Social Media Program Titles Released This Week:

Erasure – The Neon CD/LP (Mute)

English synth/pop duo Erasure (featuring Andy Bell and Vince Clarke) deliver their eighteenth studio album. The Neon is a place that lives in the imagination that we – you and me – put in the real world. It could be a night club, a shop, a city, a cafe, a country, a bedroom, a restaurant, any place at all. The album offers warmth and a brilliant brightness in our strange, silent times. It connects us to our pasts and our futures as it glistens with hope. It creates beautiful places where our imaginations can roam, bringing us together, twinkling and beaming. The Neon puts you and me in the real world again, now and forever, lit up and alive. [Limited orange colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Sun On Shade – Sun On Shade CD/LP (ATO)

Sun On Shade is a new recording project from Heath Fogg of Alabama Shakes featuring songs sung by Sam Doores (Deslondes, Hurray For The Riff Raff), Shonna Tucker (Drive-By Truckers), and Lloyd Buchanan (Alabama Shakes, Brittany Howard). Also joining Heath on the album are Alabama Shakes bandmates Ben Tanner, Zac Cockrell and Steve Johnson, plus a few other friends. “I like things to be a little blue, but with a beat. There’s still optimism but it can bring a tear to you as well,” says Fogg who balances sadness, sunshine and hard-won wisdom throughout.

September Listening Station/Marketing Program Titles Released This Week:

Bully – Sugaregg CD/LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)

Sugaregg roars from the speakers and jumpstarts both heart and mind. Like My Bloody Valentine after three double espressos, opener “Add It On” zooms heavenward within seconds, epitomizing band leader Alicia Bognanno’s newfound clarity of purpose, while the bass-driven melodies and propulsive beats of “Where To Start” and “Let You” are the musical equivalents of the sun piercing through a perpetually cloudy sky. A very old saying goes that no one saves us but ourselves. Recognizing and breaking free from the patterns impeding our forward progress can be transformative. Indeed, the third Bully album may not ever have come to fruition had Bognanno not navigated every kind of upheaval imaginable and completely overhauled her working process along the way. The artist admits that finding the proper treatment for bipolar 2 disorder radically altered her mindset, freeing her from a cycle of paranoia and insecurity about her work.

John Denver – Country Roads: Live In England 1986 DVD (Eagle Rock Entertainment)

This concert was filmed at the NEC in Birmingham in 1986 and sees John Denver in top form delivering his finest songs with all his characteristic charm and good humor. Among the many highlights are “Annie’s Song”, “Rocky Mountain High”, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and many others.

[Read more…] about New Releases for August 21, 2020

Social Media Program Titles Released This Week:

King Buzzo – Gift Of Sacrifice CD/LP (Ipecac)

Gift Of Sacrifice is the second solo acoustic album from legendary grunge progenitor King Buzzo aka Buzz Osborne, frontman for the legendary Melvins. Buzz is accompanied throughout the record by Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, Fantomas) who is credited on the album cover. A different kind of animal, Gift Of Sacrifice follow’s up Buzz’s last solo album, 2014’s This Machine Kills Artists.

Spoon – Girls Can Tell [Reissue/2001] CD/LP+MP3 (Matador)

Girls Can Tell served as Spoon’s stunning follow-up to 1998’s A Series Of Sneaks. The Austin, Texas indie rock outfit’s third studio album overall finds the extremely talented Britt Daniel developing into one of the most unique voices in rock ‘n’ roll with a remarkable maturity and economy to his songwriting. The perfect blend of craft and cool, Rolling Stone hailed Girls Can Tell as “A start-to-finish triumph!” Upon the album’s 15th anniversary, Under The Mag noted that, “Spoon have gone on to make some very good albums since Girls Can Tell, but they’ve never made one as great and one that expertly weaves their accessible and experimental sides quite as well.”

