Music Releases 03-17-23
4 LP Super Deluxe Collectors Boxset featuring 40 new acoustic and reimagined recordings from the U2 catalog, produced and compiled by The Edge and arranged into individual band member volumes. Pressed on 180-gram vinyl and housed in a stunning mat laminated slipcase with bespoke debossing, this limited and numbered boxset includes new lyrics by Bono, exclusive photos by Anton Corbijn and liner notes from The Edge.
Created between Palm Springs, California and Hilo, Hawai'i, V is the first double album from the Hawaiian-New Zealand singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ruban Nielson's Unknown Mortal Orchestra band. Designed to play as one continuous movement and road-tested on dry California freeways, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra car record. It's also the fifth full-length album Ruban has released in twelve years. Across fourteen sunbleached songs - written solo or with his brother Kody - Ruban draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, yacht rock, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. Over a laidback blend of singalong anthems and cinematic instrumentals, he evokes blue skies, afternoons spent lounging by hotel swimming pools and the alluring darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces. It's a duality expressed in the dilapidated sunset blues and the saltcorroded soul Ruban explores through tracks like 'Layla' and 'Nadja. ' During the pandemic's early days, Ruban reunited with Kody at a cousin's wedding in Hawai'i. With assistance from their father, Chris Nielson (saxophone/flute) and longstanding Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Jake Portrait, they brought everything Ruban had been thinking about together. The result was V, due for release on March 3, 2023, through Jagjaguwar. When they talked about records that moved them in that spine-shivering manner, Ruban started thinking about the 70s AM radio rock and 80s pop songs that had lurked on the edge of his subconscious mind for most of his life. He wanted to write his version of records like that, leading to the two glorious uptempo singles Unknown Mortal Orchestra released in 2021, 'Weekend Run' and 'That Life'. However, the golden good times never last forever. Not long after, health issues began to plague his extended family. Putting his recordings aside, he helped his mother and his uncle move home from New Zealand and Portland to Hawai'i, and began dividing his time between Hawai'i and Palm Springs. During this period he reconnected with his relatives, reassessed his past, and started to look at things with fresh eyes. Hawai'i brought back memories of the darker side of his parents' lifestyle as entertainers. On those trips, he heard those classic AM radio rock records everywhere. They were inextricably intertwined with the palm trees, swimming pools, and glamorized hedonism he'd internalized from his childhood. There's a type of music in Hawai'i called Hapa-haole (Half white). You can hear it expressed in signature Unknown Mortal Orchestra style through the humid guitar-led atmosphere of V's penultimate song, 'I Killed Captain Cook'. Although the songs are presented in a traditional Hawaiian manner, they're mostly sung in English. Having been influenced by Hawaiian music since Unknown Mortal Orchestra's first album, Ruban saw a space for himself within the tradition. When he reflected on his success, he realised he had the responsibility and platform to represent Hapa-haole music on the global stage.
Over the span of two decades, M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez has firmly established himself as an artist whose work transcends mere escapism in favor of full-on worldbuilding. Whether it be via his celebrated studio albums, film soundtracks, or compositions for stage productions, Gonzalez has proven that nothing surpasses his ability to perfectly encapsulate a specific time, emotion, or sense of place.
Now with Fantasy, the Platinum selling, GRAMMY nominated artist returns with his most personal album to date. Featuring long-time collaborator Justin Meldal-Johnsen and Joe Berry, M83s touring keyboardist and sax player, the album was born out of extended jam sessions that lasted nearly a year. The result is an exuberant, live-sounding record where trademark M83 goosebump moments abound.
Kacey Musgraves
Same Trailer Different Park: 10th Anniversary Edition [Limited Edition Picture Disc- Zoetrope LP]
Vinyl: $35.98 Buy
Kacey Musgraves will be releasing a limited edition Zoetrope Picture Disc Vinyl in celebrating the 10th Anniversary of her debut Platinum and Grammy winning album- Same Trailer Different Park. The album went to #1 on the Country Album Charts when it was released in 2013. Kacey co-wrote all 12 tracks and co-produced the album with Luke Laird and Shane McAnally. Album won the Grammy award for the Best Country Album at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. The album featured the break-out singles- Merry Go Round, Blowin Smoke, and Follow Your Arrow.
