The Fat Angel Sings

Levitation Sessions from POST ANIMAL!, The Chicago based quintet takes us into an alternate-universe created at Sleeping Village – a garden of distorted mirrors and a 70 minute psych-pop journey of swirling riffs and melody. 

For their “Levitation Sessions” show and live album, the band recorded a discography-spanning set, documenting a well-tuned machine ready to bring their tunes back on the road again this year – including a stop at Levitation 2021 in October.

The Chicago quintet takes us into an alternate-universe created at Sleeping Village – a garden of distorted mirrors and a 70 minute psych-pop journey of swirling riffs and melody. In addition to the live performance film stream, the performance is being pressed on limited edition vinyl + digital release on Sept 10. Artwork by Andrew McGranahan, available on screen printed posters signed by the band, limited edition cassettes, t-shirts, and tie dye tees! Get your hands on the good stuff at the link above. Filmed at Sleeping Village in Chicago, IL.

The Chicago based Post Animal takes us into an alternate-universe created at Sleeping Village. The gardens of distorted mirrors lend itself to the 70 minute psych-pop journey you’re about to embark on!

The grass was truly greener on the inside. Brought to you by the source of creativity excelsior (ever upward)!” – Post Animal

released September 10, 2021

Chicago singer-songwriter Jessica Viscius moves through grief in a profoundly moving and generous way on her spare debut as Bnny. 

The debut LP from the Chicago indie-rock band Bnny has the sound of an empty bedroom. “Everything” features a solitary lead electric guitar that gasps, reverberates thickly, and then deadens, as if resonating between walls recently stripped of room-softening decor. Jessica Viscius, the songwriter behind the project (and former Pitchfork graphic designer), barely allows her voice to vibrate above a whisper, like she’s committing song ideas to a recorder alone at night in a window-side chair. In the moments when her full band does show up to keep time or add some texture, they seem to materialize like a figment of her imagination that she can summon when she shuts her eyes. Multiple songs sound a lot like the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes”.

On those minimal characteristics alone, Everything is a beautiful record from wall to wall, comfort food for heartbroken insomniacs. But it also arrives with a tragic background that casts an entirely different kind of shadow over the evocation of an empty bedroom. In September of 2017, Viscius’ former partner, Trey Gruber, died after an accidental overdose of heroin that was laced with fentanyl. Gruber was also a gifted musician who had formally released just one song and played only a few shows under the band name Parent, but they were enough to ignite a rolling word-of-mouth buzz through the city about the soulful, wounded-sounding singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. After his passing, Viscius spent the next couple of years preserving Gruber’s recorded output alongside his mother, compiling and releasing the 25-song double LP “The Herculean House Of Cards” for Numero Group. With that chapter now closed, Viscius finally takes her turn to sing. Everything is a long-awaited debut that resembles a journal spanning five years, its first half consisting of songs written during her relationship with Gruber and its second half of ones after it. It is worth every year that went into it.

When Viscius first began writing songs, a waterlogged sound was emerging from Chicago indie-rock. A proudly lo-fi recording quality gave a satisfying wobble to both the wilting grace of Angel Olsen’s “Half Way Home” and the tinnitus-inducing crash of Ne-Hi’s debut. Some songs here bear the distinct markings of that mid-decade time and place: “Sure” takes notes from Olsen’s “Lights Out” but flips the idea from an encouraging nudge forward to resigned acceptance of a slow freefall. “Time Walk” is a masterclass in economy, barely running over 90 seconds but somehow rocking extremely hard through muted breath, nicely punctuated by a jagged, seven-second solo from Tim Makowski, who plays some fantastically cracked and frail lead guitar lines throughout the album. Seconds later, on “So Wrong,” his solo falls somewhere between Yo La Tengo’s “Today’s The Day” and a slowed-down sample of a cat groaning to its sleeping owner for breakfast. In sequence, they make for a binge-worthy three-song run.

Haley Dahl is a fascinating artist. She used to perform live with blue glittery slime dripping from her mouth, and spends time in caves recording music—in fact, she recorded her forthcoming album “Madison” with 21 bandmates in West Virginia’s Los World Caverns. Today, she’s released that record’s lead single “Party Anthem” with the news that her pal and former bandmate Phoebe Bridgers has added Dahl’s project called Sloppy Jane to the roster at Saddest Factory Records.

“Party Anthem” is some whimsically morbid art-rock. Continuously surreal (“Imprisoned in a wedding pigeon body with a tin can face”) and poetic (“Were you better as a phantom, symphony, or a party anthem?”) Dahl’s music is like nothing you’ve ever witnessed. There’s lush symphonic swirls and childlike background harmonies. And it all takes place in a magnificent cave where couples hold each other tight as Dahl bounces around them.

“When I started talking about recording in caves, she was one of the few people to really get it immediately and thought it was the coolest thing,” Dahl says of Bridgers in regard to her Saddest Factory signing. “To work with someone who has so much personal context and enthusiasm was kind of a no-brainer. The label name ‘Saddest Factory Records’ came from a joke I made on Twitter, and I kind of think that’s representative of what my ideal professional trajectory looks like—me and my same friends who understand each other making the same jokes over and over again while our platforms expand.”

