The Fat Angel Sings

Craft Recordings proudly celebrates the 25th Anniversary of R.E.M.’s tenth studio album, “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”, with a special reissue set for release on October 29th.

The bonus-filled 2-CD/1-Blu-ray Deluxe Edition offers a trove of audio-visual content, including the newly remastered album, 13 B-sides and rarities, a never-before-released 64-minute outdoor projection film (shown on buildings across five cities in 1996 to promote the album’s original release), and a previously unreleased 30-minute EPK.

Additionally, the Blu-ray features New Adventures in Hi-Fi in stunning Hi-Res and 5.1 Surround Sound audio, plus five HD-restored music videos including “Bittersweet Me,” “Electrolite,” and “E-Bow the Letter.” Housed in a 52-page hardcover book, the collection includes archival photographs—many of which have never been published—plus new liner notes from journalist Mark Blackwell and reflections from all four original band members, as well as from Patti Smith, Thom Yorke, and producer Scott Litt.

An Expanded Edition is also available as a 2-CD or digital collection, including the remastered album along with B-sides and rarities. The 2-CD offers an exclusive 24” x 24” poster and four collectible postcards, as well as a booklet featuring new liner notes and archival photos. Additionally, the newly remastered album will be available as a 2-LP set, pressed on 180-gram vinyl, with lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio.

Available via digital platforms today, ahead of the album, is the advance single “Leave – Alternate Version.” Originally recorded for the “A Life Less Ordinary” soundtrack, the single offers a haunting sparse sire-less version of New Adventures album track “Leave,” for which Michael Stipe re-recorded the vocals. Reflects Stipe, “I actually might prefer this version to the one that’s on the record… Well, I wouldn’t say I prefer it, it just tells a different story with the lyric.”

First released in September 1996, “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” endures among one of R.E.M.’s acclaimed albums. It stands as a favourite among the band members. The album was a global success, achieving platinum certification in the US and peaking at No.2 on the Billboard 200. Elsewhere, the album went to No.1 in more than a dozen countries, including Australia, the UK, and Canada. Critically, New Adventures in Hi-Fi received wide praise and was named as one of the best albums of the year by such outlets as Rolling Stone, Spin, Mojo, Entertainment Weekly, and the NME. Over the decades, the title has achieved cult status, with several press retrospectives ranking it among the top albums in R.E.M.’s rich catalogue of releases.

Recorded at the height of their fame, New Adventures in Hi-Fi also marks R.E.M.’s final album with drummer and founding member Bill Berry, who left the group amicably the following year. Perhaps most remarkable, however, is that the album found the band taking a unique creative approach: writing and recording much of the LP on the road, during their 1995 ‘Monster’ tour.

While writing new material on the road wasn’t an unusual feat for R.E.M., “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” was unlike anything they had done before. As they embarked on tour, the band sought to create an abstract travelogue documenting every emotion and experience as it happened. “We wanted to make a record about being on the road without singing about being on the road,” bassist Mike Mills explains in the liner notes. “The idea was that the feeling of being on the road would come through in the sound and feel of the record itself.”

The band traveled with a mobile recording truck, capturing new songs on an 8-track during soundchecks (as well as in various backstage areas and on the tour bus). “The idea was, ‘Let’s challenge ourselves,’” guitarist Peter Buck tells Blackwell. “My feeling was, it’ll show exactly where we’re at right now in a way that maybe some of the records don’t at all. This record was just an attempt to be who we were at that minute.”

The year-long outing, which began in January 1995, marked R.E.M.’s first tour in six years. As one of the biggest bands in the world, the quartet played to packed arenas across North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, with support from acts like Sonic Youth and Radiohead. But along the way, the tour was marred by medical emergencies. In March, Berry collapsed on stage from an aneurism and spent the next month recuperating. Mills, meanwhile, underwent intestinal surgery in June. A month later, Stipe had emergency surgery for a hernia (which, he asserts, occurred while performing the song, “Undertow”).

After the band returned from the eventful—yet highly successful—run of dates, they entered the studio with their longtime producer, Scott Litt, to record a few final tracks and put finishing touches on others. Among them was the epic, seven-minute-long “Leave;” “E-Bow the Letter,” featuring backing vocals from the legendary singer-songwriter Patti Smith; “New Test Leper,” which Buck proclaims is his favourite R.E.M. song; and “How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us,” one of several songs on the album inspired by Stipe’s experiences living in Los Angeles.

