The Fat Angel Sings

Hopefully you’ve been with The Coral since their celebrated, self-titled, mercury prize-nominated debut in 2002, are a lapsed fan or have never heard of them before, ‘Coral Island’ which is the 10^th body of work from the legendary Merseyside band – is a joy for the ears & soul….& the dinked edition is another pretty special offering too. Three years on from 2018’s unconvincing ‘Move Through The Dawn’, The Coral have returned with possibly their finest release to date. ‘Coral Island’ is loosely themed around different seasons in a seaside location, songs woven together by spoken language excerpts from a work of fiction entitled ‘Over Coral Island’, written by the band’s keyboard player, Nick Power. Such stitching is atmospheric but don’t go thinking this is some impenetrable concept album.

The Coral have come a long way in their 25 years together from a ragtag group of Merseyside teens hopped up on old Deram Records sides into one of most astute acts in modern UK rock. Now as men in the throes of middle age, they’ve turned around and delivered some of the most English Britpop since Blur’s The Great Escape.

The wheels rattle into the thrilling unknown on the Coral’s first ever double-album, which finds the unsurpassed, metamorphic gonzo-pop five-piece remaining wilfully & delightfully idiosyncratic. still heavily influenced by the classic song-writing of love, the Beatles & the Byrds, the psych-folk popsters remain inventive as they weave spoken word & cinematic instrumental interludes amongst the glorious melding of their retro melodies, guitar twang, 60s psychedelia & folk-rock influences.

Squinting into the neon-lit penny arcades & draining an after hours glass with the displaced & dispossessed once the power is pulled, The Coral’s latest caper concerns listeners with the light, shade, thrills & profound melancholy of coastal palaces packed with fun & fright.

Recorded in a sense of barely-controlled, copy & paste chaos at Parr Street studios in Liverpool, ‘Coral Island’ was written & performed by the multi-instrumentalist & multi-talented line-up of James Skelly, Ian Skelly, Nick Power, Paul Duffy & Paul Molloy plus a special guest.

Few of their peers from the 00s indie boom are so hale and hearty; 20 years into their career, the Merseyside band made their most ambitious album, and one of their best. It’s a double concept album about a seaside resort, and captures those towns’ blend of buckets-and-spades buoyancy and out-of-season malaise; gorgeous harmonies flow through jangling psych-pop and touches of northern soul, though there’s also creepy rockabilly emanating from the ghost train and ballads for lonely fishermen at the end of the pier.

The 2LP set, pressed at Takt in Poland and silent other than a couple of slightly noisy run-in grooves, sounds fulsome and maintains decent separation during the jubilant jangle of ebullient highlights ‘Change Your Mind’ and ‘Take Me Back To The Summertime’. There are nods to the frenetic psych of their early output alongside more melancholic mid-paced treats like ‘Strange Illusions’. James Skelly’s voice only seems to be improving with age and such is the quality of the song writing that a double album at this stage in their career is most welcome.

Sometimes “Dinked” is about bringing new music to new fans. sometimes it’s about bringing old music to new fans. sometimes it’s about bringing old fans to new music. sometimes it’s about rekindling an old love.
The band’s album ‘Coral Island’ released on 30th April 2021.

Loney dear is the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanängen’s idiosyncratic musical project where classic song-writing meets complex productions – both wide open and uplifting as well as sensitive and heart breaking…While Emil Svanängen’s stage moniker as Loney dear may not quite be a household name, those who have encountered him in the past rarely forget his work. A run of gorgeous records during the Noughties – ‘Citadel Band’, ‘Sologne’, ‘Loney, Noir’ and, most notably, ‘Dear John’ – ensured he was one of those artists you heard playing in your local indie store and ended up buying as a result. 

Recorded by Svanángen with producer Emanuel Lundgren in a mythical studio on western Södermalm in Stockholm, ‘A Lantern and A Bell’ is Loney dear’s second album for Real World, following 2017’s self-titled release.
Maritime themes permeate across ‘A Lantern and A Bell’ – the album arrives bearing artwork depicting the international nautical flag for distress and Emil’s voice is frequently bolstered by diffused water sounds at dark low frequencies and the calls of sea birds. For those who know their Loney dear, the constant references to sea and ships are hardly something new. “All that is an important part of my inner life, maybe a romantic dream of adventure, but also a phobia, a danger I cannot help but be drawn to,” says Emil; “Near where I live, freighters pass by every day and the sounds of their engines get into my head. And further into the music.”

