Kimber – Sufjan Stevens/Bryce Dessner/Nico Muhly
Lindsay – Big Thief, Secret Sisters
Dario – Big Thief, Sufjan Stevens/Bryce Dessner/Nico Muhly
Brittany- Big Thief

THIS WEEK’S NEW RELEASES

Big Thief – Capacity CD/LP+MP3/Cassette (Saddle Creek)
The trails that Brooklyn’s Big Thief – Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals), Buck Meek (guitar), Max Oleartchik (bass), and James Krivchenia (drums) – take us down on Capacity are overgrown with the wilderness of pumping souls. Lenker’s songs introduce us to a gallery of multifaceted women and deal with the complicated matters of identity – at once dangerous and curious, though never unbelievable. Lenker shows us the gentle side of being ripped open. Tricked into love, done in and then witnessing the second act of pulling oneself back together to prepare for it to all happen again, but this time to a sturdier soul, one who is going to take the punches better than ever before and deal some jabs and roundhouses of their own. The album is thick with raw, un-doctored beauty: most of the songs on Capacity were played for the first time in the studio and were recorded the same day. “There is a darker darkness and a lighter light on this album,” Lenker explains. “The songs search for a deeper level of self-acceptance, to embrace the world within and without. I think Masterpiece began that process, as a reaction from inside the pain, whereas I feel Capacity examines the pain from the outside.” [Limited edition white color vinyl pressing also available.]

The Birthday Massacre – Under Your Spell CD/LP (Metropolis)
The Birthday Massacre’s new album is a captivating hybrid of ‘80s, electronica, and aggressive guitars, fused with dark, cinematic melodic progressions.

Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie – Lindsey Buckingham Christine/McVie CD/LP (Atlantic)
Two longtime members of Fleetwood Mac have joined together to record their first-ever album as a duo.

Cigarettes After Sex – Cigarettes After Sex CD/LP+MP3 (Partisan)
Cigarettes After Sex mainman Greg Gonzalez’s ability to set a scene and sustain a mood reels you in deeply. On album opener “K.,” a tale of blossoming love etched in tiny details luxuriates over chiming guitars; on the hymn to romantic compulsion of “Each Time You Fall In Love,” the suspended animation of Angelo Badalamenti’s heart-stopping Twin Peaks music is echoed. “Sunsetz” and the gently lilting “Sweet,” meanwhile, showcase Gonzalez’s ability to weave impressionistic snapshots of romance into melodies that haunt like memories of past loves, all coalescing around his melting vocals. Elsewhere, Gonzalez mounts movies in miniature with the photographic references of “Flash” and Fitzcarraldo echoes of “Opera House,” a song so lovingly languid it could, conceivably, soundtrack a man hauling ships over mountains for love. And, just as every good film-maker knows the need for a killer finale, so Gonzalez closes the album with the retro-romantic swing and teasingly filthy put-downs of “Young & Dumb,” which brings the album to a close with good, timeless advice: “Drive your car to the beach with the song on repeat…” [Limited grey color vinyl pressing also available.]

Ani DiFranco – Binary CD (Righteous Babe)
“Ani DiFranco records arrive like MoMA retrospectives. Ani on Heartbreak. Ani on Worker’s Rights. Ani on Parenthood. Ani in Love. Each release is entirely immersive and seemingly exhaustive, not only because of the propulsive, intensely kinetic sound signature on the prolific singer-songwriter’s past work, but because her attention to the subject at hand has been laser-focused. For her 20th studio album, Binary, the MoMA retrospective might be called Ani Exhales. DiFranco’s voice has lowered and softened, her guitarwork has slowed down, she puts fewer lyrics in her songs, and her songwriter’s skin has gotten thicker. Gone is the 18-year-old girl on the street in Manhattan, raging against ‘Our father/ who art in a penthouse.’ Now she’s a woman at sea level, New Orleans in her blood, with a long view in every direction and a hard-won instinct for self-preservation. Where she used to favor immersion, DiFranco here favors integration. Binary isn’t about one thing, or two things, or even three things. It’s about everything.” – NPR [Vinyl edition due June 23.]

The Heliocentrics – A World Of Masks CD/LP (Soundway)
The Heliocentrics are a group for which genres are meaningless and boundaries invisible. Since first appearing on DJ Shadow’s 2006 album The Outsider the group have gone on to release a string of records that float through jazz, hip-hop, psych, krautrock, and musique concrete whilst collaborating with numerous genre heavyweights from Mulatu Astake to Gaslamp Killer and picking up prestigious fans along the way, such as Madlib and the recently departed David Axelrod. [Limited color vinyl pressing also available.]

