Kevin Morby writes (and records, and imagines) at an almost incomparable clip, and his most recent album, This Is A Photograph, studies life, time and mortality through myriad lenses. It’s a dynamic, buoyant record on big, heavy themes, so it only makes sense that Morby found he wasn’t quite done with it on its completion. More Photographs (A Continuum) finds new nooks, corners and vantage points. “If This Is A Photograph is a house that you have been living inside of,” says Morby, “then More Photographs is, perhaps, the same home just experienced differently. As if you, its inhabitant, have taken a tab of something psychedelic and now, suddenly, you’ve replaced your eyeglasses with kaleidoscopes.”

Here, Morby returns to his landmark album’s bottomless themes with new wisdom, new imagination, and the winking, looping callbacks that tie his full body of work together in uniquely special ways. “Everything you once thought was familiar,” he continues, “suddenly appears differently, shifting shapes, color and sonic landscapes.” “Five Easy Pieces Revisited” captures the same moment from Bobby’s point of view; “This Is A Photograph II” takes a similar tact, revisiting its predecessor from a different angle. “Triumph” explores more of the myths and deaths that surround Memphis, TN, this time inspired by Big Star’s Chris Bell. And “Kingdom Of Hearts” arrives as an origin story to both This Is A Photograph and its new companion.

“With every collection of songs,” says Morby, “I feel I must cast them out of me before moving onto the next project, and here I knew that what I had begun with This Is A Photograph was not finished. Releasing this collection is my tying a bow on that time and place in my creative life.” With a luxurious nine tracks – three re-imaginings and six brand new songs – More Photographs (A Continuum) is prequel, sequel and primer to an already rich and generous record from one of our most luminous modern songwriters.

TRACK LISTING

1) This Is A Photograph II
2) Triumph
3) Bittersweet, Tennessee
4) Going To Prom
5) Lion Tamer

SIDE B
6) A Song For Katie
7) Five Easy Pieces Revisited
8) Mickey Mantle’s Autograph
9) Kingdom Of Broken Hearts

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first-ever official live releases would be double albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s ‘Live At’ series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, Khruangbin’s ‘Live at’ series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at The Fillmore Miami’ features performances by Toro Y Moi and Khruangbin.

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first-ever official live releases would be double albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s ‘Live At’ series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, Khruangbin’s ‘Live at’ series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at RBC Echo Beach’ features performances by Men I Trust and Khruangbin.

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first ever official live releases would be double albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s ‘Live At’ series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited- edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, Khruangbin’s ‘Live at’ series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at Radio City Music Hall’ features performances by Nubya Garcia and Khruangbin.

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Mirrors And Fevers
2. I Will Be Grateful For This Day
3. Trees Get Wheeled Away
4. Drunk Kid Catholic
5. Spent On Rainy Days
6. The Vanishing Act
7. Soon You Will Be Leaving Your Man
8. Blue Angels Air Show
9. Weather Reports
10. Seashell Tale
11. Bad Blood
12. Amy In The White Coat
13. Devil Town
14. I’ve Been Eating (For You)
15. Happy Birthday To Me (February 15)
16. Motion Sickness
17. Act Of Contrition
18. Hungry For A Holiday
19. When The Curious Girl Realizes She Is Under Glass Again
20. Entry Way Song
21. It’s Cool, We Can Still Be Friends

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.

TRACK LISTING

1. Firewall
2. Shell Games
3. Jejune Stars
4. Approximate Sunlight
5. Haile Sellassie
6. A Machine Spiritual (In The People’s Key)
7. Triple Spiral
8. Beginner’s Mind
9. Ladder Song
10. One For You, One For Me

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Clairaudients (Kill Or Be Killed)
2. Four Winds
3. If The Brakeman Turns My Way
4. Hot Knives
5. Make A Plan To Love Me
6. Soul Singer In A Session Band
7. Classic Cars
8. Middleman
9. Cleanse Song
10. No One Would Riot For Less
11. Coat Check Dream Song
12. I Must Belong Somewhere
13. Lime Tree

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.

