U2 - Achtung Baby: 30th Anniversary Edition - Island
A limited-edition black vinyl release of the Grammy-award winning U2 album Achtung Baby, to celebrate its 30^th Anniversary. Produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and recorded between Berlin’s Hansa Studios and various locations in Dublin, Achtung Baby was released to critical acclaim in 1991 & is regarded as one of U2’s most seminal albums. The album featured five singles: ‘The Fly’, ‘Mysterious Ways’, ‘One’, ‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’ and ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’.

Kiss - Destroyer: 45th Anniversary Edition - UMe
In 1976, KISS dropped the bombshell on the world being DESTROYER, an album that originally received resistance from fans due to the band exploring a new sound and has long become the quintessential and all-time best selling KISS studio album. Exploding with concert staples and KISS Army favorites like “Detroit Rock City,” “Shout It OutLoud,” and “God Of Thunder” – the album’s new sounds came from the softer side of songs like “Do You Love Me?,”and songs heavy with orchestral arrangements including “Great Expectations” and their surprise hit single “Beth.” For the 45th anniversary, UMe is releasing the most comprehensive Super Deluxe Edition 4CD + Blu-ray Audio boxset that will melt the KISS Army’s minds. The original album on CD 1 is newly remastered by Abbey Road Mastering, CD 2 features 15 demos from Paul Stanley’s and Gene Simmons’s personal archives – 9 of which are unreleased. CD 3 loads up with studio outtakes, alternate versions / mixes and single edits – most notably a brand-new stripped-down mix for “Beth (Acoustic Mix)” where we found the acoustic guitar stems recorded for the entire song but originally only used in the last several closing notes of the song on the album. CD 4 features a ripping performance from the band’s visit to Paris France at the L’Olympia on May 22, 1976. Steven Wilson was brought in to create a first-ever Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround mix of the original studio album plus 2 bonus tracks “Beth (Acoustic Mix)” and “Sweet Pain (Original Guitar Solo)” the latter featuring Ace Frehley’s original recorded guitar solo that was not released on the studio album (this track is available on the 2012 Destroyer: Resurrected project.) Packaging features a lift top-style box loaded with so much ephemera even KISS fans may need to seek medical advice upon receiving this boxset. Also available Deluxe 2CD and Deluxe 2LP.

Yusuf / Cat Stevens - Teaser And The Firecat: 50th Anniversary - A&M
Yusuf / Cat Stevens celebrates 1971's landmark album with this 4CD, Blu-ray, 2LP, and 7" set in a rigid clamshell box. It includes the 50th Anniversary remaster of the album on CD/Blu-ray HD Audio completed at Abbey Road by the original producer, Paul Samwell-Smith. Featuring 41 previously unreleased demos, sessions, live tracks, and 21 unreleased TV performances. Plus, an illustrated 108-pg essay book, a 44-pg replica of the original "Teaser And The Firecat" book, and a 7" single of "Moonshadow." Also available Super Deluxe 4CD/Blu-ray Box Set, Deluxe 2CD and LP & CD.

Andy Shauf - Wilds - ANTI
Few artists are storytellers as deft and disarmingly observational as Andy Shauf. The Toronto-based, Saskatchewan-raised musician’s songs unfold like short fiction: they’re densely layered with colorful characters and a rich emotional depth. Like he’s done throughout his career, Shauf wrote, performed, arranged, and produced every song on his new album Wilds at his studio space in the west end of Toronto.  Over the course of a year-and-a-half, Shauf had written more than 50 songs, and pared down this massive body of work, into a single album’s worth of material, which became 2020’s highly acclaimed The Neon Skyline album. These songs focused on a theme by intertwining the individual characters stories of a group of friends who gathered for one night at the same local bar. Wilds includes songs from those same writing sessions, that did not fit into the Skyline storyline and had their own singular identity apart from that album, though he does revisit with his old friends Judy and Jeremy in this outing.

