News
What's New 4-16-21
The legendary So-Cal punk group return with their 10th album, and first new offering since 2008, with the blistering and triumphant Let The Bad Times Roll. Produced by Bob Rock, the group describes the album as "the most cathartic thing we've done. The messages might be dark, but at the end what's left is that communication is important, working through feelings is important and most of all, hope is important."
After three years, one-million concert tickets sold across five continents, four consecutive #1 singles, a GRAMMY Award, and performances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live, Greta Van Fleet is hurtling into the future with its second album, The Battle at Garden's Gate on Lava/Republic Records. *Available on Indie Exclusive double white vinyl*
Nearly two decades into her storied career, 9-time GRAMMY-winning singer, songwriter, pianist, and 2020’s most livestreamed artists, Norah Jones is set to release her first full live album, Til We Meet Again. The collection presents globe-spanning performances that were recorded between 2017-2019 and features 14 songs spanning Jones’ entire career from her 2002 debut Come Away With Me to her more recent singles series.
Award-winning, revered singer / songwriter Lucinda Williams is working to help independent music venues during this time with the announcement of Lu’s Jukebox. Scheduled as a six- episode series of mostly full-band, HD video performances in-studio, Lu’s Jukebox features a themed set of songs by other artists curated by the multi-Grammy award winner. The first episode kicks off with Running Down A Dream: A Tribute To Tom Petty, featuring songs from his celebrated career.
Violence Unimagined - the title tells you everything you need to know about Cannibal Corpse's fifteenth hellish opus. Comprising eleven tracks, it is state of the art death metal played with passion and breathless precision, making for another flawless addition to what is inarguably one of the premier catalogues the genre has thrown up.
New Release Round-Up 04-16-21
Greta Van Fleet - The Battle At Garden's Gate - Republic
After three years, one-million concert tickets sold across five continents, four consecutive #1 singles, a GRAMMY Award, and performances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live, Greta Van Fleet is hurtling into the future with its second album, The Battle At Garden's Gate on Lava/Republic Records. Indie Exclusive on white vinyl.
Tom Petty - Finding Wildflowers: Alternate Versions - Republic
Finding Wildflowers: Alternate Versions—the latest offering of Tom Petty music, curated with help from his loving family, bandmates and collaborators—released via Warner Records. The tracks, which were previously released on the limited-edition Super Deluxe 9-LP version of 2020’s Wildflowers & All The Rest, will now be available on limited edition gold vinyl for indie retail, and CD. A black vinyl release will follow on May 7. Finding Wildflowers (Alternate Versions) features 16 studio recordings of alternate takes, long cuts and jam versions of Wildflowers songs as Tom, band members and co-producer Rick Rubin worked to finalize the album in 1994. The release offers fans further deep access into the writing and recording of Wildflowers, as well as realizing the full vision of the project as Tom had always intended. The collection was produced by Tom’s longtime engineer and co-producer Ryan Ulyate who listened to 245 reels of 24-track tape, revealing Tom and his collaborators’ evolutionary process, and finding the group willing to do whatever it took to discover the essence and magic in the material.
Eric Church - Heart & Soul - EMI Nashville
Reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year Eric Church confirmed that new music is on the horizon: "I have [new] albums coming out in April. They came out of my 28 days in the mountains of North Carolina, where the songs were recorded and written. The collection is entitled Heart & Soul."
Imelda May - 11 Past The Hour - Decca
The goal of the album is to show Imelda May returning to her most honest self. Truthful beauty, feminine intuition. Intelligence. Visually, we should be showing a soft sense of warm spirited grittiness. Intimate. At home. Behind the curtain Imelda's radiant smile and illuminating laughter. A nod to her roots. Irish Heritage & inherent connection to storytelling. Imelda's words as a lyricist/poet/writer & overall thread to her Irish roots as a storyteller is a key thread within the campaign.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
Deftones - White Pony: 20th Anniversary [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Super Deluxe]
Cannibal Corpse - Violence Unimagined [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition White w/ Olive Green Melt LP]
The Living - 1982 [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Canary Yellow LP]
The Offspring - Let The Bad Times Roll [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Orange Crush LP]
The Network - Money Money 2020 Pt II: We Told Ya So!
