AVEY TARE – 7s CD/LP (Domino)
During the first week of Jan ’21, Avey Tare began making regular drives to his friend Adam McDaniel’s Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, NC to give guts and flesh and color to the skeletal demos he’d made at home the year prior. The plot for 7s, Avey’s fourth solo album, was set: trusting, intuitive, exploratory collaboration among friends, after a Winter without it. These songs are like overstuffed jelly jars, cracking so that the sweetness oozes out into unexpected shapes. Still, the sweetness—that is, Avey’s compulsory hooks—remains at the center, the joy inside these Rorschach blots. If Animal Collective has forever been defined by its charming inscrutability, Avey surrenders to a new intimacy and candor with 7s.

SCREAMING FEMALES – Desire Pathway CD/LP (Don Giovanni)
Now a band for half the lifetime of its members, Screaming Females have long been pounding out their own Desire Pathway. Formed in 2005 in New Brunswick, NJ, the trio has consistently created a hearty, surprising mix of indie-, alt-, punk- and stoner-rock, all with their original line-up of Marissa Paternoster (guitar), “King Mike” Mike Abbate (bass) and Jarrett Dougherty (drums). Released on February 17th by Don Giovanni Records, Desire Pathway was recorded at Minnesota’s Pachyderm Studios (where Nirvana recorded In Utero) and produced by Matt Bayles (Foxing, Pearl Jam, Mastodon, et al). Bright and full, the album captures the band at a time when nothing was certain other than their abiding desire to make music together.

PILE – All Fiction LP (Exploding In Sound)
“I want to do what makes me feel like a kid: experimenting, having fun, and trying to discover new things about this work,” says Pile’s Rick Maguire about All Fiction. It’s his band’s eighth record, and one that finds the ambitious group assembling its most texturally complex material yet—despite the fraught inspiration underscoring its restive lyrics. Alongside the blistering drums and scorched-earth riffs that first galvanized Pile’s dedicated fanbase, the band has incorporated elegiac strings, mystifying vocal corrosions, and haunting synths. From the creeping fear of cinematic opener “It Comes Closer” to the euphorically ascending keys on ego-shattering closer “Neon Gray,” All Fiction is an ornate, carefully paced study on the subjectivity of perception, the data-shaping despotism of big tech, and the connections between anxiety and death. In its most vital moments, it’s also a resolute recommitment to the restorative significance of art and imagination.

BOOGARINS – Manchaca CD/LP (Overseas Artists Recordings)
Following up their remote LEVITATION sessions, the world-touring Brazilian band Boogarins spent the pandemic picking up the pieces, and shuffling the deck. Unreleased gems like “Far and Safe” had the lyrics reformulated by John Schmersal (Brainiac, Enon, Vertical Scratchers, and Caribou) and is wonderfully sung by Erika Wennerstrom (Heartless Bastards). Available for the first time as a complete set, this double-album features candid moments of the creative process of the band; an intimate look into how Boogarins shaped their most recent two studio releases and what was lost (but now found) along the way.

NICK CAVE – Good Son LP [Reissue/1990] (BMG)
NICK CAVE – Dig Lazarus Dig LP [Reissue/2008] (BMG)
NICK CAVE – No More Shall We Part LP [Reissue/2001] (BMG)
180g LP reissues

BILLY HOWERDEL – What Normal LP (BMG)
What Normal Was is a studio album by Billy Howerdel, guitarist of A Perfect Circle. The album is his first to be directly released under his own name, and his second solo album overall, after releasing his prior album, Keep Telling Myself It’s Alright (2008), under the pseudonym Ashes Divide 14 years prior.

MELANIE MARTINEZ – Cry Baby LP [Reissue/2015] (Atlantic)
Melanie Martinez’s 2017 double-platinum debut album Cry Baby has now been expanded to a two LP set featuring the full deluxe album tracking listing. Three songs (“Play Date”, “Teddy Bear” and “Cake”) have been added to the album’s original 13 tracks while the enclosed booklet has expanded to 20 pages featuring new illustrations.

