Ahead of their inclusion on the 2026 Claypool Gold tour, The Fearless Flying Frog Brigade will release a new live LP recorded during 2023's Hunt For Green October Tour (which includes a band comprised of Sean Lennon and Harry Waters among others).

TRACK LISTING

Up On the Roof
Phantom Patriot
D's Diner
Cosmic Highway

After a hiatus from touring, Black Pumas returned to the road in 2024 in support of their acclaimed sophomore album Chronicles of a Diamond. Live From Brooklyn Paramount captures the "Electric Church" live experience created by Eric Burton, Adrian Quesada and their six-piece band. The 2xLP set features songs from both Chronicles and their million-selling debut, including the Grammy nominated "Colors", "Black Moon Rising”, "More Than A Love Song” & their version of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car."

TRACK LISTING

1 Fire (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
2 I’m Ready (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
3 Gemini Sun (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
4 Know You Better (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
5 Black Moon Rising (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
6 Tomorrow (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
7 Sauvignon (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
8 Ice Cream (Pay Phone) (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
9 More Than A Love Song (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
10 Confines (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
11 Chronicles Of A Diamond (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
12 Mrs. Postman (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
13 OCT 33 (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
14 Colors (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
15 Fast Car (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)
16 Rock And Roll (Live From Brooklyn Paramount)

Volume 4 of the ‘MMJ Live’ series.

This release documents night one of My Morning Jacket’s five-night 2010 residency run at Terminal 5 in New York City.

The band performed their debut album, ‘Tennessee Fire’, in its entirety, plus a seven-song encore, which includes covers of songs by Elton John and Jefferson Airplane.

TRACK LISTING

Heartbreakin Man
They Ran
The Bear
Nashville To Kentucky
Old Sept Blues
If All Else Fails
It's About Twilight Now
Evelyn Is Not Real
War Begun
Picture Of You
I Will Be There When You Die
The Dark
By My Car
Butch Cassidy
I Think I'm Going To Hell
I Just Wanted To Say
Rocket Man
Weeks Go By Like Days
Tyrone
White Rabbit
Hot Legs
Lil Billy

The 13th studio album from Old 97’s arose from what vocalist/guitarist Rhett Miller refers to as a “de-evolution.” “As much as I want us to calm down and grow up, the songs that felt right for this record were mostly big and loud and brutal and dirty.” Produced by Tucker Martine and featuring appearances from Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5) — American Primitive is gloriously rowdy, revealing a band more attuned than ever to the raw, reckless energy of timeless rock-and-roll.

When Black Pumas made their self-titled debut in 2019, the Austin-bred duo set off a reaction almost as combustible and rapturous as their music itself. Along with earning a career total of seven Grammy Award nominations (including Album Of The Year) and winning praise from leading outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, singer/songwriter Eric Burton and guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada achieved massive success as a live act, touring large theatres all over Europe and North and South America and delivering a transcendent show Burton aptly refers to as “electric church.” As they set to work on their highly awaited sophomore album, the band broadened their palette to include a dazzling expanse of musical forms: heavenly hybrids of soul and symphonic pop, mind-bending excursions into jazz-funk and psychedelia, starry-eyed love songs that feel dropped down from the cosmos. Wilder and weirder and more extravagantly composed than its predecessor, Chronicles of a Diamond arrives as the fullest expression yet of Black Pumas’ frenetic creativity and limitless vision.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Everyone get a little mad about second albums don't they? Then in waltz the Black Pumas with their effortlessly diverse melting pot of funk, rock and roll and soul and show everyone up. It's an intoxicating and unbelievably enjoyable endeavour and ram-packed with all the groove you could ever need.

TRACK LISTING

1 More Than A Love Song
2 Ice Cream (Pay Phone)
3 Mrs. Postman
4 Chronicles Of A Diamond
5 Angel
6 Hello
7 Sauvignon
8 Tomorrow
9 Gemini Sun
10 Rock And Roll

The story of Cordovas is one of rock ’n’ roll seekers, hammering away in search of not only their ideal freewheeling sound, but also for some greater truth about the human experience. Lead-singer Joe Firstman, with his journey from pro-surfer, to Atlantic Records dropout, to Carson Daly house band host, to Cordovas’ front man, fearlessly steers the band with his unconventional experience. Cordovas’ latest record, The Rose Of Aces,’ beautifully blends American roots storytelling while incorporating elements of rock, country, and jam-band style musicianship - showcasing their finest work to date.

Guitar virtuosos Rodrigo y Gabriela have announced the follow up to the Grammy-winning album ‘Mettavolution’. ‘In Between Thoughts...A New World’ is the duo’s first full length album in four years. It is a spontaneously composed yet unified work which brings the same expansion of consciousness that inspired its creation. Self-produced in Ixtapa, Mexico, the album sees Rodrigo y Gabriela building their original sound to include electronics and orchestral elements.

TRACK LISTING

True Nature
The Eye That Catches The
Dream
Egoland
Descending To Nowhere
Seeking Unreality
The Ride Of The Mind
Broken Rage
Finding Myself Leads Me To You
In Between Thoughts...A New World

Produced by Sean Ono Lennon, Temples’ fourth full-length album takes place in a mystical setting, an impossibly utopic island dreamed up by singer/guitarist James Bagshaw, bassist Tom Walmsley, keyboardist/guitarist Adam Smith, and drummer Rens Ottink. With its resplendent collage of psychedelia and krautrock and time-bending dream-pop, Exotico brings that world to life in crystalline detail, all while exploring an entire spectrum of existential themes: impermanence, mortality, our connection with nature and the wild immensity of the mind. Equal parts cerebral and celestial, the result is a truly immersive body of work, fully affirming Kettering-bred Temples as one of today’s most forward-thinking and endlessly inventive rock bands.

Mixed by Dave Fridmann (Beach House, Spoon, The Flaming Lips) and mainly recorded at Lennon’s studio in upstate New York, Exotico continues the collaboration begun on Temples’ Lennon-produced 2020 single “Paraphernalia.”

Although Temples created portions of Exotico at their home studio back in England, their 12 days of sessions at Lennon’s studio marked a significant departure from the self-contained approach they’d adhered to since their debut album Sun Structures (a 2014 release The Quietus likened to a series of “woozy daydreams that will embed themselves further in with each listen”).

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Ooooo baby, this is a big psych-drenched odyssey from the lads in Temples. Sixteen spaced out tracks of kaleidoscopic nectar, Exotico is here to remind us that it's not just James Acaster that came out of Kettering!

TRACK LISTING

1 Liquid Air
2 Gamma Rays
3 Exotico
4 Sultry Air
5 Cicada
6 Oval Stones
7 Slow Days
8 Crystal Hall
9 Head In The Clouds
10 Giallo
11 Inner Space
12 Meet Your Maker
13 Time Is A Light
14 Fading Actor
15 Afterlife
16 Movements Of Time 

The Melbourne-based five-piece CIVIC return with their visceral new sophomore album ‘Taken By Force’ - aptly described by the band as “1984 meets Endless Summer.” CIVIC have reimagined the reckless intensity of proto-punk for an era of endless uncertainty and have become one of the most exhilarating bands to emerge from the Melbourne-scene in recent years. 'Taken By Force' was produced by Radio Birdman frontman Rob Younger and mixed/mastered by Mike Young (Eddy Current, Total Control).

The second release in My Morning Jacket’s MMJ Live series. Recorded live at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, IL on Nov 11, 2021 and featuring a setlist of career highlights from recent tracks: "Love Love Love", "Complex" and "Never In The Real World" from the recent self-titled album, plus classics "Dondante", "Mahgeetah" and "Phone Went West". Three LPs pressed on limited-edition translucent orange vinyl and packaged in a triple gatefold jacket.

Rayland’s new release ‘If I Was A Butterfly’ is his first new album in 4 years. The album is certainly his most experimental – diving deep into the indie psych space – but keeping the essence of Rayland’s beautiful songwriting. A couple years ago, Rayland released a Mac Miller tribute EP ‘Good Mmornin.’ Rayland was deeply inspired by Mac’s music but he approached it from an entirely different perspective. It was surely an experiment yet it really worked. His cover of “Small Worlds” has 11 million Spotify streams. It’s been incredible to see how this project connected with core Rayland fans and Mac fans alike – it expanded his following to a whole new space. The Mac Miller project was a bridge from Rayland’s last album ‘Wide Awake’ which came out in 2018. Since then, Rayland has been through a lot of heavy experiences. His father, the legendary pedal steel player Bucky Baxter (toured with Bob Dylan), died suddenly. Rayland went through heartbreak and found new love.

Produced by Fussell and co-founder Alana Pagnutti and mixed by Joel Ford (Ford & Lopatin, Yes/And), Honey Harper & The Infinite Sky features the premiere of The Infinite Sky, a stacked backing band consisting of longtime bassist and contributing writer Mick Mayer, pianist John Carroll Kirby (Solange, Steve Lacy), Spoon keyboardist Alex Fischel, guitarist Jackson MacIntosh (Drugdealer, Jessica Pratt), pedal-steel player Connor Gallaher (Black Lips, Calexico), and TOPS drummer Riley Fleck.

