Patty Griffin – Patty Griffin CD/2xLP (PGM/Thirty Tigers)
Patty Griffin’s self-titled collection represents an extraordinary new chapter for the incomparable singer-songwriter and immediately stands among the most deeply personal recordings of her remarkable two-decade career. The album – which follows 2015’s Grammy Award-nominated Servant Of Love – collects songs written during and in the aftermath of profound personal crisis, several years in which she battled – and ultimately defeated – cancer just as a similar and equally insidious disease metastasized into the American body politic. Yet as always, like very few others, Griffin’s power lies in how, as Holly Gleason in the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette observed, “her songs seem to freeze life and truth in amber.” It’s in how Griffin can express the strikingly intimate while never making it about herself, all wrapped in sparse arrangements that breathe an incomparable force and import into her songcraft.

Meat Puppets – Dusty Notes CD/LP (Megaforce)
Dusty Notes is the first Meat Puppets studio album to feature the original trio (Curt and Cris Kirkwood and returning drummer Derrick Bostrom) since 1995’s No Joke! Since the band debuted in the early ‘80s, Curt has continually proven himself to be among the most brilliant songwriters of his generation. Time after time, album after album, he’s demonstrated an extraordinary ability to draw upon various roots and rock styles en route to a unique new vision of what the Meat Puppets can be. His latest contributions, especially songs such as “Warranty”, “On”, “Nine Pins”, and “Outflow” could be forgotten gems from Nashville, Bakersfield and Laurel Canyon. Dusty Notes also features keyboardist Ron Stabinsky, a jazz-trained virtuoso adept at any style, and Curt’s son Elmo, whose old-school rock-guitar grit ideally complements his father’s spacier explorations. Intuitive, inspired and overflowing with genuine musicianship, it’s the sort of band that transforms what Curt describes as “simple yet engaging” songs into majestic maiden voyages.

Sasami – Sasami CD/LP+MP3 (Domino)
Sasami (aka Sasami Ashworth) has been making music in the Los Angeles area, in almost every way you can, for the last decade. From playing French horn in orchestras and studios and playing keys, bass, and guitar in local rock bands (Cherry Glazerr, Dirt Dress), to contributing vocals/string/horn arrangements to studio albums (Curtis Harding, Wild Nothing, Hand Habits) and producing on tracks for other respected artists (Soko), she has gained a reputation as an all-around musical badass. Sasami’s self-titled debut album is playful, heartfelt and personal, chronicling the surprising ways that relationships – with lovers, with friends, with oneself – can shift in a single year. Sasami says, “‘Not The Time’ and ‘Callous’ are basically entries in the diary that is my first record of songs. Maybe it’s a mix of a diary and a collection of letters; written but never sent to people I’ve been intimately involved with in one way or another.”

Nick Waterhouse – Nick Waterhouse CD/LP (Innovative Leisure)
Nick Waterhouse’s eponymous fourth album was recorded at the finest working studio in Los Angeles, Electro Vox Recorders, and co-produced by Paul Butler (The Bees, Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart), the master of all things warm, rich and wooly. Nick’s songs here are personal, but personal in the way that “Please Mr. Postman”, “What’s Going On” and “Cathy’s Clown” are – intimate, direct, yet still malleable enough for listeners to suffuse their own life stories into the mix. The album is thick with talented players, including Andres Rentaria, Paula Henderson and the staggering, howling saxophone of Mando Dorame. All of the new Waterhouse songs sound big. Brawny and muscular. The lyrics are suspicious, outraged and, at times, very vulnerable (muscle is just flesh, after all). Waterhouse uses an economy of words to deliver complex, coded messages. He offers up equal parts criticism of the time we live in and innate human flaws. He paints relationships under the cover of darkness, slashing through neo-noir fantasies that are romantic, blood-spattered and bracingly aware of the powerlessness felt among people, amid the rapid onslaught of commercialism and technological progress.

