Avey Tare – Cows On Hourglass Pond CD/LP+MP3/LP+10”+MP3 (Domino)
Dave Portner aka Avey Tare of Animal Collective, has returned, following up 2017’s release of Eucalyptus and 2018’s audiovisual album Tangerine Reef, a collaboration between Animal Collective and avant-garde coral macro-videographers Coral Morphologic, with a gorgeous and layered new record. Cows On Hourglass Pond takes inspiration from the future and the past in equal measure, referencing a myriad of cultural touchstones and influences: Buddy Holly, robots, Waylon Jennings, Morricone soundtracks, and much more. “The first single, ‘Saturdays (Again)’, is pretty low-key, with few of the bracing vocal contortions that Portner sometimes peppers his songs with. Sonically, it’s much slicker than the scrappy Eucalyptus, which felt like a return to the scrappy early days of Animal Collective, with its layers of lo-fi acoustic guitar and sound effects like malfunctioning electronic toys. The acoustic is back for ‘Saturdays (Again)’ but it sits within a lush and dubby mix, atop melodic synth bass, accompanied by peals of lead guitar.” — SPIN

Andrew Bird – My Finest Work Yet CD/LP (Loma Vista)
My Finest Work Yet finds Andrew Bird grappling with themes of current day dichotomies and how to identify a moral compass amidst such divisive times. “I’m interested in the idea that our enemies are what make us whole – there’s an intimacy one shares with their opponent when locked in such a struggle. If we were to just walk away would our enemies miss us? How did we get to this point and how can we, through awareness of it, maybe pull ourselves out of this death spiral,” says Bird. He tackles these topics with a more direct songwriting approach than his previous releases, taking greater risks both lyrically and in recording. Bird and the band taped all the songs live without headphones or separation attempting to create a sound where all instruments bled into each other’s microphones. Of the new music, Bird reflects, “There is a certain optimism to this record…it’s pretty up musically though it doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the lyrics.”

Ex Hex – It’s Real CD/LP+MP3 (Merge)
On their sophomore album It’s Real, Ex Hex’s commitment to larger-than-life riffs and unforgettable hooks remains intact, but the garage-y, post-punk approach that defined their debut Rips has grown in scale and ambition. What started as a reaction to the blown-out aesthetic of Rips would test the sonic limits of the power trio and lead the band on a quest for a more immersive and three-dimensional sound. Vocal harmonies are layered ten tracks deep, solos shimmer and modulate atop heaving power chords, and the codas linger and stretch toward new frontiers of sound. On first listen, you might think you’ve unearthed a long-lost LP carved from the space where crunch-minded art rock and glitter-covered hard rock converge, an event horizon at the intersection of towering choruses and swaggering guitars. Ex Hex was already one of America’s best guitar bands – but on It’s Real, their musical savvy has thrillingly combined with anything-goes curiosity, studio experimentation, and a dedication to refinement, resulting in an album that’s ready to be played at maximum volume.

La Dispute – Panorama CD/LP+MP3 (Epitaph)
Hardcore luminaries La Dispute return with their fourth album. Panorama was produced by the band in tandem with Will Yip, and combines jazz, rock, slowcore, noise, hardcore among other influences over the span of 10 tracks. It’s a highly ambitious and deeply affecting body of work that filters narrative storytelling through a personal lens, like a set of Joan Didion essays put to music. Where the past two albums had vocalist Jordan Dreyer delving further into fictional subject matter, it’s with Panorama that the band has created the most personal project since their breakthrough Somewhere At The Bottom Of The River Between Vega And Altair, an album whose influence has been palpable within the genre over the course of the past decade.

