pyramid (Feat. Izzy Glaudini of Automatic), comes the spellbinding visualizer for their latest track, “INTL Waters,” which was created by the band’s drummer, Chris Yonker.
 
The band shares about the song: “‘INTL Waters’ came together quickly with minimal intentions but soon grew lush with melodies and decadent piano flourishes.

Thinking about the sadness of villains as they float around between imaginary borders seemed interesting and amusing to minimize. We hope you enjoy this left turn as much as we do.” 
Omni has also announced headline shows supporting the album release “Souvenir”, 

“Burial Ground,” the Portland group’s first new material since their 2018 “I’ll Be Your Girl” LP, features The Shins’ James Mercer on vocals.

The Decemberists are back with a new single “Burial Ground,” marking their first new music in the six years . In addition to featuring The Shins’ James Mercer on backing vocals, clever lyrics, melodic guitar lines, jangly percussion, and the comforting vibes of a Ren Faire campfire abound. The Decemberists are so back.

“‘Burial Ground’ is in that time-honoured pop song tradition, a paean to hanging out in graveyards,” said bandleader Colin Meloy. “The melody hook came to me in a dream and I hummed it into my phone on waking. Most dream-songs are bad; this was the exception.” and recorded with our old pal Tucker Martine once again behind the board.

The Decemberists will head out on a massive American tour this spring and summer, 

The Reds, Pinks & Purples shares new single “Learning To Love A Band” from their upcoming “Unwishing Well” that is out April 12th on Slumberland / Tough Love Records.

“Learning to Love a Band” is about that blissful moment when you realize you truly love and understand a band’s music, but it’s also about being in a band, and that honeymoon phase you find yourself in which inevitably ends. I love music, and I love the people I have played music with over the years (mostly).”—Glenn

Crystalizing the tragic self-celebrating kingdoms of fortunate failures, false heroes, music press deities of limitless deceit, hometown dive gods and humanity in the grips of all its romanticized wonder and woe — the latest missive from DIY pop titan The Reds, Pinks & Purples takes aim at the threads of hope with an untethered abandon into the intimacy and dualities of idolatry and isolation with “Unwishing Well”.

Distilling the timelines of distinction from yesterday, today, tomorrow and whatever may be;  Glenn Donaldson has materialized a musical phenomenon that embodies something more than all of its analogous inspirations.

From a musical legacy that chronicles a long list of minor triumphs and major tragedies— the continued saga of The Reds, Pinks & Purples stands tall as the encapsulation of Donaldson’s own proliferation and prestige ever since its emergence in the late 2010s.

“Unwishing Well” pontificates on the promiscuity of the pop machines’ propped up and exploited brand ambassadors with the cutting “Your Worst Song is Your Greatest Hit,” or the collective commissaries of commerce exhibitionism on “Public Art,” to auditing the forums of obsessive fandom with “Learning to Love a Band.” “What’s Going on with Ordinary People” balks with concern over contemporary states of regressive trends, while “Faith in Daydreaming Youth” questions what hope and valour can be found in the new pop culture vanguards that govern the world’s sovereign daydream nations. The dustbins of dastardly discontinuity are imbued with desire and grief on “Dead Stars in Your Eyes,”  to the discarded ditches of obscurity on “Nothing Between the Lines at All.”

The human addiction to languishing in anguish, misery and negativity tussles, tosses and turns on “We Only Hear the Bad Things People Say,” the penultimate ode to inherent human fallibility as “Goodbye Bobby” rides out into the gilded sunset glow.

The central set piece of “Unwishing Well” revolves around the title track that wrestles with wellness and wishes tempered by the sobering reality of ultra pragmatic skepticism. “Unwishing Well” is a reflection of us, the icons we adore, the Adonises we worship, the false prophets that proselytize the edicts from theses cults of personality, the fallouts, the third acts and the artistic fabrics that spool these sub-sects of artful dodgers into the stuff of legend. Glenn once again uplifts and uproots the undercurrents that carry the commonalities between the spectators and the spectacles.

releases April 12th, 2024

The Ophelias composed of Spencer Peppet (guitar & vocals, she/her), Mic Adams (drums, he/him), Andrea Gutmann Fuentes (violin, she/her), and Jo Shaffer (bass, they/she) have announced their new EP, “Ribbon”, out April 12th.

The Ophelias started amongst Peppet, Adams, and Fuentes in high school, with Shaffer joining in 2019. Although they began as an “all girl band,” they now identify as joyfully queer and trans. “Ribbon” finds the band fully in the adult world for the first time. Its songs explore spaces between right and wrong, good and bad, friend and enemy. Experiences that can’t be compartmentalized: the glowing in-betweens. 

