The Fat Angel Sings

Young Jesus is the moniker for the shapeshifting art-rock project John Rossiter founded around that time. Over the course of five albums, the project has had a revolving door of members helping to bring Rossiter’s heady lyrics and experimental compositions to life through the disparate and often convoluted languages of Midwest emo, post-punk, slowcore, prog, and alt-country before the inception of “Shepherd Head”, a new stripped-back solo record pairing Rossiter’s familiar existential, self-reflective, and theological themes with minimal, ambiance-heavy instrumentals.

Yet even these stripped-back compositions are so full of unique sounds and left turns that it never quite feels like a proper solo record (those guest verses from Tomberlin and Arswain don’t seem to help in that department either). While the lack of backing band in theory might leave room for Rossiter’s poetic lyrics to flourish, it feels harder than ever to focus on his falsetto—which ranges here from resembling Robin Pecknold to James Blake, depending on its accompaniment—as a whirlwind of fascinating sounds is constantly swirling around behind it.

With the record dropping today via Saddle Creek, Rossiter took the time to break down each track’s literary influence, citing authors ranging from bell hooks, to the Catholic theologian Meister Eckhart, to a personal friend whose poetry appears on the record.

After the release of 2020’s “Welcome to Conceptual Beach”, the band had drifted apart after too much time on the road, and Rossiter became restless. After the tragic death of a close friend, Rossiter felt a need for change. “I can be kind of perfectionist and a pretty intense band member,” says Rossiter. “I drove the band really hard for a while, and I don’t think I realized how hard I was doing that. Everyone was just burnt out on me and on each other. And I think I had wanted to reflect on that more, why I did push so hard and why I could be so demanding and stubborn.”

For the new album, Rossiter opted for something completely different. He opened up the songwriting process, relying on collaboration and improvisation. Instead of the band’s usual method of months-long rehearsal before cranking out an album live in the studio in less than a week, Rossiter decided to take his time, recording the entire record over a series of years using only his MacBook, GarageBand, and an SM57 microphone. He used found sounds, recording random people on the street, experimenting with white noise, piecing together scraps of songs from voice memos.

The result is a record completely unlike anything in Young Jesus’ discography. Rossiter’s voice is deep and lovely, conjuring a sense of melancholy and grandeur, but never with bitterness or despair. The disparate elements—the found sounds, the friend cameos, Rossiter’s disciplined songwriting—come together in thrilling and sometimes shocking ways. There’s a joy to the music, the wild hope and possibility that arises after tragedy, a feeling of revelation.

1. “Rose Eater” | All About Love by bell hooks

I was deep in a theory space—lots of niche terminology and academic language. I really wanted to learn the “truth” about the world and I thought because these books were hard to read, they held the “truth.” But it was always such a struggle reading those books, and very difficult to emotionally connect. 

Then we read All About Love and I felt angry. I was angry because it was accessible, emotional, and honest. To me, I wanted knowledge to be a scarce resource that you had to work very hard to attain. But this book showed me that the best thinkers take inaccessible, complex ideas and make them accessible. This book really changed how I think about reading. 

2. “Ocean” | Selections From His Essential Writings by Meister Eckhart

I feel like Meister Eckhart’s writings fit alongside Heraclitus, Tao te Ching, and Rilke. Prayers and sermons that are interested in the mystery of god, not the dogma. I like spiritual writing that creates a deep inner call. Eventually, through contemplation, it folds outward into the world. I used to want to be a monk, but I’m more invested in engaging with the world these days.

3. “Johno” | Ocean of Sound by David Toop

I got very excited about house music and jungle when I read this book. Really opened my ears to music that I hadn’t understood before. The writing is poetic, nonlinear. Stories weave in and out of the genuine love of music. There’s a sense of openness and adventure. Some of the sounds on “Johno” were greatly influenced by the music Toop writes about: Mr Fingers, Phuture, Psyche/BFC, Cybotron. Love reading books about music and listening to the tunes.

