Rockin Rudys Staff Picks
Rockin Rudys staff favorites of 2020...so far!
For Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, color theory confronts the ongoing mental health and familial trials that have long-plagued her, presenting listeners with an uncompromisingly honest self-portrait. The new album’s sonic landscape is vast and dexterous, with melodies that shimmer on the surface, but reveal an unsettling darkness with each listen.
Tame Impala (Kevin Parker) will release his fourth studio album, The Slow Rush, out February 14th on Interscope. Recorded between Los Angeles and his studio in his hometown of Fremantle, Australia, the twelve tracks were produced and mixed by Parker. The Slow Rush is Parker's deep dive into the oceans of time, conjuring the feeling of a lifetime in a lightning bolt, of major milestones whizzing by while you're looking at your phone.
Thundercat is set to release his new album It Is What It Is on Brainfeeder Records on April 3, 2020, and shares the first music; 'Black Qualls (featuring Steve Lacy and Steve Arrington). The album, produced by Flying Lotus and Thundercat, features musical contributions from Ty Dolla $ign, Childish Gambino, Lil B, Kamasi Washington, Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington, BADBADNOTGOOD, Louis Cole and Zack Fox. It Is What It Is follows his game-changing third album Drunk (2017). That record completed his transition from virtuoso bassist to bonafide star and cemented his reputation as a unique voice that transcends genre. 'This album is about love, loss, life and the ups and downs that come with that,' Bruner says. 'It's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at different points in life you come across places that you don't necessarily understand' some things just aren't meant to be understood.'
Preorder the Black Vinyl !! Current orders available after 5/15/2020.
Vinyl LP pressing. 2020 release. His last album - 2017's The Nashville Sound - a #1 album on the Billboard Folk, Independent, Country and Rock albums charts, also received Best Americana Album at the Grammys, Album Of The Year At The Americana Honors & Awards and was nominated at the CMA Awards for Album Of The Year. Since then, he has collaborated on the soundtrack for A Star Is Born, the debut album by the Highwomen, and Sheryl Crow's latest album Threads. He also released a live album, Live From the Ryman.
'The man singing these songs isn't exactly the same man who wrote them,' says Pokey LaFarge of Rock Bottom Rhapsody, his eighth and latest studio release. 'This album is about the story of who I used to be.' In early 2018, LaFarge ' searching for the sort of artistic freedom and inspiration he wasn't finding in the Midwest ' relocated from his longtime home base of St. Louis, Missouri, to Los Angeles, California. New songs came quickly to LaFarge in his new environment, but new temptations soon found him, as well. Though he declines to get into specifics, LaFarge admits that he experienced a significant 'fall from grace' during the last months of 2018. 'Things sort of started to unravel in my mind,' Shortly before the recording of Rock Bottom Rhapsody began, LaFarge experienced a spiritual awakening ' and the faith he re-embraced in his hour of darkness helped to buoy him through the making of the album. Though he was struggling for spiritual equilibrium at the time, LaFarge at least had some rock-solid musical support to lean on. Recorded primarily at Reliable Recorders on Chicago's Northwest side, Rock Bottom Rhapsody was produced by LaFarge's friend and collaborator Chris Seefried (who also co-wrote several of the album's tracks), and features the considerable talents of guitarist Joel Paterson, keyboardist Scott Ligon, upright/electric bassist Jimmy Sutton, and drummer Alex Hall. Musically, LaFarge continues to mix and match a wide variety of styles and traditions, while never losing track of his own vision This record is kind of like Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan hanging out with chanson singers and French jazz bands in like the forties, but I was never trying to make it sound like a particular person. Despite the trying period that preceded its recording, Rock Bottom Rhapsody is ultimately far more uplifting and life-affirming than its title would suggest. 'That desperation, that struggle,' LaFarge ponders, 'Did it add something to the record? It certainly did. I mean, I don't know if it made it better; it just is what it is. It's not up to me to decide if people are going to feel that'
Over the last decade, Real Estate have crafted warm yet meticulous pop-minded music, specializing in soaring melodies that are sentimentally evocative and unmistakably their own. The Main Thing dives further into the musical dichotomies they're known for'lilting, bright guitar lines set against emotionally nuanced lyrics, complex arrangements conveyed breezily. What emerges is a superlative collection of interrogative songs as full of depth, strangeness and contradictions as they are lifting hooks.