“Black Ribbon” is the most synth-heavy and shoegaze-y track, and explores the newness of a queer relationship. Over swelling, emotive instrumentation, Peppet captures the rush of unpredictable romantic feelings: “Some kind of desire // That I cannot categorize // You are a Springsteen song // Dark sky in overdrive into the warm night.” The accompanying video, directed by Shaffer and Peppet, is stunning, featuring the band and fuzzed-out, Midwestern imagery that visualizes the track’s mood. 

The Ophelias are now spread across the States, reconvening in New York or Cincinnati to record and prepare for touring. They released their first album “Creature Native” in 2015, followed by 2018’s “Almost” and 2021’s “Crocus”. Throughout “Ribbon”, The Ophelias’ sound moves between genres, finding the niche between indie rock, folk, and pop. Fuentes’ violin sweeps cinematically through the EP, and Peppet’s emotive vocals work in tandem as she sighs, belts, and gasps from one song to the next. Adams and Shaffer stay locked in as the rhythm section, with both purposeful drive and intentionally placed embellishments.

The band members have a cerebral awareness of one another that only comes with years of collaboration. “What distinguishes The Ophelias in a field of indie auteurs is the dynamism of the quartet, whose other members… know exactly how much space to take up at any given moment.”

“To me, Lou stood out. The real deal! Something important to American music and to all music! I miss him and his dog.” – Keith Richards In honour of Lou Reed’s birthday, Keith Richards has recorded a cover of “I’m Waiting for the Man.” The digital single & music video are out now and featured on the upcoming album “The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed”, which includes newly recorded covers from Keith Richards, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Rufus Wainwright, Lucinda Williams, Maxim Ludwig & Angel Olsen, Rickie Lee Jones, Mary Gauthier, Bobby Rush, Automatic, The Afghan Whigs, and Rosanne Cash.

This special collection will be released by Light in the Attic Records and available on Vinyl & CD at fine independent record shops worldwide on Record Store Day (April 20th). It goes without saying that the legendary Lou Reed was a true rock ’n’ roll pioneer. From The Velvet Underground’s debut in 1967 all the way through the end of his days, Reed sang truth from his heart. He lived life to the limit—and then some. “The Power of the Heart” is a tribute to Reed’s freedom of expression with covers spanning his ground breaking years with the Velvets into his majestic solo career. Each track is a glorious extension of the Rock ’n’ Roll Animal’s soul, ever adventurous and avant-garde.

Annie Clarke returns with a new St Vincent album “All Born Screaming“, which is released on April 26th by Virgin Music/Fiction Records. Her first fully self-produced album, is St Vincent at her most primal.

Clarke’s seventh album, features guests including Cate Le Bon and Stella Mogzawa. Even have Dave Ghrol on drums.

‘Broken Man’ comes from “All Born Screaming”, the new album arriving April 26th.

Louisville rockers White Reaper released a new album, “Asking For A Ride”, at the top of 2023. They spent some of last year opening for Weezer on their indie rock road trip, and guitarist Tony Esposito got to shred at a Bengals game in the fall. Today, they’re releasing a cover of the Sound’s “I Can’t Escape Myself,” which kicked off the English band’s 1980 debut album “Jeopardy”.

“We wanted to put something out and we didn’t have an album yet so we covered a song that we love,” Esposito said in a statement. “We’ve done this before and we’ll probably do it again. The Sound is a really great band and you should check them out if you’re unfamiliar.”

Guitarist Hunter Thompson added, “The sounds we made sound so much like The Sound, you’re gonna have trouble differentiating our sounds from The Sound’s sounds.”

White Reaper’s cover of “I Can’t Escape Myself” by The Sound

For the first time, William and Jim lay down the definitive story of The Jesus & Mary Chain.

For 5 years after they’d swapped sought-after apprenticeships for life on the dole, brothers William and Jim Reid sat up till the early hours in the front room of their parents’ East Kilbride council house, plotting their path to world domination over endless cups of tea, with the music turned down low so as not to wake their sleeping sister. They knew they couldn’t play in the same band because they’d argue too much, so they’d describe their dream ensembles to each other until finally they realised that these two perfect bands were actually the same band, and the name of that band was The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The rest was not silence, and picking up those conversations again more than 40 years later, William and Jim tell the full story of one of Britain’s greatest guitar bands for the very first time – a wildly funny and improbably moving chronicle of brotherly strife, feedback, riots, drug and alcohol addiction, eternal outsiders and extreme shyness, that also somehow manages to be a love letter to the Scottish working-class family.

We’re really grateful to the Reid brothers for collaborating with us on an exclusive mix CD of influences. Half compiled by William, half by Jim.