Marissa Anderson – Cloud Corner CD/LP+MP3 (Thrill Jockey)
On her Thrill Jockey debut, acclaimed guitarist Marisa Anderson’s music is boundless. Anderson is undeniably a master of the North American traditions of country, folk, and blues on guitar. On Cloud Corner, Anderson expands on those styles as well as instrumentation. Written and recorded in a period of political and personal upheaval, the album is intended as a refuge, an ode to stillness in an era of ceaseless noise. The results are an album of remarkably intimate beauty.

Arthur Buck – Arthur Buck CD/LP+MP3 (New West)
Sometimes the catalyst for creating great art is simply being in the right place at the right time. For Arthur Buck, the new collaboration between singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur and guitarist Peter Buck, that place was Mexico, and that time was the fall of 2017. Specifically, a little town off the Baja coast named Todos Santos, with the Sierra de la Laguna mountains to the east and the bright blue Pacific stretching out infinitely to the west. It is here that Buck has, for the last several years, held the Todos Santos Music Festival, which he created with his wife in 2012, shortly after R.E.M. called it a day. Among the many artists who have played the festival is Arthur, who also happened to leave behind a guitar – a Dobro, specifically – after his last appearance there. And so last year he made the trek down to Todos Santos to pick up the instrument. Which is where he ran into Buck. That was the beginning of Arthur Buck. The creative result of this relationship is a vibrant 11-song collection that captures the spontaneity at the heart of the project – right down to the 1-2-3-4 count off from Buck that opens the record – with sounds and styles meshed together in an easy, almost playful manner.

ASG – Survive Sunrise CD/2xLP (Relapse)
North Carolina riff-rockers re-emerge with their sixth full-length and first new album in five years. Survive Sunrise further expands upon ASG’s trademark blend of heavy, southern-fried, alt-rock fury and infectious, hook-centric accessibility.

Calpurnia – Scout CDEP/12” (Royal Mountain)
Calpurnia is a Vancouver, Canada-based quartet led by singer/guitarist Finn Wolfhard, best known for his breakout performances in Stranger Things and It, and also including lead guitarist Ayla Tesler-Mabe, bassist Jack Anderson and drummer Malcolm Craig. “It’s like a four-way Venn diagram,” Anderson says of the band’s coalescing musical tastes that seamlessly come together on their six-song debut EP, Scout, a giddy rock riot that sits comfortably at the intersection of classic rock, punk and angsty blues. It takes no more than 25 minutes, or roughly one spin though the EP to understand just exactly how well their sophisticated, diverse taste congeals into something so effortlessly powerful. From “Greyhound,” a slacker anthem recalling vintage Pavement to “Louie,” all Exile On Main Street-style country-blues slide guitar and choirboy harmonies, to the spaced-out closing opus “Waves,” Calpurnia’s songwriting craft belies not only their age but their experience as a collective unit.

Eligh – Last House On The Block CD/LP (Eligh Music)
Eligh, one of the founding members of the Living Legends crew, returns with his first official solo record since 2010’s Grey Crow. During the eight-year gap he has put out three collaborative albums as well as a triple-disc album with his Living Legends counterpart, The Grouch. On Last House On The Block, Eligh taps into some sounds and textures from his past and sat behind the boards for the majority of the album. He also tapped contributions from The Grouch, Zion I, Reverie, Evidence, R.A. The Rugged Man, and more.

Fantastic Negrito – Please Don’t Be Dead CD/LP (Cooking Vinyl)
There is desperation and urgency in Fantastic Negrito’s new album Please Don’t Be Dead. The record sees the Devil around the corner, and each song is a plea to make you aware of what’s waiting for you. The artist is screaming at you because he knows what comes next. The album art features a real-life photograph of Fantastic Negrito (real name Xavier Dphrepaulezz) waking up from a three-week coma. His body is shattered, his eyes are staring past you. They’re staring at the darkness that awaits. But with his new album we hear the voice of an artist who put that darkness in the rearview. Now he’s asking America to do the same. Like Negrito in that photograph, our country is driving off a cliff. We’re letting our worst inclinations lead us: hate, division, greed, superficiality. It is going to be a fight to pull ourselves from this toxic mire, and this album is a roadmap by an artist who survived the same journey…battered, scarred, but determined to wake us all up. Please Don’t Be Dead is a man standing over something wounded. Something he cares about. He’s looking around, and he’s saying: “do something.”

