The Fat Angel Sings

For the first time ever on vinyl, a special limited edition Translucent Gold pressing of Canned Heat’s 1997 super rare Canned Heat Blues Band album. This album captures the historic boogie band in a true blues and country blues setting, and features the original band’s Fito de la Parra, Henry Vestine, Larry Taylor plus Junior Watson and Robert Lucas. Tried and true blue renditions from the pens of Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson, Alan Wilson of Canned Heat, plus newer originals from the band.

Tracklisting:

Side One 1-Stranger 2-Quiet Woman 3-Iron Horse 4-Jr’s Shuffle 5-Creole Queen 6-Keep It To Yourself Side Two 1- Boogie Music 2-Going Up The Country 3-See Those Tears 4-One Kind Favor 5-Oh Baby 6-Gorgo Boogie

The Legendary album from the band which is long out of print, and limited on the second-hand market.
Released in 1968, “Living The Blues” was one of the first double albums to place well on album charts. It featured Canned Heat’s signature song, “Going Up the Country”, which would later be heard in the Woodstock film. This deluxe package released as part of Record Store Day Drops will include an OBI strip on the gatefold album jacket with two pockets, featuring the original US printed inner sleeves, orginal record labels, and one yellow and one pink translucent LPs, originally Released November 1968.

The band who unleash another batch of strong originals and engaging overhauls of a few blues staples — including the solid cover of Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues” that commences the effort. Right out of the gate, the formidable team of Wilson and Vestine explore their musical passions with a focused drive that would significantly diminish in the years and on the records to follow. One of the primary factors in the package’s commercial success was their update of Henry Thomas’ “Going Down South,” which they turned into the breezy “Goin’ Up the Country.” The song not only became one of their biggest hits, it was also used in the Woodstock (1970) documentary and a live version — from the actual concert which was presented on the soundtrack.

Blues godfather John Mayall appears on piano on “Walking by Myself” and “Bear Wires”. Dr John appears on “Boogie Music”. The 20-minute trippy suite “Parthenogenesis” is dwarfed by the album-length “Refried Boogie”, recorded live.

 “One Kind Favour” (aka “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”) drives hard with Bob Hite belting out behind the ensemble’s propelling rhythms. Aside from the slightly indulgent “Refried Boogie,” Living The Blues (1968) stands as a testament to Canned Heat’s prowess as modernizers of the blues and recommended as one of the most cohesive works from this incarnation.

Tracklisting:

“Pony Blues” | “My Mistake” | “Sandy’s Blues” | “Going Up The Country” | “Walking By Myself” | “Boogie Music” | “One Kind Favor” | “Parthenogenesis” | “Refried Boogie (Part I)” | “Refried Boogie (Part II)”

Canned Heat

• Bob Hite – vocals
• Alan Wilson – slide guitar vocals, harmonica, jaw harp (tracks 2.I, 2.II, 2.IX), chromatic harp (track 2.VIII)
• Henry Vestine – lead guitar
• Larry Taylor – bass, congas (track 2.V)
• Adolfo de la Parra – drums

Love, led by the brilliant and complicated Arthur Lee, are considered one of the most influential American rock bands of all time.

The 2015 reissue of their album ‘Reel to Real’ featured the band at the height of their rock/soul powers, and featured 12 previously-unreleased outtakes from the original sessions. This special release features five of those tracks on vinyl for the first time, including three original Arthur Lee compositions that were virtually unknown before the 2015 reissue: the sweet and soulful ‘You Gotta Feel It’, a catchy rock-pop tune called “I Gotta Remember’, and ‘Do It Yourself’, a blast of high-energy funk driven by Lee’s strutting vocals.

The ep also includes the original version of ‘Everybody’s Gotta Live’ (recently featured in the film ‘Jojo Rabbit’ and covered on Mac Miller’s posthumous album Circles) as well as a full-band performance of that song and an alternate take of ‘Singing Cowboy’.

Tracklisting:

1. everybody’s gotta live (album version)
2. you gotta feel it (outtake)
3. i gotta remember (outtake)
4. do it yourself (outtake)
5. singing cowboy (alternate take)
6. everybody’s gotta live (electric version)

Record Store Day release on Sundazed Records

It was just last month when we learned of the imminent arrival of award-winning documentary “White Riot”, debuting in the virtual cinema, which supports independent theaters during the pandemic. The movie chronicles the rise of the Rock Against Racism movement that spread across the U.K. in the late 1970s as a response to right-wing advances in federal government.

