The fact that the London-based singer-songwriter Alice Costelloe, the great-great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, is, on her debut album Move on With the Year, probing into her unconscious to conjure up memories of her estranged father might seem too on the nose or a send-up. Don’t worry, it isn’t either. Instead, it’s a gallant portrayal of a child of a parent battling substance abuse—in other words, it’s an indie pop record with a subject matter barely acknowledged, let alone expressed with such finesse and stoicism. Yet, despite the heaviness of its themes, you could be floating.
The post-war English poet Philip Larkin wrote, in his customary sardonic tone, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.” In the next stanza of “This Be the Verse”, Larkin opens with a punchline to a joke that never existed: “But they were fucked up in their turn.” The specter of Move on With the Year is, of course, Costelloe’s absent father, who moves through the songs fucking her up, or, in her own words, “a vagabond haunting the night.” Yet, perhaps in realizing that he, in turn, was subjected to the errors of his parents, Costelloe doesn’t appear to be reproachful—if anything, compassionate.
Formed in Richmond, Virginia in the mid-1980s, Famous Actors From Out of Town created ambitiously composed instrumental music rooted in the city’s fertile underground scene. Built around the uncommon power of two drummers working intricately in tandem, the quartet blended jazz, rock, improvisation, and experimental music into a sound that was both cerebral and physical.
Though the band played infrequently, their live appearances became legendary local events, drawing multigenerational audiences of punks, metalheads, jazz fans, students, and artists alike. The group featured composer and keyboardist Marty McCavitt, percussionists Johnny Hott and Pippin Barnett, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Watson on trumpet, guitar, and bass. All four were veterans of Richmond’s jazz, rock, and new-music communities, with deep connections to bands such as the Ululating Mummies, Orthotonics, Gongs Violence, House of Freaks, Idio Savant, the Tom and Marty Band, and the Snakehandlers. Their creative pedigree extended well beyond the city, with members later contributing to influential projects including Sparklehorse, Cracker, Curlew, and Gutterball.
Much of the band’s sound came from its unconventional instrumentation. Watson played pocket trumpet, short-scale bass, and occasionally prepared electric guitar. Barnett built and performed on homemade percussion, while Hott famously struck “found” objects—50-gallon oil drums, flywheels, tin sheets—sometimes using sawed-off broom handles as drumsticks. McCavitt conceived the dual-percussion approach to create “a richness that was unusual,” allowing two improvising drummers to split parts and create space through simplicity. This philosophy of “less becomes more” shaped the band’s primitive yet deeply textured musical language.
The band’s name was a tongue-in-cheek response to Richmond’s growing role as a low-cost film location in the early 1980s. As Hollywood productions arrived, McCavitt noted the irony that the “famous actors” were always from out of town—a joke the band leaned into onstage and in composition titles like “Merle Oberon,” “William Holden,” and “Jack Nicholson.”
Famous Actors From Out of Town never officially disbanded, instead entering a long hiatus as members pursued other projects and family life. Trumpeter and guitarist Paul Watson passed away in 2025, leaving behind a lasting musical legacy. This reissue is dedicated in his loving memory. The remaining members have recently reconvened as a trio, focusing on improvisation, with plans for a renewed version of the group to perform around the 2026 reissue of FA3574.
『Famous Actors From Out of Town』は正式な解散をせず、メンバーが他のプロジェクトや家庭生活に専念するため長期休止状態に入った。トランペッター兼ギタリストのポール・ワトソンは2025年に逝去し、永続的な音楽的遺産を残した。本再発盤は彼への深い追悼を込めて捧げられる。残るメンバーは近年トリオとして再結成し、即興演奏に注力。2026年のFA3574再発盤発売に合わせて、グループ再編版による公演を計画中である。 "
While working on their second album, two members of Mandy, Indiana—the Mancunian quartet fronted by a French valkyrie named Valentine Caulfield—were faced with their own corporeality. Drummer Alex Macdougall underwent surgery for a hernia and, after doctors found a lump, had half of his thyroid removed. Caulfield lost most of her vision in one eye. The 10-hour days that comprised the recording sessions could have broken them. Instead, the band’s distinctive sound—an alloy of industrial, post-punk, and ’80s neo-noir soundtracks—emerged titanium-plated and electrified. URGH is both headier and more visceral than anything Mandy, Indiana have made before. This isn’t body music or brain music; it’s spine music, homed in on the bony junction where mind meets matter.
Listening to Mandy, Indiana’s 2023 debut, i’ve seen a way, felt like wandering the darkrooms at Berghain—if Berghain blasted vintage French pirate radio broadcasts. You were in the cool kids’ club but couldn’t shake the sense of being held at a remove, as if there were another velvet rope you weren’t allowed to cross. URGH puts you right in the sex sling, and there’s Caulfield towering overhead, cracking a riding crop. As she recites Revelation 6 (the one about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) on opener “Sevastopol,” her voice glitches and frays like Jigsaw coming through the TV screen. The abiding mood is powerlessness: At any second, a trapdoor might open beneath your feet, sending you down a tube slide into a hornet’s nest of violins or a ball pit full of scrap metal.
