The Fat Angel Sings

“The fifth studio album & apparently the last euphoric mind-trip to Kikagaku Moyo’s imagined island.
Best-suited for counting stars, looking at the ocean, and dancing in one’s daydream.”

In many ways ‘Kumoyo Island’ represents the culmination of a journey for Kikagaku Moyo. While their decade-long career can be summarized as a series of kaleidoscopic explorations through lands and dimensions far and near, there’s a strong intention in each of their works to take the listener to a particular place, however real or abstract they may be. In that sense, the title and cover art for the band’s fifth and final album draws you into a magical mass of land surrounded by water—but the couch suggests that ‘Kumoyo Island’ may not be a fleeting stop, but rather a place of respite, where one could pause and take it all in.

Reconvening at Tsubame Studios in Asakusabashi, Tokyo, where their earliest material had been recorded, the five members of Kikagaku Moyo found new inspiration in a familiar and comfortable environment. With their adopted homebase of Amsterdam under lockdown and their touring activities halted due to the pandemic, the band felt a renewed sense of freedom being back in shitamachi, or the old downtown area of their hometown. With unrestricted time in the studio, they began to build upon the demos and song fragments they’d amassed since their last tour. In the 1.5 months spent in Tokyo, everything started to come together.
“Monaka”, its name taken from a type of Japanese wafer sweets, takes melodic inspiration from traditional minyofolk styles, while “Yayoi Iyayoi” is a rare instance of the band singing in their native tongue, its evocative lyrics utilizing archaic words taken from old poetry and nature books found in one of the many second-hand bookstores of Tokyo. For “Meu Mar”, an Erasmos Carlos cover, the original Portuguese lyrics were translated into English, then to Japanese. Strangely enough, the words seem to conjure an image of the protagonist floating among the clouds, looking down upon Tokyo Bay.

In fact, it may be possible to draw a parallel between the topography of the band’s home country—an island nation, surrounded by bodies of water—and the mysterious isle of Kumoyo. Are they one and the same? Has the band finally made it back home? It’s up to the listener to decide. 

Released May 6th, 2022

Ivy Wye is an Ontario-based folk singer and multi-instrumentalist who is largely influenced by 1970s singer/songwriters (Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs, Margo Guryan) and modern minimalistic folk artists (Jessica Pratt, Shannon Lay). Ivy Wye Canadian singer-songwriter and musician with a captivating folk sound contained within her music, as displayed in latest album, “Hope’s Convenience” sounds stunning from the off, with some sumptuous guitar melodies providing the backbone to the track. Ivy’s vocals are ethereal in nature, giving the music a mystical ambience that suits the folk genre well. The strings are hauntingly beautiful, as is the rest of the song – make sure you check it out here:

Released April 27th, 2022

Recorded at home. All songs written & performed by Ivy Wye

Bass guitar performed by Ryan Gavel
Backup vocals performed by David O’Connor (track 5)
Acoustic guitar performed by Jim Hardy (track 6)

Every once in a while an Artist comes along that knocks your socks off and makes you feel perfectly at peace in your Vegan boots. One such Artist is Melbourne based singer songwriter Grace Cummings. Do not pass up the opportunity to see her perform live and regale you with her stories. While Grace Cummings’ debut record “Refuge Cove” from 2019 was already an astonishing proof of her vocal expressiveness, her arbitrary coronation act for “Storm Queen” now follows on . Cummings is at her core a folksinger and her dynamics are built around the gentle strumming of an acoustic guitar. After a rather quick ascent through Melbourne’s indie underground in 2018, the Australian made her debut a year later with the austere “Refuge Cove” on King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s Flightless Records.

Lou Reed said of his live band that he insisted all the musicians bring their best or get off the stage. Grace Cummings pushes the musicians and herself to their limits at times throughout this album and I absolutely love it. The gentler tunes stand out as a warm embrace between the more jagged edged pieces. 

Upon hearing Grace Cummings‘ 2019 debut “Refuge Cove”, it was immediately understood that she had arrived. That there was no-one like her before, and there might not be again. Immediately, her second album “Storm Queen” calls you to be submerged in its waters. It’s seraphic, beguiling, and howling.

Her unmistakeable voice is like the souls of a thousand half-smoked cigarettes, and it pairs beautifully with the chilling echo of her acoustic guitar.

She has the persona of the traditional folk songwriter and storyteller, yet the surrounding production – sparse violin, howling and frenetic horns, haunting electric guitar – devour the listener.

Much like the religious experience of a Dirty Three, Nina Simone, Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Cash or Janis Joplin musical sermon, Grace Cummings rides in on the storm like a queen ready to reign.

Released January 14th, 2022

Alison Cotton presents “The Portrait You Painted of Me”, a new 6-track album – her first for Rocket Recordings (released on Feeding Tube in the USA). Like Alison’s previous solo albums, the touchstones of her immersive sound are viola, harmonium and voice, merged together to create a rich suite of songs.

