The Fat Angel Sings

Featuring one of Blondie’s most famous, endearing and successful singles, “Sunday Girl,” originally released in 1979, was the follow-up to the band’s #1 hit, “Heart of Glass,” and was #1 in the U.K. and Top 10 around Europe. Taken from the band’s multimillion-selling album, Parallel Lines, the success of these two singles pushed the album to #1 (several months after its initial release) and helped Blondie become the first New Wave act to reach platinum status. Double 7” single set housed in a stunning, bespoke gatefold sleeve featuring rare photos from the period.

Back in 2018, Numero Group announced the release of “Blondie’s The Complete Studio Recordings 1975-1982” box set, collecting the group’s first six albums plus two other discs containing rarities.  A new 12-inch vinyl version of their smash 1979 “Heart of Glass” was released then as an appetizer, featuring six versions of the song and tracing its development.  But there has been no sign of the box and several release dates have come and gone.  It is now unofficially scheduled for this year and perhaps this RSD release is a sign that may happen.  “Sunday Girl” was the group’s follow-up single to “Heart of Glass” and went to No. 1 in the U.K. and Ireland and reached the Top 10 in other European countries (it was not released as a single in the U.S.).  This new release comes includes two 7″ vinyl singles.  The first features the single version of the song and the French version, which was included on the original 12″ single.  The second 7″ debuts two unreleased renditions of the song: the demo and a live version from Portland, Oregon on January 4th, 1979. 

Side One features the original Single Version, plus the French Version, pressed on red vinyl. Side Two features 2 previously unreleased tracks – a demo from 1978 and a live version recorded at the Paramount Theatre in Portland in January 1979 – pressed on yellow vinyl.

Side 1
1. Sunday Girl (Single Version) 3:01
2. Sunday Girl (French Version) 3:01

Side 2
1. Sunday Girl (Demo) 2:50
2. Sunday Girl (Live) — recorded at the Paramount Theater, Portland, OR. January 4, 1979 2:58

Punk and indie devotees will be delighted by this new Blondie exclusive, one of the most influential bands to a limited edition EP featuring one of their most famous, endearing and successful singles, “Sunday Girl.”

Taken from the band’s multi-million-selling album “Parallel Lines”, “Sunday Girl” was originally released in 1979 and was the follow-up single to the band’s number one hit single, “Heart of Glass” and was a UK number one and a top 10 hit around Europe.

The package comes in a bespoke gatefold featuring period photos and the first single is coloured red, while the second is coloured yellow.  It is limited to 3,000 copies.

Nilüfer Yanya’s new album, “Painless”, is shaping up to be pretty great given the quality of singles she’s been sharing ahead of its release. “anotherlife” is a lush, ethereal slow jam that keeps that anticipation up. We don’t have much longer to wait to hear the whole thing, thankfully “Painless” is out March 1st via ATO.

“anotherlife” is an ethereal, midtempo track with layered synths, guitar, and weaving vocal melodies. Nilüfer shares about the meaning, “At the core of the song it’s just about being OK with things and accepting that this is where you are at. However, the ‘I’ll do anything’ line hints at a desperation of wanting to let that be known.” Directed by Nilüfer’s sister, Molly Daniel, visuals for “anotherlife” find Nilüfer on holiday in Sri Lanka wearing beautiful garments in a prismatic and lush location in the sun and moonlight.

Every Nilüfer Yanya song is an exercise in restraint. Interlocking tendrils of spidery guitar flicker like simmering flames around the edges of her beguilingly minimalist compositions, always threatening to explode and pulling back at the last second. She’s an expert at building tension, which makes the rare moments of release in songs like “midnight sun” and “belong with you” all the sweeter. “Painless” is colder and moodier than her debut but also sharper and more focused, an immaculately constructed portrait of numb heartache that can make you feel a lot with a little.

“Painless” due out March 4th, 2022 via ATO Records.

