The Fat Angel Sings

Cory’s first solo, ‘The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo’, was an intense affair, a grand experiment that produced inspiring, unconventional music – but this time around, he wanted to breathe a bit easier, to feel that breath in the music as well. So he and his band drove out to the desert to record in a low stress environment: Brian Harris’ Cactopia, a house surrounded by 6ft tall sculptural psychotropic cacti. They built a studio inside and then they made music and lived off pots of coffee and chili and cases of Miller High Life as they played guitars, bass, keyboards and drums in what seemed increasingly like a living biomech, their tech made out of fungal networks and cacti needles.

Waiting placidly for end of days, a rictus grin flashing winningly as he summons strength for the already-in-progress epic clash, Cory Hanson delivers a new music video for Pale Horse Rider.
The third single/title track from the forthcoming album ascends to climactic heights (both within itself and in the context of the larger record coming into view) via majestic country gospel-inflections and ambient steel guitar, swelling to a repeated chorus radiating with cries of catharsis from our Cory. Like the two before it, this new song is insanely amazing! The “Pale Horse Rider” video pairs sumptuous sunny California imagery to lyrics anointing the arrival of mass destruction while Cory acts as demonic guide to the future wasteland, skipping about the scene impishly. The stakes are high – and driven calmly through the heart of the matter. Out with the old, in with the new age.

Watch the title track today, but heed the note below –Pale Horse Rider is still approaching, but has slid back in time slightly, to allow for end-of-eon-type delays and adjustments. All the better to allow you to obsess on these advance singles! : The digital release date has moved to April 16th. Physical orders will be delayed, with a new ship date of May 21st.

It was loose and flowed onto tape well. Recorded by Robbie Cody and Zac Hernandez (who assisted on Wand’s ‘Laughing Matter’), the sounds were great from the get-go. First takes were mostly best takes. Fuelled with DNA lifted from country-rock cut with native psych and prog strands, Cory guided his craft toward the cosmic side of the highway, a benevolent alien in ambient fields hazy with heat and synths, early morning fog and space echo spreading the harmonies wide.

‘Pale Horse Rider’’ got a lot to get out of its mind, looking around and seeing that, on the surface, things don’t always look like much. A lifelong Californian, Cory’s naturally found himself standing to the left of most of the country. The west may be only what you make it; these days, the roadside view looks exceptionally sunbleached and left behind. ‘Pale Horse Rider’ eyes the city, the country and the fragile environment that holds them both in its hands – a record as much about Los Angeles as it can be with its back to the town and the sun in its eyes; as much about nostalgia as new music can be with the apocalypse over the next rise.

Cory’s adroit ability to flip through the gains and losses of any given moment with a simple line or two is given delicate bloom on the latest single “Bird of Paradise.” An ominous fever dream of opaque moral lessons (a la Bobbie Gentry’s “Refractions”), “Bird of Paradise” is a flowing ballad sparked from within by bubbling guitar arpeggios, glittering electric keyboards and arcs of steel guitar like falling stars shooting through the night sky. Moods of estrangement and desire play out delicately in the shadowy grid of a deserted urban landscape.

On ‘Pale Horse Rider’, Cory Hanson moves ceaselessly forward. The old myths weave and waft, the shadows of tombstones flickering in the mirages and the light that lies dead ahead.

Title track from “Pale Horse Rider,” to be released on LP/Cassette/CD/Streaming on March 12th, 2021, from Drag City Records.