White Riot won the prize for Best Documentary at the 2019 London Film Festival, and features new interviews with Clash drummer Topper Headon, Pauline Black of The Selecter, reggae producer Dennis Bovell, and more.

With the doc’s release date a week away, Film Movement has shared an electrifying new clip from the movie. In the scene, The Clash blaze through their song “White Riot,” taken from the group’s 1977 self-titled debut. The performance was part of a massive Rock Against Racism festival that happened in London’s Victoria Park. 

With the National Front gaining power, what started a fanzine established in opposition to that party turned into a sweeping movement known as Rock Against Racism. “We peeled away the Union Jack to reveal the swastika,” explained co-founded Red Saunders in a press statement for White Riot, a new documentary that chronicles the RAR movement, which culminated in a massive 1978 concert and “anti-fascist carnival” featuring X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, and The Clash.

White Riot won the prize for Best Documentary at the 2019 London Film Festival.

Maple Glider is Naarm/Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Tori Zietsch. The title of Maple Glider’s debut album, ‘To Enjoy Is The Only Thing’, exudes both a sense of elegance and hedonism. But it could have been very different.

“When I was writing the record in Brighton in the UK I took a photo of some graffiti. It said ‘To enjoy is the only thing, BTCH$’,” the singer-songwriter Tori Zietsch (rhymes with peach) recalls gleefully. The 27-year-old grew up in Lismore, northern New South Wales, ensnared in something she only refers to as The Religion. A post-interview email asking for more detail yields a polite rebuff: “I have been deliberately keeping this info private.”

Pre-Maple Glider, Zietsch gigged under her own name then formed a group, Seavera, alongside producer Daniel Pinkerton. That band went kaput too, then Zietsch fell in love with a backpacker. After his travel visa ran out, the two set off overseas. Like all young lovers living in each other’s pockets, it was all going swimmingly, until it suddenly wasn’t.

One debut album to enjoy is the only thing, Zietsch’s vocals melt into layers of plucked acoustic guitar and lulling piano, drawing on the sombre styles of folk contemporaries with a stark tenderness and introspection that assumes the listener is inside her bedroom as she plays for herself. striking emotionality is at the centre of this performance, leaning into an intimacy that is achieved by way of deeply personal reflections and velvety melodic compositions.

In Tori’s words: “to me, to enjoy is the only thing feels like walking past tinsel-covered trees in mid-september, swimming along the calanques in the South of France, frost on the hood of a car, darkness at 4pm, lightness until 10pm, sibylle baier’s colour green, Devendra Banhart’s ma, Adrianne Lenker’s a-sides, a muted feeling, the perpetual grey fog that swallows the silver coast in Portugal, an ugly green dress, the colour red, red wine, red blood, red lips, the red of a cardinal’s robe, Switzerland, my mother’s diaries, a coroner’s report, the sun on my face, the end of love.”

The Australian singer/songwriter Maple Glider (aka Tori Zietsch) has shared a new single off her anticipated Partisan Records debut “To Enjoy Is The Only Thing” , and this one shows off a more minimal, bare-bones side of her music, but is equally gorgeous in its own way.

Limited transparent green & lime marble splatter Lp* + double sided photo print* + hand numbered sleeve* (500 only) (* exclusive to dinked edition)

“Not So Bad” is a song I originally wrote for my band The Reds, Pinks & Purples. When Jeremy Earl came out to California to record Painted Shrines with me in 2018, I thought it would be fun to hear his signature high voice singing lead on that particular melody, and I think it worked out. The Painted Shrines record got shelved for a bit, while Jeremy worked on Purple Mountains and the latest Woods, so I ended up releasing my own version as “Your Parents Were Wrong About You” on my recent LP You Might Be Happy Some Day. Both songs came out around the same time unexpectedly. The versions are pretty different, and maybe it’s interesting to hear our different vocal approaches. Compare and contrast if you feel like it.