Phoenix – Ti Amo CD/LP (Glassnote)
Ti Amo is Grammy-winning band Phoenix’s first album since 2013’s critically lauded Bankrupt!. Produced by the band and recorded at La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris) with the help of longtime collaborator Pierrick Devin, the band describes Ti Amo as “an album about simple pure emotions: love, desire, lust and innocence, it’s also a record about our European, Latin roots, a fantasized version of Italy: a lost paradise made of eternal Roman summers (hyper-light, hyper-clarity, pistachio gelato), juke-boxes on the beach, Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroiani, fearless desire and Antique marble statues.” The New York Times calls Ti Amo “the band’s most unabashedly romantic record yet” and it’s ushered in by lead single “J-Boy,” a brilliant, shimmering explosion.

Rancid – Trouble Maker CD/LP+MP3/LP+7”+MP3 (Epitaph)
East Bay pop punk veterans Rancid are going on nearly 25 years together, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down. New album Trouble Maker spans 19 tracks produced by Bad Religion frontman Brett Guerwitz, who is also the founder of Epitaph. Born in the midst of the post-Reagan economic downturn in the San Francisco Bay Area, the East Bay region specifically, Rancid came to light as Armstrong and Freeman were moving forward after the first band they founded, Operation Ivy, reached a friendly demise. As Rancid, the band took up the torch of social commentary and the examination of the local scene and instantly inflamed the newly revived punk community, setting the stage for what was to come. After having seen the American dream dwindle and fade within their country, community and homes, Rancid put their description of its aftermath into their songs. [Vinyl is available in Regular and Deluxe editions. Deluxe adds a bonus 7” single.]

Rise Against – Wolves CD (Virgin)
Throughout its career, Rise Against has kept its moral compass steady, using its international punk platform to speak out for social justice. With The Black Market (2014) follow-up Wolves, the band challenges fans to join them in creating a bold new identity together. The album is about recognizing the power within; it’s a primal call for the prey to become the hunters. “In many ways, a Rise Against show is a safe space for our fans,” lead singer Tim McIlrath says. “But I realized that I don’t only want to create safe spaces, I want to create dangerous spaces where misogyny can’t exist, where xenophobia can’t exist. I want to create spaces where those sentiments don’t have any air, and they suffocate: where those ideas die. Wolves isn’t about creating a safe space, it’s about creating a space that’s dangerous for injustice.” [Vinyl edition due July 28. Cassette edition TBA.]

Secret Sisters – You Don’t Own Me Anymore CD/LP+MP3 (New West)
There are two ways of handling a dangerous, raging river: you can surrender and let it carry you away, or you can swim against the flow. For The Secret Sisters, there was a point after the release of their last record when they could have chosen to do neither – instead, sinking to the bottom as the weight of the world washed away their dreams. They went from touring with Bob Dylan to losing their label, purging their team, filing bankruptcy and almost permanently trading harmonies for housecleaning. But there’s a mythical pull to music that kept sisters Laura and Lydia Rogers moving forward, and they came out with a biting and beautiful third LP, produced by Brandi Carlile, You Don’t Own Me Anymore. The album is a document of hardship and redemption, of pushing forward when it would be so much easier to drown in grief. And it’s a story about how passion and pure artistry can be the strongest sort of salvation – how art is left, like perfect grains of sand, when everything else has washed away. The resulting songs of You Don’t Own Me Anymore are about life when everything you think defines you is stripped away.

Sufjan Stevens/Bryce Dessner/Nico Muhly – Planetarium CD/2xLP (4AD)
A completely reimagined version of the project originally undertaken years ago and performed in various iterations around the world, Planetarium unites Stevens’ vocals, McAlister’s beats, Dessner’s guitar performance, and Muhly’s instrumental compositions – part rock odyssey, part electronic experiment, part classical opus.

BADBADNOTGOOD – Lavender 12” (Innovative Leisure)
Snoop Dogg remixed BADBADNOTGOOD’s “Lavender (Ft. Kaytranada).” The original track is from BBNG’s recent album, IV, and now has a new verse added by Snoop.

London Grammar – Truth Is A Beautiful Thing LP+MP3 (Columbia)
Second full-length album from the British trio.