The Fat Angel Sings

There are times in our life when we feel magic in the air. When new love arrives, or we find ourselves lost in a moment of creation with others who share our vision. A sense that: this is who I want to be. This is what I want to share. It’s a fleeting feeling and one that Kyle Thomas, the singer-songwriter who records and performs as King Tuff, found himself longing for in the spring of 2020.

But knowing he couldn’t simply recreate this time in his life at will, Thomas—who hails from Brattleboro, Vermont—set out to write a love letter to those cherished moments of inspiration and to the small town that formed him. The one where he first nurtured his song writing impulses, bouncing ideas off other like-minded artists. The kind of place where the changing of the seasons always delivered a sense of perspective and fresh artistic inspiration. Where he felt a deeper connection with nature and sense of community that had once been so close at hand.

“I wanted to make an album to remind myself that life is magical,” he reflects.

And so, Thomas seized upon his memories, creating what he calls “an album about love and nature and youth.”

The result is “Smalltown Stardust”, a spiritual, tender and ultimately joyous record that might come as a shock to those with only a passing knowledge of the artist’s back catalogue. On “Smalltown Stardust”, Thomas takes us on his journey to a place where past and present collide, where he can be a dreamer in love with all that he sees. Images of his youth abound: from Route 91 which runs through his hometown (in “Smalltown Stardust”); to Redtooth, a spectre who used to roam the streets (“Bandits Of Blue Sky”); to old friends, old haunts and old dreams (“Always Find Me”); to Vermont’s Rock River, which gave its name to a song of a torch still burning for past love: “Those days are gone and we can’t rewind/ Cuz people grow and places change/ But my love for you will never fade away.”

But at the core of “Smalltown Stardust” is Thomas’s desire to commune with nature on a spiritual level. Images of the natural world, from blizzards to green mountains to cloudy days, fill the songs and create a setting unmistakably far away from Los Angeles. “I consider nature to be my religion,” he explains, and “Smalltown Stardust” is nothing if not a spiritual exploration.

Thomas’s identification as a sort of eternal spiritual seeker is underscored in one of the album’s sweetest moments, “A Meditation,” which features a home audio recording of Thomas as an eight year old, trying his hand at leading a meditation. It’s a journey that he continues to this day, as he intones on “Portrait of God”: “Walking in the woods, wading in the river” and “breathing in the mountain air” before heading back to a place where he finds himself “Oil painting in my garage/ Let my colours flow/ I’m working on my portrait of God.”

While so much of “Smalltown Stardust” invokes idealized traces and places of Thomas’s past, the album’s recording process made his communal vision a reality. Thomas’s Los Angeles home in 2020 formed a micro-scene of sorts, with housemates Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Sasami Ashworth recording their own heralded albums (2021’s “Fun House” and 2022’s “Squeeze“, respectively both worthy of checking out) at the same time.

A shared spirit dominated an era spent largely on the premises, with Thomas serving as engineer and contributor to both records, and Ashworth working as co-producer on “Smalltown Stardust”. Thomas describes the time with a fitting metaphor: “I’ve always thrived around other people making things. You want to bloom with each other.” Ashworth’s contributions are vital to the album: she co-wrote a majority of the record and contributed vocals, arrangements, and instrumentation to each song. As Thomas notes, “I tried to follow her vision a lot. It helps to open your world to collaborators. You always get something completely different than you would have expected.”

With the gorgeous orchestral tones of “Love Letter to Plants,” it’s immediately clear that Thomas is declaring a wider vision of what his music can be. Gone are many of the squalling guitars of previous King Tuff records, replaced with thoughtful, tender touches of cello and violin on “Love Letter to Plants,” “Pebbles In A Stream” and “The Bandits Of Blue Sky”; a plaintive saxophone on “Always Find Me”; and orchestral vocal harmonies with Ashworth that lift the songs to a celestial plane.

(Though the rollicking, joyous leads on “Portrait of God” show Thomas hasn’t lost his touch on guitar.) On “How I Love,” Thomas makes clear that all of this is by design: “So lost in nothing but noise for so many years, I forgot to love.”

