The Fat Angel Sings

TERRY REID  –  The Other Side Of The River

– Remastered from the original analog tapes
– Track notes by Terry Reid
– 6 never before heard Reid compositions, plus 5 very different alternate takes – all previously unreleased.

British musician Terry Reid is a relatively unsung legend. With his incredible voice (that earned him the nickname “Superlungs”), spot- on songwriting, and underrated guitar skills, Reid invented new sounds and others followed suit. His 1973 LP, River, is an under-the- radar but deeply loved album. Our special new release, The Other Side Of The River, features all previously unreleased material from the River sessions, including six never-before-heard Reid compositions and five very different alternate takes of tracks from River.

Over the decades, as River went in and out of print, there were rumors of a mythological double album’s worth of unreleased material. The rumors turned out to be true, as the entire album was recorded twice: once with British producer Eddy Offord and again with the legendary Tom Dowd. The sessions captured Reid’s free-associative mix of folk, blues, rock, jazz, bossa-nova, soul, and samba, recalling at times Tim Buckley and Van Morrison, while featuring some remarkable guests including Gilberto Gil on percussion, Ike & Tina Turner’s Ikettes on vocals, and David Lindley, of psych band Kaleidoscope, on violin.

The Other Side Of The River includes songs that even Terry had forgotten – rockers in the style of the River track “Dean,” Latin grooves with percussionist Willie Bobo, and beautifully sparse vocal material not unlike David Crosby’s If Only I Could Remember My Name and John Martyn’s Solid Air.

Reid’s vocal prowess earned him offers to front both Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, but he turned down both opportunities to carve out a distinctive solo career. Instead, he rocked on the sidelines, ultimately touring with Cream and Fleetwood Mac, writing songs for CSNY, and opening for The Rolling Stones on their 1969 tour.

More recently, Terry’s songs have been covered by a number of younger artists including the Raconteurs, and his voice can be heard on DJ Shadow’s track “Listen”. This spring he will be touring the East Coast and U.K. Though his “superlungs” would have no doubt served Zepp well, perhaps his solo status allowed him to be more experimental and nuanced than he would’ve been able to be as a mainstream frontman, and for that we are grateful.

The Other Side Of The River stands alone as a fresh and utterly groundbreaking Terry Reid gem.

JOSEFIN OHRN AND THE LIBERATION / GNOOMES REPETITIONS EP

CAR SEAT HEADREST – TEENS OF DENIAL

MUTUAL BENEFIT  –  Skip A Sinking Stone  

‘Skip A Sinking Stone’, Mutual Benefit (aka Jordan Lee), is released via Transgressive Records.

This new album is a two-part meditation on impermanence that also acts as a portrait of growing up. Mutual Benefit’s work has been praised as being vulnerable and warmhearted. This release has a similar sensibility, patiently built from carefully chosen lines illustrated by lush astral folk and intricately composed arrangements that manage to appear effortless.

“I kept coming back to how nice that was, throwing these stones against the water,” says Lee. “I thought it was a fitting metaphor for the endeavours I have in my life – sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. I think it’s a good exercise in accepting impermanence and failure and these things that are constant, and yet the activity of skipping stones is really relaxing and beautiful.” Each stone ultimately sinks but, as Lee sings on the album’s zenith, as the cycle ends and repeats again, all we can do is maintain the hope that it’s ‘Not For Nothing’.

MOUNTAINS and RAINBOWS

Last summer, John Dwyer came back from an Oh Sees tour talking about a fantastic band he’d played with in Detroit called Mountains and Rainbows. What followed him home was a double-LP’s worth of shopworn weirdness and a delightfully loose attitude that must have something to do with the ecstasy of a Midwestern summer. These backyard freaks jam into the twilight, led by a vocal quaver belted to the cheap seats, a groove and a grin and a heaping spoonful of “damn, aren’t you glad we came out tonight?” Vibrant and confusing like the insane-o cover artwork that appears to be constructed of many layers of fluorescent duct tape.

Careening from the mellow chugger vibe on “How You Spend Your Time” to the tightly wound twitch of “Dying To Meet You,” Mountains and Rainbows stretch their legs deep into the strange, with a dark oddness lurking in the corners of tunes like weirdo highlight “With Beefheart.” Particles is a great addition to a little journey of one’s own, perhaps, and just in time for the sunlit afternoons to come.

FIR  –  SUMMER WASN’T THERE / WINTER DOESN’T CARE

METHYL ETHEL  –  OH INHUMAN SPECTACLE

New to 4AD, Australian trio Methyl Ethel’s celebrated debut album is being given a worldwide release. Hailing from the remote fringes of Perth in Western Australia, band linchpin Jake Webb – like 4AD peers Grimes and Bradford Cox before him – wrote, played and recorded everything on ‘Oh Inhuman Spectacle’.

