Superchunk – Acoustic Foolish LP (Merge)
Celebrating 25 years since the release of their classic album Foolish, indie rock icons Superchunk, are back with a surprise new studio album. Acoustic Foolish is a full re-recording of the 1994 tour-de-force, complete with new arrangements, strings & guest appearances. Don’t expect your usual “acoustic demos” type of album here. The band thought long & hard about what these songs could mean 25 years later, bringing new light & influences to classic tracks such as “Like A Fool” and “Driveway to Driveway”. Guest vocalists Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes) and Allison Crutchfield (Swearin’, P.S. Eliot) serve up cathartic back-up vocals while Owen Pallett (Mountain Goats, Frank Ocean, Arcade Fire) provides lush string arrangements. Peter Holsapple (The dB’s, REM) contributes slick piano lines with Matt Douglas (Mountain Goats) flaring up the emotion with gauzy saxophone ambience.

 

Apex Manor – Heartbreak City CD/LP+MP3 (Merge)
Requiring less than two weeks of studio time to complete, it’s accurate to say that Apex Manor’s Heartbreak City was captured more than it was recorded due to the “everybody in the same room” live sessions featuring songwriter Ross Flournoy on guitar and vocals, Dan Allaire (The Brian Jonestown Massacre) on drums, and Rob Barbato on bass and production duties. The raucous result is a sonic spectacle that cleverly balances aggressive Dinosaur Jr-esque guitars with dreamy synth work that’s reminiscent of The Cure, all mixed together with spirited instrumental performances, nuanced melodicism, and lyrics that swing wildly between being cryptic and being profound. In short, it’s everything there is to love about early ‘90s pre-commercialized alternative rock but with a refreshingly modern absence of pretense or nostalgia.

Kishi Bashi – Omoiyari CD/LP (Joyful Noise)
Imagine being forced from your home. Imagine being sent to a prison camp with no trial, and no promise of release. Imagine all this happened simply because of the language you speak, the shade of your skin, or the roots of your family tree. For over 120,000 Japanese Americans, this was a reality during World War II. It’s a reality that Kishi Bashi seeks to reckon with on his latest release, Omoiyari. The strong conceptual elements of Omoiyari are driven by Kishi Bashi’s captivating musical score. Stepping away from his past loop-based production model, he embraced a more collaborative approach when recording, and for the first time included contributions from other musicians, such as Mike Savino (aka Tall Tall Trees) on banjo and bass, and Nick Ogawa (aka Takenobu) on cello. Kishi Bashi’s spectacular trademark violin soundscapes are still an essential component of his sound, but the focus of Omoiyari is centered squarely on its songs.

Pip Blom – Boat CD/LP (Heavenly/PIAS America)
Dutch artist Pip Blom’s debut album Boat is as energetic as it is infectious. Recorded in a shipping container on the banks of the Thames in East London, its ten songs, alluding to the album’s title, ferry you through Pip’s headspace via expertly crafted compositions gelled together through their unassuming depth. There’s the kinetic combination of guitars from Pip herself and brother Tender Blom, the effortlessly captivating vocal range which can be authoritative and intent like in the driving album opener “Daddy Issues”, or soothing and warm as heard in melodic middle track “Bedhead”. Then there are the choruses that seem to stop songs in their tracks and lift them into a different stratosphere. Boat is an open book of Pip Blom, delivered via her undeniable knack for writing hook-laden, three to four-minute songs.

*repeat repeat – Glazed CD/LP (Dangerbird)
On their second album Glazed – produced by Patrick Carney of The Black Keys – *repeat repeat deliver a batch of songs entirely true to the album’s title; sugary and sticky and impossibly shiny, all glistening harmonies and candy-coated hooks. But beneath the gloss lies something more jarring and jagged, a raw vitality generated by the Nashville band’s buzzy rhythms and blistering guitar work. Fortified by the distinct creative alliance of husband-and-wife duo Jared and Kristyn Corder, the result is an album that finds an unlikely power in irrepressible sweetness. “We wanted to make a record about seeing the world through a fresh set of colors.”

Sacred Paws – Run Around The Sun CD/LP+MP3 (Rock Action/Merge)
Sacred Paws have a natural inclination not to take things too seriously. You can hear it all the way through a conversation with its two members, guitarist Rachel Aggs and drummer Eilidh Rodgers, punctuated by rolls of giggles and thoughtful pauses, and you can hear it in the light touch they bring to their music, a jangly blend of indie pop full of fizzing world rhythms and bright horns. Run Around The Sun brims with upbeat reflections on growing up and looking back. Shimmering guitar riffs dance between snappy beats and swooning melodies that will have crowds committing to far more than a simple head-bob. “I think we’d get bored if it was too slow,” Eilidh says. “We’d never want to play something live that people couldn’t dance to. It would feel strange to us. It’s kind of the whole point.”

Sinkane – Dépaysé CD/LP (City Slang)
Sinkane is unique in that he is one of few artists that has a real, tangible stake in our current cultural and political climate, and it shows in the music. For the new album Dépaysé (a French word meaning “to be removed from one’s habitual surroundings”) Ahmed Gallab didn’t just write a few protest songs in the style of the familiar Sinkane sound. Rather, you can feel the difference, the change that has taken place in the art. The falsetto of the earlier records is almost entirely gone in favor of an aggressive, clearly stated tenor. There is almost nothing in the lyrics that is ambiguous or even difficult to understand, and even the music’s poppier moments are confrontational and bombastic. And while the album is reflective of what the band has become musically, a wild raging force to be reckoned with live, it is at its heart about what real frustration feels like and what real change could require.

