The Fat Angel Sings

“Fever Dreams Pts 1-4”; explores a multitude of concepts and themes. Because the wider world effectively shut down during its creation, Marr’s focus was pushed into both his interior life, and evoking the emotional and psychological states of others. “It’s an inspired record, and I couldn’t wait to get in and record every day,” he says. “But I had to go inwards.” As well as evoking the past and present, the album looks to the future, the idea that even in the most trying times, hope endures.

“There’s a set of influences and a very broad sound that I’ve been developing – really since getting out of The Smiths until now, and I hear it in this record,” Marr said in a statement about his new album.

“There are so many strands of music in it. We didn’t do that consciously, but I think I’ve got a vocabulary of sound. And I feel very satisfied that I’ve been able to harness it.”

Written and recorded at the Crazy Face Factory over the last year, ‘Fever Dreams Pts 1-4’ was created with Marr’s long-standing band: co-producer Doviak, bassist Iwan Gronow, drummer Jack Mitchell, and features backing vocals throughout the album from the Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Meredith Sheldon, with three songs featuring bass from Primal Scream’s Simone Marie.

The record will follow on from his third solo album “Call The Comet”, which was released in June 2018. “Fever Dreams Pts 1-4” will be released on February 25th, 2022 via BMG and includes Marr‘s recent single “Spirit, Power and Soul”. The first quarter of the album will be released as the “Fever Dreams Pt 1” EP on Friday (October 15th).

Marr has also announced details of a new livestream, Live At The Crazy Face Factory, which will premiere online on November 10th and be available on-demand until November 14th. Curated by Marr, the livestream will offer his fans “the chance to step inside [Marr‘s] custom-built Crazy Face Factory studio where “Fever Dreams Pts 1-4″ was created”.

One-fourth of a bold new double album from the famed Smiths guitarist, solo artist, and occasional Modest Mouse bandmate, the Fever Dreams Pt. 2 EP looks to continue Johnny Marr’s impressive run of solo releases that began in 2011 (if you don’t count his one release with The Healers from 2003) with The Messenger. Marr is refining his sonic palette, as well: single “Sensory Street” has a throbbing ‘80s electro-soul vibe, while “Tenement Time” is a classic rocker straight from his past.

Marr will also “discuss his creative process and life in song writing, alongside a set of full-band live performances from across his career”.

Marr will tour with Blondie as a special guest on the latter’s Against The Odds tour in the UK next April.

Boston 1971: An historic early recording of Aerosmith in their rehearsal room – just the band, crew and friends captured on Joe Perry’s tape recorder. This never-before-heard performance showcases the early, raw talent of this future Hall Of Fame band, one year before signing to Columbia Records, and two years before their eponymous debut, which featured many of these songs, including their enduring anthem ”Dream On”.

Before Steven Tyler and Joe Perry became the “Toxic Twins,” they were merely intoxicated. On a newly unearthed demo tape, which is coming out with the regrettably punny title “The Road Starts Hear”, that Aerosmith cut in 1971 two years before releasing their self-titled debut the band sounds loose and lubricated on embryonic versions of “Dream On,” “Mama Kin,” and other ditties they would be performing live for the next 50 years. It’s at once both a sonogram of the band as journeymen and a testament to the vision they had early on, the dogged determination to dream until the dream comes true — even if it sounds anything but dreamy in the moment.

The band members were all in their late teens or early twenties when they first came together in 1970. Originally, Tyler had corralled Perry, bassist Tom Hamilton, and drummer Joey Kramer into backing him on an audition tape for the Jeff Beck Group, which had recently parted ways with Rod Stewart. They ultimately figured they made a pretty good racket of their own together, nicked a moniker from Sinclair Lewis’ novel, Arrowsmith, and embarked upon becoming Boston’s greatest bar band. It’s that Aerosmith that plays on “1971: The Road Starts Hear“, a recording that reveals their roots better than their debut LP.

