Social Media Program Title Released This Week:
Robert Glasper featuring H.E.R. and Meshell Ndegeocello – Better Than I Imagined 12” (Loma Vista)
Limited-edition picture disc 45rpm vinyl pressing. Grammy-winning pianist and producer Robert Glasper enlisted R&B star H.E.R. for his new track, “Better Than I Imagined”. The song also closes on a spoken-word verse from singer/songwriter/bassist Meshell Ndegeocello. It’s a sultry, piano-driven song that contemplates Black love from the perspective of a strained relationship that defies convention. “Thought it’d be worse, cuz it hurts me/ But still I can’t see myself with no one else/ Cuz it was better than imagined,” sings H.E.R. on the chorus. In Ndegeocello’s part, she recites a short narrative of a message left on an answering machine.
Marketing Program/ Banner/ Listening Station Titles Promoted This Week:
The Dropkick Murphys – Turn Up That Dial CD/LP (Born And Bred)
On Dropkick Murphys’ new album, Turn Up That Dial, the Celtic punk outfit boots in the front door of 2021 with a record that punches you square in the face and says, in the words of co-frontman Ken Casey, “Get up, get out of those sweatpants you’ve been wearing for the last year… better times are ahead – let’s f**kin’ go!” You can expect more gang vocals, pumping pipes, bouncing rhythms and choruses meant for singing in unison in a beer-soaked bar. The Boston band’s tenth studio album comes introduced by the previously released singles “Mick Jones Nicked My Pudding”, “Smash Shit Up”, “I Wish You Were Here”, and “Middle Finger”.
Marianne Faithfull with Warren Ellis – She Walks In Beauty CD/2xLP (BMG)
Marianne Faithfull (with composer/multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis) present, She Walks In Beauty, one of the most distinctive albums of her long, extraordinary life and career. Recorded around the earliest days of the COVID-19 lockdown – during which the singer herself became infected and almost died of the disease – She Walks In Beauty fulfills Faithfull’s long-held ambition to record a full album of poetry with music, and features musical friends Nick Cave, Brian Eno, cellist Vincent Ségal and producer-engineer Head (PJ Harvey, Thom Yorke). She Walks In Beauty finds Faithfull drawing deep on the works of Shelley, Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Thomas. Her vocal performances, set to Ellis’ subtle collages of sound, draw out the vibrant living matter in these great poems, renewing them with the complex, lived-in timbres of her voice. It’s both a radical departure and a return to her original inspirations as an artist and performer.