PETER BARCLAY – I’m Not Your Toy LP (Numero)
The diminutive Peter Barclay was that guy in early ’90s Oakland, the eccentric with the most style, the most talent, the local magician. This self-taught musical wizard recorded at home and produced two barely-released albums, 1990’s dreamlike Acceptance and 1992’s synth pop What Kind Of World, winning over the few who heard them. But fame outside his small circle was not to be, and Barclay was lost in the late-’90s crest of the AIDS epidemic. Rediscovered for a new generation, this is queer music at its finest… Welcome to the world of Peter Barclay.

DEERHOOF – Apple O’ LP [Reissue/2003] (Joyful Noise)
Deerhoof’s fan-favorite breakthrough album, Apple O’, gets a 20th-anniversary edition after years of being out of print in the physical realm. They say the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge was actually a pomegranate. But Pomegranate O’ did not sound as catchy. Of course, knowledge of what, exactly? Could be the serene and orderly discipline of music, it could be the ability to instantaneously destroy the entire species in an apocalyptic fireball. This album is a love story. It is about Satomi’s mom being a Japanese girl when Truman got that ecstatic glint in his eye and blew up chunks of her country in a mushroom cloud, and next thing you know Satomi has moved to San Francisco and taken over an American noise-rock band. It is also about a different US president with an ecstatic glint in his eye, selling a criminal invasion with lies about weapons of mass destruction. This edition of Apple O’ is on vinyl the color of cotton candy accompanied by a bonus 7″ of previously unreleased live recordings.

FAUNESS – Golden Ass LP (Cascine)
The Golden Ass is a dreamy electroacoustic infusion of folk, country, pop and soft rock, with an undercurrent of ambient, sometimes psychedelic melancholy. Listen closely and you’ll hear traces of the millennial RnB that soundtracked Fauness’ teen years. Her biggest influences are three singers who all arose in the 1970s: Sandy Denny, Bonnie Raiit and the lesser known Valerie Carter. Crackling vinyl atmospherics, a Roland CR-78 drum machine, and a sample of a bong being pulled leads the buzzed tempo of teen angst and emotional numbing on “Grape & Grain”. Live drums and a solid groove carry “High” through a late-night slow dance, as Cora’s layered vocals recall snapshots from an aimless walk at dusk. At once deeply personal and universal in its themes, the record is a gorgeous journey deep into the mind of a perpetual outsider. Mirren Kessling’s cover—featuring a nude Fauness with shiny latex gloves and thigh-highs, while embracing a donkey—reminds us that no-one’s ever lonely in the worlds we create for ourselves.

COMING NEXT WEEK!
GORILLAZ – Cracker Island CD/LP
NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL – Box Set LP
SHAME – Food For Worms CD/LP
ALGIERS – Shook CD/LP
LUCERO – Should’ve Learned By Now CD/LP
US GIRLS – Bless This Mess CD/LP
SAM GENDEL – Cookup CD/LP
GINA BIRCH – I Play My Bass Loud CD/LP
LOGIC – College Park CD
IRIS DEMENT – Workin On A World CD?LP
BRIA – Cuntry Covers Vol 2 CD/LP
KOLEZANKA – Alone With The Sound The Mind Makes CD/LP
SUPERCHUNK – Everything Hurts 7”
CHURCH – Hypnogogue CD
NAUGHTY BY NATURE – 19 Naughty III LP reissue
HOLY HIVE – Harping LP
DAVID BOWIE – Divine Symmetry LP
CULT – LOVE LP reissue
JENNY O – Spectra LP
MARS VOLTA – De-Loused In The Comatorium LP reissue
MARS VOLTA – Frances The Mute LP reissue
NOFX – Double Album LP
OWEN PALLETT – Has A Good Home LP
OWEN PALLETT – He Poos Clouds LP
OWEN PALLETT – Two EPs LP
OPEN MIKE EAGLE – Component System With The Auto Reverse LP
GUIDED BY VOICES – Sandbox LP
AUTECHRE – Confield LP reissue
AUTECHRE – Draft 7.3 LP reissue
BAD PLUS – Self Titled LP
CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE – Prime LP