The Fat Angel Sings

For its first two decades, 4AD Records was one of the most unique, distinctive UK indie record labels. There was an enigmatic aura around it, thanks in part to founder Ivo Watts Russell who signed a lot of great gothy artists, and who presented an instantly recognizable façade via the gorgeous artwork done by in-house designer Vaughan Oliver and his 23 Envelope / v23 team. The 4AD roster during its ’80s/90s heyday was actually pretty varied, from punk to synthpop to ornate folk, and included Cocteau Twins, The Birthday Party, Bauhaus, The Wolfgang Press, Modern English, Throwing Muses, Dead Can Dance, Lush, Ultra Vivid Scene, Throwing Muses, Clan of Xymox, Colourbox, and Ivo’s own much-loved project with producer John Fryer, This Mortal Coil, to name a few. It all fit under Ivo’s singular vision.

But the ultimate 4AD act, or at least the one that seems to pull from all corners of Ivo’s taste, were Leeds band Pale Saints. Led by bassist and singer Ian Masters, Pale Saints were capable of the ethereal beauty of Cocteau Twins, the roar of Pixies, and the off-kilter quirk of Throwing Muses. Masters brought spine-tingling melodies, sung in an eerie fey falsetto, and fluid, driving basslines; Graeme Naysmith was one of the most original guitarists of the era; and drummer Chris Cooper brought both power and subtlety behind the kit. The band were lumped into the shoegaze scene — they toured with Lush and Ride in the USA but they were closer in spirit to early ’80s post-punk groups like The Sound and Echo and The Bunnymen.

The second album from one of the best bands of the original 4AD era turned 30 years old this week,

Pale Saints also had a real love for L.A.’s Paisley Underground scene, particularly Opal whose song “Fell from the Sun” they covered on their fantastic debut album, The Comforts of Madness, which was 4AD’s first album of the 1990s.

By halfway through 1990, with their debut out, Pale Saints began to feel limited by their trio line-up and recruited Meriel Barham on guitar and vocals. Meriel was a founding member of Lush who had left before their first EP. She joined just in time for 1990’s “Half-Life” EP but really made her presence felt on 1991’s “Flesh Balloon” EP that featured the gorgeous, dramatic “Hunted” and an especially dreamy cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “Kinky Love” that featured Barham on lead vocals and netted the band a minor UK hit.

For their second album, Pale Saints stayed with “Flesh Balloon” producer Hugh Jones who had worked with Modern English, The Sound, and the Bunnymen, and whose atmospheric style was a good match for the band’s sound. Jones was also a calming presence, smoothing out tensions between Masters — whose taste leaned more to the esoteric and the rest of the band who enjoyed working on the somewhat more mainstream side of indie and were interested in, you know, selling some records.

That push and pull between Masters‘ outsider tendencies and Naysmith, Cooper and Barham’s commercial interests is what makes “In Ribbons” so good. If some of the wild, ragged edges of “Comforts of Madness” have been smoothed off, the album makes up for it with scope and beauty. And there’s still no shortage of weird.

The album, which was released on March 23rd, 1992, opens brilliantly with “Throwing Back the Apple,” a track that immediately knocks you over with a tsunami of furiously strummed guitars and pounding drums before letting the tide recede to reveal shimmering guitars, heavenly Masters/Barham harmonies, and some ragged soloing by Naysmith that Frank Black and Joey Santiago might envy.

Pale Saints’ command of dynamics — their ability to build up layers of sound, knock them down, and put them together again in a slightly different and satisfying fashion — is all over “In Ribbons“. That’s best exemplified by “Hunted,” reused from the “Flesh Balloon” EP, that showcases every member of the band’s strengths. There’s high drama woven into the song’s ebb-and-flow structure with Cooper’s nuanced, rat-a-tat drumming, the textured guitarwork of Naysmith and Barham, and Masters‘ melodic basslines and haunting vocals. With moments of elegance and paint-peeling noise, “Hunted” rivals “Sight of You” as Pale Saints’ best song.

Not quite scaling those heights but coming very close are “Ordeal,” the soaring “Babymaker” (re-recorded from Half-Life) and “Thousand Stars Burst Open” which closes the album with a little Roback worship. “In Ribbons” also features a number of surreal mood pieces, including the cello-laden “Shell,” the tense, unsettling “Hair Shoes,” and “Neverending Night” which is as pretty as its title.