TRACK LISTING

1. Jejune Stars (Companion Version)
2. Firewall (Companion Version)
3. When You Were Mine
4. Approximate Sunlight (Companion Version)
5. A Machine Spiritual (The People’s Key) (Companion Version)
6. Beginner’s Mind (Companion Version)

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Nunca Seré Feliz Otra Vez (Companion Version)
2. The Vanishing Act (Companion Version)
3. Soon You Will Be Leaving Your Man (Companion Version)
4. Blue Angels Air Show (Companion Version)
5. I Will Be Grateful For This Day (Companion Version)
6. Motion Sickness (Companion Version)
7. I Won’t Ever Be Happy Again (Companion Version)

One of the things that struck Oberst as he and the band went through twenty-plus years of music is that he may in fact have been writing the same song this whole time. Not sonically, of course, but conceptually. This last wave contains, in Noise Floor, early Bright Eyes songs so raw Oberst never even released them back in the day, as well as, in Cassadaga and The People’s Key, the band’s most polished and sophisticated albums. When Bright Eyes toured Cassadega they performed an epic 7 sold-out nights at NYC’s Town Hall. What’s more grown-up rock- star than that? And yet ...“Thematically those early songs are not that different than the songs I make now,” Oberst says, shaking his head. “There’s something affirming and disheartening about it. It’s like, have I really changed or grown? But maybe it’s just that I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Clairaudients (Kill Or Be Killed) (Companion Version)
2. Middleman (Companion Version)
3. Coat Check Dream Song (Companion Version)
4. (Companion Version)
5. I Must Belong Somewhere (Companion Version)
6. Napoleon’s Hat (Companion Version)
7. Wrecking Bal

It’s only fitting that Khruangbin’s first ever official live releases would be double albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s ‘Live At’ series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, Khruangbin’s ‘Live at’ series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at Stubbs’ features performances by Kelly Doyle, Ruben Moreno, The Suffers and Robert Ellis and Khruangbin.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Kelly Doyle: Woman Trouble
2. Ruben Moreno: At The Trailride
3. The Suffers: Don’t Bother Me
4. Robert Ellis: Nobody Smokes Anymore
5. Khruangbin: Blind Man Can See It / (It’s Not The Express) It’s The Monaurail
6. Khruangbin: Bin Bin
Side B:
1. Khruangbin: Friday Morning
2. Khruangbin: Number 4
3. Khruangbin: People Everywhere (Still Alive

Durand Jones’s Wait ‘Til I Get Over is a memoir and a love letter. It is the story of Jones’s life, his growth and revelations, the wisdom of his hometown and the wisdom he could only gain once he left. In it, he writes through Hillaryville’s contradictions: the pristine beauty and the ragged roads; his teenage desire to leave and his adult desire to honor his tangled roots; the plantation history and the ups and downs of the Black community that made homes of this reparation town. “Hometowns have a way of keeping a part of you,” says Jones, “and if I’m making something young-me would be proud of, Hillaryville is a big part of that.” Jones finds something transformative in his memories there and the life he has led since, ultimately claiming and embracing his whole self.

The result is vulnerable, personal, touching on Jones’s relationship to church life, to his mother, to his queerness, to his worth. “I wish I could tell my younger self ‘you don’t have to stick to the dreams people have for you,’” says Jones, “’you can dream bigger. You are more than capable, you are more than able. I think about some nerdy punk kid in the rural south who needs to hear that now.’” Wait ‘Til I Get Over does exactly that.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jones' solo endeavour here shows echoes of the deep American Soul his 'Durand Jones & The Indications' project is rich with, but filled with a warm, excited, and mildly chaotic jubilance. There are uplifting moments of gospel euphoria and brittle, soulful minimalism but always with Jones's impeccable songwriting style and unmistakeable voice.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gerri Marie
2. The Place You’d Most Want
To Live (Interlude)
3. Lord Have Mercy
4. Sadie
5. I Want You
6. Wait Til I Get Over
7. That Feeling
8. See It Through (Interlude)
9. See It Through
10. Someday We’ll All Be
Free (feat. Skypp)
11. Letter To My 17 Year Old Self
12. Secrets

A gorgeous and gripping portrait of Fenne’s last two years, Big Picture was pieced together in an effort to self-soothe. Tracked live in co-producer Brad Cook’s North Carolina studio, the album delineates the phases of love and becomes a map of comfort vs claustrophobia. Though its creation took place amid personal and global turmoil, the ruminative yet candid Big Picture is Fenne’s most cohesive, resolute work to date, both lyrically and sonically. “This isn’t a sad album — it’s about as uplifting as my way of doing things will allow,” she says. “These songs explore worry and doubt and letting go, but those themes are framed brightly.” With confidence and quiet strength, each track provides an insight into Fenne’s ever-changing view of love and, ultimately, its redefinition — love as a process, not something to be lost and found.

