New Releases & Staff Picks – 10/7/22
Staff Picks
Lindsay – Courtney Marie Andrews, Patrick Watson, Nora O’Connor and Disq
Caleb – Old Time Relijun
Dario – Courtney Marie Andrews, Dungen, Old Time Relijun
Zach- Patrick Watson, Alvvays, Open Mike Eagle
Kimber – Courtney Marie Andrews
Broken Bells – Into The Blue CD/LP/Cassette (Broken Bells LLC)
Featuring two of the bigger names in indie and alternative music – the Shins’ singer/guitarist James Mercer and producer/multi-instrumentalist Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse – Broken Bells combined the pair’s greatest strengths. On 2010’s Grammy-nominated self-titled debut and 2014’s more structured After the Disco, Mercer’s gift for indelible, slightly spooky melodies and Burton’s atmospheric productions complemented each other perfectly. In the late 2010s, the duo reconvened to release a succession of singles ahead of their third album. With the 2022 release of the moody “We’re Not In Orbit Yet…”, the pair announced the release of their third album, Into The Blue, the project’s first album in eight years and first to incorporate samples into their orchestral pop sound. [An indie store exclusive clear w/ purple color vinyl pressing is available.]
Courtney Marie Andrews – Loose Future CD/LP (Fat Possum)
Following Old Flowers‘ 2020 Grammy nomination, and due to Covid restrictions, Courtney Marie Andrews, for the first time in her young nomadic life, was forced off the road and to remain at home. What resulted was the publishing of her first book of poetry, the first gallery showings of her paintings, and a period of self-discovery leading to the new album, Loose Future. Whereas Old Flowers was a beautiful and emotional break-up record, CMA’s return with Loose Future is a bright, dynamic, falling-in-love record. Courtney’s got a new story to tell, backed by a strong new musical direction, and a show-stopping collection of songs. Loose Future was recorded at Sam Owen’s upstate New York Flying Cloud Studios, with musicians Josh Kaufman (Bonny Lighthorseman), Chris Bear (Grizzly Bear), and Sam Owens (Sam Evian). [An indie store exclusive red color vinyl pressing is available.]
Action Bronson – Cocodrillo Turbo CD/LP (Loma Vista)
Action Bronson isn’t anyone’s idea of an underdog with a slew of critical acclaim, a New York Times best seller, successful TV shows, and a decade plus long career where he’s proved time and time again why he is one of the best MCs of our time. And yet, on his brilliant new album, Cocodrillo Turbo, he sets out to prove that his lingual versatility is stronger than it’s ever been. “I don’t feel like I’m given the fucking respect that I deserve,” Bronson explains. Cocodrillo Turbo is Bronson demanding that respect. It’s a record that hits immediately, but rewards deep listening and close readings. The album includes features from Conway The Machine, Roc Marciano, Hologram, and Meyhem Lauren, with production from The Alchemist, Daringer, Roc Marciano, and Bronson himself. [An indie store exclusive clear vinyl pressing, and indie store exclusive cassette edition are available.]
Love Battery – Dayglo [Reissue/1992] LP (Jackpot)
Blue color vinyl pressing. “In the middle of the wonderful sludge that was coming out of Seattle in the late ’80s/early ’90s, Love Battery pierced through with something different to offer. They were more psychedelic, more tuneful, and even more… dare we say… British sounding than what Sub Pop was releasing at the time. We were listening. The results are crystal clear on the record Jackpot Records is reissuing, Dayglo. And like many of the Sub Pop records of the day, this has not been available on vinyl in the US until now.”
Alvvays – Blue Rev CD/LP+MP3/Cassette (Polyvinyl)
Alvvays never intended to take five years to finish their third album, the nervy joyride that is the compulsively lovable Blue Rev. In fact, the band began writing and cutting its first bits soon after releasing 2017’s Antisocialites, that stunning sophomore record that confirmed the Toronto quintet’s status atop a new generation of winning and whip-smart indie rock. At least the five-year wait was worthwhile: Blue Rev doesn’t simply reassert what’s always been great about Alvvays but instead reimagines it. They have, in part and sum, never been better. There are 14 songs on Blue Rev, making it not only the longest Alvvays album but also the most harmonically rich and lyrically provocative. [A limited-edition marble blue color vinyl pressing is available.]
