The Fat Angel Sings

Australian legends, The Church, have announced a release date for their much anticipated new album ‘The Hypnogogue’ – now due out on 24th February 2023 – and to sweeten the wait, they have unveiled new single ‘C’est La Vie’ along with news of an extensive US tour.

‘C’est La Vie’ sparkles with the classic sound of jingle jangle guitars and mountainous melodies – psychedelic and grandiose, cinematic and poised. Backing choruses add a shining lustre and Steve Kilbey’s voice is as enigmatic and dry as ever. Kilbey’s gift for story telling and poeticism is at the fore, the band behind him adept at creating a fitting sound track to the mystical journeys Kilbey embarks on.

The Church remain a veritable institution with their crystalline shimmering sound, insistent, pounding rhythms and dreamy, ethereal lyricism.

Kilbey says of the forthcoming album:

‘The Hypnogogue’ is the most prog rock thing we have ever done, we’ve never created a concept album before. It is the most teamwork record we have ever had. Everyone in the band is so justifiably proud of this record and everyone helped to make sure it was as good as it could be. Personally, I think it’s in our top three records.

The Church is now made up of bassist, vocalist and founder Steve Kilbey along with long-time collaborator, drummer and producer Tim Powles, who’s remained a staple across 17 albums since 1994. Joining them is guitarist Ian Haug, who has been with the band since 2013 and formerly of Australian rock icons Powderfinger. Touring multi-instrumentalist talent Jeffrey Cain is now a full-time member since the departure of Peter Koppes in early 2020. Rounding out the members is the newly recruited Ashley Naylor who one of Australia’s finest guitarists and is a long-time member of Paul Kelly’s touring band.

Dublin’s The Murder Capital are back with a new video for ‘Ethel’, the third cut from their forthcoming second album “Gigi’s Recovery”. The Murder Capital have released a string of singles from their upcoming new album ‘Gigi’s Recovery’. This record bids to add greater depth of sound whilst maintaining the spirit and energy that we’ve all come to expect from the band.

The meditative and plaintive opening line of the propulsive new single, “I always wanted it to be like this for us, strung out on love” finds the narrator at a precipice, the song a re-examination of past desires and priorities, whether they are worth still carrying, or if they should be left behind.

James McGovern, Damien Tuit, Cathal Roper, Gabriel Paschal Blake and Diarmuid Brennan bring the track in a hopeful and cathartic direction: “I always wanted it to be like this for us, having our first kid name her Ethel”. The song follows ‘Only Good Things’ and ‘A Thousand Lives’.

The band share about the new single: “The song ‘Ethel’ is a picture of a crossroads, really, asking you what you want from life. Whether you want to continue down a path of chaos, or make a change in your course. It’s showing you what is possible when you make the decisions that bring a sort of cradled warmth into your future. The idea of ‘Ethel’ is that you can have what you truly desire if you put to rest those short-lived fixes that never bring you any real happiness.”

“Initially I thought ‘Ethel’ should be the main character and do the dance at the end, and I always had this image from this French film called My American Uncle. Where it’s like a little girl standing up at a table. I originally had that image in my head for a rap video, but it didn’t really make sense to the song, I wanted this to feel more like surreal so then as I started finding more imagery, it kind of transpired that maybe the maid was the more interesting character.”

The John Congleton produced “Gigi’s Recovery“, set for release on January 20th via Human Season Records, follows the Irish band’s celebrated 2019 debut album, “When I Have Fears”, which reached a No.2 position in Ireland and Top 20 chart position in the UK.

The 12 songs of “Gigi’s Recovery” push the band into ever braver sonic territories, oceans apart from previous peers. Electronic elements are noticeably more prominent across the record, with industrial influences explored in greater detail than ever before and James McGovern’s bold melodies acting as a reassuring anchor so we never get totally swept away into the band’s new found soundscape.

“Gigi’s Recovery” Out January 20th

This is the “Gigi’s Recovery” UK/EU tour 2023.

Blues pianist Eddie Boyd’s 7936 South Rhodes was recorded in London in January 1968 with three members of the early line-up of Fleetwood Mac: Peter Green (guitar), John McVie (bass), and Mick Fleetwood (drums). It’s a tantalizing setting for Boyd’s straight up Chicago piano Blues, going heavier on the slow-to-mid-tempo numbers than the high-spirited ones. During the Sixties’ Blues revival, Boyd toured Europe with Buddy Guy’s band, and he toured and recorded with Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.