William Basinski – On Time Out Of Time CD/LP+MP3 (2062/Temporary Residence)
On Time Out Of Time is a suite of works originally commissioned for the 2017 installations ‘ER=EPR’ and ‘Orbihedron’ by artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand (in collaboration with Jean-Marc Chomaz and LIGO) for the exhibition, ‘Limits of Knowing’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin by curator, Isabel de Sena. These works utilize, among other things, exclusive source recordings from the interferometers of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) capturing the sounds of the merging of two distant massive black holes, 1.3 billion years ago.

Chatham County Line – Sharing The Covers CD/LP+MP3 (Yep Roc)
Sharing The Covers is a tribute to those whom Chatham County Line hold dear, and a chance for the group to perform modern and traditional classics in the bluegrass-style they’re known for. On the 13-track collection, CCL takes the familiar and adds a touch of originality to create a wholly new and inventive roster of covers by Tom Petty, Alton Delmore, John Lennon, The Louvin Brothers, Beck, James Hunter, and more.

The Coathangers – The Devil You Know CD/LP (Sacred Bones)
The Devil You Know takes the Atlanta trio’s vitriolic punk, playful house party anthems and heart worn ballads and melds them into a new sound that retains all their former live show glories while revealing a new level of songwriting and nuance.

Stella Donnelly – Beware Of The Dogs CD/LP/Cassette (Secretly Canadian)
Delivered entirely with a sarcastic wink and a full heart, Beware Of The Dogs proves across 13 life-affirming songs the power in sticking up for yourself, your friends, and what’s right. The album showcases an artist totally in command of her voice, able to wield her inviting charm and razor-sharp wit into authentically raw songs. It’s a resounding statement of purpose in recent memory and most importantly, it’s a portrait of Donnelly taking charge.

Helado Negro – This Is How You Smile CD/LP (RVNG Int’l)
Miami-born, New York-based artist Roberto Carlos Lange embraces a personal and universal exploration of aura – seen, felt, emitted – on his sixth album. This Is How You Smile derives from Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl, a story she wrote in the form of a mother’s sole, complicated, but loving voice, speaking a How to litany of advice ranging from domestic chores to what a daughter, an immigrant and young woman of color, must do to protect herself in a world that was not designed by or for her. This is how joy, or it’s visage, at turns comforts, constricts, or becomes armor.

Pinegrove – Skylight CD/2xLP (Pinegrove)
Recently released on vinyl – now available on CD. “Completed in 2017 and shelved for almost a year, Pinegrove’s third record is smaller, softer, and closer to the chest. Recorded and produced by Hall and guitarist Sam Skinner at a house in upstate New York, Skylight focuses on atmosphere and abstraction. While Cardinal was defined by anthemic eruptions of longing, these 11 songs move patiently and often disregard verse-chorus song structures in favor of loose vignettes.” – Pitchfork

Justus Proffit – L.A.’s Got Me Down CD/LP (Bar/None)
“Tempered by the sights and sounds of Los Angeles, the songs on Justus Proffit’s debut album tell the tales of growing up in the shadow of the Hollywood sign. I don’t think I know anyone that can write a song as impetuous or dope as him.” – Melina Duterte aka Jay Som

Weezer – Weezer (The Teal Album) CD (Crush Music)
On the heels of their latest studio album Weezer (The Black Album) the alt-rock band delivers a covers album. “As anyone could have gathered after a first listen of ‘Africa’ or ‘Rosanna’, the latter of which is sorely missing on this compilation, the band doesn’t just half-ass the cover; they meticulously replicate each song with Fincher-like obsession. Sure, they’re not exactly offering their own spin on it, but that’s also kind of the point. The fact that these covers are so reverent to the source materials kind of plays into the joke that Cuomo is literally givin’ em what they want with no room for error. It’s like live band karaoke, and everyone is invited, which is all this really boils down to at the end of the day. They’re not reinventing the wheel; they’re using it.” – Consequence Of Sound

New Order – Ceremony (Version 1) 12” (WB)
New Order – Ceremony (Version 2) 12” (WB)
Recordings in East Orange, New Jersey, during the US visit the previous September, New Order’s first single might, in an alternative universe, have been Joy Division’s next. Both the original version (released on 12” in March 1981) and the alternative, re-recorded version (released later that year) have been remastered and pressed on heavyweight vinyl.