Eluvium – Piano Works CD (Temporary Residence)
Pianoworks is Eluvium’s first solo piano album since his sophomore album, An Accidental Memory In The Case Of Death (2004). Inspired by the quiet thoughts and solitary observations of children – and the evolution/dissolution of that ephemeral, uncorrupted wonder of simple joy – Pianoworks begins with a song about children’s piano lessons, and culminates with an etude driven by the struggle to hold onto innocence and imagination as adulthood settles in.

Fujiya & Miyagi – Flashback CD/LP+MP3 (Impossible Objects)
After the ambitious three EP trilogy Impossible Objects Of Desire in 2017, Fujiya & Miyagi release their seventh full length album. “Flashback started life as our funk record,” says Fujiya & Miyagi’s David Best. “Yet once we got into the production stage our embryonic funk songs moved closer to electro in feel. Although this is our funkiest album to date and the funk is deliberate.”

Lisa Hannigan & Stargaze – Live In Dublin CD/LP (PIAS America)
Mercury Prize nominated Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan is reminiscent of introspective folk artists such as Nick Drake, while delving into the eccentric impulses of musicians like Kate Bush.

L7 – Scatter The Rats CD (Blackheart)
The first L7 album in 20 years, Scatter The Rats embodies everything that made the band so iconic in the first place – the distortion-heavy riffs and headbanging rhythms, sludgy grooves and indelible melodies. And in their lyrics, L7 achieve a direct transmission of raw feeling, often spiked with biting commentary on the chaos of the world today.

Operators – Radiant Dawn CD/LP (Last Gang)
Operators is a Montreal based project created by Daniel Boeckner, (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, Divine Fits), Devojka, and Sam Brown (Divine Fits, New Bomb Turks). Radiant Dawn features nine tracks which meld raw analog hardware with Boeckner’s distinct voice to create an immersive cinematic sound. Interspersed between the tracks are instrumental intertitles that amplify the album’s 1970s sci-fi dystopian feel.

Samana – Ascension CD (Fat Cat)
Samana inhabit a musical space somewhere between Weyes Blood, Nico, Beach House and PJ Harvey, yet they possess a unique spirit born out of their nomadic existence. Each song is written with its own distinct weight and significance, born from the interpretation of dreams, the philosophies of ancient rituals and personal experience of love, loss and death.

Team Dresch – Personal Best [Reissue/1995] CD/LP+MP3 (Jealous Butcher)
Team Dresch – Captain My Captain [Reissue/1996] CD/LP+MP3 (Jealous Butcher)
Team Dresch – Choices, Chances, Changes: Singles & Comptracks 1994-2000 CD (Jealous Butcher)
Combining the brazenness of Riot Grrrl with the angst dirge of grunge, Team Dresch didn’t just raise the stakes of queercore: They created two near-perfect albums about longing, freedom, and belonging over guitar riffs as epic and intense as Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson’s poetic couplets.

The Warlocks – Mean Machine Music CD/LP (Cleopatra)
New album from the L.A. psych rock band, inspired by everything from Stereolab to Krautrock to death rock.

Juan Wauters – La Onda De Juan Pablo LP (Captured Tracks)
Juan Wauters – Introducing Juan Pablo LP (Captured Tracks) Not long ago, Wauters released La Onda de Juan Pablo, an album that allowed him to reinvent himself and start writing a separate chapter in his exciting career. Now, as a companion and as a prequel, he releases Introducing Juan Pablo. La Onda de Juan Pablo was a travelogue of sorts, with its anthropological efforts, its parade of Latin American musicians and its choice to only feature Wauters’ native tongue. Introducing Juan Pablo, on the other hand, goes back and forth between Spanish and English. It is, in short, more faithful to the inter-culturalism that Wauters experiences daily.

3RA1N1AC ‎– Electro-Shock For President [Reissue/1997] 12” (Touch & Go)
Brainiac began in 1992 as the basement experiments of Dayton, OH natives Tim Taylor (vocals, synth), and Juan Monasterio (bass), who first met playing cello in fifth grade. Upon completing the lineup with Michelle Bodine (guitar) and Tyler Trent (drums), they released two full-lengths and toured vigorously, establishing themselves as the latest peg in Ohio’s diverse musical timeline. Jim O’Rourke produced 1997’s Electroshock For President EP, which found Brainiac continuing their transition into a more electronic rock band. On May 23, 1997, only weeks after the EP’s release, Tim lost his life in a car accident. He was 28. A feature length documentary exploring Brainiac’s music, legacy, and loss, entitled Transmissions After Zero is due this year.

Depeche Mode – Black Celebration – The Singles 5×12” (WB)
Depeche Mode – Music For The Masses 7×12” (WB)
From the beginning of their career Depeche Mode have been at the forefront of remix culture; creating their own classic extended mixes back in the early ‘80s and over the years amassing a collection of remixers of their songs that pretty much charts the history of cutting edge dance music.

Om – Live LP (Outer Battery)
Inspired by classic 70’s bootlegs, Al Cisneros from Om wanted to capture the raw live feel of their 2013 European tour on vinyl.

Phish – Billy Breathes [Reissue/1996] 2xLP+MP3 (Jemp)
Phish – Slip Stitch And Pass [Reissue/1996] 2xLP+MP3 (Jemp)
Released last year as limited Record Store Day/Black Friday releases, Phish’s sixth studio album (Billy Breathes) and second official live album (Slip Stitch And Pass) are available on 180gm black vinyl.