Lucinda Williams – Runnin’ Down A Dream: A Tribute To Tom Petty CD/2xLP (Highway 20)
Revered singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams is working to help independent music venues during this time with the announcement of Lu’s Jukebox. Scheduled as a six-episode series of mostly full-band, HD video performances in-studio, Lu’s Jukebox will feature a themed set of songs by other artists curated by the multi-Grammy award winner. Lucinda has poured her heart and soul into each of these episodes. From hand-selecting the songs to giving it her all in the studio, this series has been a journey you won’t want to miss. Tracked live by Grammy Award-winning producer Ray Kennedy, the first episode kicked off in October 2020 with Running Down A Dream: A Tribute To Tom Petty, featuring songs from his celebrated career in advance of his 70^thbirthday. Includes takes on “Runnin’ Down A Dream”, “I Won’t Back Down”, “Wildflowers”, “You Don’t Know How It Feels”, and “Room At The Top” among others.

Norah Jones – Til We Meet Again Live CD/2xLP (Blue Note)
Norah Jones’ first-ever live album, ‘Til We Meet Again, presents globe-spanning performances from the US, France, Italy, Brazil, and Argentina that were recorded between 2017-2019. The first single “It Was You”, was recorded at the 2018 Ohana Festival in Dana Point, CA with Pete Remm on organ, Christopher Thomas on bass, and Brian Blade on drums. Additional musicians featured on the album include bassist Jesse Murphy, guitarist Jesse Harris, flutist Jorge Continentino, and percussionist Marcelo Costa. The album closes with Jones’ stunning solo piano performance of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”, a tribute to Chris Cornell that was recorded at the Fox Theatre in Detroit just days after Cornell’s death following a performance at the same venue.

Tom Petty – Finding Wildflowers (Alternate Versions) CD/2xLP (WB)
Finding Wildflowers (Alternate Versions) – the latest offering of Tom Petty music, curated with help from his loving family, bandmates and collaborators – features tracks, which were previously released on the Super Deluxe 9xLP version of 2020’s Wildflowers & All The Rest. It gathers 16 studio recordings of alternate takes, long cuts and jam versions of Wildflowers songs as Tom, band members and co-producer Rick Rubin worked to finalize the album in 1994. The release offers fans further deep access into the writing and recording of Wildflowers, as well as realizing the full vision of the project as Tom had always intended. The collection was produced by Tom’s longtime engineer and co-producer Ryan Ulyate who listened to 245 reels of 24-track tape, revealing Tom and his collaborators’ evolutionary process, and finding the group willing to do whatever it took to discover the essence and magic in the material. [A limited-edition indie store exclusive vinyl pressing is available.]

Fitz and The Tantrums – Head Up High CD (Elektra)
In short, Head Up High is an album by Fitz and The Tantrums. The longer story is that this is more of a collaborative album between the band itself and its frontman, Michael Fitzpatrick, who goes by the stage name FITZ. The album was a product of FITZ’s solo work during quarantine, writing songs to fill the time after the band’s tour was canceled due to the pandemic. So, in many ways, Head Up High is as much a solo album as it is a Fitz and The Tantrums album. It’s a product of FITZ’s individual work and experience while still retaining the integrity of the band as a whole.” – UT Daily Beacon

Greta Van Fleet – The Battle At Garden’s Gate CD/2xLP (Republic)
Described as “a bold evolution” from the band’s 2018 debut Anthem Of The Peaceful Army, Greta Van Fleet’s highly anticipated second album The Battle At Garden’s Gate came together primarily on the road or while in the studio after the runaway success of 2017’s “Highway Tune” led to the band packing up, leaving home, and eagerly soaking up new experiences on an extended road trip around the world. The melding of all these experiences opened their eyes to amazing new worlds of culture, history, philosophy and spirituality – and ushered in an entirely new way of looking at life and the approach to their music.