4. “Shepherd Head” | The White Stones by JH Prynne

To me, this is the best poetry book about feeling in love—to be in love with the world, to let it break your heart. It’s incredibly full, elegant, urgent. Thank you to Connie for showing me this!

5. “Gold Line Awe” | Jamie Renee Williams

Jamie wrote and read the poem that is featured on “Gold Line Awe.” Such a great writer. Order her zine emer.jent and read her writing along with a lot of great local writers and poets here in LA.

6. “Satsuma” | Belomor by Nicolas Rothwell

No one makes me feel the connection between melancholy and beauty like Nicolas Rothwell. It’s almost as if we live for pain so that it might paint the rest of our lives with different colors. His books speak to my soul. Wandering, questioning, a deep sense of how spirit is tied to place and how stories/art weave their way into the ground, the air become the ground, become the air. I always recommended these books to people when I worked at the bookstore and no one ever bought ’em.

7. “Believer” | Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

When I read this I started to think the Christianity I was raised with is kinda bullshit. The Gnostic Gospels represent alternative visions of the Bible. Some of them feel like questions, riddles, places for contemplation. It opened me up to my own interpretations of Christianity. I’m somewhere in the middle now, rather than complete acceptance or complete denial.

The thing about so many dominant ideas is that there do exist many alternatives. It takes a bit of digging because the world we’re in is deeply invested in the books and ideas that support it. So finding my own versions, my own spaces of belief and possibility, has been very important to me. It allows me to cling to the beautiful histories that they don’t often teach in school or church.

8. “A Lake” | Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Beautifully written. Very brave. I’m not sure what the future holds, but this book seemed to offer a way forward, an example.

Shepherd Head is an album of healing, of acceptance of weakness, of love, and of hope. It’s the sound of an artist stretching himself, going to new places and facing the pain and fear of life. Gathering together the sounds of the world, from the chatter of friends to footsteps of strangers, and building something new out of it. Something singular and unique. Something beautiful. 

released September 16th, 2022

About a month ago, Oslo-based fuzz-punk troupe Spielbergs dropped their aggressively upbeat sophomore album “Vestli“, a record that opens with an energetic sendup to Japandroids’ yearning noise-pop and mostly maintains that energy throughout its remaining eleven tracks. The Album Is About Being Trapped In Everyday Life’ – Spielbergs Get Reflective About Their Hometown On Second Album ‘Vestli’ ‘Everyone has the place that they grew up. We have the good and we have the bad and that’s what has shaped us into the people that we are today. That’s what the name “Vestli” is all about.’

It might not be a particularly original idea, but it’s one that’s almost universally accepted all over the world and when it’s combined with the fuzzed out punk rock power pop anthems of Spielbergs, it explains why the anticipation was palpable for their recently released sophomore album. “Vestli” is a suburb of Oslo, where two members of the band – guitarist/vocalist Mads and bassist Statil – grew up and shared their formative years.

‘There’s nothing to see there, just a pub and a mall’, Mads tells me. ‘A commuter town with lots of big buildings and not much going on. A great place to grow up when you were kids because there’s a lot of peace and quiet where you can run around and play, but not so great when you’re a teenager. Just a lot of drugs and smoking weed. That was it really.’

Sounds like pretty much every small town that every one of us grew up in right? But that’s what creates the magic behind the music when you listen to bands like Spielbergs. You get the idea that you could see ‘Vestli’ occupying the same place in the listener’s mind as the lore of other such bands, like the way that The Menzingers or The Wonder Years write so many songs about Philadelphia and The Gaslight Anthem pen their tales about New Jersey and New York.

Spielberg’s first album ‘This Is Not The End’ may have been well received, but when ‘Go!’ dropped during the pandemic the hype was immediately doubled.

Needless to say, it’s the stuff of unforgettable live shows—a sound that’s best consumed by having it blasted at you from an irresponsible proximity from the house speakers.