Within the first few moments of the self-titled new album, Honey Harper & The Infinite Sky deliver a dashed-off statement on the trappings of country music. Despite the high level of conceptualization that went into its creation, the record embodies an irresistibly loose and groove-heavy sound that hits with an immediate impact. While previous album Starmaker was touted as “country music for people who don’t like country music,” Honey Harper & The Infinite Sky is “country music for everyone.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Reflections
2. Ain't No Cowboys In Georgia
3. Broken Token
4. One Thing
5. Tired Of Feeling Good
6. The World Moves
7. Boots Mine Gold
8. Hard To Make A Living
9. Lake Song
10. Crystal Heart
11. Heaven Knows I Won't Be There
12. Big Sky

While Nick Hakim’s sophomore album, "Will This Make Me Good", was the release of a blockage that came out at the height of the pandemic as everyone was struggling to stay grounded, his forthcoming album "Cometa" sees the artist on the other side of that emotional roller coaster as he transcends to the next realm of his musical universe. Instead of tuning the world out and turning inward, Hakim invites the listener to embrace a newfound sense of clarity that he’s found. Since he was transitioning into the life of a nomad throughout 2021, the album was recorded between recording studios and domestic spaces throughout Texas, North Carolina, California, and New York. To build the foundation of this intricate soundscape, Hakim teamed up with his longtime collaborator, producer/mixing engineer Andrew Sarlo.

"Cometa" is truly a collaborative effort and the highlight for Hakim is having so many special guests from his community that play supportive roles–this talented roster of peers includes Alex G, Isaiah Barr, and DJ Dahi. Hakim refers to the bassist Kyle Myles as the glue that has held his musical life together for the past decade along with the pianist Jake Sherman, drummer Vishal Nayak, and guitarists Joe Harrison and Dylan Day. “Happen” includes Abe Rounds on drums and Alex G on piano, and “Slid Under” features Helado Negro on synths. Hakim’s younger brother, Danny Hakim, wrote the chords for “Perfume,” a sweet song about falling in love with someone’s scent, which he also plays acoustic guitar on.

TRACK LISTING

1 Ani
2 Happen
3 Vertigo
4 Feeling Myself
5 M1
6 Only One
7 Perfume
8 Something
9 Slid Under
10 Market

After nine critically acclaimed albums, twenty bandmates, countless bars, clubs, theaters and festivals, after two full decades, Will Sheff is letting Okkervil River drift out to sea with the release of Nothing Special, his debut collection under his own name. Nothing Special was recorded with a mix of old friends (like Benjamin Lazar-Davis and Will Graefe) and new collaborators (Christian Lee Hutson, Cassandra Jenkins, Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith, and Death Cab For Cutie pianist Zac Rae).

Hailing from Melbourne, 60’s tinged psych-rock punks The Murlocs  announce their brand new studio album, Rapscallion. Strapped with fuzzy guitar licks, feverish bass and psychedelic brightness, the 12-track collection is a coming-of-age novel in an album form. The wildly squalid odyssey populated by an outrageous cast of misfit characters — teenage vagabonds and small-time criminals, junkyard dwellers and truck-stop transients — is partly inspired by frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s own adolescence as a nomadic skate kid. Their most magnificently heavy work yet, the result is an endlessly enthralling album equally steeped in danger and delirium and the wide-eyed romanticism of youth.

TRACK LISTING

1. Subsidiary
2. Bellarine Ballerina
3. Living Under A Rock
4. Bobbing And Weaving
5. Farewell To Clemency
6. Compos Mentis
7. The Royal Vagabond
8. Virgin Criminal
9. Bowlegged Beautiful
10. Wickr Man
11. The Ballad Of Peggy Mae
12. Growing Pains

Released in 2013, ‘Regions of Light and Sound of God’ was the debut solo album from Jim James of My Morning Jacket.

This deluxe reissue features the original album plus a second LP of twelve B-sides, demos and alternate versions, including ‘State of The Art (Demo)’ and the previously unheard ballad ‘Begin Again’.

The double LP is housed in a rainbow foil tip-on gatefold spot matte jacket with revised artwork, a fold-out handwritten lyrics insert and new custom inner-sleeves and centre labels. Pressed on clear/purple blob vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

‘Regions Of Light And Sound Of God’
State Of The Art (A.E.I.O.U.)
Know Til Now
Dear One
A New Life
Exploding
Of The Mother Again
Actress
All Is Forgiven
God’s Love To Deliver

Bonus Disc
All Is Forgiven (Alt Version)
State Of The Art (A.E.I.O.U.) [Demo]
A New Life (Alt Version)
Dear One (Demo)
Actress (Demo)
God’s Love To Deliver (Demo)
You Always Know
Read Between (Begin Again)
Epichord
Sweets
Moving Away (Alt Version)
Hallway Of Trees

On the title track to Welcome 2 Club XIII, Drive-By Truckers pay homage to the Muscle Shoals honky-tonk where founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley got their start: a concrete-floored dive lit like a disco, with the nightly promise of penny beer and truly dubious cover bands. “There were no cool bars in town and Club XIII was the best we had—but it wasn’t all that good, and our band wasn’t particularly liked there,” says Hood, referring to the vocalist/guitarists’ former band Adam’s House Cat. “From time to time the owner would throw us a Wednesday night or let us open for a hair-metal band we were a terrible fit for, and everyone would hang out outside until we were done playing. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but it’s funny to us now.” The 14th studio album from Drive-By Truckers—whose lineup also includes keyboardist/guitarist Jay Gonzalez, bassist Matt Patton, and drummer Brad Morgan—Welcome 2 Club XIII looks back on their formative years with both deadpan pragmatism and profound tenderness, instilling each song with the kind of lived-in detail that invites bittersweet reminiscence of your own misspent youth.

Produced by longtime Drive-By Truckers collaborator David Barbe and mainly recorded at his studio in Athens, Georgia, Welcome 2 Club XIII took shape over the course of three frenetic days in summer 2021—a doubly extraordinary feat considering that the band had no prior intentions of making a new album. “We had some shows coming up and decided to get together and practice, since we hadn’t even seen each other in a year and a half because of the pandemic,” Hood recalls. “We started demoing song ideas, and pretty soon we realized we had a whole record. It was all sort of magical.” Featuring background vocals from the likes of Margo Price, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, and Mississippi-bred singer/songwriter Schaefer Llana, Welcome 2 Club XIII was recorded live with most songs cut in one or two takes, fully harnessing the band’s freewheeling energy. “For us it’s always about just getting together and having fun, but this time there was the added feeling of being set free after a long time of wondering if we’d ever get to do this again,” notes Cooley.

Arriving as the band enters its 26th year, Welcome 2 Club XIII marks a sharp departure from the trenchant commentary of The Unraveling and The New OK (both released in 2020). “All our records are political to some extent, but after making three overtly political records in a row we wanted to do something much more personal,” says Hood. A hypnotic introduction to the album’s sprawling autobiography, “The Driver” kicks off Welcome 2 Club XIII with a seven-minute-long, darkly thrilling epic punctuated with lead-heavy riffs and Llana’s unearthly vocals. “Around the same era of Club XIII, I spent a lot of time driving around late at night when I couldn’t sleep, listening to music loud and often having a beer or two,” says Hood. “Sometimes during those drives I’d have these epiphanies about what to do with my life—like listening to Tim by The Replacements not long after it came out and deciding to drop out of school to try and make this whole band thing work.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This sounds like classic DBT, country leaning indie rock imbued with a hazy southern groove. It's heavy in parts, but also nuanced and cohesive. For a band coming on 30 years together, they're showing no signs of slowing down or faltering. A brilliantly uplifting and well humoured new entry in their storied history.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Driver
2. Maria's Awful Disclosure
3. Shake And Pine
4. We Will Never Wake You In The Morning
5. Welcome 2 Club XIII
6. Forged In Hell And Heaven Sent
7. Every Single Storied Flameout
8. Billy Ringo In The Dark
9. Wilder Days

Painless is the follow-up to Nilüfer Yanya’s renowned 2019 debut album Miss Universe, which fully established her as a singular artist and a distinctive voice that simply has to be heard. The critically acclaimed Miss Universe - a widescreen concept record that took a tongue in cheek swipe at the most self-involved corners of the health and wellness industry - was followed last year by the three song EP Feeling Lucky?, which further explored Yanya’s fascination with ‘90s alt-rock melodies and drew on themes of resentment, her fear of flying, and the concept of luck. Pitchfork summed up Feeling Lucky? and her now peerless songwriting aptitude best: “Nilüfer Yanya’s melodies have a pull so strong they almost necessitate their own law of physics.” Yanya also re-released her early EPs on vinyl for the first time this year on the record Inside Out. The release is a fundraiser for Artists in Transit, a collaborative not for profit group she founded with her sister Molly that delivers art workshops to displaced people and communities in times of hardship.

As the daughter of two visual artists (her Irish-Barbadian mother is a textile designer and her Turkish-born father’s work is exhibited at the British Museum) creativity was always destined for Nilüfer Yanya’s future. Now she enters the next stage of her creative journey, Yanya is running head first into the depths of emotional vulnerability on her sophomore record Painless. The album was recorded between a basement studio in Stoke Newington and Riverfish Music in Penzance with Miss Universe collaborator and producer Wilma Archer, DEEK Recordings founder Bullion, Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo, and musician Jazzi Bobbi.

Where Miss Universe stretched musical boundaries to include a litany of styles from smooth jazz melodies to radio ready pop, Painless takes a more direct sonic approach. By narrowing down her previously broad palette to a handful of robust ideas that revolve around melancholy harmonies and looped industrial beats to mimic the insular focus of the lyrics, Yanya has smoothed out the idiosyncrasies of previous releases without losing what is essential to her.