Barham sings lead on three tracks, two of which — “Thread of Light” and “Featherframe” — are terrific and bring a new but complimentary sound to Pale Saints. “Thread of Light” does sound a lot like Barnham’s old band but brings a level of refinement and dexterity that Lush rarely achieved. Also, no knock against Lush’s Miki Berenyi or Emma Anderson, but Barham was the better singer, too.

The best song to feature Barham, though, is one that that wasn’t on the original UK edition of “In Ribbons” but was wisely pulled up from the “Throwing Back the Apple” EP and onto the North American release of the album. It’s a cover of Slapp Happy’s 1972 song “Blue Flower,” which Roback’s post Opal band, Mazzy Star, had covered on their 1989 debut album, “She Hangs Brightly“. Where Mazzy Star’s version had smoky late night cool, Pale Saints brought a crystalline beauty, both with the delicately arpeggiated guitars and Barham’s clear voice. But when she sings “But I’m no fool, I know you’re cool / I never really wanted your heart,” the feedback swells and the band majestically hammer it out on two chords that could hypnotically go on forever. There is probably no changing the minds of Mazzy Star fans, but this is the best “Blue Flower.”

Unfortunately, the rift within Pale Saints grew after the release of In Ribbons. Masters didn’t really like to tour and a US label-mandated tour of the States with Ride, who had released their second album “Going Blank Again” just a few weeks before “In Ribbons”, proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Masters quit in 1993 and formed Spoonfed Hybrid and then ESP Summer with His Name is Alive’s Warren Defever, two projects that allowed him to spiral into his own navel. Pale Saints, meanwhile, carried on without him, recruiting Heart Throbs’ Colleen Brown on bass and making one more record — 1994’s “Slow Buildings” — which was fine but lacked that creative spark and the great songs of the first two albums.

In 2020, Beggars Arkive gave “The Comforts of Madness” a 30th anniversary reissue. “In Ribbons”, which has been out of print in physical formats since its initial release, surely deserves the same treatment.

“The Leather Lemon” is a reckoning record for the times; an album of psychedelic resurfacing, real-time response to world events, and soft, sympathetic magic. This is a collection of songs shaped by five individuals who embrace music-making as a way to centre themselves in times of uncertainty; it’s resilience and imagination given shape. “The Leather Lemon” is a true sweet-and-sour listening experience, an album as bright and clear as it is fractured and fun. Get turned UP and ON with the electrifying new lemon drop from P.E.! .

This power coupling of Brooklyn bands Pill and Eaters has just get better, Brooklyn’s groups Pill and Eaters teamed up for a one-off live performance to open for Bodega’s “Endless Scroll” release party back in 2018. They liked working together so much, both of their respective bands basically ceased to exist and they became a more highly evolved combined organism know as P.E. Pill’s Jonny Campolo, Benjamin Jaffe, and Veronica Torres bring skronk and attitude, while Eaters’ Jonathan Schenke and Bob Jones bring beats and inventive production.

Their excellent debut album came out just days before lockdown in March 2020 but they’ve thrived creatively through the pandemic, releasing the killer “The Reason for My Love” EP last year and are now back with their best record yet, the awesomely titled “The Leather Lemon”.

The production is wilder, the hooks are bigger, and everything feels more confident. Also: Torres has also all but dropped the sprechgesang delivery to reveal a terrific singing voice. 

“The Leather Lemon” has dancefloor fillers (“The Reason for My Love,” “Contradiction Of Wants”), baroque dreamstate jazz (“Magic Hands”) and even a loungy duet with Parquet Courts’ A. Savage (“Tears in the Rain”), all of which make sense together in P.E.’s unique universe.

