The Fat Angel Sings

“The title of our third album, “The Rubber Teeth Talk“, comes from a lyric in one of the songs on the record, “Dream Song“, describing “the rubber teeth” covering the clock during a freaky, playful fever dream. Throughout the album, the Rubber Teeth symbolize the voices in our heads — sometimes tender and creative, other times critical and self-sabotaging. At its core, this album is about embracing the unknown, driven by both bold imagination and intimate personal reflection. We were so lucky to be able to work on this project with the inimitable Catherine Marks, star of our hearts and fearless co-leader of the project.

“All I wanna know is, will I be alright? / Will I be alright for the rest of my life?” I couldn’t agree more. New York duo Daisy the Great’s third LP, “The Rubber Teeth Talk“, finds Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker in full Rock God mode. Produced alongside Catherine Marks (St. Vincent, boygenius, Wolf Alice), “The Rubber Teeth Talk” is energizing, catchy, and sharply self-aware, traveling between rock-adjacent tangents—twang on “Mary’s at the Carnival,” dream-pop on “Lemon Seeds,” overmodulated grunge on “Bird Bones”—while keeping grit, distortion, and guttural emotion at its core.

The reverby opener “Dog” kicks off with a high-pitched synth loop that explodes into a riff-heavy 2000s-era rock track. The vocals are stacked to infinity, delivered in their signature run-on sentence cadence, building intensity with each repeat of the chorus. The production throughout is crisp and clean, which only makes the chaos hit harder. The record is as intense as it is gentle.

The wispy falsettos and laid-back acoustic riffs on “Mary’s at the Carnival” offer a moment to catch your breath. “Swinging,” about getting too high on laughing gas at the dentist, is a standout—bass-heavy and rhythm-forward, it flirts with spoken word and King Gizzard-style, psychedelic storytelling before melting into something whimsical and synthy. 

“The Rubber Teeth Talk” is packed with attitude the single “Ballerina” carries a Courtney Barnett-like exasperation (“I’ll never have any fun if all I do is sit and whine”), while “Lady Exhausted” names that fatigue outright, ending in an operatic, Heaven’s Gate-style climax. I’m convinced the sound of Dugan and Mina’s voices alone could lure me to the ends of the earth.

Each song exists in its own distinct world, blending lyrically inspired sonic details with our stacks of interlocking harmonies. We recorded the album with our band at Studio G in Brooklyn and finished it up in London with Catherine at Eastcote. It has been a really really special time and we can’t wait for everyone to hear the music.

Five albums in, Ken Yates thinks he may have nailed it with Total Cinema (Tone Tree)—and we tend to agree. With help from award-winning producer Dan Ledwell, the London, Ontario, singer/songwriter has finally assembled the fully operational musical vehicle for delivering his subtle, meticulously observed insights into the post-millennial human condition. He came awfully close with 2023’s “Cerulean”, an album that connected with American critics, if not a ton of listeners. But while that LP tailed off into formula toward the end, “Total Cinema” never loses its creative momentum, thanks to a surplus of memorable melodies that often hinge on Yates’ inventive guitar leads.

Yates says With “Total Cinema“, I felt like I had this depth of new experiences to draw inspiration from. From grief and cynicism, to love and gratitude, there was a clarity to writing these songs I’ve never had before. I think that comes from experiencing and feeling things my younger self wouldn’t have been able to articulate.

Yates’ boyish delivery has something in common with Elliott Smith’s, in the way it makes vulnerability feel so approachable—even charismatic. As with “Cerulean“, lead vocals are often doubled on “Total Cinema“, which adds another dynamic to the album’s living, breathing bed of sound.

