The Fat Angel Sings

Kate Bollinger’s songs tend to linger well beyond their run times, filling the negative space of
ordinary days with charming melodies and smart phrasings. She writes them at home in
Richmond, Virginia, letting her subconscious lead stretches on guitar, an open-ended process
she likens to dreaming. From a chord progression appears a line, maybe a syllable will start to
stick, enough to pursue, but she says sometimes the words don’t feel like her own, more like
shapes that form in the mind’s sky. While many are personal and deal with the emotions that
surface with finding her place in the world, she’d prefer they be whatever you’d like them to be,
to connect with listeners in their own way. Bollinger’s musical universe is relaxed, tender, and
unassuming; within lives a timeless sensibility, a songwriter’s knack for noticing the little things
and their counterpoints. Darkness and light, pain and pleasure, reality and escape.
Her project is collaborative; she shoots music videos with her friends and colours each of her
folk-pop songs with musicians in her community. An agile group of players with backgrounds in
jazz, they recorded her first EP, “I Don’t Wanna Lose”, as live takes in a single day, then slowed it
down to build out her 2020 EP, A word becomes a sound. Bollinger sings fast at times; she
jokes that can get her into trouble when it comes to playing live, “some of these songs are going
to be a mouthful.” She’s always been drawn to singers in that free-flowing style and got into the
habit of writing quickly while watching her long time collaborator John Trainum work with rappers
in the studio.

Forced to finish her last EP in lockdown, Bollinger, Trainum, and bandmates excitedly returned
to sessions in the spring of 2021 to explore a new batch of songs, now beginning to surface at
summer’s end. In August, she shared “Shadows,” an introspective psych-pop lullaby
characterized by languid melodies, pointed lyrics, and an air of mischief — all on display in the
single’s surreal music video directed by her childhood friend, Kia Wassenaar. Paste Magazine
called the single “warm, dynamic, and inviting.”
With a tour underway supporting Real Estate and dates with Faye Webster slated for spring
2022, Bollinger lets the next one fly alongside the announcement of her first-ever label signing.
From a forthcoming collection on Ghostly International, “Yards / Gardens” finds Bollinger in full
swing, skipping verses of uncertainty above a bright and nimble bassline and kick. Guitarist
Chris Lewis weaves throughout, his riffs unravel across the bridge, trailing her lines like ellipses.

Written with Trainum and Lewis in their shared month-to-month storage space, “Yards /
Gardens” reflects “feeling resistant to change, during a time when it felt like everything was
changing,” says Bollinger. Growing up has become a motif in her work, but she’s never
sidestepped the concept in quite this way. Here, self-assured and surrounded by vivid
production, she leans back in the grass, letting expectations breeze by, reminding herself she’ll
tend to things in good time (“I’m viewing days like practice rounds / come next year, I’ll know
what to do”)

The brand-new album from the Dream Syndicate blends vintage krautrock, eno-like ambience, neu-inspired rhythmic groove and a Californian sun baked sheen into the their classic psychedelic, melodic, hue.

The Dream Syndicate have moved well past their early velvet underground influences and taken on british glam, german prog, and more featuring singer/songwriter/guitarist Steve Wynn, drummer Dennis Duck, bassist Mark Walton, lead guitarist Jason Victor plus their newest member Chris Cacavas (you remember him from the 1980s Los Angeles band Green On Red), on keyboards, plus guest appearances from Stephen Mccarthy (of the Long Ryders) and Marcus Tenney’s expressive sax and trumpet work. “clever, ambitious, and blessedly noisy.”

Lead single ‘Where I’ll Stand’  opens with vintage Krautrock electronic synths blending into a classic Dream Syndicate vibe – not unlike “Tell Me When It’s Over” that kicked off ‘The Days of Wine and Roses’ – with touches of Bowie’s opening song on Scary Monsters “It’s No Game”.

“It feels like an attempt–via the lyrics and the circular chord progression–to impose some kind of order and logic on a world that was severely lacking in both respects at the time.” Steve Wynn

“atmospheric rock music veering between noise and subtlety compelling.” 

Available in LTD ed. Transparent Violet LP, Black LP & CD. Also available the ‘Dream Syndicate Battle Hymns Bundle’: LTD ed. Violet LP + Enamel Pin + Tote Bag + Baseball Cap + Slipmat.

If you’re looking for a raw, sugary blast of distorted pop, look no further than Weird Nightmare. The debut album from METZ guitarist and vocalist Alex Edkins contains all of his main band’s bite with an unexpected, yet totally satisfying, sweetness. Imagine The Amps covering Big Star, or the gloriously hissy miniature epics of classic-era Guided by Voices combined with the bombast of Copper Blue- era Sugar—just tons of red-line distortion cut with the type of tune craft that thrills the moment it hits your ears. 

