The Fat Angel Sings

As Blondshell, Partisan-signed New Yorker Sabrina Teitelbaum is channelling honesty and rage, picking up the baton from alternative music’s greatest women.

Blondshell, the alias of her latest project, is a vehicle for female rage. When she wiped the slate clean and announced her debut single, “Olympus”, the caption of her Instagram post read: “It’s the music I’ve always wanted to make but was too scared to”. But what is fear when there are scores to settle?

Without the pandemic, Teitelbaum doubts Blondshell would have come into being. “I learned a lot,” she says. “I was so scared to spend extended periods of time alone, and when COVID happened, just like everybody, I had to. I think I can look back on myself with a lot more compassion because of it.” And at the end of it all, Sabrina Teitelbaum is a woman who is unafraid to ask for what she wants.

“I’m going back to him / I know my therapist’s pissed,” she plainly declares on her song “Sepsis”, an admission of defeat. The treatment she accepts in a relationship spreads through her self-worth like rot as she tries to untangle the riddle of herself through the lens of someone else. “And I think I believe in getting saved,” she sighs in a streak of masochism, “Not by Jesus, validation in some dude’s gaze / And I think I believe in getting saved / Holy water pull my hair right from the base.” But there came a point where Teitelbaum couldn’t force herself to swallow this long-brewed resentment. She’s spitting it out.

So Blondshell doesn’t represent a persona? “No.” Her lyrics are unambiguous. “I was never able to write figuratively,” she admits. “That concept is so hard, like, people who write metaphors in their music. I think it’s awesome, but it’s just not my skillset. My songs are all pretty literal.”

When writing the songs for her upcoming debut as Blondshell, she didn’t have sprawling ideas or an excess of material that needed whittling down. In a cautious and considered way, she dealt with her emotional upheaval track by track – guided by sheer instinct. But without the encouragement of producer Yves Rothman, a close collaborator with Yves Tumor, she doubts that the album would have arrived at all. ‘I think we make a lot of space for each other,”

Maggie Rogers‘ last album “Heard It in a Past Life” came out in 2019, and today the musician has shared news of its follow-up titled “Surrender“, arriving July 29th. The album, which was recorded in Electric Lady Studios in New York, Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios near Bath in England, and Rogers’ parents’ garage, finds the songwriter giving in to harmonic emotional buzzing.

The announcement came with an album trailer directed by Rogers and Michael Scanlon. In it, Rogers recites a poem. “When I’m angry or in love, I feel it in my teeth. Strange harmonic buzzing. Cuts through my hands. My jaw. My breast bone,” it begins. The video matches her recited words about relinquishing power to emotion with close-up images of Rogers, New York City traffic, and bright explosions of light, with the black-and-white montages recalling Andy Warhol’s work. What I assume is snippets from the forthcoming album break through between her spoken word, presenting collisions of guitar and powerhouse vocals.

It takes a combination of raw talent and deep introspection to birth an album like Maggie Rogers’ “Surrender”. Full of collaborations with artists as varied as Rogers’ old pal Del Water Gap and late-night bandleader Jon Batiste, the album never settles on a direct muse, but flits between radio-friendly rock and early girl-power pop.

While not quite as daring as its predecessor, “Heard It in a Past Life”, the album still delivers as an honest expression of the singer’s desire to be taken seriously as an artist. Perhaps Rogers said it best in “Anywhere With You,” one of the album’s breakout hits: “All I ever wanted is to make something fucking last.” This time around, she has.

‘Surrender’ – the new album by Maggie Rogers, available July 29th, 2022

The eight songs on the Norwegian musician Jenny Hval’s latest album, “Classic Objects”, are purposely dreamlike. They are more atmospheric and rhythmic than narrative and follow tangents into unexplored places. As both narrator and protagonist, Hval starts in a waking state and then lets the songs float away into unknown territory. The results suggest our primal urges and our conscious thoughts are out of balance. “Life could be a dream”, as the Chords sang us so long ago on “Sh-boom”. But then it wouldn’t be real. Hval implies that we need to find a way to incorporate our dreams into our everyday life but to be wary. Hval’s ethereal voice suggests that her art serves a higher purpose. Her role is that of a doula to help the listeners release their inner selves. The specifics of her experience help ground us.