New album “Total Cinema” out June 6th:

“Radio Waves” (Tone Tree) marks a significant milestone for an artist who’s been an all-around model of self-sufficiency. For his fifth studio album, the Bones Of J.R. Jones’ Jonathon Linaberry cleared the creative decks, hiring an outside producer for the first time. As it turns out, the one he picked was a perfect match for his latest nostalgia-laced batch of tunes. A Grammy nominee for his work with Feist, Robbie Lackritz does moody and hypnotic better than most, and he permeates “Radio Waves” with an uncanny sense of time and place: a distinct ’80s/’90s vibe. For Linaberry, those were the days when an album could change your life. And while “Radio Waves” may not change your life, it will move you in unexpected ways.

1) “Car Crash”
“As we get older, we realize that life and love will always be beautifully imperfect. It’s a disaster. It’s a car crash. But it’s something I like to think we always yearn for. There’s some part of us that wants it to hurt. If it hurts, you know it means something—and that’s all we ever really want.”

2) “Savages”
“‘Savages’ is about finding yourself out all night in the July heat under the city lights, at a house party or getting lost with your friends and being completely enveloped in that moment. It’s surrendering to that feeling, letting yourself feel wrecked, gut-punched, inspired and bleary-eyed. It’s about wanting to disappear right then and there in the hopes that time stops.”

3) “Heart Attack”
“This one always felt like the loneliest track on the album. For me, it’s about dealing with the expectations of family, loved ones and just life in general.”

4) “Shameless”
“I think we all struggle with the ‘what could have been’ question. What arrogant fool can’t look back and wonder? I’m just trying to recognize that in this song.”

5) “Catching You”
“Here I’m missing days of staying out on wild nights … of not caring, of being a stranger in a room.”

6) “Ghosts” (Featuring Two Runner)
“Young loves. Young friends. Just kids making silly promises to each other.”

7) “Wasting Some Time”
“It’s about fulfilling a role for someone you love deeply, but you recognize that life is too complicated to call it what it truly is.”

8) “Hills”
“I had a neighbor set fire to a giant brush pile in his yard. It burned for days. His wife had just died, and it felt like an effigy to me. I imagined him working through his loss and carrying on with his farm work. This song is about living in a town where you see this fire on the hill that burns and burns … and everyone imposes their own meaning on it.”

9) “Drive” 
“I’ve spent so many years of my life driving myself around, playing my songs. Countless cities, countless late nights, trying to get home as fast as I can. Sometimes I do feel like I lose time. It’s the tediousness and monotony of the touring life, doing the same thing every night. I suppose this is my modest attempt to express my darker feelings on being a touring musician.”

10) “The Devil” 
“It’s recognizing that maybe the one you love is the worst thing for you as a person, that maybe they represent the weakest point in your character. But you know you’re going to love them anyway.”

11) “Start Again” 
“The repetitious arguments, the same highs, the same lows, the acknowledgment of changes needed and then doing it all over again. This song is about the hope of starting over—that maybe tomorrow will be different if we just put these feelings to bed tonight.”

Linaberry explains, “A lot of these songs started on a drum machine, which was very intentional. I wanted to focus on simplicity, on stripping tracks back to their most essential elements so that the melody and the vocals could shine.” Those electronic origins are clearly evident throughout what is, for the most part, an excellent album that allows Linaberry’s glorious vocals to shine amidst a mix of acoustic and synth-driven backing. The songs work best when those drum machines are employed in a more restrained and subtle fashion. ‘Waste Some Time’ and ‘Start Again’ are fine examples of this, while others like ‘Hills’ eschew the electronics for simple acoustic accompaniment.

Just occasionally, though, that programming is a detraction that threatens to overwhelm. ‘Savages’, revelling as it does in the reckless abandon of young adulthood, begins with an insistent drum track that never lets up. In the same vein, ‘Catching You’ wonders what we were ever trying to prove with all the debaucherous nights and bad decisions of youth. Whilst also employing an unrelenting beat, the acoustic backing here distracts the ear and softens the overall sound.

The Bones Of J.R. Jones

David Lowery’s “Fathers, Sons And Brothers” (Cooking Vinyl) is an outlier. It’s more of a memoir—and even that’s playing a bit loose with the truth. Still, it can be a challenge to set even the most disparate elements of one’s life story to music.