These ten songs showcase a new side of Edkins’ already-established song writing, but even though the bulk of Weird Nightmare was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic some of its tunes date back to 2013 in demo form. “Hooks and melody have always been a big part of my writing, but they really became the main focus this time” he explains. “It was about doing what felt natural.” 

Weird Nightmare is not a “pandemic album,” but an album—some of which had been gestating for quite a while—that just so happened to be recorded during the pandemic. “I had always planned on finishing these songs, but being unable to tour with METZ, and forced to lock down, really gave me a push.” After days spent home schooling his son, Edkins would drive to the METZ rehearsal room and tinker deep into the night on these songs’ deceptively simple structures and rich, static-laden textures. “It was a godsend for me,” he states about the creative process. “The hours would disappear and I would get lost in the music and record. It was a beautiful escape.”

Weird Nightmare is, in its own way, a study in extremes: Edkins’ melodic instincts and penchant for dissonance are both turned up to the max throughout, the latter reflecting not only the barn-burning tendencies of METZ, but Alex’s own sonic predilections. “It doesn’t sound right to my ears until it’s pushed over the edge.” He also cites other artists who are masterful at mixing the sublime and the punishing—Kim Deal and Scout Niblett among them—as influences on his own song writing. “My favourite songs are the simple ones,” he explains. “I’ve never been attracted to virtuosity or technicality. Certain songs have the power to lift your spirits like nothing else can. I wanted to create that type of song.” 

“I’ve found a new confidence in my writing and producing,” Edkins continues while discussing his song writing approach on Weird Nightmare. “I really enjoy creating and recording, and I wanted this record to reflect how much fun I was having.” And even though its songs occasionally dip into weighty themes—underneath the driving riffs of “Darkroom” are ruminations on trying to fight off bad habits amidst personal malaise, while the anthemic “Lusitania” is, in his words, “a fictional love song”—this album is indeed an absolute blast to listen to. 

A few guests pitch in on Weird Nightmare: Canadian alt-pop genius Chad VanGaalen adds his unmistakable touch to the ever-escalating “Oh No,” while Alicia Bognanno of Bully lends her distinctive pipes to the thrashing “Wrecked,” a collaboration that effectively saved the song. “I almost didn’t put it on the album because I thought it was missing something,” Edkins explains. “I sent it to Alicia and she lifted it way up.” 

And taking risks and reaching out of Edkins’ comfort zone was the name of the game when it came to making Weird Nightmare. “I found myself doing new things I didn’t have the guts to do before, recording everything by myself and trusting all of my musical instincts,” he states. “I think when music manifests quickly, a certain amount of honesty automatically comes along with it. When it is a purely instinctual creation, there is no opportunity to obscure the truth.”

Releases May 20th, 2022

© 2022 Sub Pop Records

Dig deep enough inside yourself – start treating your body as your sanctuary rather than your enemy – and eventually you’ll find yourself blooming right back out into the sun. That’s the transformation Guerilla Toss trace on their newest album “Famously Alive“, their effervescent Sub Pop Records debut. After a decade sprinkling glitter into grit, building a reputation as one of the most ferociously creative art-rock groups working, the upstate New York band have eased fully into their light. This is Guerilla Toss at their most luminescent – awake, alive, and extending an open invitation to anyone who wants to soak it all up beside them.

Singer and lyricist Kassie Carlson, multi-instrumentalist Peter Negroponte and guitarist Arian Shafiee wrote “Famously Alive” at home in the Catskills during the pervading quiet of the pandemic year. The uncertainty of COVID-19 lockdowns and the total disruption of routine forced Carlson to negotiate with herself in new and challenging ways. “You have to be with yourself all the time during the pandemic,” she says. “I had to figure out a way to manage my anxiety. The pandemic was hard, but it helped me get comfortable inside my own body. My peace of mind came out of being thrust into the deepest shit. This album is all about being happy, being alive, and strength. It’s meant to inspire people.”

The album’s title derives from a poem written by a close friend of the band, Jonny Tatelman, who supported Carlson through the early stages of her recovery from opiate addiction. The poem comprises the entirety of the lyrics to the title track, an exuberant ode to loving your own survival and charting a course into unconditional self-acceptance. “The song ‘Famously Alive’ is about living with purpose and excitement whether you’re famous or not, accepting your strangeness and thriving even if your successes look different than other people’s,” notes Carlson. “To me, ‘Famously Alive’ means flipping the notion of dying famously to living famously,” Negroponte adds. “I also like to think of it as a way to describe living through something traumatic and coming out of it a stronger, wiser person.”