‘Mumurations Over the Moor’ is a wordless piece of layered vocals, drifting like fog towards a sunset over the green undulations of North East England (from where she hails). ‘The Last Wooden Ship’ evokes the shipyards of Sunderland using droning harmonium and viola lines, laced with piano and percussion events, while her voice calls out like one of Tim Buckley’s Sirens urging listeners to a rocky demise. ‘I Buried the Candlesticks’ has a haunted, traditional feel with its dolorously folky viola melody laid across a thick carpet harmonium, and small bursts of percussion that sound like cannonade heard through the thick cold walls of a castle in winter. ‘That Tunnel Underground Seemed Neverending’ is a musical vision of Northumberland’s mining culture at the dawn of the 20th Century – labyrinthine, subterranean, dimmer than night.

‘Violet May’, the only traditional “song” on the album, was inspired by a trip to Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst Castle. Its plot deals with a reclusive artist who has forsaken all else for a life of solitary creation in her tower. The structure and sound reminiscent of a post-modern approach to lyrical concerns dealt with by folk singers of the British ‘60s, but the actual arrangement is closer to something John Cale might have done with Nico on The Marble Index. The closing track, ‘17th November 1962’, inspired by nearly-forgotten memories of disaster with a fishing boat, a storm and an ill-fated rescue attempt. The song (and album) ends with what sounds like a forlorn foghorn cutting across waves of night with Alison’s voice again evoking the Sirens.

As with its predecessors, “The Portrait You Painted of Me” was recorded at home in London, beautifully produced by Alison’s partner, Mark Nicholas, and it contains all the elements that result in the sombre, exquisite melancholy she creates. This is some serious and remarkable stuff. 

Released June 17th, 2022

At this point in her career, we would probably settle for a “pretty good” album from Joan Shelley. But no, “The Spur” continues an unbroken streak of masterpieces for the Louisville-based artist. It’s a record that features some of Shelley’s very best song writing, bolstered by sensitive and occasionally surprising arrangements, ravishingly lush at some points, spare and spectral at others. “The Spur” is a wonder, from start to finish. 

Folk-musician based out of Louisville, Kentucky, Joan Shelley released her acclaimed seventh album back in 2019, Like “The River Loves The Sea“. In the Spring of 2021, whilst Joan was seven months pregnant, she went to Earthwave Farm in the Kentucky countryside, and, alongside producer James Elkington, recorded the songs that would become her eighth album. Featuring collaborations with the likes of Bill Callahan and Meg Baird, the album will be out this summer via No Quarter, as a preview of its release Shelley has this week shared the sparkling title track, “The Spur“.

Recalling the gestation of “The Spur”, Joan recalls the track came from a “period of opposite extremes”, inspired by the duality of, “intellectual hyper-connection and physical isolation”, which came with the joy of parenthood and marriage during the darkness of the pandemic. The track opens in a traditionally psych-folk fashion, as Joan’s richly hued vocal joins the complex push-and-pull of the finger-picked guitars. From there though “The Spur” is a track of delightful surprises, from the increasing presence of the buzzing organ to the distorted fuzz that slices through the outro. In the album notes for “The Spur”, Joan references a line by the novelist Wendell Berry, “make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came”, that’s exactly what Joan’s music seems to do, it enhances the calm, adds to the tranquillity, takes nothing from the thought just enhances its clarity.

Joan Shelley might in her own words be, “a bird on a branch echoing others”, yet it’s she has a special talent that echoes them so well that for a moment you feel like you’re hearing these sounds for the very first time,

“The Spur” is out June 24th via No Quarter. 

For OSEES‘ upcoming album “A Foul Form“, out August 12th via Castle Face, bandleader Jack Dwyer promised an experiment in lo-fi punk. Well, what he said exactly was “Brain stem cracking scum-punk.” And no foray into underground punk would be complete without a condemnation of the police, and thus OSEES have delivered “Perm Act”.

“Perm Act” arrives in a more digestible form than the lead “A Foul Form” single “Funeral Solution“, which drowned out any frontal cortex activity with an overdrive-infested total assault. For the new single, the band takes on a dark surf-rock tone as Dwyer delivers a verbal takedown of those who work forces—all of it imbued with a healthy amount of fuzz. The video goes even further as power-hungry local cops go mad and ultimately rip each other apart.

Watch the new John Harlow-directed music video for the latest OSEES single, “Perm Act”. A Foul Form is available for pre-order. The group is preparing for a fall tour of North America “Perm Act” appears on the forthcoming album “A Foul Form”, out on Castle Face Records August 12th

Neil Young has detailed his new double live album and concert film, “Noise & Flowers“, chronicling his 2019 European tour with Promise of the Real. Out on August 5th, Friday’s announcement comes alongside a live video of “From Hank to Hendrix”.

