The Fat Angel Sings

Lightning Bug announced their third album (and first on Fat Possum), “A Color of the Sky“, out June 5th. Singer/songwriter Audrey Kang and company also shared its lead single, “The Right Thing Is Hard to Do,” along with an animated music video. “The Right Thing Is Hard to Do” is an atmospheric, guitar-driven ballad, with a gorgeous drone that Kang’s vocals illuminate, like a spotlight shining through the night sky. The song’s reflective lyrics find Kang recalling her idyllic childhood, and the way that reckoning with her emotions grew more difficult as she got older; she connects this rising anxiety to our current political climate (“So they say they’ll build a wall […] And turn away those seeking shelter most of all”), ultimately upholding love over doubt and fear. Lightning Bug’s lush instrumentation intertwines with Kang’s hopeful lyrics, and “The Right Thing Is Hard to Do” as a whole fortifies the spirit, convincing you that a better world is possible.

Kang’s otherworldly vocals, trickling acoustics, well-placed distortion flare-ups, all of it like shadowy images viewed through a misty, rainy day — just like all the best dream-pop the band is drawing upon. 

A lightning bug glows with the aid of a chemical called luciferin, derived from Latin for “light-bringer”. Lightning Bug began as three friends who made music together to bring each other light. The music we make continues to hold that purpose at its heart. The music of Lightning Bug is an attempt to record the deepest experiences in the self and connect them outward.” – Audrey Kang

Grounded in a tightly knit friendship and an intuitive musical bond, Lightning Bug’s music, an enveloping mix of rapturous shoegaze, longing balladry, and ambient soundscapes, sits at the centerpoint of a creative exchange among songwriter Audrey Kang, multi-instrumentalist Kevin Copeland, and producer Logan Miley. Despite a knack for sonic eclecticism, each Lightning Bug record holds a magnetic sense of cohesion. Lyrically, the songs document Audrey navigating a relationship with her own humanity, memories fraught with joy and pain, and the constant cycle of tension and release necessary in developing self-trust. Lightning Bug’s music is then the manifestation of dialogues: a musical dialogue amongst members of a sacred creative partnership and an internal one as Audrey plumbs the depths of her own foundation.

2019’s October Song (released via Marbled Arm) marked Lightning Bug’s second full-length offering, the follow up to the largely anonymous release of their self-titled debut Floaters. Earning an 8.0 from Pitchfork and a spot on NME’s best debut albums of 2015 respectively, Lightning Bug have emerged as one of the musical underground’s most fertile sources for textured world-building and soaring catharsis.

‘The Right Thing Is Hard To Do’ from Lightning Bug’s new album ‘A Color of the Sky’ out on June 25th, 2021. on Fat Possum Records.

Another Michael got their start in the chilly environs of up-upstate New York, in Albany. Once the trio relocated to Philly, their music became warmer and more inviting and more assured. Their debut album “New Music And Big Pop” is confidently unhurried, taking its cues from spindly ’70s singer-songwriters and the erudite emo of Pinegrove. Its pair of title tracks are counterpoints to each other — “New Music” is a shaggy folk ramble, while “Big Pop” is rousing and anthemic. Their album is largely about the joy and mystique of making music, and Another Michael exude plenty of joy and mystique themselves. 

For Another Michael, it all boils down to trust. In mid-2017, the critically acclaimed indie three-piece packed their bags and collectively relocated from Albany, NY to a shared house in West Philadelphia. This move signalled not only the start of a new chapter for the trio, but also a deepening of the bonds that would come to define their captivating debut LP, ‘New Music and Big Pop.’

“It’s hard for a group of people to get closer than living together,” says bassist and producer Nick Sebastiano. “The stronger our connection grew, the more it shaped the music we found ourselves making.”
It should come as little surprise, then, that ‘New Music and Big Pop’ is Another Michael’s most collaborative work yet. Recorded in a small A-frame house-turned-makeshift studio outside Ferndale, NY, the record finds the trio pushing their sound in a dreamier, more folk-influenced direction, building songs around vulnerable, intimate performances using an ethereal palette of breezy guitars, subtle keyboards, and layered harmonies. As on the band’s early EPs, singer and songwriter Michael Doherty’s mesmerizing voice is front and centre here, calling to mind Robin Pecknold or Ben Bridwell in its reedy, crystalline timbre, but it feels more at home than ever before amidst the album’s lush, Technicolor landscape, which the band partnered with producer and fellow housemate Scoops Dardaris to create. The result is a masterfully understated record that belies its status as a full-length debut, a thoughtful, poetic, collection all about growth and change, hope and faith, endings and beginnings, delivered by a band that’s only just begun to scratch the surface of their story.