Painless is a record that forces the listener to sit with the discomfort that accompanies so many of life’s biggest challenges whether it be relationship breakdowns, coping with loneliness, or the search for our inner self. “It's a record about emotion,” Yanya explains. “I think it's more open about that in a way that Miss Universe wasn't because there's so many cloaks and sleeves with the concept I built around it.” She adds, summing up the ethos of the new album, “I'm not as scared to admit my feelings”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Poppy melodies, clashing percussion and Yanya's unmistakeable voice weave around each-other, sometimes hinting at the vocal rhythms of R&B, but much more akin to a stylistic mix of electronic indie and scattered art-rock.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Dealer
2. L/R
3. Shameless
4. Stabilise
5. Chase Me
6. Midnight Sun
7. Trouble
8. Try
9. Company
10. Belong With You
11. The Mystic
12. Anotherlife

Produced by Matt Ross-Spang, and featuring eleven new, original songs, The Alien Coast is the first SPATBB album tracked in the band’s hometown of Birmingham, AL. The arrangement allowed the octet to spend more time and tap a broader creative community than ever before, resulting in their most ambitious work to date.

Led by singer and lyricist Paul Janeway - a former bank teller and preacher-in-training who learned to sing in his church choir - the octet explore thrilling new territory on The Alien Coast, a fever dream convergence of soul and psychedelia, stoner metal and funk, animated by the very “fire and brimstone” which Janeway invokes in the album’s opening line. Unlimited studio-time allowed individual members of the band to experiment with synths and samples on The Alien Coast, and even collaborate with Birmingham beatmaker and hip-hop artist Randall Turner.

Janeway cites a similarly disparate range of influences that wove their way into the writing for The Alien Coast, from Greek mythology and dystopian sci-fi, to works of art like Bartolomé Bermejo’s Saint Michael Triumphs over the Devil and 17th century Italian sculpture, to colonial-period history books. “The title actually came from reading about the history of the Gulf of Mexico, which is home for us,” he recalls. “When the settlers—or invaders, really—first came to the Gulf Coast they couldn’t figure out what it was, and started referring to it as the Alien Coast. That term really stuck with me, partly because it feels almost apocalyptic.”

TRACK LISTING

3000AD Mass
Bermejo And The Devil
Minotaur
Atlas
The Last Dance
Ghost In Smoke
Alien Coast
Hunter And His Hounds
Tin Man Love
Popcorn Ceiling
Love Letter From A Red Roof Inn

Grace Cummings is an actor and musician from Melbourne, Australia.Grace learned piano as a child and took up the guitar as a young adult, but only began to write and perform music in 2018.

She went from a debut gig at Melbourne’s Old Bar to a breakthrough performance at Boogie Festival in the space of six months, pickingup support slots with J Mascis and Evan Dando along the way. With buzz building around her powerhouse live show, Grace grabbed the attention of Flightless Records (King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard), who released her debut album, Refuge Cove, in late 2019.

Refuge Cove won praise from publications around the world, including Pitchfork and All Music, and Grace was tapped for support slots with Weyes Blood, Cash Savage, Teskey Brothers and Allah-Lahs. In 2020, Grace recorded the single Sweet Matilda for Mexican Summer’s Through the Looking Glass series before landing a worldwide deal with indie powerhouse ATO Records (Alabama Shakes, My Morning Jacket, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard) and a distribution deal with Caroline Australia.

Her sophomore album, Storm Queen, is set for release early in 2022.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Part way between widescreen Americana or electric country and soulful lounge music, Grace Cummings presents a distinctive and evocative suite both confident and athletic. Her vocals shine with emotion and skilfully dominate the beautifully laid backdrop. An exciting and bracing journey.

TRACK LISTING

1 Heaven
2 Always New Days Always
3 Dreams
4 Up In Flames
5 Freak
6 Here Is The Rose
7 Raglan
8 Two Little Birds
9 This Day In May
10 Storm Queen
11 Fly A Kite

Widely considered as one the greatest live bands of their generation, My Morning Jacket have become one of the most vital and reliably thrilling forces in American rock and roll. On ‘Live2015’ - the bands' first live album in 15 years - MMJ showcase sixteen explosive performances recorded during 2015’s The Waterfall tour.

TRACK LISTING

1. Victory Dance
2. Circuital
3. Compound Fracture
4. I’m Amazed
5 .Believe (Nobody Knows)
6. Evil Urges
7. Off The Record
8. Tropics
9. The Way That He Sings
10. Wonderful (The Way I Feel)
11. Get The Point
12. Masterplan
13 Dondante
14. Wordless Chorus
15. Touch Me I’m Going To Scream, Pt.2
16. Gideon

An origin story since time immemorial, this DIY garage rock five piece came together in 2018 through the traps of the Melbourne music scene. Bonding over a shared love of tightly coiled riffs and a collective musical ethos, Civic made a name for themselves through the intensity of their live shows, which would become local folklore.

On ‘Future Forecast’, Civic pay homage to the classics, but pivot on them with avant-charged edge. It’s raw, searing guitars, pummelling rhythms, driving bass and vocals that lock into and synergize with their wall of sound. All of this is balanced by the raucous and restrained weaving of melodies and textures, and vocal variation which broadens their sound past any one genre label.

There’s the horn-fuelled drive of album opener ‘Radiant Eye’, the power pop-laden hook of ‘As Seen On TV’, the emotively atmospheric and vocally subdued ‘Sunday Best’, all culminating with closer ‘Come To Know’, before ending in a tightly wound splay of feedback and groove.

TRACK LISTING

Radiant Eye
Another Day
As Seen On TV
Just A Fix
Tell The Papers
Sunday Best
Shake Like Death
Back To You
Hollywood Nights In
Hamburg
Velvet Casino
Clone
Come To Know

Chicago singer, songwriter and pianist Neal Francis is ATO Records’ newest signing. After returning home from touring on the back of his 2019 debut album Changes, Francis went through a breakup and found himself living in a church, where he ended up writing a series of new songs about honesty and resilience.

“I’m owning up to all my problems within my relationships and my sobriety,” he says. “So much of it is about coming to the understanding that I continue to suffer because of those problems. It’s about acknowledging that and putting it out in the open in order to mitigate the suffering and try to work on it, instead of trying to hide everything.”

Francis and his bandmates recorded In Plain Sight entirely on tape - and mostly in that same church - and the resulting songs are dreamlike and reflective, anchored in the rock and soul sound that has led critics to compare him to legends like Allen Toussaint and Dr. John. In PlainSight was mixed by the Grammy-winning producer Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala, MGMT).

TRACK LISTING

1. Alameda Apartments
2. Problems
3. Can’t Stop The Rain
4. D’Artagnan
5. Prometheus
6. Sentimental Garbage
7. Asleep
8. BNLV
9. Say Your Prayers

In 2011 Dawes released their highly anticipated sophomore album ‘Nothing Is Wrong’.

Produced and mixed by Jonathan Wilson, ‘Nothing Is Wrong’ built on the band’s sun-drenched, Laurel Canyon sound with rock solid songwriting and beautiful Crosby, Stills and Nashstyle harmonies.

The album was met with near universal critical-acclaim and catapulted the band’s career. With ‘Nothing Is Wrong’, Dawes staked their flag

TRACK LISTING

‘Nothing Is Wrong’
Time Spent In Los Angeles
If I Wanted Someone
My Way Back Home
Coming Back To A Man
So Well
How Far We’ve Come
Fire Away
Moon On The Water
Million Dollar Bill
The Way You Laugh
A Little Bit Of Everything

Bonus 7”
Strangers Getting Stranger
Rest Easy

Recorded direct to acetate - all live, no overdubs - Capitol Cuts - Live from Studio A captures a powerful moment in time. After months of cancelled shows Black Pumas went to Los Angeles this past fall and laid down eight explosive tracks at the famed Capitol Studios. The recording brims with pent up energy, nearly bursting through the grooves on the expansive and mind-blowing seven minute rendition of “Colors.” A few weeks later the song would receive a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year.

TRACK LISTING

A Side
Colors
Fire
Black Moon
Stay Gold

B Side 
I'm Ready
Old Man
Red Rover
Know You Better

On their new studio album, The Murlocs share a collection of songs reflecting on the people who leave a profound imprint on our lives, the saviors and hellraisers and assorted other mystifying characters. The Murlocs (whose lineup includes two members of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard) recorded at Button Pushers Studio in Melbourne, Australia - dreaming up a prismatic sound that pinballs from sunshine-pop to blues-punk to wide-eyed psychedelia. What emerges from these 11 infectious tracks is their most personal and boldly confident work yet.

TRACK LISTING

1 Francesca
2 Dangerous Nature
3 Bittersweet Demons
4 Eating At You
5 Illuminate The Shade
6 No Self Control
7 Skyrocket
8 Skewiff
9 Limerence
10 Blue Eyed Runner
11 Misinterpreted

Originally conceived as a quarantine EP collecting material recorded in Memphis during sessions for ‘The Unraveling’, the project quickly grew to include provocative new songs written and recorded over what Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood calls “this endless summer of protests, riots, political shenanigans and pandemic horrors.”

Tracks such as Hood’s ‘Watching The Orange Clouds’ - inspired by the protests which followed George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police - and a fiery cover of The Ramones’ classic ‘The KKK Took My Baby Away’ (vocals by bassist Matt Patton) were exchanged between Hood, cofounding singer / songwriter / guitarist Mike Cooley, bassist Patton, keyboardist / multiinstrumentalist Jay Gonzalez and drummer Brad Morgan and then mixed by long-time Drive-By Truckers producer David Barbe.