Vinyl LP pressing. 2020 release, the third album from the Los Angeles-based instrumental supergroup. Recorded by legendary engineer Jim Scott (Wilco, Rolling Stones, Tom Petty) at his studio in Valencia, CA, this new collection began with... a drum machine. The Sequential Circuits Drumtraks from 1983, to be specific. The Circles band members-guitarist Neal Casal (Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Ryan Adams), bassist Dan Horne (Cass McCombs, Jonathan Wilson), keyboardist Adam MacDougall (Black Crowes) and drummer Mark Levy-were searching for a sound, something more upbeat than previous releases. Cue the Drumtraks. The seven-track collection marks a stylistic shift from their previous LPs. It's an evolution that sees the band embracing a sleeker, shinier, even dancier version of themselves - a cosmic disco of the body and the soul, still anchored in the groove, but ascending to the stars.
WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD is a question Nick Hakim has asked himself since he was young and struggling in school; a reflection of what's happening in his head as he sorts through his life and the tumult around the globe. WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD articulates a sense of confusion alongside a desire for hope and clarity. The album was produced by his longtime collaborator Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver), who also produced Hakim's breakthrough debut "Green Twins". Double LP in gatefold jacket.
Moses Sumney evades definition as an act of duty: technicolor videos and monochrome clothes; Art Rock and Black Classical; blowing into Fashion Week from a small town in North Carolina; seemingly infinite collaborators, but only one staggering voice. A young life spent betwixt Southern California and Accra, Ghana - not so much rootless as an epyphite, an air plant. The scale is cinematic but the moves are precise deeds of art and stewardship. Sumney's new, generous album, græ, is an assertion that the undefinable still exists and dwelling in it is an act of resistance. To try to pin Sumney down on a sound - and really, on any matter - is to end up with a hand full of fog, but his genius is never allowing the set to sound like a hodgepodge. His forthcoming double album expands upon the sonic universe built in Sumney's critically-acclaimed debut LP Aromanticism and subsequent EP Black In Deep Red, 2014. The songs on græ may be divergent, like the visceral, Smashing Pumpkins drama of "Virile" and the intoxicated, outro jazz of "Gagarin." There's the kinky, ambiguous bop of "Cut Me" countered with the sweeping, amphitheater-ready "Bless Me." But there's that voice, always unknowable and penetrating, threading these pieces together: a heavenly rasp, a whale call, Miles' horn, a soulful snarl. It all works to create a paradox, keeping art and artist somewhere between any one sure thing - but surely something that demands your attention affixed and your breath bated. All of this is græ. There's probably a biblical analogy to be made about a person who just happens to be named Moses, who flees the binary, splits a massive body into two pieces, and leads us through the in-between - holy and wholly rebellious. By breaking up græ into two multifaceted, dynamic pieces, Sumney is quite literally creating a "grey" in-between space for listeners to absorb and consider the art. Not strictly singles, not strictly albums, never altogether songs or spoken word segments on their own. It's neither here nor there. Neither/Nor, if you will.
Like any great artist on the rise, Archy Marshall's life is moving fast. There's a lot to catch up on, after 2017's sprawling masterpiece, The OOZ, broke through amid Mercury Prize nominations and mind-blowing media plaudits. Unlike that record, Man Alive! doesn't aim to present any kind of narrative thread, or Brexit-era state- of-the-nation address, just a collection of snapshots and stories, artfully sequenced into a dazzlingly coherent whole. Man Alive! is available on CD, standard single LP black vinyl and as a limited red vinyl edition sold exclusively at independent record stores.