Im sorry, what? A double Say Hi LP without any vocals? Yep, youve heard right. I woke up one day not too long ago and decided I needed to take a break from words, so it seemed like a convenient time to attempt the all-instrumental-mega-synthesizer-record Ive been itching to make for a while. Now, I know what youre thinking, but these songs arent meandering, ambient sketches. Theyre just as focused and concise as Ive tried to make every other Say Hi record. Its just that the melodies here are expressed via dulcitones or vector-synthesis in lieu of my usual slightly-off-key vocal chords. Please dig in. It took me a while to get the formula right, but Im hopeful youll like it. Oh yeah, its also the 20th anniversary of Say Hi, so Ill be performing every past record around the release of the new one. -- Eric / Say Hi
The duo of Dylan Brady and Laura Les, 100 gecs, announces that the bands highly-anticipated sophomore album, 10,000 gecs, will arrive on March 17th, 2023. Following their breakout debut album, 1,000 gecs, the anticipation of their next body of work has been high and the bands teases have been plentiful. The forthcoming album is set to include previously released singles mememe which was described in the story as "an ebullient carnival of ska-inflected verses that bounce off a chorus of thrash guitars and a squiggling synth line" along with the 90s Alt Rock-inspired Doritos & Fritos, which The Fader noted as "unlike any other Gecs track before it.
For those yet initiated: 100 gecs planted their flag on the proverbial pop culture moon with their 2019 debut album 1000 gecs, which was heralded by The New Yorker as, an impressively precise maximalist exercise with no rules and utterly unhinged in the best way possible by GQ. The innovative project captured the hearts of fans and critics alike - selling out all of their live shows to date along with The New York Times calling it, some of the savviest pop music of the year, and Rolling Stone dubbing it one of 2019s most exciting debuts. In just a few months following the release of 1,000 gecs, the band went from playing their first concert from inside the video game Minecraft to selling out shows across the country, proving that their rabid, rapidly multiplying fanbase doesn't only exist in the far corners of the internet. After their world tour was postponed in the summer of 2020, Brady and Les kept rolling with the release of 1000 gecs and The Tree of Clues, a rework of the original album featuring collaborations from the likes of A. G. Cook, Fall Out Boy, Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, as well as crowd sourced contributions by fans. The transformative release was described by The NME as a brain-melting, genre-crushing vision of pops future. Their subsequent international touring over the past two years has sent the unlikely wizard-cloaked pied pipers jumping from sold-out show to sold-out show, seemingly two steps ahead of the zeitgeist, not to mention having a blast while doing it.
Dropkick Murphys
Blackout: 20th Anniversary Edition [Limited Edition Translucent Red LP]
Vinyl: $25.98 Buy
The music on Blackout rocks, has a truckload of sweat, blood and energy & conveys an intense insight into relationships (Walk Away) & personal politics (Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight - lyrics written by Woody Guthrie after the bandwas given special exclusive access & permission to use the words of Woody Guthire through his family). The recordstill contains rousing tunes rooted in Irish music & American Folk (Black Velvet Band & The Dirty Glass) and destinedto be a Boston Bruins call to arms classic called Time To Go. And its important to mention that each member of theband played a crucial role, working hand in hand to create this new record. Everyones influence from the youngestmember of the band to the most experienced, bring together their many influences to play a role in creating an all timegem of a rock record. With each new record, they just dont let up, their passion, life experience & and true commitment to music fans shines through on every song. Reissued on limited edition red vinyl to celebrate the albums 20thanniversary!