Bridgers added, “I have never seen an audience more captivated than at a Sloppy Jane show. Whether it was a house show in Reseda where the opener was a trash fire, or a 2,000 seat theatre in New York. They have been among my favourite band’s since I was 16. I am never surprised, and always impressed. I’m glad to live in a world where Haley Dahl wanting to go to a cave to make a record just makes sense. This is already a classic album.”

“Party Anthem” the new song by Sloppy Jane from the forthcoming album ‘Madison’, out November 5th on Saddest Factory Records.

“Is It Light Where You Are” is the debut album from Art School Girlfriend, moniker of Welsh producer, multi-instrumental musician and song writer Polly Mackey. Mostly written over a two week period of 14-hour solo studio sessions, the bulk of her album is torn straight from a journal kept throughout 2019. Those pages chronicle the end of a US tour, the tumultuous ending of a six-year relationship and Mackey’s journey back to London from Margate, where she lived and co-owned a book shop with her then girlfriend.

“The record starts with that feeling of being on the precipice of change,” she explains. “Before deciding to pull everything apart, go through it all and come out the other side.” While the lyrics are autobiographical, the full story can be heard in the album’s sonic relief map. “The main theme is duality between light and dark, lightness and heaviness. The production sort of mimics human emotions: there’s a lot of beauty buried underneath these uncomfortable-to-listen-to sounds.”

Iggy Pop and Matt Sweeney have released their take on The Velvet Underground‘s “European Son”. The song is set to appear on the upcoming album, I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground & Nico with tracks from Iggy Pop & Matt Sweeney, St. Vincent & Thomas Bartlett, Sharon Van Etten (with additional vocals by, out on September 24th via Verve Records.

Of all the songs on the Velvet’s groundbreaking 1967 debut album, “European Son” travels the furthest from the rock norms of the time. Following a fairly conventional opening verse, the song descends into the murky waters of what would eventually be deemed noise rock. In this dark swamp of feedback, overdrive, and droning instrumentation, Pop and Sweeney make their home.

The collaboration between Iggy Pop and Sweeney bridges together two generations of the same alt-underground world the Velvets helped create. With Pop’s historic reputation as a forefather of punk and Sweeney’s prolific status in the post-rock, pre-grunge underground circles, the two are able to create something completely new out of vintage materials like putting patches on an old denim vest.

“The Velvet Underground were rock and roll’s finest band. Iggy Pop remains rock and roll’s greatest singer,” Sweeney said in a press release. “I am thrilled and humbled that the joyous experience of getting deeply nasty with Iggy on ‘European Son’ can be heard by lifelong VU fans and newcomers.”

Also set to appear on “I’ll Be Your Mirror” are Matt Berninger, Courtney Barnett, Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), Kurt Vile & The Violators, St Vincent & Thomas Bartlett, Matt Berninger (The National), Sharon Van Etten with Angel Olsen, Thurston Moore & Bobby Gillespie, Andrew Bird & Lucius, Fontaines DC, and King Princess. The cover album was announced in July with Kurt Vile & The Violators’ rendition of “Run Run Run”.

Listen to Iggy Pop and Matt Sweeney’s take on “European Son” by The Velvet Underground. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” is available, Verve Records unveils the new tribute album I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground & Nico .

out on September 24th via Verve Records.

Just in time for the world that’s coming are a bewitching new duo from Australia. Featuring music and instruments by Mick Turner and words and voice by Helen Franzmann, Mess Esque’s debut album restlessly wanders through a series of intimate dialogues.

Helen lives in Brisbane; Mick in Melbourne. Mick’s played guitar for years, collaborating with loads of talented others; he’s perhaps best known as one third of Dirty Three – though we know him as the visionary behind six or seven mostly instrumental releases for Drag City Records. His last record, 2013’s “Don’t Tell The Driver”, found him departing from his traditional hermetic template by employing a rhythm section and brass charts and collaborating with a vocalist, which clearly set the stage for Mess Esque.  

In 2019, he was introduced to Helen through a mutual friend who’d produced the last McKisko album, the name Helen has worked under over the past 12 years, making records and touring regularly. With a plan to get together and make a record, they sent ideas back and forth – but when everything else happened instead, they continued to collaborate from a distance. In mutual isolation, a true correspondence took flight, electrifying in the air between them. Helen rode the drift of Mick’s tracks, a dazzling brew of guitars, organs, bass and drums. Her singing altered their meaning, which inspired Mick to make revisions, for Helen to respond to again. And so the music grew.

2021: the album’s done, they’ve made a band in the process, and Mick and Helen still haven’t met face-to-face! Listening to Mess Esque, you’d never know it. The lead single and video “Take it Outside” is lively, exultant, with Helen’s double-tracked vocals multiplying the plaintive desire simmering in her words, as Mick’s organ chords radiate bursts of emotion over the song’s give-and-take rhythm shuffle.

Through a patient balance of improvisations and a focused pursuit of something that wasn’t fully there at the start, Mess Esque have willed themselves and their world into verdant, lustrous being. “Take it outside” is the luscious first taste of their creation – the self titled full-length album will be ripe and ready on October 22nd, pre order your whole copy now!