Tennis are an indie pop duo comprising husband and wife Patrick Riley (guitar, keyboards, production) and Alaina Moore (vocals, keyboards). The band wrote their upcoming album on land and sea; on their sailboat traveling around Baja California, Mexico & in their recording studio they built in Denver. Alaina and Patrick were driven to elevate their songwriting & experimented with different instrumentation, time changes, & a focus on lyrical storytelling. The band experienced many life-changing occurrences over the last two years that influenced their writing - from loss to illness and renewed bonds. Swimmer is a single they are releasing in Fall 2019, coming out as the band announces touring dates for spring 2020.
Nathaniel Rateliff has written and recorded his first solo record since the explosive debut of his work together with The Night Sweats. And It's Still Alright, is an intensely personal 10-song album of vibrant country-blues, badland ballads, ornate Americana and jazz-inflected R&B. Rateliff's warm baritone, ranging from gently hushed to a guttural howl, imbues these superbly drawn character studies with raw, naked emotion.
And It's Still Alright was produced by Rateliff, Night Sweats' drummer Patrick Meese and James Barone of the indie band, Beach House and primarily recorded at National Freedom in Cottage Grove, Oregon, the studio formerly owned by the late Richard Swift (who produced both Night Sweats recordings). While Rateliff, Meese and Barone handled much of the album's instrumentation, several friends make contributions including Night Sweats' guitarist Luke Mossman; bassist Elijah Thomson (of the indie band Everest); keyboardist Daniel Creamer (of The Texas Gentlemen); steel guitarist Eric Swanson (touring musician for Israel Nash) and renowned string arranger Tom Hagerman (of the instrumental vocal ensemble DeVotchKa), whose delicate orchestrations beautifully complement the album's deep emotional terrain.
And It's Still Alright's many highlights include album opener ''What A Drag,'' which sketches a vivid portrait of a disconnected relationship, ''Tonight #2,'' a haunting, end-of-the-world waltz, ''Time Stands,'' detailing an epic, desperate struggle for love and the elegiac ''Rush On,'' a heart-breaking requiem for Swift.
Unguarded and unflinchingly real, Nathaniel Rateliff's And It's Still Alright expands on the sounds and styles he's used to great affect across both his band and solo careers. It's a commanding next step in Nathaniel's evolution into one of America's most vital and essential songwriters.
Phoebe Bridgers doesn’t write love songs as much as songs about the impact love can have on our lives, personalities, and priorities. Punisher, her fourth release and second solo album, is concerned with that subject. To say she writes about heartbreak is to undersell her blue wisdom, to say she writes about pain erases all the strange joy her music emanates. The arrival of Punisher cements Phoebe Bridgers as one of the most clever, tender and prolific songwriters of our era.
Bridgers is the rare artist with enough humor to deconstruct her own meteoric rise. Repeatedly praised by publications like The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Pitchfork, The Fader, The Los Angeles Times and countless others, Bridgers herself is more interested in discussing topics on Twitter, deadpanning meditations on the humiliating process of being a person, she presents a sweetly funny flipside to the strikingly sad songs she writes. Fittingly, Punisher is fascinated with, and driven by, that kind of impossible tension. Whether it’s writing tweets or songs, Bridgers’s singular talent lies in bringing fierce curiosity to slimy and painful things, interrogating them until they yield up answers that are beautiful and absurd, or faithfully reporting the reality that, sometimes, they are neither.
Bridgers pulls together a formidable crew of guests, including the Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, Christian Lee Hutson and Conor Oberst as well as Nathaniel Walcott (of Bright Eyes), Nick Zinner (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Jenny Lee Lindberg (of Warpaint), Blake Mills and Jim Keltner as well as her longtime bandmates Marshall Vore (drums), Harrison Whitford (guitar), Emily Retsas (bass) and Nick White (keys). The album was mixed by Mike Mogis, who also mixed Stranger In The Alps.
On the album’s epic, freewheeling closer, “I Know The End,” Bridgers orchestrates wails and horns, drums and electric guitar into a sumptuous doomsday swirl, culminating in her own final whispered roar. This is Punisher in a nutshell: devastating elegance punctuated by a moment of deeply campy self-awareness.
