New Releases & Staff Picks
Staff Picks
Kimber – Sufjan Stevens
Lindsay – Jónsi, Brent Cobb
Dario – Death Valley Girls
Eric – Death Valley Girls
Dawes – Good Luck With Whatever CD/LP (Rounder)
Far from apathetic, Good Luck With Whatever is Dawes at their most unapologetic. It’s sympathetic and magnetic, 50% genetic and highly kinetic. Songs like “Didn’t Fix Me” and “Me Especially” showcase Taylor Goldsmith’s poetic prowess perfectly; a historian of the human condition, transforming turmoil into motor oil. It’s an unfiltered photograph of a band doing what they do best. A moment in the timeline of a 10 year old outfit who still possess the wonderment and fearlessness of when they started. “As a songwriter, this album is a relinquishing of my codependence…Not concerning myself with things that I shouldn’t…witnessing life around me but trying to hold back judgement. It’s also about stepping more firmly into adulthood, even if a few years later than expected,” says Taylor. “As a band, this album is a celebration of each other and our closeness as a group. It’s the four of us live in a room not hiding behind any sort of studio magic. This band has made us stronger and brought us closer through the years and we’re recognizing that and are more proud of that than ever.” [Limited brick and mortar indie store colored vinyl edition available.]
Nightmares On Wax – Smokers Delight: Sonic Buds 12″ (Warp Records)
Following the 25th anniversary of Smoker’s Delight, we see its companions release Sonic Buds, now available on vinyl!
The Nude Party – Midnight Manor CD/LP (New West)
Midnight Manor is the much anticipated sophomore album from the six-piece rock outfit The Nude Party. Following two years of non-stop touring in support of their eponymous debut, the band returned to their farmhouse in New York’s Catskill Mountains, where they live together under one roof. Like The Band’s sacred home-recording habitat The Big Pink, The Nude Party’s communal dwelling provided the landscape and proximity to focus on deepening their bonds through music. It was at the Manor that the band of childhood friends could shift their energies from the archetypical emotional journeys of mid-20-somethings towards rebuilding their road-worn relationships with one another, leading them to write Midnight Manor – an album that lead singer Patton Magee describes as “a stone skipping over troubled waters.”
Enigmatic singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens makes his long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s Carrie & Lowell with the 15-track double LP, The Ascension. The years-in-the-making collection’s first single comes in the form of the sprawling closing track “America”. Sufjan says the foundations of The Ascension are “a call for personal transformation and a refusal to play along with the systems around us.” He adds, “my objective for this album was simple: Interrogate the world around you. Question anything that doesn’t hold water. Exterminate all bullshit. Be part of the solution or get out of the way. Keep it real. Keep it true. Keep it simple. Keep it moving.” The result is The Ascension, a “lush, editorial pop album,” as Sufjan describes it, which finds us all at a “terrifying crossroad.” [Limited brick and mortar indie store colored vinyl edition also available.]
Brent Cobb – Keep ‘Em On They Toes CD/LP (Ol’ Buddy)
For his fourth album, Keep ‘Em On They Toes, Brent Cobb is giving his songs the space they need to speak for themselves, a reflection of his own decision to write about the way he sees the world. “My last couple of albums have been about people and places, and I wanted this album to be about thoughts and feelings,” he says. At his core, Cobb still writes country songs, so there’s a continuity between Keep ‘Em On They Toes and past projects like 2016’s Shine On Rainy Day (a Grammy nominee for Best Americana Album) and 2018’s Providence Canyon. “To me, listening to this album feels like I’m sitting there with somebody, having a conversation,” Cobb adds. “I would hope that it feels like sitting with an old friend you haven’t seen in a while. There’s nothing like being alone and listening to an album that is quiet and conversational – like those old records by Jerry Lee Lewis, Roger Miller, or Willie Nelson. I hope my music is that way to somebody now.”
Death Valley Girls – Under The Spell Of Joy CD/LP (Suicide Squeeze)
New album from the Los Angeles dystopian punk/occult glam rockers. The initial inspiration for Under The Spell Of Joy came from the jubilant spirit of Ethiopian funk records the band had been listening to on tour, but once they began to channel the songs it seemed like the music came from somewhere not in the past but in the future. In the weeks leading up to recording, Death Valley Girls relied on their subconscious and effortlessly conjured Under The Spell Of Joy’s eleven tracks as if they’d tapped into the Akashic Chronicle and pulled the music from the ether. [Limited gold colored vinyl pressing also available.]
Lana Del Ray – Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass CD/LP (Interscope)
The new spoken word recording, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, includes 14 poems performed by Lana Del Rey accompanied by music from Grammy Award-winning songwriter/producer Jack Antonoff.
Shiver is the exciting and boundary pushing second record from L.A.-based Icelandic musician Jónsi following the Sigur Rós frontman’s 2010 solo debut, Go. Co-produced by A. G. Cook (PC Music, Charlie XCX) and recorded in Berlin, Reykjavik, London and Helsinki, the long awaited album features tracks with Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins) and pop icon Robyn. Jónsi had made a career on sweeping music that plumbed the depths of the human experience and our connection to the natural world. Cook’s production exists at the opposite end of the spectrum: synthetic, sometimes abrasive, and often on the cutting edge of experimentalism. On paper, their collaboration is surprising, but Shiver is a beautiful record that pushes Jónsi’s otherworldly voice into startling new territories.