Midland – The Sonic Ranch CD (Big Machine)
In 2014, Mark Wystrach, Cameron Duddy and Jess Carson spent ten days in El Paso, TX at Sonic Ranch Recording Studio to record a demo album. During those days, a brotherhood was forged. A sound was established. Midland was born. Six years later, Midland is a multi-platinum selling band that has toured the world over, received two Grammy nominations and won ACM New Group Of The Year. The Sonic Ranch album collects those original recordings for first-time release.

Deftones – White Pony (20^th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) 4xLP (WB)
On June 20, 2000, Deftones released their third studio album, White Pony, which was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece by fans and critics alike. Fueled by the successful singles “Change (In The House Of Flies)” and “Digital Bath”, the album won the 2001 Grammy for Best Metal Performance for the song “Elite”. In the twenty years since release, White Pony has continued to grow in stature and influence. Inspired by DJ Shadow’s Entroducing…, Deftones had the idea to have DJ Shadow reimagine the entire White Pony album and call it Black Stallion. 20 years later, Deftones hand-picked a diverse and brilliant collection of artists, including DJ Shadow, to make that idea a reality.

Sam Gendel – DRM LP (Nonesuch)
The follow-up to his Nonesuch debut, Satin Doll, released earlier this year, DRM features Gendel’s solo musical experiments with vintage instruments such as a forty-year-old Electro Harmonix DRM32 drum machine, antique synthesizers, and a sixty-year-old nylon-string guitar-accompanied by his voice. While Satin Doll was a futuristic homage to classic jazz, DRM includes just one cover song: Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”, which Gendel interprets as an instrumental, playing the melody on an old German analogue synthesizer.

Hudson Mohawke – Hudson’s Heeters Vol. 1 12”+MP3 (Warp)
Hudson’s Heeters Vol. 1 is the debut mixtape by Hudson Mohawke. This seminal release caught the eye of Warp and led to his eventual signing to the label. This marks the first time Hudson’s Heeters Vol. 1 has ever been released on vinyl.

Mirah ‎– Advisory Committee [Reissue/2002] LP+MP3 (Double Double Whammy)
Mirah ‎– C’mon Miracle [Reissue/2004] LP+MP3 (Double Double Whammy)
Limited color vinyl reissues. Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn has been creating incorruptible independent pop music since the late ‘90s.

Caroline Polachek – Standing At The Gate: Remix Collection LP (Caroline Polachek)
Caroline Polachek has already lived an extraordinary life in music: her previous band Chairlift formed in 2006 whilst Caroline was still in art school; and in 2008 the band was thrust into the spotlight when “Bruises” was synched in an iPod commercial as the Brooklyn indie scene peaked as an international export. Caroline’s idiosyncratic vocal style and synth textures quickly became their sonic trademark and continued to evolve through their three critically acclaimed albums into a new, more modular kind of pop experimentation.

Toro y Moi ‎– Underneath The Pine [Reissue/2011] LP+MP3 (Carpark)
Limited 10^th anniversary color vinyl reissue. Columbia, South Carolina’s Chaz Bundick (aka Toro y Moi) rose to the fore of the music blogosphere in summer 2009 when he and a few peers made their hazy bedroom recordings the most talked-about sound of the season. His second album for Carpark, Underneath The Pine, is an album evocative of R. Stevie Moore’s homespun ruminations, David Axelrod’s sonic scope, Steve Reich-ian piano phrasing, and the pervasive funk of his first record. Underneath the Pine announces a new phase for an artist whose talent defies classification.

Various Artists [Ali Shaheed Muhammad & Adrian Younge] – Jazz Is Dead 6: Gary Bartz LP (Jazz Is Dead)
Recently released on CD – now available on vinyl. There’s early work with Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner in Charles Mingus’ Jazz Workshop, work with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, a stint in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and also one with Miles. There’s his groundbreaking and highly influential Ntu Troop albums of the early ‘70s and his jazz-funk work including two classic albums with the Mizell Brothers, one of which supplied A Tribe Called Quest with a sample that was smooth like butter. That’s not to mention appearances on beloved albums by Pharoah Sanders, Donald Byrd, Norman Connors, Roy Ayers, Gene Ammons, Phyllis Hyman, Jackie McLean and many others. This is what Gary Bartz brings to the Jazz Is Dead project and as can be expected, his questing spirit fits the JID style like a glove and has produced an album that’s a cutting-edge addition to his immense canon as he effortlessly interfaces with a new generation.