Norwegian musician and novelist Jenny Hval releases her new album “Classic Objects” a map of places; past places, like the old empty Melbourne pubs Hval’s band used to play in, public places Hval missed throughout lockdown, imagined, future places, and impossible places where dreams, hallucinations, death and art can take you. It is interested in combining heavenly things and plain things.

“Classic Objects” is Hval’s version of a pop album. Every song has a verse and a chorus. There are interchangeable moments of complexity, interesting melodies throughout, and a feeling of elevation and clarity in the choruses. Heba Kadry mixed it to sound as though it’s played through “a stereo in a mysterious room.”

‘Year of Love’ by Jenny Hval is taken from new album ‘Classic Objects’, out now via 4AD records.

Performers Vocals Jenny Hval Keys and vocals Jenny Berger Myhre Bass Håvard Volden Keys Johan Lindvall Drums and percussion Kyrre Laastad Guitars Daniel Meyer Grønvold

S.G. Goodman has a distinctive voice that is not conventionally pretty. It serves her alt-Goth country tales of life and love well. Her Tennessee drawl and warbly delivery provide grit to the demonstrative values expressed. Her sentiments come across as nastier and more personal than anthemic.

Goodman’s not preaching on “Teeth Marks”. She observes the world around her and sees that too many people waste their lives or at least don’t spend their time wisely. The good life would involve centreing one’s life around the love of another human being instead of one’s job. Goodman is a queer Southerner who has received her share of abuse because of her sexuality. Her focus on romantic love seems to come as a defense mechanism. She’s enough of a realist to know that it’s not always a positive experience. Sometimes, love hurts, as in the title song “Teeth Marks”. Just because one may love somebody does not mean the other person will love you back.

S.G. Goodman gazes off into the distance as she begins the first song in this Tiny Desk session, rocking her body from side to side, connecting with a force inside and also just out of reach: maybe it’s something in her past or the image of a person she holds dear, or maybe it’s simply fierce, ragged hope. “I see all my love coming back to me — I can see it!” she wails in her piercing, haunted soprano. Her band revs its engine beneath her as she testifies about a rock and roll epiphany. As drummer Stephen Montgomery and bassist Mark Sloan push the rhythm harder and guitarist Michael Ruth lays down some pure-energy riffs, she squeezes her eyes shut and bears down on her guitar. Music, Goodman’s songs show us, is a route to both survival and transcendence. A proud and ever-questioning Southerner who invokes Tyler Childers, Dolly Parton and her own Kentucky accent in her between-song banter,

Goodman released her debut album “Old Time Feeling” early on in the pandemic and her astounding “Teeth Marks” released in June of this year. Goodman’s songs cultivate a direct gaze as they confront grief and stump for understanding. The two others offered here, “If You Were Someone I Loved” and “Space and Time,” show the breadth of expression she and her band achieve with their feet firmly planted on the ground of grassroots rock, the kind that echoes from bar stages and garages in Hickman, Kentucky, and countless small American towns like it. Goodman’s stories and her sound are very particular, but she’s a hero with big arms, an ordinary woman learning how to keep on keeping on. You can see it, that engagement and resilience, in every moment of this performance.

SET LIST “All My Love Is Coming Back To Me” “If You Were Someone I Loved” “Space And Time”

MUSICIANS S.G. Goodman: vocals, electric guitar Michael Ruth: electric guitar Mark Sloan: bass, vocals Stephen Montgomery: drums

Black Country, New Road barely waited a year after putting out their acclaimed debut, For the first time, to follow it with Ants From Up There. Just ahead of its release, singer/guitarist Isaac Wood left the band, citing mental health issues, and while his loss will certainly be keenly felt going forward, his presumably final statement with the band is a glorious whirlwind, 58 minutes of ambitious, anthemic art rock and chamber pop that captures your heart and doesn’t let go. “I’ve kind of accepted that this might be the best thing that I’m ever part of for the rest of my life,” bassist Tyler Hyde says. “And that’s fine.”

Black Country, New Road‘s sound is bold and progressive, unconcerned with imitation or revivalism. The six-piece paint classical and jazz instrumentation on a deconstructed rock canvas, layering atop nuanced lyricism that conveys sharp narratives and achingly-sincere emotions.