Although Tyler’s pouty lips would earn the band Stones comparisons for most of its career, this record suggests the band was more obsessed with Beck, the Yardbirds, and Led Zeppelin, artists who came to prominence in the wake of the Stones’ blues-rock renaissance, making Aerosmith third-wave contributors (and giving them the latitude to create their own iconic sound eventually). On this tape, you can hear the carefree spirit in Aerosmith that would later influence bands like Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses but none of the glossy, powerhouse pop sheen that would define “Kiss my sassafras”/”Love in an Elevator”-era Aerosmith in their comeback years. This is crude Aerosmith, the unrefined essence of what they would become.

After years in storage, the ancient tape’s sound is murky and blurry, which actually adds to the songs’ smoky, bluesy appeal. From the beginning, when the band members sound like they’re having a Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On”–style party as Perry noodles on Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross,” before they all align on Aerosmith’s “Somebody,” they sound more casual than they ever did on any studio recording. This tape is most likely a rehearsal tape, so they sound off their guard. In the release’s liner notes, penned by Rolling Stone contributing editor David Fricke, the band members say they can’t even remember making this recording; it was just in a stack of tapes Tyler had asked a friend to store. But it shows the chemistry they had at the time, for better and worse.

Most of the material here would become middling deep cuts on the band’s early records, and the album versions almost always sound better, thanks to recording-studio sound which allows you to hear both Perry and rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford’s parts clearly in stereo. On every song here, Tyler sings in the kind of strange Kermit the Frog voice he used on the first album, before he embraced his James Browny rasp. And some of the songs, which were likely recorded only for the band, sound downright sloppy. On “Dream On,” the piano sounds out of tune, Perry flubs a few notes, and Tyler sounds like he’s gasping for oxygen on the high notes. But on the upside, the song features a long-forgotten outro for the song; where the studio single ends like the Twilight Zone theme, Perry and Whitford play an almost cheerful guitar line, giving it some historical importance. It just doesn’t live up to their later legend.

The best stuff here, though, comes when the musicians just kick into bar-rock mode. Their cover of Rufus Thomas’ blues number “Walkin’ the Dog,” sounds rowdy and dangerous here; even with Tyler’s flute solo, it sounds more like the party anthem it probably was before they professionalized it in the studio for Aerosmith. “Movin’ Out” (the first song with a Tyler/Perry songwriting credit to make it on an album) reeks of Led Zeppelin III patchouli with its psychedelic guitars and Kramer’s thumping drumbeat; the album version is boring by comparison with its weird phaser effect on Tyler’s voice and tighter playing.

Both “Somebody” and “Mama Kin” (two songs that sound almost exactly alike, except in that “Mama Kin” is better) show how Aerosmith were born with their signature groove intact. They likely learned that groove from messing around on blues songs like the release’s two blues rarities, “Reefer Headed Woman” and “Major Barbra.” It’s a feeling they’d later lose their grasp on. By the time they recorded “Reefer” for “Night in the Ruts”, they sounded more jaded and like they were going through the motions (this time with heavy-metal guitar distortion.) As for “Major Barbra,” they quickly abandoned it, sticking versions of it on their “Classics Live” and “Pandora’s Box” comps; it’s a shame that the version here doesn’t sound better because it’s a better performance than either of the official releases.

But because you can practically hear the dust infecting the tape heads, “The Road Starts Here” feels more like a curious fossil, worthy of study, rather than a lost gem. This is not Aerosmith; this is the promise of Aerosmith. It’s rude awakenings, not the dream come true.

The San Fransico-based trio of Adam Abildgaard, Nick Duffy, and Ted Davis have built a loyal following and constant buzz over the last several years, with the 2019 EP ‘Mood Ring’ standing as their most kaleidoscopic work to date. Merging the quintessential melodies of pop’s past with contemporary touches to forge something truly unique, HFHW is just starting to create their own sonic world.

Californian indie trio Hot Flash Heat Wave draw on dream pop, surfer rock and post punk, finding an international audience with their albums “Neapolitan” and “Soaked”.

With a new full-length record on the way, the crucial announce a promotional tour, “Now that we’ve finally finished the record, we’re shifting the focus to preparing these songs for the stage with a new line-up and bringing them to life. From its concept, this album was meant to exist as both a record and a live experience, so nailing the sound and performance is really important to us and we have some ideas to sort out.”