Bartees Strange – Farm To Table CD/LP+MP3 (4AD)
Farm To Table, the second album from Washington D.C. resident Bartees Leon Cox Jr. examines Bartees’ constantly shapeshifting relationship with life. Where his 2020 debut record Live Forever introduced the experiences and places that shaped Bartees (Flagey, Brussels & Mustang, Oklahoma), Farm To Table zeros in on the people – specifically his family – and those closest to him on his journey so far. It also speaks to a deeper lore that says don’t forget where you came from. With his career firmly on the ascent, Bartees is celebrating the past, moving towards the future and fully appreciating the present. An unapologetic and braggadocious indie-trap banger, new single “Cosigns” celebrates Bartees’ peers, collaborators, and friends; name-checking the likes of Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers, Courtney Barnett, Lucy Dacus, through a genre-defying outpouring somewhere between swaggering hip-hop and euphoric alt rock. [An indie store exclusive yellow color vinyl pressing is available.]
The Cult – Under The Midnight Sun CD/LP (Black Hill)
“Six years after their last record, 2016’s Hidden City, The Cult’s main men, founders Ian Astbury (lead vocals) and Billy Duffy (guitars, backing vocals), emerge once again re-energized and inspired as ever, with their latest offering, Under The Midnight Sun. Troubled by musical differences and lots of personnel changes in the past, Astbury and Duffy have always managed to keep The Cult afloat and relevant. Their willingness to push their own boundaries, while still being able to stay rooted in their beginnings, enabled them to keep on making new music. In enough words, Under The Midnight Sun is not only a worthy addition to the band’s discography; it is also a homage to their origin. The album is a return to The Cult’s original sound of the post-punk era.” – Alfie Vera Mella, Cryptic Rock [An indie store exclusive white color vinyl pressing is available.]
Gilla Band – Most Normal CD (Rough Trade)
For their first album as Gilla Band, (formerly Girl Band) the foursome has redrawn their own paradigm. Most Normal is like little you’ve heard before, a kaleidoscopic spectrum of noise put in service of broken pop songs, FX-strafed avant-punk rollercoaster rides and passages of futurist dancefloor nihilism. Covid lockdown robbed Gilla Band of any opportunity to try the new material out live, but the pandemic also incinerated any idea of a deadline for the new album. They were free to tinker at leisure, to rewrite and restructure and reinvent tracks they’d cut – to, as drummer Adam Faulkner puts it, “pull things apart and be like, ‘Let’s try this.’ We could try out every wild idea.” The group also fell under the spell of modern hip-hop, “where there’s really heavy-handed production and they’re messing with the track the whole time,” says Fox. “That felt like a fun route to go down, it was a definite influence.” [Vinyl edition due October 14.]
Will Sheff – Nothing Special CD/LP (ATO)
After nine critically acclaimed albums, twenty bandmates, countless bars, clubs, theaters, and festivals, after two full decades, Will Sheff is letting Okkervil River drift out to sea with the release of Nothing Special, his debut collection under his own name. Nothing Special was recorded with a mix of old friends (like Benjamin Lazar-Davis and Will Graefe) and new collaborators (Christian Lee Hutson, Cassandra Jenkins, Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith, and Death Cab For Cutie pianist Zac Rae). [An indie store exclusive baby blue color vinyl pressing is available.]
Patrick Watson – Better In The Shade CD/LP (Secret City)
“Following his very successful 2019 record Wave, Patrick Watson’s latest release Better In The Shade reflects the bizarreness and uncertainty of the past two years. As he puts it, the theme is “about negotiating a world where you don’t know what’s real anymore”. Like the album itself, the artist is a paradox. Rather like a manly woodsman in appearance, his vocals are ethereal, almost feminine. Inspired by Virginia Woolf, among others, here his music is uncanny, yet reassuring, while also being cerebral and reflective. Better In The Shade is a brief album at just 22 minutes in length, but its richness illustrates that less can be more. Combining the retro with the futuristic, the work expresses nostalgia for a comforting past, fascination, and trepidation about what is ahead, and no ground beneath our feet in the present. Patrick Watson’s striking, creatively ingenious record, with exquisite vocals and instrumentals, comprises an impressive accomplishment.” – Catherine Sedwick, The Up Coming
Bonny Light Horseman – Rolling Golden Holy CD/LP (37D03D)
Love and loss, death, and fear: the songs may be different, but the emotional sources remain. The band thrives in rendering fresh wisdom and insight from old models, whether scraps of ancient songs or the spark of entwined voices. Theirs is a space created for sharing, learning, singing, and playing as one. Rolling Golden Holy is the band’s testament to partnership and trust at a moment when we crave such connections so much. They fully appreciate what they have found in one another. On Rolling Golden Holy, we get to live inside that magic, too. [An indie store exclusive blue color vinyl pressing is available.]
