The Fat Angel Sings

When two great songwriters have the opportunity to build off each other’s strengths and habits in just the right environment, sublime work has the chance to flourish. Such has been the case thus far with Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, who last month delivered the divine singles “Reach Out” and “Olympus,” from their new collaborative LP “A Bbeginner’s Mind” due out September 24th on Asthmatic Kitty. Today (Aug. 10), they’ve shared a further two new songs, “Back to Oz” and “Fictional California,” both expressive and emotional tracks that keep in line with the album’s theme of taking inspiration from various films, coming from 1985’s Return to Oz and 2004’s Bring It On Again, respectively.

“Fictional California’’ is soulful and intimate, recalling some of the best works of each songwriter. Instrumentally sparse and following a gentle rhythm, the song’s vocals seem to envelope you in the gorgeous refrain, which features lyrics “open your light to the darkness / open your heart, let it all hang out.” “Back to Oz,” on the other hand, is much more substantial and instrumentally full, featuring a catchy refrain, gorgeous layered drums, noisy drums and a groovy bass. While both artists thrive in minimalism, it’s thrilling to hear their efforts being translated into a grander sound so successfully.

De Augustine says of “Back to Oz,” “The words reference an erosion of a central character’s internal reality. A loss of innocence is the impetus for a journey to find inner truth. In the film, Dorothy returns to the world of Oz to find its landscape in ruins and its citizens frozen in stone. Only she can find the ruby slippers and return peace to Oz. Only we can save ourselves, but we first have to remember who we truly are.” The track arrives with a music video directed by Alex Horan and animated by Clara Murray.

A Beginner’s Mind, was conceived when the artists embarked on a song writing retreat at a friend’s cabin in upstate New York, the project developed after the pair noticed their music reflecting the movies they’d watch daily to unwind. The result is an album inspired by classic films, leading to “less a “cinematic exegesis,” per a press release, and more a “rambling philosophical inquiry” that allows the songs to free-associate at will.”

The album itself is named after the Zen Buddhist concept of “shoshin,” which refers to the state of seeing and accepting the world around you openly, like a child. Stevens and De Augustine employed that mindset to write music without preconceived notions restricting the creative flow.

The pair have released “Reach Out” and “Olympus,” ahead of the album, both undeniably gorgeous and personal acoustic-based tracks from two songwriters renowned for their specialty in that field. Featuring lyrics that drift from the confessional to the divine, the artists sound centered, vulnerable and alive. “Reach Out” arrives with a video shot by the two artists, featuring their beloved dogs and edited by Jess Calleiro.

“A Beginner’s Mind” by Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine available on CD, LP, Cassette, & Digital September 24th, 2021

Since arriving with their sizzling, power-pop-infused brand of rock music in the mid-2010s, New Zealander group The Beths have been harnessing the raw energy of their music for compelling and electric live performances. On the three-year anniversary of the release of their debut album “Future Me Hates Me” and following their second album 2020’s “Jump Rope Gazers”, the band have announced a new live album and an accompanying film titled “Auckland, New Zealand, 2020”, out September 17th on Carpark Records.

The anticipation is there in Elizabeth Stokes’ solo guitar riff under the opening lines of “I’m Not Getting Excited”: a frenetic, driving force daring a packed Auckland Town Hall to do exactly the opposite of what the track title suggests.

As the opener of The Beths’ “Auckland, New Zealand, 2020” expands to include the full band, the crowd screeches and bellows. It’s a collective exhalation, in one of the few countries where live music is still possible.

The album title, and film of the same name, deliberately include the date and location, lead guitarist Jonathan Pearce says. “That’s the sensational part of what we actually did.” In a mid-pandemic world, playing to a heaving, enraptured home crowd feels miraculous.

In March 2020, everything seemed on track for another huge year for The Beths. Home after an 18-month northern hemisphere tour, they had just finished recording sophomore album Jump Rope Gazers and were primed for more extensive touring. But within days, New Zealand’s lockdown split the band between three separate houses. All touring was cancelled.

Recorded at the Auckland Town Hall, the show is notable for being one of the few any major rock band was able to perform mid-pandemic, due to the anti-COVID measures New Zealand adopted early on. As such, the group’s performance teems with life and the excitement to be gathered in a space with fans during such a dark period. Deliberately choosing the name of the album/film in reference to that fact, Jonathan Pearce comments, “That’s the sensational part of what we did,” and says playing to the sold-out hometown crowd “felt miraculous.” The idea for Auckland, New Zealand, 2020 came from the desire to share the good fortune they had playing shows with the rest of the music-less world.