Upon its release, New Adventures in Hi-Fi marked R.E.M.’s longest studio album, with a total run-time of 65 minutes. Filled with cinematic storytelling, haunting effects, and dissonant notes, New Adventures in Hi-Fi found R.E.M. exploring diverse sonic territories—particularly in songs like “Low Desert,” which, Berry describes, is “just dusty and kind of slow and it’s swampy…I feel isolated when I listen to that song, but it’s a good thing.” Stipe adds that the song offers such questions as, “‘What are we doing in the desert? What are we doing in the American West? What are we doing in this unlivable, uninhabitable place?’” Other tracks, like “Departure” and “The Wake-Up Bomb” deliver classic R.E.M. rock vibes.

The band looks back on New Adventures in Hi-Fi with great pride. Buck, perhaps, sums it up best. “Most records, you go in the studio and you just do ’em. And years later all you really remember is vaguely where you stayed, and the songs and the recording process. But this one I remember every bit of it. It was an experience. It was f**king tough, but we made a record. And it was as challenging as anything I’ve ever done.”

The long-running Neil Young Archives Series has featured a number of lines: an Official Release Series, a Performance Series, and a Special Release Series among them.  Shakey Pictures Records and Reprise Records recently announced a new addition to the Archives:  the Neil Young Official Bootleg Series.  It will launch on Friday, October 1st with “Carnegie Hall 1970“, featuring Young’s debut performance at the venerable venue on December 4th, 1970 (the early show).  “Carnegie Hall 1970” will arrive on double vinyl,

Neil Young has announced  an Official Bootleg Series that will feature recordings of storied concerts from throughout his musical career. The first of these albums is the “Carnegie Hall 1970″, which will be out October 1st via Warner Brothers.

Specifically, this was Neil’s first-ever show at Carnegie Hall, on December 4th, 1970, and the first of two back-to-back shows he played there that night (a second followed immediately after at midnight). Neil’s set included “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” “Down By the River,” “Helpless,” and “Sugar Mountain,” plus “After the Goldrush,” as well as some songs he hadn’t released yet, like “Bad Fog of Loneliness,” “Old Man,” and “See the Sky About to Rain.”

‘Carnegie Hall 1970’, which was recorded on original analogue multitrack and mixed by The Volume Dealers: Neil Young and Niko Bolas, was made from the early show on December 4th, 1970, and it was the first time Young ever performed at the New York venue.

Young performed two shows at Carnegie Hall, one on the 4th and another at midnight the next morning. Bootleggers were unable to capture this first show, which according to Young was “by far, a much superior show”.

The last couple of years have seen Young share a number of unreleased projects from his extensive vault, including 1975’s ‘Homegrown’ and a number of live recordings like 1990’s ‘Way Down In The Rust Bucket’.

Now, the Crazy Horse band leader – alongside Shakey Pictures Records and Reprise Records – has revealed that the first release in ‘The Neil Young Official Bootleg Series’ will arrive on October 1st.

You can listen to “Cowgirl in the Sand” from the album now,

In other news, Neil is apparently making a new album with his band Crazy Horse, and just cancelled his performance at Farm Aid, citing Covid concerns, and saying, “My soul tells me it would be wrong to risk having anyone die because they wanted to hear music and be with friends.”

Neil Young Official Bootleg Series track listing:
OBS 1: Carnegie Hall 1970
(NYC: December 4th, 1970 – Early show)

Down by the River
Cinnamon Girl
I Am a Child
Expecting to Fly
The Loner
Wonderin’
Helpless
Southern Man
Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing
Sugar Mountain
On the Way Home
Tell Me Why
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Old Man
After the Gold Rush
Flying on the Ground Is Wrong
Cowgirl in the Sand
Don’t Let It Bring You Down
Birds
Bad Fog of Loneliness
Ohio
See the Sky About to Rain
Dance Dance Dance

