STAFF PICKS
Lindsay – American Analog Set and Helado Negro
Dario – Itasca and Thee Conductor w/Bonnie Prince Billy
Kimber – American Analog Set
Jake –  Don Caballero and Glass Beach
Zach – Glass Beach, Helado Negro, and Itasca

American Analog Set – New Drifters 5xLP (Numero)
Limited-edition green with white spilt colorway. Gathered here are The Fun Of Watching Fireworks, From Our Living Room To Yours, and The Golden Band albums, garnished with period B-sides, outtakes, and demos. Remastered from the original analog tapes, this early-career spanning 5xLP box includes lyrics, photos, and ephemera from the before times.

Burial – Dreamfear/Boy Sent From Above 12″ (XL)
New 12” from Burial – ‘Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above’. Available on XL Recordings.

Helado Negro – Phasor CD/LP (4AD)
While Phasor feels loose and expansive, it’s Lange’s tightest collection-deep, atmospheric, meticulously executed. It’s aligned with 2019’s This Is How You Smile, which found him incorporating more upfront drums and bass and focused grooves. Sequentially, it follows the expansive hour-plus long Far In, whose title was inspired by new age legend Laraaji and created in lockdown, in Marfa, Texas – lyrically digging into connection and focused on being in quarantine. Phasor, in turn, is an homage to going outside again. It’s a returning-to-life record, remembering what the sun feels like and letting it warm your skin.

Usher – Coming Home CD/LP (mega/gamma)
Coming Home marks the creative reunion of Usher and L.A. Reid, who haven’t worked together since 2004’s Diamond certified Confessions. The album was mainly recorded in Atlanta, GA with many of Atlanta’s hottest producers including Sean Garrett, Lil John, The Avila Brothers, Mel & Mus, Tricky Stewart, Rico Love, The-Dream, Jermaine Dupri, D Mile among many others. Indie store exclusive ‘peach sky’ vinyl is available.

Madi Diaz – Weird Faith CD/LP+MP3 (ANTI-)
Madi Diaz has been making records and writing songs professionally since the mid-2000s, but it wasn’t until she released 2021’s History Of A Feeling that she felt the glare of wider notoriety. It wasn’t her debut album, but it certainly felt like it.  She made her daytime and nighttime television debuts, embarked on her first solo tour since 2012, and supported Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen on tour, and collaborated with them on record. Harry Styles handpicked Diaz to open for him in arenas and stadiums in North America, and was so taken by her captivating live show, he asked her to be a member of his touring band, to sing alongside him all over Europe and the UK, as well as continuing to open the show in various cities. After three months on the road touring internationally, Diaz is back in Nashville, and now releases her new album, Weird Faith. Featuring Kacey Musgraves and produced by Sam Cohen and Konrad Snyder, Weird Faith is expansive and exploratory, showcasing her growth as a songwriter and speaking earnestly about the fears that come from falling in love again. [An indie store exclusive opaque green color vinyl pressing is available.]

The Seatbelts – The Real Folk Blues Legends: Cowboy Bebop – All Composed By Yoko Kanno 2xLP (Milan)
The Seatbelts  –Cowboy Bebop: Songs For The Cosmic Sofa – All Composed By Yoko Kanno LP (Milan)
Color vinyl pressings. Originally aired in 1998, Cowboy Bebop became a critical and commercial success both in Japanese and international markets (most notably in the United States), garnered several major anime and science fiction awards upon its release, and received wide acclaim for its style, characters, story, voice acting, animation, and soundtrack. Seatbelts’s repertoire covers not only jazz but also rock, electronic, funk, blues, heavy metal, country, and J- pop.

The Chisel – What A Fucking Nightmare CD/LP (Pure Noise)
The Chisel is back with more oi/punk/hardcore delivered by members of Chubby And The Gang, Violent Reaction, etc., bringing a whopping 16 songs to this sophomore full-length. [An indie store exclusive coke bottle green w/ black & white color vinyl pressing is available.]

Glass Beach – Plastic Death CD/LP/Cassette (Run For Cover)
Plastic Death – the second album by Glass Beach – is a follow-up record almost five years in the making. The band’s 2019 debut, aptly titled the first Glass Beach album, has over the years grown a cult fanbase for its unflinching depiction of queer life as mediated through social media, its oversized ambition, and its scrappy yet adventurous production. And while it took some time to arrive, plastic death sounds like the logical expansion of all the things that made their first album so special. [A limited-edition orange color vinyl pressing is available.]