Slaughter Beach, Dog – At The Moonbase LP (Lame-O)
At the Moonbase, the fourth full-length album from Slaughter Beach, Dog, is a return to form for Philadelphia bandleader Jake Ewald. Written and recorded alone at home and at The Metal Shop, Ewald’s East Kensington recording studio, the album tracks an exercise in solitary production not unlike Slaughter Beach, Dog’s 2016 debut Welcome or 2017’s Motorcycle.JPG. On the heels of 2019’s Safe and Also No Fear, Ewald’s latest offering brings expanded arrangements and sharpened storytelling as he taps into salad days over slacker rock (“Do You Understand”), the dark grooves of seedy city life (“Song for Oscars”), and even a barroom-piano-driven “escapade through the great American bedroom” (“A Modern Lay”). Indie exclusive variant is pressed on limited dark blue vinyl, with matching dark blue print on jacket art and center labels.

Hypnosonics – Drums Were Beating:For Apache Studios 1996 CD/LP (Modern Harmonic)
Prior to founding the band Morphine, Mark Sandman launched Hypnosonics, built around a stripped down drum kit with no toms and a piece of plywood in place of cymbals, played by Jay Hilt. With funk in its heart, Hypnosonics was originally a five piece with Sandman on guitar and organ, Tom Halter and Russ Gershon of the Either/Orchestra on trumpet and sax, and Mike Rivard, who later founded Club d’Elf, on bass. After Morphine took off, Dana Colley joined Hypnosonics, Hilt added hi-hat cymbals to his kit, and the horn section started singing. In 1996, the same year that Morphine recorded Like Swimming at the legendary Cambridge, MA studio Fort Apache, Hypnosonics visited the Fort to play a live-in-the-studio radio broadcast on beloved local rock station WFNX.

Hypnosonics – Someone Stole My Shoes: Beyond The Q Division Sessions CD/LP (Modern Harmonic)
In 1986, while Mark Sandman was still touring with his first major label band, Treat Her Right, and before he convened the now-mythical Morphine, he assembled what is often referred to as his “”secret band.”” Hypnosonics remained a favorite side project, and performed for the last time two weeks before Sandman’s death in 1999. Playing guitar and organ as well as singing, Mark was joined by members of the large jazz ensemble Either/Orchestra for the funkiest excursions of his diverse career. An edition of the band which included future founding drummer of Morphine, Jerome Deupree, and future bassist/leader of Club d’Elf, Mike Rivard, recorded five songs at Q Division Studio in Boston in 1989. Also included are four more tracks by the 1996 edition of the group featuring original drummer Jay Hilt along with Morphine’s Dana Colley, trumpeter Tom Halter, and saxman Russ Gershon.

COMING NEXT WEEK:
KALEO – Surface Sound CD/LP
SPIRITUALIZED –  Lazer Guided Melodies CD/LP reissue
DINOSAUR JR – Sweep In Into Space CD/LP
LOST HORIZONS – In Quiet Moments CD/LP
THE SELECTER – Too Much Pressure (40th Anniversary) LP
UNSANE – Improvised Mutations and Demo CD/LP
UNWOUND – Challenge For A Civilized Society LP
ALAN VEGA – Mutator CD/LP
HAYES CARLL – Alone Together CD
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – Crestone LP
GANG OF FOUR – Solid Gold CD/LP
GANG OF FOUR – Entertainment CD/LP
ELLIOTT SMITH – Either/Or LP reissue
ELLIOTT SMITH – Roman Candle LP reissue
TODD SNIDER – First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder CD/LP