Chubby and the Gang were one of a few bands lucky enough to perform their 2020 debut album in the flesh before the pandemic hit. After releasing their breakneck LP “Speed Kills” via independent punk label Static Shock, they embarked on a brief U.S. tour, showcasing their saucy punk-pop to rooms of faithful punks of all breeds willing to fling themselves around. Their bluesy guitars romped like Chuck Berry on a sugar high, and their recklessly delivered lines were filtered through the lens of a ham-fisted, fun-loving, working-class Londoner. The album quickly became one of the favourites of the year, and we later gave them a best New Artist from many music blog’s, simply put, we couldn’t get enough of Chubby or his gang in 2020, but thankfully there’s more to come from these U.K. hardcore regulars. Late last year, they announced their signing to Partisan Records and confirmed their new album would bve released this year. If you like punk, hardcore or just good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, Chubby and the Gang will satisfy your cravings and then some, and their live show is not to be missed.

“West London five-piece Chubby and the Gang are balanced by two energies — a casual “fuck it” on one side, an active “fuck off” on the other. For every moment of punk imperfection, there’s an intricate flurry of detail. For every enraged statement about modern life as war, there’s a lyric like “Hello heartbreak, my old friend” that catches you off-guard.

Made up of musicians from across the consistently thriving and criminally overlooked U.K. hardcore scene, Chubby and the Gang marinate their characteristic speed and sick-of-it-all energy in a mixture of ’50s pop. The result is a prickly take on the older, more melodic genres that punk derives from, chewing them up and spitting them out into something mangled but revitalised.”

“Coming Up Tough” taken from the forthcoming album ‘The Mutt’s Nuts.’

“Aaron Dessner has consistently sought an emotional outlet and human connection through music — be it as a primary songwriter in The National, a founder and architect of music festivals, or collaborator on albums by Taylor Swift, among many other projects. This generous spirit and desire to push music forward has never been more deeply felt than on Big Red Machine’s “How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?“, the second album from Dessner’s ever morphing project with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Songs feature guest vocals and writing contributions from artist friends including Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, Ben Howard and This Is The Kit, Naeem, Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Nova, and Swift herself.

Says Dessner: “This is all music I initially generated and feel emotionally connected to, but it has been very interesting to hear how different people relate to it and how different voices collide with it,” says Dessner, who for the first time also handles lead vocals on three tracks. “That’s what makes it special. With everyone that’s on this record, there’s an openness, a creative generosity and an emotional quality that connects it all together.”

Releases August 27th, 2021

‘Til I Start Speaking” charts this journey of empowerment across 10 gentle anthems of soul and self-realization, to be shared and leaned on in low times or late nights.

Katy Morley’s soft, swooning strain of storyteller pop has distilled across the past half decade into an increasingly hushed and heartfelt private language, as lived in as it is lyrical. ‘Til I Start Speaking“, her long awaited debut, took shape slowly during stints in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and London, stripping back the melodies to their essence, driven by a yearning to “reach ‘the other side,’ to live in and be art and music.” The songs that emerged are time-worn, aching, and acoustically rich, like hymns or traditionals, traced in piano, voice, and percussion. She describes the creation process as almost a “subconscious exorcism,” casting out old ghosts and outgrown loves.

All songs written by Katy Morley and Christopher Stracey, with the exception of Wasted, co-written with Marcus Foster

Released August 20th, 2021

The Parquet Courts boys are back, and with one of the most antcipated records for 2021. Brooklyn’s own indie-rock cult heroes have announced their first new album since 2018’s acclaimed “Wide Awake”, 

“Sympathy for Life“, coming October 22nd on Rough Trade Records. Though the band say they completed their new record pre-pandemic, lead single “Walking at a Downtown Pace” could not be more on point in capturing the feelings of this fraught time period, from the yearning to recapture day-to-day joys (“I’m making plans for the day all of this is through / Seeing my path and hearing the song I’ll sing and / Food that I’ll taste and all the drinks that I’ll consume”) to the cabin fever and isolation (“Pick out a movie, a sandwich from a screen / How many days of life will I spend underground?“). It’s cathartic to hear those feelings rendered against Parquet Courts’ celebratory, animated dance-rock, which adopts its eponymous fast pace, yet never comes across as rushed or harried. The band drew inspiration from Screamadelica, knitting their new record together from self-samples, yet on “Walking at a Downtown Pace,” you’d be hard-pressed to spot a seam. 

