Music Releases 01-20-23
Describing their first three albums as a trilogy that is now complete, Meath and Sanborn see No Rules Sandy as the beginning of a new period, with songs that are “wilder and stranger and more cathartic than the band used to be,” as Nick Sanborn puts it. “It feels like who we actually are,” Amelia Meath adds. “It just feels like us. We’re not trying to fit into the mold, just happily being our freak selves.”
Cruel Country–Wilco’s universally-acclaimed 12th studio album will be available for the first time on vinyl and in a standard retail CD format via dBpm Records on January 20th. The double-disc packages are comprised of 21 Country Music inspired tracks, recorded at the band’s Chicago studio–The Loft.
Originally released in May 2022 (digital only) and in a limited “pre-release” CD edition for the June RSD drop, lead tracks “Falling Apart (Right Now)” and “Tired Of Taking It Out On You” have already become staples on non-commercial, public and AAA radio. Cruel Country songs and graphics have been featured throughout the band’s June European tour and August/September/October North American tour.
A new music video for “A Lifetime To Find” will be released in conjunction with the pre-order announcement.
Bandleader Jeff Tweedy has commented a length on the concept and recording process of Cruel Country in numerous podcasts, online interviews and print articles:
“There have been elements of Country Music in everything we’ve ever done. We’ve never been particularly comfortable with accepting that definition, the idea that I was making Country Music. But now, having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making Country.”
Jon Pareles in The New York Times wrote: “Wilco makes an understated magnum opus. Its tone is naturalistic and understated; the album was recorded largely with Wilco playing live in the studio as a six-man band, quietly savoring the chance to make music together after pandemic isolation.”
Jon Dolan in Rolling Stone wrote: “Their latest is a beautifully rootsy album with a broken sense of patriotic concern.” ****
Tagged in multiple publications’ mid-summer Best of Albums of 2022 (so far) Lists including
Variety, Rolling Stone, Spin, Uproxx and Paste.
“The plan was to start driving north and not go home to Los Angeles until I was done with a record,” Five Easy Hot Dogs is a collection of instrumental recordings from Mac’s time on the road. “Kind of like being on tour, except there weren’t any shows and I’d just be burning money.” All of the songs on Five Easy Hot Dogs were recorded and mixed in the corresponding city from each song title and the tracklisting reflects the chronological order in which the songs were produced.
Darker and more danceable and demonic than 2021’s “Huffy,” We Are Scientists’ new album “Lobes” features the singles Operator Error, Settled Accounts & Less From You. On their second self-produced outing, the band’s assurance and perversion have blossomed. Limited edition, 140g Cathode Blue translucent vinyl available exclusively for indie record stores.
Beauty, disposability and fragility of the culture that surrounds us, and the exhilaration of freeing yourself from those structures… these are the themes Ladytron return to on Time’s Arrow, their seventh album.
Driven by analogue synths, distorted chimes and hallucinogenic soundscapes, Ladytron crash-landed into electroclash at the turn of the century, using the dancefloor as a bridgehead to the collective unconscious. On Time’s Arrow the group add new richness, distant shimmers and a shoegaze-adjacent glow with Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo’s trademark understated voices now inhabiting a space somewhere between cloudscape and dream.
Announcing their debut album Leisure in 1991, Blur continued to revolutionise the sound of English popular music with second release Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993). Five successive UK #1 albums followed - with Parklife (1994) and The Great Escape (1995) helping to propel the band to mass popularity in the UK and beyond. The eponymous Blur was released in 1997 and seventh album Think Tank (2003). In 2015 the band returned with The Magic Whip It was the band's first studio album in 12 years.The album received acclaim from music critics. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, marking Blur's sixth UK number-one album. It has been certified Gold.
In recent years, his film and TV composing work has included soundtracks for Netflix sci-fi series The One and BBC One’s technological crime thriller The Capture.
Bryan Adams has re-recorded a selection of his biggest hits and deep cuts, now featured on vinyl! The 2LP package features 14 tracks including classic hits like “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” “Summer of ‘69” and “Heaven.” Side D features an etching.
Deluxe Hardcover Casebook CD with 32-page Booklet and 5 Photo Cards
After stepping into the spotlight thanks to her own cover versions of blues & rock classics on YouTube (500K subscribers - 105 million views), Laura Cox managed to become the guitarist & singer with the most views in the French rock scene thanks to her amazing first albums Hard Blues Shot (2017) & Burning Bright (2019).