On just his second solo album in the 40 years since Camper Van Beethoven’s debut, Lowery clears that hurtle, moving quite nicely between acoustic, narrative-heavy story songs and tunes with more conventional verse/chorus/verse structures. Some of the best moments among the 28 tracks blur the line between the two, subversively catchy numbers like “Mexican Chickens” and “Battle Of Leros.”

Though Lowery recorded much of “Fathers, Sons And Brothers” alone during the pandemic, it contains numerous contributions from artists scattered across five time zones and three continents. The list includes guitarist Jim Dalton (Roger Clyne And The Peacemakers), bassist Bryan Howard (Slackdaddy), vocalist Lisa Kekaula (Bellrays), keyboardist Jeremy Lawton (Big Head Todd & The Monsters), pedal-steel player Matt “Pistol” Stoessel and many others. The album was co-produced by Lowery and Drew Vandenberg (Faye Webster, Of Montreal).

The late Clifton Chenier, Zydeco pioneer known for his Creole-inspired sound rooted in blues, Cajun and R&B, is being bolstered by the music community on his 100th birthday. To mark the occasion and signify Chenier’s esteem by his musical admirers, The Rolling Stones have taken on the artist’s 1965 recording, “Zydeco Sont Pas Salés,” sung entirely in French by Mick Jagger. The track is part of the forthcoming LP “A Tribute To The King Of Zydeco“, due June 27th, 2025. 

Speaking of their involvement in the project, the blues-influenced British band shared, “The Stones are truly honoured to be on this tribute album amongst a stellar cast of artists and musicians. Clifton Chenier was one of the most influential musicians to come out of Louisiana. He turned so many people onto the wonderful free-spirited dance music of Zydeco, including ourselves back in the day.”

“Although the development of any music style can seldom be attributed to one artist, there is not a zydeco band who has not followed the template Chenier created,” the group delineates, speaking fondly of their longstanding source of influence. On the track, the band tapped guest Steve Riley, who adds a layer of The Big Easy by way of the accordion. The results are a renewed appreciation for the Zydeco tradition fused with the players’ signature brand of rock-and-roll. 

“Both Mick singing in impeccable Creole French and Keith and Ronnie completely carving up the traditional approach with those signature licks and their iconic ‘weaving’ style sounds easy and playful,” says the track’s producer, CC Adcock. “Man, this one sounds like they’re just running wild through the swamps with it.” 

On a broader scale, the album’s producer, Steve Berlin (Los Lobos), and Joel Savoy, the founder of ALCOUR Records and member of the “First Family of Cajun Music,” state,  “Clifton Chenier was an international ambassador, introducing the world to Zydeco. While he has been honored with many awards, his real impact is found in the lives and style of musicians from southwest Louisiana and beyond.” 

“A Tribute to the King of Zydeco” presents 14 tracks contributed by Taj Mahal (“Hey ‘Tite Fille”), Lucinda Williams (“Release Me”), John Hiatt (“You Used To Call Me”), Charley Crockett (“Easy Easy Baby”), Jimmie Vaughan (My Soul), David Hidalgo (“Hot Rod”) and more industry luminaries.

In addition to music, the Chenier family estate and the University of Louisiana Lafayette have come together to set up the Clifton Chenier Memorial Scholarship, which will, “The scholarship fund will offer annual financial assistance to students studying Traditional Music, specifically Zydeco accordion,

Funkadelic‘s back catalogue of Westbound studio albums is being reissued on vinyl via ORG Music. On August 29th, the reissue series kicks off with the band’s 1970 self-titled debut album, with audio restored and remastered from the original master tapes by mastering engineer Dave Gardner and tape restoration specialist Catherine Vericolli.

“It’s very rare for an archivist and a re-mastering engineer to be in the same room with the source material on a project,” Vericolli said in a statement. “To investigate, troubleshoot and make decisions as a team to best serve the releases. The approach is unorthodox, but the more we dug in, the more we realized that the magic of this undertaking wasn’t just in the tapes, or the incredible history that surrounded us in the studio—it was in the process. It was in the collaboration and trust.”

