May 12, 2017 — Stinkweeds
New Releases & Staff Picks 5/12/17
STAFF PICKS
Kimber – Elf Power
Lindsay – L.A. Takedown
Dario – Woods
Brittany- Bob’s Burgers Soundtrack
THIS WEEK’S NEW RELEASES
Jim Avett and Family – For His Children And Ours CD/LP (Ramseur)
The second Jim Avett and Family collection following an eponymous 2008 release. Produced by and featuring Seth and Scott Avett of The Avett Brothers, additional musicians include Jim Avett, Bonnie Avett Rini, Bob Crawford and Tania Elizabeth.
There’s something romantic about a band’s early days. A sense of innocence, optimism, and wonder courses through the music. In the summer of 2014, No Doubt’s Tony Kanal (bass), Tom Dumont (guitar), and Adrian Young (drums) and singer Davey Havok (AFI, Blakq Audio) began writing and demo-ing music together. Without telling a soul outside of their significant others, the four musicians clandestinely moved into a cramped downtown Los Angeles rehearsal spot and revved up what would become Dreamcar. When Havok heard the first four demos, the music immediately resonated, transporting him back to his childhood fascination with the celebrated New Romantic movement. Rife with shimmering guitar tones, percussive slap bass, bombastic drums, and a neon-lit dancefloor dreaminess, Dreamcar gleefully nods to the decade of Boy George and Back To The Future through a kaleidoscope of wisdom.
Elf Power – Twitching In Time CD/LP (Orange Twin)
New release from the Athens, GA-based indie rockers and part of the legendary Elephant Six Collective.
Girlpool – Powerplant CD/LP+MP3/Cassette (ANTI-)
Life has been a whirl for Girlpool since the release of their acclaimed 2015 debut Before The World Was Big. Shortly before the record came out, Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker relocated from their hometown of Los Angeles all the way across the country to Philadelphia, where they quickly became embedded in the local D.I.Y. scene. Girlpool made their mark with a spare, simple sound — two guitars and two voices, with absolutely nothing else accompanying them. It was an original, intimate sound, and it made the two sound like they were united against the rest of the world. But on their new album, Powerplant, they’re trying something else. They’re playing with a full band. The album’s 12 tracks grow and burn with greater fire than the duo have possessed heretofore. Both bandmates were heavily inspired by Elliott Smith, the Cranberries, the Cocteau Twins, Brian Eno, Arthur Russell, and Graham Nash; the influence of each appear in the record’s deliberate and intricate guitar work (“Fast Dust,” “She Goes By”) as well as its embrace of dissonant noise (“Corner Store,” “Soup”). [Limited deluxe vinyl edition pressed at 45rpm also available.]
Jake La Botz’s story seems entirely too cinematic to be true. On his album Sunnyside, Jake’s songs are heavily informed by his life, one that wraps shades of Merle Haggard, Charles Bukowski, Jim Jarmusch, and Sid Vicious all in one. La Botz learned from pre-war blues masters such as David Honeyboy Edwards and Maxwell Street Jimmy Davis, but Sunnysidemakes a sonic move well beyond string blues. Sunnyside was produced by Jimmy Sutton at Hi-Style Studios in Chicago, whose previous production work includes albums for JD McPherson and Pokey LaFarge. The rock ‘n’ roll groove is paramount throughout, propelled by driving bass and drums, ethereal piano, and doo-wop inspired gang vocals. This isn’t your dad’s blues music – it’s roughhewn by La Botz’s stories from the more shadowy corners of America, with an unforgettable atmosphere that hangs like thick smoke and lingers long after the first listen. [Vinyl edition due June 16.]
L.A. Takedown – II CD/LP+MP3 (Ribbon Music)
On their new album II, L.A. Takedown align the moody grandeur of a film score with the pure melodicism of pop. Led by Los Angeles-based composer/multi-instrumentalist Aaron M. Olson, the seven-piece band delivers a guitar-driven take on synth-pop once described by Black Dice’s Bjorn Copeland as “Baywatch krautrock.”
I Can Spin a Rainbow marks the first full-length collaboration between Amanda Palmer and Edward Ka-Spel, founding member of visionary Anglo-Dutch psychedelicists The Legendary Pink Dots and one of her greatest artistic heroes. Recorded largely on Ka-Spel’s computer, I Can Spin A Rainbow is a truly collaborative effort, “a spiritual experience,” says Palmer, in which both artists’ stories, song fragments, poems, and lyrics became wholly meshed with loops, melancholy piano playing, melodic beds, and strange rhythms.
Passafire – Longshot CD/LP (Easy Star)
A genre-defying mix of reggae, hard rock, hip-hop from the Savannah, GA outfit.