“The perfect soundtrack for a neo-noir” – Rolling Stone

“Soft and a little sleazy” – The Fader

“They carve out deeper grooves and mine darker textures, revelling in a kind of intoxicated, nocturnal exhilaration—these songs aren’t so much heavier as denser, all of the elements that came together on Person now calcifying into crystallized solid.” – Treble (Album Of The Week)

“The quintet refines their impulses on their 2020 debut “Person” and transforms them into a body-moving EP. The jittery electronics are still there, but the drum cuts feel sharper and lighter, bringing a sense of structure to what could easily be shapeless. Vocalist Veronica Torres abandons spoken-word and leans fully into singing about poetry, beauty, and the contours of the body. Her lovely vocal stretches fill up the space once occupied by industrial bass drops. Sensuality suits them well.”

P.E. ‘s sophomore album, “The Leather Lemon” (Wharf Cat Records, out March 25th, 2022), ushers in a new era for the New York band. A wild ride through chewy bubblegum pop, sweeping synthetic orchestrations, and mutant club beats, the album slides ever closer to the fully-realized pop sensibility only winked at with their debut album “Person” (2020) and subsequent releases.

P.E. is: Jonny Campolo (piano, synths, bass, percussion, voice), Benjamin Jaffe (saxophone, synths, voice), Bob Jones (beats, samples, synths, bass, voice), Jonathan Schenke (synths, beats, bass, percussion, voice), Veronica Torres (voice, lyrics).

Wharf Cat Records, out March 25th, 2022

After two terrific albums in the early 2010s, San Francisco shoegazers Young Prisms drifted off into the ether. The music industry is tough and you can’t pay Bay Area rent with critical acclaim, and with inter band romantic entanglements, parenthood and other Real Life stuff, the band was put on the backburner. But they never broke up. At the end of the decade, Stefanie Hodapp, Gio Betteo, Matt Allen and Jordan Silbert reconnected and found they still had something to say, and were in a better place to do so. “Drifter” is Young Prisms first album in a decade and maybe their best.

They made it with Shaun Durkan of Weekend (another shoegaze band that hasn’t made a record in a while) who helped them find a balance of melody, atmosphere, beauty and noise. Too many of these groups put “dream” ahead of “pop” but “Drifter” is full of memorable songs “Outside Air,” “Yourside,” “Violet” and blissful arrangements and productions. “Honeydew,” with its mile-wide sunshine smile of a chorus, would’ve been worth reuniting for alone.

“Drifter” is a record that finds steadiness in the embrace of uncertainty. Young Prisms have always delivered stories that have remained mostly shrouded in a dreamlike state, the kind of dreams where you never quite get to where you’re aiming to go, and the ones which unravel in melancholy when you open your eyes and reality sets in.

With their first new music in ten years, the band explores the tension and release that comes with bringing your head down from the clouds and making sense of the tangible entanglements that make up everyday existence. “You’ve spent your whole life wondering if you’ll ever live up to your own expectations, but one day realize that it’s ok to just be a normal, boring human. You’re used to running away from life because you hate yourself and now you are pleasantly surprised by a new feeling to let go and accept yourself,” explains lead vocalist Stefanie Hodapp.

Released March 25th, 2022

Band: Stefanie Hodapp, Gio Betteo, Matt Allen & Jordan Silbert

One of the most promising bands of the early 2010s was from Cardiff, Joanna Gruesome who mixed punk and indie pop into big pop hooks with big feelings. Singer Alanna McArdle left the group in 2015; they carried on for a while without her but they fell apart not long after. So it was great news in 2018 that McArdle and Owen Williams, who wrote most of Joanna Gruesome’s songs, were forming a new band, Ex-Vöid. Four years and a couple singles later, we’ve got their terrific debut album.

The bright melodies and wonderful harmonies that distinguished Joanna Gruesome are still here, but they’ve mellowed out just a little, owing more to the 12-string jangle of Gene Clark and the descending chord progressions of Big Star than anything on indie-pop touchstone C-86.

They keep things short and punchy, with songs acting as pure hook delivery devices that rarely need more than two minutes to lodge in your brain, though they do make a little time for some flashy twin lead soloing. McArdle and Williams’ voices sound great together even when singing the same melody, but when the harmonies kick in on tracks like “Chemical Reaction,” “Churchyard,” and “Boyfriend,” Ex-Vöid soar.