Parquet Courts announce new album ‘Sympathy for Life’ out on October 22nd and share the first video/single ‘Walking at a Downtown Pace’ direct by Daniel Arnold.

Ahead of the album, on October 20th ‘Feel Free – Sympathy for Life, Visualised’ will air – get a sneak peek experience of the full album with never-before-seen videos and extras. Early bird tickets will be $10 for the first 72 hours, then $15 after. Discounted Album + ticket bundles available on their store.

The band have also announced eleven(!) global pop-up events, go to parquet-courts.com and sign up for details.

*Pre-order from our Rough Trade store and receive a free Sympathy for Life, 11-card Tarot Set designed by Andrew Savage. New Album ‘Sympathy for Life’ out October 22nd,

Low have shared a new video for another track from their forthcoming album “Hey What”. The latest cut is called “More,” and Julie Casper Roth directed a video for it. The visual, according to a press release, “explores the Sisyphean task of dismantling structural oppression, through gender biases.” this bodes well for another great Low album.

Following the singles “Days Like These” and “Disappearing,” indie and experimental stalwarts Low have shared another cut from their forthcoming album “Hey What” (out September 10th on Sub Pop records), the epic and striking “More.” Once again finding the band merging elements of noise, static and sonic decay with bits of melodic simplicity, “More” feels like it’s trying to bear its own weight against increasingly heavy gravity. The noisy, thunderous guitar that serves as the track’s foundation guides the song into almost a distorted take on classical folk. Bolstered by Mimi Parker’s enchanting vocals and a subtle but impactful rhythm, the song is a convincing soundtrack to our current state of entropy.

Arriving on September 10th, Hey What follows the band’s 2018 record “Double Negative”. The group has already shared the LP’s “Day’s Like These” and “Disappearing” .

“More” from Low’s album ‘Hey What’ (Out September 10th, 2021)

Baltimore quartet Future Islands have released their first new music of 2021, a one-off single titled “Peach.” The track follows the 2020 release of the synth-pop veterans’ sixth album, “As Long As You Are”. “Peach” is slick and danceable, upbeat in instrumentation, but far heavier on a lyrical level. Frontman Samuel T. Herring is caught amidst conflicting forces larger than himself, like a man overboard struggling to stay afloat on stormy seas: “Death is in season / And it’s pushing me round,” he sings, evoking Alice in Wonderland (“This one makes you big / In a cruel world / And this one makes you small / In a lonely world”) and ultimately resolving to hold onto hope: “But I’m not giving up / Not today.”

‘Peach’ by Future Islands is out now on 4AD Records,

Glasgow six-piece Fauves have gifted us with their new single “Ends of Me” on the 6^th of August 2021.

With life rapidly changing from what we have experienced over the last eighteenth months, Ends of Me is a track which works perfectly to fuel our collective feelings of relief and excitement for the prospect of a brighter future.

At first listen, Ends of Me presents itself as a tight indie-rock track, however it is, in fact, a great deal more complex. A careful ear will pick up injections of shoegaze guitar, disco-style bass and light, pop vocals, altogether creating an idyllic melange of genres which hooks us from the first note.

The cinematic music video for the track was written, directed and edited by Kasparas Vidunas and Eric J. Liddle of Humble Film Productions. It shows Fauves’ frontman adopting the role of a lost wanderer who roams a picturesque forest whilst being repeatedly drawn towards a pyramid which sits prominently among the trees.

Our protagonist appears to drift in and out of consciousness as he comes face-to-face with several versions of himself and witnesses the pyramid morph from traditional Egyptian style to a colourful, Dark Side Of The Moon-esque apparition. It seems he is searching for a path, sign or meaning amidst chaos and confusion – an experience that many of us may be able relate to in one way or another, especially during recent times.

The track promises excellent things from Fauves’ upcoming debut album, which is scheduled for release early next year. For something sooner to look forward to, Fauves will be making their live return on the mainstage of Playground festival on the 23^rd of September alongside the likes of The Libertines and Hot Chip. This will be an unmissable performance which will undoubtedly display the band’s talent and captivate existing and new fans.