Misc. Items, trumpeter Jake Baldwins second record as a leader, features Adam Harder Nussbaum on drums, Toivo Hannigan on guitar and Cody McKinney on electric bass with seven compositions by Baldwin and three from Hannigan. It showcases Baldwins ability to mesh the simple and melodic with the exploratory and textural, the juxtaposition of beauty and tension, showing that miscellaneous items can sometimes be used together to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
Stephen Sondheim, Sara Bareilles, Into The Woods 2022 Broadway Cast
Into The Woods (2022 Broadway Cast Recording) [Apple Red 2LP]
Vinyl: $37.99 Buy
Theres more than a hint of ambition on the doubleLP sophomore effort from Sam Austin Rabede, theproducer known as DJ Black Low. Pretoria, SouthAfrica-born and based, the young man makesamapiano with new ways of expressing this local-turned-global style of dance music.
In DJ Black Lows musical imagination, the songsmanage to smoothly vacillate between dreamy andfirmly-grounded. Adorned with vocalists acrossmost of the twelve tracks, theres a new dimensionto Black Lows now-signature approach to abstract,angular deconstruction of the rhythmicdevelopments in his songs.
The album references influences and ambitions inits song titles and lyrics while the music itself isanthemic in its sonic and structural aspirations. Onmany of the songs a slow-burning tensiontransforms into something unexpected until youresomewhere else as the track concludes. There isan emotional and compositional maturity that buildson his earlier work. Vocals and lyrics are in focus.Production collaborators among Black LowsGauteng Province circle add to the constantlychurning array of ideas that populate thisconsistently surprising release. Despite being arelative newcomer, DJ Black Low is ontosomething here.
After spending the past 20 years in the studio, on concert stages all over the world and at the literal top of the charts, All-American Rejects co-founder Tyson Ritter didnt start Now More Than Ever in 2018 with the expectation it would turn into a real band but a real band is very much what it has become. In tandem with veteran musicians/songwriters/producers Scott Chesak and Izzy Fontaine, Ritter has begun a meaningful and exciting new chapter in his music career with Now More Than Evers debut album Creatrix, which will be released March 17, 2023, by Thirty Tigers.
To hear Ritter tell it, All-American Rejects relationship with the traditional music industry was in many ways the reason he was eager to try something different: simply making music with friends for fun, without any preconceived notions about what would, could or should happen next. In other words, no constraints, no A&Rs, no deadlines and no mandate to sound like anyone or anything other than themselves.
The fact that Ritter and Chesak have known each other for so long certainly helped jumpstart things, as the latter has been a multi-instrumentalist touring member of All-American Rejects since 2011. Chesak later segued into writing and producing for artists such as Weezer and Panic! At The Disco, a skill Ritter has long admired but had difficulty incorporating into his own creative process. As he began thinking about new music, he definitely knew he didnt want to write in the traditional sense with and for another artist in a studio. Scotty and I just got to talking and decided to write some tunes. It started that innocently.
We didnt have a name, or an idea of being a band, until probably a year after that, Chesak adds. We were kind of just writing for the purity of writing and trying to make something cool. Theres a huge folder of songs we made during that time that arent part of this project, but three or four of them showed us there was something cohesive there.
Having spent decades in the same musical scene, Ritter and Chesak were committed to a fresh approach when it came to the sound of their new work. We were kind of sick of guitar music, because we both come from the rock world, says Chesak, who handled bass, drums and keyboard duties during the sessions. So at first we made a rule: Fuck guitars. No guitars! Quickly they realized their beef wasnt with guitars per se, but rather the same old sound of the instrument. Enter Izzy Fontaine, who has worked closely behind the scenes with everyone from Taking Back Sunday and Glassjaw to Seal and Banks, and came up in the industry alongside many of the same bands as Ritter and Chesak.