TRACK LISTING

The New OK
Tough To Let Go
The Unraveling
The Perilous Night
Sarah’s Flame
Sea Island Lonely
The Distance
Watching The Orange
Clouds
The KKK Took My Baby Away

Sometimes, a mystical, life-changing connection can be closer than you think. In 2017, Grammy Award-winning guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada had recorded some instrumentals in his Austin studio, and he started looking around for a vocalist—he knew a lot of singers, but he wanted something different. He reached out to friends in Los Angeles, in London, but nothing seemed right. Meantime, Eric Burton had recently made his way to Texas. Born in the San Fernando Valley, he grew up in church and then got heavily involved in musical theater. He started busking at the Santa Monica pier, where he brought in a few hundred dollars a day and developed his performance skills. Burton traveled through the Western states before deciding to settle down in Austin—setting up his busking spot on a downtown street corner, at 6 th Street and Congress, for maximum exposure.

A mutual friend mentioned Burton to Quesada, saying that he was the best singer he had ever heard. The two musicians connected, but Burton took a while to respond (“My friends were like ‘Dude, you’re an idiot, you need to hit that guy back!’ “) Finally, he called Quesada, and started singing to one of the tracks over the phone. “I loved his energy, his vibe, and I knew it would be incredible on record,” he says. “From the moment I heard him on the phone, I was all about it.” The results of that inauspicious beginning can now be heard on the self-titled debut album from Black Pumas, the group that Quesada and Burton assembled, which has become one of the year’s most anticipated projects. Described as “Wu-Tang Clan meets James Brown” by KCRW, Black Pumas were the winner of Best New Band at the 2019 Austin Music Awards.

Quesada has a storied reputation from playing in bands like Grupo Fantasma and Brownout, accompanying artists from Prince to Daniel Johnston, and producing such acclaimed projects as 2018’s Look At My Soul: The Latin Shade Of Texas Soul. For the tracks that kicked off this project, though, he had a different direction in mind. “I was looking for somebody with their own identity,” says Quesada, “who liked Neil Young as much as Sam Cooke.” Burton’s taste, range, and experience proved to be exactly what Quesada was seeking. “We just take to the same kind of music,” he says. “I listen to East Coast hip-hop, old soul music, folk music. When Adrian sent me the songs, it was like I had already heard them before. We were on the same wavelength from the get- go.”  The first day they got together in the studio, they recorded the dusty funk that would become the Black Pumas’ first two singles, “Black Moon Rising” and “Fire.” Quesada had written the music for “Black Moon Rising” on the day of the 2017 solar eclipse, and Burton took that concept and ran with it. “Right away, the hair stood up on the back of my neck,” says Quesada. “I knew, ‘This is it—this is the guy.’ ”

Burton sensed the potential, as well. “When I saw that Adrian played with Prince and had a Grammy,” he says, “that he was a serious, respected artist, I knew that I would do my best not to squander that. If you can do it on the street, for a long time, without making yourself crazy, you can do it with a guy who’s won a Grammy.” The duo also knew that they didn’t want their sound to be too retro or imitative. “We didn’t want to just do throwback soul and pretend that hip-hop never happened,” says Quesada, nothing that it was listening to Ghostface Killah that initially triggered him to start writing this material. “It had to feel sincere coming from us. I have a certain aesthetic in the studio, Eric has a voice that evokes a certain era, but I don’t think we reference that too directly.” “Adrian has had the time and the interest to really dive into a specific sound, to recreate something he heard on a Motown record,” adds Burton. “And because of that specific knowledge, he provides an interesting sandbox for me, whose background is in theater, to do something super-unorthodox—to be an art student and play with all the colors I have, but to put it on something that’s more familiar to listeners’ ears.”

With Black Pumas having evolved from an idea to a session to an album, they decided to put a band together and see how this music sounded live. They booked a residency at C Boys (a sister venue to Austin’s famed Continental Club), initially playing every Thursday for a month. “We only rehearsed twice, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into,” says Quesada. “But with the first show, we knew it was unique, special—the chemistry and fire were there immediately. And what Eric could do as a frontman was like nothing I’d ever seen.”  As word got out, the C Boys shows turned into a local phenomenon (“the hottest party in town,” according to the Austin American-Statesman), with lines around the block despite the fact that the band had only released one song. The reaction to the group’s recent South by Southwest appearance helps explain the mania—the Chicago Tribune called Burton’s performance “a whirlwind of movement and gesture,” while Rolling Stone, in naming Black Pumas “One Of The 30 Best Bands We Saw In Austin,” wrote that “the hometown six-piece’s grooves were funky in a thick, viscous way, oozing out in ambitious jams that wandered into heady territory without meandering” and praising Burton’s “tireless, charismatic energy.”

The other, unexpected result of the C Boys residency was that Burton presented more of his own songs to help fill out the set, which led Black Pumas into new territory. “Eric had all these other songs based on other styles, going back into what he was doing when he was busking,” says Quesada. “It was a real spark that we could huddle around him and his songs, too, and get a real sense of what our sound was.” In fact, the final song recorded for Black Pumas was “October 33,” a tense, pleading ballad by Burton. “I didn’t feel like we had the right last song,” says Quesada, “we needed something with more of Eric on guitar. I said ‘I want to put down one more, do you have anything?’ and he texted me back exactly what I was imagining—it was almost unspoken.”

Quesada and Burton both return, over and over, to this almost mystical connection they felt from the beginning. It’s this sense of common purpose, of shared vision, that gives Black Pumas its focus and power—and that points to great things ahead. “It’s so seamless, it’s like we’re musical brothers to some degree,” says Burton. “It feels so easy to meld together that what’s most important for us now is to continue to look for new sounds—to make sure we’re feeding ourselves the knowledge to continue to evolve. Every time we get together, it’s better than the last time.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautiful groove-led juxtaposition of classic soul and simmering low-key funk, brimming with tenderly plucked guitars and phased Wurlis, all working their way around the momentum-filled majesty of Burton's perfectly fitting vocals. Stunning stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1 Black Moon Rising
2 Colors
3 Know You Better
4 Fire
5 OCT 33
6 Stay Gold
7 Old Man
8 Confines
9 Touch The Sky
10 Sweet Conversation

Bonus CD
(Recorded Live At Arlyn Studios – Austin, TX)
1. Black Moon Rising
2. Colors
3. Fire
4. Eleanor Rigby

Just under a month after delivering their award-winning 2016 album Nonagon Infinity, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard took the stage at San Francisco’s The Independent for a set both wildly frenetic and meticulously executed. In one of their final club gigs before bursting onto the international scene—soon selling out amphitheaters and headlining festivals—the Melbourne septet laid down a breakneck performance that, in the words of SF Weekly, “made every organ ache just right.” Multi-tracked and impeccably mixed, Live in San Francisco ’16  simultaneously channels the massive energy of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s set while echoing the sweaty intimacy of the 500-capacity venue.  

Newly unearthed by ATO Records, Live in San Francisco ’16 captures an extraordinary moment in the band’s increasingly storied history, a 13-song spectacular likely to leave every listener awestruck and adrenalized.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: King Gizzard are without a doubt one of the busiest bands on the planet, and by all accounts, one of the greatest forces on the live circuit too. This is a true to life and superb sounding document of a band at the height of their powers. LONG LIVE KING GIZ.

TRACK LISTING

Robot Stop
Hot Water
Big Fig Wasp
Gamma Knife
People-Vultures
Trapdoor
I'm In Your Mind
I'm Not In Your Mind
Cellophane
I'm In Your Mind Fuzz
The River
Evil Death Roll
Head On/Pill

In 2017, Hakim’s debut album, the critically acclaimed ‘Green Twins’, announced the singersongwriter as an idiosyncratic talent, making music that resists genre classification.

You could work a song of his into an HBO original series, as ‘Insecure’ did; you could smoke to it and wonder about your ego; you could slow dance with the person you love—it’s not versatility, so much as a lack of boundaries and a strong sense of intuition. In between albums, musical ideas still came and he worked with his peers, some including Onyx Collective, Anderson .Paak, Jesse and Forever, Lianne La Havas, and Slingbaum, but there came a time for Nick to dive into his own songwriting again, and ‘Will This Make Me Good’ is the result of this.

TRACK LISTING

All These Changes
Wtmmg
Bouncing
Let It Out
Qadir
All These Instruments
Drum Thing
Vincent Tyler
Crumpy
Lacjkl;ajclaj
Gods Dirty Work
Seeing Double
Whoo

Drive-By Truckers’ 12th studio album and first new LP in more than three years – the longest gap between new DBT albums – The Unraveling was recorded at the legendary Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, TN by Grammy® Award-winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price) and longtime DBT producer David Barbe. Co-founding singer/songwriter/guitarists Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood both spent much of the time prior doing battle with deep pools of writer’s block. “How do you put these day to day things we’re all living through into the form of a song that we (much less anybody else) would ever want to listen to?” says Hood. “How do you write about the daily absurdities when you can’t even wrap your head around them in the first place? I think our response was to focus at the core emotional level. More heart and less cerebral perhaps.”

The songs that eventually emerged are among Drive-By Truckers’ most direct and pointedly provocative, tackling the myriad horrors of our new normal through sincere emotion and unbridled heart. Indeed, “Armageddon’s Back in Town” takes a whirlwind joyride through the whiplash of events we collectively deal with each day while the concluding “Awaiting Resurrection” dives headfirst into the despair and pain roiled up by these troubled times.