The band currently are touring Europe and the UK, the rest of us have at least gotten to see them rip through a few songs in the studio, with live videos from a late-March 2022 session at Oslo’s Studio Paradiso surfacing this month.

Previous tracks “When They Come for Me” and “Get Lost,” and now they’re sharing a third and final dispatch from the studio session with a performance of the album opener “The New Year’s Resolution,” a rousing, noisy take on anthemic pop-punk through to its final moments wallowing in a wash of feedback.

Spielbergs are Mads Baklien: Vocals and Guitar Stien Nettum Brennskag: Bass and Backing Vocals Christian Løvhaug: Drums and Backing Vocals Additional Instrumentation from , Ole Torstein Honig: Synths Kristopher: Guitar and Backing Vocals

The latest new Spielbergs album ‘Vestli’ released via Big Scary Monsters (worldwide) and Fysisk Format (Scandinavia).

Before Jon Brion had a hand in scoring “Lady Bird”, “Punch-Drunk Love”, and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind“, he made an album in 2001 that very few ever got to hear. “Meaningless“, released in limited format on his own label 21 years ago, is returning for the first time digitally and on vinyl through Jealous Butcher Records. “Meaningless” is a mystical auteur’s vision before his apex. It’s a grounded yet unabashedly eager record that unlocks new sonic quirks with every choral turn without overextending itself.

In the two decades since recording “Meaningless”, Brion has enjoyed making moves behind the scenes, collaborating on projects with Fiona Apple and Kanye West, and finishing the late Mac Miller’s posthumous Circles. This unearthed work, long vaulted and rarely heard, showcases Brion’s distinctive artistry, which combines a magnetic blueprint of charming, rambling vocals with timeless Wall of Sound-style arrangements. The songs on “Meaningless” are a strong diversion from his scoring work. Instead of well-placed instrumentals, he’s crafted his own songbook and emphasizes his own still-growing legacy.

The latest single unearthed from “Meaningless”, “I Believe She’s Lying,” is one of pure, joyful Y2K rock and roll, written in collaboration with revered singer/songwriter Aimee Mann. With a romantic buoyancy and machine gun percussion, the track fits easily into any genre category in 2022 while still feeling immensely tethered to the era it was first built in. That’s a testament of Brion’s skill and genius, that he can make pop cuts so everlasting. 

“I just don’t think we as creatures have the RAM to understand the physical universe, and anything beyond that, that’s beyond us,” Brion said of “Meaningless” existentialist landscape. “Maybe we get to know, maybe we don’t, either way, I’m OK with it.”

“Meaningless” Out October 21st through Jealous Butcher Records.

Post-punk newcomers Girl Scout met at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and started as a duo who bonded over the Beatles, Phoebe Bridgers, and Elliott Smith while studying jazz together and covering Burt Bacharach songs at cocktail parties. When they started writing their own original compositions, Girl Scout became a four-piece they are Emma Jansson, Evelina Arvidsson Eklind, Per Lindberg, and Viktor Spasov. Their debut single “Do You Remember Sally Moore?” is their first official release as a band, and it’s a stunner that pieces together components of contemporary bedroom pop with stems of vintage new wave.

“Sally was written as a homage to the absolute knockdown experience of going through high school. The original idea and overall story was created with visual inspiration from TV shows like Sex Education or Stranger Things, influenced by their portrayal of friendship, humour, and overwhelming emotions,” guitarist Viktor Spasov says about the track. “Part of the story was co-written with my own best friend from high school, Tobias Ekelund, and our shared experiences and friendship helped fuel the storytelling and emotional connection to the song.

Both of us used to fall in love with older, cooler girls, and we’d spend our lunch breaks in the school canteen dreaming about building up the courage to talk to them. Of course in the end we never did, and they had absolutely no idea who we were…. So Sally might be a representation of that hopeless yet wonderful one-way street kind of love.”

