The Fat Angel Sings

The long wait is finally over! I am grateful to announce a new Withered Hand album “How To Love” for Reveal Records releasing April 28th, 2023. The artist known as Withered Hand . While a London native, he has based himself in Edinburgh for some time.

His elevating new single “Waking Up”, effectively the first single from his “How To Love” new album. Released via Reveal Records . Withered Hand (aka singer-songwriter Dan Willson) collaborated with Mark Freegard (The Breeders, Del Amitri, New Model Army, Lush, Pale Saints)  effectively the first single from his “How To Love” album. Being the first track we’ve heard from the he’s given us good reason to both look forward to the album he is to release on April 28th and also explore his back catalogue, the material of which was strong enough to get him a record deal with Slumberland Records.

Produced, recorded and mixed by renowned producer Tony Doogan (Mogwai, David Byrne, Teenage Fanclub, The Twilight Sad, Belle & Sebastian, The Delgados) at Castle of Doom Studios in Glasgow, the new album features guest appearances by King Creosote and Mercury-nominated English songwriter Kathryn Williams.

Withered Hand is the nom de plume of Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter Dan Willson, the new album, he continues to live up to his reputation as one of Scotland’s most gifted songwriters. Following his acclaimed debut “Good News” LP came 2014’s “New Gods” LP, both of which released on vinyl via Slumberland Records and featured Scottish luminaries from Belle & Sebastian, Frightened Rabbit and The Vaselines, as well as Pam Berry of seminal 90’s US noisepop band Black Tambourine.

Dan Willson notes, “It’s hard to put down your worries when you’re so used to carrying them around that they seem like part of who you are. This song is about taking a long hard honest look in the mirror and about the unfolding process of trying to trim my rudder a little every day to do something about what I see there. In my mind I was channeling a Street Legal-era Dylan vibe with that strident chord pattern and Pete’s swirling Hammond organ and brass and the band bring a lot of joy to this arrangement, we had fun with it”.

Willson started writing songs and singing in his thirties following the birth of his first child and the death of a close friend. With a wayward tenor and unaffected charm onstage, he has come to be celebrated as a songwriter and lyricist of rare wit and remarkable honesty. With songs picked up by MTV and cult series ‘Skins’, he’s gained a legion of fans including Jarvis Cocker and Rolling Stone USA, who deemed him an Artist to Watch.

the band:

Dan Willson – Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
Malcom Benzie – Electric Guitar, Backing Vocals
Fraser Hughes – Bass, Backing Vocals
Owen Curtis Williams – Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Peter Liddle – Keyboards
Richard Merchant – Trumpet
Ross McCrae – Trombone
Lynsey Payne – Saxophone
Eva Willson – Backing Vocals
Eugene Willson – Backing Vocals

Anna B Savage is a London singer-songwriter and musician. Her songs are stark, skeletal paintings of moods and reflection, using a palette of mainly voice and guitar. Most prominent is her voice – strong and sonorous, yet with a vulnerability that feels as if she’s in the same room as you

released April 22nd, 2022
Written on the floor of my childhood bedroom.
Recorded by Danny Allin in London in 2017.

For every track sold, a minimum of £1.30 goes to EarthPercent’s grantmaking programme, after deducting only third-party platform fees and applicable taxes from the purchase price. No EarthPercent operating costs are deducted.
Funds raised support organisations doing vital work to tackle the climate emergency. For more info go to earthpercent.org

Elvis Costello is halfway through his 10-night “100 Songs And More” residency at NYC’s Gramercy Theatre where he’s playing a completely different set each night, no repeats, where “each night will tell a different tale.” At previous shows, he’s been bringing out special guests who join him for a few songs, but on Tuesday night Elvis let the crowd know that he was the special guest, and given it was Valentine’s Day, he was playing a set of love songs. One of those was “Toledo,” which he co-wrote with the late, great Burt Bacharach, to whom he dedicated the song (and paid tribute to at the first night of the residency). Elvis is one of rock’s great raconteurs and his banter can be worth the price of admission alone, and it’s also fun to hear him rework songs, like The Attractions’ classic “I Hope You’re Happy Now” which he transformed here into a ballad.

