What's New 6-26-20

Haim

Women In Music Pt. III

Columbia

Haim regularly push themselves out of their comfort zones, experimenting with glitchy electronics, slatherings of sax, and dubby syncopation (“Another Try”, which feels like a sparkier sibling to Lana Del Rey’s cover of Sublime’s ‘Doin’ Time’). Between all of the new, though, the sisters are still experts at deploying irresistible rock, like the rousing, shout-a-long brilliance of “The Steps.”

Grey Daze

Amends

Loma Vista

Grey Daze, Chester Bennington’s pre-Linkin Park outfit, had just reformed before the untimely death of Bennington in 2017. Amends feature’s remastered vocals from one of rock’s most recognizable voices. It’s an origin story and a deeply intimate full circle moment among friends and fans. Featuring multiple guests from contemporaries such as Korn, Helmet, Bush, and Breaking Benjamin.

Corb Lund

Agricultural Tragic

New West

Corb Lund embraces his rich and rustic western heritage with a style that’s unique, honest and resolute, while touching on a range of cowboy themes — from rough-and-tumble tales of lawless frontier saloons, to the somber realities of running a modern family ranch. It’s a classic sound with a twist, something of a rarity these days, but one that evokes the spirit of the American West, past and present.

Ray LaMontagne

Monovision

RCA

Monovision is Grammy Award-winning artist Ray LaMontagne’s eighth studio album. The 10 new tracks see Ray not only writing and producing but also add on duties of engineering as well as performing all the instrument. The guitar-driven single, “Strong Enough,” features Ray’s signature raspy vocals his fans have come to love.

Buju Banton

Upside Down 2020

Roc Nation

The legendary dancehall singer’s 13th studio album - his first since Grammy-winning Before the Dawn in 2010. Banton says of the album, “[it] comprises 20 tracks. Why? Because it’s 2020... 2020 has a deeper understanding in my mind. It resonates with a clear vision and seeing things for what it is. After a 10-year absence, we try to give the people some music for that missing time.“

Asking Alexandria

Like a House On Fire

Sumerian

Like A House On Fire is an album that shows the group's continuity of a more straight forward and melodic hard rock sound, as established on their previous self-titled fifth album, while also shifting into different genres. It’s also yet another Asking Alexandria album that will divide opinion. And, once again, the band themselves are unlikely to care.

Derrick Hodge

Color of Noize

Blue Note

Color of Noize reflects a melting pot of influence and experience with jazz flow, hip-hop groove, soulful depth, spiritual uplift, and creative fire — but the concept is best described in more abstract terms. As Hodge lays it out, “It’s the contrast, it’s the beauty, it’s the chaos, it’s the freedom — all of that.”

New Release Round-Up 06-26-20

HAIM - Women In Music Pt. III - Sony
Women In Music Pt. III is the third studio album by American band HAIM. Released through Columbia Records. It was produced by Danielle HAIM, Rostam Batmanglij and Ariel Rechtshaid, and was preceded by the singles 'Summer Girl', 'Now I'm in It' and 'Hallelujah'.

Corb Lund - Agricultural Tragic - New West Records
Corb Lund embraces his rich and rustic western heritage with a style that’s unique, honest and resolute, while touching on a range of cowboy themes — from rough-and-tumble tales of lawless frontier saloons, to the sombre realities of running a modern family ranch. As a descendant of many generations of rodeo contestants and ranchers, he sings about a life that he and his ancestors have lived themselves, paired with his quick-witted, wry observations of today’s world. As a result of his heritage and the ten years he spent touring the world with his indie rock band, Corb’s writing resonates emphatically with rural and urban audiences alike. It’s a classic sound with a twist, something of a rarity these days, but one that evokes the spirit of the American West, past and present. Corb Lund’s 11^th studio album, Agricultural Tragic, finally puts a name to the genre he’s been embodying all of these years.

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Grey Daze - Amends - Loma Vista
Prior to his untimely passing, Chester personally announced a 2017 Grey Daze reunion on social media. As he never got the chance to launch the reunion himself, his bandmates, friends, family, and various collaborators stepped up to give the music the second chance it deserved, finishing what the late singer started. The musicians—longtime members Sean Dowdell [drums, backing vocals] and Mace Beyers [bass] as well as Cristin Davis [guitar] recruited in 2017—curated eleven tracks from their catalog and rerecorded the music in 2019 to accompany Chester’s original vocals, which comprised many unheard takes from the vault. Released by Tom Whalley’s Loma Vista Recordings and produced by Jay Baumgardner, the result illuminates the prophetic power of an icon on the cusp of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most significant revolutions and deepens his already venerable legacy in the process.

The Rolling Stones - Living In A Ghost Town [Limited Edition 10in Orange Single] - Interscope Records
Limited orange colored ten-inch vinyl pressing. Following the band's Global Citizen performance, The Rolling Stones have released a new song, "Living In A Ghost Town". This is the band's first new material in eight years. The track was written by Mick and Keith which was created/recorded in Los Angeles and London while in isolation. An official music video showcasing empty cities around the world premiered recently.