“The past three-and-a-half years were among the most tumultuous our country has ever seen,” says Hood, “and the duality between the generally positive state of affairs within our band while watching so many things we care about being decimated and destroyed all around us informed the writing of this album to the core.

“While a quick glance might imply that we’re picking up where 2016’s American Band album left off, the differences are as telling as the similarities. If the last one was a warning shot hinting at a coming storm, this one was written in the wreckage and aftermath. I’ve always said that all of our records are political but I’ve also said that ‘politics is personal’. With that in mind, this album is especially personal.”

The remarkable songcraft found on The Unraveling receives much of its musical muscle from the sheer strength of the current Drive-By Truckers line-up, with Hood and Cooley joined by bassist Matt Patton, keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez, and drummer Brad Morgan – together, the longest-lasting iteration in the band’s almost 25-year history. The LP also features a number of special guests, including The Shins’ Patti King, violinist/string arranger Kyleen King (Brandi Carlile), and North Mississippi All-Stars’ Cody Dickinson, who contributes electric washboard to the strikingly direct “Babies In Cages.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having always tread the fine line between good-ol' Americana and more driven, indie-based rock and / or roll, it's good to see DBT maintaining their southern lilt but with a more momentous, stadium pomp to the proceedings. Brilliantly produced and perfectly weighted, this might well be their finest work to date.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Rosemary With A Bible And A Gun
A2 Armageddon’s Back In Town
A3 Slow Ride Argument
A4 Thoughts And Prayers
A5 21st Century USA
B1 Heroin Again
B2 Babies In Cages
B3 Grievance Merchants
B4 Awaiting Resurrection

Soulful vanguard Allen Stone’s album "Building Balance" is released via ATO Records, taking his soulstirring R&B and funk to the next artistic level. Allen continues to draw inspiration from 70s funk and soul with current flexes, sitting amid D’Angelo in its sultrier moments, Stevie Wonder at its most melodic and the production of Mark Ronson at its most modern. The album features the most personal, lushly produced and gorgeously performed songs of his career.

Recorded in a number of studios in Nashville with three producers: the acclaimed British artist Jamie Lidell, Grammy-winning producer Nasri and Jeremy Most (Emily King). The album is a textured amalgam of R&B and soul, a result of several personal co-writing sessions, collaborations with Emily King and Theo Katzman / Joey Dosik of Vulfpeck and lyrics by Allen.

Sentimental ("Brown Eyed Lover", "Consider Me") and replete with nostalgic funk ("Back To The Swing", "Sweaters"), Allen’s third album shows an artist who has grown into his own and learned to balance and appreciate all parts of his life: the vices of the past and the gifts of the present, career and family, the brilliant highs and discouraging lows.

TRACK LISTING

Brown Eyed Lover
Sunny Days
Consider Me
Hold It Down
Sweaters
Miscommunicate
Lay It Down
Back To The Swing
I'm Alright
Taste Of You (ft Jamie Lidell)
Give You Blue
Look Outside
Chippin' Away
Warriors

It is one of the brilliant facets of recorded music that while it can frame forever in time one of humanity’s most fluid art forms, those captured sounds themselves can go on to become an active launchpad for the ideas, memories, emotions and feelings of those listening. Returning with their third album, Hot Motion, Temples have not just provided a strong demonstration of this dual static/frenetic nature, but they’ve created a record that revels in this beautiful contradiction.

A brilliantly crafted, thoughtfully recorded collection, the album’s propulsive, seemingly immediate songs soon reveal an impressive depth of ideas and energy with subsequent listens because, as its title warns, Hot Motion is not a record that stands still.

“I’m excited for people to experience these songs for the first time,” declares singer and guitarist James Bagshaw. “They are constructed in such a way that the album should feel relatively instantaneous, but we did not water down our creative ideas. Getting that balance can be hard, perhaps on the last record on some songs we used too many layers to create depth, but making this album we discovered that depth doesn’t simply come by layering things, it can come from the intensity of an idea.”

While proud of 2017’s electronically orchestrated Volcano, the trio – completed by bassist Tom Walmsley and guitarist Adam Smith – feel they have reconnected with the verve and spirit of their debut, 2014’s Sun Structures, although Hot Motion proves as unique and forward-thinking as any Temples album.

“There’s something more primal about this record,” suggests Walmsley of its energy. “We didn’t want to complicate things. We wanted it to have a more robust feel to it and focus more on guitars. Having less on there, but making everything sound as big as possible. I’ve always wanted our records to sound quite grand and larger than life, but we achieved that with some more earthy sounds in this time.”

As with the band’s first two LPs, the group recorded the album themselves in Northamptonshire, although this side of Temples as evolved too. “We’ve gone from bedroom to living room to a dedicated space. We could all set up in the same room and allow things to play out a lot more like a band. That played a huge part in the sound of the record,” says Walmsley, although despite the extra room Hot Motion remains a home recording like its predecessors.

"The room is a 300 year-old outbuilding at my house,” continues Bagshaw. “I spent two years fixing it up because it had a leaky iron roof on it. It was nice to work in a space which had a little charm to it but still felt like home recording.”

That space fed directly into Temples vision. While retaining their enviably poppy instincts, the band created a host of brand new guitar sounds for this record and also took a lead from the “simplicity” of some 70s rock recordings which ensured the fundamentals behind each track are organic and original. “We were hiding less behind synth sounds and delays, which meant that the pureness of the melodic construct of each song was more thought through,” explains Bagshaw. “There was an element of less is more in some places.”

A glorious technicolour infuses much if the album, but there is a David Lynch-like undertone that adds a gravity to Hot Motion’s soaring moments. “It felt like there was a darker edge to what we were coming up with and we wanted to make sure that carried through across the whole record,” says Walmsley. “It’s not a ten track, relentless rock record from start to finish, it’s got a lot of light and shade and more tender moments, but that heavier, darker sound for us is something we wanted to make sure was in there and explore further.”

The exemplar of this is the opener and title track Hot Motion. Starting with a seemingly innocent, crunked ice cream van-like riff, the song quickly bounds through a sonic landscape of shadowy valleys and exalted highs as the track captures Temples at their inventive best, and shares an expansive, irresistible energy with the listener.

“Hot Motion is the feature piece,” declares Walmsley. “It was one of the first songs we put together for the record and it felt like it had all the marks and inspiration that we wanted the whole record to have, that was an important track.” Bagshaw agrees, suggesting that it set a tone for the next phase of Temples’ development. “Hot Motion is a better song than I ever dreamed it could be,” he says. “There was something in essence of that song to conjure with.”

From the impressive opening, the rest of Hot Motion similarly boats an initial immediacy before unfurling greater depth and ideas, although each song cascades onto its own unique territory. Tracks like The Beam, It’s All Coming Out and Step Down offer swirling, enticing mini journeys, while the groove on Context “huge and a bit of a nod to an old school hip hop vibe” according to Bagshaw. “Songs like The Howl and Holy Horses have a slightly harder, heavier than we’ve done before,” adds Walmsley. “It felt like it was very important to retain that element on the record because it allowed us to open up with tracks like Atomise.”

Lyrically too, this record has seen Temples embrace “purer, primal” feelings.

“I’m really proud of You’re Either On Something lyrically because I feel deeply connected with the words – they’re so truthful,” admits Bagshaw. “On that track, I can hear influences of stuff that I listened to when I was growing up. There’s almost a nostalgia to that track, even though it’s very forward-looking. Equally, while the words on [album closer] Monuments are a little cryptic, it’s very much about the time we live in. I wouldn’t say it’s a political song but you can’t help but write about the things that are happening otherwise you’d just be a hermit.”

Fizzing with ideas, bursting with kinetic energy and balancing an immediate impact with an enduring, timeless intensity, Hot Motion is an album that very much provides a snapshot one of Britain’s most progressive bands’ soul, while offering its audience a starting point for their own flights of emotion and imagination. Indeed, one of its creators is jealous that he cannot experience it anew too.

“This record has really got me excited,” declares Bagshaw. “I really want to be on the receiving end of it more than any other record we’ve done. While we were making it I was thinking I wanted to be able to hear what it sounded like without working on it – I’d love to hear this out of the context in which it was made. I was really longing for that as we worked on each song, so I’m excited for people to experience these songs for the first time.”

Don’t delay this life-affirming trip, Hot Motion awaits.

TRACK LISTING

1 Hot Motion
2 You're Either On Something
3 Holy Horses
4 The Howl
5 Context
6 The Beam
7 Not Quite The Same
8 Atomise
9 It's All Coming Out
10 Step Down
11 Monuments

In the making of ‘Good Luck, Kid’ Joseph pushed beyond the dreamy folk of their debut album with ATO Records, embracing a grittier, more dynamic sound.

The 13-song collection was produced by Christian ‘Leggy’ Langdon (Meg Myers, Charlotte OC) and the result brims with thick drums and lustrous guitars, heavy grooves and radiant melodies.

Despite the bolder sonic palette, ‘Good Luck, Kid’ remains centred on the band’s crystalline vocal work, including the otherworldly harmonies that suggest a near-telepathic connection among sisters.

“The through-line of the album is this idea of moving into the driver’s seat of your own life - recognizing that you’re an adult now, and everything’s up to you from this moment on,” Natalie said. “You’re not completely sure of how to get where you need to go, and you don’t have any kind of a map to help you. It’s just the universe looking down on you like, ‘Good luck, kid.’”