Lambchop – This (is what I wanted to tell you) CD/LP+MP3 (Merge)
As with 2012’s engrossing Mr. M and 2016’s staggering FLOTUS, Kurt Wagner’s openness to unexpected collaborators to give his thoughts and feelings the shape they need was central to the creation of This (is what I wanted to tell you). In the summer of 2017, Wagner re-met Matthew McCaughan, who has spent the last decade drumming for the likes of Bon Iver and Hiss Golden Messenger. McCaughan told Wagner he had been adventuring inside the world of rack-mounted analogue synthesizers and asked if Wagner might send some vocals to which he could compose. They became instant musical pen pals, with Wagner sending him a cappella takes of new song ideas and McCaughan dispatching long-form synthesizer pieces for inspiration. McCaughan eventually headed to Nashville, where, together, they put a band behind the songs, using pedal steel and piano and the harmonica of Nashville legend Charlie McCoy to color in the spaces of these black-and-white sketches.

Jenny Lewis – On The Line CD/LP (WB)
Jenny Lewis returns with her highly anticipated fourth solo album, On The Line – the former Rilo Kiley member’s follow up to 2014’s critically acclaimed The Voyager. Produced by Beck and Ryan Adams, the 11 all-new original songs were written by Lewis and recorded at Capitol Records’ Studio B and feature a backing band of legendary talent including Benmont Tench, Don Was, Jim Keltner, Ringo Starr, Beck and Adams. There were two events in Jenny’s life that had an emotional impact on recording the album. One was a recent breakup and the other was the passing of her mother. On The Line is introduced by the retro, Emmylou Harris-esque lead single, “Red Bull & Hennessy.” “What’s the matter with me?” Jenny Lewis sings on her latest single, “Redbull & Hennessy.” On [“Redbull & Hennessy”] Lewis “offers a darkly suggestive tale of dissolution and desire. Riding a sparkling Seventies pop-rock piano riff, Lewis’ narrator second-guesses herself into a haze of liquor and regret. She has long been a master at juxtaposing candy-sweet melody with ominous narrative, and her latest is no exception.” – Rolling Stone

Orville Peck – Pony CD/LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)
Combining the lulling ambience of shoegaze with the iconic melodies and vocal prowess of classic American country music, enigmatic outlaw cowboy Orville Peck croons love and loss from the badlands of North America. The resulting sound is one completely his own, taking the listener down dusty rose-colored desert highways, through a world where worn out gamblers, aloof road-dogs and lovesick hustlers drift in and out of his masked gaze. Orville’s debut album, Pony, delivers a diverse collection of stories that sing of heartbreak, revenge and the unrelenting tug of the cowboy ethos. Warm lap steel guitars and echoing drums move through dreamy ballads, campfire lullabies and sometimes frantic buzzsaw tunes, all the while paying homage to his country music roots.

American Football – American Football: LP3 CD/LP+MP3/2xLP+MP3 (Polyvinyl)
American Football’s original triumph, on their 1999 self-titled debut, was to reunite two shy siblings: emo and post-rock. It was a pioneering album where lyrical clarity was obscured and complicated by the stealth musical textures surrounding it. Like Slint’s Spiderland, or Codeine’s The White Birch, even Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, American Football asked far more questions than it cared to answer. But there wasn’t a band around anymore to explain it, anyway. The three young men who made the album – Mike Kinsella, Steve Holmes, and Steve Lamos – split up pretty much on its release. 15 years later, American Football reunited (now as a four-piece, with the addition of Nate Kinsella). LP3 is contemplative, rich, expressive, yet with a queasy undercurrent. It is heavy with expectancy, revealing its ideas slowly, eliciting the hidden stories people carry around with them.

Apparat – LP5 CD/LP (Mute)
Like previous Apparat albums, LP5 is essentially the result of collaboration between Sascha Ring and cellist Philipp Thimm and on the album you can also hear trombone, trumpet and saxophone, a harp, a double bass and other strings. John Stanier, the dancing dervish from math-rock outfit Battles, plays percussion and the songs were developed over endless group improvisations and lavish orchestral sessions. The music of Apparat is now music of enrichment, of omission and override; every melody, every sound is at the same time a palimpsest.