In the months that follow, other celebrated albums from the group will be released, including “Free Your Mind…and “Your Ass Will Follow”, “Maggot Brain”, and more. 

Funkadelic’s debut album alone would be enough to secure Westbound’s legacy, let alone a roster that includes Ohio Players, Junie Morrison’s solo albums, The Detroit Emeralds, Denise LaSalle, The Counts, Dennis Coffey and so many more who continue to deeply influence soul, R&B, rock, funk and beyond. 

Irish band Just Mustard are back with their first new music in three years. “Pollyana” picks up where 2022’s “Heart Under” left off, with blisteringly loud guitar haze floating atmospherically around a driving bassline and breakbeat drumming.

The latest from Just Mustard finds them taking a deeper dive into the experimental ambiance of shoegaze. A minimalist drone of sound anchors the vocals, holding the song together. Katie Ball’s voice has just enough of a piercing quality to make this work. If you were hoping for a more guitar-oriented track, this is not it, but it does work well at creating the dreamy vibes that keep the band from being boxed into a singular aspect of the genre they are associated with. 

The video was directed by singer Katie Ball, who says, “We shot the video using different CCTV and VHS cameras around our hometown Dundalk trying to have as much fun as possible, the kind of fun that makes you feel sick almost instantly, which suits the themes of the song.”

We are also happy to announce that we have a run of intimate shows across the world this September. Sign up to our mailing list at justmustard.ie to access presale 10am local time tomorrow, Wednesday 18th June.

Death Valley Girls – “Live From the Astral Plane”. Originally recorded back in 2020 in the heart of a global pandemic, the band reunited to record a live film in their practice space in Los Angeles, CA. Revisited and remastered in 2024, pressed on beautiful splatter vinyl for the very first time. 

“Wow! Getting to do this project was such an honor, and a treat! We finished recording our record “Under the Spell of Joy” one day before lock down. Rolling out an album under normal circumstances is a huge, and all consuming job. Then figuring out how to compassionately, respectfully, and successfully roll out an album during a worldwide catastrophe, and especially an album about spells, and incantations for joy, was a real head scratcher! Getting to work on this live recording during that period allowed us to focus on a way we could be most helpful in a world of sorrow, and forced us to be creative. We were desperate to be of service.

We realized astral projection – and concepts around leaving the 3D experience was an exciting idea. If we could connect people on the astral plane, we wouldn’t have to feel so alone! So we decided to start the session with an introduction on how to astral project! Learning how to meditate on this concept turned out to be the greatest gift, and a lasting escape during this terrible time. This recording finally getting to be on vinyl is so exciting! The idea that we can all meet up in the sky, and leave our problems behind for a bit is such a fun exercise! Now all you gotta do is drop that needle and fly! Thank you for letting us !” – Death Valley Girls

Bonnie Bloomgarden – Vocals, Guitar, Keys
Nikki Pickle – Vocals, Bass
Rikki Styxx – Vocals, Drums
Larry Schemel – Guitar

Recorded at The Cone with Dante Aliano in Los Angeles

Parisian psych institution, La Femme, unleash a discography spanning set dripping in LSD and casual chic, transmitted from a smoky room in Normandy, France. The Session comes on the heels of their new LP, “Paradigmes”, and upcoming world tour.
“We have recorded this session in the country side of Normandy, France, an intimate set in a rustic old home. We played our most psyches track, according to the Levitation Sessions spirit, recorded by the fireplace in the darkest hours of the night.

The spirit of the Psych Fest was haunting the room, and so were psychedelic ghosts, they were living in every one of the musicians of the band. We were time traveling, the spirits of the 60s rising back from the dead. The track “Sphynx” was written during Austin Psych Fest 2014 in Austin, Texas, and we are pleased to bring it back home. Danser sous acide” – La Femme

Filmed in Normandy, FR