The Fat Angel Sings

Los Angeles, CA’s  band Rocket have announced their highly anticipated debut album, “R is for Rocket“, due out Oct ober 3rd via Transgressive Records / Canvasback. The lead single “Wide Awake” is a jagged, fuzzed-out introduction to the band’s levelled up sound, balanced out by vocalist Alithea Tuttle’s sweetly hypnotic vocals. 

“R is for Rocket” is about relationships, the most important part of life; relationships with your friends, your parents, your girlfriend or boyfriend, and most importantly your relationship with yourself,” share the band. “‘Wide Awake’. is the perfect balance of all the elements of this record, after years in the making and countless versions, we’re excited to finally share it.” 

Comprised of Tuttle (vocals, bass), Baron Rinzler (Guitar), Cooper Ladomade (Drums) and Desi Scaglione (Guitar), Rocket have had a busy few years. The Los Angeles crew with friendships stretching back to their childhood formed in 2021, convening in an unmarked shed to put their debut EP to tape. Despite it being the first time any of them had seriously approached the idea of a ‘band,’ they seemed to arrive fully formed with combustible, airtight songs.

“R is for Rocket“, the quartet’s remarkable debut album, is a joyride through sonic terrain that is gloriously loud, anthemic, bombastic and beautiful, with instantly captivating songs that achieve the rare feat of evoking nostalgia while sounding completely new. The band’s jagged, fuzzed-out sound has antecedents in ‘90s guitar bands like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, but Rocket are doing something uniquely their own with those touchstones. It’s no wonder they are widely considered one of the most promising guitar-forward bands of their generation.

While the album builds on the energy of their critically lauded “Versions of You” EP, “R is for Rocket” is also hugely evolutionary, elevating the band’s craft in major ways. By the time they began work on the album in early 2024, they’d been on a near constant touring schedule, spending countless hours on the road opening for their heroes Ride, Sunny Day Real Estate and Silversun Pickups, and writing in their modest studio – a back house in drummer Cooper Ladomade’s parents’ yard – both refining and expanding their sound.

Rocket will embark on their debut US headline tour, kicking off in October after a run of August dates supporting The Smashing Pumpkins across the UK. 

Rocket’s debut album ‘R is for Rocket’ out October 3rd via Transgressive Records/ Canvasback

An upcoming career-spanning double-disc Ronnie Wood collection includes solo material as well as co-written songs with the Rolling Stones, Faces and Jeff Beck Group. “Fearless: Anthology 1965-2025” will be available in 2CD and 2LP formats on September 26th.

The set includes a cover of the Falcons’ No. 17 1959 hit “You’re So Fine,” Wood’s first new music since 2010’s “I Feel Like Playing”. The set also features a new essay by Paul Sexton with extensive interviews.

Wood is celebrating his 50th anniversary with the Rolling Stones. He’s released seven solo studio albums along the way. “Fearless: Anthology 1965-2025” begins with his first groups, the Birds and the Creation, when Wood was still a teen in the mid-’60s before moving on to work with Jeff Beck and the Faces.

The set’s other key song writing collaborators include Rod Stewart (the title track from Stewart’s 1971 LP “Every Picture Tells a Story“), Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top (2010’s “Thing About You” from “I Feel Like Playing), Ronnie Lane (the beloved title song from Faces’ 1973 finale “Ooh La La“) and George Harrison (1974’s “Far East Man” from “I’ve Got My Own Album to Do”). His cover of “Seven Days” by Bob Dylan originally appeared on 1979’s “Gimme Some Neck”.

“Fearless: Anthology 1965-2025″ is rounded out by four new songs: the original “Mother of Pearl” and updates of “You’re So Fine,” Allen Toussaint’s fun R&B gem “A Certain Girl” (with Pretenders stalwart Chrissie Hynde) and Hopeton Lewis’ rocksteady favourite “Take It Easy.” Imelda May is featured on “You’re So Fine.” These sessions were co-produced by Sean Genockey and Wood’s son Jesse.