Crafted in isolation, the album’s understated psychedelic pop quickly drew plaudits, leading Webb to recruit Chris Wright (drums) and Thom Stewart (bass) – friends from the tight-knit and thriving music scene in Perth – to help realise the songs live as a full-fledged band.

Having gained notable success in Australia including being nominated for the prestigious Australian Music Prize and taking Laneway Festival by storm, Methyl Ethel are now poised to take their music overseas with the worldwide release of ‘Oh Inhuman Spectacle’ and a huge run of touring in both Europe and North America to coincide.

Like a modern, indiefied iteration of Syd Barrett with the melodic intonations of the ghosts of post-punk. Woozy rhythms and fuzzed-out basses, twirling arpeggios meet chugging guitars and soaring strained vocal melodies. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

BRAIDS – COMPANION

VARIOUS ARTISTS  –  DAY of the DEAD

A celebration of the Grateful Dead’s music, Day of the Dead was created and curated by brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National.

For both Aaron and Bryce, the Grateful Dead were a gateway to playing music together; the first music the brothers investigated deeply. The two recall their first-ever jam session at 14 years old with The National’s future drummer Bryan Devendorf playing the Dead’s ‘Eyes of the World’ for several hours in Bryan’s attic in suburban Ohio. The brothers were drawn not just to the Dead’s songwriting, but also to the detail, spontaneity, and depth in the instrumentation. A life-long love affair with the Dead, shared with the Devendorfs, was born in those teenage years and crested when The National were invited to play a HeadCount.org fundraiser with Bob Weir in March 2012. The band assembled for this event learned over 25 Grateful Dead songs, and most of those players went on to form the “house band” heard on many of Day of the Dead’s tracks.

The compilation is a wide-ranging tribute to the songwriting and experimentalism of the Dead which took four years to record, and features over 60 artists from varied musical backgrounds, 59 tracks and is almost 6 hours long. Produced by Aaron Dessner, and co-produced by Bryce Dessner and Josh Kaufman, many of the tracks feature an all-star house band made up of Aaron, Bryce, fellow National bandmates and brothers Scott and Bryan Devendorf, Josh Kaufman, and Conrad Doucette along with Sam Cohen and Walter Martin. The record shows the broad reaching impact and legacy of the Grateful Dead, both culturally and musically.

Day of the Dead will be released digitally and on 5xCDs on May 20th. A limited edition vinyl boxed set will follow later in the year. All profits will help fight for AIDS / HIV and related health issues around the world through the Red Hot Organization. This is the 20th album of original music produced by Red Hot to further its mission and the follow up to 2009’s Dark Was The Night (4AD), a 32-track, multi-artist compilation also produced by Aaron and Bryce for Red Hot. Dark Was The Night has raised over $1.5 million to date for the organizations fighting AIDS to date.

MARISSA NADLER  –  STRANGERS

For more than 12 years Marissa Nadler has perfected her own take on the exquisitely sculpted gothic American songform. On her seventh full-length, Strangers, released 20th May on Bella Union , she has shed any self-imposed restrictions her earlier albums adhered to, stepped through a looking glass, and created a truly monumental work.

Today Nadler has shared “Janie in Love”, one of her most texturally rich songs to date and one that updates her signature sound with some of the most prominently featured drumming of her career. Her talent for powerfully juxtaposing the ominous and the beautiful is on full display.

In the two years since 2014’s elegiac, autobiographical “July”, Nadler has reconciled the heartbreak so often a catalyst for her songwriting. Turning her writing to more universal themes, Nadler dives deep into a surreal, apocalyptic dreamscape. Her lyrics touch upon the loneliness and despair of the characters that inhabit them. These muses are primal, fractured, disillusioned, delicate, and alone. They are the unified voice of this record, the titular “strangers.”

Once again partnered with July producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Black Mountain) Nadler has created an album equal in sonic quality to the apocalyptic lyrical tone that covers its 44 minutes. In places her voice and guitar play off subsonic synths, while elsewhere, a pulsing drumbeat launches the songs off into an intense, confrontational place.

FEWS  –

Swedish / American four-piece FEWS have been making some serious waves ahead of their debut album. Specialising in propulsive, motoric noise-pop, producer Dan Carey (Bat For Lashes, Sexwitch, TOY, Kate Tempest et all) discovered the band via a mysterious Soundcloud link and promptly invited the band to his South London studio where debut single ‘Ill’ quickly followed on Carey’s Speedy Wunderground label.

Having joined the ranks of the Play It Again Sam label their own brand of malevolent post-punk continues to evolve and thrill with follow up singles ‘The Zoo’ and ‘100 Goosebumps’ that has seen the band bear resemblance to DIIV and Faust.

“Sonically charged post-punk that’s equal parts Interpol, DIIV, The Walkmen and A Place To Bury Strangers. Anthems for the disaffected in waiting”