Vinyl LP pressing. 2020 release. Global Pop superstar Dua Lipa is back with Future Nostalgia. Dua arrived in style in 2015 with her self-titled, chart topping debut album which eclipsed 4 million sales worldwide with single sales reaching over 40 million. Dua Lipa is also officially the most streamed album by a female artist in Spotify history. Dua made Brit Award history in 2018 by becoming the first female artist to pick up five nominations, with two wins for British Breakthrough Act and British Female Solo Artist, all while selling out tours around the world. In early 2019, she received two Grammy awards for best new artist and best dance recording.
'We should try again to talk,' Frances Quinlan writes. It not just a lyric'it's a suggestion, a warning, a plea, a wish. This request is woven throughout Likewise, her forthcoming solo album, amidst dramatically shifting motifs. Some are jubilant, some are dreamy and abstract, and a few are sinister, but within each dark void that Quinlan explores, there is a light peering back at her. Frances Quinlan has built an identity for herself over the past decade as the lead songwriter and front-woman of the Philadelphia-based band Hop Along, and her distinct voice is among the most recognizable and inimitable in music. While the band began as Quinlan's solo project (originally titled Hop Along, Queen Ansleis), Likewise (out January 31st on Saddle Creek) is Quinlan's debut under her own name. To make the record, she enlisted the virtuosic skills of her bandmate Joe Reinhart, and together they produced the album at his studio, The Headroom, recording in stints over the course of a year. With a renewed openness to explore different sounds, Quinlan supplements her typical guitar-based instrumentation with synthesizers, digital beats, harps, strings, and a wide variety of keyboards. The shifting and exploratory nature of these musical arrangements allow her lyrics and vocals'which have always been at the forefront of her music'to reach emotional depths like never before. Her vocal tones beckon a kaleidoscopic range of emotions across all nine songs on the album, from soft and ruminative to enraged and commanding; from conveying powerful messages to highlighting small, yet poignant, moments. Quinlan is a voyaging songwriter. Throughout Likewise, she confronts what confounds her in the hopes that she will come out on the other side with a better sense of what it is to be human. She presents listeners with a complicated, albeit spirited vision of what it could mean to truly engage with another person, to give a small piece of oneself over to someone else without expectation. Although such is likely to be a lifelong effort, these songs prove evident that light can still permeate from unsettling depths.
It's country music but not as we know it which begs the question: Have these Bad Kids of 21st Century rock 'n' roll finally grown up on their ninth studio album? Are they at peace with themselves? Have they made a record their parents could listen to? The Black Lips new album 'Sing In A World That's Falling Apart' continues to flick the middle finger to one and all. This ain't another gaggle of bearded southern sons fleeing their collective suburban upbringings and collegiate music education. There aren't the usual clichés about drinking, honkytonks, and heartbreak. These are, after all, the same Black Lips who rescued the waning garage punk subgenre by not sounding or dressing their musical predecessors. They also dug contemporary hip-hop and punk and actualized themselves Like so many dramatic moments in the Black Lips career, 'Sing In A World That's Falling Apart' was born out of crisis. The band's stylistic evolution through decades of prolific touring and recording took them where no garage punk band had gone before - huge venues, network television shows, and major music festivals. Here Black Lips are at their grimiest, most dangerous and equipped with the best collection of songs since the aughts. Skidding onto the asphalt in a shower of sparks, they roll on with an unapologetic southern-fried twang, pacing the beast, every now and then dropping a psycho howl into the rubber room madness lurking underneath the truckstop fireworks. This ain't your granny's country album. And conversely this ain't your mama's Black Lips.