Two weeks ago, rock supremo and prolific music maker Ty Segall surprise-released a new album “Harmonizer”, his first new album since 2019, out now digitally via Drag City and physically in October. Today, he presents a music video for one of its standout tracks, “Feel Good,” and announces a North American tour with the Freedom Band. “Feel Good” is one of harmonizer’s two songs to feature lyrics and vocals by Denée Segall. The music video, directed and produced by Joshua Erkman, sees the Segalls taking a late night drive between slick scenes of technicolor grandeur.

“Don’t be afraid / I can show you the way / I’ll be your right hand,” Denée’s cool vocals intone over the track’s scorching guitars. It’s a prime example of “Harmonizer’s” transcendent energy as distorted synth and beats drive the chorus. By the end of “Feel Good,” Denée takes the driver’s seat with Ty by her side, content to see where she takes him.

Denée comments, “’Feel Good’ is about allowing oneself to be confident and unrestrained in regard to whatever makes them feel good, be it emotionally, physically, or beyond. It’s also about extending this sentiment to another who might desire this same sort of freedom, but needs a little encouragement. It’s an ode to the joy that comes from loving and supporting one another unconditionally.”

Co-produced by Cooper Crain, Harmonizer is the first recording to be released from Ty’s just-completed Harmonizer Studios. Cooper’s own journey in rhythm, minimalism and DIY mines the depths around Ty’s peerless vocal attack and never-ending search for unfathomably corrosive guitar sounds. With an eye towards precision, feel and explosive mass, The Freedom Band — Ben Boye, Mikal Cronin, Emmett Kelly, and Charles Moothart — appear all over “Harmonizer”, but often one at a time. Additionally, Denée Segall co-writes and appears on two tracks.The thing about closed doors is they need opening again, no matter what happens. You open them and then you can pass through them. And there’s light on the other side. That’s the essence of “Harmonizer”. 

“Feel Good” is from “Harmonizer,” released digitally on August 3rd, 2021 by Drag City. LP, CD, and Cassette to arrive later, in the fall.

With this LP, Ty Segall has created a simply impeccable rock album. From start to finish this album is like a racecar and Segall knows just when to hit that experimental button to give the extra propellant juice. “Whisper” smacks, “Erased” shrieks.
It’s a rave in 10 tracks, a mosh pit compilation. 

The surprise return of Ty Segall, with an album that dropped with no prior warning or publicity, the Freedom Band (as his current bandmates are called) are the tightest they’ve ever been, as Ty and guitarist Emmett Kelly riff back and fourth and frequently at the same time, the band also explores synthesizers in a big way and it leaves us wondering what else the band will explore and knock out of the park next.

Years of performing in New York City clubs and touring internationally have honed a natural ability that brings Elizabeth Ziman’s colorful imagination, smart lyrics and catchy melodies to life — a testament to why this singer-songwriter, who performs as Elizabeth and the Catapult, is often found collaborating — most recently with Sara Bareilles on Apple TV’s “Little Voice” and with Paul Brill on award winning documentaries.  

Elizabeth and the Catapult’s fifth studio album was born out of a need during the pandemic shut down to cope with the breakdown of communication. It was recorded in her living room during quarantine and is her first fully self-produced album. 

“sincerely, e” is a comforting salve – to soothe and nourish listeners and lovers of music – after a most confusing and emotional year.

“Sincerely, e” was conceived of and recorded in singer-songwriter Elizabeth Ziman’s living room as a way to try and reach beyond the isolated bubble of her home to connect with others, during quarantine. It was also a personal reckoning with solitude, helping her explore new layers of herself. This juxtaposition — the anxiety of loneliness coupled with over stimulation, chaos and the urgency of numerous global crises converging — is present in so much of her writing as she grappled with connection and existence.

“Sincerely, e” showcases two sides of the same Elizabeth and the Catapult coin: thoughtfully peppered through the album are intimate, live, solo-piano songs that tremble, raw, with the intimacy of their making; the other half, songs that required a larger sound, fully display Ziman’s film scoring and composition background.

Producing tracks from her home provided new opportunities to work remotely with a few talented friends and the decision to explore rhythm without percussion, proved to be a constraint that enabled her lyrics to properly breathe. With the desire to connect at the core of this collection of songs, lush background vocals prominently express sincerely, e’s “together, alone” sound – a symptom and product of the time in which she, and we, find ourselves.

Released March 5th, 2021

The first night when we shot the indoor footage there was a tornado that swept through chicago a mile from where we were, and we were stuck inside the studio at 12am as the wind and rain shook the windows and water spilled from the ceiling. when we filmed the outdoor shots at the indiana dunes on july 3rd, i could see chicago across the lake and it looked like a floating city next to the peach sun. we drove back to the city at night with hundreds of fireworks going off all around us and on the horizon. the folks who made the video are really rare people and cherished collaborators of mine and really captured the essence of the song. 

“Roadkill” is taken from Squirrel Flower​’s sophomore album, “Planet (i)”, out now.