September 25, 2015 — Stinkweeds
This Week’s New Releases & Staff Picks – 9/25/15
STAFF PICKS
kimber – youth lagoon, bikini kill
lindsay – kurt vile, youth lagoon
dario – julia holter
jeff – kurt vile
THIS WEEK’S NEW RELEASES
Bikini Kill – Revolution Girl Style Now [1991] CD/LP+MP3 (Bikini Kill)
Bikini Kill’s first collection of work (previously cassette-only) has been expanded with three previously unreleased tracks: “Ocean Song,” “Just Once,” and “Playground.” These songs feature a decidedly more grunge sound than the rest of the Bikini Kill catalog.
David Bowie –Space Oddity [Reissue/1969] CD (Rhino/Parlophone)
David Bowie –The Man Who Sold The World [Reissue/1970] CD (Rhino/Parlophone)
David Bowie –Hunky Dory [Reissue/1971] CD (Rhino/Parlophone)
David Bowie – The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars [Reissue/1972] CD (Rhino/Parlophone)
David Bowie –Aladdin Sane [Reissue/1973] CD (Rhino/Parlophone)
David Bowie –Pin Ups [Reissue/1973] CD (Rhino/Parlophone)
CD reissues of David Bowie’s second through seventh studio albums, which were available earlier this year as import-only (UK and Japan), but are now available domestically in conjunction with the Five Years 1969-1973box set.
Casey Veggies – Live & Grow CD (Epic)
New release from the Los Angeles rapper. Casey Veggies started out as one of the founding members of the hip-hop supergroup Odd Future before he decided to strike out on his own at age 14 after the release of his first mixtape, 2007’s Customized Greatly Vol. 1. That same year, he formed the popular street wear brand Peas & Carrots International (PNCINTL), and his grassroots approach to marketing has helped him build a loyal following. Live & Grow includes the single “Backflip,” featuring YG and Iamsu!. Vinyl version due October 30.
Caspian – Dusk And Disquiet CD/2xLP+MP3 (Triple Crown)
Caspian present Dust & Disquiet, the band’s first full length since 2012. The band returned to Q Division Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts again with producer Matt Bayless (Mastodon, Minus The Bear, Isis) where they recorded the highly acclaimed Waking Season (“the Best Post-Rock Album of the Year,” said SPIN Magazine in 2012). The result showcases a maturation of the quiet/loud dynamic that Caspian has been exploring since their debut EP, You Are The Conductor. The new album reflects the many moods of post-rock from the album opener with horns and a string quartet (“Separation No. 2”), riffs on the wilder, steel-eyed side of country (“Rioseco”), all the while staying true to its epic brand of build-and-release rock (“Arcs Of Command,” “Dust & Disquiet”).
CHRVCHES – Every Open Eye CD/LP (Glassnote)
Every Open Eye develops CHVRCHES signature style, juxtaposing the light and the dark, creating their own brand of twisted pop music that uniquely merges the organic with the electronic, molding sounds and ideas forged over two years on the road into an electronic-pop record with a heart. Using some ideas the band had recorded in venues during their time on the road as a starting point, the band found riffs, loops and melodies they wanted to develop or started from scratch on the synths, pads and machines they had been gathering in their basement to create the instrumentals of the songs. The album seeks to do more with less. To make big sounds without racking up endless tracks within Cubase sessions. To make something intense and urgent and visceral, using the basic tools of melody, rhythm and arrangement rather than the mentality that more is more. Available in Regular and Deluxe editions. Deluxe adds three bonus tracks. Limited color vinyl also available.
The Dead Weather – Dodge And Burn CD/LP (Third Man)
Jack White and the Kills’ Alison Mosshart’s band The Dead Weather return with the follow-up to 2010’s Sea Of Cowards. The album features 12 songs, including four previously released singles remixed and remastered. Among them: “Open Up (That’s Enough),” “Rough Detective,” “Buzzkill(er),” and “It’s Just Too Bad.” White, singer Alison Mosshart, guitarist Dean Fertita, and bassist Jack Lawrence spent their rare and sporadic free moments over the past year recording together in Nashville. The Dead Weather told SPIN last month that their new record included some music made for “demented kids.”
The Dears – Times Infinity Volume One CD/LP+MP3 (Dangerbird)
Times Infinity Volume One, the first new album from the Dears in four years is a sweeping collection of orchestral pop/rock that is at once enlightening, angst-ridden and mesmerizing. The first song from the album, “I Used To Pray For The Heavens To Fall” vividly encapsulates The Dears’ neo-romantic songwriting and acts as a calling card for the album. From electrifying pop to full-on primal screams; grinding guitar solos to soulful baroque, Times Infinity “is made of daydreams and spontaneous yet careful inspiration. That’s the sound of The Dears — always has been and always will be.” – NPR
Disclosure – Caracal CD/2xLP (Capitol)
“Disclosure has traded in its debut’s hook-heavy, nonstop good time for a more relaxed follow-up designed for respectability beyond the EDM world — as if dance music couldn’t possibly be enough” – Billboard. Available in Regular and Deluxe editions. Deluxe adds four bonus tracks.