In the end, “Smalltown Stardust” is not merely a nostalgia trip. In making the record, Thomas not only conjured a special time in his life, he found new inspiration, surrounded by a small circle of collaborators and a sense of love and wonder for nature. If the first King Tuff record was content to merely state Thomas was no longer dead, “Smalltown Stardust” is a paean to what that life means. A statement of belief and a hymnal to the magic still to behold all around us. “I’m a different person now than I was 20 years ago when I first started it. But oddly, when I first started the band, it was more like this,” he says. Which is to say, things have come full circle. Or as Thomas intones on “The Wheel”:

“Ooh we were just kids then…
Caught up in the turning of the wheel….
And it’s coming ‘round again.” 

Releases January 27th, 2023

© 2023 Sub Pop Records

“I came across this Emily Dickinson poem and found it to be the most vivid description of an inner world I’ve ever encountered. It became an inspiration for the songs on Inside Problems. Who better to sing it with than Phoebe Bridgers? I sent her a demo and so, here we are. Thanks to Ms. Dickinson’s publisher at Harvard University Press for allowing us to use this poem. As I understand, her poems weren’t published as she intended them until the 1950s – that is, without the heavy hand of her male editors.” – Andrew Bird.

Andrew Bird is an internationally acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, whistler and song writer who picked up his first violin at the age of four and spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear. As a teen Bird became interested in a variety of styles including early jazz, country blues and folk music, synthesizing them into his unique brand of pop. 

Released October 26th, 2022

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard seem determined that their fans should have very little free time. “Changes” is the upcoming 23rd studio album by Australian psychedelic rock band, Who knows how long it will take to fully absorb and process the five albums the six-member Melbourne psych-rock outfit has released this year alone? “Changes”, the band’s third album to be released this coming month, is a departure from the psychedelic guitar noodling of early October’s “Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava”, toward a jazzier amalgam of influences like Queen, Stevie Wonder and the Beastie Boys.

The album was first conceived in 2017. That same year, the band released five studio albums “Changes” was supposed to be the final one, however the band didn’t think the album was finished, and instead released “Gumboot Soup”. The eventual release of the album contains “Exploding Suns” as it was recorded back in 2017. As stated by band member Stu Mackenzie: “Every song is built around this one chord progression – every track is like a variation on a theme.” The band had been “tinkering with” Changes since then, calling the album “not necessarily our most complex record, but every little piece and each sound you hear has been thought about a lot.”

Only those familiar with 2017’s “Sketches of East Brunswick”, KGLW’s collaboration with American stoner jazz collective Mild High Club, would even suspect upon hearing the opening of the album, during which a fast hi-hat pattern chases a slithery piano melody, that this blue note-inflected noodling was emanating from a gizzard of any kind. “Changes” was originally going to be one long song. That became the album’s 13-minute opening track “Change”, which was described as a “odyssey touching on kaleidoscopic ’60s pop, colour-splattered prog-rock fireworks, and floaty, keyboard-driven retro R&B”. Mackenzie described the following songs as building out of the first track: “Hate Dancin” is built out of one of the chord progressions from “Change”. And then “Astroturf” is built out of one of the chord progressions in “Change” as well. And so is “Short Change”, the last song. Every song on the album is built out of a section of “Changes”.

During the 13-minute epic, synth sounds transform the strange soundscape into a spacey groove replete with electric piano, tubby bass and whispery lyrics.

“Change for its own sake/ Uniformity gives me a bellyache,” guitarist-singer Stu Mackenzie sings. The song is sprawling but remains thoroughly chillaxed, at times punctuated by mellow scatting, until the huge rock outro reminds listeners they have a head with which to bang. The album’s other extended jam, “Astroturf,” which clocks in at seven and a half minutes, is pinioned by syncopated drumming and keys. Just  imagine an uptempo “The Virgin Suicides” soundtrack from Air. Whispery vocals are accompanied by blasts of horns. During the second half of the song, a funky flute dances with bubbly synth bass. Here, a band that earlier this month released an album that evoked comparisons to Santana, Yes and Magma seems equally at home dipping into the vibe from the Beastie Boys and classic vinyl.

