Some forty years into one of music’s most impactful, sometimes tense and yet curiously enduring partnerships, Tears For Fears have finally arrived together at The Tipping Point – the group’s ambitious, accomplished and surprising first new studio album in nearly two decades.

And now, at very long last, Tears For Fears find themselves back in peak form at The Tipping Point, an inspired song cycle that speaks powerfully and artfully to our present tense here in 2021. This is an album that vividly recalls the depth and emotional force of the group’s earliest triumphs. Imagine a far more outward-looking take on TFF’s famously introspective 1983 debut album The Hurting set in an even more mad world, or 1985’s Songs From The Big Chair bravely confronting even bigger issues in our increasingly unruly world. Or even 1989’s The Seeds Of Love that sows a mix of love and other emotions.

The Tipping Point is the bold, beautiful and powerful sound of Tears For Fears finding themselves together all over again.

TRACK LISTING

1. No Small Thing
2. Tipping Point
3. Long, Long, Long Time
4. Break The Man
5. My Demons
6. Rivers Of Mercy
7. Please Be Happy
8. Master Plan
9. End Of Night
10. Stay

"Source - We Move" finds Garcia reinventing her Mercury Prize-nominated album, "Source", through new collaborations with several artists and producers including; Dengue Dengue Dengue, Georgia Anne Muldrow, DJ Harrison and Moses Boyd. The reworked tracks retain the inspiring musicianship and blend of jazz and other influences found on the original, whilst also moving in a more beat-driven, electronic direction.

Perfect for DJs exploring more slower and sensuous moods, these lavish and highly musical grooves remind me of nights spent at Mr. Scruff and Eyes Down; with a spaciousness that allows turntablists and MCs to perform at will. The electrical innovation works incredibly well with Garcia's source material which should appeal to hip-hop heads, beat diggers, jazz nerds and soul boys alike. Mega stuff this, check it! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Now this is truly gorgeous, these remixes are paired back versions from her 2020 album Source and but it’s like discovering her music all over again. With remixes from the likes of Kaidi Tatham, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Moses Boyd these tracks are just so smooth.. it’s super limited so don’t sleep!

TRACK LISTING

1. La Cumbia Me Está Llamando Feat. La Perla (Kaidi Tatham Remix)
2. Together Is A Beautiful Place To Be (Nala Sinephro Remix)
3. The Message Continues (DJ Harrison Remix)
4. Inner Game (Blvck Spvde Remix)
5. Boundless Beings Feat. Akenya (Georgia Anne Muldrow Remix)
6. Stand With Each Other Feat. Ms. MAURICE, Cassie Kinoshi And Richie Seivwright (KeiyaA Remix)
7. La Cumbia Me Está Llamando Feat. La Perla (Suricata Remix)
8. Source (Dengue Dengue Dengue Remix)
9. Pace (Moses Boyd Remix) 

This collection showcases some of Coltrane's best recordings as a side artist and features collaborations with such jazz greats as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Tadd Dameron, and Art Taylor. Primarily focusing on Coltrane's recordings as side man from 1956 and 1957 on the Prestige, Riverside, and Jazzland labels, it also includes a guest appearance (and legendary tenor saxophone solo) with Miles Davis on the track "Someday My Prince Will Come" (from the 1961 Miles Davis Columbia album of the same title).

The 2-LP vinyl edition contains two extra tracks that are not available on the CD and digital editions: Nutty (Originally released on the album Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (Jazzland JLP 46) and Birks' Works (Originally released on the Red Garland Quintet album Soul Junction featuring John Coltrane and Donald Byrd). The liner notes were written by Doug Ramsey, winner of the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Ramsey is the author of the award-winning biography Take Five, The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. His other awards include two ASCAP Deems Taylors.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. SONNY ROLLINS QUARTET: Tenor Madness (12:08)
2. MILES DAVIS AND THE MODERN JAZZ GIANTS: 'Round Midnight (5:22)
3. THE MILES DAVIS QUINTET: Oleo (6:17)
Side B
1. THE MILES DAVIS QUINTET: Airegin (4:21)
2. TADD DAMERON WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Soultrane (5:22)
3. ART TAYLOR: C.T.A. (4:39)
4. THELONIOUS MONK: Monk's Mood (7:48)
Side C
1. THELONIOUS MONK WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Epistrophy (Alternate Take) (3:07)
2. THELONIOUS MONK WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Trinkle, Tinkle (6:39)
3. *THELONIOUS MONK WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Nutty* (6:36)
4. *RED GARLAND QUINTET FEATURING JOHN COLTRANE AND DONALD BYRD: Birks' Works* (7:32)
Side D
1. THE RED GARLAND QUINTET WITH JOHN COLTRANE: Billie's Bounce (9:21)
2. MILES DAVIS: Someday My Prince Will Come (9:02) 

* Vinyl Bonus Tracks.

The Offspring is a punk rock band from Garden Grove, California, formed in 1984. The band's current lineup consists of lead vocalist Dexter Holland, guitarist Noodles, drummer Pete Parada and bassist Todd Morse. Over the course of their 36-year career, they have released nine studio albums.