Khruangbin - Mordechai - Dead Oceans
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.

Frank Zappa & The Mothers - The Mothers 1970 [4CD Box Set] - Zappa Records
Frank Zappa & The Mothers -"The Mothers 1970" - A 4-CD collection commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Mothers with 70 unreleased tracks. Personnel includes Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan (Flo & Eddie), George Duke, Ian Underwood, Jeff Simmons and Aynsley Dunbar. Featuring unheard studio sessions from Trident Studios in London England with engineer Roy Thomas Baker, and historical live performances mostly captured by Zappa's own tape recorder. Clam Shell Box with 4 discs, booklet and a button.

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UPCOMING RELEASES

Paul Weller - On Sunset - Verve
Paul Weller’s 15th solo album, On Sunset, is a soul album. At the same time it’s an electronic album, an orchestral album, an album packed with classic pop songs and heart-tugging ballads, and an album filled with touches of experimentalism. It’s also an album that sees Weller taking a rare glance into the rear-view mirror as he speeds into the 2020s.

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Stu Larsen - Marigold - Nettwerk Records
Stu Larsen has no fixed residence...all he owns is a suitcase. You can find him in his native Australia, in Spain, Japan or South America before he picks up and leaves for his next destination. The Queensland, Australia-born singer-songwriter, and narrator packed up his life in a suitcase and has circled the globe on a near twelve-year and five-continent international trip. He has chronicled this journey through his music, including his newest full-length album Marigold.

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For more information on these and other releases out this week, check out our New Releases charts by week section.

What's New 6-19-20

Braids

Shadow Offering

Secret City

Although the album directs itself at the failures of people to love and be loved, it also seeks to restore justice and attain blissful union. Its arc crests through the dark towards the light and learns how to dance with the dizzying rhythms of the heart. The songs bubble, sustain, dissolve, expand, retract.

Ocean Alley

Lonely Diamond

Ocean Alley

Guitarists Mitch Galbraith says of the new album, “It’s pushing forward into the unknown.” An unknown that consists of 70's guitar rock, country and western, old school funk and synth-heavy new wave to create a deeply contemplative and atmospheric odyssey reminiscent of music legends including Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd.

Peggy Lee

Ultimate Peggy Lee

Capitol Records

One of the most important musical influences of the 20th century, Peggy Lee wrote over 200 songs, recorded over 1,100 masters, and had over 100 chart hits throughout her seven-decade career. As a salute to the music legend, and celebrating her landmark 100th birthday, comes a brand new career-spanning collection, Ultimate Peggy Lee.

New Release Round-Up 06-19-20

Neil Young - Homegrown - Reprise
Neil Young puts it best: “This album is the unheard bridge between Harvest and Comes a Time”. Recorded between June 1974 and January 1975, Homegrown was intended to come out in 1975 before Neil cancelled the release. The album has remained unreleased until now, achieving a legendary status among Neil Young fans in the process.  The album is made up of twelve Neil Young songs, of which seven are previously unreleased - “Separate Ways,” “Try,” “Mexico,” “Kansas,” We Don’t Smoke It No More,” “Vacancy” and “Florida” (a spoken word narration). Also included are the first recordings of “Love Is A Rose,” “Homegrown,” “White Line, “Little Wing,” and “Star Of Bethlehem” – different versions of which would all later appear on other Neil Young albums.  Neil plays solo on some tracks (guitar, piano and harmonica), and is joined by a band of friends on other tracks, including Levon Helm, Ben Keith, Karl T Himmel, Tim Drummond, Emmylou Harris and Robbie Robertson.  Recorded in analog, and mastered from the original master tapes, this long-lost album is a wonderful addition to Neil’s incomparable catalog.

  

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Bob Dylan - Rough And Rowdy Ways - Columbia Records
‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ is Bob Dylan’s first album of original material in 8 years and his first since becoming the only songwriter to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 2016. Its 10 tracks include the three new songs released this spring: the album’s lead-off track, “I Contain Multitudes,” the nearly 17-minute epic “Murder Most Foul” and “False Prophet.”

Lamb Of God - Lamb of God - Epic
The 10th studio album by heavy metal band Lamb of God. This self-titled release is the first studio album of all-new material by the band since 2015's VII: Sturm und Drang and the first to feature Art Cruz as the replacement for original drummer Chris Adler, who left Lamb of God in July 2019. The album features guest appearances by Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed and Chuck Billy of Testament.

Ron Sexsmith - Hermitage - Century Media
Hermitage is the follow-up to his 2017 album The Last Rider. Ron Sexsmith worked with producer Don Kerr to create this album; the two set up in Ron's living room to record where Ron played all the instruments for the album, with the exception of the drums. The result is the songwriter's most self-assured collection, still charmingly subtle yet increasingly full of musical vigor, as on "Chateau Mermaid," an ode to his own Stratford Graceland, or the surprisingly hopeful "Small Minded World" in which Sexsmith croons, Oh now don't feel blue 'cos they don't get you, you'll win this small minded world. This new zen can be heard from the first moments of Kinks-esque album opener, "Spring of the Following Year," as the serene sound of birds situate the listener into Sexsmith's state of grace.