Duster – Capsule Losing Contact 3xCD/4xLP (Numero)
San Jose’s sonic cure-all for the Y2K hangover that never materialized, Duster emerged from a cloud of lonely bong rips to take indie rock to the moon, and beyond. Scotch-taped guitars toggle between a chorus of brittle winter trees and a blanket of distorted fuzz. The low rumble of a cardboard box being kicked in a dead mall keeps pace in the background, as muffled, sung-spoken vocals ponder the great mysteries of modern mundanity. Three years of home recording accidents and blown-out 2am studio experiments are spread across three CDs and four LPs, gathering the short-lived trio’s Stratosphere and Contemporary Movement albums, 1975 EP, singles, demos, and other miscellaneous debris into one escape pod, now free to drift in the endless void of space.

Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days [Reissue/2004] CD/LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)
Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, released Our Endless Numbered Days, his second in March of 2004. It followed his hushed, literate, intimate, melodic, 2002 debut album, The Creek Drank The Cradle. This reissue of Our Endless Numbered Days features the original album plus eight previously unreleased demo versions and a 12-page booklet with an essay by Amanda Petrusich.

John Lennon & Yoko Ono – Wedding Album [Reissue/1969] CD/LP+MP3 (Secretly Canadian/Chimera Music)
Originally released in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Wedding Album was the couple’s third experimental, album-length record, and one of the most remarkable of the duo’s testaments to an intense romantic and artistic partnership that would last fourteen years, until Lennon’s murder in 1980.

Spiral Stairs – We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized CD/LP+MP3 (Nine Mile)
For his feel-good third solo album, We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized, Pavement co-founder Scott Kannberg – best known to the musical world as Spiral Stairs – concocted some of the most fun and accessible music of his storied career by expanding his musical repertoire.We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized is fun, infectious and musically compelling, while still managing to cover some hefty topics like the current rambunctious political climate.

Strand Of Oaks – Eraserland CD/LP (Dead Oceans)
Leading off with standout track “Weird Ways” and his powerful declaration of “I don’t feel it anymore,” Eraserland traces Tim Showalter’s evolution from apprehension to creative awakening, carving out a new and compelling future for Strand Of Oaks. In February 2018, he spent two weeks alone in Wildwood, New Jersey writing and demoing all of the songs that would eventually comprise Eraserland. And in April, he went into the studio to record with Kevin Ratterman at La La Land Studios in Louisville, Kentucky, and with Broemel, Hallahan, Koster, and Blankenship as his band. Jason Isbell also contributed his Hendrix-esque guitar work to Eraserland, while singer- songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle provided gorgeous vocals.

New Order – Temptation b/w Hurt [Reissue/1982] 12” (WB)
Featuring the full versions of both tracks, this 12” was originally released in May 1982 and comprised New Order’s first self-produced recordings.

Snarky Puppy – Immigrance 2xLP (Ground Up Music)
Released last week on CD – now available on vinyl. Immigrance, the twelfth Snarky Puppy studio album, is all about movement. “The idea here is that everything is fluid, that everything is always moving and that we’re all in a constant state of immigration,” explains Michael League. “Obviously the album’s title is not without political undertones.” Like the Grammy-winning Culcha Vulcha, Immigrance is a studio project, and it features most of the same musicians. And though it shares that project’s ace musicianship and dynamic, kinetic spirit, it is also rawer and moodier than its predecessor. Several of the compositions put a newfound emphasis on delivering simpler, streamlined impact. With Immigrance, Snarky Puppy is essentially practicing what it’s preached all along: People from different places can bring their various strengths and experiences, and that can be beautiful and cohesive. The band itself is a representation of that musical expression.

X – Wild Gift [Reissue/1981] LP (Fat Possum)
Four decades after their inception, one thing is clear: X was not only one of the most influential bands to crash out of the punk movement of the late ’70s, but the group’s music continues to be sonically groundbreaking today. Songs written during the group’s inception are as relevant and inventive today as they were in 1977. The band’s early albums, Los Angeles, produced by Ray Manzarek of the Doors, Wild Gift, and Under The Big Black Sun explored dark love and an even darker L.A. with the unflinching eye of a Raymond Chandler novel.