Dungen – Allas Sak CD (Mexican Summer)
Dungen frontman/mastermind Gustav Ejstes has been making music for nearly twenty years—at first for himself, then eventually and inevitably for all of us. As a teenager in rural Sweden, he became obsessed with hip-hop and sampling, and eventually, ‘60s pop and psychedelia. He took up guitar and bass, drums and keyboard and even flute, then took to his grandmother’s basement to put it all on tape. It’s been five years since the last Dungen album, 2010’s Skit I Allt, which is by far the longest interval between releases for a band that proved especially prolific and inspired during the 2000s. Allas Sak picks up where Dungen’s previous album left off, but somehow it sounds bolder and livelier, feistier yet more focused. Allas Sak is about everyday matters: family, friends, the fine texture of life. Common but never mundane, these subjects anchor the music in the here and now, while the music lends a certain grandeur to ordinary moments. Vinyl version due October 9.
Fetty Wap – Fetty Wap CD (300 Entertainment)
The New Jersey hip-hop artist’s 17-song debut album features the hits “Trap Queen,” “My Way,” “679,” “Again” and “RGF Island.” Production credits include long time Fetty Wap collaborator, Brian “Peoples” Garcia and Young Lan.
Girl Band – Holding Hands With Jamie CD/LP+MP3 (Rough Trade)
Recalling any number of things but for only milliseconds at a time, Girl Band make a mockery of comparisons, because you can only get as far as “oh this bit sounds like—” before a guitar scuff-screams, the bass crunches like a car in a bailing press, or something else visceral and glorious comes from the speakers, and the thought’s erased.
Graveyard – Innocence & Decadence CD/2xLP (Nuclear Blast)
Swedish rockers Graveyard release their fourth full-length album. The band noted: “It’s gonna be an album filled to the rim with a little bit of this — and for all of those who might wonder or worry, there will be quite a lot of that on it as well.”
Patti Griffin – Servant Of Love CD (Thirty Tigers)
Servant Of Love is the Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter’s tenth album, and her first to be released on her new self-owned imprint in conjunction with Thirty Tigers. On the album, Patty Griffin digs deep into folk and roots tradition with its grounding in the experience and rhythms of the everyday, but she also writes in the vein of another tradition, less often mined: the transcendentalism of writers like Emerson and Whitman. Grounding itself in the natural world and finding patterns there which speak both to human experience and to the call of the spirit, Servant Of Love weaves an elemental spell out of the stuff of life. Vinyl version due October 9.
Julia Holter – Have You In My Wilderness CD/LP+MP3 (Domino)
Have You In My Wilderness is Julia Holter’s most intimate album yet, a collection of radiant ballads. This, her fourth album, explores love, trust, and power in human relationships. The focused, warm sound and luminous instrumentation highlight a remarkable voice that rises confidently above intricate, yet grounded arrangements. It’s a bold step for the young songwriter/composer, one that is immediate and rewarding. “The composer, singer and keyboardist Julia Holter’s latest album is her sunniest and most accessible. The music has shifted, gaining warmth and weight while remaining essentially mysterious. Instead of unpacking weighty overarching concepts, Holter is telling stories, brief and foggy ones that are often plagued by ambiguities.” [BNM] – Pitchfork
Los Lobos – Gates Of Gold CD/LP (Savoy Jazz)
With their new album Gates Of Gold, Los Lobos evoke a rich American saga in the tradition of Faulkner and Steinbeck. “Gates Of Gold puts a fresh spin on the blues-rock that has come to define Los Lobos sound, with elements of samba and jazz mixed in for good measure. It’s a driving record, equal parts mellow and rocking, that should fit well into the Los Lobos catalog once it hits shelves.” – jambands.com
The Maccabees – Marks To Prove It CD/LP (Caroline)
Marks To Prove It is the London indie band’s fourth studio album and the first since their debut to receive a proper release in the United States. It follows 2012’s Given To The Wild which was nominated for the Mercury Prize. “As lofty and stoic as Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, with a claustrophobic, concrete-like weight to its sound,Marks To Prove It is indebted to the cold grey city in which it was created – or perhaps the time spent in it drinking to forget.” – The Guardian
New Order – Music Complete CD/2xLP+MP3 (Mute)
Long awaited album Music Complete is New Order’s first full studio release since 2005’s Waiting For The Siren’s Call, and their debut for Mute. The album finds the group revitalized, and where they had previously pushed toward electronics or guitars, here the two are in balance. Music Complete also marks a return to the studio for Gillian Gilbert, this is her first album with New Order since 2001’s Get Ready, and is also their first without founding bassist Peter Hook. “On the band’s first studio album since the departure of Peter Hook, New Order don’t attempt to replace his characteristic lead basslines, but shift instead towards a more general electronic orientation.