Sonic Youth – Walls Have Ears CD/LP/CASS [Reissue/1986]
Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band’s story, Sonic Youth’s Walls Have Ears appeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité on par with elements of side B of ‘Master Dik’ to come later. With a bit of complexity to the situation of the release itself. Deleted as quickly as it appeared, it’s now issued for the first time officially under the band’s auspices.

Itasca – Imitation Of War CD/LP (A Paradise Of Bachelors)
On Imitation Of War, songwriter and guitarist Kayla Cohen advances Itasca into rockier terrain, with a suite of smoky nocturnes and uneasy idylls surveying, with refreshing urgency, mythologies and psychologies both classical and personal. Co-produced by Robbie Cody (Wand, Behavior), these ten sturdy set-pieces represent the loosest, leanest, and most smolderingly electric guitar-forward recordings of Cohen’s deepening catalog.

Meat Puppets – Meat Puppets II [Reissue/1984] CD/LP (Megaforce)
Meat Puppets have teamed up with Megaforce Records for remastered reissues of the band’s classic SST Records output spanning 1981 through 1989. A reissue of their seminal 1984 album Meat Puppets II – featuring the well-known numbers “Lake of Fire” and “Plateau” – is now available.]

Orgōne – Chimera CD/LP (Three Palms)
Orgōne is a pillar of West Coast soul music, maintaining an unmissable touring presence for more than a decade. The group’s arresting intensity, impeccable playing style, and undeniable, irresistible chemistry have earned them the reputation as one of the tightest bands of the modern era. Fresh off of doubling as the studio band for discodelic sensation Say She She and circling the globe as the live band for their wildly successful world tour, Orgōne is back in California and coming in hot with Chimera, a fire-breathing spectacle of psychedelic Afro-soul. Produced by Sergio Rios (Neal Francis, Say She She), Chimera is an electrifying, dream-like odyssey, tripping through the hazy swamps of New Orleans, weaving textures of entrancing voodoo soul, thrumming Afro-funk, and stoney psych-rock. [A limited-edition yellow color vinyl pressing is available.]

Chelsea Wolfe – She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She CD (Loma Vista)
“The impression left by Wolfe’s [recent] trail of extracurriculars seems a lot like that of an artist making an attempt to put as much distance between herself and where she’d been. Her first album in five years, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, gives added weight to that idea through songs of shedding one’s skin and setting ablaze the most self-destructive parts of the self. In a statement she described it as summoning “change, growth, and guidance,” and has elsewhere referred to it as a ‘rebirth’, though in doing so she hasn’t embraced a brighter tonal palette or a Canva portfolio full of trite aphorisms. In her saga of self-improvement and a newfound sobriety, Chelsea Wolfe has delivered one of the most stunningly dark albums of her career.” – Jeff Terich, Treblezine [Vinyl edition – including an indie store exclusive blue colorway – due February 16.]

Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand [Reissue/2004] LP (Domino)
Limited orange and black color vinyl pressing. Winner of the 2004 Mercury Music Prize, Franz Ferdinand’s debut album was an instant hit. The Glasgow four-piece channeled throwback art-rock through an early noughties Britpop-revival prism. A must listen.

Negative Approach – Negative Approach [Reissue/1982] 7” (Touch & Go)
Back in 1981, Negative Approach (along with The Meatmen and the Necros) were one of the dominant forces in the Detroit underground. The ravages of the Motor City made it a perfect breeding ground for this cacophony, later termed “hardcore.” Hordes of punks packed the legendary Freezer Theatre to hear John Brannon’s jagged, gruff vocals, the McCulloch brothers’ (Rob and Graham) guitar/bass gnash, and OP Moore’s pounding fury. 10-songs on one 7”. Do the math.

A$AP Ferg – Trap Lord [Reissue/2013] 2xLP (Sony Legacy)
10 years ago, A$AP Ferg burst onto the scene with Trap Lord – an album that embodied the energy of Harlem and showcased Ferg’s magnetic street showmanship. From anthems like the jubilant “Shabba”, to “Dump Dump” and the star-studded “Work (Remix)”, this album brought a youth-fueled fire. To top it off, Ferg enlisted rap icons Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Onyx to contribute their own masterful touches. The perfect marriage of old and new.