Bibio returns with a new collection of music called Sleep On The Wing, just over a year on from his last album Ribbons. This collection continues the story of Ribbons, with ten tracks drawing on similar inspiration and using a similar palette of instruments and sounds. In this way it continues a pattern in Bibio's work, like Dye The Water Green following Silver Wilkinson. It is much more instrumental focused with only two tracks featuring vocals. Bibio performs the following on Sleep On The Wing: Acoustic guitar / Tenor acoustic guitar / Baritone acoustic guitar / Baritone electric guitar / Bass guitar / Mandolin / Mandola / Octave mandolin / Violin / Viola / Cello / Piano / Rhodes / Wurlitzer / Minimoog / Mellotron / Alto saxophone / Clarinet / Voice
With producer Andrew Sarlo (Bon Iver, Big Thief, SASAMI) at the helm, Wilsen's new album Ruiner dissolves both the heavy reverb and ethereal moments found on their first recording by instead letting the band's essentials ' drums, bass, guitar, and vocals ' have centre stage. In the album's opening moments, you might hear a knotted wash of guitars and Wilson (Tamsin Wilson ' the singer) softly humming, for a very brief moment returning you to their dreamscape but sharply, a driving rock rhythm comes into focus and so too does a revitalised band. 'Making this record was somewhat of a coming of age process,' Wilson explains,'We're getting older and becoming more deliberate, less precious, less measured. Overthinking less and trusting instincts.'
Over the years, different members have traded production and composition duties from album to album. On the new album''Fu Chronicles''Amayo leads us through a thrilling sonic journey of kung fu meets Afrobeat, weaving together the strands of Edo and Yoruba cultural memory from Nigeria with his training and study in Chinese martial arts. Recorded in the Summer of 2018, over seventeen musicians and singers crammed into the storied Daptone House of Soul in Bushwick to record the massive body of work. With live versions and arrangements stretching up to thirty minutes, Perna, Amayo, and Roth worked tirelessly to preserve the hypnotic power of the long-form live arrangements into six concise and powerful album tracks.
Vinyl LP pressing. 2020 release. Early James, an Alabama native and signing to Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound roster, releases his debut album, Singing for My Supper. The album spans hard-charging blues, wistful folk, and ages-old pop crooning, anchored by the singer's voice that oscillates from gravel-gruff shout to a honey-smooth whisper. James' inspirations run from Fiona Apple and Tom Waits to the Southern gothic poets, as heard in the album's darker themes and in the wry humor with which he writes about them. Early James' debut features ten wide-ranging songs, co-produced by Auerbach and David "Fergie" Ferguson, is full of world-weary wisdom. "Blue Pill Blues" details a period when James, who was being treated for depression, quit his antipsychotic medication cold turkey. "High Horse" is a lament of the ways his adolescent excitement faded with the arrival of the vices of adulthood, while "Easter Eggs" finds the songwriter coming to terms with some of the darker sides of his heredity.
If there’s one lesson to be gleaned from Jamie Wyatts latest album, Neon Cross, it’s that life goes on. And through it all—good times and bad, dreaming and desperation, there is truth. When it came to capturing that truth on tape, Wyatt had some assistance from Shooter Jennings, who produced Neon Cross. Together, she and Jennings boldly color outside the country lines, taking a wide-lens sonic and stylistic approach to the songs on Neon Cross.
The buzz around CHRISTIAN LEE HUTSON started in earnest in 2018 after he began his collaborative friendship with singer Phoebe Bridgers. Hutson co-wrote songs with Bridgers for both the EP of supergroup boygenius (ft. Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus) and her 2019 release with Conor Oberst, Better Oblivion Community Center. The emerging folk artist received further critical attention after Bridgers invited him to Eaux Claires Festival last July, where he performed a solo set and earned praise from festival host Bon Iver. Eventually, Bridgers asked if she could produce an album for him. Engineered and mixed by Joseph Lorge (Blake Mills, Perfume Genius), the forthcoming release also features contributions from Bright Eyes pianist Nathaniel Walcott. To merely call Christian Lee Hutson an old soul would be to deny the vibrancy of his sound. Hutson writes songs that the SF Bay Guardian describes as, "... Foreboding, bluesy love ballads laden with longing nostalgia." Hutson is an avid touring artist and his touring will take him to Austin this Spring for SXSW. For Fans of Phoebe Bridgers, Elliott Smith and Bright Eyes.
