AIMS Marketing Program/ Featured Titles Promoted This Week:

Gracie Abrams – Good Riddance CD (Interscope)

Gracie Abrams’s debut album Good Riddance, produced and co-written by her frequent collaborator Aaron Dessner of The National, finds Abrams documenting her emotional experience with more precision and impact than ever before. As she narrates the end of a fractured relationship and all the confusion, frustration, and longing that come with it, the 23-year-old artist achieves a new level of lyrical honesty and self-possession – an element fully reflected in her quietly captivating vocal work.

Algiers – Shook CD/2xLP+MP3 (Matador)

The world got shook. So, Algiers formed a crew. The band – who have built one of the most exciting catalogs and cult followings of recent years, with 2020’s There Is No Year described as “electrifying and unpredictable” (The Observer) and “precise, thoughtful and powerful” (NME) – gathered a posse of like-minded artists to create their fourth album, Shook. Stacked with guests spanning icons through to future stars, Shook is a lightning rod for an elusive yet universal energy and feeling. A plurality of voices; a spiritual and geographical homecoming; a strategy of communion in a burning world; the story of an end of a relationship; an Atlanta front porch summer party. Ultimately, it’s a 17-track set of the most mind-expanding and thrilling music that you are likely to hear anytime soon.

Gina Birch – I Play Bass Loud CD/LP (Third Man)

As a founding member and one-half of The Raincoats’ core duo since 1977, Gina Birch is a punk icon with a pop sensibility, an art-schooled adventurer who has painted, filmed, and created music by her own rules for over 45 years – using her visual art to tell stories, charging raw recordings with concepts. Her history converges onto her first solo album, I Play My Bass Loud, its title evoking her singular approach to her instrument as well as an ethos. She won’t hang back or play a supporting role. On I Play My Bass Loud, Gina takes center stage. “The album distils my years of musical, political and artistic life with these genre breaking songs” says Gina Birch, “It’s a personal diary using sounds and lyrics, full of fun, rage and storytelling.” [An indie store exclusive clear vinyl pressing is available.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for February 24, 2023

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

Naima Bock – Giant Palm CD/LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)

The roots of Naima Bock’s music are far reaching. Born in Glastonbury to a Brazilian father and a Greek mother, Naima spent her early childhood in Brazil before eventually returning to England and various homes in South-East London. This heritage combines with more recent pursuits in Naima’s music; from the Brazilian standards that the family would listen to driving to the beach, to the European folk traditions she tapped into on her own, and the pursuits that interest her today – studies in archaeology, work as a gardener, and walking the world’s great trails – Naima’s music draws from family, the earth, and the handing down of music through generations. Naima’s debut album Giant Palm is undoubtedly infused with the Brazilian music of her youth and regular family visits. She found inspiration in “the percussion, the melodies, chords – and particularly the poetic juxtaposition of tragedy and beauty held within the lyrics”. [A limited-edition orange color vinyl pressing is available.]

Fleet Foxes – A Very Lonely Solstice CD/LP+MP3 (ANTI-)

Robin Pecknold brings light to the bleakest of winters with Fleet Foxes’ A Very Lonely Solstice, a 13-track career spanning collection recorded in December 2020, at Brooklyn, NY’s St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church. Now being released for the first time on CD and vinyl, A Very Lonely Solstice captures a poignant moment in time. The recording was originally broadcasted as a live-stream event on the winter solstice of 2020, just days after New York declared a state of emergency tightening restrictions again in response to increasing COVID-19 cases. Pecknold describes the set as “me by myself on the longest night of the year…honoring the loneliness of 2020 with a nylon string and some songs new and old.” [An indie store exclusive clear vinyl pressing is available.]

Charlie Gabriel – Eighty Nine CD (Sub Pop)

Charlie Gabriel’s first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans’ Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band then included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer J.C. Heard. While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader. Since 2006, Gabriel has been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Eighty Nine was different, and not simply due to a smaller ensemble. “We had no particular plan, or any particular insight on what we were gonna do. But we were enjoying what we were doing, jamming, having a musical conversation,” Charlie says, further musing, “Musical conversations cancel out complications.” Eighty Nine includes six standards and three newer pieces on which Gabriel is a writer [Vinyl edition due July 22.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for July 1, 2022

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

Arooj Aftab – Vulture Prince: Deluxe Edition CD/2xLP (Verve)

Deluxe offering of Grammy Best New Artist nominee Arooj Aftab’s breakthrough 2021 album Vulture Prince, featuring Grammy Best Global Music Performance-nominated track “Mohabbat”. Aftab’s remarkable voice, backed by a team of renowned musicians, transports listeners to the composer’s world. Intimate piano and swelling orchestral strings unveil mystical passage into Aftab’s emotionally gripping symphonic world – vast with colorful sounds and transcendent of genre.

Alexisonfire – Otherness CD/2xLP (Dine Alone)

Otherness is the first album in over a decade from the group Rolling Stone declared “put Canadian post-hardcore on the map.” Five guys playing aggressive rock grew to a hockey-arena headlining phenomenon while pushing and pulling between spirited guitar leads, melodic might, and emotional weight. The band never sacrificed the punk soul summoned in beat-up vans and basement shows. Blending their classic sound with new and forward-thinking textures, they produced Otherness themselves. As Revolver Magazine noted in 2019: “It’s hard to overstate the influence Alexisonfire had in post-hardcore through the mid-2000s, their combination of singing and screaming setting the blueprint for many artists to come.” [An indie store exclusive vinyl pressing is available.]

The Animals – The Animals [Reissue/1964] CD/LP (Abkco)

English rhythm and blues group The Animals emerged in 1964 with their debut single “Baby, Let Me Take You Home”, but it was runaway second single, “House Of The Rising Sun” that truly catapulted them to international fame. Eric Burdon’s howling vocals and the dramatic arrangement created arguably the first folk rock hit. Both were featured on the band’s Mickie Most-produced 1964 full-length debut album.

[Read more…] about New Releases for June 24, 2022