It’s most effectively realized in tracks produced by Tom Rowlands, especially “Unlearn This Hatred”, a twitchy electro strut infectious enough to help one overlook the ragbag of clichés that passes for its lyric. But mostly, the album comprises a series of scuttling bleepscapes lent individual character by unorthodox instrumental detail” – The Independent. (Regular double-LP vinyl available now; Super Deluxe eight-piece vinyl edition coming in November.)
Doe Paoro – After CD/LP+MP3 (Anti)
As a songwriter and vocalist, Doe Paoro seeks both to uplift and unsettle. For her Anti debut After, the New York-bred, L.A.-based artist worked in close collaboration with producers Sean Carey (drummer/supporting vocalist for Bon Iver) and BJ Burton (musician/producer/engineer whose past credits include POLIÇA, Sylvan Esso, The Tallest Man On Earth and Volcano Choir), deepening her musical repertoire into a dense hybrid of R&B, synth-pop, and indie-leaning electro that’s rooted in earthy minimalism. “I’m used to just having a piano and working with that,” says Doe, “but with this album we built an entire world with the sonics alone. There’s an assumption that pop music needs to be dumbed down, but I think pop can be surprising and make you uncomfortable sometimes. It can ask you to think about something you hadn’t considered before, and maybe awaken a place in yourself that you hadn’t been giving attention to.”
Peaches – Rub CD/LP (I U She Music)
Peaches, the queen of filthy electropunk, enlisted Kim Gordon and Feist for her new album Rub, her first since 2009’s I Feel Cream. The album was recorded last year in Peaches’ Los Angeles garage studio with longtime collaborator Vice Cooler. “After six years, I was excited about my lyrics again, about what Peaches was. I felt more comfortable living out any idea I wanted to try. We spent ten hours a day making beats, and whatever stuck, I would write on and develop. The only agenda was to make the best album we could.”
Silversun Pickups – Better Nature CD/LP (New Machine Recordings)
Produced at Jacknife Lee’s Topanga studio (he’s worked with the likes of U2 and Two Door Cinema Club),Better Nature is the first release on Silversun Pickups’ own label, New Machine Recordings. According to lead vocalist and guitarist Brian Aubert, the new full-length is an amalgam of the group’s trademark SoCal vibe, funky sampling, and other “swirly bits.” The band has been steadily climbing the ranks of the indie rock scene for more than a decade, mixing frontman Brian Aubert’s layered guitar riffs and airy vocals with the animated backbeats from drummer Christopher Guanlao.
U.S. Girls – Half Free CD (4AD)
The work of Illinois-born, Toronto-based artist Meg Remy, U.S. Girls has evolved in recent years from the coarse four-track fidelity found on her early recordings to more luscious and unabashed works, packed with fiery pop sensibilities. Half Free is the next step in this impressive progression, an honest and lyrically jarring exploration of emotions, drenched in a bath of raw beats and loops that have become the hallmark of her work with producer and frequent collaborator Onakabazien. Other album guests include Slim Twig (DFA), Ben Cook (F**ked Up, Young Guv), Amanda Crist (Ice Cream) and Tony Price. Vinyl version due October 9.
Kurt Vile – B’lieve I’m Goin Down… CD/2xLP+MP3 (Matador)
Kurt Vile – B’lieve I’m Goin (Deep) Down... 3xLP+MP3 (Matador)
B’lieve I’m Goin Down… is Vile’s sixth album, and shows Kurt both deeply introspective and briskly self-assured. As longtime fan Kim Gordon wrote about the album: “Kurt does his own myth-making; a boy/man with an old soul voice in the age of digital everything becoming something else, which is why this focused, brilliantly clear and seemingly candid record is a breath of fresh air. Recorded and mixed in a number of locations, including Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, B’lieve I’m Goin Down… is a handshake across the country, east to west coast, thru the dustbowl history (“Valley Of Ashes”) of woody honest strait forward talk Guthrie, and a Cali canyon dead still nite floating in a nearly waterless landscape. The record is all air, weightless, body-less, but grounded in convincing authenticity, in the best version of singer songwriter up cycling.” (B’lieve I’m Goin (Deep) Down… is the deluxe triple-vinyl edition which includes six additional tracks.)