The album’s five other tracks all set up their sonic base camps around vintage electric piano grooves and bumping drumbeats. “Hate Dancin” calls to mind Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” with its major key cheeriness and plunky Fender Rhodes piano sounds.

Standouts include “No Body,” which feels like a funky guitar solo, a further twist on Ween’s take on Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” The song’s huge hi-hat blasts add a touch of Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips sound to the sonic stew. “Gondii” sports a Krautrock vibe with Motorik-inspired beat and bleepy synths sounds. Mackenzie’s sort of new wave sounding vocals manage to sound mechanized but soulful.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard seems to operate almost like a bacterium or other single-cell organism, in that the band’s growth seems exponential rather than linear. Like a bacterial culture spreading to cover the bottom of the petri dish, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard is constantly exploring new musical landscapes, and like any good explorers, sending back plenty of maps of these territories. Good things come to those who wait, and the magnificent “Changes” is worth every one of the 2,628,000 minutes King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard invested in it. Soaked in the warm sonics of 70s r’n’b and guided by simple chord-changes that contain multitudes and rounding out another remarkable year for the group, their fifth album of 2022 is a luminous, soft-pop marvel. Come lose yourself in its slow-cooked brilliance.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

• Stu Mackenzie
• Ambrose Kenny-Smith
• Michael Cavanagh
• Joey Walker
• Cook Craig
• Lucas Harwood

Due to arrive Friday 11th November

Porridge Radio are vying for attention in what’s either a crowded genre or a thriving scene. But two years on from their acclaimed “Every Bad”, their latest LP “Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky” cements the band’s spot in the canon of 2020s UK post-punk. Dana Margolin and co return with an articulate, angry example of why the UK’s post-punk scene is so great. The band’s sound is shifting and dynamic: simultaneously aggressive and vulnerable, confident and unsure of itself. The blend of indie, shoegaze and post-punk (and the record’s penchant for sudden bursts of noise) leads you to feel as though you’re standing at the bottom of an enormous wave, not quite sure as to when it will break.

With the opening (barring the intro track –) “Back To The Radio”, the band claim a spot themselves at the heavier, darker end of the genre. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the anxiety and the isolation of the pandemic is the driver behind that decision, and you’d be partially correct – but Porridge Radio have always had a restrained anger present in their music; “Waterslide…” simply represents a refinement of that anger, rather than an amplification of it. Frontwoman Dana Margolin’s vocals have always been a far-cry from the softer speak-singing of Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw or the theatrical delivery of Black Country New Road’s (now former) vocalist Isaac Wood – when she pulls out all of the stops, she strays into a raw scream reminiscent of Dresden Dolls-era Amanda Palmer. It’s the sort of uncontrolled yelling that feels like a last resort of expression, more restrained vocalisations having proved insufficient. 

So while they are equipped to address the last two years, that is thankfully not the only thing they do – the most explicitly lockdown-derived song being the opener feels like the obligatory acknowledgement of the pandemic that every new record must contain. Not that it’s a throwaway song, far from it, but for the rest of the album the melancholy isn’t solely sourced from lockdown isolation.

From track three onwards the record’s scope expands out to a much broader set of emotional peaks and valleys, addressing a gnawing emptiness whose roots run far deeper than the effects of any global pandemic. Ultimately, lockdown malaise would never have been a big enough topic for Margolin’s lyrical approach, which excels at painting vignettes of much bigger, complex feelings – and pandemic boredom has long since become one-note, a period in our lives where we spent most of our time feeling nothing at all.