Speaking about Emil’s new record – on which he has consulted as a sounding board, Real World label founder Peter Gabriel says; “Sad soulful melodies that create space in your head that fill with memories dreams and tenderness. I am very proud that we are working with such a gifted songwriter. When you’re isolating, what better than to be wrapped up in these beautiful imaginative constructions – the work of a master.” ‘Mute / All Things Pass’ and ‘Trifles’ both explore tone and intensity to great effect while the plangent tip-toe tune of ‘Go Easy On Me Now’ is accompanied by a staggeringly direct vocal performance that must be heard. Any format will suffice for such magnificent music, but the vinyl has been done very well indeed considering the beautiful nature of the recording. With each listen, I think I love this album a little more. Everyone I’ve recommended it to has said something similar,

This really is excellent, his voice sounds like magic and these are all beautifully crafted songs.

The Anchoress‘ (aka Welsh multi-instrumentalist Catherine Anne Davies) second album has rightly been lauded by critics and is truly a joy from start to finish. “The Art of Losing‘s” strength is largely down to a collection of superb songs, and there are so many of them!. The synth-driven title track’s deliberate juxtaposition of a poppy “do-do-do-do-do” refrain against lyrics like “do you want the marks to prove that you do matter more than he says” is just one example of intricate craft and unrestrained artistry at play. The self-production is entirely fitting for such an honest record and the attention to detail is well-served across an excellent Optimal double vinyl pressing. There’s 14 tracks in total, but actually four of these are short piano interludes (with two top-and-tailing the record) so that leaves us with ten ‘proper’ songs, which I’m sure you would agree is a perfect for an album.

‘Let It Hurt’ is a melodic, mournful, mid-paced piano-led number and the pace never lets up on ‘Show Your Face’ which is a pulsing, driving track with crunching guitars. On ‘The Exchange’, James Dean Bradfield duets (returning the favour of 2018, when The Anchoress delivered guest vocals on ‘Dylan & Caitlin’ on the Manic Street Preachers’ Resistance is Futile). ‘Unravel’ boasts ‘Running Up That Hill’-style drums and the truly remarkable ‘5am’ which would only be spoilt by a precis of its message here. Seek it out, take in the meticulous sleeve notes and just listen. It is just piano, voice and strings; it’s achingly sad and beautiful. The title track brings together everything that is good about The Art of Losing in four minutes and six seconds.

The overriding theme here is of loss; the lyrics are heartfelt and Catherine’s voice and delivery really sucks you in. The songs manage to pull off the rare feat of sounding both satisfyingly ‘classic’, structurally – in rock/pop terms – but also edgy and dark, with enough angles in the production/arrangements to keep the listener engaged.

Even if this collection of songs wasn’t more than the sum of its parts, it would still be superb, but when brought together and thoughtfully sequenced, with those interludes, the magic happens. It’s a truly exceptional album.

There was a smart looking 3CD deluxe at the time of release, which included all sorts of bonus tracks. Sadly, I missed out on that (argh!), but a new, expanded single CD, with five bonus acoustic tracks, is released in March .

There are albums, for which the first listen is a curious mix of emotions. Spacious, delicate and precise recordings can simultaneously wow one’s heart and make the brain flutter. The realisation that it is a keeper can be rapidly offset by a fear that the vinyl edition might not be much cop. After the less-than-stellar pressing afforded their 2014 delight, ‘Familiars’, the return of The Antlers was cause for such mixed emotions.

2011’s ‘Burst Apart’ is an album that everyone should own, offering a soulful, jazzy indie-Prince approach that still sounds sublime and suited the analogue realm perfectly. 2017’s ‘Impermanence’, a solo effort from beleaguered frontman Peter Silberman, was the product of him reframing his song writing in light of debilitating tinnitus and revelled in the notion of quiet.

As a result, The Antlers’ ‘Gold To Green’ is similarly muted at points, although the lineage from ‘Familiars’ remains logical. The beautiful gatefold sleeve follows the colour scheme dictated by the record’s title and houses an excellent cut via Optimal. The lulling, enveloping build towards the end of ‘Volunteer’ will make you long for an overgrown field in which to mooch or laze, while the title track possesses the languid slinkiness that so impressed a decade ago. The standout is, arguably, ‘Solstice’ which chimes serenely despite a “wo-ah-woah” chorus that feels ever so slightly beset with anguish. Transgressive have delivered a pleasingly affordable, near-silent pressing that does justice to this mesmerising album.