Debut album from former leaders of Joanna Gruesome finds their power pop powers still intact released through Don Giovanni Records

Cassandra Jenkins and Wednesday have released new songs as part of Secretly Canadian’s ongoing 25th Anniversary celebration. For “Pygmalion,” Cassandra recorded at the famed Abbey Road studios in London, backed by members of Glaswegian band Lylo. It’s a real slow-burn of a song, with Cassandra delivering a particularly smoky vocal. “The lyrics in this song revisit the story of Pygmalion, the Greek mythological figure who, scornful towards women, falls in love with an ivory statue of his own making,” says Cassandra. “When the sculpture comes to life, they live happily ever after.

Through today’s lens, we might view this as a tale of an incel who falls for his ivory sex doll, and one that lacks any trace of the female voice. I wanted to give the statue a chance to speak, and to address Pygmalion directly as he begins to carve her likeness according to his vision.”

Cassandra continues, “The result is short & bittersweet, expressing part menace, sarcasm, and exhaustion, and part lucidity. I wrote it in a moment when I was frustrated by a relationship, and recorded it while I was on tour (at Abbey Road Studios). I was thinking about how easy it is to box each other into moulds, and to impose our solipsistic ideals upon other people, only to be disappointed when they exhibit their true character. In that equation, everyone misses out, and there’s so much more to be gained from burning down ancient ideals. This song aims to strike the match.”

Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman admits their song, “Feast of Snakes,” was inspired by a classic Secretly Canadian artist. “I 100% ripped off the chords for this song from Jason Molina’s ‘Almost Was Good Enough.’ When I wrote it I had just finished reading his biography ‘Riding With the Ghost’ which has a ton of information about Molina’s music and by extension the beginnings of Secretly. I thought channelling his music for our contribution to SC25 would be fitting!”

Proceeds from these songs go towards Secretly Canadian’s $250,000 fundraising goal for the Bloomington-based, gender-inclusive emergency housing solution, New Hope For Families

Hailing from the sleepy rural town of Driffield, Yorkshire, Priestgate are charismatic, angsty and euphoric in equal measure. After a stellar year of experimentation, the band have emerged in 2020 with their own brand of guitar music infusing pop hooks with dark sensibilities as popularised by The Cure and Joy Division. The band have received support from So Young, Radio 1 and 6Music.

This Ascendant Yorkshire five-piece share their debut EP “Eyes Closed For The Winter”, on Lucky Number. Produced by Nick Hodgson (Alfie Templeman) and mixed by Caesar Edmunds (Foals, The Killers, PJ Harvey) the EP is a formidable statement straight out the gates – and a window into the world of one of Britain’s most thrilling new young bands.

Raised in the sleepy town of in East Yorkshire, the band is made up of Rob Schofield (vocals), Bridie Stagg (drums), Connor Bingham (guitar), Isaac Ellis (guitar), and Kai Overton (bass). Formed as a battle-cry against the restlessness and mundanity of rural life, Priestgate began as a reaction to the sparse local music scene around them, which in turn has allowed them to craft and develop their own unique sound without the added pressure of conformity.

Priestgate have combined bright guitar-pop hooks with darker lyrical sensibilities, concocting their own angst-laden blend of the hypnotic and euphoric.

Released March 25th, 2022

Andy Bell‘s new album, “Flicker“, is a bit of sonic time travel. You notice even before listening: the album cover features a blurry but clearly much younger Bell, a portrait taken during the shoot for Ride‘s 1990 debut, “Nowhere“. And the songs are ones Bell had started but never finished from throughout his career, including a few that date back to the early ’90s. He dusted them off during lockdown, brought them into focus and recorded them at his friend and onetime Oasis/Beady Eye bandmate Gem Archer’s studio. “When I think about Flicker, I see it as closure,” says Andy. “The cognitive dissonance of writing brand new lyrics over songs that are 20-plus years old makes it feel like it is, almost literally, me exchanging ideas with my younger self.” It’s a fantastic album, and you can listen to the whole thing below.

One of the standout cuts from the album is “World Of Echo,” a jangly pop gem which owes a little to late-’80s/early-’90s band The La’s. It’s being released as a single on 3/25 and comes with a b-side cover of “Our Last Night Together” by Arthur Russell (whose album “World of Echo” inspired the title of Bell’s song). We’re premiering the very vibey, psychedelic video for it, which was directed by Innerstrings.