The Fat Angel Sings

Without a brutal evaluation of their own becoming, TV Priest might have never made their second album. Heralded as the next big thing in post-punk, they were established as a bolshy, sharp-witted outfit, the kind that starts movements with their political ire. There was of course truth in that, but it was a suit that quickly felt heavy on its wearer’s shoulders, leaving little room for true vulnerability.

“A lot of it did feel like I was being really careful and a bit at arm’s length,” says vocalist Charlie Drinkwater. “If I’m honest, I think maybe I was not fully aware of the role I was taking, how I would be perceived. I had to take a step back and realise that what we were presenting was quite far away from the opinion of myself that I had. Some of the ways people would interpret the music and my performance isn’t really me, and I didn’t know why I was trying to wear that coat of the meat-and-two-veg rock guy. Now, I just want to be honest.”

Having made music together since their teenage years, the London four-piece piqued press attention in late 2019 with their first gig as a newly solidified group, Debut single “House of York” followed with a blistering critique of monarchist patriotism, and they were signed to Sub Pop Records for their debut album. 

TV Priest will release “My Other People”, the group’s follow-up to “Uppers“, their acclaimed debut, worldwide on June 17th, 2022 from Sub Pop Records. The album features the highlights “One Easy Thing” and new single, “Bury Me In My Shoes,” which you can hear now. “My Other People” was produced by band member/multi-instrumentalist Nic Bueth at Studio East in London.

Frontman Charlie Drinkwater says of the album,  “My Other People” is a more “open” set of songs, both musically and in our themes; in the process of writing we found ourselves talking about things other than anger or aggression. We wanted to discuss love, loss, and joy too. It’s a record about personal disintegration and destruction but also rebuilding again after this. It’s also heavily rooted in place, the music being a very direct response to Britain and England in 2021, but in a more abstract and textural sense. A muddy field viewed from a train window between cities, a patch of wildflowers growing next to a motorway, sticky carpets in a suburban flat roof pub, pissing rain on an August bank holiday, and the smell of diesel in an out of town supermarket car park. An angry, hopeful, shitty, beautiful island.”

As for  “My Other People” new single, he adds, “‘Bury Me In My Shoes’ is a hangover of a song. Last year was about reminding ourselves to hang on to good things; to remember you can love and hate in equal measure. That the answers are rarely found by looking backwards. “Bury Me” was written as a response to that general feeling of unease and creeping dread. A feeling you get from bad news on no breakfast.”

“My Other People” is now available to pre-order from Sub Pop. The band — Drinkwater, guitarist Alex Sprogis, producer, bass and keys player Nic Bueth and drummer Ed Kelland

Releases June 17th, 2022 through Sub Pop Records

Naima Bock knows how to sneak up on you. The London-based artist mines from folk traditions around the world (including Brazil, the homeland of her father where she was raised as a child) to create something revelatory that, at first glance, can seem understated. It’s to her credit that every element of her debut album “Giant Palm” feels justified despite employing around 30 musicians; these are songs with big emotions weaved into their inviting, latticed texture.

On “Working,” the album’s fourth song, Naima Bock bears witness to desolation. “I heard you were / Something special” she sings, her feathery voice dropping each syllable like a perfect marble over a tell tale heart-rhythm guitar. The subsequent description – of a house in some anonymous nowhere, infested with bloodthirsty bugs – is so vivid, and Bock’s recurring sigh of “It’s all been a waste of time” so defeated, you get the sense that the object of her scorn is internal.

The song gets progressively more lively, with jazz saxophone and jangly percussion adding colour to Bock’s malaise. And yet at the end, after sending us into a free fall, Naima Bock pulls a parachute: “Try and function / Do it for us all.” Whether sincere or an ironic skewering of platitudes, it’s another surprise from an artist so adept at them.

Smash cut to Kiwi Jr.’s third album, “Chopper”, overseen by trusted pilot Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs) on storied Sub Pop Records. Turning nocturnal with necks mock turtle, our Local Kiwi Jr. takes neon flight off the digital cliff – like The Monkees starring in Blade Runner; like Michael Mann directs Encino Man. Ten songs with synth shimmer, zen gongs with yard strimmer. The signs along the highway read “LESS BAR, MORE NOIR AHEAD.” Ah, those late summer, Joe Strummer, Home on the Range Rover Blues.

There’s a melancholy to all forms of flight, and the view out the “Chopper” is as hazy as it gets: mission-oriented, both stealth and self-realized. This album is decidedly (yet almost secretly) anti-patio-sunscreen-Beach Boys bachelor cruise sing-a-long. Sure, these songs let a little light through the blinds, but they sting insomnia, corrupt mayors, Kennedy Curses, sex tapes, and deer rifles. “Chopper” is the bird’s eye view of the big event – a real night time character of oil stain, film grain, search light, night flight. It is muscular and fragile; loud yet quiet: both an observer and somehow the observed spectacle itself.