The Antlers are a very special band indeed. “Solstice” by The Antlers from the album ‘Green To Gold’, available now

I heard about O’Rourke’s new album in a piece about Paul Weller. “Arrivals” features O’Rourke’s first new material in two years and brings us the most emotionally raw and affecting album of his career. Produced by Paul Weller at Black Barn Studios, Surrey, the sound is stripped back to Declan’s soulful and resonant voice, the virtuosic acoustic guitar playing for which he’s renowned and only the occasional sparse arrangement of strings and late-night drums bringing colour and light to the LP’s 10 songs. Weller, a fan of Declan’s song writing for some years, also adds his multi-instrumental abilities, including a beautiful piano accompaniment, to the closing track. With Weller is in the producer’s chair and this seemed to suggest it might be worth sampling. Not long into ‘In Painters’ Light’, the album’s opening track, I was hooked and it soon felt like there was a logical link between this and Weller’s 2018 pastoral delight, ‘True Meanings’. “Arrivals” features O’Rourke’s first new material in two years and brings us the most emotionally raw and affecting album of his career.

While this record is exactly the sort of thing that pithy ‘also released’ review round-ups tag singer-songwriter and move on, there’s much more to it than O’Rourke’s weathered voice and acoustic guitar. Not that those two ingredients aren’t excellent, but when lyrics add “Johnny cooks a steak from Lidls on a Friday night” and “when you live by the weather every wind has a tail” it ensures you don’t treat ‘Arrivals’ as background music.

Sympathetic but understated strings mix with delicate organ parts as O’Rourke paints landscapes, toys with narratives and gets under the listener’s skin. Fans of the late, great Gavin Clark could find an echo of his masterful communication in these skilfully arranged tracks. A slow-burning delight, Give it time and attention and you may find yourself similarly smitten.

Produced by Jack Shirley (Deafhaven, Joyce Manor, Whirr, Jeff Rosenstock). Pardoner is a force to be reckoned with; melding slacker rock attitude with pummelling hardcore for a visceral sound not unlike a trip to the dentist’s office and a novacaine high. “Came Down Different” features some of their most pop moments yet, even occasionally ditching the foreman shouting for genuine hooks.

The band even has their own visual language, with record sleeves, tour posters, and t-shirts adorned with Flanigan’s distinct, psychedelic drawings. Pardoner has been a fixture of the San Francisco DIY scene for years, and released their debut album on Father/ Daughter Records in 2016. Since then, they have done noticable West Coast touring, having played gigs with Emily Yacina, Moaning, Momma, Pllush, Shamir, and Versing, amongst others. I love this album! , For a second I thought you guys were going to break up, and I’m so glad you didn’t. 

The past few years have been full of reasons to fall apart, and Bay Area rockers Pardoner very nearly went that way. Max Freeland (vocals, guitar), Trey Flanigan (vocals, guitar) and River van den Berghe (drums) bonded over Yo La Tengo and Polvo in the San Francisco State University dorms, formed Pardoner, and released a pair of warm and fuzzy guitar-rock records, 2017’s “Uncontrollable Salvation” (via Father/Daughter) and 2019’s “Playin’ on a Cloud“. But when Freeland lived out many Americans’ Tr*mp-era fantasies by relocating to Vancouver (home of Pardoner’s friends and peers Dumb) that same year, it appeared the band was also on its way out.

Fortunately for us, Pardoner wobbled, but didn’t fall, adding an old friend in Colin Burris (bass), and reuniting in San Francisco to record “Came Down Different“—their forthcoming third album and Bar/None Records debut, came out May in a two-day spree with veteran hardcore producer Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Jeff Rosenstock). The results, thus far, have jumped right out of our headphones, including the sardonic slacker rock of lead single “Donna Said” and the Parquet Courts-esque shredder “Spike,” which we hailed as one of March’s best tracks. The third and final single ahead of the band’s new record, “Bunny’s Taxi.”

Pardoner makes music fit for these singular times: Right around the corner is a sunny, vaccinated summer, full of explosive celebration, but by no means free of simmering rage. “Donna Said” melded rock of the noise and jangle varieties while documenting the draining demands of the music-industry rat race (“When you got feelings and guitar / You wanna trade it for cash”), while “Spike” moved a mile a minute to reflect its anti-exploitative sentiments (“Step up on some grapes / They want wine / They want twice the results / In half of the time”). These are songs about being cash-strapped, anonymous and squeezed dry by society (just like those grapes), but somehow having the last laugh all the same.