After outstanding performances at renowned European festivals (Hellfest, Pol'and’Rock, Rock Palast...), not only the honor of interviewing the legendary SCORPIONS for Arte followed, but also an own documentary for one of the biggest German TV stations, WDR.
In 2022, she is the rising star of rock in Europe with her new album 'Head Above Water'.
With 11 sparkling new tracks recorded at the legendary ICP studio in Brussels by Erwin Autrique and mastered by multiple GRAMMY award-winning Ted Jensen, 'Head Above Water' breaks all boundaries and proves Laura Cox's undeniable talent.
Fan favorite dark dance outfit Boy Harsher have contributed a sumptuously eerie track for the David Gordon Green directed finale to the iconic Halloween franchise. Sacred Bones and Nude Club (Boy Harsher’s imprint) are joining forces and releasing a proper 12” maxi single containing four versions of the track “Burn it Down,” to be released in tandem with the original score provided by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies.
Boy Harsher said of the experience: “During an extremely brief period of rest between tours, we got this call from the music supervisor of Halloween. The director, David Gordon Green, had listened to our music and wanted to use something for the final installment in the trilogy - Halloween Ends. We flew to New York the next day to meet the team and discuss the possibilities. It was totally surreal. Obviously we’re huge fans of Carpenter and the franchise is a fav, but to work with Gordon Green was also so special, his early films (George Washington, Undertow, Snow Angels) were heavy influences on our work. The real kicker is that Halloween Ends was shot in Savannah, GA - the birthplace of Boy Harsher and where we met. Unbelievable. It all felt too synchronous, and we knew we had to make something work although we were about to leave for a multi-month tour that week. We flew home to Massachusetts, dug through old demos, and found Burn It Down. In the end it was the perfect energy for the bittersweet love affair between Allyson and Corey, so during a couple days off - we cleaned it up and made it come alive."
Sampa the Great
As Above, So Below [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Seaglass Blue LP]
Vinyl: $25.98 Buy
Having started her professional career outside of her home of Zambia, Sampa The Great returned at the beginning of the pandemic to Africa. As Above, So Below is the result of this return to her roots, embracing the sounds and themes of her origins. Sampa has reconnected with a different side of herself, one closer to the younger artistry that was nourished growing up. Now, in an age of authenticity, meet a 360 Sampa, a higher version of herself. No mask on, or role to play.
Sam Fender
Live From Finsbury Park [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Red 2 LP]
Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein
Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1 [Max's Blue World 2LP]
Scored by Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein of S U R V I V E!
Stranger Things is the breakout Netflix original series set in 1983 Indiana where a young boy vanishes into thin air. As friends, family and local police search for answers, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top-secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one very strange little girl. A love letter to the '80s supernatural classics that captivated a generation, Stranger Things stars Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Matthew Modine, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton.
- Stranger Things Season Four is split over two volumes!
- LPs contain 80 tracks, about three hours of music, on both Volumes 1 & 2!
- Stranger Things has won seven Emmy Awards, and has been nominated for 216 various awards, with 77 wins.
- Stranger Things 4 is Netflix's most-viewed English-language series of all time.
Features
- Double Vinyl LP
- Transparent 'Max's Blue World' Vinyl
- Gatefold Jacket
- Printed Inner Sleeves
STRANGER THINGS SEASON 4 VOLUME 1 - VINYL LP
Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein
Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2 [Vecna's Red World 2LP]
Vinyl: $34.98 Buy
The Murder Capital
Gigi's Recovery [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Pink LP]
The Murder Capital’s second studio album Gigi’s Recovery, produced by John Congleton, will be released on January 20, 2023 via Human Season Records. The black LP will be housed in a printed inner sleeve in a single-pocket jacket. Painting by Peter Doyle and designed by Aidan Cochrane.
What does John Cale have that the rest of us don’t—some gene that engenders infinite restlessness, a rapacious mind that is never satisfied? For nearly 60 years, or at least since he was a young Welshman who moved to New York and joined The Velvet Underground, Cale has been reinventing his music with dazzling and inspiring regularity. Once again, here is Cale, reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. His engrossing 12-track MERCY—his first full album of new tunes in a decade—moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronic blues toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future with the help of some of music’s most curious young minds.