The Offspring is often credited—alongside fellow California punk bands Green Day, Rancid, Bad Religion, NOFX, Pennywise and Jawbreaker—for reviving mainstream interest in punk rock in the 1990s. They have sold over 40 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling punk rock bands in history. The Offspring achieved its first commercial success with their third studio album, Smash (1994), which has sold over eleven million copies worldwide, setting a record for most albums sold on an independent record label, and was the first album released on Epitaph to obtain gold and platinum status. After switching record labels from Epitaph to Columbia in 1996, the Offspring continued their commercial success with its next six studio albums: Ixnay on the Hombre (1997), Americana (1998), Conspiracy of One (2000), Splinter (2003), Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace (2008) and Days Go By (2012); the first four were certified platinum, multi-platinum, platinum and gold status by the RIAA respectively.

The legendary So-Cal punk group The Offspring are back with their 10th album and first new offering since 2008. After releasing two standalone tracks in 2020 - the over-the-top cover of Joe Exotic's (of Tiger King infamy) "Hey Kitty Kitty" and a rendition of Darlene Love's classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" - the band is ready to plant their punk rock flag in the sand once again with their blistering new album Let the Bad Times Roll.

With the help of producer Bob Rock, Dexter Holland describes the album as "the most cathartic thing we've done. The messages might be dark, but at the end what's left is that communication is important, working through feelings is important and most of all, hope is important." 

Then let the bad times roll for now, in the hopes that good times lie ahead.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I was a MASSIVE Offspring fan back in the day, I still have and play their first five albums or so on a regular basis, but I kind of stopped listening after Americana. Though there is a significant polish to their sound now, Holland's vocals are as ubiquitous as ever and I can tell without looking that Noodles is still on guitar duties. A superb outing for a band into album double-digits.

TRACK LISTING

1. This Is Not Utopia
2. Let The Bad Times Roll
3. Behind Your Walls
4. Army Of One
5. Breaking These Bones
6. Coming For You
7. We Never Have Sex Anymore
8. In The Hall Of The Mountain King
9. The Opioid Diaries
10. Hassan Chop
11. Gone Away Requiem
12. Lullaby 

“Hey Clockface” was recorded in Helsinki, Paris and New York and mixed by Sebastian Krys in Los Angeles. Following the solo recording of, “No Flag”, “Hetty O’Hara Confidential” and “We Are All Cowards Now” at Suomenlinnan Studio, Helsinki by Eetü Seppälä in February 2020, Costello immediately traveled to Paris for a weekend session at Les Studios Saint Germain. Costello tells us, “I sang live on the studio floor, directing from the vocal booth. We cut nine songs in two days. We spoke very little. Almost everything the musicians played was a spontaneous response to the song I was singing. I’d had a dream of recording in Paris like this, one day.”

The assembled album, “Hey Clockface” is “An Elvis Costello & Sebastian Krys Production” following on from their work together on Elvis Costello and The Imposters Grammy-winning album “Look Now.” The motion picture of “We Are All Cowards Now” by Eamon Singer & Arlo Mc Furlow features images of flowers & pistols, smoke & mirrors, tombstones & monuments, courage & cowardice, peace love and misunderstanding.

Serpentine Prison is the debut solo record from Matt Berninger front man of The National. The album, produced by renowned Memphis multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones (of Booker T. & The MG’s fame) will be released via Book Records, a new imprint formed by Berninger and Jones in conjunction with Concord Records.

“The song ‘Serpentine Prison’ was written in December 2018, about a week after recording The National’s I Am Easy to Find,” Berninger explains about the new track. “For a long time, I had been writing songs for movies and musicals and other projects where I needed to get inside someone else’s head and convey another person’s feelings. I liked doing that, but I was ready to dig back into my own garbage and this was the first thing that came out.”

Berninger continues, “The title is from a twisting sewer pipe that drains into the ocean near LAX. There’s a cage on the pipe to keep people from climbing out to sea. I worked on the song with Sean O’Brien and Harrison Whitford and recorded it about six months later with Booker T. Jones producing. It feels like an epilogue, so I named the record after it and put it last.”

The album features contributions from a wide array of notable artists, including Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Jonathan Fire*Eater), Andrew Bird, Mike Brewer, Hayden Desser, Scott Devendorf (The National), Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie, Lenny Kravitz), Booker T. Jones, Teddy Jones, Brent Knopf (EL VY, Menomena), Ben Lanz (The National, Beirut), Walter Martin (The Walkmen, Jonathan Fire*Eater), Sean O'Brien, Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan), Kyle Resnick (The National, Beirut), Matt Sheehy (EL VY, Lost Lander) and Harrison Whitford (Phoebe Bridgers). Additional production on the album was provided by Sean O’Brien.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Matt Berninger has had our attention for a long time, fronting and writing songs for The National. It comes as a little surprise then, that he's smashed out a solo album with the band still fully intact (just not the done thing is it?). Anyway, he's forgiven because what we have here is a beautifully emotive but comfortingly different creative path than his 'Day Job'. How the songs keep flowing at this quality is beyond me, let's just hope they keep flowing.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Eyes Are T-Shirts
2. Distant Axis
3. One More Second
4. Loved So Little
5. Silver Springs
6. Oh Dearie
7. Take Me Out Of Town
8. Collar Of Your Shirt
9. All For Nothing
10. Serpentine Prison