Dungen – En Är För Mycket Och Tusen Aldrig Nog CD/LP+MP3 (Mexican Summer)
Dungen, torch bearers of Sweden’s rich and fabled history of pastoral psychedelia, return with En Är För Mycket Och Tusen Aldrig Nog, the band’s first full-length album since 2015’s Allas Sak. Creating their own critical and fervent, fan-based lane for guitar-powered, melodic, and magisterial rock ‘n’ roll with their 2004 break out album Ta Det Lugnt, Dungen has since left a staggering array of albums and a prodigious live presence in the embers of their burning wake. en är för mycket och tusen aldrig nog (English translation: “One is too much and a thousand is not enough”) finds Dungen’s core four members Gustav Ejstes, Reine Fiske, Mattias Gustavsson, and Johan Holmegard in pure form, their now decades deep collaboration in total focus and elevated to new heights unobstructed by the spirits that once haunted and shaped the band’s music. [An indie store exclusive burgundy color vinyl pressing is available.]
Lamb Of God – Omens CD/LP (Epic)
Produced by longtime collaborator Josh Wilbur (Korn, Megadeath), Omens is (according to press sheet) Lamb Of God’s most diverse affair. Densely muscular with a pessimistic eye toward inner struggles and global affairs alike, Omens is a furious entry in the Lamb Of God’s angry catalog. “The world is crazy and keeps changing. Omens is a reaction to the state of the world,” explains vocalist D. Randall Blythe. “It’s a very pissed-off record.”
Lissie – Carving Canyons CD/LP (Lionboy)
Lissie’s Carving Canyons finds the acclaimed singer-songwriter digging deep to carry on through life’s many uncertainties. The singer-songwriter’s fifth album is her most personal expression yet, with twelve songs that chart the ripples caused by heartbreak and loneliness as well as what happens when the soul perseveres amidst pain. Carving Canyons is as deeply felt as Lissie’s music has ever been, with sumptuous production and indelible melodies that will surely stand the test of time. [An indie store exclusive translucent orange color vinyl pressing is available.]
Nora O’Connor – My Heart CD (Pravda)
Nora O’Connor’s dance card has been jam-packed in recent years, as she’s toured and recorded with The Decemberists, Neko Case, and The New Pornographers, among others. She finally found her way back to the studio to write and record music of her own. The result is My Heart, ten songs of pure Nora, a stunning reflection of her eclectic taste and spectacular talent.
Pushing play on Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet, it is easy to imagine that it is the year 1998, and your cool older sister has returned from her freshman year at college only to hand you the sort of mind-altering mixtape out of which lifelong rock fanatics are born. It is the sort of record Beck might have made in his prime, if you swapped out the hip-hop and delta blues of Odelay for midwestern emo, Scottish power-pop, and the sort of all-American indie that functions as “classic rock” for this cherubic cohort.
Listening to Disq navigate the myriad twists and turns of their new album can feel akin to an attempted processing of our endless poly-crisis, where each new catastrophe and atrocity jostle for position at the top of the timeline. With their new album, Disq take a valiant stand against the temptation of complacency. As for that “someplace quiet?” It will have to wait… it’s about to get loud in here.
Component System With the Auto Reverse is the newest full-length outing from acclaimed rapper Open Mike Eagle. It comes introduced by the single “Multi-Game Arcade Cabinet,” produced by Illingsworth and featuring R.A.P. Ferreira, Still Rift and Video Dave. “My apartment was a dream dungeon,” Mike explains. “Myself and my two brothers Dave and Rift started making product in my dining room every week. One day R.A.P. Ferreira and a mystery brother came through. We put on an Illingsworth beat and we all made product together. The mystery brother’s product made us all cry, so we took his part off and slid the rest back together. We did something different with the mystery brother’s part.”
Say She She – Prism CD/LP (Colemine)
The highly anticipated debut LP from Say She She – an all-female discodelic soul band that will transport you with their dreamy harmonies, catchy hooks and uptempo grooves. The band’s sound is a hat tip to late ‘70s girl groups with the three strong female lead voices of Piya Malik (featured in El Michels Affair, and backing singer for Chicano Batman), Nya Gazelle Brown, and Sabrina Cunningham – whose vocals soar through a set doused heavily with funky bass lines, rhythmic wah guitar, melodic synths, and lilting bansuri flute lines, bursting into a seamless blend of dreamy harmonies and catchy hooks. [An indie store exclusive pink color vinyl pressing is available.]
Indigo Sparke – Hysteria CD/2xLP+MP3 (Sacred Bones)
Indigo Sparke’s majestic second full-length album Hysteria is a sweeping work, one that possesses a rare, reflective power. On it, she examines love, loss, her history, and the emotional upheaval surrounding those sensations: her words tell the stories, and the sounds act them out. It’s a diary built for big stages. [Indie color options are available.]