One amp. One mic. One person. Countless hooks. That’s the Dazy formula. Since first releasing the single "Bright Lights b/w Accelerate" in August 2020, Dazy mastermind James Goodson has been writing, recording, and releasing new music like a man on the hunt to find the best pop hook, and he won’t stop until he’s put all of them into his songs. Showcasing a unique set of influences, Dazy’s sound marries thumping drum machine beats, blasts of feeding back guitar, and sugar-sweet hooks into something that sounds like Godflesh covering Oasis—or maybe the other way around. With lean songwriting that recalls Teenage Fanclub but a home-recorded production style better suited for Big Black, Goodson builds a constant churn of abrasive, consuming noise and then makes it catchier than anyone else would ever dare to.
Dazy released two EPs, Revolving Door and The Crowded Mind, in 2021, the latter of which landed on Stereogum’s ‘25 Great EPs From 2021’ list.’ Ever-prolific, all of those songs and more appeared on Dazy’s August 2021 collection, MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD: The First 24 Songs (Convulse Records), which was also included on multiple year-end lists such as Paste’s ‘50 Best Albums of 2021’ and ‘40 Best Rock Albums of 2021,’ and The Alternative’s ‘50 Top Records of 2021’—in addition to garnering praise from Stereogum (“...sticky, fuzzy, overwhelmingly catchy power-pop, and it’s got hooks for days”), Bandcamp Daily (‘New & Nota-ble’), and MAXIMUMROCKNROLL (“Absolutely ridiculous ‘90s college rock hook-laden pop”), among others.
Disclaimer, Seether’s debut breakthrough album features the singles “Gasoline,” “Fine Again” and “Driven Under”. To celebrate it’s 20th Anniversary, the album has been completely remastered and expanded. This new Deluxe Vinyl will span 3 12” LP’s and feature a host of bonus content including an entire live show from the era as well as a rare B-side cover of Nirvana’s “Something In The Way.” The package will also include exclusive liner notes from acclaimed rock journalist Katherine Turman.
Jerry Lee Lewis
Live At The Star Club Hamburg [RSD Essential Indie Colorway White LP]
Vinyl: $34.99 Buy
Praised as one of the greatest records of all time, this newly remastered, 180-gram edition includes bonus material and a gatefold jacket.
A remastered classic from the quintessential American girl group of the 1960s. Features the original European cover artwork.
Don Covay & The Jefferson Lemon Blues Band
Different Strokes For Different Folks [RSD Essential Red LP]
Vinyl: $27.99 Buy
Masters Of Reality
Masters Of Reality [RSD Essential Indie Colorway Translucent Blue LP]
Vinyl: $27.99 Buy
One can't speak of California's famed desert rock movement without mentioning the visionary producer/musician Chris Goss. The so-called Godfather of the Joshua Tree-centered scene, Goss has produced famed and acclaimed albums by groups like Queens Of The Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Kyuss, Screaming Trees, and numerous others. Before he was known as a renowned producer though, he was the singer/guitarist and only consistent member of one of the most influential-yet-forgotten hard rock groups of all time: Masters of Reality. Masters Of Reality (Whose name was appropriately taken from a Black Sabbath song) had the distinction of being the only group signed to two different hip-hop labels of historical note: Def Jam and Delicious Vinyl. Originally label mates with Public Enemy and Slayer, Masters Of Reality's self-titled debut album was released by Def American in 1988. Two years later, Delicious Vinyl founders Matt Dike and Mike Ross, huge Masters fans, bought the band's contract from Rick Rubin and re-released the album with new cover artwork to renewed acclaim and commercial success. So many years later, Masters Of Reality's debut still feels like a hard-hitting breath of fresh air in a modern landscape of over-produced rock music
Nathaniel Merriweather Presents...Lovage
Music To Make Love To Your Old Lady By [RSD Essential Indie Colorway Turquoise 2LP] [Repress]
Vinyl: $29.99 Buy
“Lovage” is defined as “an herb that is said to be a benefit for relieving abdominal pains due to gastrointestinal gas…also touted to reduce flatulence when consumed as a tea.” But when placed in the able hands of sonic mastermind Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, recording under the guise of musical lothario Nathaniel Merriweather, the result is a concept album of “music to make love to your old lady by.” With the help of collaborators such as Mike Patton (vocals), Jennifer Charles (vocals) and Kid Koala (turntables), Merriweather serves as your personal guide to the sensual side of life, painting a satirical, darkly funny portrait of love and sex with left-field hip-hop and instrumentals as only he can do.
Originally released in 2009, this "25 Years of Twiztid" version of W.I.C.K.E.D. is the 2nd in a series of 5 albums to be re-released in celebration of Twiztid's 25 years as a band. Limited Edition 2 LP pressed on black and red vinyl in a gatefold jacket.