All of my songs are based on real feelings but not always on actual events. This song was based on a real moment in my life many years ago. I had a girlfriend I was in love with and through circumstances I can’t recall, it ended up that I was supposed to have dinner alone with her mom — actually kind of terrifying to be honest, wanting to make a good impression. Her mom seemed very cordial, but she spent half the dinner trying to convince me that her daughter was a “little bit much” and maybe even “crazy,” and she not so subtly wondered what I even saw in her. It was terribly sad, but I weathered it and just said, “Maybe you are wrong about her.” During that same visit, her mom pressured me into serving legal papers on her ex-husband, my girlfriend’s stepfather, while he was getting off an airplane. He had been dodging the process servers and wouldn’t recognize me, so I had a chance of succeeding. 

 This song is a tribute to my ex and anyone else with parents who are undermining and inappropriate or abusive. I extended it to be about someone who wants to be who they are at the risk of not being accepted. “Your life is wrong but you’re not so bad/Is that your fault they can’t understand?” That’s about taking that internalized negativity and rejecting the blame and guilt for it. Let them carry it. We need other people to survive, but it’s OK to reject the negative people in your life and move on. Let them earn your trust if they want it. Find some other good people to accept you, love you and try to make your own life somewhere.

Glenn Donaldson 

Released on Woodsist on: 2021-03-05

With no touring this year, and possibly next, we decided to take a deep dive into our archives and put together the first volume of our much discussed archival series, “Reflections”. Featuring rare and unreleased recordings from 2009 – 2013, Including a ghost town desert jam off the side of the highway, our first live performance in Big Sur, the first recorded version of Bend Beyond and some shelved diamonds in the rough that were finished up during quarantine. Our hope is that it plays like a “lost record” from an extremely strange and fruitful period in Woods history.

With no touring in 2020, and possibly this year, Woods decided to take a deep dive into their archives and put together the first volume of their much discussed archival series, “Reflections”. 

Track notes:

1. Bumble Bee Crown King – Recorded to cassette tape just off the highway in Arizona, on tour in 2009 after we passed a sign that read “Bumble Bee Crown King.” As a bunch of native New Yorkers, we were surprised to find nothing but endless desert when we pulled off of i17. Unaware of Bumblebee’s ghost town history we set up drums and a battery powered amp and began to bang away. Driving in the desert for so long can have a crazy affect on you. It’s both inspiring and anxiety producing. This session was our way of exercising the demons and getting that crazy energy out. Overdubs added in August of 2020 when it was finally mixed.

2. Midnight Moment – Recorded April 16th, 2013 at Buttermilk Falls in Warwick, NY during the writing of With Light and With Love. Bass and piano added during quarantine 2020.

3. Be Kind My Love – Recorded April 11th, 2013 at Buttermilk Falls in Warwick, NY during the writing of With Light and With Love. We spent a good amount of time working on a version in the studio, but we couldn’t recapture the magic of the demo. It was our first time in a proper recording studio and a couple of good songs got shelved because we didn’t know how to translate that feeling from our home recordings into the studio yet. Bass, wurlitzer and organ added during quarantine 2020 when it was finally finished and mixed.

4. Skull – Recorded at Buttermilk Falls, Warwick NY. with additional recording & mixing at Rear House June, 2011. This has, what might be the best drum take ever featured on a Woods recording. Is it just one long fill?!  Remixed August, 2020.  Originally appeared on a split 7″ with Kurt Vile for our 2011 tour together.

5. Party In The Pines – Recorded live August 29th, 2009 in Big Sur, CA during Mexican Summer’s Party In The Pines Festival. Though we were mostly playing for Redwood trees the title stuck and felt inappropriate to change. I remember that, being one of the only non Mexican Summer bands on the bill, we had to play first. It was probably around noon and there were just a few people in lawn chairs watching. It was Jeremy’s idea to cut a few songs and open with an improv just to stretch out and set the mood. This was our first time playing in Big Sur at the Henry MIller Library and was the impetus for our future Woodsist Festivals. A day that forever changed our lives.

6. Space and Time – Recorded February 7th, 2012 at Buttermilk Falls in Warwick, NY. Bass added during quarantine 2020 when it was finally finished and mixed.