The lyrics of their previous efforts were consistently smart and funny, and here they’re no less smart – but there has been a shift away from the whimsical, and towards a nervous, repetitive lyrical approach. The humour that is here is drawn from a rather dark well; such as the juxtaposition of the song title “Birthday Party” with an unflinching exploration of fears of death and dying, and the refrain “I don’t want to be loved.” Happy birthday to you…

It works for the scope of the album, but if there is an issue with this record it’s this sustained intensity. There’s not really a break from the anxious repetition of dour lyrics – not many glimmers of hope shine through across the 44 minute runtime. If you’re not prepared, it can begin to exhaust. However, adjust to the fearful world that the record paints and there really is a lot of variation and nuance to how the band explore emptiness.

The feeling of the record is saved from being utterly relentlessly dour by the balance of the instrumental arrangements. Often sparkling, pretty guitar lines are accompanied by bright synth textures, but there are plenty of heavier moments of noise and intensity. More traditional sharp and clean post-punk guitar lines often find themselves recontextualised and inverted, too, and Margolin isn’t afraid to stomp on a fuzz pedal and fill out the sound. It’s a Revelation RJT-60 thinline. I didn’t want to get the same guitar as everyone else, I wanted something that felt really good, sounded really good, looked really good – and wasn’t just a Strat.

The song writing is consistently excellent; tracks never really overstay their welcome, and each of the cuts has a clear identity and texture. The diverse production aesthetics on display serve to mix things up rather than muddy the waters; lo-fi synths and piano provide a sense of airy lightness to balance out thick bass and cuttingly-clean guitar lines. The layering runs incredibly deep, with multiple listens rewarding you with riffs, bass and drum fills that were hiding behind Margolin’s arresting vocal delivery. The way a lot of songs work is that we’ll play them over and over again as we’re figuring out how we want them to sound, and so with “Lilac” when we started playing it, it always had this big build-up at the end. But as we were thinking about how we wanted to produce it, how it would sound on the record, we thought obviously let’s just layer up all those guitars and add loads of effects and loads of guitars, vocal tracks and violin layers.

The dynamics of the record are immensely gratifying: guitar effects and synth textures shift with a drama that begins to edge into the territory of post-rock. A highlight in this regard is penultimate song “The Rip”, perhaps the biggest song the band has ever taken on: it begins as almost a synthwave track, and builds into a sprawling, cinematic second half driven by Margolin’s crescendoing yells, a fuzzed-out guitar riff and warbling synthesisers. The climax of the build is a jaw-on-the-floor moment executed perfectly, all the more impressive given the difficulty of pulling off bomblast within the ostensible confines of post-punk..

This, essentially, is why the UK post-punk scene is getting the buzz it is: most every band within it find their own approach to the genre, often to the point of transcending post-punk and becoming something entirely new. “Waterslide…” is a welcome reassurance that the 2020s’ crop of post-punk revivalists Porridge Radio exist as a thread in a colourful tapestry, and “Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky” is just one example of why this whole scene is absolutely worth your time.

UK duo Sorry are back with their first new music since their debut album and let’s hope there’s more with this came from. London once again features as a prominent character on Sorry’s second studio album, “Anywhere But Here”. ’If our first version of London in “925” was innocent and fresh-faced, then this is rougher around the edges. It’s a much more haggard place,’ Louis says.

Earwigged conversations, text messages, snatched speech recorded underground; the city’s discarded words fed into the lyrics which map the experience of urban life on a young and frustrated generation.

We are excited to share it with everybody. It’s been naughty intense out here the last couple years, we were sad not to play our first album to everybody but we did try to internalise the global inertia and break it slightly into these songs!

Produced alongside Portishead’s Adrian Utley in Bristol, the result is an angular, acerbic, bittersweet triumph. Our second album “Anywhere But Here” is coming out on the 07/10/22 on Domino Recording Company

“Eternal Ring”, the debut record from Los Angeles band Milly has been a long time coming, with the band originating as a solo vehicle for frontman Brendan Dyer. Since linking up with his bass player and collaborator Yarden Erez, the band has entered a phase they have coined as “MILLY 2.0,” inaugurated with the release of their 2021 EP, “Wish Goes On”. While last year’s EP introduced their hazy combination of ‘90s alternative, emo, and shoegaze, “Eternal Ring” is a tighter and more kinetic refinement, allowing the band’s nostalgic stylings to coalesce into a promising debut album.