Lucinda Williams - Runnin' Down A Dream: A Tribute To Tom Petty
Midland - The Sonic Ranch [Limited Edition]
Norah Jones - ‘Til We Meet Again (Live)
Fitz - Head Up High
Havok - Point Of No Return EP
Garage A Trois - Calm Down Cologne
The Armed - Ultrapop [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Opaque Tan LP]
Amigo the Devil - Born Against
Escape The Fate - Chemical Warfare
Liquid Tension Experiment - LTE3 [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Translucent Orange 3LP]
& More .....
What's New 4-9-21
The Pink Stones deliver a full serving of Peach State picked country-rock from Athens, Georgia with the release of their debut album, Introducing… The Pink Stones, via the New West Records imprint Normaltown Records. Mixing elements of classic cosmic country, raucous rock’n’roll and fresh humor and heartaches, The Pink Stones are authoring a new chapter in the annals of Cosmic American Music.
Be Here Instead emerged from a wild alchemy of instinct, ingenuity, and joyfully determined rule-breaking. In a departure from the guitar-and-notebook-based approach, Millsap experimenting with everything from piano to effects pedals to old-school drum machines. As those explorations deepened and broadened his musical vision, Millsap soon arrived at a body of work touched with both unbridled imagination and lucid insight into the search for presence in a chaotic world.
Led by led by Reverend Peyton, who most consider to be the premier finger picker playing today, the Big Damn Band is the greatest front-porch blues band in the world. Peyton has earned a reputation as both a singularly compelling performer and a persuasive evangelist for the rootsy, country blues styles that captured his imagination early in life. Dance Songs For Hard Times brings a country blues record that was made the right way — two feet on the ground and both hands getting dirty.
This is record nerd-core in a major way, evocative of the LP's first golden era, as the late sixties oozed into the strange 1970s, with the requisite T-Rex stomps, Britfolk twists and turns, and dueling Verlaine/Lloyd guitars. You could call Silver Synthetic rock & roll formalists, but the truth is they're more like minimalists, stripping away tired clutter and unnecessary bloat and just zooming in on the essential. In a world that doesn’t seem capable of swaying, Silver Synthetic’s self-titled debut shakes and boogies.
With over 5,000 performances spanning four decades, 20 million records sold worldwide, and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cheap Trick is undoubtedly one of the most influential classic rock groups of the past 50 years. While it has evolved throughout the years, Cheap Trick has continued to reach mainstream and critical success. Hits such as “I Want You To Want Me,” “Dream Police,” and “Surrender” have cemented the group as one of America’s top rock ‘n’ roll bands of all time.
Fiendish is a choice cut, beefy slab of putrid and rotting old school Death Metal! This morsel of meat comes with hooks attached- catchy melodic rhythms, memorable choruses, pounding drums, clear yet brutal vocals, and searing solos. With Fiendish, Carnal Savagery not only eat the dead, but they also devour every other modern Death Metal band with their gnashing teeth, spitting out the gristly remains!
New Release Round-Up 04-09-21
Silver Synthetic - Silver Synthetic - Third Man Records
In the midst of the thick New Orleans summer of 2017, Chris Lyons of garage punks Bottomfeeders found himself sitting on a small batch of songs that didn’t quite fit the fuzzed-out pileups of that band. The new songs were more chiming, driving but relaxed, full of little corners begging to be filled with classic pop harmonies and wayward country licks. He called in his trusted confidants: Bottomfeeders drummer and longtime musical partner Lucas Bogner—the two started playing music together at the tender age of 15—plus bassist Pete Campanelli, and Kunal Prakash (Jeff the Brotherhood) dug the songs and signed on, and the quartet started playing in earnest, hunkering down in the practice space. By the time the band played its first gig in late 2018 at the opening of Nola’s ManRay Records, the songs had multiplied and the members of the newly christened Silver Synthetic had become genuine rock & roll craftsmen. In a world that doesn’t seem capable of swaying, Silver Synthetic’s self-titled debut shakes and boogies. It makes sense that the band’s first gig was in a record shop ‘cause folks, this is record nerd-core in a major way, evocative of the LP's first golden era, as the late sixties oozed into the strange 1970s, with the requisite T-Rex stomps, Britfolk twists and turns, and dueling Verlaine/Lloyd guitars. It’s about warmth, and you can practically smell the gently glowing amp tubes on “In the Beginning,” which wafts along on a gust borrowed from Lou Reed’s beatific Coney Island Baby breeziness. With “Chasm Killer,” the boys lean into jammy heartland rock, almost approaching Silver Bullet Band territory at one point! Even when the band kicks into charging lean rock-n-roller, like on the Kinksy “Around the Bend,” there’s a laid-backness that allows more room for the spirit. You could call Silver Synthetic rock & roll formalists, but the truth is they're more like minimalists, stripping away tired clutter and unnecessary bloat and just zooming in on the essential.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE - Entertainment Death [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Maroon, Deep Purple and Coke Bottle Clear Marbled LP]