Ibibio Sound Machine – Doko Mien CD/LP+MP3 (Merge)
“Music is a universal language but spoken language can help you think about what makes you emotional, what makes you feel certain feelings, what you want to see in the world,” says Eno Williams, frontwoman of Ibibio Sound Machine. When Williams uses both English and Ibibio – the Nigerian language from which her band’s name is derived – on Doko Mien, the group somehow produces a world of both entrancing specificity and comforting universality, a language entirely of their own. By pulsing the mystic shapes of Williams’ lines through further inventive, glittering collages of genre on Doko Mien, Ibibio Sound Machine crack apart the horizon separating cultures, between nature and technology, between joy and pain, between tradition and future.

Lucy Rose – No Words Left CD/LP (Arts & Crafts)
Where 2017’s Something’s Changing was an artist rediscovering their voice, No Words Left, is UK singer-songwriter Lucy Rose using that voice to devastatingly frank effect. Lyrically and musically fearless, her fourth studio album is a beautifully intense, but often unsettling listen. It’s a body of work, a fine modern example of the enduring strength of the album format.

Paula Frazer and Tarnation – What Is And Was [Reissue/2017] LP+MP3 (Slimstyle)
“My introduction to the music of San Francisco-based singer-songwriter Paula Frazer started with her breakthrough second album, 1995’s Gentle Creatures (4AD), released under the band name Tarnation. I remember being blown away after listening to the very first track – the transistor-radio sounding ‘Game of Broken Hearts’, which featured nothing but Paula’s lonesome, melancholic vocals lilting over a strummed guitar. Evoking nuances of Patsy Cline and the Old West, this was probably my first intro to the musical genre of alt-country. I was immediately hooked. Over the years that followed, Paula released several additional albums. While the artist/band names may have varied over the years, the one constant is Paula’s brilliant songwriting and trademark vocal style, contributing to the unique and immediately identifiable sound across all of her recordings.” – Soundthread

Françoise Hardy ‎– Personne D’Autre LP (Arts Music)
Personne D’Autre is the 28th studio album by the French singer. It was originally released in April 2018. The album features 10 original songs, including one sung in English, “You’re My Home” penned by Yael Naim, a cover of Michel Berger’s “Seras-Tu Là”, and an adaption of Finnish band Poets Of The Fall’s “Sleep”, titled as “Dors Mon Ange”.

NEXT WEEK’S NEW RELEASES
BILLIE EILISH – When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go CD/LP
GOB IRON (JAY FARRAR) – Death Songs For The Living CD/LP
TY SEGALL – Deforming Lobes CD/LP
SON VOLT – Union CD/LP
WEDDING PRESENT – Live 2017 Part 2 CD
FENNESZ – Agora CD
UNKLE – Road: Part II/Lost Highway CD/LP
STEVE EARLE + THE DUKES – Guy CD/LP
BETH GIBBONS – Henryk Gorecki Symphony No 3 CD/LP
CHRIS COHEN – Self-Titled CD/LP
MEKONS – Deserted CD/LP
OH SEES – Cool Death Of Island Raiders Reissue CD/LP
JONATHAN RICHMAN – SA LP
XXXTENTACION – Skins LP
RUPA – Disco Jazz LP
C DUNCAN – Health CD/LP
JONI VOID – Mise En Abyme CD/LP
MUSTAFA OZKENT – Genclik Ile Elele CD/LP
NICK ZAMMUTO – We The Animals soundtrack CD/LP
FACS – Lifelike CD/LP
JOY DIVISION – Atrocity Exhibition LP
JOY DIVISION – Live At The Paradiso Club LP
MELVINS – Pinkus Abortion Technician LP
ROYAL TRUX – Accelerator LP
THRICE – LP reissues
VARIOUS – Nigeria 70 – No Wahala CD/LP
O.A.R. – Mighty CD
JOSHUA REDMAN – Come What May CD
BRUTUS – Nest CD/LP
BEN FOLDS – Live at Myspace CD/LP