Songs like the expansive, gleaming “Live Exponential” similarly invite the listener to lean into the light. “It’s about loving yourself and finding a way to be comfortable in your own body – to live life to the fullest and beyond,” says Carlson. Throughout the record, Guerilla Toss meet themselves with curiosity, generosity, and acceptance even for the harder parts of being alive. Opener “Cannibal Capital,” a song about the exhaustion and dread of social anxiety, came together in a flurry toward the end of the album’s sessions. A taut bass groove erupts into competing squalls of guitar and synth that support one of the most immediate and arresting vocal hooks of Guerilla Toss’s catalogue to date.

Together with guitarist Arian Shafiee, Carlson and Negroponte cultivated a sound that spliced together psychedelic texturing and Krautrock syncopation with the gloss and glow of contemporary pop music. “I like to combine as many musical influences as possible,” says Negroponte. “We thought the sleekness of current radio pop would make our dense wall-of-sound aesthetic both more bizarre and more accessible and fun at the same time.” Carlson was similarly inspired by a wide range of artists from around the world after diving deep into obscure 7-inches for her weekly show on Radio Catskill, Rare Pear Radio.

While writing the album, Carlson took voice lessons online for the first time. Though she has been singing since she was four years old, at first with a vocal harmony group in her family’s church, she hadn’t formally trained her voice since joining Guerilla Toss. The lessons allowed her to deepen and broaden her range, helping her feel more embodied and connected to her voice. Underneath ripples of Auto-Tune, playful, searching vocal melodies suspend lyrics about reaching for yourself and holding fast in your own love.

“Famously Alive” finds Guerilla Toss coming into the fullness of their power, celebrating their prismatic idiosyncrasies from a place of optimism and abundance. “It felt like I didn’t need to force myself into this dark place to create anymore,” Carlson says. “For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m finally comfortable inside my body.”

“Cannibal Capital” by Guerilla Toss from their upcoming album ‘Famously Alive’, out March 25th on Sub Pop Records.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever return in 2022 with ‘Endless Rooms’, the Melbourne quintet’s third album proper. Described by the band – comprised of Fran Keaney, Joe White, Marcel Tussie and brothers Tom Russo and Joe Russo – as them ‘Doing what we do best: chasing down songs in a room together’, ‘Endless Rooms’ stands as a testament to the collaborative spirit and live power of RBCF.

Rolling Blackouts C.F.’s forthcoming album ‘Endless Rooms’ (out May 6th).

Spiritualized have shared a new song from their upcoming album, “Everything Was Beautiful”, which is out April 22nd via Fat Possum Records. (The album was supposed to be out February 25th but got moved due to pressing plant delays.) “The Mainline Song” is one of the best, most joyous songs on the album, with Jason Pierce singing “I wanted to know if you wanted to go to the city tonight” against an orchestral rush of fuzzed out guitars, strings, woodwinds and choir.

During lockdown last year, J Spaceman would walk through an empty ‘Roman London’ where the world was ‘full of birdsong and strangeness’, trying to make sense of all the music playing in his head at the time. The mixers and mixes of his new record weren’t working out yet. Spaceman plays 16 different instruments on ‘Everything Was Beautiful’ which was put down at eleven different studios, as well as at his home. He also employed more than 30 musicians and singers including his daughter Poppy, long-time collaborator and friend John Coxon, string and brass sections, choirs and finger bells and chimes from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Eventually the mixes got there and ‘Everything Was Beautiful’ was achieved. The result is some of the most ‘live’ sounding recordings that Spiritualized have released since the ‘Live at the Albert Hall’ record of 1998, around the time of ‘Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space’.

Releases February 25th, 2022

Melancholic, dreamy and drenched in shoegaze sounds, bdrmm are back! Since their debut album, Bedroom, there hasn’t been many signs of movement from the four-piece. Thankfully, they have been busy. With the return track, “Port“, plus many incredible remixes, this is a great time to get on the bdrmm train.

Released March 4th, 2022
Written by bdrmm

Sunflower Bean’s third album, Headful of Sugar, is due out in May via Mom + Pop Records, and the latest single is “Roll the Dice.” “Almost everyone we know struggles with money,” the band says. “The traditional routes towards success and stability in America have severely narrowed. The only way to get ahead is to take big risks and roll the dice.”

Sunflower Bean’s new single “Roll The Dice” from the upcoming album ‘Headful of Sugar’ out May 6th.

Norwegian musician and novelist Jenny Hval releases her new album “Classic Objects”. “Classic Objects” is a map of places; past places, like the old empty Melbourne pubs Hval’s band used to play in, public places Hval missed throughout lockdown, imagined, future places, and impossible places where dreams, hallucinations, death and art can take you. It is interested in combining heavenly things and plain things.