August Listening Station/Marketing Program Titles Released This Week:

Biffy Clyro – A Celebration Of Endings CD/LP (WB)

“This is a very forward-looking album from a personal perspective and a societal perspective,” explains frontman Simon Neil. “The title is about seeing the joy in things changing, rather than the sadness. Change means progression and evolution. You can retain everything you loved before, but let’s lose the bad shit. It’s about trying to take back control.” Sonically, Biffy Clyro playfully push the outer reaches of their sound to the extreme – often in the case of the same song. Opening track “North Of No South” hits hard before finding the space for the Johnston brothers to unleash some soaring Queen-style vocal harmonies, before “The Champ” throws piano, cinematic strings (conducted by Bruce Springsteen collaborator Rob Mathes at Abbey Road) and Biffy’s prototyped jagged rhythms into the mix without ever losing any of its sleekness. There’s the rush of “The Vertigo Of Bliss”, a detour into Sub Pop-style grunge and manic shrieks which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Liturgy record. But then it contorts again, first into ethereal orchestration and then with a final burst of violence. It’s an ending to celebrate. [Limited edition indie store exclusive vinyl pressing also available.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for August 14, 2020

Social Media Program Titles Released This Week:

Alison Mosshart – Sound Wheel CD/LP (Third Man)

Sound Wheel is artist and musician Alison Mosshart’s first solo spoken word album and companion piece to her new printed collection of paintings, photographs, short stories and poetry, Car Ma. It’s an album about cars, rock n’ roll, and love. It’s an album about America, performance, and life on the road. It’s an album about fender bender portraiture, story tellin’ tire tracks, and the never-ending search for the spirit under the hood.

August Listening Station Program Titles Released This Week:

Deep Purple – Whoosh! CD+DVD/2xLP+DVD (earMUSIC)

Whoosh! sees Deep Purple for the third time joining forces with producer Bob Ezrin, who invited the band to Nashville to write and record new songs. Together they created the most versatile album in their collaboration. Deep Purple “stretched out in all directions” without any limitation, letting their creativity go. “Deep Purple is putting the Deep back in Purple” was the half-joking motto in the studio after the first songs made it clear that Ezrin and Purple were on their path to creating an album pushing the boundaries of time, while voicing their resentment about the current situation of the world and addressing all generations. [Limited indie store exclusive vinyl pressing available.]

Laura Marling – Songs For Our Daughter CD/LP (Chrysalis/Partisan)

Laura Marling’s exquisite seventh album Song For Our Daughter arrives almost without pre-amble or warning amidst uncharted global chaos, and yet instantly and tenderly offers a sense of purpose, clarity and calm. As a balm for the soul, this full-blooded new collection could be posited as Laura’s richest to date, but in truth it is another incredibly fine record by a British artist who rarely strays from delivering incredibly fine records. Taking much of the production reins herself, alongside long-time collaborators Ethan Johns and Dom Monks, Laura has layered up lush string arrangements and a broad sense of scale to these songs without losing any of the intimacy or reverence we’ve come to anticipate and almost take for granted from her throughout the past decade. [Limited indie store exclusive vinyl pressing available.]

The Stooges – Live At Goose Lake: August 8^th, 1970 CD/2xLP (Third Man)

The apocryphal tale of the Stooges performance at the Goose Lake festival on August 8th, 1970 has been told countless times over the past five decades. Bassist Dave Alexander, due to nerves or overindulgence or whatever you choose to fill in the blank, absolutely spaces in front of 200,000 attendees. He does not play a single note on stage. He is summarily fired by Iggy Pop immediately following the gig. Here starts the beginning of the end of the Stooges. Found buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse amongst other tasty analog artifacts of the same era, the 1/4″ stereo two-track tape of the Stooges complete performance at Goose Lake is the Rosetta Stone for fans of this seminal band. Not only is this the last ever performance of the original godhead Stooges line-up, but it is the only known soundboard recording of said line-up. Playing the entirety of their canonical 1970 masterpiece Fun House, the sound, the performance, everything about this record is revelatory. [Limited indie store exclusive colored vinyl pressing available.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for August 7, 2020