Just as Young and Promise of the Real were preparing to jet out to Europe in summer 2019, Neil received news his lon gtime friend and manager Elliot Roberts had passed away. Two weeks after Roberts’ death, Young and Lukas Nelson‘s backing band began the nine-show trek through Europe that began at Denmark’s Tinder Box festival and wrapped with a pair of shows in the U.K. and Ireland split with Bob Dylan. Throughout the tour, however, the ensemble held on to Roberts both emotionally and physically, adorning a road case with a poster of him just where the former manager stood during Neil’s shows for over 50 years.

“Everyone who was with us felt that this tour was amazing for its great vibe,” Young wrote on the Neil Young Archives.  The Real and I delivered for Elliot.”

The “Noise & Flowers” track list features a number of classics including “Helpless”, “Comes A Time”, “Winterlong”, “Alabama”, and “Rockin’ In The Free World”, which Neil altered to chastise then-President Donald Trump for using the song at his rallies: “Got the Orange Lucifer usin’ this song again”. The 13-track collection also features Young’s fourth-ever performance of “On The Beach” in 47 years which came on July 9th in Antwerp, Belgium.

Neil Young has not performed live since September 21st, 2019 when his run with POTR ended at Farm Aid and in that time he has released four archival albums, and two LPs with Crazy Horse with the band’s 2001 album “Toast” finally slated for release on July 8th. Though the Farm Aid founder sat out last year’s event citing COVID concerns, Rolling Stone reports that he recently shared the charity concert’s September 24th date announcement on his Instagram, hinting at his attendance.

So excited to share this new EP and video series with you! “Portraits” is a reimagining, in elemental form, of two songs from “The Caretaker” and two from “Mythopoetics“. It was filmed and recorded as a live performance in Troy, NY. I think of it as a kind of sonic portraiture, rendering the melodies and lyrics in intimate detail. Half Waif is the musical home of singer / songwriter / producer Nandi Rose

I came to music and to songwriting when I was a kid, singing at a piano. Over the years, I learned to build layered arrangements around the songs, which at times felt like a kind of armor. Returning to these voice and piano arrangements feels particularly vulnerable for me. There’s nothing to hide behind. But it also feels like a homecoming, a nod to where I came from. In this form, I could see the songs from a new angle–it was like we were meeting again after we’ve both done some growing up. Sometimes we can say more with so much less.

The EP was recorded and mixed by the ever-brilliant Zubin Hensler, and the videos were shot by my trusty collaborators, Kenna Hynes and the Chromoscope team. Each captures a different quality of light as the sun flared and fell on a blizzardy day in March.

MUNA have glided right to a new height in their career. Amidst their success, the trick became following up their highest-charting smash with an album not just worthy of the renewed acclaim, but of themselves. “It’s a delicate dance because to enjoy it, you want to be able to receive the love when you’re getting it,” lead singer Katie Gavin says. “But I also don’t want to have that dark side of now I have to do the same thing so that they still like me. That’s actually kind of the name of the fucking game: Not making this about our own validation.”

“Life’s so fun/ Life’s so fun.” Muna indeed seem to be rollerskating through life right now. On a road paved by their hit single “Silk Chiffon” (featuring their new label boss, Phoebe Bridgers), the indie pop trio have glided right to a new height in their career.

Just two years ago, Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson didn’t even have a label. RCA, which had released their first two albums, dropped them during the pandemic. Though the split wasn’t what you’d call amicable, it wasn’t acrimonious either; Gavin notes their single “Anything But Me” — a breakup song with “a lot of joy” in it — reflects how she sees the “uncoupling.”

“I think with a major label, there are a certain set of guidelines that they would normally prescribe to in marketing a band,” adds Maskin. “And especially when we were first coming up,

Bridger’s indie startup Saddest Factory gave them “a lot more leeway,” and one that proved instantly successful. Gavin says it was a “blessing” to have “Silk Chiffon” . Muna were still writing what would become their self-titled LP (out Friday, June 24th) when the single arrived. The trick then became following up their highest-charting smash with an album not just worthy of the renewed acclaim, but of themselves.

There are multiple co-writers on the album (and even horns contributed by Joy Oladokun) who are called out in the credits for “achieving the rare feat of co-writing with Katie.” Gavin laughs at the description, readily accepting that she struggles to “construct a lyric and melody in the presence of other people.” With Mitski, though, it was an honour.

“I remember when I first played the verse and chorus on acoustic guitar, I think the first thing she said was like, ‘That’s hot,’” Gavin recalls, noting that Mitski is among her all-time favourite songwriters. “To me, she’s also like one of the sexiest songwriters of all time. There’s such a raw sexuality that she [writes with]. So it was cool when we were spit balling about the second verse to be able to see her as this North Star of like, ‘That’s cheesy,’ or, ‘No, that’s hot and that works for me.’ Like that’s… I just wanted to turn Mitski on.”