There actually was a special guest, though. Imposters and Attractions keyboardist Steve Nieve, who came straight to the theater from his Air France flight, joined Elvis for the last third of the show, which included songs “High Fidelity,” a cover of George Jones’ “A Good Year for the Roses,” “Indoor Fireworks,” “My Funny Valentine,” “I’ll Wear it Proudly,” and “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” which has closed every show so far.

For this residency, Gramercy Theater has been redubbed Elvis House, with the titles of Costello songs printed on the stair steps and other special decorations, plus an extra large merch area with signed items, test pressings and more.

Steve Nieve will join Elvis for the remaining five Gramercy Theatre shows which resume Thursday and run through February 22nd.  Right after this residency, Elvis will take The Imposters on the road for a short tour and in May is hosting a destination concert vacation in Iceland.

SETLIST: Elvis Costello @ Gramercy Theatre 14th February 2023
This Year’s Girl
Starting to Come to Me
I Hope You’re Happy Now
Our Little Angel
King of Confidence
Blue Chair
Harry Worth
Home Truth
I Dreamed of My Old Lover
Dishonour the Stars
After the Fall
Toledo (Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach cover)
Beyond Belief
My Three Sons
The Puppet Has Cut His Strings
Stripping Paper
The Greatest Love
I’ll Wear It Proudly
Crimes of Paris
Adieu Paris (L’envie des étoiles)
Isabelle in Tears
High Fidelity
Riot Act
A Good Year for the Roses (George Jones cover)
Indoor Fireworks
My Funny Valentine
(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding

U2 has amassed a catalogue of classic music over the course of the Irish band’s enduring career — and on March 17th, Bono and the guys will revisit many of those songs for a special new album.

“Songs of Surrender” will feature “a collection of 40 seminal U2 songs from across the band’s catalogue, re-recorded and reimagined for 2023 in sessions spanning the last two years,” per a news release.

The latest preview of this collection touches on one of the band’s most beloved songs and biggest hits: “With Or Without You.” Here’s the new version, :

Here’s another preview in the form of a radically different take on “Pride (In the Name of Love),” which in its its original version highlighted 1984’s “The Unforgettable Fire”:

U2 used the platform of television’s most watched program, the Super Bowl, to announce a Las Vegas residency. “U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at the Sphere” will take place in Fall 2023 at what is being described as “the world’s most exciting all-new-state-of-the-art venue,” MSG Sphere at the Venetian. The run, announced just before Super Bowl LVII’s thrilling ending, will mark the band’s first live outing in four years. The venue seats 17,500; watch an extensive clip below.

When U2 performs in Vegas, it’ll be without drummer Larry Mullen Jr. The announcement comes with confirmation that he will take time out to undergo and recuperate from surgery this year. The band will be joined for these shows by drummer Bram van den Berg joining Bono, The Edge and Adam Clayton onstage at MSG Sphere. In a joint statement, they said, “It’s going to take all we’ve got to approach the Sphere without our bandmate in the drum seat, but Larry has joined us in welcoming Bram van den Berg who is a force in his own right.” Further details on Mullen’s health circumstances were not disclosed.

The Edge added, “The beauty of the Sphere is not only the ground-breaking technology that will make it so unique, with the world’s most advanced audio system, integrated into a structure which is designed with sound quality as a priority; it’s also the possibilities around immersive experience in real and imaginary landscapes. In short, it’s a canvas of an unparalleled scale and image resolution and a once-in-a-generation opportunity. We all thought about it and decided we’d be mad not to accept the invitation.”

The album title is connected to Bono’s recent memoir, Surrender, and its corresponding book tour Stories of Surrender.