What was slack in the slacker phase, got tauter, with lacquer glaze. Slick gloss, rightened wrongs; murdered boss, promoted pawns. With Boeckner transmitting high-voltage shocks upon every reach for a familiar instrument, Kiwi Jr. expands the palette with string machine song, synthesizered oblong, and Dentyne Classic Menthol vocals from area soprano Dorothea Paas (US Girls, Badge Epoch Ensemble) like the missing piece all along.

Kiwi Jr. brings the “Chopper” to a new space, demilitarizing the technology just like flasks, aviators, and cargo shorts. Graceful in the air above, but when the “Chopper” lands, there’s chaos on the ground. Kiwi Jr. shout, “Look Out!” When it gets close, it’ll blow the hat right off of your head.

Kiwi Jr. play ping-pong in the new lyric video for “The Extra Sees The Film,” a new track from “Chopper“, the group’s forthcoming new album out August 12th.

KIWI JR. is Jeremy Gaudet vocals and guitar, Brian Murphy guitar, Mike Walker bass, Brohan Moore drums, and everybody played a little bit of keyboard. 

The Lone Bellow Lyrics “Gold” This town’s too small for second chances Prom kings and queens and true romantics Main street on the auction block Let the window down, feel the wind Johnny put the paycheck in his arm Let the window down, let it in It’s in my blood, it’s in the water It’s calling me still I could leave, I know I oughta. “We don’t ever try to write songs with an agenda, so with ‘Gold’ the idea was to tell the story from the perspective of someone in a hard situation—in this case, a guy who’s stuck in the downward spiral of addiction,” stated guitarist Brian Elmquist. “We’ve sung ‘Gold’ as a folk song in the past, but for the recording we wanted to really experiment and push our sound as far as it could go.”

Nashville-based trio The Lone Bellow released their new single titled “Gold.” The first new release since their triumphant 2020 album “Half Moon Light”, “Gold” embodies an unvarnished intensity with a galvanizing look at the real-life impact of the opioid crisis. Recorded with their long time bassist Jason Pipkin and drummer Julian Dorio, the chorus explodes in a wild collision of bright piano tones, potent beats, and massively stacked guitars.

released July 21st, 2022
Written by Zachary Williams, Brian Elmquist and Trent Dabbs

Bread Pilot started in 2011 in Connecticut, high schoolers Taylor Hayden, Stephen Ibanez Jr, and Evan House began collaborating after meeting at one of Connecticut’s many basement shows – the three bonded over Animal Collective’s freeform writing style and discovered their shared appreciation for textured, atmospheric music.

After years of writing and touring, they tossed out many of their original tunes – hours of long jams, screams, and scattered arrangements – but several pieces still begged for the attention they deserved.

Those songs make up “New To You”, Bread Pilot’s full-length label debut that maps out a decade of memorable places and momentous occasions while exploring life’s most intimate emotions through detailed and dynamic arrangements. Catching the attention of Brooklyn indie label Double Double Whammy, “New to You” stands not only as the band’s first official debut, but as a testament to how far the band can push itself to reach its full potential – a blend of songs that are poppy and catchy, but non-traditional and non-linear.

Its softness and tenderness are at odds with emotion too strong to hold back and too intense to be hushed. Their harmonies are gentle and earnest, revealing years of deep friendship and connection. The move to Seattle was a catalyst for “New to You’s” completion, but Bread Pilot has provided an immersive, wistful escape from the disharmony of this world since the beginning.

Written in the southwest with the cacti and the dust kicking up around the clear sky, this album is about living in the future and looking to the past with some notion of peace tying them together. It’s a record of a personal odyssey into subtle and not so subtle struggles with mental health, love, and loss. Surrounded by dogs who were slated for to be put down but were spared to find a second chance.

Lead vocals and acoustic guitar were recorded by Wren in the doorway of Rancho Cowabunga studios in Arizona with the engineering guidance of Keith Abbott. Then they were sent through buzzing wires to Along the Way Studios on the Gulf Coast in the deepest south where Luke Franks added literally every other sound you hear and produced, mixed, mastered it into what it is today. Taken from a pen and ink sketch by Wren, the album cover design and concept was the work of Ryan Strong.

Luke and Wren make up Shelterheart and most folks who have heard this album note that it’s a turning point for the band and a worthy listen for you in your day to day life.

Shelterheart is Luke and Wren, friends who have been playing music together since 2005 when they met in the Bay Area, California. Toured together in long forgotten rock bands and various other musical projects up and down the west coast and the southwest for years. Though they live on different sides of the country nowadays (west coast/gulf coast), their musical collaboration has become so constant that they formed the band Shelterheart in 2018. Wren writes the songs – records them with acoustic guitar and singing and Luke orchestrated and produces all of the backing tracks. Wren’s drawings and paintings serve as an important visual component for Shelterheart and you will see them sprinkled throughout the band’s physical and virtual presence. Shelterheart’s first two EPs were released independently online. In 2022, Perpetual Doom and Along The Way Records will release Shelterheart’s debut full length album.

