The Fat Angel Sings

The Killers return with their seventh studio album “Pressure Machine”. The album is about the small town of Nephi, Utah, where Brandon Flowers spent his youth. The songs are extremely personal, covering a spectrum of emotions in connection to growing up in a rural setting. The album also includes a collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers – it’s real good stuff. Where The Killers’ sophomore album “Sam’s Town” was a triumphant return to the band’s dust-riddled origins of Las Vegas, Nevada, “Pressure Machine” is a raw and visceral slouching back home. Told through the guises of multiple characters, each song narrates memories and true stories. weaving tales of religious disenchantment, broken dreams, death by train collision, and escape by means of “heroine hillbilly pills.” Most of Pressure Machine’s brightest moments come by way of quiet contemplations on forfeited desires. It can be heard in “Another Life” when the protagonist harps on a parallel reality where hopes are fulfilled.

“Pressure Machine” follows 2020’s “Imploding the Mirage”, The Killers recorded the new album in the period the band could not tour during the pandemic. The LP is co-produced by Shawn Everett and Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado.

Included on the record is the track “Runaway Horses,” featuring Phoebe Bridgers. weaving tales of religious disenchantment, broken dreams, death by train collision, and escape by means of “heroine hillbilly pills.” Most of Pressure Machine’s brightest moments come by way of quiet contemplations on forfeited desires.

Despite being one of the world’s most successful rock bands, when they sing about broken dreams and small-town struggles, every single word feels true.

The Killers, under exclusive license to Island Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

The third album from the Brooklyn trio A Great Big Pile of Leaves—and their first release since 2013, “Pono” overflows with a warm, wistful longing for simpler times, from summery opener “Yesterday’s Clothes” (“I wanna feel the speed of our bikes / and sticky fingers from the water ice / I wanna feel the burn on my feet / waiting for the ice cream”) to the “Simple Pleasures” of its math-y curtain call. The fleeting bitter sweetness of such moments is the album’s bruised heart; meanwhile, co-founders Pete Weiland and Tyler Soucy and 2007 addition Tucker Yaro dole out consistently satisfying rock with shades of math and emo, never tipping too far in any one direction. Their charming hooks reinforce the childlike wonder of tracks like “Halloween” or “Writing Utensils,” in which little parts of life come to loom so large in one’s imagination.

Produced by A Great Big Pile of Leaves and recorded primarily at their home studio, new album Pono was mixed by touring guitarist Matthew Weber at Gradwell House Recording and mastered by Dave Downham (Beach Slang, Into It. Over It.). With eight years between releases, the band recalls how the recording process of Pono felt like they were making their first record, adding “we worked at our own pace with no preconceived notion of what it needed to be.”

On “Pono”, A Great Big Pile of Leaves sound like a band at peace with the passage of time, cherishing times gone by and seizing as many days as they’re given—“We’re aching to say it all now,” sings Weiland on “Waiting for Your Love,” an earnest lust for life you can’t help but share as a listener. 

A Great Big Pile of Leaves is: Pete Weiland, Tyler Soucy, Tucker Yaro

All music written, performed, and produced by A Great Big Pile of Leaves New Album ‘Pono’ – Released August 13th, 2021 Topshelf Records.

‘Caroline’ captures this aggressive if not sultry appeal. This immediate infliction of ardent rock hits the audience, whilst this raucous tone intensifies. It’s a punk-infused rock wonder, biting momentum, and consuming charm which is ingrained into the core of this anthemic instrumentation. The coarse chorus even reflects a faint surf-rock influence, found beneath the capacious soundscape.

Recorded during the same sessions as ‘Only Lasts a Moment’ at Greenmount Studios, it is another testament to the song writing synergy of Danny Trew Barton (vocals/ guitar) and Sam Coates (Vocals/ guitar), who crafted ‘Caroline’ as throw-away in the time it takes to play the song out. Seriously, Cowgirl are an exciting outfit to watch!

Extremely limited stock. Be sure to pick up this impressive cassette with sage colour whilst you can- thanks to Safe Surburban Home.

Cowgirl release ‘’Caroline / Shut Up’ is the latest release from Safe Suburban Home cassette series .

Track A – Caroline
Track B – Shut Up

Mutations Festival is back! Featuring performances from 100 of the most exciting, inspirational and relevant artists, performing over 4 exuberant days and 11 of Brighton’s most treasured Grassroots Music Venues.
Including Anna Meredith, Baxter Dury, Beak, Ross From Friends, This is the Kit, Working Men’s Club & more.

Born in 2015, the genre melting Mutations 001 set the foundation for its daring line-ups to come. 2019 saw a mysterious venue unearthed on the outskirts of the city as Mutations 002 evolved into a powerhouse of creative exploration. Arriving at any place and at any time, Mutations Festival is an ever evolving and unforeseen meeting of like minded music fans, hungry to uncover the unknown and the unexpected. With a passionate belief that all customers should be able to enjoy the festivals headline acts we’ve structured Mutations Festival 2021 such that the festival uses lower capacity venues, but more of them, during the day, as the afternoon progresses the number of venues being used reduces and the capacities increase, culminating in the evening with one single headline stage each day where all customers can enjoy the final acts of the night .Get ready to embrace the experimental and the brave at Mutations Festival 2021.