The band’s twelfth album, “Atum”, will arrive in three parts over the next six months, The Pumpkins are back with a brand new album treading familiar waters. “Atum” is a three-part, 33-song record billed as not just a rock opera but a bonafide sequel to their 1995 classic, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness“. Each track will be revealed, chronologically, each week on frontman Billy Corgan’s new iHeartRadio podcast, Thirty-Three with William Patrick Corgan. Furthermore, each chapter of “Atum” will be released 11 weeks apart, starting with Act 1 on November 15th, followed by Act 2 on January 31st and Act 3 on April 21st. 

To christen the forthcoming album, the band has released leading single “Beguiled” a heavy, distorted alt-rock cut harkening back to the sounds that made the Smashing Pumpkins a household name in the 1990s. Corgan’s vocals are sharp, but what defines the track is the expansive landscape the band traverses on the arrangements.

True to its rock opera form, there are many twists and turns, but none feel out of place or overwrought. The stems of “Mellon Collie and 2000’s Machina/Machine of Gods” shine through, as the Smashing Pumpkins are returning to their best-sounding selves. And to kick off a packed next six months, the band is heading out on tour with Jane’s Addiction and Poppy in October.

Tthe new podcast Thirty-Three with William Patrick Corgan – https://link.chtbl.com/thirtythreepod…

The Smashing Pumpkins’ official video for “Beguiled” from the upcoming album “Atum” vinyl boxset featuring 10 additional unreleased songs available for pre-order now.

Recorded at the famed Sam Phillips Studios (Memphis, TN) with producer Matt Ross-Spang and help from Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart, known collectively for their work in the indie-art-pop band Finom (formerly known as Ohmme), Iron & Wine preset “LORI” – their take on four of their favourite Lori McKenna tracks.

Sam Beam came to McKenna’s music a few years ago on the suggestion of a friend; as the lock down dragged on, Beam found himself like so many turning to music for comfort. McKenna’s catalogue of work was never far from reach. Taken by her heart-on-your-sleeve confessional style storytelling, Beam admits it’s a trait that draws him to McKenna and something not often found in his own song writing. As a well-known interpreter of other artists’ songs, when the time came for him to shake off the pandemic cobwebs and record, McKenna’s songs were as fresh and familiar to Beam as his own.

The special sauce on “LORI” however comes in the formidable talents of Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart. Having enjoyed successful solo careers outside of Finom, the two bring their own touches to “LORI” and helped Sam Beam find even further depths to McKenna’s songwriting. Together the three sonically re-interpreted her plaintive odes into a tapestry of sounds while effortlessly blending their signature singing styles breathing fresh life into the lyrics.

The track “That’s How You Know” was released August 24th with a lyric video directed, concepted and animated by Nebila Oguz. The full EP will be available NOW

“LORI” Tracklisting:

1. Like Patsy Would
2. Halfway Home
3. That’s How You Know
4. Shake

Helen Ballentine’s spellbinding first full-length album “Quiet the Room” is the sound of a window opening, a barrier dissolving. Across these fourteen tracks, the outside world seeps in and the inside world crawls out. The result is a stunning and quietly moving work that reflects the journeys we take through the physical and spiritual realms of ourselves in order to show up for the world.

While writing the album in the summer of 2021, Ballentine drew inspiration from her childhood home in Mount Vernon, NY. What she set out to capture on “Quiet the Room” was not the innocence of childhood, as it is so often portrayed, but the intense complexity of it. Past and present merge Escher-like in this dreamlike space laced with elements of fantasy, magic, and mystery. Musically, this translates into a sound that feels somehow weighty and ephemeral all at once, like a time lapse of copper corroding.

To capture the effortless blend of electronic, ambient, folk, and rock, Ballentine and her collaborator Noah Weinman brought in producer Andrew Sarlo to record at Chicken Shack studio in Upstate New York, close to where Ballentine grew up. “We wanted every song to have that little twinkle, but also a sense of crumbling,” she says.

