March Listening Station & Social Media Titles Released This Week:

Honey Harper – Starmaker CD/LP (ATO)

Honey Harper’s debut album, Starmaker, comes as a collection of contradictions in both subject matter and style. Written with his wife and writing partner Alana Pagnutti over the past three years, the album itself is primarily about the journey to create it. Its self-awareness is largely the result of Harper’s inner monologues about his fear of failure, desire for success, and the toll that journey has taken on him and his loved ones. It’s an attempt at honesty through the veil of a country singer lost in the stars. After explorations in other vastly different styles, Harper recognized the value he could add to a genre with beautiful sounds but negative connotations. On Starmaker, Harper seeks to revitalize country music for people who don’t like country music. With album appearances from Sébastian Tellier, Austra, and John Kirby, the contrast of the songs becomes even more apparent and set Honey Harper apart to become the torchbearer for a revitalized country sound. [Limited colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Lauv – How I’m Feeling CD/2xLP (Lauv)

Most pop genre albums can be categorized by their peppy messages along the lines of “Believe in yourself no matter what!” or “Life is always amazing!” That’s what Lauv’s second album – How I’m Feeling – subverts. Instead of following industry standards, the record acts as a refreshing take on pop music by taking an honest introspective look on himself. [Clear vinyl pressing also available.]

Mandy Moore – Silver Linings CD/LP (Verve)

Emmy, Grammy & Golden Globe-nominated actress/singer/songwriter Mandy Moore returns to music with her first album in a decade, Silver Landings. In a purposeful departure from the pop sound of her previous material, she worked closely with longtime collaborator, producer Mike Viola and her husband, Taylor Goldsmith (of folk-rock band Dawes), creating the lyrics on her own and recording each song live with a full band setup. The album deftly moves from ‘70s inspired soft-rock to contemporary pop.

Esmé Patterson – There Will Come Soft Rains CD/LP (BMG)

Esmé Patterson is folk-rock singer/songwriter who began as a member of the Denver folk pop septet Paper Bird and has written three records as a solo act including All Princes, I (2012), Woman To Woman (2015) and We Were Wild (2016). The Guardian called her “defiant and witty,” the New York Times found her voice “wiry and candid” with songs that “hint at mystery and mortality.” Now she returns with her fourth solo endeavor, There Will Come Soft Rains, produced by Tennis aka Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore. Named after a story from Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, it finds Patterson adding synthesizers and dream-pop arrangements to the mix with stunning results. Patterson calls single “Shelby Tell Me Everything”, a “sweet and innocent gay love song” that “exists in the initial moment of attraction, frozen temporarily in the air like a cloud. This song ecstatically explores the distance between reality and fantasy, between attraction and first kiss, suspended in innocence like a daydream.”

[Read more…] about New Releases for March 6, 2020

March Program Titles Released This Week:

Robert Cray Band – That’s What I Heard CD (Nozzle)

“Funky, cool and bad,” is how Robert Cray describes his latest album, That’s What I Heard. “I thought if it we could get this thing that Sam Cooke used to have, the kind of sound that early Sam Cooke records had, that we could pull this off,” says producer Steve Jordan. Over the past four decades, Cray has created a sound that rises from American roots, blues, soul and R&B, with five Grammy wins, 20 acclaimed studio albums and a bundle of live albums that punctuate the Blues Hall of Famer’s career. On That’s What I Heard, Robert celebrates the music of Curtis Mayfield, Bobby “Blue” Bland, The Sensational Nightingales and more, alongside four newly written songs. [Limited indie store exclusive colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Five Finger Death Punch – F8 CD/2xLP (Better Noise)

Founded in 2005, the American heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch has described their eighth studio effort F8 as a rebirth. This is the first album featuring new drummer Charlie Engel who replaced Jeremy Spencer in 2018. “Every so often, a band renowned for railing against the sicknesses of the system, decides to turn the lens inward, to express the inner turmoil that smolders within their own minds. A beautiful a catharsis this proves to be, and it is seldom more warranted than in the case of American metal titans, Five Finger Death Punch. Five Finger Death Punch has opened the floodgates and unleashed their eighth studio album, aptly titled F8. Forged from the fires of vocalist Ivan Moody’s lifesaving quest for sobriety, it comes to bear that F8 is deeper, angrier, and more disturbingly introspective than anything we have seen to date from one of America’s most successful metal bands.” [Limited indie store exclusive picture disc vinyl pressing also available.]

Four Year Strong – Brain Pain CD/LP (Pure Noise)

Four Year Strong aka vocalist/guitarists Dan O’Connor and Alan Day, bassist Joe Weiss and drummer Jake Massucco, began conceptualizing the ideas for Brain Pain two years ago. For the past year-and-a-half they focused on bringing those thoughts to fruition. “We didn’t want to set a strict deadline for this album because we wanted to be sure we took the time to write the best songs possible. In the past our writing and recording was so dependent on getting something out in time to go on tour; this time we really had the opportunity to take our time and work through these ideas,” explains Day. In order to capture that sound the group enlisted producer Will Putney, who was an engineer on 2010’s Enemy Of The World and already had a relationship with the band. “We were really emotionally invested in this music so we wanted to go with someone who we knew would care about it as much as we did and Will was that guy,” Day adds.

[Read more…] about New Releases for February 28, 2020

March Program Titles Released This Week:

Best Coast – Always Tomorrow CD/LP (Concord)

Inspired by the ‘70s, L.A.-based duo Best Coast expand their signature indie pop sound into a harmonic blend of melodic guitars and keyboards as warm and refreshing as a California breeze. Multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno, along with the irrepressible Bethany Cosentino, combine to bring her masterful storytelling to new heights, crafting their most eloquent and reflective album to date. “Always Tomorrow is about leaving the darkness for the light, but still understanding that nothing is ever going to be perfect,” Cosentino said. “It’s about burning it all down and starting from scratch even when the idea of that is fucking terrifying. Closing one chapter and moving onto the next even when you have no idea what is on the other side. Acceptance. It’s about taking a gigantic leap of faith.”

Greg Dulli – Random Desire CD/2xLP (BMG)

For the last 30 years Greg Dulli, frontman of The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers, has been the poet laureate of the bizarre whims and cruel tangents of desire. A foremost authority on the sell-your-soul rewards of carnal lust, the high voltage epiphanies of chemical enhancement, and the serotonin lows left in their wake. Therein lies Random Desire,the first solo album under Dulli’s own name. Opener, “Pantomima,” sets the tone from the sardonic taunts of the album’s first bars: desolation, come and get it. Clocking in at a lean 37 minutes, Random Desire is a clinic put on by a veteran master operating at the height of his powers, offering evidence of the hard-fought and weary wisdom learned from setbacks and victories alike. A lucid, confident and self-assured document of the songs of experience, the perils of existence, and the possibilities that offer themselves anew with each breath. Another death and rebirth from an outlaw who has seen it all and somehow lived to tell.

Grimes – Miss Anthropocene CD/LP+MP3 (4AD)

Canadian artist Claire Boucher aka Grimes follows-up 2015’s Art Angels with her highly-anticipated fifth studio album, Miss Anthropocene. An amalgamation of three albums Grimes recorded over the past three years, Miss Anthropocene is based on a neologism commonly used in scientific circles. Misanthropocene refers to both the misanthrope’s loathing of humanity and the Anthropocene era in which our planet is dominated by human activity. The 10-track collection is introduced by the breathy and beat driven “Violence” and atmospheric “So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth.”

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