“[The] blend their voices in the eerily close way that only siblings seem able to accomplish” - NPR Music. 

“a rallying cry and a celebration of the determination and angst that has pulled us all through these toxic times” - Nylon. 

“Upbeat, anthemic” - Brooklyn Vegan. 

“Dark folk-pop that will make you cry (in the best, most cathartic way possible)” - Paper. 

“an uplifting stronghold” - Paste.

TRACK LISTING

Fighter
Good Luck, Kid
Green Eyes
In My Head
NYE
Revolving Door
Half Truths
Presence
Without You
Side Effects
Enough In Your Eyes
Shivers
Room For You

Born in Shreveport, LA with time spent in Muscle Shoals, AL, LeBlanc has released three full length albums including his most recent, 2016’s ‘Cautionary Tale’, which featured Brittany Howard (Alabama Shakes) and was produced by John Paul White (The Civil Wars) and Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes). 'Renegade' was produced by Grammy Award-winning Dave Cobb and features ten new songs. It was recorded at Cobb’s RCA Studio A in Nashville.

TRACK LISTING

Renegade
Born Again
Bang Bang Bang
Domino
I See It In Your Eyes
Damned
Sand And Stone
Lone Rider
Magenta
Honor Among Thieves

Though she’d been writing songs in her head since she was six, and on the guitar since she was 12, it took a long time for Nilüfer Yanya to work up the courage to show anyone her music. 'I knew I wanted to sing, but the idea of actually having to do it wasreally horrifying,' says the 23-year-old. When she was finally persuaded to do so, by a music teacher in West London where she grew up, she says 'it was horrible. I loved it'.

At 18, Nilüfer, who is of Turkish-Irish-Bajan heritage, uploaded a few demos to SoundCloud. Though she’s preternaturally shy, her music, which uniquely blends elements of soul and jazz into intimate pop songs with electronic flourishes and a newly expressed grungy guitar soun, isn’t. And it didn’t take long for it to catch people’s attention. She signed with independent New York label ATO, following three EPs on esteemed London indie label Blue Flowers, and earned a place on the BBC Sound of 2018 longlist. She also supported the likes of The XX, Interpol, Broken Social Scene and Mitski on tour.

Now, Nilüfer is ready to release her debut album, "Miss Universe". Though she recorded much of it in the same remote Cornwall studio she used to jam in as a much younger person, it is bigger and more ambitious than anything she has done before. "Angels", with its muted, harmonic riffs, channels ideas 'of paranoid thoughts and anxiety' - a theme that runs through the album, not least in its conceptual spoken word interludes which emanate from a fictional health management company WWAY HEALTH TM. 'You sign up, and you pay a fee,' explains Nilüfer of the automated messages, which are littered through the album and are narrated by the titular Miss Universe. 'They sort out all of your dietary requirements, and then they move onto medication, and then maybe you can get a better organ or something... and then suddenly it starts to get a bit weird. You're giving them more of you and to what end?'

TRACK LISTING

1 WWAY HEALTH ™
2 In Your Head
3 Paralysed
4 Angels
5 Experience?
6 Paradise
7 Baby Blu
8 Warning
9 Heat Rises
10 Melt
11 “Sparkle” GOD HELP ME
12 Safety Net
13 Tears
14 Monsters Under The Bed
15 The Unordained
16 Give Up Function
17 Heavyweight Champion Of The Year

In The Rainbow Rain' - produced by Sheff and mixed by Shawn Everett (Perfume Genius, Alabama Shakes, The War on Drugs) - serves as showcase for Sheff's writing and the musical interplay of his new band mates, Benjamin Lazar Davis (bass), Will Graefe (guitar), Sarah Pedinotti (keys) and Cully Symington (percussion) - the same iteration of Okkervil River that joined Sheff on the Away tour. Recalls Sheff of that tour: "It was my favorite touring experience in many years... I felt like a kid again. I realized how phenomenally lucky I am that I've been able to play music for this long."

Sheff and the band started work on the new album shortly after the end of that tour - and the presidential election. "If December 2016 was good for anything, it was good for writing songs," he says. Galvanized by the seismic events of that Fall and the following year, Sheff, sometimes co-writing with his new band, channeled his outrage and sadness into music intended to be hopeful, healing and uplifting. Inspired by the Quaker meetings he had been attending, Sheff injected the album with undercurrents of spirituality and gratitude. The result is something akin to a modern secular gospel record, and among the best music of his career.

Highlights include driving, melodic anthems "Love Somebody" and "Pulled Up The Ribbon," and "Famous Tracheotomies," which chronicles notable figures who've endured the titular procedure, including Gary Coleman, Dylan Thomas, Ray Davies, and Sheff himself. "In places, the record deals with heavy things like trauma and betrayal and shame, but, actually, it's supposed to be a good time," says Sheff. "I hope it's something fun, that makes people feel happier

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: With hints of smooth synthpop mixed in with the usual swooning indie anthems, Sheff has managed to sacrifice none of his original appeal whilst bringing in the considerable talents of his new bandmates, somehow simmering into a cohesive and enjoyable whole.

TRACK LISTING

1. Famous Tracheotomies
2. The Dream And The Light
3. Love Somebody
4. Family Song
5. Pulled Up The Ribbon
6. Don't Move Back To LA
7. Shelter Song
8. How It Is
9. External Actor
10. Human Being Song

“The idea for UNIFORM CLARITY came from UNIFORM DISTORTION,” says James, “an album of intentional chaos/dirt: literal and figurative distortion of lyrics and sound meant to echo and hopefully shed some light on the twisted times and distortion of the truth in which we now live. UNIFORM CLARITY is meant to illuminate the other side – raw and real, but very clear, much like in the early days of recording where all you could hear was the truth because there were no ways to manipulate recordings in the studio. Working with Shawn Everett, we created a document style recording of these songs- just vocals, guitar and the space itself- no special FX. A crystal clear illustration of the flawed beauty of what a song starts off as or sometimes remains- a thought. a seed. a light from the womb of the universe brought to life down here on earth."

TRACK LISTING

1 Just A Fool
2 You Get To Rome
3 Out Of Time
4 Throwback
5 No Secrets
6 Yes To Everything
7 No Use Waiting
8 All In Your Head
9 Better Late Than Never
10 Over And Over
11 Too Good To Be True
12 It Will Work Out
13 Flash In The Pan

Thoreau had Walden Pond. Kerouac had Big Sur. Rayland Baxter? He had an old rubber band factory in Franklin, Kentucky, and it suited him just fine. As one of the hardest-touring artists on the road today, Baxter’s spent most of his professional life in transit, but ever since he was a kid, he dreamed of creative seclusion someplace lonely and isolated, somewhere he could sit still and devote his every waking hour to writing without interruption or distraction. When the opportunity finally presented itself in late 2016, the Nashville native pounced.

“I packed everything in my van and moved to Franklin for three months,” says Baxter. “It was the fist time I ever got to be alone and focus solely on songs like that. All I did was write, write, write all day every day. I was obsessed.”

By the time Baxter emerged, he’d penned more than 50 tunes and crafted a detailed blueprint for his spectacular new album, ‘Wide Awake.’ Deftly produced by Butch Walker, the record infuses Baxter’s easygoing, soulful sound with British Invasion melodies and rock and roll swagger, marrying lean, muscular songwriting with adventurous, inventive arrangements. It’s a cutting, insightful collection, one that takes a sardonic view the violence, greed, and division that seem to define the modern American landscape. Rather than point a finger, though, the music holds up a mirror, offering a sober reflection of the times thoughtfully bundled in bright, infectious hooks. There’s no judgment here, only keen observation, and Baxter implicates himself as much as his neighbor through it all.

“This is an album about decision making,” he explains. “It’s about being a human at the crossroads. Do I do good or do I do evil? Do I lie or do I tell the truth? Am I going to be happy or am I going to be sad? All of these questions and emotions are things I see in myself, and they’re the same things I see in everyone else no matter where I go.”

Baxter’s built a career on capturing those sorts of timeless, deeply human sentiments, bringing colorful characters to vivid life with equal parts humor and pathos. His debut album, ‘feathers & fishhooks,’ was a critical hit praised by Interview for its “well-worn maturity,” while NPR described “Yellow Eyes,” the lead single from his 2015 follow-up, ‘Imaginary Man,’ as “close-to-perfect.” Stereogum dubbed the record “an impeccable sophomore break-out,” and Rolling Stone hailed its pairing of “whimsical narrative with often deceptively complex arrangements.” The music earned Baxter festival appearances from Bonnaroo to Newport Folk in addition to tours with an astonishing array of artists, including Jason Isbell, The Lumineers, Kacey Musgraves, The Head and The Heart, Shakey Graves, Lauryn Hill, and Grace Potter.

“The six months leading up to the release of ‘Imaginary Man,’ that was the first time I really started playing electric guitar and performing with a band,” says Baxter. “We did my first headline run and toured that album for a year-and-a-half, and the experience really opened up this whole new sound for me. It helped me figure out more of who I was as an artist and a songwriter and a traveler and a human being.”

It was with that newfound sense of self that Baxter entered Thunder Sound, the abandoned rubber band factory-turned-studio in the cornfields of Kentucky that would become his home for three months of intensive soul searching and songwriting.

“I blanketed the windows so no one could see inside,” he explains. “I laid a mattress down next to an old Wurlitzer so I had somewhere to sleep. I had a guitar, a desk with a lamp and some paper and pencils, and that was it. For fifteen hours a day, I wrote.”