While the album was written alone in Fenne’s Bristol flat – a fact intentionally reflected in its compact sonic quality – Big Picture was transformed from a solitary venture into a unifying collaboration during the recording process when she was joined by her touring band, Melina Dutere of Jay Som (mixing), Christian Lee Hutson (guitar and co production), and Katy Kirby (vocals). Notably, these 10 songs are Fenne’s first and only to have been written over the course of a relationship; 2018’s On Hold and 2020’s Breach both confront the pain of retrospection, saying goodbye to a love that’s gone. Big Picture does the exact opposite — rooted firmly in the present, it traces the narrative of two people trying their hardest not to implode, together. “This album is an observation of the way I think about love, the self[1]examination that comes with closeness and the responsibilities involved in being a big part of someone else’s small(er) world,” summarizes Fenne. “It was written in a place of relative emotional stability – stability that felt unstable because of its newness, but also because of the global context. 2020 was the year of letting go, but we’d all already let go of so much and nothing felt like mine anymore. Writing always did, though, so that’s what I chose to do.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1) Map Of Japan
2) Dawncolored Horse
3) Lights Light Up
4) 2+2
5) Superglued
SIDE B:
6) Henry
7) Pick
8) In My Own Time
9) Red Deer Day
10) Half Finished

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone is Wednesday’s second full length album & first as a full band. The Asheville, NC quintet (guitarist/ vocalist Karly Hartzman, lead guitarist Daniel Gorham, pedal steel guitarist Xandy Chelmis, bassist Margo Schultz & drummer Alan Miller) maximizes the dark dissonance of a three guitar attack to highlight the emotionality of Hartzman’s bell-clear vocals & wisps of half-recalled memories & literary references that make up her lyrics.

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone’s eight songs meld elements of shoegaze, grunge, indie pop & southern American culture into a uniquely personal style of modern rock music that resonates with power & tenderness. The ever-darkening & deepening of Wednesdays’ sound on I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone owes a debt of influence to The Swirlies, Arthur Russell, Red House Painters, Tenniscoats, Ana Roxanne, Acetone, & their continued collaboration with MJ Lenderman (who lends backing vocals to the songs “Billboard” & “November”).

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone was recorded at Hartzman’s home with engineering assistance from her roommate Colin Miller. The depth & clarity of the recordings balance the distorted volume of Wednesday’s live performances with the intimacy of Hartzman’s voice. Her words hold the center of the chaos, unobscured by the power of the band. Hartzman describes her lyrics as “attempts to access old personal memories & do them justice through prose, with inspiration from the writings of Richard Brautigan, Flannery O’Connor, David Berman & Tom Robbins, & movies like Steel Magnolias.”

TRACK LISTING

1) Fate Is…
2) Billboard
3) Love Has No Pride (Condemned)
4) Underneath
5) November
6) Maura
8) Coyote
9) Revenge Of The Lawn

A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter/ vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, the Asheville quintet’s new and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic. Across the album’s ten tracks Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis build a shrine to minutiae. Half-funny, half-tragic dispatches from North Carolina unfurling somewhere between the wailing skuzz of Nineties shoegaze and classic country twang, that distorted lap steel and Hartzman’s voice slicing through the din.

Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It’s not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void – somehow – you see everything.

The songs on Rat Saw God don’t recount epics, just the everyday. They’re true, they’re real life, blurry and chaotic and strange – which is in-line with Hartzman’s own ethos: “Everyone’s story is worthy,” she says, plainly. “Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating.”

But the thing about Rat Saw God - and about any Wednesday song, really - is you don’t necessarily even need all the references to get it, the weirdly specific elation of a song that really hits. Yeah, it’s all in the details – how fucked up you got or get, how you break a heart, how you fall in love, how you make yourself and others feel seen – but it’s mostly the way those tiny moments add up into a song or album or a person.

TRACK LISTING

01. Hot Grass Smell
02. Bull Believer
03. Got Shocked
04. Formula One
05. Chosen To Deserve
06. Bath County
07. Quarry
08. Turkey Vultures
09. What’s So Funny
10. TV In The Gas Pump

In a long and emotionally exhausting year of being inside (alone, in my case,) I have found myself thinking about mirrors. How to avoid spending too much time in them, most days. Taking inventory of the real, physical self is difficult work, work that I’m not entirely opposed to but work that became immediately more treacherous for me when I had to witness the very real toll that time, modern anxieties, isolation, and boredom were taking on me. It was easier, it seemed, to spiral into a not-so-distant glorious past, to use memory as a tool of both excitement and healing. But, speaking of excitement, I like to stumble towards a band with no agenda, no purpose, uncovering sound almost on accident. This is how I first heard Wednesday. The band came to me and I don’t remember how, or why. They simply arrived, as if we’d been traveling toward each other our whole lives.