Now More Than Ever shimmers with that spirit of freedom, its nine tracks gracefully surfing the peaks of the past four decades of pop and rock. These are the kinds of songs that used to be on the radio and certainly still should be today the ones that make you dance, shake your ass and forget about everything else for a while. The breathless electro-rock of D-E-A-D Together and the sultry power ballad Heart To Heart best embody that vibe, while horn players from Ozomatli add an instant dance party to Candle. The 80s synth-driven closer Never You started life as a Ritter acoustic song but was quickly transformed by Chesak and Fontaine into whats now the perfect soundtrack for a vintage slow dance prom scene.
To that end, Heels Up Head Over explores those themes with a tale about a werewolf and vampire getting married, while lyrical references to the ageless cool of Joan Jett and drunk, young romance make you feel right at home in Now More Than Evers company. This is a record where there was freedom in lyric, Ritter says. When youre on a major label for 15 years, you can succumb to trying to follow your last thing. That can seep into the music in a way thats so unconscious. The joy of this band is that its completely free of any oppressive overlords, ivory towers, approval processes or co-writes that have been manufactured, licked, stamped and thrown onto the assembly line.
Now More Than Ever is here to help make sure the pillars of pop and rock will never fall, and theyre prepared to go down believing. This is our little monolith, Ritter says. It might be six feet tall amongst giants, but its pure. And its truth for us. Its saccharine as fuck, and I love it.
Ultramodern heavy icons KAMELOT reign supreme with their anticipated new studio album, The Awakening! Following decades of top-charting releases and massive international touring, new radio-ready anthem One More Flag in the Ground continues the bands legacy, proving their balanced rock and metal potency and featuring additional vocal layers from JUNO Award winning musician/producer Brian Howes.
Ten Years After
A Space In Time: 50th Anniversary [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Clear Half-Speed Master LP]
Vinyl: $35.98 Buy
A Space In Time is Ten Years After's sixth, and best selling album, and was originally released in August 1971.
Featuring their most well-known track "I'd Love To Change The World", which regularly features in movies and TV shows, saw the band taking a more melodic direction from previous releases and showcased the band at their peak. This new (delayed) 50th Anniversary edition of the album features a brand new mix by the original producer/engineer, Chris Kimsey (Rolling Stones/Emerson Lake & Palmer/Marillion), using the original 2" multitrack tapes. He has used modern day plug-ins that perfectly emulate and expand upon the original recording. The results are stunning. The second disc in this set features the original 1971 mix of the album. Both have been mastered and cut at half-speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios.
Her Loss is a collaborative studio album by Drake and 21 Savage. It was released on November 4, 2022 throughOVO Sound/Republic Records and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart.
Frightened Rabbit
Pedestrian Verse: 10th Anniversary [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition 2LP]
Vinyl: $34.98 Buy
Frightened Rabbit has earned a wide range of critical applause and a fervent international fan following with their emotional melodies and frank lyricism. As moving and triumphant on stage as they are on record, Frightened Rabbit has performed countless headline shows, as well as sharing stages with such like-minded artists as Modest Mouse and Atlantic labelmates Death Cab for Cutie. The band has also won over audiences at a scope of international festivals, including Glastonbury, T in the Park, Oxegen Festival, and Latitude in the UK, Australia's Splendour in the Grass, and our own Lollapalooza and South By SouthWest (SXSW).
RSD Essential 036 * Think Indie Exclusive * The Offspring preserve the essential ingredients of their chosen genre--guitars grinding out three chords, shouted vocals, and plenty of vitriol--and layer them over a melodic base that packs considerable popular appeal. The singles from Smash, the Offspring's breakthrough album, still receive considerable radio airplay: "Gotta Get Away," "Come Out and Play," and "Self Esteem." With these and Smash's 11 other tracks, the band chronicles the adolescent experience with clarity and surprisingly incisive wit. That pretty much describes all of their albums, but this is the one to get. It's got more shape than their earlier material and isn't as disturbingly poppy as their more recent recordings; it's the perfect blend of riffs and rage. Smash is the best-selling independent album of all time with over 20 million sold worldwide. Alongside Rancids And Out Come the Wolves and Green Days Dookie, Smash signaled the arrival of punk rock as a commercial force upon its initial release in 1994.