“Recording a full-length album was something we’d been talking about doing for a while,” says Doherty, “but I think we needed to take our time and get here organically. We had to figure out who we were as a band first.”

“I Know You’re Wrong” by Another Michael from the album ‘New Music and Big Pop’ Released February 19th 2021 via Run For Cover Records

Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky, who released a critically acclaimed collaborative album “Droneflower” on Sacred Bones Records earlier this year have shared two cover songs that make up a new single via Sacred Bones – Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight and Extreme’s More Than Words.

Being unfortunately old enough to be of an age where I can remember the original, it must be said that I absolutely loathed In the Air Tonight, and still do, but when Marissa Nadler says “We wanted to make a creepy, sexy version…”, then I’m prepared to give it a listen. This should have been the original is all I can say…

On paper, a collaboration between dream-folk singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler and metal shredder Stephen Brodsky—known for his dizzying work with Cave In and Mutoid Man—might seem a little strange. Beyond the fact that both of them are from Massachusetts, they appear to have little in common. It’s only when you realize that Brodsky has a vastly underappreciated solo discography, which includes soft acoustic material, and that Nadler has previously worked with reclusive former black metal musician Xasthur, that the duo’s “Droneflower” album begins to make sense.

“Steve and I come from different musical wheelhouses,” Nadler acknowledges. “But I’m always attracted to people who can do things I can’t do. I like the riffage, basically. When he sent me some music that didn’t have words, and [I could hear that] it was really different from what he normally does, I got really excited. It doesn’t sound like him in his other bands, and it doesn’t sound like me in my other work.”

By turns eerily melodic and pleasantly surprising—consider their haunting acoustic cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “Estranged”—Droneflower is the result of a collaboration that took place over three years, both in person and through online file exchanges. As it turns out, Droneflower is both the album title and the band name.

“It’s a bit tricky,” Brodsky says with a laugh. “I think we just felt like the record would get a stronger push with our names attached rather than trying to hype a new band. Maybe next time it’ll flip and the artist name will be Droneflower and the album title will be our names.”

Jethro Tull are to release a 50th-Anniversary “enhanced edition” of their 1970 LP, “Benefit”, on November. 5th.

The four-CD, two-DVD set includes the Steven Wilson’s 2013 remix of the original album and associated tracks, along with a variety of previously unreleased recordings. It comes packaged in a deluxe, 100-page book featuring commentary from various contributors (including front man Ian Anderson, guitarist Martin Barre, bassist Glenn Cornick and drummer Clive Bunker) and various studio and live images.

Following the successes of This Was (1968) and Stand Up (1969), Jethro Tull returned in 1970 with their third studio album in as many years. For Benefit, Ian Anderson (flute, guitars, vocals), Martin Barre (guitars), Glenn Cornick (bass), and Clive Bunker (drums) were joined by John Evan on piano and organ, who would go on to play on all of Jethro Tull’s albums throughout the 70s. The album featured more advanced studio techniques, such as a backward-recorded flute on “With You There To Help Me” and a sped-up guitar on “Play in Time.”

Compared to Stand Up, although containing a similar mix of bluesy hard-rockers and melodic acoustic numbers, Benefit had, as Anderson put it, a “harder, slightly darker feel” compared to previous material. Peaking at #4 in the U.K. Singles Chart, “The Witch’s Promise” continued Tull’s success in the charts,

This latest edition expands upon the 2013 reissue: The third disc includes Wilson’s previously unreleased remix of the concert performance Live at Tanglewood 1970, and the second DVD features film footage of that same show; the fourth CD boasts a newly remastered mono version of the previously unissued gig Live at the Aragon Ballroom, Chicago 1970.

Benefit, was their third album, found the band in a transitional phase: Keyboardist John Evan, still an unofficial member at the time, made his first appearance on a Jethro Tull project, while Cornick made his final studio contribution to the group.