Gaslight Anthem – The ’59 Sound Sessions CD (SideOneDummy)
The Gaslight Anthem celebrates 10 years of their seminal album, The ’59 Sound, with this collection of rare, unreleased, and alternate takes recorded during the album’s sessions. [Vinyl edition due July 13.]

Johnny Marr – Call The Comet CD (New Voodoo)
Recorded with his band in Manchester at Johnny Marr’s Crazy Face studios, Call The Comet is the third solo record from the Smiths guitarist and follows 2013’s critically acclaimed The Messenger and 2014’s Playland. “Call The Comet is set in the not-too-distant future” says Marr, “and is mostly concerned with the idea of an alternative society. It’s my own magic realism.” [Vinyl edition due July 6.]

Buck Meek – Buck Meek CD/LP+MP3/Cassette (Keeled Scales)
Buck Meek’s (ex-Big Thief guitarist) songs are for the lost dogs of honest mechanics, good guys and girls born into a life of crime, runaways, snow spirits, the ghosts of Central Park, unsung diving-board stars, the affection shared through gambling, and so on. Bred in Texas, more bread in New York City, Meek spins outlaw ballads and quotidian fairy tales into a yarn, with Adam Brisbin on guitar (Jolie Holland, Sam Evian, Katie Von Schleicher), Mt. Davidson on bass (Twain, The Low Anthem, Spirit Family Reunion), and Austin Vaughn on drums (Here We Go Magic, Luke Temple, Sam Evian).

Melody’s Echo Chamber – Bon Voyage CD/LP (Fat Possum)
Made up of seven expansive tracks, Melody’s Echo Chamber’s second album marries Melody Prochet’s breathless soprano to the wildest sonic excursions, always pinned to an emphatic, clattering groove as she delivers her fables of spiritual search and emotional healing in multiple tongues (French, English and Swedish). Bon Voyage is a collaborative record between Prochet and Dungen’s Reine Fiske and The Amazing’s Fredrik Swahn with Melody sculpting and producing the sessions as well as encouraging the players around her to experiment, often with instruments that might be less familiar to them. It also features special guests Gustav Esjtes and Johan Holmegaard (both from Dungen) and Nicholas Allbrook (Pond). The album arrives more than five years after Melody’s Echo Chamber’s debut, and it is the soundtrack to a trip back from the brink, the sound of spiritual renewal, and a pilgrimage to the sonic outer limits.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones – While We’re At It CD/LP (Big Rig)
Boston’s ambassadors of ska return with their tenth album of unique brass-infused punk rock. While We’re At It is the final part of a musical trilogy that began with Pin Points And Gin Joints in 2009 followed by The Magic Of Youth in 2011.

MOURN – Sorpresa Familia CD/LP (Captured Tracks)
Catalonian quartet MOURN stormed onto the scene with their 2014 self-titled debut – a work of angular indie rock and pointed lyricism delivered with confidence well beyond their teenage years. Chock full of tension and pent up frustration, their new third album, Sorpresa Familia, feels tonally right at home within MOURN’s catalog. But it also feels distinctly separate – more refined, more intentional. Railing against greedy businesses, exploitation, fake friends, dishonest figures of authority, and ever complicated global politics, it’s an album of decidedly higher stakes than their past outputs, delivered with the newfound poetic grace of a band rising up out of the ashes of those who stood in their way.

John Parish – Bird Dog Dante CD/LP+MP3 (Thrill Jockey)
The twice Ensor-nominated composer and Mercury Prize winning producer delivers a new collection of songs which includes a duet with his longtime musical partner, PJ Harvey. Parish records songs as they come to him, often with the intent of just capturing the idea. “Like all of my records, Bird Dog Dante was recorded all over the place in odd situations, because I’ll have an idea somewhere and want to record it, then I actually end up liking the sound of that specific recording and want to incorporate it,” says Parish. While a few of the tracks began with the band in Toybox in Bristol, often they were then deconstructed in Parish’s home studio. John’s producer’s ear can focus on a small detail that captures his imagination, which then becomes the foundation to build the song around.

Prefuse 73 – Sacrifices CD (Lex)
Following his detour into fractured, kaleidoscopic hip-hop with Fudge, electronic music pioneer Prefuse 73 has become progressively interested in injecting a sense of space into his characteristically complex productions. The resultant 17-track collection, Sacrifices, is akin to watching an old photograph deteriorate in one’s hands, as otherwise dense beats disintegrate into airy expanses of emotionally resonant electronics. Its effect is not unlike attempting to recall a murky memory of a dream of Guillermo Scott Herren’s earliest works, imbibed with an increased interest in the subtlety of contemporary minimalism. [Vinyl edition due July 6.]