Warren Zevon
Life'll Kill Ya [RSD Essential Indie Colorway Smoking Skull LP]
First Time on Colored vinyl.Following a decade of stagnation and waning interest, legendary singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, who masked his soft side with his sarcastic, lyrical prose, entered the new millennium with his acclaimed 10th studio album Life'll Kill Ya. Though the album predated Zevon's fatal cancer diagnosis by two years, its title track, as well as standout cuts like "My Shit's Fucked Up" and "Don't Let Us Get Sick," brought the album critical praise as a "mournful lament on the aging process and the inevitable decay that accompanies it." Available now for the first time on colored vinyl. Ship To Shore PhonoCo's reissue of Life'll Kill Ya features expanded liner notes and rare photos from Jorge Caldern, Zevon's son, Jordan, and Dawes' Taylor Goldsmith. Other highlights include "Porcelain Monkey," which puts Elvis Presley in Zevon's sardonic crosshairs, a cover of Steve Winwood's "Back In The High Life Again" sounds as if it were written for Zevon, and "Fistful of Rain" is a melodious examination of the fickle nature of fame. Engineered as a comeback vehicle, co-produced by Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade (the producing duo responsible for Radiohead's Pablo Honey), Zevon's songwriting collaborator Jorge Caldern added a lighthearted accent to Zevon's musical portraits of doom and gloom. Despite helping with a successful comeback, Life'll Kill Ya's content was revealed all too true when, in 2003, Zevon passed away of pleural mesothelioma. "I mean, the fact that life will kill you is just that," Zevon told Rolling Stone upon the album's release. "I think you have to spend a fair amount of time realizing that you will be, so that you'll remember to enjoy everything you possibly can every minute you're not. You always want to try and tell younger people that, which is very difficult because they don't really hear it because they feel a life has been imposed on them. And of course, they're absolutely correct."
Mystic
Cuts For Luck And Scars For Freedom [RSD Essential Indie Colorway Black Ice 2LP + Ruby Red 7in]
Vinyl: $59.99 Buy
The Flaming Lips
Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell EP [Limited Edition Glow In The Dark Green Vinyl]
Portland artist MAITAs latest offering, Loneliness is an unorthodox release for the prolific writer, in that the track listing is exactly the same as 2022s I Just Want to Be Wild For You. Following the release of IJWTBWFU, MAITA felt the urge to record a quiet, introspective record, allowing the same songs to be heard in a different light, closer to how they were originally written. The once bombastic Honey, Have I Lost It All, an ode to fearing writers block and obsolescence, comes across as gauzy yearning, while Pastel Concrete, shows up not as the jaunty surf-pop audiences are familiar with, instead a wistful reflection of the shallow depths of Southern California sunshine. Throughout the record, songwriter Maria Maita-Keppeler, accompanied only by her nylon string guitar, re-imagines I Just Want to Be Wild For You, cementing her place among the echelon of todays greatest songwriters.
Limited red colored vinyl LP pressing. 2023 release from New York City's most diabolical Rhythm & Blues street gang. The band's fourth studio album represents a wellspring of bottled-up feelings and emotions that need to be taken to the streets. Produced by Oakley Munson of the Black Lips at Old Soul Studios in Catskill, NY the band expands upon a sound that's all their own and features guest appearances from Punk Rock legend Wreckless Eric providing backing vocals on "Nightmare" and "Silver Satin" and The Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian on "Ding-Ding Man," In dark times Daddy Long Legs continue to shine their light everywhere they go, leaving a piece of themselves on stage every night because it's in them and it's got to come out. Over the last decade these gentlemen have burned down houses the world over with their explosive fire ceremony and have amassed a cult-like following all their own with a tough to beat reputation for being one of the finest live acts on the road today. Written and recorded against a backdrop of political tension, riots in the streets and a deeply uncertain future, Street Sermons is a testament to triumph over adversity.