The new versions of “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” “With Or Without You,” and “One,” the first tracks from the brand new set of recordings have been released in advance. From the Jan. 11 album announcement: “Songs Of Surrender”, curated and produced by The Edge, sees U2 revisit some of the most celebrated songs of their 40+ year career, including “With Or Without You,” “One,” “Beautiful Day,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Invisible,” for a musical reimagining resulting in a completely new recording of each track, to include the arrangements and, in some cases, new lyrics.

Guitarist The Edge curated and produced Stories of Surrender, and issued a statement about the project:

“Music allows you to time travel, and we became curious to find out what it would be like to bring our early songs back with us to the present day and give them the benefit, or otherwise, of a 21st century reimagining.

What started out as an experiment quickly developed into a personal obsession as so many of our songs yielded to a new interpretation. Intimacy replaced post punk urgency. New tempos, new keys, and in some cases new chords and new lyrics arrived. A great song, it turns out is kind of indestructible.

The process of selecting which songs to revisit started with a series of demos. I looked at how a song would hang together if all but the bare essential elements were taken away. The other main aim was to find ways to bring intimacy into the songs, as most of them were originally written with live concert performance in mind.

Reviewing these sketch recordings with producer Bob Ezrin, it was very easy to see the ones that worked straight off the bat and those that needed more work. We all got into the sensibility of less is more.”

The collection’s 40 songs are arranged across four separate albums, distributed across each of the band member’s names. 

The Zombies have released a second track, “Love You While I Can,” from their upcoming studio album, “Different Game”. The LP arrives March. 31st, 2023, via U.K. indie label Cooking Vinyl Records. In support of the release, and a forthcoming feature documentary, the band will resume their “Life Is A Merry-Go-Round” Tour in 2023 with appearances at Austin’s famed music and film festival, SXSW, as well as concerts in the U.S., followed by a full U.K. run in the Spring. More extensive touring is planned throughout the year.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers began work on the album after their 2019 induction and a U.S. tour with Brian Wilson. The Zombies are founding keyboardist Rod Argent and lead singer Colin Blunstone, along with drummer Steve Rodford, guitarist Tom Toomey and bassist Søren Koch. As primary songwriter and producer Rod Argent notes, “Making this album has been a joy from start to finish. Post-lockdown, we were absolutely determined to come together and record in as ‘live’ a way as we could – to capture the magical, fleeting quality of energy and immediacy of performance.”

“Different Game” is produced by Argent together with the band’s longtime live audio engineer Dale Hanson.

The album, their first since 2015, is being released in advance of a new feature documentary entitled “Hung Up On a Dream”, directed by musician and filmmaker Robert Schwartzman, and co-produced by Schwartzman’s Utopia Films, The Ranch Productions, and Tom Hanks’ Playtone, slated for release later in 2023.

Elvis Costello opened his 10-night residency at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City on Thursday.

“This is not the Bruce Springsteen show, by the way,” he quipped after performing the first two songs, “Welcome to the Working Week” and “Miracle Man,” both from his 1977 debut, “My Aim Is True”. Costello’s set, performed entirely solo, included early classics like “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes,” “Mystery Dance” and “Alison.”

Costello also performed a handful of covers, including Van Morrison’s “Domino.” He added that he enjoyed Morrison’s music when he was younger, “before he went totally mad,” noting that Morrison is now “a comedian.” He also performed a cover of Grateful Dead’s “Dupree Diamond Blues.”

“It’s been a tough day,” Costello admitted near the middle of the set, referencing the recent death of onetime collaborator Burt Bacharach, with whom he worked on 1998’s “Painted From Memory” and 2018’s “Look Now”. A really great man left us,” Costello said, before performing Bacharach’s “Baby It’s You,” best known as a hit record by the Shirelles in 1961.