Highschool friends Adam Abildgaard (vocals, guitar), Ted David (vocals, bass), and Nick Duffy (drums) and named their band after an intense summer in their home of San Francisco.

In 2015, they dropped their debut album “Neapolitan“. Featuring the hit single “Gutter Girl”, the record has rocketed up to 500,000 streams and continues to rise and was followed by second album “Soaked” two years later. More recently, they returned with their adventurous “Mood Ring” EP just last year which saw the boy adapt R&B on lead single “Go Ride” plus “Sky So Blue” which saw them embark on more psychedelic avenues.

“It’s the first record where we felt fully in charge of our sound and direction. We were writing more personal music, letting go of ideas about what we should sound like and exploring vulnerable, exciting places.”

This month has seen the release of brand new single “m o t I o n s”, a song which sees them explore an electro edge.

“m o t I o n s” will feature on their as yet untitled  album which is expected to be released next year. Hot Flash Heat Wave will be showcasing their new material when they kick off their tour in February 

“It’s a simple boy-meets-girl story, complicated somewhat by the presence of a motorcycle.”

That’s the humble introduction given by Richard Thompson in a YouTube clip of a performance of “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” his unforgettable folk ballad found on 1991’s “Rumour And Sigh“. It may indeed be an uncomplicated story, but it is brought to life in thrilling and moving fashion by this perpetually underrated singer-songwriter.

When Thompson’s name is mentioned, it is often in the context of his guitar work, which is indeed magnificent on this track. Finger picking his acoustic at lightning speed, he takes listeners on a ride every bit as breath taking in its way as one the James and Red Molly take aboard the titular bike. Yet his lyrics deserve just as much credit for the song’s success.

For those not up on their motorcycle history, the Vincent Black Lightning was only in production in Great Britain for a four-year span, but in that time it was the favoured weapon of choice for those daredevils looking to break land speed records. Still, it’s not necessary to know any of this to understand the allure of the bike for the two main characters in the song.

Red Molly is attracted to both speed and danger, making the sight of James on his Vincent simply irresistible. The feeling is likewise, as James lets her know: “Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme.” As anyone who has heard a folk ballad or two can probably guess, their time together is bound to be fleeting. James, an outlaw with a heart of gold, acknowledges this: “Now I’m 21 years, I might make 22/And I don’t mind dying, but for the love of you.”

Their hopes to ride their rapid motorbike into the sunset together quickly fade when an armed robbery gone awry leads to mortal wounds for James, giving him just enough time to confess his undying love to Red Molly. Yes, it’s a cliché, but Thompson imbues their last goodbye with such genuine emotion that it transcends all the times this story has been told before.

James knows he’s had it good in his brief time on Earth, considering he was able to partake in his two deepest desires: “Says James, ‘In my opinion, there’s nothing in this world/Beats a 52 Vincent and a red-headed girl.’” As his time runs out, his version of the afterlife appears before his dying eyes, “I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome/Swooping down from heaven to carry me home.”

He gives Red Molly one last kiss, but not before he hands her over the keys to the motorcycle, allowing her to take all the rides that are now denied to him. It’s a misty-eyed moment. “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” may be, at face value, just a simple tale about a girl, a guy, and a motorcycle, but, thanks to the inimitable talent of Richard Thompson, it’s nothing short of epic.

Like a shaken can of soda; post-punk/noise-rock from Kaurna Land (Adelaide, Australia).
Through a juxtaposition of experimental feedback, dissonance and rich vocal harmonies, Placement deliver a ferocious and often partially improvised live show, influenced by performance art.

At the very beginning of 2021, Kaurna Land/Adelaide five-piece indie-rock band Placement released their first single ‘Harder’. Angular, atmospheric, propulsive and impossible to ignore, it remains one of the most exciting Australian releases of the year.

Since then, they’ve released their debut EP “Lost Sun“, featuring ‘Harder’ and two equally engaging cuts of noisy but beautiful indie rock. If these songs weren’t so thrilling, we’d think nothing of such a truncated release. But due to the quality of the material, releasing just three songs feels like a tease.