7. Ballad Of Jim Jones – Written by The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Recorded August 2, 2010 at Buttermilk Falls in Warwick, NY after watching a Jonestown documentary. Bass and Organs added in 2020.

8. Bend Beyond (First Version) – Recorded March 1st, 2011 at Buttermilk Falls in Warwick, NY. This was our first attempt at recording it and has a more laid back approach with acoustic guitar and hand percussion. After working on it, we started playing it live and over the course of a year of touring, it had turned into a loud, duelling electric guitar, epic set closer. When we revisited this version of it, we realized we had to honour what the song had turned into live. Which was a big turning point for us, turning from a recording project that then does live interpretations of these weird home recordings to a band that actually tested out songs on tour before committing to a final version.

Jeremy Earl – vocals, guitars, drums, percussion, Mellotron
Jarvis Taveniere – bass, guitar, organ
G Lucas Crane – percussion (track 1), tapes/ percussion (track 5)
Kevin Morby – percussion (track 1), Bass (track 5)
Kyle Forester – piano (track 2), organ (track 7)

Recorded by Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere.

A heavy dose of California chill beaming out from New Hampshire, John Andrews and his “band” The Yawns return with “Cook Book”, their follow-up to 2017’s Bad Posture, and an airy collection of laid-back country rock, gentle AM ballads, and breezy cantina instrumentals with more than a dose of Guaraldi-imbued jazz. Andrews is a communal artist: drumming in Quilt, playing keys in Woods, and generally lending a hand in projects such as Hand Habits, Cutworms, Widowspeak, and Kevin Morby.

His imaginary band “The Yawns” are back! Third time’s a charm. In hockey terms, they call it a “hat trick” and you know who’s always wearing a ratty old hat? John Andrews. Three years in the making and we have “Cook Book”, the third, and most colourful record from your favourite craftsman. Unknowing folks usually assume he lives in New York City or Los Angeles but confer with John for 5 minutes and if he’s in the right mood he’ll talk your ear off about the granite state & the old, seedy colonial barn where he’s tracked his records with his weird and wonderful friends

After a few more years of traveling here are about 9 or 10 new tracks, but who’s really counting? The lyrics are simple and endearing,  inspired by mid century love songs. “New California Blue” offers some of the album’s most elegant and freewheeling piano playing. As such, his sound emits a close-knit, homespun warmth, not unlike the familiar coziness that the album’s title suggests. 

In album stand out, “River of Doubt”, he sings “If I’m swimming in that river of doubt, won’t you pull me out?” It’s a similar yearn we’ve heard from groups of yesterday like The Shangri Las & The Mama’s Papas,  but it’s a distant, more contemporary interpretation. Johnny’s vocals are his own instrument. His tenor is mellow yet greatly confident. He doesn’t always sing though; instrumental track  “Song for the Gonz” provides a score to 90’s street skateboarder  Mark Gonzalez with a timeless, cartoon-like melody.  “Try” could be cut from the same cloth as Carol King’s piano demos. 

Released May 14th, 2021

Melbourne, Australia psych rock band The King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, what I love more than anything is the recent semi-trend in psych rock to use droning, excessive, energetic, distorted, wild, extreme, face-melting extended guitar work. Thats exactly what you get on this further live adventure from King Gizz.

The band’s latest album ‘L.W.’ was released in February, a companion to previous album ‘K.G.’, which dropped in November of last year.

Both heavily utilise microtonal tunings, a theme the band introduced with their 2017 album ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’.

Here we go again! We have 2 editions available. 100 in both our UK and EU shops. Both editions are limited editions of 250. We will be not press anymore for the time being so act fast! Make sure to read the release date and pre order details above before ordering.

Earlier this month, the band announced their melodic and psychedelic new album ‘Butterfly 3000’ would arrive on June 11th.

released May 29th, 2021

Live at The Enmore Theatre, Sydney, Australia, April 22nd 2021

Mixed by Stu Mackenzie

The Band:

Ambrose Kenny-Smith: Harmonica, Keys, Vocals, Percussion, Guitar
Cook Craig: Guitar, Keys
Joey Walker: Guitar, Vocals
Lucas Harwood: Bass
Michael Cavanagh: Drums
Stu Mackenzie: Guitar, Vocals