“Bunny’s Taxi” keeps an eye on that same everyday dehumanization, but takes more of a big-picture view of such everyone-for-themselves struggles, mocking the thoughtlessness of following your bliss wherever. “C’mon and do what you want / If it makes you feel good, how could it be wrong? / C’mon and do what you want to,” Freeland urges over shrieking guitars, going on to drone, “I threw my cares off the cliff / I didn’t care who I hit / The tourists shouted in French / But it’s all Greek to me.” Elsewhere, Pardoner reference their hometown antihero Dirty Harry, deliver wrist-shattering drums and red-hot riffs that land somewhere between shoegaze and surf-rock, and conjure a truly harrowing metaphor for life (and “leisure”) under late capitalism on a dying planet: “If you need me / I’m watching TV in the oven with a gun to the back of my head, fuck.”

Released May 14th, 2021

All songs written and performed by Pardoner.

“Wary + Strange”, the breakout album from Tennessee artist Amythyst Kiah, isn’t just a great country album: it’s a great album in all aspects, that’s not afraid to speak truth to power. If the arrangements are a faithful rendering of American roots tradition—Appalachian instruments, cyclical construction, warm vocals with a touch of timbre—her lyrics function in the exact opposite, deconstructing country tropes to expose deep-seated biases and uncomfortable truths. The Grammy-nominated “Black Myself” exhumes the racist skeletons in country music’s closet, “Wild Turkey” develops country’s thematic obsession with booze into a devastating reflection on suicide, and “Fancy Drones” decries the dehumanization of modern technology.

By “Soapbox (Reprise),” she’s tamed her demons, bared her soul, and shattered our preconceptions of roots music—not as a means of entertainment, but rather a defiant act of self-preservation. “You can keep your sophistry/ Save my brain from atrophy,” Kiah sings, “I have my own hand that feeds/ I don’t need what you think.” As listeners, we’re just lucky to bear witness.

Released June 18th, 2021

2021, © 2021 Rounder Records.

Dummy refuses to slow down. After releasing two cassette EP’s in 2020 (on Popwig and Born Yesterday respectively), Dummy’s debut full-length album arrives via Chicago’s Trouble in Mind Records. Employing pummelling guitars and celestial ambience within the same breath, the band folds a myriad of reference points into their drone-pop style. Influence from ’60s melodicism and ’90s UK noise pop can be found woven in with inspiration from spiritual jazz, Japanese new age, and Italian minimalism. Dummy dodges the brooding, dark, dramatic tropes of contemporary “artistic” music often found in punk, experimental, and electronic, instead insisting on joyous and euphoric sonic palettes. They refuse to be artistically stagnant, continuously shifting their approach to writing across 12 tracks.

Shaped by performances around Los Angeles in 2019, songs like “Daffodils” and “Fissured Ceramics” feature relentless driving energy and ample psychedelic noise. Elsewhere, Dummy counterbalances the aggression with meditative synthscapes focused on sound design and studio experimentation, like on the motorik “X-Static Blanket“. Finally, centrepiece “H.V.A.C.” and the album’s final track, “Atonal Poem”, seek to synthesize these two poles, offering multi-part journeys through uncharted sonic territory. In contrast to blissed-out instrumentation, Dummy’s sardonic lyricism examines “the burden of modern life, consumerism, environmental collapse, alienation, and other anxieties born out of living in this absurd moment in history”. Interior design, marine pollution, the psychology of commercial architecture, and nuclear testing are all featured subjects. Dummy’s restless creativity keeps them moving ever-forward, continuously challenging themselves and pushing their sound into exciting and exhilarating places.

Rock music might be a means to no end for some bands, but for Dummy, it’s an opportunity to surface and synthesize more interesting bits of popular music that otherwise go overlooked by professional three-chord wonders who own only three records. Affixing their lengthy and diverse influences proudly on their sleeve—and literally listing some of them on the sleeve of this very record—on “Mandatory Enjoyment“, the Los Angeles five-piece revel in restless and rule-less punk creativity, zipping from sunshine-y indie pop to noisy drone to Tropicália to Japanese ambient to krautrock and shoegaze and basically every cool genre that ever existed, ever. While musical experimentation this deliriously heady can sometimes become an annoying exercise in hipper-than-thou footnoting, “Mandatory Enjoyment” is one of those rare rock records that pushes the form forward by looking back with reverence rather than for reference.

Dummy’s first full length, “Mandatory Enjoyment” – out October 22nd, 2021 on Trouble in Mind Records.

Recommended if you like: Silver Apples, Laraaji, Velvet Underground, Stereolab, Cluster, Antena, My Bloody Valentine, Haruomi Hosono, Carl Sagan, Yo La Tengo, Finis Africae, Midori Takada.