Peggy Lee - Ultimate Peggy Lee - Capitol
As a salute to the music legend, and celebrating Peggy Lee's landmark 100th birthday, comes a brand new career-spanning collection, Ultimate Peggy Lee. The 22-track album features hits and signature songs including "Fever", "It's a Good Day", "He's A Tramp", "Big Spender", "I'm A Woman" and the previously unreleased "Try A Little Tenderness."

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Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile - Not Our First Goat Rodeo - Sony Classics
The long-awaited follow-up to the Grammy Award-winning The Goat Rodeo Sessions, with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile. Not Our First Goat Rodeo builds on 2011's genre-defying The Goat Rodeo Sessions, which debuted at #1 on Billboard's Classical, Classical Crossover, and Bluegrass charts and remained at # 1 for 11 weeks on the Bluegrass chart. Marking Yo-Yo Ma's highest debut on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, the release went on to break into the chart's top 20 albums, where it peaked at #18.

For more information on these and other releases out this week, check out our New Releases charts by week section.

What's New 6-12-20

Ambrose Akinmusire

on the tender spot if every calloused moment

Blue Note

Ambrose Akinmusire follows his acclaimed, genre-busting best-of-2018 manifesto Origami Harvest with another visionary statement on his new album on the tender spot of every calloused moment, which finds the trumpeter examining blackness on an uncompromising set of modern jazz laced with a heavy feeling of the blues.

Norah Jones

Pick Me Up Off The Floor

Blue Note

Growing out of Jones’ acclaimed singles series, the unreleased songs unexpectedly congealed into an album of tremendous depth and beauty. Featuring a range of collaborators from Brian Blade to Jeff Tweedy, Pick Me Up Off The Floor is connected by the sly groove of her piano trios, lyrics that confront loss and portend hope, and a mood that leans into darkness before ultimately finding the light.

Jack Garratt

Love, Death and Dancing

Island Records

The highly anticipated new album, which marks his return to creating music after a four year hiatus from his previous album Phase, was self-produced with additional production by Jacknife Lee, James Flannigan and Brett Cox. The album compiles all four individual volumes of Love, Death & Dancing, kicking off with lead single "Time."

Sammy Brue

Crash Test Kid

New West

Hailed as an “Americana prodigy” by Rolling Stone and one of the “teenagers shaping pop” by The New Yorker, Brue has always been an artist seemingly wise beyond his years. But on Crash Test Kid he often gets at the heart of a matter or melody with just a simple but insightful turn of phrase or cleverly-picked guitar.

What's New

Frank Sinatra

Nice'n'Easy - 60th Anniversary

Capitol

In celebration of the 60th Anniversary of Frank Sinatra's Nice 'n' Easy, the album will be remastered and released on June 5th. Features the original 12 tracks like "The Nearness of You", as well as full sessions of "I've Got A Crush on You" and "Nice 'n' Easy" that include previously unreleased alternate takes and reveals Sinatra studio chatter.

Trixie Mattel

Barbara

ATO

For years, Trixie Mattel has broken boundaries not only for drag performers in the music world but also for LGBTQ+ artists in the genres of country, folk and Americana. Barbara is laid out to reflect a vintage, plugged-in late 60s/early 70s vibe. It hearkens back to the introspective folk that took Trixie to the top of the charts (for her second album One Stone) with quieter country-tinged songs.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

Sideways To New Italy

Sub Pop

After years spent looking out at landscapes and loved ones and an increasingly unstable world, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have turned their gaze inward, to their individual pasts and the places that inform them, on their second full-length, Sideways to New Italy.

Sports Team

Deep Down Happy

Island Records

Sports Team, a band of six singular characters who have been variously described as one of the most raucous, electrifying and chaotic acts in the UK release their debut album Deep Down Happy. The highly anticipated record, is their first release on the legendary Island Records label.

A NOTE ABOUT RECORD STORE DAY 2020

Due to the current circumstances RSD 2020 has once again had to adapt and here is the latest information from Record Store Day:

Since 2008, Record Store Day has grown into the world’s largest single-day music event, shining a light on the culture of the indie record store across the globe. In 2020, that world is different, so Record Store Day will be too. RSD is now scheduled to be celebrated with special, properly distanced release dates on Saturdays in August, September and October.

Record Store Day will look very different this year, but supporting indie record stores may be more important than ever. We don't know what sort of rules will be in place, or what sort of gatherings people will be in the mood for this year, so we're focusing on the music and getting the really great titles on the RSD Official List this year into the stores and into your hands, in the most financially and socially responsible way.

The titles on the RSD 2020 Official List, launched on March 5th, will be released at participating record stores on one of these three RSD Drops: August 29th, September 26th, and October 24th.   The new version of The List, with newly assigned RSD Drops dates will launch on June 1 so check back here for a look at when you'll be able to pick up the titles on your RSD 2020 wishlist at your local record store.