Costello prefaced the first of the Bacharach songs he performed, “Baby, It’s You,” by saying, “I always like the opportunity to play one of his songs. And I was thinking, I want to sing a gentle song of his… I learned this here song from the Beatles (The Beatles recorded the song on their debut album two years later.). And you can sing with me if you want.” Indeed, much of the crowd murmured along and added the famous “sha-la-las,” along with the “cheat, cheat” that represents naysayers’ gossip about the couple in the song.

Costello also covered Bacharach’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “Please Stay” Thursday night.

The theme of the Thursday performance was songs written by Costello prior to releasing his debut album, “My Aim is True,” in 1977. He stretched that to include a few songs others had written prior to that date, But inevitably it allowed for the trio of Bacharach classics, two of which Costello had recorded before. He cut “Baby, It’s You” as a duet with Nick Lowe in the 1980s and later recorded “Please Stay” for his “Kojak Variety” all-covers album in the ’90s — both before he actually joined up with Bacharach to write the song “God Give Me Strength” for the film “Grace of My Heart,” followed a few years later by a full collaborative album, “Painted From Memory.”

Costello promised the audience — some of whom had bought a pass for the entire 10-night engagement at the Gramercy — that he would be exploring the catalogue of songs that he wrote with Bacharach himself when his long time pianist Steve Nieve joins the run six nights in.

You can see the set list for Costello’s show below.

When Costello announced the residency last year, he promised fans that he would play more than 200 different songs throughout 10 nights. He will perform solo for the next several evenings, before being joined by his longtime keyboard player, Steve Nieve. He also previously divulged — in the form of a poem in a press release — that there are surprise guests in store: “Let’s just set up the chair or two and play / In case some friends turn up along the way.”

For some fans, the opportunity to see Costello 10 nights in a row was too good to pass up. Craig Danuloff, a New York City resident who also runs the Bob Dylan fan club Freak Music, said before the show that selecting which nights to attend was downright impossible, so he bought a ticket for each one.

“How could I choose between them? How could I live with the set lists I missed? So it wasn’t a hard decision,” he explained. “More than anything I pray for great sound and that everyone else will shut the fuck up while he’s singing.”

Costello’s sold-out residency will continue through February 22nd.

Elvis Costello, Gramercy Theater, New York, 2/9/23
1. “Welcome to the Working Week”
2. “Miracle Man”
3. “Hoover Factory”
4. “(The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes) Red Shoes”
5. “Stranger in the House”
6. “I Can’t Turn It Off”
7. “Sneaky Feelings”
8. “Imagination (Is a Powerful Deceiver)
9. “Domino” (Van Morrison Cover)
10. “Living in Paradise”
11. “Baby It’s You” (Burt Bacharach Cover)
12. “Poison Moon”
13. “Dupree’s Diamond Blues”
14. “Wave a White Flag”
15. “I’m Not Angry”
16. “Anyone Who Had a Heart” (Burt Bacharach Cover)
17. “Radio Sweetheart”
18. “Mystery Dance”
19. “Mr. Moon” (Clover Cover)
20. “No Dancing”
21. “Cheap Reward”
22. “Alison”
Encore:
23. “Please Stay”
24. “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” (Nick Lowe Cover)

Teeming with melodic epiphanies and layered sounds, squid’s second album is a musical evocation of environment, domesticity and self-made folklore.

Like its predecessor, 2021’s ‘Bright Green Field’, it is dense and tricksy – but also more warm and characterful, with a meandering, questioning nature. expansive, evocative and hugely varied, ‘O Monolith’ retains squid’s restless, enigmatic spirit, but it still holds surprises for those familiar with ‘Bright Green Field’. it’s a reflection of the outsized progression of a band always looking to the future. like its namesake, ‘O Monolith’ is vast and strange; alive with endless possible interpretations of its inner mysteries.

From the forthcoming album ‘O Monolith’ out 9th June via Warp Records.