From the first moments of  “Eternal Ring”, it’s clear that Milly’s songwriting is thoroughly rooted in various shades of ‘90s alt rock. There are echoes of grunge classics at play, mixing in equal measure with the spacey shoegaze of Hum, along with strains of confessional indie rock, and even occasional hints of alt country twang. The band offers up a decadent melange of influences, cooked up with both a steadfast love for indie classics and an undeniably compelling rawness.

While many bands are able to evoke the gauzy and hazy side of these styles, Milly succeeds most in how they imbue those styles with lean and punchy songwriting. Rather than remaining lost in a blur of guitar effects, Millys melodies offer towering gut punches, as demonstrated by the anthemic chorus and pummeling rhythm section on the opener, “Illuminate.” Meanwhile, tracks like “Marcy” and “Nullify” show off some legitimately solid pop instincts, imbuing the band’s choruses with honeyed vocal melodies and sharp guitar hooks.

Elsewhere, the band diverges slightly from their blend of ‘90s influences, incorporating a wider swath of sounds that range from lush to intimate. Though “Ring True” eventually builds into a distorted finish, its opening is soft and ornate, with Dyer’s vocals recalling the plaintive confessionals of Death Cab for Cutie or other emo touchstones. The record also gets a simmering slow-burning centerpiece with “Stuck in the Middle,” a hypnotic cut that finds the band stretching their mercurial chemistry past eight minutes. In contrast, the closing tracks, “The End” and “Carousel,” are both darkly meditative efforts, with the former conjuring the crushing dream rock textures of DIIV and the latter building on winding guitar lines before the record culminates in a soulful show-stopping solo.

Running throughout these tracks are meditations on the chaos of daily life, living with the anxiety of a new cataclysm lying right around the corner. The record was written in the early days of the pandemic and that uncertainty tinges much of the album, reflected even in its frayed instrumental edges and the reckless abandon of the album’s instrumental peaks.

Yet, for all of its ruminations on death and searching for meaning,  “Eternal Ring” feels neither resigned nor despairing. Rather, the record finds vitality in its darker corners, bringing forth a record with plenty of joy if you know where to look for it, be it in a potent melody or heartfelt lyric. In fact, you can look no further than the closing invitation of “Illuminate”一“Shadows come in if no one will sing again/Rest all you can til sunlight comes in again.

released September 30th, 2022

All songs written by MILLY

There’s a really nice moment in this month’s MOJO cover story. Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys is telling Keith Cameron about his hunt for a vintage David Axelrod interview when, with characteristically fastidious self-consciousness, he stops himself and asks: “Is that too MOJO?”

There is, of course, nothing that should be considered too MOJO, and most of us will recognise ourselves in such obsessive behaviour: that music fan’s hunger to go right back to the source.

As Arctic Monkeys return with another impressively complex album, loaded with knowing historical signifiers, we find Alex Turner in thoughtful, self-effacing mode. He tells Keith Cameron about a new track that didn’t make the final tracklisting of “The Car”. “I guess we don’t need to spend too much time talking about the song that isn’t on the record,” he muses. “That would be perverse – although it is pretty MOJO.”

We have some quotes for the boxset retrospective, then. But we also have Turner’s latest cratedigging epiphanies to enjoy alongside his own fine music. Last time the Arctic Monkeys appeared on the MOJO cover, in 2018, Turner enthused about the Francois De Roubaix soundtrack for Le Samouraï, and about Alan Hull’s “Pipe Dream“. This time, he’s turned us on to Gloria Ann Taylor’s “How Can You Say It”, a ‘70s R&B single where everything sounds slightly queasy and out of sync. Rich with classic soul resonances, but disorienting, too; a bit like “The Car“. Give them both a listen.

