AIMS Marketing Program/ Featured Titles Promoted This Week:

Chicano Batman – Notebook Fantasy CD/LP (ATO)

Since forming in 2008, Chicano Batman has followed their own visionary impulses to tremendous heights—a journey that began at local dive bars and recently saw them co-headlining the legendary Hollywood Bowl. In the making of Notebook Fantasy, Chicano Batman worked with producer John Congleton (Erykah Badu, Death Cab For Cutie, St. Vincent) to double down on their hyper-creative tendencies, discovering new dimensions of their prismatic music while infusing the lyrics with an unflinching honesty. [A limited-edition clear vinyl pressing is available.]

Friko – Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here CD/LP (ATO)

Adding to Chicago’s long lineage of forward-thinking indie rock, Friko transform each song into a moment of collective catharsis. On their full-length debut, vocalist/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger sustain the combustible energy of their break-out single “Crimson To Chrome”, merging elements of post-punk, chamber-pop and experimental rock, magnifying their music’s exhilarating power with a barrage of spirited ensemble vocals. Poetic, explosive, and sublimely raw in feeling.

Ride – Interplay CD/2xLP/Cassette (Wichita Recordings)

Everything feels like it has been leading to Interplay, Ride’s seventh album, the third since their 2015 reunion. It’s the sound of the group connecting all the dots, taking the frenzied guitar attacks, hypnotic grooves, and dreamy melodic hooks of their early work, and setting it to a more expansive sonic template, one that takes in synth flourishes, psychedelic folk, electronic beats, and noir-pop soundscapes. Interplay flows from start to finish, at times urgent and formidable, at others wistful and melancholic. It’s the sound of a great British band hitting a second peak. It’s a record about perseverance, about sticking together, about finding a way forward. Nine years after coming back together, Ride keeps rewriting their story. [An indie store exclusive blue color vinyl pressing is available.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for March 29, 2024

AIMS Marketing Program/ Featured Titles Promoted This Week:

Gary Clark Jr. – JPEG RAW CD/LP (WB)

Gary Clark Jr.’s new album JPEG RAW, his fourth studio release, marks a grand step in his musical evolution. While retaining the deep and true resonance of his blues foundations and guitar virtuosity with subtlety yet conviction, he reaches well beyond this time. The emphasis here is on song and studio craft without losing the rawness of his young legend. The music is dense and adventurous with a more cohesive synthesis of his eclectic musical palette. Hip samples, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Boy Williamson decorate flourishes of African, world music, even jazz while merging with blues, rock, R&B, and rap; familiar areas he has ventured before, this time with more unity forging a fresh new style. Clark’s lyrics are pointed, deeply personal, outspoken, and socially conscious with occasional forays into rap and spoken word from Clark himself. The sonics are immersive verging on modern groove-oriented psychedelia with hip-hop driven beats in verses giving way to anthemic choruses, rich with power-chording and wide fuzz riffage. [Available on regular and deluxe vinyl. An indie store exclusive colorway is also available.]

Sam Evian – Plunge CD/LP (Flying Cloud Recordings)

Plunge is Sam Evian’s fourth studio album and the debut on his new imprint Flying Cloud Recordings. Joined by his closest friends and collaborators (including Liam Kazar, Sean Mullins, El Kempner of Palehound and Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief), the album was tracked live to tape in the early winter months of 2023 over a 10-day period at his quaint Flying Cloud Recording studio tucked away in the Catskills Mountains. With a wide-open recording approach, the result is Evian’s best album to date: a cathartic rock record that melds power pop, iridescent guitar, raucous psychedelia, and Sam’s now sought-after grooves. The music is both fresh and familiar, sonically inspired by his penchant for early ‘70s production and creatively propelled by the free-spirited process depicted in the Beatles documentary Get Back. [An indie store exclusive translucent marble blue color vinyl pressing is available.]

Sierra Ferrell – Trail Of Flowers CD/LP (Rounder)

One of the brightest young luminaries in roots music today, Sierra Ferrell brings a dose of beautifully strange magic to everything she touches. On her new album Trail Of Flowers, brought to life with producer Eddie Spear (Zach Bryan, Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton) and additional production by Gary Paczosa (Alison Krauss, Dwight Yoakam, Gillian Welch), she expands her sound while deepening the urgency of her songs, often revealing a wealth of wisdom within her wildly imaginative storytelling. [An indie store exclusive blue color vinyl pressing is available.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for March 22, 2024

AIMS Marketing Program/ Featured Titles Promoted This Week:

The Black Crowes – Happiness Bastards CD/LP (Silver Arrow)

The Black Crowes are leaving the bullshit of the past. 15 years after their last album of original music, the Robinson Brothers present Happiness Bastards – their 10th studio album. Some may say the project has been several tumultuous years in the making, but it’s arriving at just the right time. Call it brotherly love or destiny that brought them back together; the highly anticipated record consecrating the reunion of this legendary band just may be the thing that saves rock & roll. In a time where the art form is buried beneath the corporate sheen of its successors, The Black Crowes are biting back with the angst of words left unsaid penned on paper and electrified by guitar strings, revealing stripped, bare-boned rock & roll. No gloss, no glitter. [Two indie store exclusive editions are available: CD and 180gm clear vinyl.]

Gouge Away – Deep Sage CD/LP (Deathwish Inc.)

Deep Sage, Gouge Away’s third studio album, started coming together in 2019 during sound checks and in small pockets of downtime between tours. In early 2020, they demoed with Brok Mende in an unassuming storage unit in Orlando. They pulled influence not only from the nostalgia of the bands they grew up listening to but also developed the sense of urgency, noise, and introspective lyrics they felt most represented them. Those demos helped shape the songs into the finished record that Deep Sage would become. The album was recorded with Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden East in March 2023 completely analog and almost entirely live. Unpolished and far from being over-produced, this is what the heart of Gouge Away has always been. [Two color vinyl pressings are available: clear; and indie store exclusive black w/ blue.]

Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well CD/LP (Interscope)

The music on Deeper Well, the seven-time Grammy winner’s fifth album, is almost chimeric. Rolling acoustic guitars, puffy clouds of strings and synth, warm bass punctuation, layered harmonies, moments of Celtic melody and plenty of room on the tracks for Musgraves’ silvery vocals. On the bright, almost folky title track, the 30-something songstress surveys her life and priorities, recognizing what feeds her, drains her and even examines the childhood she’s left behind on her way to now. Saturn returns, cardinals embody a dead friend, love is given and taken, streets rush by belongings are packed and old chapters deserted, new love blooms, jade bracelets serve as talismans, deep lessons emerge, small details define everything, the woods are a refuge and New York City serves as the same gleaming beacon as Oz. [Two indie store exclusive editions are available: translucent w/ splatter color vinyl; and a deluxe CD version with photo cards and lyric book. A cream color vinyl pressing is also available.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for March 15, 2024