“We always said that we weren’t going to sacrifice quality for quantity,” guitarist Alex Dearman says.

“I’m pretty passionate about being particular about the compositions themselves. I think you can have great ideas, but if they’re not executed well, then it all falls apart.” But there’s a little grain of perfectionism in the band’s collective psyche – though especially in Dearman’s way of working – that might further explain the band’s limited output in their two years together.

“I think we overly curate ourselves sometimes,” Dearman says. “We just work things over and over and over,” clarinet and saxophone player Stu Patterson says. “Sometimes it’s a bit, ‘Why the fuck are we doing this?’ but it works. Because then it doesn’t just turn into chaos.”

None of the members of Placement are new to music, but the idea of the band from the outset was to do something none of them had really done before.

“I had a few ideas kicking around,” Dearman says. “I had an idea of how I wanted to approach my instrument, which would be different to any other project I’d done.”

After meeting frontwoman Malia Wearn at a local show, the two creatives became firm friends and looked to begin collaborating. “We got to a point where we were like, ‘Okay, I think we’ve got an idea here. Let’s chat with some people we find inspiring in the local area and see if they want to get together’.”

One of those people was Patterson, who gives Placement a distinct point of difference through their clarinet and saxophone work. “I’d never played clarinet in a punk band before, so it was a bit weird to be honest,” Patterson says. “We experimented with sounds and eventually got some good amps and pedals to go with the clarinet.

Experimentation is a big part of Placement’s modus operandi. Rather than beginning with prescriptive ideas about what the band would sound like, they’ve given themselves the time and space to let their art

“We were just kind of flailing around, really,” Dearman admits. “I was playing in this open tuning that I made up specifically for the band. Stu was still figuring out their thing and there was this vocal delivery [from Wearn]. “But it really kind of all clicked when we jammed with Kim [Roberts], the bass player.

“Kim comes from this real alternative rock, 90s rock, sort of background. She is generally a guitarist, but came in with the bass, turned on the fuzz pedal and smashed out these groovy riffs. And then it just clicked. We knew we had something at that point.” Left-of-centre musical ideas – spoken word vocals, bizarre guitar tunings, punk rock clarinet – were all part of the band’s quest for attention. And they didn’t care if that attention was positive.

“I was fed up with doing the same old thing day in day out with music,” Patterson says. “Starting out with the idea of, ‘Let’s just try and do something that people might not necessarily like, but [something] we want to make’.

“It’s better to polarize initially,” Dearman offers. “If it’s somewhat challenging, then you’re at least trying to push new ground. There’s a clear reverence for the noisy New York of the early 1980s through the work the band have released so far. But the inspiration to create outside of the realms in which they’ve worked before is also inspired by that time and place.

“If you were a filmmaker, you’d go start a punk band, Dearman says of the New York no wave scene. “If you’re a painter, you’d become an actor. People were trying to figure it out by just kind of completely getting out of their comfort zone.

“You kind of unlock this foundational or primitive sense of what art is. Rather than overthinking it, it’s so fresh to you that the first thing that comes out that’s kind of like organic and has like a sense of rhythm that’s natural, everyone goes ‘Oh, that was kind of cool’.

“I’m really trying to whip Alex into shape,” Patterson says of their bandmate and housemate. “I’ll leave for work and then come home, and he’s been working on the same guitar line for 12 hours straight. And I’m like, ‘Alex, it does not sound any different to when I left’. I think Alex has gotten a lot better than when he started. It gets to a certain point where it does get into dangerous ground, where you become too perfectionist, and then you don’t get anything done. “Maybe sometimes I’m a little bit too pedantic about tiny details,” Dearman acknowledges.

“But I think the reason why we’ve not released a lot of music is because we’re still a pretty young band, and we’re still figuring it out. I feel like we’re just kind of clicking with the sound that we want now.”

The band’s most recent single ‘Disintegrate’ might be a good example of where they’re headed.

It starts off more post-rock than post-punk, as the melody and timbre of Wearn’s vocals and Patterson’s clarinet thicken its gentle intro. Halfway through, the song turns on a dime. The band launch into an urgent, bouncy verse and a short but catchy chorus.