Jenny Hval’s new album and first for 4AD, Classic Objects, is due out Friday 11th March, and ahead of that she’s shared one more advance single, “Freedom.” “I don’t know what freedom is,” Jenny says. “This song doesn’t either. The lyrics are bombastic and silly, as if written by a political folk song generator. Nonetheless the song was needed on my record—I needed something short and sweet after a series of long, layered reflections. I imagine it being sung in a courtroom or in parliament when the debate gets too heated and everyone needs a break. In this imagined moment, everyone is singing in unison. This is the only way I can describe “Freedom“—as a kind of performative moment that breaks up the structure, language and ambivalence of the rest of the record. On its own, it seems weirdly clear and pure. I can’t really defend it. Or perhaps it is myself I can’t defend. The song is necessary. It just reminds me of the fact that I am not.”

Classic Objects is Hval’s version of a pop album. Every song has a verse and a chorus. There are interchangeable moments of complexity, interesting melodies throughout, and a feeling of elevation and clarity in the choruses. Heba Kadry mixed it to sound as though it’s played through “a stereo in a mysterious room.”

‘Classic Objects’ arrives Friday 11th March via 4AD Records.

Florence + The Machine recently returned with the first track off the upcoming album “King,” her first new single of the year, and now she’s followed it with another, the intense, percussive “Heaven is Here.” “‘Heaven is Here’ was the first song I wrote in lockdown after an extended period of not being able to get to the studio,” Florence says. “I wanted to make something monstrous. And this clamour of joy, fury and grief was the first thing that came out. With dance studios also shut it was my dream to one day create choreography with it. So it’s one of the first pieces of music I have made specifically with contemporary dance in mind.”

Florence + The Machine have announced the new album “Dance Fever“. It’s due out May 13th, and as a preview the band has shared their latest single, “My Love.”

“Dance Fever” is the follow-up to 2018’s “High as Hope“, and it was described by Florence Welch as “a fairytale in 14 songs.”  Welch produced alongside Jack Antonoff and Dave Bayley of Glass Animals, and a press statement said the album was inspired by choreomania, “a Renaissance phenomenon in which groups of people — sometimes thousands — danced wildly to the point of exhaustion, collapse and death.” Combine that mood with Welch’s typically glorious take on baroque pop, and you land on a tone she called “Nick Cave at the club.”

“My Love” is the album’s third single, following “Heaven Is Here” and “King,”. It comes with a music video directed by Autumn de Wilde, and you can check it out below.

Two of the dancers in this video are currently sheltering, to my brave and beautiful sisters Marine and Nastia I love you I wish I could put my arms around you. Strength.

It’s the album that brings back the very best of Florence Welch – the festival headlining boudicca, wielding anthems like a flaming sword. just before the pandemic Florence had become fascinated by choreomania, a renaissance phenomenon in which groups of people – sometimes thousands – danced wildly to the point of exhaustion, collapse and death. the imagery resonated with Florence, who had been touring non-stop for more than a decade, and in lockdown felt oddly prescient. the image and concept of dance, and choreomania, remained central as florence wove her own experiences of dance – a discipline she turned to in the early days of sobriety – with the folkloric elements of a moral panic from the middle ages.

in recent times of torpor and confinement, dance offered propulsion, energy and a way of looking at music more choreographically. starting, as ever, armed with a notebook of poems and ideas, Florence had just arrived in New York in march 2020 to begin recording the record with Jack Antonoff when covid-19 forced a retreat to London. holed up at home, the songs began to transform, with nods to dance, folk, ‘70s iggy pop, longing-for-the-road folk tracks and more.

once back in london, ‘My Love’ was one particular track that shapeshifted from one entity to another with the help of Dave Bayley from Glass Animals. Welch had written the song in her kitchen as a “sad little poem”, and when she recorded it acoustically it just didn’t seem to work. Bayley suggested using synths and it soon expanded with floor-filling, chest-thumping energy. with Dave’s love of synths and Florence’s fascination with all things gothic and creepy a kind of sound started to emerge to shape the record. lyrically, she took inspiration from the tragic heroines of pre-raphaelite art, the gothic fiction of carmen Maria Machado and Julia Armfield, the visceral wave of folk horror film from the wicker man and the itch to midsommar.

Florence + The Machine (aka Florence Welch and backing band) shared a video for her new song “Free,” which stars British actor Bill Nighy as a representation of her anxiety. Autumn de Wilde directed the video, which was filmed in Ukraine before the Russian invasion.

“Dance Fever” is an album that sees Florence Welch at the peak of her powers, coming into a fully realised self-knowledge, poking sly fun at her own self-created persona, playing with ideas of identity, masculine and feminine, redemptive, celebratory, stepping fully into her place in the iconic pantheon.