Chicago trio Dehd will release their third album, “Blue Skies”, on May 27th via Fat Possum Recordings. It’s their first album for the label, and they produced it themselves, with Grammy-winning engineer Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, Rolling Stones) mixing.

The first single from the album is “Bad Love,” a real stormer that singer Emily Kempf says is about “recovering from love addiction and making a decision to stop choosing and aligning with people who aren’t your energetic match.” She adds, “I wrote it for myself and for everyone who needed to hear a song about choosing new forms of love. it’s about chasing a relationship with oneself rather than an unhealthy one, one that just doesn’t quite fit, or a co-dependent one. everyone experiences loneliness and everyone needs connection. I wished to reclaim loneliness for myself and others as something not embarrassing or to be a kept dark secret. I wanted to embrace loneliness and being alone, alchemizing it with friendship and behaviours with self that don’t involve romance or sex.”

All songs written by Emily Kempf, Jason Balla, and Eric McGrady. Produced by Jason Balla.

Official music video for Dehd’s new single “Bad Love,” off of their upcoming album “Blue Skies,” out on Fat Possum Recordings May 27th.

Fontaines D.C.’s “Skinty Fia” is one of the most anticipated albums of the spring ( limited edition, transparent red vinyl), and after having chewed on “Jackie Down the Line” for a month or so, we now have a second single. Using layered, shimmering guitars, the band lay down a dark mood on “I Love You” before the song builds to a full-on roar.

Frontman Grian Chatten says it’s “the first overtly political song we’ve written,” adding, “It’s standing in the center of our beloved home country as a multitude of things are brought to tragic ends in an apocalyptic state of affairs. That’s how it feels to me, and what I felt when I wrote it.” “And I loved you like a penny loves the pocket of a priest, and I’ll love you ‘til the grass around my gravestone is deceased”.

the video, directed by Sam Taylor and featuring an intense, magnetic performance by Chatten,

“Skinty Fia” is due out April 22 via Partisan Records 

Oceanator, the project of Brooklyn indie rock musician Elise Okusami, has announced her Bartees Strange-co-produced sophomore album, “Nothing’s Ever Fine”, due 4/8 via Polyvinyl Records, and first single “Bad Brain Daze” also features Jeff Rosenstock on saxophone; gang vocals from members of Groupie, Bad Moves, Maneka, The Sonder Bombs, Long Neck, Late Bloomer and Alright; and a video directed by Chris Farren. With a lifetime of playing in and alongside so many bands of friends, it makes sense Okusami would seek communal joy on this record, especially from musicians in the Brooklyn scene that has given Oceanator its home and the DC scene from which she got her start.

Lonely feelings can skew apocalyptic when compounded with mental health struggles and an ever-frightening planet, but Okusami’s exuberant song writing and brawny arrangements manage to form a complexly coloured and auspiciously bright sunset on the horizon. On “Nothing’s Ever Fine“, the world might end. But it might not. And while we wait to find out, Oceanator delivers a revitalizing smack of sound and energy, helping us to remember that even if things don’t turn out fine, we can make our time here worth it.

Co-produced by Elise Okusami (Oceanator), her brother & long time bandmate Mike Okusami as well as her friend Bartees Strange “Nothing’s Ever Fine” is powerful, absolutely dialled in and frankly kickass!!

“Bad Brain Daze” is taken from Oceanator’s new album, Nothing’s Ever Fine, out April 8th, 2022. Starring Elise Okusami and Jeff Rosenstock as “Saxophone Man”

Bands releasing songs in different languages is not a new idea The Beatles released a few of their early singles in German — but rarely do they do it in nine different languages. Enter Bodega, who’s great new single “Statuette on the Console” is out in English, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Ukrainian. The French version is particularly good, as it really brings out the inherent “Ca Plane Pour Moi” vibe in this ultracatchy two-minute mutant punk ripper.

BODEGA’s album “Broken Equipment” is out March 11th on WYR?