These songs thrum with moments of anxiety that boil over into moments of peace, as on lead single “Whatever Fits Together,” which chugs to a ragged start before the gears catch and ease. On “It’s Like a Secret,” Ballentine struggles to connect and let people in, recognizing that no one can ever fully know our inner worlds and that to understand each other is to cross a barrier and leave a part of ourselves behind. And yet, on closing track “You are my House,” she finds a way to reach out. “You are the walls and floors of my room,” she sings in perfect, hopeful harmony.

As the album cover invites, these are dollhouse songs to which we bend a giant eye, peering into the laminate, luminous world that Ballentine has created. Like a kid constructing a shelter in a patch of sharp brambles, she reminds us that beauty and terror can exist in the same place. The complexities of childhood are so often overlooked, but through these private yet generous songs, she gives new weight to our earliest memories, widening the frame for us—even opening a window. 

Releases October 14th, 2022

A trio comprised of Bill Lennox (vocals, guitar), Bobby Colombo (vocals, guitar) and Jake Kmiecik (drums), Bonny Doon were formed in 2014 and put out a few 7”s before releasing their self-titled debut in 2017. “Bonny Doon’ is at once jagged and unfinished, languid and detail-oriented, restless and at peace,” Pitchfork said at the time. In 2018 the band began performing as the backing band for Waxahatchee and released their latest record ‘Longwave’.

“Longwave’ is a gently simple record but one which manages to exert an almost hypnotic pull,” the UK’s Clash Magazine said. Lennox and Colombo were also close collaborators on Waxahatchee’s critically acclaimed 2020 album ‘Saint Cloud’ and wrote many of the record’s guitar arrangements.

released September 15th, 2022

On Beat Radio’s last album, 2016’s “Take It Forever”, bandleader Brian Sendrowitz offered up a succinct chestnut of self-examination: “I’ll always be that singer / Who sings the words like they mean too much,” Sendrowitz declared on the rousing “Song for Camden Power.” “That’s because the words always mean too much in my mind.”

For Sendrowitz—Beat Radio’s singer, songwriter, and only permanent member that may well be a statement of purpose. Since starting Beat Radio back in 2005, amidst the halcyon days of NYC music blogs, Sendrowitz has excelled at writing open-hearted indie-rock songs that double as life rafts, carrying him through the tumultuous waters of adulthood, grief, and familial trauma.

You don’t juggle songwriting with raising five kids while recording demos in a laundry room if you don’t believe every word, and on “Real Love”, Beat Radio’s sixth album (and first since 2006 with founding member Philip Jimenez), it’s clear that Sendrowitz does. Songs ripple with catharsis and hard-fought empathy. Choruses reach out for understanding through the pain and disconnect. Put simply, it is Beat Radio’s best and most honest album yet.

“There was nothing to hold back anymore,” says Sendrowitz. “This whole record just feels like the record I was working towards my whole musical career. I went all in emotionally in a deeper way than I was capable of before.”
With a textured sound that splits the difference between lo-fi indie-pop, folk jangle, and emo vulnerability, Beat Radio grew out of Sendrowitz’s years as a mainstay in the early 2000s New York singer-songwriter scene. After growing up on Long Island playing in emo bands (one of which included a young Daryl Palumbo of future Glassjaw fame), Sendrowitz became obsessed with Bob Dylan and began performing in coffeehouses during college. In 2005, aiming to move beyond his folksinger origins and write anthemic pop songs with a more raggedy edge, he formed Beat Radio with producer/multi-instrumentalist Philip Jimenez (formerly of Wheatus).

The band’s 2006 debut, “The Great Big Sea”, attracted critical raves and drew comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel and The Weakerthans. Critics raved, and major labels started calling. But Beat Radio’s momentum stalled when the original line-up disbanded in 2008.