When it came time to record his mountain of new songs, Baxter relocated to Santa Monica, California, where he wrangled an all-star studio band that included Dr. Dog’s Erick Slick on drums, Butch Walker on bass, Cage The Elephant’s Nick Bockrath on guitar, and piano wizard Aaron Embry (Elliott Smith, Brian Eno) on keys. A producer and artist equally at home working with massive pop stars and indie stalwarts, Walker immediately embraced Baxter’s vision for the album, and the result is a sunny and altogether charming collection. Scratch beneath the surface, though, and you’ll find it’s populated by a cast of characters who project a vision of the good life as they struggle to keep it all together behind closed doors. On the punchy ‘Casanova,’ the singer reckons with debts he knows he’ll never be able to repay, while the volatile “Amelia Baker” charts the narrator’s descent into near-madness as he pines for a starlet perpetually out of reach.

“We have this society where we’re obsessed with celebrity and living on the top of the mountain,” says Baxter. “But what’s at the top? Maybe it’s a lonely place to wake up.”

Late 2016 was a particular tumultuous time in the country, and though Baxter did his best to isolate himself from the outside world while he wrote, it was inevitable that some of the chaos would seep in. On album opener “Strange American Dream,” a chiming piano and spare Motown groove give way to lush harmonies and unexpected melodic twists as Baxter sings, “I close my eyes and realize that I’m alive inside this strange American dream.” Meanwhile, the soaring “79 Shiny Revolvers” finds him reflecting, “you really wanna save the world, man / well, I wanna save it, too / we can blow ’em away / the American way.”

While ‘Wide Awake’ offers plenty of broad, wide-angle musings, some of its most arresting moments arrive bundled inside deeply personal memories and snapshots. The heartfelt “Everything To Me” is a tender tribute to family (Baxter’s father Bucky, who played pedal steel with Bob Dylan and Ryan Adams among others, contributes to the record), and the laidback “Let It All Go Man” is a reminder that there’s beauty in simply being alive.

“I actually started that song two years ago on a trip to South America,” says Baxter. “I was sitting on the porch of a house in this little town in Colombia, and I was all alone playing a gut string classical guitar, just staring out at the ocean and the beach in the middle of the night. It made me realize how much unnecessary stuff we hold on to, all the grinding away we do chasing success and money and missing the big picture. It made me realize what an incredibly beautiful gift it is to be human.”

That empty South American beach may have been a world away from the rubber band factory in Kentucky, but for Baxter, the effect was the same. The solitude offered a chance to observe, to reflect, to grow, to appreciate, and most importantly, to write.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Effortlessly melodic pop craftsmanship in a Southern/ West Coast easy stylee. This is the perfect album for the summer.

TRACK LISTING

1 Strange American Dream
2 Casanova
3 Angeline
4 79 Shiny Revolvers
5 Amelia Baker
6 Without Me
7 Hey Larocco
8 Sandra Monica
9 Everything To Me
10 Let It All Go Man

Jim James third studio album ‘Uniform Distortion’ follows on from his previous success from being frontman of My Morning Jacket.Uniform Distortion was produced by Jim James and Kevin Ratterman at Louisville, KY’s La La Land, with Ratterman also serving as recording engineer. All songs were written by James, who is backed on the album by bassist Seth Kauffman (Floating Action) and longtime touring drummer Dave Givan, with backing vocals provided throughout by Dear Lemon Trees’ Leslie Stevens, Jamie Drake and Kathleen Grace. “The name of my new record is Uniform Distortion because I feel like there is this blanket distortion on society/media and the way we gather our ‘news and important information. More and more of us are feeling lost and looking for new ways out of this distortion and back to the truth…and finding hope in places like the desert where I write this now...finding hope in the land and in the water and in old books offering new ideas and most importantly in each other and love.” says James. Uniform Distortion is James’ finest work to date filled with compassion and brimming with meaningful ideology. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Jim James does things differently on his solo records and this one's no exception. Raw, playful and rocking, but still with melodies galore, which other massive alt-rock stars keep things this fresh!

TRACK LISTING

1. Just A Fool
2. You Get To Rome
3. Out Of Time
4. Throwback
5. No Secrets
6. Yes To Everything
7. No Use Waiting
8. All In Your Head
9. Better Late Than Never
10. Over And Over
11. Too Good To Be True

Natalie Prass had her new album written, her band ready, the recording studio booked. Then the 2016 election happened, and out of her despair and disappointment in those results came an impulse she could not ignore: she rewrote the album to reflect these swirling emotions. The result is ‘The Future and The Past’ a stunning snapshot of a musician in a state of personal rediscovery and surging femininity. The celebratory and defiant ‘The Future and The Past’ also signals a significant artistic leap for Prass on the heels of her 2015 breakthrough debut album. It finds Prass tapping into deep, dancey grooves that glisten with 80s pop and 90s R&B, nestled alongside quivering, lushly orchestrated ballads.

Like her debut album, Prass made ‘The Future and The Past’ in Richmond, VA with long-time friend and collaborator Matthew E. White at his Spacebomb Studios. She added some new collaborations to the mix as well: Blue (Solange’s ‘A Seat At The Table,’ Blood Orange, Carly Rae Jepsen) and Michael Brauer (Elle King and James Bay). ‘Future’ is ripe with string orchestrations and piano flourishes, snaking synth lines and fuzzed out guitars.

‘The Future And The Past’ is bursting with a myriad of grooves and Natalie’s vocals float on top, light as a feather and tough as nails. “Short Court Style” dials the tempo into 90s R&B territory – punctuated by handclaps, sampled “woos,” and a Dr. Dre-esque whistling synth line. Lyrically she wields a sharp knife as well. The love torn “Lost” begins with: “Turn up the fader, its like a lightning bolt / we can’t be saved, so now I’m listening on my own / Once there was a time when you had me hypnotized / you realized that your finger prints were on my bones.” Funky feminist anthem “Sisters” is an empowering rallying cry: “I want to say it loud / for all the ones held down / we gotta change the plan.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliantly smooth set of low-key soul, funky synth-pop and swooning groove-led summer anthems. Prass' perfectly emotive vox offset the choppy funk with aplomb, accentuating the groove and leading us through her latest opus. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

1. Oh My
2. Short Court Style
3. Interlude: Your Fire
4. The Fire
5. Hot For The Mountain
6. Lost
7. Sisters
8. Never Too Late
9. Ship Go Down
10. Nothing To Say
11. Far From You
12. Ain't Nobody

Tribute To is a collection of George Harrison songs recorded by Jim after George’s death. “All I had was that eight track at our studio and right after George died I just went up there and sat in a room and played those songs to try and deal with the emotions I felt from his passing and pay tribute to him” said Jim James.

Spin described the EP as “spare and somber – just that windy Americana tenor against a squeaky acoustic guitar … Many of us remember where we were when Harrison died; now we hear when James began to heal.”


This re-issue includes a bonus track, a cover of "If Not For You".

TRACK LISTING

Long, Long, Long
Behind That Locked Door
Love You To
If Not For You
My Sweet Lord
Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)
All Things Must Pass

After releasing the politically charged solo album ‘Eternally Even’ in 2016, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James returns with ‘Tribute To 2’, a collection of cover songs that reverberate with hope.

Unlike his 2009 mini album of songs by George Harrison and the Beatles, ‘Tribute To’, which was recorded on an eight-track, reel-toreel tape recorder in the days following Harrison’s passing, the 11 songs of ‘Tribute To 2’ were recorded over a period of years, in different places, with different gear and varied instrumentation. James explains, “These are some of my favourite covers - songs I recorded trying to bring myself peace during a rough time or trying to make myself laugh or just have fun. I hope others can relate and enjoy the journey during these tough times and hopefully in times of peace and love as well!”

Simon Okely is lost in time. Or at least, his songs sound that way: warm, near-whispered indie rock love letters to the 60s and 70s rhythm and blues records his parents would play on family car rides down Australia’s winding West Coast, heavy on nostalgia and even heavier on imagination. “I try not to be too caught up in trends and what’s popular in music now and just focus in on my passions, my influences,” grins the Melbourne songwriter better known as Slow Dancer, whose 2014 debut ‘Surrender’ was a melt-your-heart, Fleetwood Mac-with-Neil Young licks ‘pop postcard’ from another time, another place.

Returning in 2017 with new album ‘In A Mood’, Okely is aiming even higher on his new material, featuring a “more expansive, more ambitious” sound that’s “less about the stories we tell ourselves when in love and more about the moods that can come creeping over a relationship” at any time. “It’s a little more tasteful, involving new instruments, like drum machines and strings,” says the 31-year-old, whose lush tales of new romance, awkward courting and “scraggly, mangy love that’s fading and waning” have been striking a chord with fans of Mac DeMarco, Tobias Jesso Jr, Connan Mockasin and more.