Beyoncé – Renaissance 2xLP (Columbia)
Recently released on CD – now available on vinyl. Seventh album by the R&B and pop superstar. Includes the single “Break My Soul”. 180gm in deluxe gatefold packaging with a collectable (1 of 3 randomized) poster in a hard slipcase.
Bitchin Bajas – Bajascillators LP/Cassette (Drag City)
Bajascillators arrives almost five years since their last official full-length, 2017’s Bajas Fresh. In the eight years prior to Bajas Fresh, Bitchin Bajas issued seven albums, plus cassettes, EPs, singles… wave after wave of analogue synth tones and zones extending into a stratospheric arc. Each release its own headspace, shape, and timbre, each one sliding naturally into their implacable, eternal gene pool.
Ezra Furman – All Of Us Flames LP+MP3 (ANTI-)
As a singer, songwriter, and author whose incendiary music has soundtracked the Netflix show Sex Education, Ezra Furman has for years woven together stories of queer discontent and unlikely, fragile intimacies. She has a knack for zeroing in on the light that sparks when struggling people find each other and ease each other’s course. All Of Us Flames widens that focus to a communal scope, painting transformative connections among people who unsettle the stories power tells to sustain itself. Produced by John Congleton in L.A., All Of Us Flames unleashes Furman’s songwriting in an open, vivid sound world whose boldness heightens the music’s urgency. The record arrives as the third installment in a trilogy of albums, beginning with 2018’s Springsteen-inflected road saga Transangelic Exodus and continuing with the punk rock fury of 2019’s Twelve Nudes.
Grant Green – Feelin’ The Spirit [Reissue/1962] LP (Blue Note)
Grant Green was Feelin’ The Spirit on this deeply soulful 1962 date that found the great guitarist interpreting a set of spirituals with a state of the art modern jazz line-up featuring Herbie Hancock on piano, Butch Warren on bass, Billy Higgins on drums plus Garvin Masseaux on tambourine. Part of Blue Note’s Tone Poet vinyl reissue series, remastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog master tapes, pressed on 180gm vinyl at RTI, and packaged in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket.
L7 – The Beauty Process – Triple Platinum [Reissue/1996] LP (Real Gone Music)
L7 wasn’t just one of the best all-female bands of the late ’80s and ’90s; they were one of the best bands, period, paving the way for the grunge and riot grrrl movements with killer songs, crunching riffs, and badass attitude.
Mac Miller – Macadelic [Reissue/2012] 2xLP (Rostrum)
Double silver color vinyl pressing housed in embossed cover. Includes 11” x 17” poster. 10th anniversary edition. Macadelic was the seventh mixtape by rapper Mac Miller, originally released in 2012. The album includes the hit single “Loud”.
Old Time Relijun – Musicking LP (K. Records)
Released last November on CD – now available on vinyl. Old Time Relijun conduct sweaty, compulsively danceable performances that never fail to inflame. Their songs are simple, but no one in the world could imitate them. Their albums are packed with sing-along hits mixed with sonic experiments and cosmic jests. The loose swagger belies years of practice, fastidious arrangements and a gut-level understanding of musical how and why.
Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry LP (G.O.O.D. Music)
Recently released on CD – now available on vinyl. Pusha T returns with his highly anticipated fourth studio album, It’s Almost Dry. Picking up where his Grammy-nominated album Daytona left off, Pusha stays true to his roots with his signature snarl, razor-sharp lyrics, and menacing beats. Produced entirely by Pharrell Williams and Kanye West, It’s Almost Dry features an all-star cast including Jay-Z, Ye, Pharrell, Kid Cudi, Lil Uzi and more.
Tom Waits – Blood Money (20th Anniversary Edition) LP+MP3 (ANTI-)
2002’s Blood Money is based on the true story of Woyzeck, a conscripted German soldier, who murders the mother of his child after being driven mad by army drug experiments. This is a darkly rhythmic record, illuminating life’s bleak carnival with songs like “Misery Is The River Of The World” and “God’s Away On Business” and includes the melancholic beauty of “All The World Is Green” and “The Part You Throw Away”. Marimba, bass clarinet, trumpet, viola, cello, calliope, and log drums form the core group of instruments. “Blood Money is flesh and bone, earthbound,” said Waits of the record. “The songs are rooted in reality: jealousy, rage, the human meat wheel…They are more carnal. Kathleen and I are well suited to this material. She is hilarious, blasphemous, and ominous. I like a beautiful song that tells you terrible things.” [Several colorways are available, including an indie store 180gm metallic silver pressing. A gold color vinyl reissue of Alice is due October 21.]