Protomartyr – Consolation CDEP/12”+MP3 (Domino)
An EP of brand new material recorded in collaboration with Kelley Deal (The Breeders) and Mike Montgomery (R. Ring, Ampline), Consolation’s four songs capture the breadth of mood and stylistic variety of a full-length Protomartyr album: from the short sharp shock of the opener “Wait”, through the mutant pop of “Same Face In A Different Mirror”, the epic “Wheel of Fortune”, to the beautiful closer “You Always Win”. [Limited yellow colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Rebelution – Free Rein CD/LP (Easy Star)
While still rooted in the Jamaican inspiration that Rebelution’s songs and sounds have always paid homage to, Rebelution’s sixth studio album Free Rein takes experimental leaps and new adventures too. The musicians collaborated with Jamaican artists on three of the twelve new tracks: Don Corleon (Sean Paul, Rihanna) produced “Rise On Top”, a pointed reflection on celebrity and ambition; and Winta James, producer for Damian Marley and Chronixx, worked with the band on “Settle Down Easy” and “City Life,” two songs that reflect a more confessional perspective. Opener “Celebrate” nods to the classic Rebelution sound. It has special meaning for the band too. In their long months on the road they’ve met fans with health struggles who’ve said that their music has helped them get through tough times. “Patience”, a reggae-R&B hybrid, is another hymn to human connection, a haunting message from the well of romantic love. Other tracks take a wider perspective including the uptempo “City Life” which speaks on the solitude and beauty of mother nature while “Take On Anything” notes that being different is actually a beautiful thing.

Steve Reich – Drumming [Reissue/1971] 2xCD (Superior Viaduct)
Steve Reich’s Drumming is regarded as one of the most important musical works of the last century. Distilled through his studies of African percussion in Ghana during 1970 and Balinese gamelan music, Reich revolutionized our understanding of polyrhythms, sculpting a new sonic territory to illuminate the radical potential of minimalism. Divided into four sections, performed without pause, Drumming is written for eight small tuned drums, three marimbas, three glockenspiels, piccolo and voice. [Vinyl edition due July 6.]

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs CD/LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)
It’s rare that a band’s debut album sounds as confident and self-assured as Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s Hope Downs. To say that the first full-length from the Melbourne quintet improves on their buzz-building EPs from the last few years would be an understatement: the promise those early releases hinted at is fully realized here, with ten songs of urgent, passionate guitar pop that elicit warm memories of bands past, from the Go-Betweens’ jangle to the charmingly lo-fi trappings of New Zealand’s Flying Nun label. But don’t mistake Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever for nostalgists: Hope Downs is the sound of a band finding its own collective voice. The album is as much about the people that populate the world around us – their stories, perspectives, and hopes in the face of disillusionment – as it is about the state of things at large. It’s a record that focuses on finding the bright spots at a time when cynicism all too often feels like the natural state. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are here to remind us to keep our feet on the ground – and Hope Downs is as delicious a taste of terra firma as you’re going to get from a rock band right now.

Tangents – New Bodies CD/LP (Temporary Residence)
New Bodies continues Tangents’ rummage through countless varieties of electronics, rock, dub, noise, and free improv jazz that defines the group’s acclaimed aesthetic. The spacious dub of a plucked cello gives way to a minimalist breakbeat tableau resting over rhythmic prepared piano; a staid electronic groove is gradually absorbed into washes of frenzied improv; staccato synths are woven into tumbling avant-rock; and shimmering free drums phase over static loops of piano, guitar and cello. To quote FACT Magazine, “The quintet are so comfortable working with jazz, folk music, post-rock and electronic music that it comfortably hangs in a space between them all.”

Tom Waits – Bastards CD/LP+MP3 (ANTI-)
Tom Waits – Brawlers CD/LP+MP3 (ANTI-)
Tom Waits – Bawlers CD/LP+MP3 (ANTI-)
Previously released in 2006 as a triple-CD/seven-LP set entitled Orphans: Bastards, Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, each volume of that collection has been remastered and is now available separately. Taken as a whole, the collection of 56 songs went far beyond a simple career retrospective. It dipped back as far as 1984 with the bulk of its songs hailing from the mid-nineties onward. Over 2/3 of the material had never been heard when originally released in 2006 and had 30 newly recorded songs.