Sa-Roc – The Sharecropper’s Daughter CD/2xLP (Rhymesayers)
The Sharecropper’s Daughter album is entirely produced by a veteran renaissance man from the Atlanta hip-hop scene, Sol Messiah, with the exception of “Deliverance” produced by Evidence and co-produced by Al B Smoov. And, while Sa-Roc’s crafty wordplay, razor-sharp delivery and exceptional writing are the prominent highlight, this undeniable quality is only further enhanced by stellar guest performances from a small, but formidable, all-star cast of guests, including Saul Williams, Styles P, Ledisi, Chronixx, and Black Thought.
Sean Nicholas Savage – Life Is Crazy CD/LP (Arbutus)
Life Is Crazy, the accurately titled new record from Sean Nicholas Savage, is unlike anything you’ve heard from the cult balladeer. No drums or bass on the album, the accompaniment consists strictly of pure piano and lush strings, leaving Savage’s songwriting bare to the listener like never before.
May You Be Held follows the humanistic themes explored on Love In Shadow, partially informed by Aaron Turner’s navigation of fatherhood and family life. This compassionate tone stands in stark contrast to the misanthropic and death-obsessed nature of most heavy metal music, and perhaps even seems diametric to the caustic and aggravated tone of May You Be Held. It may make more sense to approach the album as if it were a free jazz record or an abstract noise piece, where the emotional resonance isn’t bound up in melody as much as it is in performance. Here, Turner’s bellows and howls seem less threatening than wounded, primal, and mammalian. On guitar, his subversion of melody and penchant for noise seems less like aural punishment and more like an open horizon for frequencies and timbre.
Anohni – It’s All Over Now Baby Blue b/w Be My Husband 7” (Secretly Canadian)
A viscous embrace, a pulsating pouring out, Anohni’s voice is above all else a vessel for political armament. Now sharing a dual cover set, she casts a subtler, but no less powerful incantation towards change. The original tracks dating to 1965, a year marked by the Selma marches, the Watts Rebellion, and the landmark Voting Rights Act, illuminate the eerily parallel struggles of this year.
Limited green colored vinyl pressing. When Filmation Studios landed a late-‘60s hit with the Saturday morning cartoon TV show The Archies, it wasn’t long before it started looking for more “sugar” with a similarly music-themed follow-up. Inspired by the success of such shows as The Munsters and The Addams Family, penned by a couple of writers for Laugh-In, and featuring the voice of F-Troop’s Larry Storch, Groovie Goolies first aired in September 1970 as a pairing with the Archies spin-off Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. Groovie Goolies brought A-list talent to the task of composing and performing two songs for every episode. The whole record has a very Archies vibe with some very groovy touches. [CD version due October 9.]
New Order – Blue Monday [Reissue/1983] 12” (WB)
New Order – Confusion [Reissue/1983] 12” (WB)
New Order – Murder [Reissue/1984] 12” (WB)
New Order – Thieves Like Us [Reissue/1984] 12” (WB)
12” vinyl reissues of three EPs by the Manchester synth pop band formed after the demise of Joy Division.
Oasis – What’s The Story Morning Glory [Reissue/1995] 2xLP (Big Brother Recordings)
Double silver-colored vinyl LP pressing of this 25th anniversary edition of the British band’s sophomore album.
Creation Myths is the first album in five years from Elvis Perkins. Produced by Sam Cohen, the album in many ways picks up where his debut Ash Wednesday left off. Pitchfork wrote of that album “Elvis Perkins has emerged as an assured, fully-formed cosmopolitan able to merge readily recognizable influences with a sense of theatre.” [CD edition due October 9.]
Skyzoo – Milestones 12” (Mello Music Group)
Recently released on CD – now available on vinyl. “This is a conceptual EP, where each song is a story that holds hands with the ones before and after it, all about my life as a kid, growing up with my father always in my life, and how that’s now shaped me as a father myself. It’s named Milestones, after my son Miles, and also signifying the milestones that we dads reach in life as we grow into fatherhood. This project is solely about growing up with a dad, being a dad, and the importance of it all. To all the fathers out here who are lovingly and actively doing the work, this one is for you.” – Skyzoo
Released in May on CD – now available on vinyl. West coast composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has chartered a pioneering career with multiple critically-acclaimed albums since 2015. Following the release of The Kid in 2017, Smith focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She’s continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body’s relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of her latest full-length, The Mosaic Of Transformation, a bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself. [Limited clear vinyl pressing also available.]
COMING NEXT WEEK………
BUDOS BAND – Long In The Tooth CD/LP
CUT WORMS – Nobody Lives Here Anymore CD/LP
FUTURE ISLANDS – As Long As You Are CD/LP
METZ – Atlas Vending CD/LP
BAHAMAS – Sad Hunk CD/LP
BLACK PUMAS – Self Titled CD/LP
REPLACEMENTS – Pleased To Meet Me CD+LP boxset
GUNN/TRUSCINSKI DUO – Soundkeeper CD/LP
MRS PISS – Self SurgeryCD/LP (Chelsea Wolfe+Jess Gowrie)
TRAVIS – 10 Songs CD/LP
GROOVE ARMADA – Edge Of The Horizon CD/LP
MACHINEDRUM – View Of U CD/LP
SLOW PULP – Moveys CD/LP
TOUCHE AMORE – Lament CD/LP
MARY LATTIMORE- Silver Ladders CD/LP
ANTELOPER – Tour Beats CD/LP
JULIEN BAKER – Turn Out The Lights LP reissue
BUFFALO TOM – Birdbrain LP
DOVES – Universal Want LP
FOALS – Collected Works 1 LP
YO LA TENGO – Sleepless Night LP
JUICE WRLD – Legends Never Die LP
WEYES BLOOD – Cardamom Times LP