The timeless qualities of traditional tunes can carry us across oceans and eons, linking us not only to the past but to each other as well. It was under the banner of those eternal connections that the trio of Bonny Light Horseman came together. From festival fields and a German art hub to a snowy upstate studio and everywhere in between, the astral folk outfit-comprised of Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats, The Shins), and Josh Kaufman (The National, Bob Weir)-is mixing the ancient, mystical medium of transatlantic traditional folk music with a contemporary, collective brush. The resulting album, Bonny Light Horseman, is an elusive kind of sonic event: a bottled blend of lightning and synergy that will excite fans of multiple genres, eras, and ages. The album features fellow 37d03d artists-in-residence Michael Lewis (bass, saxophone) and JT Bates (drums) as well as Justin Vernon, Aaron Dessner, Kate Stables, Lisa Hannigan, The Staves, Christian Lee Hutson, and more. Leaving the 2018 37d03d Berlin event with roughly 60-percent of a record, the band reconvened at Dreamland Studios in Woodstock, NY, in January 2019 to finish, bringing Lewis and Bates as well as engineer Bella Blasko along with them.
Built To Spill
Built To Spill Plays The Songs Of Daniel Johnston [Easter Yellow LP]
New Vinyl: $22.98 Buy
In 2017 Built To Spill was invited to play a few shows as Daniel Johnston's back up band This is what those rehearsals sounded like. 11 tracks of Johnston's fractured pop presented through the eyes of Built To Spill.
The first pressing is on yellow vinyl and will include a 32 page songbook
‘Earth’ is an album of rediscovery and adventure by Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, being released under the moniker EOB. Written and recorded over five years during any possible break from the making and touring of Radiohead’s ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’, the album deftly veers from moments of delicate folk to euphoric house, its songs seamlessly pinned together by unswerving melodic hooks and candid lyricism. A spirit of collaboration runs through 'Earth' from the production team of Flood, Catherine Marks, Alan Moulder and Adam ‘Cecil’ Bartlett to the extraordinary musicians O’Brien assembled to bring these tracks to life; bassist Nathan East, drummers Omar Hakim and Glenn Kotche, and The Invisible’s multi-instrumentalist leader David Okumu. Portishead’s Adrian Utley appears on two tracks, whilst Laura Marling duets with O’Brien on stirring closer “Cloak of The Night.” But every group of collaborators needs a leader, and Earth is all O’Brien’s vision. “I wanted to make a record from the heart,” he says. “I wanted to make something direct. I wanted to talk about love, your family in the immediate and the wider sense, where we are on the planet, the bigger picture, life and death. I wanted to make a big hearted, warm and colorful album… something hopeful and full of love.” Featuring the singles “Shangri-La”, which sways between syncopated beats and twisted rock, and “Brasil”, a track that morphs from a tender opening into a heightened-state rhythmic banger, ‘Earth’ marks a new beginning for Ed O’Brien.
2 150-gram LPs in a gatefold sleeve with digital download and also includes a 24” X 36” foldout poster
Bubba is the second studio album by Canadian electronic music producer KAYTRANADA. The album features guest appearances from Kali Uchis, Pharrell Williams, Mick Jenkins, Tinashe, Estelle, Charlotte Day Wilson, and GoldLink, among others.
Little Dragon is the pioneering Swedish four-piece fronted by enigmatic vocalist Yukimi Nagano, with multi-instrumentalists Håkan Wirenstarnd and Fredrik Wallin on keyboards and bass respectively and Erik Bodin on drums and percussion. The band return with their sixth studio album, 'New Me, Same Us' this spring, their first album release since signing with Ninja Tune. Yukimi has lent her trademark vocals to Gorillaz, Flume, SBTRKT, Kaytranada, Christian Rich, De La Soul, DJ Shadow, Tinashe, Mac Miller, Big Boi, Faith Evans, and ODESZA. The band has remixed Rhye, Childish Gambino & more. Additionally, artists such as NAO, Lianne La Havas, Nick Mulvey and Rosie Lowe all have covered Little Dragon. 'Tried', their recent collaboration with BADBADNOTGOOD received great support from the likes of Pitchfork, The FADER, NPR, Annie Mac and more. GRAMMY-nominated for 2014's 'Nabuma Rubberband', Little Dragon have long been seen as one of the most sought-after groups to work with. This year Little Dragon play a huge run of headline shows in March/April 2020. A 32-date tour across the UK, EU and North America that will see the band playing in front of over 40K fans, including the Hollywood Palladium (5K) and London's O2 Brixton Academy (5K cap).