  

Damon Albarn - The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows - PIAS
The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows was originally intended as an orchestral piece inspired by the landscapes of Iceland. This last year has seen Damon Albarn return to the music in lockdown and develop the work to 11 tracks which further explore themes of fragility, loss, emergence and rebirth. The result is a panoramic collection of songs with Albarn as storyteller. The album title is taken from a John Clare poem Love and Memory. Albarn says "I have been on my own dark journey while making this record and it led me to believe that a pure source might still exist."In a career of perpetual musical shifts and exploration, the record uncovers yet more ground, finding expansive orchestral arrangements nestling with intimate melodies, discordance brushing up against infectious majesty, all set to some of Albarn's most arresting vocal performances to date. Much like the beauty and chaos of the natural world it soundtracks, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows vividly documents the emotional ebb and flow of the human condition, in all it's extremes, serving as a soul enriching document for our times.

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They Might Be Giants - Book - Idlewild Recordings
Book is a new phase They Might Be Giants album presented on 180-gram audiophile vinyl LP, CD, Cassette and Limited Edition Deluxe CD/Book with package design by Paul Sahre. Featuring "I Broke My Own Rule," "I Lost Thursday," and "I Can't Remember the Dream," Book is billed as a beacon of light amid a pretty unanimously rough period of time with the band's John Linnell describing it's songs as "humorously germane to the catastrophe going on around us."

  

Diana Ross - Thank You - Verve
Diana Ross sings “Thank You” to the world.  “This collection of songs is my gift to you with appreciation and love. I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to record this glorious music at this time,” said Ms. Ross. Recorded in her home studio, “Thank You" offers a powerful, inclusive musical message of love and togetherness.  With its songs of happiness, appreciation and joy, it wholeheartedly acknowledges that we are in this all together. Her family, friends and loyal and loving audiences all around the globe have been an integral part of her wonderful life’s story. In this special moment, it is time to step into the light. Ms. Ross co-wrote and collaborated on the 13 songs along with award-winning songwriters and producers including: Jack Antonoff, Troy Miller,Triangle Park, Spike Stent, Prince Charlez, Amy Wadge, Neff-U, Freddie Wexler, Jimmy Napes, Tayla Parx, Fred White, and Nathanial Ledgewick. Let us come together in harmony and gratitude with Diana Ross now and for the future. “I dedicate this songbook of love to all of you, the listeners. As you hear my voice you hear my heart.  "Let Love Lead the Way”

  

Bullet For My Valentine - Bullet For My Valentine - Spinefarm
Metal vets Bullet For My Valentine announces their self-titled, seventh album which will be released via Spinefarm Records. It sees the band open a bold new chapter and is easily their heaviest, fiercest album so far.

 

Garbage - beautifulgarbage: 20th Anniversary - Geffen
beautifulgarbage is the third studio album from Garbage, initially released on October 1, 2001. The album expanded on the band's musical variety, with stronger melodies, more direct lyrics, and sounds mixing rock with electronica, new wave, hip hop, and girl groups. Featuring newly remastered audio by Billy Bush & Butch Vig, this deluxe edition includes Beautiful Garbage on 2 x 180g Black Vinyl, as well as a 12" 180g of B-Sides and memorabilia.

Curtis Harding - If Words Were Flowers - Anti
Simply calling Curtis Harding a soul man feels reductive. Harding's voice conveys pain, pleasure, longing, tenderness, sadness and strength-a full gamut of emotions. Today his voice takes on an optimistic lilt with his his new album, If Words Were Flowers. If Words Were Flowers is Harding's first new music since 2018, a follow up to his critically acclaimed 'Face Your Fears" album. It features songs like " Hopeful", where Harding croons with devotion over a classic soul groove, textured with infectious horn playing, background singers and modern psychedelic flourishes. Harding fuels his psychedelic sound with the essence of Soul but isn't bound by it. Instead, his songs convey an eclectic blend of genres leaping from the many musical lives he has lived from following his evangelical Gospel-singing mother on tour around the country as a child to rapping in Atlanta, forming a garage band with The Black Lips' Cole Alexander to singing back-up for Cee Lo Green. Through these experiences he fully embraces life's darkest intricacies and conjures dynamic, addictive melodies