It’s a heady combination, but one that makes a riveting antidote to their post-punk peers’ seemingly-endless obsession with aping genres that lived and died 40 years ago. It’s hard to overstate just how good “Ants From Up There” is. It’s not quite Black Country, New Road’s masterpiece, as the band are too young and raw for it to be that perfect. However, it’s tough to find much fault with it. The sprawling nature of the tracks, especially the final two, makes for staggeringly compelling listening.

The disregard for conventional structure and instrumentation, combined with the adroit, sincere lyrics, makes “Ants From Up There” one of the richest and most emotionally-honest albums released by a young British band for quite some time. In a world that seems content to reanimate the past perpetually, Black Country, New Road are daring to dream up something different.

Leeds’ Yard Act are one of the UK’s most hotly-tipped acts right now. The sudden rise of Yard Act during the pandemic isn’t something I think anybody could have expected. In less than three years, a band of anti-capitalist, sonic experimentalists became major label darlings during a time when the live music industry was nonexistent. On their debut full-length “The Overload”, they’ve managed to craft a distinct sound that’s refreshing enough that any comparison sounds a little farfetched but also recalls most eras of post-punk’s history at one point or another.

Go on the band…From: Leeds, UK, For fans of: Do Nothing, John Cooper Clarke
Yard Act will have you in stitches with their fiercely humorous lyricism which they couple with the catchiest post-punk grooves around.
You’re going to love them: “We’re gonna knock through the kitchen wall though, even though it is a lovely bit of Tudor”, Yard Act frontman James Smith stabs on one of 2020’s greatest indie singles ‘Fixer Upper’, it’s comedic genius as he assumes the role of a proud two homeowner disgruntled with the world around him. Going by the incisive and equally impacting other airings so far, this band are reinvigorating modern post-punk with a much-needed sense of humour.

The outlandish storytelling and deadpan delivery frontman James Smith transforms Yard Act from just another indie band to exciting propositions. Songs like “Fixer Upper”, “Peanuts” and “The Trapper’s Pelts” are satirical takes of life in West Yorkshire, neoliberalism, and a fictional obituary to a bloke called Graeme, all tightly delivered over unrelenting guitars and bass lines.

Many of the current successful indie rock and post-punk bands are still harkening back to the genre’s period of mainstream success in the 2000s. Yard Act definitely occupy a similar place in the genre to Black Country, New Road, Mush, or Black Midi in keeping the “post” in post-punk going through rampant experimentalism. However, Yard Act have songs that are more accessible to a mainstream audience than much of that scene.

Bill Ryder-Jones of The Coral and Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, Working Men’s Club) have both produced Yard Act tracks released this year, so they’re in very good hands.

The Brattleboro, Vermont trio Thus Love stand together, a bond cemented by their experience as outsiders looking in. For Thus Love, DIY is an ethos that reflects not only their musical vision but their very existence as three self-identifying trans artists. From the band’s inception, Echo Mars (she/her) , Lu Racine (he/him) and Nathaniel van Osdol (they/them) have lived together under the same roof, designed and produced their own merch, and created their own recording studio from scratch.

The band was just starting to regularly headline renowned local venue The Stone Church when everything came to a screeching halt. Rather than idly wait, the band decided to take their future in their own hands. Armed with nothing but YouTube videos and her innate curiosity, Mars constructed a makeshift studio in their apartment, recording during odd hours when their next-door neighbours were out and about.

Their resulting debut, “Memorial”, is a stunningly accomplished album. The hallmarks will be unmistakable to anyone who has ever obsessed over classic LPs from indie and post-punk’s progenitors—everything from the chiming, Marr -esque guitars on opener “ Repitioner ” to the pugnacious rhythmic punch on lead single “ In Tandem ”. But even more impressive and exciting is how Thus Love manage to tap into this celebrated lineage to find their own unique voice and tell their own story. Ultimately, despite the many difficulties and setbacks, the story of Thus Love and “Memorial” is one of triumph. Of seeking meaning in struggle. Of embracing community and love. Of finding joy in rebirth.

For fans of Dry Cleaning, Bambara, Ought, Television, The Church, Echo and the Bunnymen.

Guided By Voices‘ “Crystal Nuns Cathedral” is a startling late-career classic that brings back the welcome string arrangements from the last record and flaunts some of the most uplifting, imaginative rock songs of recent memory. Robert Pollard raises the stakes yet again with a hi-fi indie rock record for the ages and one of Pollard’s finest works. Here in-house producer Travis Harrison (known as the sixth member of Guided by Voices and now the equivalent of a George Martin for the band) delivers the most cultivated production possible, the latest iteration of the band sounding like an arena-tested live institution of the highest order.