Tired of the racial discrimination he experienced in the United States, he first moved to Belgium where he recorded with Dutch Blues band Cuby & The Blizzards. Boyd died in 1994 in Helsinki, Finland, just a few months before Eric Clapton released the chart-topping blues album, “From The Cradle” that included Boyd’s “Five Long Years” and “Third Degree”.     

Tracklisting: 1. You Got to Reap 2. Just the Blues 3. She’s Real 4. Back Slack 5. Be Careful 6. Ten to One 7. Blues Is Here to Stay 8. You Are My Love 9. Third Degree 10. Thank You Baby 11. She’s Gone 12. I Can’t Stop Loving You

Eddie Boyd: Vocal, Piano Mick Fleetwood: Drums Peter Green: Guitar John McVie: Bass

London’s Jockstrap deliver a wildly ambitious debut in “I Love You Jennifer B”. With the shadow of a prestigious music school behind them, the duo shake all preconceptions with an expansive record that collates heavy electronics and crystallising vocals. Comprised of Georgia Ellery (also of Black Country, New Road) on vocals and lyrics, and Taylor Skye on electronic production, the pair breathe new energy into the expansive boundaries of pop.

Cohesively eloquent and atmospheric, their contrast of musical styles becomes their signature. Opener “Neon” eases in with gentle guitar plucks and breezy silences, melding sweetly with Ellery’s crooning voice before crunching synths dart in, heavy and droning. The titular “Jennifer B” sticks out as a creeping, woozy affair, with hazy elements woven around seedy samples. Soaring orchestral arrangements delight on tracks like “Concrete Over Water”, while “Glasgow” indulges in flourishes of keys and uplifting string accompaniments.

Together, the ten tracks are a barrage of lightheaded vertigo, a culmination of five years of recorded work. The unpredictable evolution of previous EP offerings, the pair’s experimentation displays a keen ear for melody, and a reinvention of the modern colliding with classical influences. For a debut, Jockstrap are brandishing hugely enthralling potential.  I swear this album will become a classic one way or another.

Kathryn Joseph’s songs often tread a fine line between comforting and chilling, which is an astonishingly difficult thing to pull off. On her Lomond Campbell-produced third album, “for you who are the wronged”, her aim was more in the direction of comfort but there’s still a spine-tingling strangeness to it that’s undeniably arresting.

This is an album about abuse and survival, but the stories here are largely not her own. Assuming the role of observer, these songs are Joseph’s way of trying to make sense of the violations she sees being imposed on those she loves, and how she might, with care, give them something to latch onto. At its core is a smouldering fury, which Joseph keeps mostly under or just at the surface. Erupting would be too easy.

When she does bare her teeth, as on “what is keeping you alive makes me want to kill them for” and the sinister highlight “the burning of us all”, it’s done with love and loyalty. There’s even room for hope in places. Joseph wants to open doors with these songs, or at least to signpost where they stand. Concluding with the cryptic, glitchy “long gone”, which ends abruptly as if shutting something behind, the hope is that, one day, the exit is found. 

Kathryn Joseph released her stunning third album “for you who are the wronged” in April. Her haunting single is ‘what is keeping you alive makes me want to kill them for’. Watch the video below, it’s a startling song quivering with Joseph’s quiet rage, above sparse brittle keyboard motifs that mirrors the work of Cat Power or Portishead.

Always intense, insular and eerily pretty, the work of Scottish songwriter Kathryn Joseph may require a focused, sit-down listen to truly appreciate, but the payoff is worth it. Her third album “for you who are the wronged” is no exception, using mostly keyboards, minimal ambient percussion and the gentle warble of Joseph’s voice to toe the line between the harrowing and the sweet with ease. For all of the horrors she pulls out and condemns on songs like singles “what is keeping you alive makes me want to kill them for” and “the burning of us all,” there is also obvious love pouring from every note, letting the listener find comfort in Joseph’s creation even as the world seems to silently burn down as each track starts. “When the teeth sink in your skin / I’ll suck the poison out,” she promises on sinister-sounding lullaby “flesh and blood,” wrapping those left vulnerable up into the fabric of her work, letting them hear their experiences reflected in her thoughtful, intricate songwriting.

released April 22nd, 2022

“I’m just a fire,” Emily Wells sings on her album “Regards to the End”, her ethereal warble floating over a backbeat of drums. “Burn everything in sight.” And so she does, in a new body of work that smolders and scorches, wounding and illuminating in equal turn. The polymathic composer, producer, and video artist explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience—as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn—in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.

