AIMS Marketing Program/ Featured Titles Promoted This Week:
Blur – The Ballad Of Darren CD/LP (Parlophone)
Britpop legends Blur are back with their first new album in over eight years. The Ballad Of Darren is the band’s ninth studio album overall, their first since 2015’s The Magic Whip, with artwork featuring an image by British photographer Martin Parr. Damon Albarn said, “This is an aftershock record, reflection and comment on where we find ourselves now.” Graham Coxon adds, “The older and madder we get, it becomes more essential that what we play is loaded with the right emotion and intention. Sometimes just a riff doesn’t do the job.” Alex James shares, “For any long-term relationship to last with any meaning you have to be able to surprise each other somehow and somehow we all continue to do that.” Dave Rowntree closes, “It always feels very natural to make music together. With every record we make, the process reveals something new, and we develop as a band. We don’t take that for granted.” The highly anticipated 10-track collection is introduced by lead track “The Narcissist” which The Guardian says, “chugs along to a motorik beat, rising to an anthemic chorus that seems to be reflecting on the band’s career path.” [An indie store exclusive blue color vinyl pressing is available.]
Sam Burton – Dear Departed CD/LP (Partisan)
Dear Departed, the second album from Sam Burton, arose from a time of rebirth. In the last few years, Burton basically started over. He temporarily abandoned the life he’d built in Los Angeles and spent time with friends and family friends in rural Utah and California. After all that time wandering, couch-surfing, and writing, Burton emerged with more than enough material for his sophomore outing. He joined up with producer Jonathan Wilson to craft a more intricate, layered sound that recalled the lived-in yet immediate singer-songwriter albums of the ’60s and ’70s. Together they achieved a sound that didn’t descend into retro pastiche, but rather became an evocative echo, a dream of the past. In scope, Dear Departed finds Burton using a far bigger canvas than on his debut, giving the emotions therein a new sense of urgency and intensity. But the album still has an intimacy to it, like Burton and his backing musicians are crammed onto the corner stage of a smoke-filled bar in a long-lost time.
Lori McKenna – 1988 CD/LP (CN)
Lori McKenna titled her new album 1988 after the year she married her husband, Gene, yet the ten songs within also serve as a love letter to lifelong friendships, people she’s lost, and her family. Recorded with producer Dave Cobb in Savannah, Georgia, 1988 naturally has its nostalgic moments, even if not every ending is a happy one. With more of an electric edge than her past projects, 1988 feels in step with classic ‘90s albums by Sheryl Crow or Gin Blossoms, where the lyrics pulled you in as much as the melody or production. Playing together on acoustic guitars while facing one another in the studio, McKenna and Cobb tracked the album live, giving it a feeling of immediacy and authenticity.