The mighty Guided by Voices are set to unleash upon the world their 35th and quite possibly…BEST album, “Crystal Nuns Cathedral” . How do they do it you might ask? Well we don’t know how they do it, but we certainly do know WHY they do it. They do it because quite honestly we NEED them to do it. The world needs The Rock, and we need loud guitars, we need anthemic songs, we need a reason to raise a rock fist in the air and give a “Hell Yeah”! On “Crystal Nuns Cathedral”, the band delivers all of this and so much more.

On “It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!” slick production moves such as the fade-in to “Black and White Eyes in a Prism” and the underwater static of guitar riffs on “The Bell Gets out of the Way” perfectly wedded a hi-fi sound with a lo-fi ethos. This same mindset saturates the solid rock edifice of “Crystal Nuns Cathedral”. It’s an album indie fans won’t sleep through. Albeit brief, with “Crystal Nuns Cathedral”, Pollard and co. have struck gold once again, delivering a hi-fi record that proves itself to be just as virtuosic and inventive as any indie rock album of recent memory.

This record is a statement, a challenge, a monument, a call to arms. Top this one if you can, this is the new benchmark. Who will best it? Who will try? Listen to “Crystal Nuns Cathedral”, and report back to us. We will be eagerly waiting. 

released March 4th, 2022

All songs written by Robert Pollard, Needmore Songs (BMI)
Produced by Travis Harrison
GBV: Robert Pollard, Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr., Mark Shue, Kevin March

On their stellar debut, “The Great Regression”, Brighton’s five-piece DITZ come out hard and dark. They deliver an intense and sonically invigorating assault on the superficial politeness that masks systemic inequality while exploring the elements of personhood that cast some from the mainstream.

There’s an ominous build to these songs that results in each of them progressively morphing into pummelling, pounding, riffy anthems – an indomitable & incendiary force.

We’ve worshipped at the Ditz altar for a few years (they came together in Brighton in 2015), through their various line-up changes & developments in sound but 2022 finally delivered their debut album…& what a fucking incredible achievement it is!! even those of us who came to this with the highest of expectations have been left awestruck.

Their dynamic, experimental punk is savage, cacophonous & urgent but complex, layered & considered, so every listen will deliver new thrills & previously unprocessed aural assaults whilst also revealing a surprising & obverse melody & warmth.

Abrasive but accessible, their music carries themes of personal identity, particularly within the context of masculinity & femininity & insecurities around gender. ‘the Great Regression’ is full of anger, rage & despair but it also showcases their love of childish jokes, literature…& pedals. many, many pedals contribute to the ever-growing pile of equipment they gathered in order to make unusual sounds during the recording process.

Singer Cal Francis wrote that the track “I Am Kate Moss” is about “the separation between your visual and personal identities, particularly within the context of masculinity and femininity”. This separation of mind and body comes across in the album’s ten tracks, which balance cerebral spoken word and somatic song structures via familiar rock riffs. With cues from Foals and Ireland’s Gilla Band, DITZ place themselves on post-punk’s heavier, metal side. Their riffs are dark and simple, in the vein of Korn or Slipknot, but with artistic sensibilities more in line with Deftones and At the Drive-In.

“A vital reminder that, in order to embrace therapeutic progress, you need to regress. a taut, well-honed package it’s a brutal assault on the senses” – loud & quiet

released September 23rd, 2022

Spielbergs‘ twilit punk-pop is robust and immediate, coming at you like a sonic snow plow. Hailing from Norway, and naming their sophomore album after a suburb of Oslo in which they grew up, the trio make music that approaches the beefy riffs and emotive vocal refrains à la Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American not from sun-scorched Arizona but frosted-over Scandinavia. Indeed, there’s a sense of geographical dysphoria permeating the songs on “Vetsli”—of which the anthemic “When They Come for Me” and plaintive intermission “Goodbye” are standouts. As frontman Mads Baklien puts it, “You can leave Vestli but Vestli never leaves you.” Provided it falls into the right hands, the record may achieve the same.

“Spielbergs‘ twilit punk-pop is robust and immediate, coming at you like a sonic snow plow”

released August 19th, 2022