Released April 8th, 2022

Cloakroom celebrate their tenth anniversary as a band with their new album, “Dissolution Wave”.

“Dissolution Wave” is a concept – a space western in which an act of theoretical physics—the dissolution wave—wipes out all of humanity’s existing art and abstract thought. In order to keep the world spinning on its axis, songsmiths must fill the ether with their compositions. Meanwhile, the Spire and Ward of Song act as a filter for human imagination: Only the best material can pass through the filter and keep the world turning.

This is the universe that Cloakroom guitarist/vocalist Doyle Martin conceived as a way of processing the last few years. “We lost a couple of close friends over the course of writing this record,” he says. “Dreaming up another world felt easier to digest than the real nitty-gritty we’re immersed in every day.”

With lyrics based on an imagined cosmology, “Dissolution Wave” also marks a grand expansion of Cloakroom’s dreamy space-rock palette. Written from the perspective of the album’s protagonist—an asteroid miner who writes songs by night—”A Force at Play” has an airy, pastoral feel.

Meanwhile, the melancholy title track captures the miner’s regret as they lament that they signed up for such a long stint on the job, while closer “Dissembler” describes their anxiety about the revelator who will judge their work. “If you don’t write a good enough song in this universe, you run the risk of being forgotten and lose the opportunity to return as a meaningful form of life,” Martin explains. The stakes have never been higher! .

Released January 28th, 2022

Partner Look are a Melbourne-based band made up of German sisters Ambrin (Cool Sounds) and Anila Hasnain (Studio Magic), who are joined by their partners Dainis Lacey (Cool Sounds) and Lachlan Denton (The Ocean Party). The members also share a history of friendship and musical bonds. Trouble In Mind (in conjunction with Spunk / Osbourne Again in Australia) is honoured to be releasing “By The Book” – the band’s debut – a twelve-track charmer that swoons and smirks with a scrappy, yet sophisticated take on sparkling indie pop.

For fans of The Go-Betweens, Dick Diver, The Ocean Party, The Chills, Twerps, The Goon Sax, Yo La Tengo, The Clientele, Ultimate Painting etc.

Since the inception of Anxious in 2016, the band has always acted with purpose. This may seem like a simple premise, but for five kids still in high school at the time, it’s quite an accomplishment. Early songs were packaged in limited run demo tapes with accompanying zines and hand-dyed t-shirts. Weekends were filled with regional runs of shows outside of their Fairfield, Connecticut homebase. With this amount of effort it’s no wonder that within a few years of graduation, Anxious has built a solid foundation for their debut album to flourish upon.

On “Little Green House”, Anxious explores what it feels like to enter adulthood in unflinching detail. The Connecticut band unpacks struggles, joys, and hard-earned realizations in a way that makes them feel wise beyond their years. Anthemic songs like lead single “In April” and guaranteed singalong “Growing Up Song” thread the often difficult melodic-hardcore needle in a way that feels both nostalgic for the emo renaissance of yesteryear and precisely built for the current moment of genre defiant pioneering.

While crafting Anxious’ new album, “Little Green House”, the Connecticut five-piece were afforded a luxury so few bands are when making their debut album: time. With extensive touring plans halted and regular life on pause, the band—vocalist Grady Allen, guitarists Dante Melucci and Ryan Savitski, bassist Sam Allen, and drummer Jonny Camner—headed into Allen’s mom’s basement and reflected on each part of the material that would turn into their first record over and over again. The result is an artistic leap that, had the band’s plans to spend much of 2020 on the road actually been feasible, maybe wouldn’t have happened.

UK eight-piece Caroline’s eponymous debut album often cascades with force like an avalanche, squalling and rumbling on the edge of all-out collapse. At other points they slip back into impossibly fragile moments of quiet – a simple bassline or a rattle of snare the only sound amid a dark sea of silence. Caroline know exactly the right balance between restraint and release. These songs are expansive and emotive pieces, their rich palette drawing on a mixture of choral singing, Midwestern emo and O’Malley and Llewellyn’s roots in Appalachian folk.

“Sometimes things sound much better when there’s empty space,” says Llewellyn. “Sometimes you might populate [a song] with too many things and forget that an element on its own is enough.” Elsewhere on the record the band have employed a collage-like technique, combining snippets of lo-fi recordings from a myriad of different locations – a barn in France, the members’ bedrooms and living rooms, the atmospheric swimming pool in which they also filmed sublime live sessions for ‘Dark blue’ and ‘Skydiving Onto The Library Roof’ – with more traditional group sessions at the Total Refreshment Centre and their studio in Peckham.

The growth that began as a scrappy guitar band above a pub many years ago is still continuing. Caroline’s astounding debut album is merely the first step.