Marketing Program/ Banner/ Listening Station Titles Promoted This Week:

Alabama Shakes – Sound & Color (Deluxe Edition) CD/2xLP (ATO)

Resisting any notion of a sophomore slump and putting to bed the “revivalist soul” label, Alabama Shakes returned in 2015 with a humdinger. Replete with moody vibes, intricate textures, atmospheric grooves, and confident playing, Sound & Color encompasses blues, psychedelia, R&B, and garage rock while ceding the floor to powerhouse singer Brittany Howard. Expanding on the soulful blues-rock base that made their name, they defy predictable expectations and map an exciting, surprising, and innovative new direction. The album’s twelve songs reveal a band honed by years on the road and drawing from a wide range of influences. This Deluxe Edition reissue features seven bonus tracks pulled from unreleased studio material, B-sides, and live songs cut at the world-renowned Capitol Records Studio A plus revised artwork and new photos. [A limited-edition color vinyl pressing is also available.]

Tori Amos – Ocean To Ocean CD (Verve)

Despite the various crises that have occurred since 2017’s Native Invader, Tori Amos has emerged with Ocean To Ocean, her most personal work in years – an album bursting with warmth and connection, with deep roots in her earliest song writing. Written during the third lockdown in Cornwall in 2021, Ocean To Ocean is a universal story of going to rock bottom and renewing yourself all over again. [Vinyl edition due January 28.]

Archspire – Bleed The Future CD/LP (Season Of Mist)

Following up their mind-bending 2017 album, Relentless Mutation, Archspire unleash their new full-length, Bleed The Future, another unforgiving masterpiece that serves up technical death metal at its most extreme and intricate. The G-force levels of velocity and dizzying technical proficiency reach seemingly impossible heights, defying the laws of physics and pushing human boundaries to the outer limits. Bleed The Future sits at the apex of technical and extreme metal, certifying Archspire’s place among the genre’s masters.

[Read more…] about New Releases for October 29, 2021

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Can’t Swim – Change Of Plans CD/LP (Pure Noise)

Change Of Plans is the culmination of everything Can’t Swim have been building and exploring over the last six years, combining their signature visceral lyricism and cathartic rock sound with influences ranging from the worlds of folk to EDM. Ultimately, the band feel that Change Of Plans is “the most Can’t Swim record yet,” Chris LoPorto says, “All of our endeavors as a band have led us to make what I think is the most honest and transparent album in our discography. We spent way less time recording what we thought we should be writing and put down whatever came naturally. The recording process was certainly the easiest to date as well – we knew what we wanted going into it. I’m constantly writing songs and some of the tracks on Change Of Plans have been in the demo stage for almost four years now so it feels great to finally have them all together on one release.”

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – B-Sides & Rarities: Part II 2xCD/2xLP (Mute)

B-Sides & Rarities Part II is the follow up to 2005’s B-Sides & Rarities. Part II was compiled by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and contains 27 rare and unreleased tracks from 2006-2020, including the first recordings of “Skeleton Tree”, “Girl In Amber” and “Bright Horses”. The song “Vortex” was written and recorded in 2006 by Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos. As the band were never able to define the song as either Grinderman or Bad Seeds, it remained unreleased. “I always liked the original B-Sides & Rarities more than any of our other albums,” Cave shares. “It’s the only one I’d listen to willingly. It seems more relaxed, even a bit nonsensical in places, but with some beautiful songs throughout. There is something, too, about the smallness of certain songs that is closer to their original spirit. B-Sides & Rarities Part II continues this strange and beautiful collection of lost songs from The Bad Seeds.” [A Deluxe vinyl edition collecting both volumes is also available this week.]

John Coltrane – A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle CD/2xLP (Verve)

After nearly six decades, a private recording of a rare, nightclub performance by John Coltrane of his magnum opus, A Love Supreme, is available for the first time. Recorded in late 1965 on the culminating evening of a historic week-long run at The Penthouse in Seattle, A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is a musical revelation of historic importance, capturing Coltrane as he began to expand his classic quartet – adding Pharoah Sanders on second saxophone and Donald Garrett on second bass – and catapulting him into the intense, spiritually focused final phase of his career. The significance of A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is heightened by the fact that Coltrane seldom performed his four-part suite after originally recording it in the studio in 1964. Composed and created as a public declaration of his personal spiritual beliefs and universalist sentiment, it became a best-seller and received a Grammy nod the next year. This fascinating and rare live performance of the full suite is marked by a looser and more improvisational approach and an overriding sense of communal participation – much like a Sunday church service. The lineup featured John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders on saxophones, McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison and Donald (Rafael) Garrett on basses. Carlos Ward, then a young saxophonist just getting started on the scene, sat in as well.

[Read more…] about New Releases for October 22, 2021

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Coldplay – Music Of The Spheres CD/LP (Atlantic)

Coldplay’s ninth studio album, Music Of The Spheres, was produced by hitmaker Max Martin and features twelve tracks, five of which are represented by emojis. The British pop-rock giants follow-up to 2019’s Everyday Life is introduced by the cosmic lead single “Higher Power” and experimental 10-minute closer “Coloratura”, an exhilarating, space-bound epic that includes namechecks for Galileo, Oumuamua and Betelgeuse. The band hints at further sci-fi themes with the note, “Everyone is an alien somewhere.” [A limited-edition color vinyl pressing is also available.]

Norah Jones – I Dream Of Christmas CD/LP (Blue Note)

Norah Jones has been a steady voice of warmth and reassurance for nearly 20 years since her cozy 2002 debut album Come Away With Me became a familiar musical companion for millions of people around the world. Now the nine-time Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and pianist has made her first-ever holiday album with I Dream Of Christmas, a delightful and comforting collection of timeless seasonal favorites and affecting new originals that explore the complicated emotions of our times and our hopes that this holiday season will be full of joy and togetherness.

Toby Keith – Peso In My Pocket CD (Show Dog, LLC)

Singer/songwriter Toby Keith releases his first all-new in more than five years. Peso In My Pocket was co-produced with Kenny Greenberg and features the highest Billboard Country Airplay chart debut of his career with the lead single “Old School”. Though Keith has accomplished much since the 2015 release of 35 MPH Town – perhaps most notably in writing the Clint Eastwood inspired “Don’t Let The Old Man In” – a new studio album was long overdue. Peso In My Pocket has more than a little to do with the worldwide pandemic. “My whole musical career, I haven’t been off the road this long,” Keith says, calling 2020 “a reset button I never would have hit.” [Vinyl edition due December 10.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for October 15, 2021