Taylor Swift - Fearless: Taylor's Version [2 CD]
Parker Millsap - Be Here Instead
Rhiannon Giddens - They're Calling Me Home
Cheap Trick - In Another World
The Orb - Abolition Of The Royal Familia - Guillotine Mixes [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Double Blue LP]
The Pink Stones - Introducing...the Pink Stones
Luke Bryan - Born Here Live Here Die Here: Deluxe
Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band - Dance Songs For Hard Times
Nick Waterhouse - Promenade Blue
Ariana Grande - Positions [Coke Bottle Clear LP]
BROCKHAMPTON - ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE
Briston Maroney - Sunflower [Translucent Blue-Green LP]
The Blips - The Blips
Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles Keys - Keys
Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac Live: Super Deluxe Edition [2LP/3CD/7in]
Various Artists - Wilcovered [Red 2LP]
Pony - Tv Baby
Show Me the Body - Survive EP [10in Vinyl]
& More .....
What's New 4-2-21
There's early work with Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner in Charles Mingus' Jazz Workshop, work with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, a stint in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and also one with Miles. This is what Gary Bartz brings to the Jazz Is Dead project and as can be expected, his questing spirit fits the JID style like a glove and has produced an album that's a cutting-edge addition to his immense canon as he effortlessly interfaces with a new generation.
Lead single, “Six Days In June,” is an upbeat and foot-stomping anthem that sure to put a big smile on the face of any Fratellis fan. “Some days you sit on the couch watching daytime TV and along comes a song like Six ‘Days In June’ to remind you that you’re still alive!,” says Jon Fratelli. Half Drunk… follows their critically acclaimed album In Your Own Sweet Time and very much continues on this upward trajectory, sure to become a signature moment in the band's career.
The South London trio’s New Long Leg is more ambitious and complex, with spoken vocals tightly intertwined with the band's restless instrumentals. With lyrics preoccupied by themes like dissociation, escapism, daydreaming, complicated feelings of love, anger, revenge, anxiety, the kitchen, lethargy, forgetfulness, and survival, lead singer Shaw says, "the title is ambiguous; a new long leg could be an expensive present or a growth or a table repair."
Heavy Sun fuses classic gospel and modern electronics, mixing gritty, human textures with crisp, digital accents and lush, swirling atmospherics to create a sound that's at once warmly familiar and boldly unexpected. It’s spacious and dreamy, anchored by rich, righteous organ topped with airy falsetto and mesmerizing four-part harmony, tapping into the shared uncertainty of the human condition to offer hope, comfort, and connection at a time when all three run in desperately short supply.
Sturgill returns with the next installment of his bluegrass series, Cuttin' Grass Vol. 2. An A-Team of acoustic players reconvened for another round of reinterpretations of his catalogue, this time largely focusing on 2016's A Sailor's Guide to Earth, which won the Grammy for Country Album of the Year. This volume also includes "Jesus Boogie," originally performed by Simpson's first band, Sunday Valley, and two previously unreleased songs, "Tennessee" and "Hobo Cartoon."
In 2008 Etienne de Rocher paused his budding career as a songwriter in the Bay Area to relocate his growing family to the fertile artistic grounds of Athens, GA. Faltering Light is more than just a love letter to the Classic City though. It’s a love letter to life. 11 rocking, thoughtful, psychedelic, literary songs about Etienne’s experience with life raising kids, restoring homes, cooking, holidays and his inward contemplations of dreams, emotions, and nightmares.
Demi Lovato returns with her highly anticipated seventh studio album, Dancing with the Devil… The Art of Starting Over. The album serves as the companion to Demi's powerful 4-part YouTube Originals documentary, Dancing with the Devil, which premiered March 23rd. The album includes 19 original songs including previously released Grammy Awards showstopper "Anyone" as well as "What Other People Say" with Sam Fischer.