THE BETHS
Elizabeth Stokes
Jonathan Pearce
Benjamin Sinclair
Tristan Deck

Releases September 17th, 2021

Although the last album we got from from Cherry Glazerr, “Stuffed & Ready“, came out in 2019, ans since Clementine Creevy has been keeping busy over the years. Recently, she’s released a couple singles, “Big Bang” and “Rabbit Hole,” that have emphasized the sonic evolution her music is taking. She was also featured on the new Willow album with a spot on the track “Breakout”. Now Creevy has returned with another new Cherry Glazerr single titled “Soft Drink.”

The song, which at times recalls The Strokes in both their rock and experimental electronic phases, finds Creevy reflecting on intimacy and the nerves of revealing oneself to another for the first time. Creevy’s vocals inhabit a lightness like never before. “People just want to shake me / Shake me upside down like a soft drink,” she sings on the first verse. By the chorus, she lets the other person in, lost in movement, “not so lonely anymore.”

“I started with that synth line. It just popped into my head while I was driving and I like frantically recorded it into my voice memos while driving to the beach kind of down by Hermosa and Manhattan beach. I was randomly obsessed with the song ‘Naive’ by The Kooks and kind of listening to it a lot, and I think that sound crept in a little. The song is about yearning for some validation. Sometimes all you need is company and you’re not looking for anything specific, just someone to dance with. It was a lonely year obviously,” Creevy said of the track.

“Soft Drink” the new song by Cherry Glazerr, out now on Secretly Canadian.

It feels like Big Thief give us just the right amount of music each time to tide us over until we’re aching for more. In 2019, they released two albums, “U.F.O.F.” and “Two Hands”, and since then individual members of the group have been releasing their own music while the band itself was laying low: last year Adrianne Lenker released two albums “Songs and Instrumentals”, drummer James Krivchenia revealed an experimental solo record A Newfound Relaxation and earlier this year Buck Meek shared his latest album “Two Saviors”. But today we get new music from the band in the form of the singles “Little Things” and “Sparrow.”

Together, the two tracks illustrate familiar and fresh sounds for Big Thief. On the lingering track “Sparrow,” Lenker sings about an eagle’s scream, snakes, apples, and potent fluids like blood, juice, and poison. Tack piano, unhurried percussion, and warm guitar strums push her metaphorical words to the forefront. It’s a retelling of the Biblical creation tale, Lenker singing, “Adam said, ‘She has the poison inside her / She talks to snakes and they guide her.’”

“We all just scattered about the room without headphones, focused and in the music—you could feel that something special was happening,” explained drummer James Krivchenia, who produced both “Sparrow” and “Little Things.” “It was a funny instrumentation that had a really cool natural arrangement chemistry—Max [Oleartchik] on piano, Buck providing this dark ambience, me on floor tom and snare, and Adrianne in the middle of it with the acoustic and singing.”

The second single “Little Things” is a refreshing sound for Big Thief. Lenker’s vocals are positioned further back as robust instrumentation swims around her. At times, her vocals are fragmented into prismatic shards. Even when she’s not singing, cool wisps of her voice break through. Sometimes there’s a screech or a whimper or cry of relief. “It’s in this sort of evolving free time signature where the beat is always changing,” said Krivchenia, “so Max and I were just flowing with it and guessing where the downbeats were—which gives the groove a really cool light feeling.”

Big Thief tracks “Sparrow” and “Little Things” .

We’re excited to announce the opening of our first ever ThirdManRecords store outside the USA. Situated on Marshall Street in the heart of London’s historic Soho – an area renowned for its rich musical history – the London store will complete a trio of Third Man physical spaces that includes buildings in Nashville, Tennessee and Detroit, Michigan. Located at 1 Marshall Street, London W1F 9BA, the store will officially open to the public on Saturday 25th September. Come one come all, with priority given to #ThirdManVault members.

The space has been personally designed by Third Man founder Jack White. Third Man Records London (Third Man Records London) will be multi-functional, tripling up as a two-level retail space, an intimate live music venue named “The Blue Basement,” and a European headquarters for Third Man Records. It will feature a host of quirks, details and idiosyncrasies. In celebration of the opening, we approached some of our favourite UK artists –Paul Weller, David Ruffin, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Cornershop, Gina Birch of The Raincoats and the great, lost Manchester group Magic Roundabout – to record something brand new or contribute something previously unheard to the Third Man catalogue. These exclusive releases will be available to buy on black vinyl on 25th September from the Third Man Webstore (soon to be expanding to the UK/EU), at all three Third Man Records stores, and independent record shops everywhere, and on very limited edition yellow vinyl in the Third Man London store only.