Dan Deacon’s most emotionally open record and his most transcendent, Mystic Familiar is the result of obsessive work, play, and self-discovery. The album’s 11 kaleidoscopic tracks of majestic synth-pop expand his sound with unfettered imagination and newfound vulnerability.
Produced by longtime collaborator Dan Horne (Circles Around The Sun, Allah-Las), Mapache's new album, From Liberty Street, captures the Los Angeles duo at their finest, with Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch weaving airtight harmonies around stripped-down, organic arrangements that blur the lines between traditional folk and modern cosmic country. The songs here reckon with longing, desire,and change, and the arrangements draw on everything from Hawaiian-steeped surf and Mexican boleros (Blasucci spent two years living South of the border) to Bakersfield twang and lonesome cowboy campfire tunes, all delivered with the kind of easy going charm and natural intuition usually reserved for blood brothers or married couples. It's an instantly engaging chemistry the two share, a captivating musical bond that mirrors the comfort, closeness, and camaraderie of the album's homespun roots.
'This record is about as close to the sound of home as you can get,' says Blasucci. 'We recorded it with a bunch of our friends in the house where we were living in a neighborhood that we loved. The studio was right downstairs, so we had the freedom to try all kinds of new ideas without any pressure or limitations. All the other folks who lived in the house were musicians, too, so it made for this communal atmosphere where everyone was always collaborating and creating together. 'The First Edition LP and CD of From Liberty Street includes a free Mapache air freshener in the packaging! Plus, the First Edition LP arrives on limited edition yellow vinyl!
The project was formed in early 2016, leading to their debut album later that year `Wisdom of Elders'; a document of sessions combining Hutchings with a group of South African jazz musicians he'd long admired.
Other Lives mark their return their long-awaited fourth album 'For Their Love' on April 24th, 2020. The record follows 2015’s Rituals and finds frontman Jesse Tabish displaying a more candid narrative both in general and on a more personal level. Originally hailing from Stillwater, Oklahoma, Other Lives emerged in 2011 with their debut 'Tamer Animals', much celebrated both across Europe and the US with an invitation from Radiohead to open their North American tour soon followed.
ANDY SHAUF is becoming one of the most important songwriters of his generation. His songs are tuneful vignettes of small moments and big hearts. On his latest, The Neon Skyline, Shauf intertwines stories of a group of friends who frequent a local dive bar, and through them, makes poignant observations about human nature with a novelist’s detail and melancholic humor. The songwriting is down to earth, yet sophisticated and inventively melodic. The Neon Skyline is a creative leap for this already acclaimed artist.
Wolf Parade - Dan Boeckner, Spencer Krug, and Arlen Thompson - will release Thin Mind, the group’s fifth album for Sub Pop, on January 24th, 2020. The 10-track record was recorded by John Goodmanson at Risque Disque on Vancouver Island, BC, mixed by Goodmanson at Bogroll Studios in Seattle, WA, and mastered by Noah Mintz at Lacquer Channel Mastering in Toronto, ON. Thin Mind has sci-fi, post-apocalyptic and dystopian narratives interwoven throughout. These themes emerged while working at Risque Disque, which Boeckner jokingly describes as a Dutchman’s failed utopia, a problematic structure with a post-apocalyptic vibe: the studio is housed in a stone barn hand-built by the Dutchman in the middle of the woods, using local materials and based on his memory of a building he loved growing up in the Netherlands. Thin Mind finds the core members of Wolf Parade working as a trio, as they did on past albums Apologies to the Queen Mary and At Mount Zoomer, with songwriting duties evenly split between singers Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug. The album includes the singles “Forest Green,” “Julia, Take Your Man Home,” and “Against the Day,” the latter of which features a rare, co-vocal performance from Boeckner and Krug.
