The Fat Angel Sings

Lambchop began in the 1990s, at the time pronouncing itself “Nashville’s most fucked-up country band.” Provocative it may have been, but the description made sense: at the heart of all that ruckus was a band at once defying and embracing the musical legacy of its hometown.

Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner can’t play piano. So for Lambchop’s 15th studio album – the third in this Americana artist’s recent experiments in electronics – he transposed music he had written on the guitar on to a midi keyboard. The result is “Showtunes”, an album whose title suggests razzmatazz but delivers Wagner’s customary laid-back profundity with well placed digital embellishments.

“Showtunes” is indelibly a Lambchop album, a set of songs that references the legacy of American song writing from inside a vat of shimmering treacle. The pace is slow but spacious, giving rise to a pair of instrumental meditations and a seven-minute track, “Fuku“, whose percussive pops, blithe piano motif and bittersweet brass accretes into a quasi-standard pondering the imperfect nature of love. Drop C uses cut-up found sound in a more staticky way, and Blue Leo essays some disorienting vocal manipulations that are perhaps too reminiscent of the latterday Bon Iver. “Showtunes” is much stronger, however, when Wagner layers its disparate elements more subtly – leaning into its limpid jazz horns and electronic atmospheres, with just the distant memory of an opera singer punctuating The Last Benedict.

“Showtunes” is Lambchop’s follow-up to 2019’s “This (is what I wanted to tell you)”. Lambchop mastermind Kurt Wagner recorded the album remotely with Yo La Tengo’s James McNew, Ryan Olson, co-producer and engineer Jeremy Ferguson, horn player and arranger CJ Camerieri, and Cologne DJ Twit One.

Released May 21st, 2021

Ryan Olson: horn production and rearrangements, sound manipulation.
C.J. Camerieri: horns and arrangements.
Andrew Broder: grand piano and turntables.
James McNew: upright bass.
Twit One: beats.
Kurt Wagner: vocals, MIDI piano, guitar, composition and editing.

with
Jeremy Ferguson: a snare drum.
Eric Slick: a drum pass.

Renee Reed from Lafayette, Louisiana, is a musician who possesses a special gift, one that I have always loved in any musician, the ability to make complex ideas seem beautifully simple. The evidence is there to hear on her stunning, self-titled debut album, released last month on the wonderful label Keeled Scales. Across the twelve songs she describes modestly as, “dream-fi folk from the Cajun prairies”, Renée chronicles a three year period, full of making sense of the world and her place in it.

The resultant record has a timelessness to it, songs carved from the ancestral coal face, weaving together the seemingly disparate strands of the Cajun and Creole music scene in which she grew up surrounded by at her parents shop-come-music-venue at the owned by her parents Lisa Trahan and Mitch Reed; and her own musical discoveries, seeming to pick out sounds from minimal folk to French Chanson. Renée Reed grew up on the accordion-bending knee of her band-leading grandfather Harry Trahan; in the middle of countless jam sessions, soaked in the storytelling of her great uncle, folklorist Revon Reed and his infamous brothers from Mamou; and surrounded by a litany of Cajun and Creole music legends, both backstage at the many festivals of Southwest Louisiana and on the porch of her family home.

While Renée’s music is certainly informed by these deep roots, her dark dreamlike folk has more in common with contemporaries like Cate Le Bon and Jessica Pratt. It’s also not unlike the intangible magic contained in Mazzy Star’s songs.

For the most part this record is just Renée and her acoustic guitar, yet it has a depth of character to it, whether it’s the dreamy musical textures she rings from six-strings, or her voice, that seems almost to say one thing, while hinting at much more. It’s a voice that seems to carry a story alongside the lyricism; in the almost dismissive hint to the delivery of Your Seventh Moon, or the exquisite and undeniably sad tones of “Fool to the Fire“, as she laments, “all your love that you never really gave”.

Throughout the record, there’s a certain dream-like quality, it allows space for your mind to wander, before pulling you back with an arresting tone or a lyric that hits like an arrow and demands you come back into a more conscious, attentive state. Take the wonderfully hypnotic Little Flower Dance, it flows in on a gorgeous, bright-guitar line, a gentle lilting piece, that suddenly takes a dark turn that catches your ear entirely off-guard, “feeling kind of bruised, feeling black and blue inside”, or when Fast One’s driving guitar-tone is cut through by the dancing melody, “with you darling, I could live a lie”. It’s these moments that are littered throughout the album, these little drips of trouble in the serene surroundings, the moments of vulnerability and humanity that make this album so much more than just a truly beautiful listen.

Today Renée Reed is sharing an exclusive live version of one of the record’s stand-out moments, “Neboj” by Renée Reed (recorded live) From her self-titled record coming March 26th, 2021

Renée Reed’s debut album is out now via Keeled Scales Records. 