Wand – 1000 Days CD/LP/Cassette (Drag City)
1000 Days finds Wand searching in corners. They found extra texture during 1000 Days via synthetic animation. Songs compelled them to reach across lifestyle, relying on broadcast to find out who might need the sound. The atmosphere is quicksilver and the space acoustic; as a beacon sparks electric, a cascade of hi-fi noises for everyone’s ear moles — raucous, impassive, inevitable musical expressions.
Widespread Panic – Street Dogs CD (Vanguard)
Street Dogs is the twelfth studio album from Widespread Panic, and was the first to be entirely recorded live in the studio. The result is the most fun the veteran sextet has had making an album, which is apparent upon first listen. For almost 30 years, Widespread Panic has been known for their masterful improvisational style, but their core has always been built around songwriting. Incorporating a vast range of styles, Panic’s songs run the gamut from compelling narratives to poignant ballads to southern blues to progressive jazz and rock. Street Dogs is a testament to how a veteran band can remain vibrant, relevant and continue to progress. Vinyl due October 9.
The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – Harmlessness CD (Epitaph)
Founded by guitarist/singer Derrick Shanholtzer-Dvorak, guitarist/singer Tyler Bussey, and bassist Josh Cyr in 2009 in the post-industrial mill town of Willimantic, Connecticut, The World Is A Beautiful Place’s early records were atmospheric, impressionistic tone-poems, balanced somewhere between the twilit emo of American Football and Christie Front Drive and the pensive, mood-heavy post-rock of The Appleseed Cast and Yo La Tengo. Their new album, Harmlessness, is a breakthrough for a band that has built a following crafting striking melodies, poignant narratives, and confident, compelling songs out of their own complicated and imaginative aesthetic. It ranges from the hushed folk of opener “You Can’t Live Here Forever” to the epic, grandiose “Mount Hum” – spanning the bedroom pop of the band’s salad days to the sweeping scope of 2013’s Whenever, If Ever, and beyond. Vinyl due October 9.
Youth Lagoon – Savage Hills Ballroom CD/LP (Fat Possum)
“In rococo indie-rock songs that have wormed their way into ears well beyond his native Boise, Idaho, Youth Lagoon mastermind Trevor Powers comes across as a sensitive, trembling soul who combines precision and poise with a sense of being forever on the verge of falling apart. Shows of strength and vulnerability abound onSavage Hills Ballroom, the third Youth Lagoon album since his 2011 debut — and his most formidable work yet. ‘My legs are limp, my shoes suckled stone,’ Powers sings at the start of ‘Officer Telephone,’ an opener that introduces itself as a pensive dirge before launching into a spacious, big-bottomed blast with muscular beats and frayed electronic sounds that peer surprisingly toward dubstep. Before the mania spills over, ‘Highway Patrol Stun Gun’ gathers up and dials down with a balladeer’s piano and violin in the open air around Powers’ singular voice. That voice is a curious jewel: homely yet highly stylized, impish and ingenuous, constantly warbling while always falling flush into place after all manner of melodic adornments and curlicues” – NPR. (Limited copies available on gold vinyl.)
Big Black – Atomizer [Reissue/1986] LP (Homestead/Touch & Go)
Recorded in 1985 by Steve Albini and Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering, this remastered vinyl reissue of Big Black’s first full-length album Atomizer includes the song “Strange Things” which appeared on the first pressing, but was not present on subsequent vinyl editions nor on The Rich Man’s Eight Track CD.
Goat – It’s Time For Fun b/w Relax 7”+MP3 (Sub Pop)
Goat return with a brand new single, their first new music since the critically-acclaimed second albumCommune, which was released last September.
NEXT WEEK’S NEW RELEASES
BLITZEN TRAPPER – All Across This Land CD/LP
EAGLES OF DEATH METAL – Zipper Down CD/LP
WAVVES – V CD/LP
KAMASI WASHINGTON – Epic LP
BORN RUFFIANS – Ruff CD
BOTTLE ROCKETS – South Broadway Athletic Club CD/LP
CHILDBIRTH – Women’s Rights CD/LP
CLUTCH – Psychic Warfare CD/LP
DEAFHEAVEN – New Bermuda CD/LP
FORT LEAN – Quiet Day CD
EDITORS – In Dream CD/LP
INDIAN HANDCRAFTS – Creeps CD/LP
JESSE MALIN – Outsiders CD/LP
MERCURY REV – Light In You CD
SELECTER – Subculture CD/LP
TURKUAZ – Digitonium CD
WOOD BROTHERS – Paradise CD/LP
DARKSTAR – Foam Island CD/LP
PATTY GRIFFIN – Servant Of Love CD/LP
WIDESPREAD PANIC – Street Dogs CD/LP
RUN THE JEWELS – 2 LP
SHEEPDOGS – Future Nostalgia CD
JOE JACKSON – Fast Forward CD
PAUL MCCARTNEY – Pipes Of Peace CD