“I think there’s a few more songs that are a bit more progressive,” Patterson says of their newer material.

“For a while, we kind of went head deep into [the idea] that songs need to have a bit more of a journey. We didn’t sit down and say it needs to be like that, that’s just how it started coming out.”

“When it’s the first time you’re doing something, you unlock this new wave of creativity. It’s difficult to not compare frontwoman Malia Werle’s sprechgesang with that of Florence Shaw of beloved British band Dry Cleaning. It was a different band, from a similar part of the world, that Dearman was hoping Placement could channel. “When we started the band, I’d never heard Dry Cleaning,” Dearman says. “There’s this band from Leeds called Drahla that I really like. The love of detuned guitars comes from a more obvious place, however. “I mean, Sonic Youth are my favourite band and I think that’s pretty obvious in my guitar playing, Dearman says. “I’ve loved them since I was a kid.

Placement are Malia, Alex, Kim, Stuart and Giuseppe

Vox/Guitar: Malia Wearn
Guitar/Vox: Alex Dearman
Bass/Backing Vox: Kim Roberts
Clarinet/Sax: Stuart Patterson
Drums tracks 1 & 3: Giuseppe Caporaso
Drums track 2: Braden Palmer
Backing Vox on track 3: Vanessa Marousopoulos (Keeskea)

The pandemic has kept Placement off the road, but those who catch the band live as they make their inevitable

There’ll be another EP out before too long, with an album

“Heaven’s Just a Cloud“, the new Spirit Was album and solo project from LVL UP’s Nick Corbo, feels like a dream that’s undeniably sinister but oddly warm nonetheless. It’s peppered with doomy folk, ambient clamour and even a brief flash of black metal, but it has a tender charm thanks to Corbo’s slow-crawling vocals and cavernous guitar tones. The album’s melodic rock is surprisingly intimate despite its sombre, mythical lyricism and wide array of textures. Corbo’s lyrics suggest an inner turmoil and possess a poetic escapism—throughout his search for rejuvenation and deeper abstract truths, there are frequent references to oblivion, otherworldly beings and the elements. Just like the album as a whole, each of these types of imagery are capable of sparking both fear and wonder—images like shadows, spirits and gardens are as old as time and contain infinite meanings.

Boasting both absorbing sonic tones and transportive catharsis, it’s a particularly great album to listen to on headphones from the comfort of one’s own space. If you like twisty or darkly beautiful songcraft, I can’t imagine not falling under this LP’s spell.

The cover of “Heaven’s Just a Cloud”, Nick Corbo’s full-length debut under the name Spirit Was, features an illustration of laundry drying on a line. But Corbo, a former member of the New York-based bands LVL UP and Crying, uses a crosshatching technique to contrast the bucolic scene with dense, textured shadows. “Heaven’s Just a Cloud” achieves a similar effect: Softness coexists with dark swatches of droning noise that channels Mount Eerie at its most black metal. It’s oblivion at its most intricate. 

Heaven’s Just a Cloud on Danger Collective Records Released on: 2021-10-22

As a founding member of Hiss Golden Messenger, Scott Hirsch lent his sonic imprint on their productions, as well as shaping the sound of the live outfit, having toured heavily through the formative years of the band. The follow up to 2018’s critically acclaimed Lost Time Behind The Moon, “Windless Day” finds Hirsch pushing the sonic envelope of his studio and crew at Echo Magic in Ojai, California. 

Scott Hirsch digs further into mellow, cosmically inclined jams with his third album “Windless Day”. Hirsch’s rich, warm production draws from AM gold, classic soul, and crispy fried country funk, and his arrangements are easy going and inviting. “Big Passenger” is a rubbery, low-key delight; instrumental foils “Redstone” and “The Price of Gold” offer fizzling tension and a subsequent twangy unwind. There’s even a little gospel shine, too, on “Wolves.” Equally comfortable emoting moody grooves (“Much Too Late”) and heartfelt devotion (“Love Is Long”), Hirsch leads the way as a relaxed and affable guide.

Released October 8th, 2021

Produced by Scott Hirsch | Daniel Wright | Jesse Siebenberg