Only a couple of days until Friday and the release of the new Allo Darlin’ album “Bright Nights”. It’s their first record for almost 11 years, 

On their first new album in far too long, Anglo-Australian indiepop quartet Allo Darlin’ are back with “Bright Nights” — marking the timely return of their smart, beautiful pop music, bursting with lyrics that resonate with experience and melodies that chime, echo and soar. While this isn’t a country album, the timelessness of folk and country influences are woven in throughout. In a fractious world, the warm embrace of “Bright Nights” and it’s emotionally-satisfying songs is as needed as it is welcome.

Allo Darlin’ are on tour in October – and it really does help us when you buy tickets well in advance! Nottingham is already now sold out, and Manchester has been moved to a larger venue.
Oct 7th: Nottingham The Old Cold Store – with Hobbes Fanclub

Well there it is, the new LP or comp, whatever. 4th of July exists now solely to celebrate the release of my record, sorry USA, you played yourself. USA people can order direct from the Fire USA store and get domestic shipping there, they aren’t set up for domestic USA shipping on bandcamp sadly. Oasis is back, Pulp is back, fascism is back, all of it. I am working on new music that is different and will alienate half of you but maybe interest some other people who have better taste and personal style.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples are a band that effortlessly captures the essence of indie rock’s golden era. With a sound that echoes the equally prolific and fellow British-Invasion-disciples Guided by Voices, they weave a tapestry of melodies that are both nostalgic and refreshingly original. Imagine the raw, lo-fi charm of GBV meeting the atmospheric melancholy of The Cure, all while channelling the storytelling of The Go-Betweens.

Having written more than 200 songs in the past six years San Francisco-based melodic DIY pop greats The Reds Pinks and Purples release an album of tracks previously unreleased on physical format. The band, which is the solo project of auteur Glenn Donaldson, has had a prolific run since the release of their debut album “Anxiety Art” in 2019 – an album that led to releases via legendary jangle pop label Slumberland Records – and this ninth studio album is the cherry on top of a very fine run of form. ‘Dead End Days’ chimes with the wistful unease and euphoric tenderness. ‘What’s In Your DNA’ sounds like a janglier Jarvis Cocker and ‘Citygardens’ is a shoegaze-y masterpiece, like how you imagine Spiritualized would sound if they were recording quietly in an apartment as opposed to a studio. Whilst technically an album of leftovers – misshapes that didn’t quite yet fit on an album – that the tracks are up there with the rest of Donaldson’s oeuvre and with the best jangly indie pop of the past forty years, is testament to Donaldson’s songwriting genius.

Joining the esteemed Fire Records, home to similar acts like The Bevis Frond, The Lemonheads, and The Chills, the band has finally landed where their music belongs.

An archival first-time on vinyl collection of rare tracks is set to be released in June, followed by their highly anticipated Fire Records debut in late 2025.

“Fire has one of the most iconic catalogues in indie music, I am humbled to be working with them. I count The Chills, Television Personalities, The Lemonheads, Spacemen 3 and more as formative.” Glenn Donaldson

“Since our studio was destroyed by the hurricane Ida floods, our music has been heavily influenced by the nature of water. ‘Get Me High’ is about trying to grasp a breath after unexpectedly losing everything. Inspired by children’s cartoons, pipe systems, and fluid dynamics, we created Ding Ding, creatures who find themselves lost in a foreign psychedelic world.” – Acid Dad

Building on their previous single, “1993,” “Real Good Dream” dives deeper into the dream-pop soundscape. Blending classic ’80s synths with shoegaze-inspired guitar, Acid Dad has crafted a world you won’t want to wake up from.

If you didn’t already know—we’re back! Our new single, “Real Good Dream”, is finally out. It’s been two years since we released new music, so we wanted to come back with something special. This track had been sitting on a hard drive for a couple of years, but it wasn’t until @webbhunt came along with his video idea that it truly came to life.

A video like this is usually expensive and requires a full crew to produce. Instead, Webb put in hundreds of hours learning the skills needed to animate and produce it himself—bringing this dream to life. His dedication and hard work deserve a standing ovation.

While it may seem like a new direction at first, the psychedelic core of Acid Dad remains as strong as ever. -Song Written by Vaughn Hunt, Sean Fahey and Trevor Mustoe.