The Bob’s Burgers Music Album features 109 songs from the first 107 episodes of the show (all six existing seasons), plus five special cover versions of songs from the show. Originally broadcast within the episodes – and often in abbreviated form – these songs appear here in their freestanding glory for the first time. The Bob’s Burgers Music Album– in both its standard edition and its impressive deluxe edition – is a must-have for any fan of the show (and, really, any sentient life-form). The album features the main cast members – Bob (Jon Benjamin) and Linda (John Roberts) and their children Tina (Dan Mintz), Gene (Eugene Mirman) and Louise (Kristen Schaal) – singing original songs that build on the show’s unique sense of humor. Also featured are many of the show’s recurring and special guests, from comedians like Aziz Ansari, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Kline, Bill Hader, Zack Galifianakis, and Fred Armisen, to musical guests Cyndi Lauper and Carly Simon. Includes five never-aired “Bob’s Buskers” cover versions of songs from the show performed by St. Vincent, The National, Lapsley, and Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields. [Limited Deluxe “condiment” color vinyl pressing also available.]
Weller releases his eagerly awaited thirteenth studio album A Kind Revolution — ten absolute classic modern Paul Weller songs. By “modern Paul Weller songs” we mean, instantly recognizable but in no way predictable. He doesn’t make a “kind of” album, he fits together all his influences – rock, R&B, soul, jazz, funk, folk…whatever – and builds a song from them, delivering something that drifts through genres unselfconsciously and at ease. Two great examples of this are two of the most reflective, contemplative songs, “Long Long Road” and “Hopper,” which in lesser hands might have been delivered as ballads, but Weller adds so much texture and color to each that they defy categorization. With great age comes great wisdom…
Woods – Love Is Love CD/LP (Woodsist)
“Wisdom comes with age, so it’s no surprise that Woods have grown more sage in the twelve years since they formed, expanding from sylvan drum circles into increasingly elaborate, transcendent psychedelia.” — Pitchfork
Between The Buried & Me – Coma Ecliptic Live 2xLP (Metal Blade)
Recently released on CD – now available on vinyl. Between The Buried & Me performed their 2015 Coma Ecliptic in its entirety live on October 4, 2016 at The Observatory North Park in San Diego, CA.
The Garden – U Want The Scoop? 12”+MP3 (Epitaph)
Representing a youthful California punk scene with their dirty, raw and immediate two-piece bass and drum attack, the Rob Schnapf (Joyce Manor, Elliott Smith, Beck) produced U Want The Scoop? which follows the band’s 2015 album Haha.
Gas – Narkopop 3xLP+CD (Kompakt)
Triple-LP hardcover edition including a copy on CD and a 24-page booklet. From wafts of dense symphonic mist emerges a floating and whirling feeling of weightlessness, before the listener steps into an eerily beautiful forest of fantasy, pulled in by the allure of a narcotic bass drum. While earlier Gas tracks were often based on the hypnotic effects of looping techniques, the ten new pieces on Narkopop unfold their magic in a more entwined manner, sometimes with the sonic might of an entire philharmonic orchestra, at times subtle and fragile.
NEXT WEEK’S NEW RELEASES
!!! – Shake The Shudder CD/LP
POKEY LAFARGE – Manic Revelations CD/LP
DO MAKE SAY THINK – Stubborn Presistent Illusions CD/LP
ALEX G – Rocket CD/LP
BEASTMAKER – Inside The Skull CD/LP
LAND OF TALK – Life After Youth CD/LP
ENDLESS BOOGIE – Vibe Killer CD/LP
MOUNTAIN GOATS – Goths CD/LP
ERASURE – World Be Gone CD/LP
OXBOW – Think Black Duke CD/LP
WAVVES – You’re Welcome CD/LP
NOTORIOUS B.I.G. + FAITH EVANS – King and I CD/LP
CRIMPSHRINE – Duct Tape Soup LP
CRIMPSHRINE – Sound Of A New World Being Born LP
MISSIO – Loner CD
RAMMSTEIN – Paris CD
LEFT LANE CRUISER – Claw Machine CD/LP
LOS STRAITJACKETS – What’s So Funny About Peace Love + Los CD
MATISYAHU – Undercurrent CD/LP
MISTERWIVES – Connect The Dots CD/LP
MORNING TELEPORTATION – Salivation For Symbiosis CD/LP
SINGLES SOUNDTRACK LP
BUFFALO TOM – Let Me Come Over 25th Anniversary CD/LP
BUILDERS & THE BUTCHERS – Spark CD/LP
HELIUM – Ends With And LP
HELIUM – Magic City LP reissue
KURT VILE – So Outta Reach LP
KURT VILE – Square Shells LP
WHITE HILLS – Stop Mute CD/LP