The 1999 album by the Lilys  was originally released on Sire Records and became one of those major label releases that just fell by the wayside. It is a crunching and sophisticated 60’s British invasion influenced album with jangling guitars, hooks galore and adventurous song writing.

By the time of their fourth full-length album, 1999’s “The 3 Way”, Lilys had already gone through a more dramatic evolution in just a few years than many bands experience throughout an entire career. Centered around songwriter and sole consistent member Kurt Heasley, Lilys began as a fuzzy shoegaze band, making sounds heavily influenced by My Bloody Valentine for their first few albums before taking a dramatic left turn toward orchestral mod pop created in the likeness of the Kinks, the Zombies, and the Small Faces on 1996’s “Better Can’t Make Your Life Better“. Compared to that album, Lilys’ output from just a few years earlier sounded like the work of a completely different band. This ’60s-steeped phase of the band reached its highest form with “The 3 Way”, an album where Heasley’s British Invasion and baroque pop influences felt less like faithful recreations, and bled more into his own cracked song writing sensibilities.

The overwhelming influence of the Kinks is still undeniable as album-opener “Dimes Makes Dollars” kicks things off with a bumbling garage rock riff and the kind of cheeky melodies Ray Davies perfected on Face to Face. As the song goes on, however, Heasley’s eccentricities start leaking into view as the melodies become more angular and winding. The album splits its time between quick stomping jams and drawn out song suites like the quickly shifting “Socs Hip” and “Leo Ryan (Our Pharoah’s Slave).” On these longer, more meandering tracks, Heasley assembles a pastiche made up of Left Banke harpsichord sounds, fuzz guitar borrowed from the Action, and quick-turning genre exercises following the blueprint of The Who Sell Out.

The wildly mapped song structures rarely stay in one mode for more than a few bars, and sometimes the songs start in S.F. Sorrow territory and end up traipsing through disco strings and bursts of free jazz saxophone. Throughout “The 3 Way”, Heasley’s distracted muse becomes the main attraction. He recalls Bowie’s sultry Aladdin Sane balladry on “The Spirits Merchant” before offering up what sounds like an Arthur outtake moments later with “The Lost Victory,” throwing in nods to the Monkees, lounge pop, and even the smallest traces of the blissed-out shoegaze guitar that defined earlier iterations of Lilys.

Indie bands fixating on ’60s pop was fairly commonplace by the late ’90s, but the way Lilys explored this muse would have more of a ripple effect. There are links in Heasley’s circuitous melodies and rapid key changes to Elephant 6 peers Of Montreal and Apples in Stereo, and the sense of groove that guides “The 3 Way’s” funkier experiments would resurface four years later on Belle and Sebastian’s far more visible effort Dear Catastrophe Waitress. While the bold-faced influences are easy to pick out, the way Heasley used them as a starting point to break new creative ground requires deeper listening. Once you get past the Kinks references emblazoned in many of the songs, Lilys’ own silent influence on the course of indie rock that followed becomes more apparent.

A lost gem that finally gets the reissue it richly deserves. For fans of The Kinks, The Small Faces and Apples in Stereo.

Wand frontman Cory Hanson is back with his sophomore album “Pale Horse Rider.” Hanson’s new album is a reflection on his time spent at home in Southern California and his observation of the desolation of the Mojave desert surrounding him throughout the recording process. “Pale Horse Rider’s” release was accompanied by Hanson’s newest endeavour, a web series. His series, titled Limited Hangout, included performances with Hanson in red face paint and a yellow suit mouthing the lyrics to his newest release and then switching to sketches of absurd segments like puppet shows and fake commercials. “Pale Horse Rider” sees Hanson finding a much more country/folk sound than his previous psych infuzed release. The Album opener “Paper Fog” sounds as much like a cowboy ballad as it can while also tiptoeing the line between fantasy and terror. My favourite track on this album is the namesake “Pale Horse Rider” inspired by a tarot card and beautiful ode to a lone ranger-esque hero who in reality isn’t as trustworthy as he appears.

Setlist:

Wonder [Wand, Laughing Matter] – 0:21 Blue Cloud [Wand, Plum] – 5:25 The Trap (just the intro) [Wand, Plum] – 8:50 Ordinary People [Cory Hanson, The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo] – 9:58 Cosmic Dancer (cover) [T. Rex, Electric Warrior] – 13:00 Morning Rainbow [Wand, 1000 Days] – 18:47 Rio Grande [Wand, Laughing Matter] – 22:10 Candy Says (cover) [The Velvet Underground, S/T] – 26:02 Growing Up Boys [Wand, Ganglion Reef] – 30:13