And don’t forget, of course, that there’s much more to an issue of MOJO than the cover story. This month we herald the arrival of Bob Dylan’s “Rough And Rowdy Ways” tour by sending John Harris to Oslo for a night out with the master. MOJO’s Bob Dylan special is also on sale now. BOB DYLAN: 1941-2022 REVISITED Deluxe Anthology Edition, two specials in one sumptuous single volume, is an essential purchase for every music fan. Also in the issue, Sylvie Simmons talks to those who know Tom Waits best. Paul Weller shows Pat Gilbert his tattoos. Bill Callahan is just as psychically revealing to Bob Mehr. Plus we have interviews with Alabaster DePlume, Joan Armatrading, Steve Harley, Eddie Chacon, Pauline Black, The Mary Wallopers, Charles Lloyd, Blossom Toes and Weyes Blood, and a How To Buy guide to ELO.

And for UK readers and all our print members/subscribers, the issue comes with the long-awaited sixth volume in our Heavy Nuggets CD series. Mighty jams from Groundhogs, Hawkwind, Edgar Broughton Band, Mighty Baby, Blossom Toes and loads more. A cratedigging mission on a par with Alex Turner’s, hopefully.

Los Angeles psych-rock juggernauts Frankie and the Witch Fingers have returned with the pummelling new single “Electricide.” The track appears as the A side on a new 7″ backed by the brand new “Chalice” — available via Greenway Records / The Reverberation Appreciation Society. The band is currently finishing their US tour which will finish off with an appearance at Levitation before they embark on a headline tour of Australia.

Following the mind-sweat psychedelics of their last album, “Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters…,” Frankie and the Witch Fingers snapped back into focus with the tar-pit grease-slick of “Cookin’,” a single that found them scratching through the rubble of rock n’ roll. With a new tour on the horizon, the band follows that single up with “Electricide,” a double side of singe that sees them chewing on iron-plated riffs at a breakneck pace. Fuelled by speed, smoke, and an elemental electricity, “Electricide” continues to embrace the street-level heft that crept in with “Cookin’.”

They drop into the single, already pushing the venom and volume to its limits, crushing the accelerator to the floorboards. Then, just before the three-minute mark, the band detonates the amps for maximum damage, hitting a heaviness that’s only been hinted at on record, evoking their explosive live shows.
The flip finds them cooling off, but only slightly, with a bit of desert twang butting heads with oxygenated synths. “Chalice” runs its fingers through the listeners’ lymph nodes with a neon- hued intoxication that’s just as enticing as the red-line rip on the a-side. It’s as potent a pairing as the band have offered up yet and just a hint of what the band has in store for the coming year.

Released through Greenway Records / The Reverberation Appreciation Society

The unholy union of Weird Nightmare and Ancient Shapes brings you the double A-Side experience of the year on a bright red 7″ vinyl! “I Think You Know” w/ “Bird With an Iron Head” delivers two sides of sing-along power-punk you need to hear to believe. 

This pairing is now available in physical form on a bright red 7”colored vinyl single. Featuring  Weird Nightmare’s “I Think You Know” on side A, and Ancient Shapes’ 3-part suite “Bird With an Iron Head” (+official video), ”Imaginary Agony” and “I’m Against the Wind” on side AA. All four songs are also available digitally on all DSPs from Sub Pop. 

Weird Nightmare and Ancient Shapes have a handful of upcoming Canadian release shows for the new single, as covered below. And Weird Nightmare will also be the main support for select Archers of Loaf east coast shows .

Weird Nightmare’s self-titled full-length debut is available now from Sub Pop Records. The LP’s limited Loser Edition on transparent cotton candy swirl vinyl, packaged in a special embossed jacket with semi-transparent obi-strip along the spine, can be purchased from megamart.sub pop.com, select independent retailers in North America, and at Weird Nightmare live shows. In the UK, and in EU, the Loser Edition is available on coke bottle clear vinyl (both while supplies last).

Ancient Shapes was spawned in 2015 as a recording side project of Daniel Romano. Here’s Weird Nightmare’s Alex Edkins on Daniel Romano, “I think Daniel is a real treasure and a severely underappreciated genius. He released 11 albums last year! I’m quite tickled to be sharing a release with him.”