Frankie And The Witch Fingers lurch into new territory with “Trash Classic”, a warped evolution soaked in synth-punk squalor and disintegrating glamour. Unconcerned with polish, the LP thrives in corrosion, offering rickety rictuses and distortion-drenched gospel from bottom barrels. This is their most jagged, volatile work yet: buzzing with attitudinal attrition, spat-out hooks, and rhythms writhing like exposed wires neath acid rain. Made between the scorched industrial outskirts of Vernon, LA and finally shaped at Tiny Telephone Studio in Oakland with producer Maryam Qudus (La Luz, Spacemoth), this one owes its gnarled edges to both geographic grit and a willingness to unravel convention; late-night sugar binges, chaotic cartoon marathons, and freeform studio experiments fed its spastic jaunt.

“Trash Classic” marks a feral mutation for Frankie and the Witch Fingers — a record that snarls with proto-punk venom, angular melodies, and electronic textures that cough and sputter like dying neon lights under a poisoned sky. Every day of recording began with cartoons blaring at full volume—a Looney Tunes ritual that turned the madness of the recording process into something almost childlike. Late at night, sugar-fueled candy binges kept the energy spiking, pushing the sessions into a fever dream of jittery, spastic playfulness.

It’s also a digital detour for the band, since their many discog-jamming catalogue adds released through Greenway Records, which otherwise trod in an increasing doom-psych direction.

This remastered glimpse into the Brondesbury Road sessions captures a formative moment in British progressive music-when Robert Fripp, Peter Giles and Michael Giles were sketching out the vocabulary that would soon define King Crimson. Recorded in 1968 using a single Revox tape machine, the material is raw but revealing: two early takes of ‘I Talk To The Wind’ feature Peter Giles and Judy Dyble on vocals respectively, both casting the song in a more folk-inflected light. ‘Suite No.1’ foreshadows ‘Prelude: Song Of The Gulls’, while ‘Why Don’t You Just Drop In’ seeds lyrical ideas later reworked into ‘The Letters’. ‘Passages of Time’ stands out for its bolero pulse and melodic motifs that would resurface on “In the Wake of Poseidon“.

The fidelity may waver, but the historical value is undeniable-this is the sound of a blueprint forming in real time.

The first standalone release of the songs from Giles, Giles & Fripp’s 1968 debut album, now with spoken word sections removed. While 1967 is rightly remembered for an abundance of classic albums, there were also quieter debut LPs emerging, signalling popular music’s imminent changes to a more rock-oriented, musician-centred approach.   It was also the year that Robert Fripp applied for a ‘singing organist’ role advertised by brothers Peter and Michael Giles, despite having no experience either as a singer or organist. 

Experiencing a few challenges and disappointments on the way, the year was an exciting one for the trio, who recorded a series of demo tapes which eventually led to them being offered a record deal with Decca Records. 

In 1968, “The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp” album was released, bringing a mix of folk and psychedelic pop interspersed with Goon-ish humour, a slightly confusing cocktail of seriousness and comedy but nonetheless an album showing some beautiful harmonies and fine guitar playing. 

“The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles And Fripp” might not have made waves when it landed in 1968, but it’s since become a cult curiosity for anyone tracking the tangled roots of King Crimson. The trio of Michael Giles, Peter Giles and Robert Fripp wove a quilt of psych, chamber folk, jazz daftness and classical eccentricity, within a spoken-word skit framing device (a la ‘The Saga Of Rodney Toady’, ‘Just George’). It’s less a precursor to “In The Court Of The Crimson King” than a sidelong step into the British art-pop twilight zone, with Fripp still years away from his feedback-drenched grandeur. Though it reportedly sold only 500 copies at first, reissues with bonus demos and singles have helped rescue it from obscurity, especially the 2001 Brondesbury Tapes, capturing home-recorded sketches that fill in the backstory.

For all its lack of commercial success, the album has been reissued on several occasions – though never in an edition that focuses purely on the songs. For this updated 2025 remaster, the somewhat dated spoken word/humourous interludes have been removed which has allowed for the songs to flow as an album revealing it as a charming, sometimes whimsical example of late British psychedelic music.

New 2025 remaster by David Singleton.