To celebrate the opening of The Third Man Records Store London store on 25th September they asked if we’d like to provide something unique for a vinyl release. Our friends at Third Man are based in Detroit where the label was born. Our sound engineer has the useful habit of recording our live shows so we invited Third Man to choose three songs from our last show in Detroit’s historic Fox Theatre on 23rd Oct 2018. They chose The Living End, Teenage Lust and Cracking Up. This is also our first 7” vinyl release since 1998.The 7″ will be available in good record stores on 25th September on black vinyl, and on very limited edition yellow vinyl only in Third Man’s new London shop.

Nashville in 2010 was a time and place bristling with potential. The city had long been characterized by a sort of underdog spirit, and in 2010, that spirit was in full display at DIY punk venues, run-down honky-tonks and hole-in-the-wall dives. This is where Caitlin Rose worked out the songs which became “Own Side Now“, a now timeless classic being reissued here as a Deluxe Edition.

Just over a decade ago Caitlin Rose came crashing to the world’s attention with her critically lauded debut album, “Own Side Now”. With a long-overdue new record apparently already recorded, this week Caitlin has announced it will be preceded by some anniversary celebrations, with a deluxe new edition of “Own Side Now” due out in October. Alongside a re-mastered take on the original, the record also features two bonus tracks, and this week Caitlin has shared the first of them, “Whatchoo“. Also the remastered “Shanghai Cigarettes,” a breakup song featuring Rayland Baxter about which American Songwriter wrote, “Rose’s vocals are so sweet and the beat is so contagious, you might be tempted to break up with your beau just to have an excuse to listen to it on repeat.” 

Recalling the origin story of Own Side Now, Caitlin recalls how it came from a time, “when I was at my most naive that nobody doubted me and I could create something so temporal and honest”. The record was heavily influenced by Nashville, as was “Whatchoo” as Caitlin explains, “this album came out of a city that didn’t need people telling it who it was. ‘Whatchoo’ is the lament over a city that seems to have forgotten itself”. The song builds from a gentle opening, and the vocal remains delightfully serene throughout, even as she’s pulling a knife from her back, left there by someone, “who wants to win the fight and then destroy everything”. Rose released “Own Side Now” in 2011 to instant acclaim from critics, who praised her crystal-clear vocals and her ingenious lyricism – equal parts heartbroken and defiant – and compared her to her musical heroes Stevie Nicks and Linda Rondstadt.

Own Side Now is a record that has gone down in the annals of Americana-history, and while it might never quite hit the acclaim I think it deserves, this is a well-deserved reminder of just how special it truly is.

“Own Side Now” Deluxe Anniversary Edition out on Cloudy Clear vinyl with Bonus 7” vinyl is out October 1st via ATO Records.

Brighton based, Breathe Panel formed now with Split between London and Brighton, Breathe Panel come together to create a sound that is the sum of their four parts. Playing together half unplugged in a living room and swapping drums for cushions is where they would often hit their natural r, “no agenda other than the enjoyment of making music together”. The band took that sense of freedom and enjoyment into their forthcoming album, “Lets It In”, recorded in just five days working with acclaimed producer Ali Chant. With the album due out next month via FatCat Records, September 17th, 2021. Breathe Panel are premiering the latest track from it, “Love You, I Love You”.

Breathe Panel formed in an East London house that frontman Nick Green and guitarist Josh Tyler shared and the duo set about using music as a method of escapism from the fast pace of the city, as Nick puts it, “a mediation from the mess”. In the case of Love You, I Love You, this manifests as a search for comfort in shared doubts, as Nick explains the track is, “a lighter take on feeling a bit down and worried, so the lyrics cover overthinking and doubting yourself but understanding that it’s what most people go through and finding comfort in that thought”.

The track was written on a day off the band had in the middle of touring, “we set up in our living room, half unplugged, just having fun playing with no expectations and it came together pretty quickly“. The final version maintains that sense of freedom and playfulness and merges them with a rich production, hitting a similarly wistful jangle to bands like Real Estate or Chris Cohen. Particularly excellent is the meandering lead guitar line that snakes through the track, a perfect foil to Nick’s easy vocal delivery. This feels like music from a good place, comforting, outward glancing and ready to heal any listener willing to lend Breathe Panel an ear.

The result is a second album that sounds real and present in the moment, evoking the moments in time in which it was made. 

“Lets It In” is out September 17th via Fat Cat Records.