TRACK LISTING

In The Water
Bitter
Don’t Believe
I Would
I’m Done Waiting
It Goes On
Heaven Knows
I Was Often
In A Mood
I’ve Been Thinking

A statement from Okkervil River’s Will Sheff:

The new Okkervil River album is called Away. I didn’t plan to make it and initially wasn’t sure if it was going to be an Okkervil River album or if I’d ever put it out. I wrote the songs during a confusing time of transition in my personal and professional life and recorded them quickly with a brand new group of musicians. I got together the best New York players I could think of, people whose playing and personalities I was fans of and who came more out of a jazz or avant garde background, and we cut the songs live in one or two takes – trying to keep things as natural and immediate as possible – over three days in a studio on Long Island that hosts the Neve 8068 console which recorded Steely Dan’s Aja and John Lennon’s Double Fantasy. I asked Marissa Nadler to sing on it and got the composer Nathan Thatcher to write some beautiful orchestral arrangements, we recorded them with the classical ensemble yMusic and then I mixed the record with Jonathan Wilson out in Los Angeles. 2013-2015 had been a strange time for me. I lost some connections in a music industry that was visibly falling apart. Some members of the Okkervil River backing band left, moving on to family life or to their own projects. I spent a good deal of time sitting in hospice with my grandfather, who was my idol, while he died. I felt like I didn’t know where I belonged. When there was trouble at home, a friend offered me her empty house in the Catskills where I could go and clear my head. New songs were coming fast up there, so I set myself the challenge of trying to write as many as possible as quickly as possible. I wasn’t thinking about any kind of end product; the idea was just to write through what I was feeling, quickly and directly. Eventually, I realized I was writing a death story for a part of my life that had, buried inside of it, a path I could follow that might let me go somewhere new. “Okkervil River R.I.P.” and “Call Yourself Renee” are good emotional transcriptions of that time. I wrote the latter on psylocibin mushrooms on a beautiful afternoon in early fall in the Catskills. I wrote “The Industry” quickly after getting some bad news. “Comes Indiana Through the Smoke” is an anthem for the battleship my grandfather served on during the Pacific Theater of World War II. Before becoming a private school Headmaster, my grandfather was also a jazz musician; he paid his way through college as a bandleader, toured with Les Brown and His Band of Renown, and spent summers playing a residency at a NH lakeside gay dance club called The Jungle Room that kept live monkeys in the basement. (You can hear his actual trumpet on this song, played by C.J. Camarieri from yMusic.) “Judey on a Street” is a love song, sunny but written late at night when the woods are maximum spooky. We cut “She Would Look for Me” pretty shapelessly, with a lot of improvisation, and it’s also a love song. “Mary on a Wave” is about the feminine aspect of God but is in a very masculine tuning: DADDAD. It’s also a love song. I wrote “Frontman in Heaven” in an obsessive three-day streak of writing for 14 hours, going to bed, getting up and writing again. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. I wrote “Days Spent Floating (in the Halfbetween)” by just jotting down the first sentence that popped into my head every morning in October immediately after I opened my eyes. At the end of the month I had a finished song. It was recorded as an afterthought as the last thing we did when they were about to kick us out of the studio. You can hear me flub some lyrics. But one take and we had it.

I think this record was me taking my life back to zero and starting to add it all back up again, one plus one plus one. Any part that didn’t feel like it added up I left out. Weirdly, it was the easiest and most natural record I’ve ever made. More than any time in my life before, I felt guided by intuition – like I was going with the grain, walking in the direction the wind was blowing. The closer it got to being finished, the more the confusion I’d felt at the start went away. It’s not really an Okkervil River album and it’s also my favorite Okkervil River album.

Will Sheff
May 2016

The deluxe ATO Records reissue of ‘It Still Moves’, My Morning Jacket’s third full-length.

This deluxe reissue contains the original album completely remastered and remixed, 13 previously unreleased B-sides and demos and brand new artwork and photos.

Drive-By Truckers present a live set recorded at The Fillmore in San Francisco, available in two editions.

In the band’s own words: “Thrilled to announce that our long awaited live album, recorded over three nights at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco CA, will be released […]! Our long-time producer, David Barbe, acquired the necessary mobile gear to record us and flew out to San Francisco to capture our three-night stand in November of 2014. We hired some horns, sold some tickets and played three special and unique shows. From those shows we have sequenced a sort of ultimate live DBT collection, one that hopefully captures the essence of our life’s work into one cohesive whole.

“We are releasing two versions... a shorter 13 song version called ‘This Weekend’s The Night’ which provides a Best Of version snapshot of our live show [and] also a larger 35 song box set entitled ‘It’s Great To Be Alive!’ which goes far more in-depth into the DBT catalog and history. Songs and stories spanning thirty years of Drive- By Truckers sequenced to hopefully give as close as possible document of the DBT show.”

“Sun Club have been tearing up venues with their unique blend of ferocious energy and euphoric dream pop for a number of years. At long last, a full-length release is finally on the cards.” - Line Of Best Fit

“‘Tropicoller Lease' is a driven take on oddities, where substance meets outward-thinking head on.” - DIY Magazine

The members of Sun Club became a band as childhood friends over ten years ago and have toured endlessly ever since, opening up for the likes of Alvvays, FIDLAR and Fat White Family.

Their first-ever full length album, ‘The Dongo Durango’, finds the band joyously deconstructing the traditional pop song and then rebuilding it with off-kilter time signatures, gleefully unhinged vocals and sunny hooks that sink deep into your already fevered brain.

Sun Club set about recording ’The Dongo Durango’ using an old warehouse space just outside of their hometown as a makeshift studio. They recorded the album live. There they channelled influences of fellow Baltimore greats from Future Islands to Dan Deacon, as well as drawing from their own musical libraries that include DEVO, The Beach Boys and The White Stripes.

Following the release of 2012’s ‘Women And Work’, Lucero’s new album ‘All A Man Should Do’ contains some of the most resonant lyrics Ben Nichols has ever written.

Working with producer Ted Hutt (Old Crow Medicine Show, Flogging Molly) for a third time at Memphis’ Ardent Studios, the band felt comfortable enough to take some chances with a palette of new tones that sound understated yet powerful, bringing life to the stories behind the lyrics without overshadowing them.

For the first time the band have put a cover song on a record, with a full band version of Big Star’s ‘I Fell In Love With A Girl’. The track features Jody Stephens from Big Star singing back-up vocals.

TRACK LISTING

Baby Don’t You Want Me
Went Looking For Warren Zevon’s Los Angeles
The Man I Was
Can’t You Hear Them Howl
I Woke Up In New Orleans
Throwback No. 2
They Called Her Killer
Young Outlaws
I’m In Love With A Girl
My Girl & Me In ‘93

New album ‘We Are Undone’ is Two Gallants’ second full length release on the ATO Records label following 2012’s ‘The Bloom And The Blight’.

Two Gallants’ Adam Stephens (guitar, harmonica, keyboard and vocals) and Tyson Vogel (drums, guitar and vocals) spent one month recording ‘We Are Undone’ with Karl Derfler (Tom Waits) at Panoramic House in Northern California.

Of the title track, Stephens says “‘We Are Undone’ was, without being too blunt about it, trying to make sense of this unending pressure to acquire and consume, and usually as conspicuously as possible, that has taken a hold of our culture.”

TRACK LISTING

We Are Undone
Incidental
Fools Like Us
Invitation To A Funeral
Some Trouble
My Man Go
Katy Kruelly
Heartbreakdown
Murder The Season / The Age Nocturne
There’s So Much I Don’t Know

Mixed by Rob Schnaph and produced by John Avila (Oingo Boingo), ‘III’ is available in all formats, including day-glo orange vinyl, via ATO Records.

It’s the band’s third Mariachi album, this time approaching writing from a different direction. For ‘III’, Mariachi El Bronx dusted off old sequencers, synths and an ARP.

Certain tones echo through this 10 song album - the feel of a band coming into their own, extending the proverbial middle finger to tradition (and backing it up 100%).

Drive-By Truckers release their new album ‘English Oceans’ through ATO Records.

‘English Oceans’, the band’s 12th release, is an elegantly balanced and deeply engaged new effort that finds the group refreshed and firing on all cylinders. “It can go from this chainsaw rock ‘n’ roll to this very delicate, pretty-sounding stuff,” says singer and guitarist Mike Cooley.

‘English Oceans’ was recorded over 13 days at Chase Park Transduction Studios in Athens, GA with the band’s longtime producer David Barbe.

TRACK LISTING

Sh*t Shots Count
When He’s Gone
Primer Coat
Pauline Hawkins
Made Up English Oceans
The Part Of Him
Hearing Jimmy Loud
Til He’s Dead Or Rises
Hanging On
Natural Light
When Walter Went Crazy
First Air Of Autumn
Grand Canyon

Although he has long been known as a characterdriven songwriter, Okkervill River’s Will Sheff announced that this album is a work of autobiography.

‘The Silver Gymnasium’ is set in a very specific time and place from Sheff's childhood - in 1986 in the small town of Meriden, NH, where Sheff's parents worked as teachers for a boarding school. Sheff conceived the album as a tribute to the spirit of pre-adolescence, meant to evoke the nostalgic feeling of “an action figure you found in the woods.”

This was also the era of video games like ‘Leisure Suit Larry’, ‘Maniac Mansion’, and ‘King’s Quest’. To pay homage to those early games, Sheff created his own online adventure game in partnership with Eyes And Ears' Benjamin Miles.

Their fourth album proper and second for a major label, this should be the one that does it for these Louisville longhairs. It's got all their special ingredients; country, lonesome rock with a little Neil, a lot of echo and even more soul - but, with the help of John Leckie (and this time not recorded in a barn in Kentucky!) they've made a modern, otherworldly, dream-rock record that puts them in a similar arena to Mercury Rev. They tap into the very heart of the classic American music we all know and love. This one's slightly more rhythmical and with synths bubbling up, but they still ache and burn. Jim James still pines away, his voice as beautiful as ever. This is a more compact MMJ, but no worse for it. Infact, this may prove to be their most powerful album yet. Rich, as ever.