March Program Titles Released This Week:

Boniface – Boniface CD/LP (PIAS)

The self-titled debut from Canadian solo artist Boniface is a catalogue of his most formative coming-of-age experiences – each moment captured in diary-like detail and set against a magnificently sprawling backdrop. Throughout the album, the musician/producer otherwise known as Micah Visser reflects on falling in love and facing heartbreak whilst struggling with identity, never failing to find an ineffable beauty within all the pain. The result is a body of work both bracingly honest and powerfully exhilarating. Growing up in Winnipeg, Visser wrote the songs for the album at home throughout their late teens and early twenties, after shifts at the local coffee shop and lost nights in the city. This intimacy has been preserved on Boniface, which features production engineer Neil Comber (Charli XCX, M.I.A., Glass Animals) who helped bring Boniface’s lavish arrangements to full and dazzling life. [Limited red colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Albert Cummings – Believe CD/LP (Mascot Label Group)

Blues-rock guitarist Albert Cummings’ new album, Believe, features a flavorful mix of blues, country, and rock ‘n’ roll. Recorded at the iconic FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL, Cummings takes this release to new heights with the help of Grammy-winning producer, Jim Gaines (Stevie Ray Vaughan, Santana). Together, they drew inspiration from the rich recording legacy of Muscle Shoals and created a timeless album full of rhythm, funk, and soul. “You can hear the difference between this album and my others, and that is the Muscle Shoals difference,” Cummings says of the new project, “If I had recorded those same songs anywhere else, then Believe would have sounded like a completely different album.” [Limited colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Eden – No Future CD (Astralwerks)

Vocalist/producer/multi-instrumentalist Eden (Dublin-bred artist born Jonathon Ng) returns with No Future, the follow-up to his acclaimed 2018 full-length debut, Vertigo. As with all his music to date, lead single “Projector” was recorded and produced by Eden at his home studio. With its dreamlike textures and heady drum-machine rhythms, the song finds Eden’s graceful vocal work channeling a heavy-hearted surrender. “‘Projector’ is about appreciating all the ebbs and flows and accepting how things really are instead of wishing they were some other way,” Ng explains. “It started out as a very no-man’s-land kind of song, and then the lyrics ended up reflecting the concept of the death of the universe into a very personal space: this idea that no matter what’s going on in your life right now, everything eventually runs its course.” [Vinyl edition due March 13.]

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

March Program Titles Released This Week:

Green Day – Father Of All… CD/LP (Reprise)

Five-time Grammy Award-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Green Day unleash their soul-inflected new single “Father Of All…”, – complete with a falsetto turn from frontman Billie Joe Armstrong – which is the lead track of their new thirteenth studio album of the same name. It’s the band’s first album of new music since 2016’s Revolution Radio. Citing Kendrick Lamar and old-school Motown as influences, Armstrong revealed to Billboard that, “It’s very high energy – 10 songs in 26 minutes. I like to feel some sense of joy, living through the chaos of [this] era.” [Limited indie store exclusive colored vinyl pressing also available.]

The Homesick – The Big Exercise CD/LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)

The Big Exercise, the second album by Dutch band The Homesick, finds the group keenly second-guessing their core chemistry as a live unit, imbuing their angular post-punk workouts with baroque elements such as piano, acoustic guitar, percussion, and even clarinet. “It’s the opposite of trying to translate recorded music to the stage,” guitarist Elias Elgersma comments. “We were already playing these songs live for quite some time, so for this album, we wanted to unlock the potential of these songs further in the studio.” Opening track “What’s In Store” was in part inspired by bassist Jaap Van der Velde’s unprompted deep dive into the world of national anthems, making his own attempt to conjure a similarly timeless melody. The song seamlessly bleeds into the chivalrous prance of “Children’s Day” and the fragmented “Pawing”, righteously encouraging Erik Woudwijk’s nimble, cerebral drumming to become the band’s driving force. The headstrong wanderlust of The Big Exercise is fitting, given The Homesick’s exodus as a small-town Dutch band ready to trot the world.

The Lone Bellow – Half Moon Light CD/LP (Dualtone)

Half Moon Light is an artistic triumph worked toward for years, earned not by individual posturing, but by collective determination and natural growth. With earthy three-part harmonies and songwriting as provocative as it is honest, The Lone Bellow creates sparks that make a stranger’s life matter or bring our sense of childlike wonder roaring back. On Half Moon Light, the trio mix light and dark to muster a complex ode to memory, a call for hope, and an exercise in empathy. Anchored in the acoustic storytelling that first so endeared the band to fans and critics, Half Moon Light also takes more chances, experimenting with textures and instrumental fillips to create a full-bodied music experience. The 15-track album touches on personal topics like family, loss, overcoming struggle, and letting things go. The band expertly traverses several moods throughout, going from gentle, soothing lows to enormous, sweeping highs, and their musicianship shines through in every track.

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

February Program Titles Released This Week:

Dashboard Confessional – The Best Ones Of The Best Ones CD/2xLP+MP3 (Hidden Note)

Dashboard Confessional’s first-ever career-spanning compilation, The Best Ones Of The Best Ones, is a thoughtfully curated collection of the band’s most beloved songs and features selections from all seven studio albums, the So Impossible and The Drowning EPs, and the band’s MTV Unplugged performance. From start to finish, The Best Ones Of The Best Ones showcases the profound durability of Dashboard Confessional’s music over the past two decades. The collection highlights singer/songwriter Chris Carrabba’s extraordinary ability to give a cathartic voice to the messiest of emotions, which led the band to ascend from a bedroom project to a global sensation. [Limited indie-exclusive burgundy colored vinyl pressing also available.]

Dan Deacon – Mystic Familiar CD/LP+MP3 (Domino)

Dan Deacon’s most emotionally open and transcendent record, Mystic Familiar’s eleven kaleidoscopic tracks of majestic synth-pop exponentially expand his sound with unfettered imagination and newfound vulnerability. It’s the first album where Deacon presents his natural singing voice, unprocessed and with only minimal accompaniment; a vulnerable shift in a songbook abundant with characters, metaphors, and distorted vocals.

Destroyer – Have We Met CD/LP+MP3 (Merge)

Dan Bejar initially conceived of Have We Met as a Y2K album. He was already active during the era but not heard overhead in a cafe or salon, which is perhaps what the idea of the Y2K sound evokes nearly two decades later. Bejar assigned frequent producer and bandmate John Collins the role of layering synth and rhythm sections over demos with the period-specific Björk, Air, and Massive Attack in mind, but he soon realized the sonic template was too removed from Destroyer’s own, and the idea of a concept was silly anyway. So, he abandoned it and gave Collins the most timeless instruction of all: “Make it sound cool.” Atmosphere and loose approximations of a place or feeling are what we’ve come to expect from any new Destroyer record – certainly not an easily defined and stridently adhered to theme or concept. Have We Met manages to meet somewhere between those disparate Y2K reference points and Destroyer’s own area of expertise, gliding deftly into territory that marries the old strident Destroyer with the new, aged crooning one of late.

[Read more…] about New Releases for January 31, 2020