Willie Dunn shared truth through song and celluloid. “It’s like the reason you’re supposed to make music,” said Kurt Vile about the song to MOJO Magazine in 2015. “He was our Leonard Cohen,” said singer-songwriter Eric Landry about his musical hero. In talent, he is Cohen, Dylan, and Cash rolled into one and along with Buffy Sainte-Marie, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, and A. Paul Ortega, brought a new set of perspectives and realities to the folk music tradition. “The Pacific”, Willie Dunn’s third album, originally released in 1980, is available for streaming and digital download for the first time. We are humbled to help honour Willie Dunn. May he never be forgotten… PEACE.

released August 13th, 2021

The project of the now LA-based songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Noah Weinman, Runnner’s poignant reflections on the isolation and anxiety caused by a sense of rootlessness radiate with wit and charm. While writing the songs that now span “Always Repeating“, he floated between Providence, Los Angeles, and New York. “It’s like I sing about these places yearning to be there, but also knowing full well that what I’m really missing is the people I met and the experiences I had,” Weinman explains. “I get restless and frustrated in my present, and romanticize my past while pushing myself into some different chapter—one that usually starts with me in a dark place and some songs in my journal. These songs end up being the constant for me over the years.” Always Repeating, self-produced and recorded wherever he called home at the time, documents this cycle of looking back and moving forward, of alienation changing to reconciliation.

The 10-track collection is composed of five re-recorded versions of songs that appeared on Runnner’s 2017 debut, Awash, and 2020’s One of One EP. Although the songs were written over the course of three years, all find Weinman grappling with the same thing: feelings of uncertainty about his life. After leaving college, his friends, and his beloved life in Ohio, Weinman made the reluctant decision to move back to his hometown of Los Angeles; not because he wanted to, but because he wasn’t sure where else to go. It was an extremely isolating time and that existential dread pervades the music. “I began to feel like all of the people I knew and had met maybe never really existed,” Weinman explains. “I fell out of touch with everyone. It was really lonely. I wrote these songs as a way of reaching out and trying to reconnect. It’s interesting that the feelings I had then overlap with the feelings I’ve had in the past year, where everybody feels distant and far away.”

For Weinman, Runnner is primarily a solo endeavour with an ever-expanding musical community of musicians collaborating on his albums and shows, which at times have been known to feature up to a 7-piece live band (he also has a burgeoning career as a producer, notably working on Skullcrusher’s critically-acclaimed debut EP for Secretly Canadian). Weinman completed “Always Repeating” last fall in Western Massachusetts and Woodstock using a mobile studio set-up. He played the majority of the instruments himself, including guitar, bass, trumpet, banjo, piano and synth. The goal was to create the perfect balance of intimate and melancholy song writing through the lens of hi-fi/lo-fi dynamics, inspired by his favourite artists like Bon Iver, the Microphones, and Julien Baker. “I want it to feel honest and homemade and a little rough around the edges, but where the roughness doesn’t preclude somebody from engaging with the song,” Weinman explains. “Like you’re in the room listening to it all be made. I tried to preserve some artifacts of the process to help it feel present.”

The songs draw from personal emotions and experiences—with Weinman usually more interested in posing questions than in always providing answers—and are sometimes inspired by the works of writers such as Angela Pelster, Max Porter and Donald Barthelme. “Awash” embodies the feeling of being lost and adrift through its aching melody and acoustic riffs, while the pulsating “Urgent Care” uses humour and light-heartedness to touch on Weinman’s very real anxiety. The relatable album opener, “Monochrome,” resonates as he tries fruitlessly to recall mundane and insignificant moments from his past. While the songs are about feeling alone, they also offer the hand of connection. “The act of writing songs and the time being alone making songs has been a way for me to work through those feelings,” Weinman says. “I write songs hoping for connection: if someone else feels less alone from listening to my music then I might also feel less alone.” He is looking towards the future, but he also knows that the songs on Always Repeating probably haven’t finished playing themselves out–and they probably never will.

Always Repeating ultimately tells the start of Weinman’s journey as Runnner, and his cyclical feelings of being connected and then disconnected from the world over and over again. This collection of songs reflects a constant, honest search for attachment and a sense of place–and a vulnerability that empathizes with listeners who may face that same challenge. “When I first left college I was uncertain and afraid, and I knew I had changes ahead of me, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to make them,” he recalls. “I was just circling in my own anxiety and indecision, and now I’m back to recording those same songs again, in a world that is in many ways more uncertain than it was then. Me struggling with loneliness and anxiety is true for all of the music I write. And pandemic or not, these songs would still feel relevant. I went through it then, I’m going through it now, and I’ll probably go through it again in a few years.” 

Released July 16th, 2021

Julia Shapiro (Chastity Belt, Childbirth, Who Is She?) is back with her second solo album, “Zorked”, the follow-up to 2019’s superb “Perfect Vision”. Set for an October 15th release on Suicide Squeeze Records, the 10-track LP features co-production from Melina Duterte (Jay Som), who helped Shapiro record at home during lockdown in Los Angeles, and pushed her to explore a sound distinct from both her solo debut and her work with Chastity Belt.

Lead single “Come With Me,” out now alongside a psychedelic, live-action/animation-hybrid music video (dir. Ertugrul Yaka), is our first preview of that new sound: dreamy, but dark—nightmarey, more like—with droning synths that jab your nerves, hazy and hallucinatory lyrics, and layered Shapiro vocals that evoke MGMT. It’s a sound cleverly calibrated for these times, in which we’re all “zorked” in one way or another, whether by virtue of chemical intervention, or our mental circuits simply overloading.

Julia Shapiro “Zorked” out October 15, 2021, on Suicide Squeeze Records.