Boo Boo Records

April Listening Station & Social Media Titles Released This Week:

The Boomtown Rats – Citizens Of Boomtown CD/LP (BMG)

The Boomtown Rats – Bob Geldof on vocals, Pete Briquette on bass, Simon Crowe on drums and Garry Roberts on guitar – mark 2020 (The Year Of The Rat) with the release of Citizens Of Boomtown, their first new studio album since 1984. The record is ushered in by the beautifully sleazy rocker “Trash Glam Baby”. So why a new record? “Because that’s what bands do. They make records. Songwriters write songs. There’s so much to respond to in this new and different febrile atmosphere that we live in. People forget we took our name from Woody Guthrie, the great musical activist. I think The Boomtown Rats have always shown that rock ‘n’ roll is a form of musical activism. The music has intent and purpose even if that is just the sound, about boy/girl, nothing particularly at all, everything in general, or pointed polemical…. whatever.” Does the world need another Boomtown Rats record? “I couldn’t give a shite,” says Geldof. “We do, and that’s enough.”

Circles Around The Sun – Circles Around The Sun CD/2xLP (The Royal Potato Family)

Circles Around The Sun explore new horizons on the band’s new double album, Let It Wander, the first new music from the quartet since their acclaimed 2015 debut, Interludes For The Dead. Originally, the band – guitarist Neal Casal, keyboardist Adam MacDougall (his bandmate in the Chris Robinson Brotherhood), bassist Dan Horne and drummer Mark Levy – were only supposed to record some Grateful Dead-influenced instrumentals to be played during the set breaks at the Dead’s Fare Thee Well concerts. But the response was so positive, and they were having so much fun making music together, that they all agreed to keep it going. Let It Wander signals a new beginning for Circles Around The Sun as they move beyond their original musical mandate of evoking the spirit of the Dead and fully embrace their own personality.

Deap Lips – Deap Lips CD/LP (Cooking Vinyl)

Deap Lips is Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd from Oklahoma psych-heroes The Flaming Lips and Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards from the Los Angeles, California rock & roll duo Deap Vally. This special collaboration came together after a friendship formed between the two bands. Deap Vally have spent several years touring the world with the likes of Queens Of The Stone Age, Muse and Red Hot Chili Peppers and played festivals such as Glastonbury and Bonnaroo. Their last album FEMEJISM was released to much critical acclaim. The Flaming Lips, long considered one of the most important alternative rock bands of all time, winning multiple Grammys and selling millions worldwide, released their latest The Soft Bulletin: Live At Red Rocks (feat. The Colorado Symphony & André de Ridder) last November. [Limited indie store exclusive colored vinyl pressing available.]

[Read more…] about New Releases for March 13, 2020

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