Jethro Tull recently confirmed they will release a new studio album, The Zealot Gene, in early 2022 through new label InsideOutMusic/Sony Music. They’ve yet to detail a track listing or firm date for the project, which Anderson previously teased in March. The band’s current line-up features the front man (vocals, flute, acoustic guitar, harmonica) alongside guitarist Joe Parrish-James, keyboardist John O’Hara, bassist David Goodier and drummer Scott Hammond. (Guitarist Florian Opahle is credited in a press release as “album only.”)

John Darnielle has written almost 600 songs now, and some of them are very sad, dealing with hard drugs and tragic ends, hurting yourself and others, sicknesses of both body and brain, off-brand alcohols. They are told in beautiful, unnerving, specific detail because he is a very good writer, and also some of them are just true stories about his own life.

Released November 5th, 2021

John Darnielle – vocals, guitar, piano
Peter Hughes – bass
Matt Douglas – keyboards, guitar, saxophone, piano
Jon Wurster – drums

Recorded live in studio at Manifold Recording in Pittsboro, NC, on August 8 & 9, 2020

Montreal band Ought are no more. Today, the post-punk band announced that they have broken up. “We are no longer active as a band,” they wrote in a statement on their Instagram, continuing: When we started Ought in 2012 we had no greater aspirations than to play and write music together, and the fact that we were able to tour the world to such an extent and share so many rooms with so many of you has meant the world to us. We send lots of gratitude and love to all those we met and worked with along the way.

Ought released three excellent full-length albums — 2014’s “More Than Any Other Day“, 2015’s “Sun Coming Down” and 2018’s “Room Inside The World”. The bands lead vocalist Tim Darcy also released a solo album while the band was still together.

Good news for fans of the late Ought is that Darcy and Ought bassist Ben Stidworthy have a new project called Cola, which they started alongside US Girls drummer Evan Cartwright. And they’re releasing their first-ever single, “Blank Curtain.” Darcy’s deadpan voice is still front-and-centre, as is some architectural guitar work. What started as stripped-down open D song writing with a CR-78 soon became a full album and new band. We wanted to see how far we could stretch our compositions with just drums, one guitar, one bass, and one voice.

Blank Curtain is a quarter note kick drum pushing 240 bpm, a drone-like chord progression, and declarative vocals cutting through the haze. If you could invert the colour of the Blank Curtain, you might have something like a Chicago house track that sounds like a band in a room.

“Blank Curtain” is out now via Fire Talk Records. Cola will play their first live show at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn 

Since the early Rilo Kiley days, Jenny Lewis has held very little back. “Puppy And A Truck” leaves a few details fuzzy; when Lewis sings that she was “infatuated with an older man,” for instance, we just have to gossip amongst ourselves about whether she’s talking about Bill Murray. For the most part, though, Lewis gets almost uncomfortably real on the song, working with country producer Dave Cobb to mine her own life for hard-luck lessons. She finds one, too: “If you feel like giving up, shut up. Get a puppy and a truck.”

On “Puppy And A Truck,” Lewis sings about exes who have disappointed her and roots that she hasn’t put down. She’s got no kids, no roots, no significant other. When it comes to dogs, she’s got a lot of needs: “I need a dog that’s hypoallergenic/ In the poodle milieu and photogenic/ Don’t shed, don’t bark, and can play in the band.” Apparently, though, she’s found one, and that’s the happy ending. The next time Jenny Lewis comes through town, I can’t wait to see what instrument the dog plays.

Jenny Lewis kicks off “Puppy and a Truck” with a realistic view of her life, complete with unconditional love from her dog and a pedal steel guitar. As most of her hardcore or even mediumcore fans know, Lewis got a cockapoo back in February, naming her Bobby Rhubarb, after Bob Dylan. She even has an Instagram account devoted to the pup, with captions quoting Dylan songs as recent as “Black Rider” and as early as “Spanish Is the Loving Tongue.” With Bobby Rhubarb as her muse, she encourages us to embrace the finer things in life on “Puppy and a Truck” — specifically, the finer things that fall into the categories of animal and/or vehicle. “If you feel like giving up, shut up,” she sings. “Get a puppy and a truck.”

Lewis has reflected on her age before — particularly on “Wasted Youth” from her 2019 solo album On the Line — but she’s never sounded this candid and whimsical. And with the dawn of a new presidency and an ongoing global pandemic, she needs some time to process. “So I’m 44 in 2020, and thank god I saved up some money,” she sings. “Time to ruminate, like, what the fuck was that?”

Released on: 2021-11-03