Enhanced with PlayARt - Augmented Reality
With their ninth album, Nada Surf: Matthew Caws, Daniel Lorca, Ira Elliot, and Louie Lino continue pursuing their humanistic vision of the world through hooky, catchy rock songs with sharply drawn, yet tenderly felt lyrics. Never Not Together, is a compact, yet wide-ranging collection of songs that revel in the quartet's ability to evoke and reflect grand and intricately wrought emotions, whether through sweeping guitar solos or hushed-whisper vocals. Never Not Together was recorded at the Coach House Studio in Wales' Rockfield Studios, where artists like Echo & the Bunnymen, the Flamin' Groovies, and Dumptruck recorded albums. "I've been seeing the name on albums for so long," says Caws. "It's a working farm, and the founder/owner, Kingsley Ward, would come in and tell us stories when he wasn't farming. I'd walk into town every morning and listen to the sheep talking as I walked by them."That openness to listening to their fans, to each other, to the world has helped inform Nada Surf's legacy as down-to-earth rock stars musicians who can command festival stages around the world while connecting to audience members on a personal level, conscious of the shared humanity every step of the way.
Enhanced with PlayARt - Augmented Reality
2LP – Double Vinyl w/ 3-sides audio and 1-side etched; includes 32-page booklet
Pearl Jam will release their much-anticipated eleventh studio album, Gigaton, on March 27th. It marks the band's first studio album since 2013. "Making this record was a long journey," explains Mike McCready. "It was emotionally dark and confusing at times, but also an exciting and experimental road map to musical redemption." 2020 officially marks 30 years of Pearl Jam performing live, with over 85 million albums sold worldwide and a 2017 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Enhanced with PlayARt - Augmented Reality
Vinyl LP pressing. 2020 release. The band is known for their fast, punk-influenced two-piece bass and drum songs, with both their music and image being characterized by "DIY principles, thrift store-cum-glam fashion style and a vast list of influences." The brothers classify their sound as "vada vada," a philosophy which Wyatt Shears describes as "an idea that represents pure creative expression, that disregards all previously made genres and ideals".
Enhanced with PlayARt - Augmented Reality
As we age, we face obstacles that are beyond our control. Some forces are internal: insecurity, anxiety, fear. Some are external: the loss of loved ones, an unjust system and the fragility of time. Yet the mark of maturity is how you respond when you realize you’re not in control. Where do you find your resilience?
This album is a reflection of us coming to terms with how to find our power in the face of an unfair world. These songs lead listeners past “where happy man searches, to a place only mad women know.” We question our purpose, our relationships, our faith. Trading the fears of our youth for the dread that rages within us as mature women.
With SATURN RETURN, our hope is that women can feel less alone in their journey through the modern world. We need each other more than we ever have; the less competition and the more inclusiveness and understanding, the better. We are southern women in the 21st century, convicted by our beliefs.
Khruangbin has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf-rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony. But on its third album, it’s finally speaking out loud. Mordechai features vocals prominently on nearly every song, a first for the mostly instrumental band. It’s a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting Khruangbin’s transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that’s always defined it. And it all started with them coming home.
Bombay Bicycle Club's long-awaited new album, Everything Else Has Gone Wrong, is set for 1/17 release. It is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the British band's acclaimed No 1 charting, Mercury Music Prize nominated 4th album `So Long, See You Tomorrow, released back in 2014. The new album was largely recorded in the US alongside Grammy Award winning producer John Congleton (St. Vincent/Sharon Van Etten/War on Drugs) and features their euphoric new single `Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You).
Monovision is the new album from Grammy Award winning artist Ray LaMontagne. This 10 track collection is Ray’s his 8th studio album, and finds the artist in the multiple roles of songwriter, singer, producer, engineer, as well as performing all the instruments on every track. The first songs to be released as singles from Monovision are “We’ll Make It Through,” and “Strong Enough.”
All of Ray LaMontagne’s albums, including Monovision – show a vast catalog of music where the artist continues to push himself in different directions, yet with a uniquely signature sound that could only be his. Monovision is available on CD, VINYL, and digitally.