Over the next decade and change, Sendrowitz sporadically kept the dream alive in his basement studio while raising a family near the south shore of Long Island. “Real Love” (out this fall via Totally Real Records) represents a new beginning. For one thing, it marks a reunion between Sendrowitz and Jimenez more than a decade after the latter’s departure. Sendrowitz describes their collaboration as “a trust exercise”; he would send over skeletal demos and, in the hands of Jimenez and his wife Kathryn Froggatt, they would blossom into ornate indie-rock gems. “Real Love” is flush with lush sonic flourishes—the rustling banjos on “Lowlands,” the climactic sax on “Radioactive,” the elegiac violins and layered harmonies on the title track—that rank it as Beat Radio’s most fully realized record yet.

In 2020, when Sendrowitz began writing “Real Love”, he felt his world tilting off its axis. A dear friend died unexpectedly at 37. Struggles in his marriage had come to a head, forcing him to question his identity as a husband and father. And, as the new decade began, Sendrowitz went through a painful fracturing with family, which resulted in him becoming estranged from his parents a profoundly difficult decision that proved necessary for his emotional well-being.

With the help of therapy, Sendrowitz underwent a period of reckoning and painful growth. He took stock of his flaws and turned to music. Immersing himself in wide-ranging influences—from the grief-powered catharsis of Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree to the rowdy emotional intensity of Irish folk music (The Pogues) to a playlist he jokingly describes as “baby-boomer midlife crisis music” (Graceland! Tunnel of Love!)—he used song writing as a means to make sense of the chaos and to heal.
“The songs on this record are way more vulnerable and more connected to my real life,” Sendrowitz says. “I think I’ve learned how to be more emotionally honest as a person.”

On the stirring centerpiece “Family Name,” Sendrowitz confronts intergenerational trauma and what it means to accept a fraught family background (“The mistakes I’ve made and this psychic pain / Is a legacy in the family name”), while the jangly pop of “Protection Spells” finds the singer reflecting on a decision to sever family ties: “Needed to walk away / To save myself / And sleep to dream of better days.” “Solid Ground” is a somber meditation on a marriage strained though unbroken by crisis, while the immensely moving title track is the most honest kind of love song, which is to say, one that reckons with the difficulty of making love last across decades and life changes: “We’ve got a real love / Sometimes it ain’t enough / No matter what it takes / I’m never giving up.”

While that lyric was written for his wife, Liz, a similar sense of dogged determination describes Sendrowitz’s songwriting career. At 44, he knows he’s not a buzzy new band. But the songs have never felt more meaningful; the stakes have never seemed higher. “When I look at bands that feel like they started to coast, it’s because they don’t really have to prove themselves anymore. For me, I was just trying to go all in,” Sendrowitz says.

Featuring: Brian Sendrowitz – guitars, vocals / Philip A. Jimenez – drums, guitars, synths, vocals, percussion, banjo, bass / Kathryn Froggatt – backing-vocals, bass, tambourine

Releases October 21st, 2022

“Being Somewhere”, Dan Mangan’s sixth studio album, cuts incisively but never forget’s its underlying thesis: It’s cool to care. Mangan arms the rebels in the crusade for tenderness. The album is a combative plea for mercy from a manic world and its effects on the psyche. Whittling his sharpest pen to date, Being Somewhere is marked by Mangan’s singular wit and a respectful deference to the quagmire of existence.

“I wanted this album to feel like the inside crook of a familiar elbow on the nape of your neck, a comforting embrace.” says Mangan, “These songs are tender hearted and unfurl like an overdue conversation with a dear friend. They essentially lay out where we’re at, how I’m doing, and how I think I can help.”

Under the care of producer Drew Brown’s (Radiohead, Beck) distinct touch, “Being Somewhere” forges sonics well beyond the tropes of modern folk music. Helming the project from Chicago, Brown sourced musical contributions from all over North America, the UK and Japan, including work from Joey Waronker (Beck, Atoms for Peace), Jason Falkner (Beck, St. Vincent), Thomas Bartlett (The National, Taylor Swift), Dave Okumu (Arlo Parks, Adele) Mary Lattimore (Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten), & Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew.

releases November 2th8, 2022