Wells, is a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a classical background in violin, often thinks in terms of an ensemble while composing. Along with a roster of contributors including her father, a French horn player and former music minister, she builds the songs on “Regards to the End” from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, string instruments (violin, cello, bass), and wind instruments (clarinet, flute, French horn). The music is numinous in part because the listening experience is a resoundingly bodied one. Life—unsanitary, beautiful, persistent, brief—swells inside of every note.

“Quietly transfixing” composer / producer Emily Wells is known for her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation, “a master of blending the worlds of classical and electronics” (NPR) and “dramatic, meticulous and gothic songs”

released February 25th, 2022

Produced, Written, Arranged, and Recorded by Emily Wells
On this album Emily performs: Vocals, Guitars, Synths, Programing, Drum Programming,
Violin, Viola, Cello, Piano, Bass

Enumclaw, the rising rock four-piece and recent best of new rising act out of Tacoma, Washington, shared one last single ahead of their debut album “Save the Baby” before its release this week. Our fifth preview of the album after “2002,” “Jimmy Neutron,” “Cowboy Bepop” and “Park Lodge,” “10th and J 2” is out now alongside a music video. One of the last tracks on “Save the Baby”, “10th and J 2” is also quietly one of the album’s best, a gleaming, twang-tinged strummer in which Aramis Johnson fights to safeguard his self-belief, even in the face of anxiety, isolation and doubt.

Over Eli Edwards and Ladaniel Gipson’s steady low end, Johnson and Nathan Cornell interweave warm acoustic chords and distant pedal steel, setting these heartland rock sounds against Johnson’s aspirational lyrics: “You should have it quoted / Say it all the time / I will be, I will be / Who I’m destined to be,” he sings, his heart set on running down that dream.

Enumclaw’s new single “10th and J 2” off of their forthcoming debut album “Save the Baby.”

Following on from Hutson’s breakthrough 2020 release “Beginners”, a record that saw him catch the corners of Phoebe Bridgers’ starlight, “Quitters” puts Bridgers back in charge of production, this time splitting duties with Conor Oberst. Taking cues from Elliot Smith and sharing the same downcast and detached musical DNA, they kept the recordings intimate, capturing the warmth and diaristic confessionality of Hutson’s performance.

But it’s Hutson’s lyricism that really lifts “Quitters”. Full of cutting insight, self-deprecation, considered wit and loaded imagery, he can illuminate a scene with the turn of a few words. “I’m peeking through the bandages, to see if I can handle it”, he sings on “Endangered Birds”, while on “Teddy’s Song” he paints a glowing portrait. “Asleep with the radio next to the bed on the floor, ‘cause it sounds like my parents talking through the door.” His lines are evocative, instantly accessible and intuitive. While his use of first-person often has him playing the punchline, his delivery is so inclusive you always feel like you’re in on the joke. 

released April 1, 2022

Produced by Phoebe Bridgers & Conor Oberst

With a melancholic breakup ballad turning into a global success, Inverness native Katie Gregson-MacLeod, was little known outside the Scotland folk and indie scene. On 4th August, Gregson-MacLeod posted a one-minute clip of herself singing a stripped back piano ballad called “complex,” a song she’d written in an evening about the strange dysmorphia that comes with wholeheartedly loving someone who will never quite love you back the same way. The next day, the snippet had received the full TikTok treatment, generating thousands of views by the hour. By the weekend, she remembers, “it was very clear everything had changed.” The world was singing the words along with her—everyone from teenagers making duet videos to the likes of Gracie Abrams and Adam Melchor—crowning Gregson-MacLeod as the next writer in line for the throne of social media’s favorite sad song anthems.

“People were just listening to it over and over again,” she recalls of “Complex” first blowing up. But while this kind of virality is thrilling, it can also be an overwhelming amount of pressure. “When I released the (demo) version, I got messages and comments telling me that I said certain words different and breathed in different ways from the original video.”

“It just happened that the song that blew up for me was one that I was very proud of.” She says that she’d only written “complex” a few days before posting it after a fresh wave of emotions about a previous relationship caused her to revisit that period in her life. As is the case with so many of the best songs, she remembers that writing it was a blur, the words pouring out of her quickly. Though she had no plans to release it—maybe, she concedes, it could have been a deep cut on an album a few years down the line—the Internet had other ideas. Three weeks after the initial clip, Gregson-MacLeod released “complex (demo),” a one-take version of the track featuring just vocals and a soft piano, recorded at an Edinburgh studio in her native Scotland.

Gregson-MacLeod’s rise has been stunning, but it’s also been extremely well deserved. “Complex” is in and of itself a stunning piece of song writing, but perhaps most important is that the song’s success came on the heels of years of hard work from Gregson-MacLeod that put her in all the right places once the right time came.