So, the group game together at the “Le Guess Who?” Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands in 2018. I was asked by the organizers to find another group on the festival to collaborate with for a one off performance. I was immediately drawn to Kikagaku Moyo. We share similar guitar scuzz and riff heavy improvising when playing live. Seemed like the most fun and natural thing to do. I was in the middle of a european tour, so had my full backing band. So with Kikagaku Moyo and me, 9 mother fuckers total on stage wailing.

It was a lot of Sound. At first glance this may seem a little meandering, but if you start digging into the layers it becomes apparent that there’s always another sound to find; always another layer to parse. Boisterous chord skronks, whiny sitar buzzes, the quiet tugs of cello strings, gentle bass thrums, and swirling keyboards all coalesce to form a cosmic tapestry that flows outward like an ever-morphing and undulating mandala.So we passed the live recordings off to Cooper Crain of Cave and Bitchin Bajas to tweak the levels and add some sprinkles. He shaped the raw recordings into a cohesive piece that works for a 40 min slab. We had an afternoon of rehearsal and it mostly just drinking espresso, smoking cigs and saying “man, we’ll be fine”

And it was great.”
(Ryley Walker/Husky Pants Records)

Released February 5th, 2021

A terrific new album “I Ain’t Leavin’” from storyteller singer songwriter Bert Deivert This is his 14th album in 48 years of being a professional musician. With everyday stories of life with folk, blues, and even some jazz influences. Originally from New Hampshire in the US, but have lived in Sweden now for 47 years and played in 25 countries.  . The new album is getting radio play right now in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the US.

This year Bert also appeared playing on many tracks on Peter Case’s “The Midnight Broadcast” album which came out in March 2021.  Although mostly known for his blues mandolin work in recent years, Bert has been writing songs for more than 50 years and has released some excellent albums mainly original songs , solo and including his work with bluesman Eric Bibb.

Some of the subjects of these songs include: the murder of his policeman grandfather in Boston in 1930; hitchhiking to Montreal from his home in New Hampshire to see if he could seek asylum there if drafted to go to Vietnam; the joys of singing the country blues songs of Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes; the humorous trials and tribulations of a woman that doesn’t love all his vintage instruments; and a noisy and sleepless trip on the Orient Express to Istanbul while traveling to Afghanistan in 1976. 

“I Heard the Dark Roads Call” – the fear of war in Vietnam and being drafted in 1969, This song by Bert Deivert is about a trip to Canada before the lottery for the Vietnam war draft was held in December 1969. All previous student deferments were cancelled and the lottery would be done for all eligible men from the ages of 18-26 years old. It was the first time a lottery system had been used to select men for military service since 1942. He hitchhiked from his home in Derry, New Hampshire in the summer of 1969 to Montreal to check out the possibilities of moving there and seeking asylum if drafted. The song tells of his feelings and what happened. It is a document of that time of a young man at the age of 18 and his feelings about what was going on in the world around him.

This next song from my album “I Ain’t Leavin” about my maternal grandfather’s murder in the line of duty in 1930. James J. Troy was a detective on the police force in Boston. The photos and articles were from newspapers and private sources from our family.

“I Ain’t Leavin” by Bert Deivert features 10 songs, 41 minutes long – all the songs, except for one traditional, are written by Bert Deivert. 

Released in August 2021 on his own label, Hard Danger Records, Sweden,

There’s something about Bleach Lab. Their second EP, ‘Nothing Feels Real’, is run through with that sort of spectral, magical powder that first drew Wolf Alice to wider attention – a gut instinct that something truly special could be just around every corner. In terms of high compliments, it doesn’t come much better than that.

10 track vinyl LP combining the first two EP’s from Bleach Lab. the band’s second EP is full of open-hearted emotional songs Whilst their debut EP, A Calm Sense of Surrounding found them processing grief, in particular the loss of bassist Josh Longman’s father, its follow-up finds them striving to set boundaries both personally and romantically. From a musical standpoint, Nothing Feels Real comprises their most immediate material to date. Influenced by the likes of The Sundays and The Cranberries, it features their biggest choruses, whilst the introduction of drummer Kieran Weston and his background in producing Bon iver-esque ethereal pop, has added an extra layer to Bleach Lab’s already complex sound. “Nothing Feels Real” is the document of a band who have progressed both musically and emotionally since their last outing

Produced by the legendary Stephen Street, it’s no surprise there’s a touch of The Cranberries to opener ‘Real Thing’, either – Jenna Kyle’s vocal gliding across the emotional spectrum, never losing the warmth that draws the listener in. Musically deft of touch, ‘Inside My Mind’ manages to covey both the weight of thoughts and a soothing, reassuring tone in the same four-minutes, while ‘Talk It Out’ may well be one of the more subtle earworms of 2021 so far.

While so many new acts go for the big and bombastic to grab the attention, Bleach Lab’s approach is far more effective. An EP that doesn’t just impress, but stops you dead in your tracks. Stunning.