The Aquabats – The Fury Of The Aquabats [Reissue/1997] 2xLP (Kings Road)
Limited red vinyl colored vinyl LP pressing, expanded with four additional tracks and an etching on the D-side. One-part punk, one-part ska, one-part Devo.

Tim Armstrong – A Poet’s Life LP+MP3 (Epitaph)
First-time vinyl edition. Tim Armstrong, guitarist and frontman of Rancid, took a different path on his 2007 solo debut, A Poet’s Life. With able backing from L.A. reggae revivalists the Aggrolites, Armstrong crafted a grooving, fun-filled modern reggae album, influenced by ska, rock steady, roots reggae, and dancehall and filtered through a modern pop-punk attitude.

Daniel Avery – Projector 12” (Phantasy/Mute)
Leaning further towards the rhythmic and propulsive intent behind his recent, marathon DJ sets, Avery’s new EP serves to delve further still into his unfolding, ever-deepening sound. Expanding on the delicate core ideas at the center of his creative ethos, Projector invites listeners on a further excursion of transient, psychedelic bliss.

Bad Religion – No Substance [Reissue/1998] LP+MP3 (Epitaph)
Remastered vinyl reissue. Seen as a return to form for the band after the transitional The Gray Race, No Substance offers up tight and heady punk which touches on societal ills and world politics and still remains catchy as hell.

Eric’s Trip – Forever Again [Reissue/1994] LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)
Eric’s Trip – Purple Blue [Reissue/1995] LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)
Hailing from Moncton, New Brunswick, indie rockers Eric’s Trip formed in 1990 when musicians Rick White and Christopher Thompson of The Forest joined Julie Doiron and Ed Vaughan (who was later replaced by Mark Gaudet of Purple Knight). The first Canadian band signed to Sub Pop Records, White described their sound as “sappy melodic pop music on top of thick distortion.” Their second and third albums are back in-print on vinyl.

Nick Lowe – Tokyo Bay/Crying Inside 2×7” (Yep Roc)
Nick Lowe is back and has re-discovered his rockin’ side on his first new release in half a decade. Tokyo Bay/Crying Inside is a four song EP featuring two Nick originals, the ship-rockin’ “Tokyo Bay” and introspective “Crying Inside”, plus covers of the Bee Gees’ “Heartbreaker” and Cliff Richard’s “Travellin’ Light”. Nick’s recent tour mates, Los Straitjackets, are his backing band on this record, contributing to the sounds of Nick rocking his hardest in decades.

Soundtrack – Napoleon Dynamite [Reissue/2015] 2xLP (Lakeshore)
Laden with sound bites of inimitable movie dialogue and pieces of John Swihart’s score, this album also offers the movie’s smart choice of pop tunes.

Matthew Sweet – Tomorrow’s Daughter LP (MRI)
Recently released on CD – now available on vinyl. Seasoned singer/songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist Matthew Sweet is currently in the midst of a personal musical renaissance that’s seen him produce some of the most compelling and ambitious music of his three-decade career. That certainly applies to Tomorrow’s Daughter, on which such instantly memorable new tunes as “Belong,” “Run Away,” “Lady Frankenstein” and “Out of My Misery” demonstrate his uncanny ability to tap into a bottomless well of pop history to craft music that’s effortlessly catchy yet deeply personal. The follow-up to the artist’s acclaimed 2017 set Tomorrow Forever is a persuasive testament to the enduring qualities of Sweet’s adventurous, emotion-charged songcraft. The 12 new songs abound with the punchy melodic sensibility, playful sonic experimentalism and introspective lyrical insight that have been constants in his expansive catalog.

Frank Turner – Love Ire & Song: Tenth Anniversary Edition 2xLP (Xtra Mile)
First-time vinyl LP pressing of the second solo album by British singer-songwriter Frank Turner, originally released in 2008.

Wintersleep – Wintersleep [Reissue/2003] LP+7” (Dine Alone)
Wintersleep – Untitled [Reissue/2005] LP+7” (Dine Alone)
Wintersleep – Welcome To The Night Sky [Reissue/2008] LP+7” (Dine Alone)
180gm vinyl reissues of Halifax-raised, Montreal-based modern rock band Wintersleep’s highly sought after and critically-acclaimed first three albums. These new reissues have updated and expanded artwork include a bonus 7″ featuring previously unreleased demos, B-sides or bonus tracks from the album’s recording sessions.