Various Artists – 200% Dynamite! [Reissue/1999] 2xLP (Soul Jazz)
Carrying on perfectly from 100% Dynamite, this second compilation continues to trace the history of Jamaican reggae and the influence of American styles such as funk and jazz had on this music. Featured here are serious funk and rocksteady tunes from the likes of The Skatalites and Johnny Osbourne through to Jamaican jazz from masters such as Tommy McCook and Byron Lee, as well as some serious dub from the likes of Augustus Pablo, King Tubby, and Jackie Mittoo. New bonus tracks on this new 2023 edition include seminal dancehall party cuts Sister Nancy’s “One Two” and Chaka Demus and Pliers’ “Murder She Wrote”, alongside classic soul to reggae covers including cuts of Marlena Shaw’s “Women Of The Ghetto’” and Odyssey’s “Don’t Tell Me Tell Her”.

Don Caballero – American Don LP (purple) Touch and Go
Originally released in 2000, American Don is the band’s fourth full-length album for Touch and Go Records. The first record, For Respect, was all dense and menacing bricks of sound that built severe structures as cheerful as the Berlin Wall. That gave way to a second record Don Caballero 2, just as solid, yet girding melodies skyscraperly, de-emphasizing denseness in exchange for taking up a large area. “Math rock,” a definition for which there is little to no agreement, became an easily recognizable concept and word. The members of Don Caballero sought to avoid those markers and released their third record What Burns Never Returns, where time signatures were harder and harder to follow and form was more confusing. After redefining their sound in these more protean terms, a hard rock thread still remained that bound all of the band’s efforts up to that point. American Don marred their relationship to “heavy” as much as What Burns troubled the band’s relationship to “math rock.” 

DJ Harrison – Shades Of Yesterday LP (Stones Throw)
Shades of Yesterday is a brand new covers record from 3x Grammy Award-nominated producer, musician + songwriter, DJ Harrison. DJ Harrison produced and played almost every instrument on the record himself, making it a truly personal tribute to his musical heroes. Shades of Yesterday is made up of some of Harrison’s favorite tracks, which represent fond memories of his upbringing in Richmond, VA, as well as his journey to becoming a musician himself. The album includes several re-imaginings of songs by The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Ohio Players, Donald Fagen + many more!

Thee Conductor w/Bonnie Prince Billy – Ennoia LP (Spaceflight)
Austin musician Jason Butler returns as Thee Conductor, his musical alter-ego, on Ennoia, a new song cycle of poignant compositions and contemplative beauty. Known as an artist who frequently collaborates on his releases, Butler has again enlisted Will Oldham (as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) to sing, this time on every track. Elsewhere, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche makes a couple of appearances as do multi-instrumentalist Christopher Cox, longtime collaborator Kevin Shea, and GRAMMY-winning ensemble The Tosca String Quartet. 

British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music? CD/LP (Rough Trade)
The 15th anniversary reissue of Sea Power’s Mercury nominated album, Do You Like Rock Music? The limited-edition LP/CD is housed in gatefold glow in the dark sleeve with orange vinyl & a picture disc, plus sleeve notes written by Roy Wilkinson.

Mike – Burning Desire CD (10k)
Released last week on LP, this week, available on CD with bonus disc. Burning Desire is the ninth studio album by MIKE, released via his own 10k label. The expansive new record has guest features from Earl Sweatshirt, Larry June, Liv.e, Venna, Lila Ramani (from Crumb), El Cousteau, Niontay, mark william lewis, Klein, and TAKA. A dark romantic horror with comedic twists. It tells the tale of a fire deeply rooted in revenge and devastation, masked with an intricate beauty. 

The Germs – Whisky Hong Kong Cafe LP (Cleopatra)
Special limited edition 12″ on blue vinyl featuring live performances by seminal L.A. punk band, The Germs! 

COMING NEXT WEEK!
HEALTH – Rat Wars CD/LP
IDLES – Tangk CD/LP
EARL SWEATSHIRT + THE ALCHEMIST – Voir Dire CD/LP
GRANDADDY – Blu Wav CD/LP
CHROMEO – Adult Contemporary CD/LP
CODEINE + BEDHEAD – Atmosphere/Disorder 7″
LAURA JANE GRACE – Hole In My Head CD/LP
MOLLY LEWIS – On The Lips CD/LP
CHELSEA WOLFE – She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She LP