Released February 16th, 2022

‘Flicker’ is the second album from Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell. Written almost as a conversation with his teenage self, it follows the triumphant solo debut that was 2020’s ‘The View From Halfway Down’. This 18-track double album finds Andy moving towards classic song writing, notably on the reflective lead single ‘Something Like Love’, the strident harmonies of ‘World of Echo’, the joyous refracted loops of ‘Jenny Holzer B. Goode’ and the fuzz-laden late-’60s balladeering of ‘Love Is The Frequency’. Stylistically, the four sides of ‘Flicker’ take in everything from modern psychedelia to fingerpicked folk, whimsical baroque pop, and Byrdsian 12-string beauty.

Andy Bell‘s new album 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.”

What a treat “Flicker” is. The songs have a youthful energy, with a melodic style that feels very ’90s but Bell has brought maturity to them, as well as the blissed out sound heard on 2020’s “The View from Half Way Down” to them as well. It’s the best of both worlds: an 18-track double album that breezes by, full of jangly Britpop (“World of Echo,” “Love is the Frequency”), groovy psychedelia (“Riverside,” “Jenny Holzer B. Goode,” “Sidewinder”), ethereal melodies (“It Gets Easier,” “The Looking Glass,” “The Sky Without You”), contemplative folk pop (“Gyre And Gimble,” “We All Fall Down”), and more. There’s also “Something Like Love” that sounds like a first cousin to Ride’s “Vapour Trail” that takes an entirely different, dreamy orchestral path. On it, Andy sings, “Lost in a reverie of future days,” a phrase that’s also a good description of this album.

The Ride singer-guitarist reworks unfinished songs from throughout his career on this excellent double album

released February 11th, 2022

All tracks written and performed by Andy Bell

Spoon! The celebrated indie-rockers would have had the follow-up to 2017’s ‘Hot Thoughts’ with us a lot sooner than now, but that pesky pandemic interrupted the recording sessions for the intriguingly-titled ‘Lucifer On The Sofa’. Fortunately the album is finally with us now, and it’s a doozy. More seasoned Spoonites than I have heralded this as possibly the group’s best ever LP. This isn’t something one often hears about a band ten albums deep, but after giving it a quick spin I’ve got to say that they might be on to something. Spoon sound invigorated here, playing with panache and wit, and the grooves on cuts like ‘Wild’ and ‘Feels Alright’ are so righteously rollicking that they bring Eels and the more Rolling Stones-facing bits of Beck to mind.

Its Spoon’s tenth album, “Lucifer on the Sofa”, is the band’s purest rock ’n roll record to date. Texas-made, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years – both in and out of lockdown – these songs mark a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more full-colour.

This is not a return to the Spoon of “Girls Can Tell” or “Kill the Moonlight“, records that were so spare you could pick out every instrument on every song. Spoon sound huge here — it’s a modern studio album but these 10 songs crackle with electricity. “The Hardest Cut,” a snarling number with clear roots in ZZ Top, is pure Texas boogie but also pure Spoon. You can hear the curl on Daniel’s lip in his delivery. “The Devil & Mr Jones” is another track that plays with traditional rock tropes — Stonesy riff, Santana-y leads, deals with Satan — but does so with such style and palpable energy (and nicely subtle sax), that they make it their own.

From the detuned guitars anchoring “The Hardest Cut,” to the urgency of “Wild,” to the band’s blown-out cover of the Smog classic “Held,” Lucifer on the Sofa bottles the physical thrill of a band tearing up a packed room. It’s an album of intensity and intimacy, where the music’s harshest edges feel as vivid as the directions quietly murmured into the mic on the first-take. According to frontman Britt Daniel, “It’s the sound of classic rock as written by a guy who never did get Eric Clapton.”

Spoon is one of the few bands where you can expect that their next album is going to be yet another masterwork. “Lucifer on the Sofa” is no exception and that is an understatement. This is one of Spoon’s best albums. It is definitely stripped down from their last album “Hot Thoughts“, with more emphasis on guitar and hooks. Spoon is still at the top of their game 26 years into their career.