Formed in 1984, Dinosaur Jr carved a singular path through the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s, issuing a number of highly influential albums in the process before finding a home with Sire Records. ‘Where You Been’, their fifth record, emerged in 1993, at the height of enthusiasm for grunge and the alternative American rock scene the band had long been part of.

At this point in time, there is no questioning where J Mascis stands amongst his peers. His song writing has transcended generations and continues to evolve with each passing release. Everything he touches turns to gold, from the moment he started his shape-shifting band Dinosaur Jr. back in the mid-’80s, it was clear that he was more than your average frontman. J.Mascis oversaw the entire production and writing process for multiple LPs in the Dinosaur Jr catalogue, playing and recording almost entire albums as a one-man show. While Mascis is far from needing help to craft the blazing guitars and moody vocals that makeup Dinosaur Jr’s signature sound, some of his best work comes when a full band is backing his poetically bleak lyricism. Such is the case on the band’s fifth studio album, “Where You Been”, which was released on February 9th, 1993.

“Where You Been” marks one of the few albums released by the band via a major label that includes a full roster. Mascis was joined by longtime drummer of Dinosaur Jr, Murph, and a fresh face to the scene in the form of bassist Mike Johnson. With the full weight of the recording process lifted off Macis shoulders, he was able to truly hone in on his lyrical craft and vocal delivery while the rest of the trio rips through the wide range of tones delivered on this album. 

In just 10 tracks, Mascis and his band deliver one of the tightest and most well-rounded albums in their discography. This is very much a Dinosaur Jr album, seething guitar solos swooping in to knock the wind out of you right before the raspy sweetness of Mascis vocals carry you from one song to the next. Despite the undeniable style that is associated with the band still being present, “Where You Been” feels like a coming-of-age moment for the band. The playing from each member reached a level even higher than the bar they set on previous records, allowing these ideas to take their full form. Their chemistry shines the brightest during the bridges on these songs, these onslaughts of full instrumental pieces span from thrashing walls of sound to masterful bite-sized moments of pure rhythm. “On The Way” holds one of the more aggressive examples of chemistry on the tracklist, Dinosaur Jr gifts us with a bridge that would fit on a motorcycle gang’s playlist while a song like “Drawerings” features a more technically skilled moment with the blazing guitars and head-pounding drums creating a sort of harmony with each other. 

While the trio’s chemistry is a strong reason for the album’s success, with the song “Start Choppin’” marking the band’s highest charting single at the time, “Where You Been” is still very much a Mascis clinic. He toes the line of personal and relatable with his songwriting here, painting pictures that can be interrupted a variety of ways almost as if the pictures being painted are more on the abstract, minimalist side. Track 3 on the LP, “What Else Is New” is one of the best moments on the album and a highlight in the Mascis songbook in general. He’s stretching the possibilities of what his voice is capable of through a wavy melody as he delivers some of his most vague yet impactful lyrics. All over the album Mascis lays the foundation for us to build a narrative around his writing without creating a disconnect between his personal views and the music, forging these moments of clarity that still feel refreshing 30 years later. 

Mascis achieved something special with the lyrical content on “Where You Been”. He pieced together 50-minutes of scenic poetry that continues to provide solace to new fans the same way it did when people were hearing these songs for the first time in 1993. This style of songwriting breaks down generational gaps and time as we know it, creating a connective tissue that makes the world feel a lot smaller. The absence of directness in these lyrics gives these songs a sense of freedom, they were released into the wild with just enough disconnect from the author, making the listener an author in their own right as they build their own narratives around these 10-songs. 

30 years and a plethora of other releases from Dinosaur Jr, “Where You Been” still stands as one of their strongest. With the assistance of a full band, Mascis was able to explore new areas of his creativity and toy with his own blueprint in order to create a fresh sound without losing touch of his originality. In another 30 years, there will be another article written about Dinosaur Jr’s “Where You Been” as they created an album that is, in one word, timeless. 

 “Where You Been” is a great introduction to the music of Dinosaur Jr;