I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone soaked into my summer of 2020, and in sound, in spirit, in central concerns and the execution of them, it took me back to an era before the current era, which I’d needed at the time. The past can feel less hellish than the present if we are, sometimes, not fully honest with ourselves. There is the trick of nostalgia that I spend a lot of time playing with in my own writing, and somewhat tormented by in my own living. The very real idea that nostalgia is both a useful tool and also a weapon if it isn’t paired with something that approaches a type of rigorous honesty.

But if I may go back to all of these ideas of nostalgia and our old, tricky, past selves that are, indeed, a part of the house of bricks that make up our present self, what I also hope you, listener, might adore about this album is the exact moment at the start of “The Burned Down Dairy Queen” when Karly sings I was hiding in a room in my mind / and I made me take a look at myself. Because if you, like me, have been avoiding mirrors – both metaphorical and real – this is where the album becomes a lighthouse, echoing bright across the darkness of my otherwise dark and empty chambers.

So much of these songs meditate on the past in far less romantic ways than I have found myself meditating on the past, and I was desperate for the recalibration that this album provided. So, yes, the songs are good. You will maybe roll down your windows on a comfortable day on the right stretch of road in a warm season and turn the volume up when “Birthday Song” gets good and loud and singalong-able. You might sit atop a rooftop at night, closer to the moon than you were on the ground, and let “Ghost Of A Dog” churn and rattle you to some nighttime realization that you couldn’t have had in silence. But, even on top of all of this, on top of all the pleasures and the mercies that the sounds on this album might afford. I hope and think, too, that it will remind anyone who listens that we are a collection of many reflections. All of them deserving patience. —Hanif Abdurraqib

TRACK LISTING

1) Twin Plagues
2) Handsome Man
3) The Burned Down Dairy Queen
4) Cliff
5) How Can You Live If You Can’t
Love How Can You If You Do
6) Cody’s Only
7) Toothache
8) Birthday Song
9) One More Last One
10) Three Sisters
11) Gary’s
12) Ghost Of A Dog

On the one hand, new album Food for Worms calls to mind a certain morbidity, but on the other, it’s a celebration of life; the way that, in the end, we need each other. The album is an ode to friendship, and a documentation of the dynamic that only five people who have grown up together - and grown so close, against all odds - can share.

For the first time, the band are not delving inwards, but seeking to capture the world around them. “I don’t think you can be in your own head forever,” says Steen. A conversation after one of their gigs with a friend prompted a stray thought that he held onto: “It’s weird, isn’t it? Popular music is always about love, heartbreak, or yourself. There isn’t much about your mates.”

It’s through this, and defiance, that the band have continually moved forward together; finding light in uncomfortable contractions and playing their vulnerabilities as strengths: The near-breakdowns, identity crises, frontman Charlie Steen routinely ripping his top off on stage as a way of tackling his body weight insecurities. Everything is thrown into their live show and the best shows of their lives are happening now.

Back in 2018, around debut album Songs of Praise, they were at the vanguard of a transformative scene that changed the underground music landscape in the UK; paving the way for artists soon to come. Then, Charlie Steen suffered a series of panic attacks which led to a tour’s cancellation. For the first time, since being plucked from the small pub stages of south London and catapulted into notoriety, shame were confronted with who they’d become on the other side of it. This era, of being forced to endure reality and the terror that comes with your own company, would form shame’s second album, 2021’s Drunk Tank Pink.

Now they arrive, finally, at a place of hard-won maturity. Enter: Food for Worms, which Steen declares to be “the Lamborghini of shame records.”

Reconnecting with what they first loved about being in a band hotwired them into making the album after a false start during the pandemic. Their management then presented them with a challenge: in three weeks, shame would play two intimate shows and debut two sets of entirely new songs. It meant the band returned the same ideology which propelled them to these heights in the first place: the love of playing live, on their own terms, fed by their audience. Thus, Food for Worms crashed into life faster than anything they’d created before. The band recorded it while playing festivals all over Europe, invigorated by the strength of the reaction their new material was met with. That live energy, what it’s like to witness shame in their element, is captured perfectly on record - like lightning in a bottle.

The album marks a sonic departure from anything they’ve done before. shame have abandoned their post-punk beginnings for far more eclectic influences, drawing from the sharp yet uncomplicated lyrical observations of Lou Reed and the more melodic works of 90s German band, Blumfeld.

They called upon renowned producer Flood (Nick Cave, U2, PJ Harvey, Foals) to execute their vision. Recording each track live meant a kind of surrender: here, the rough edges give the album its texture; the mistakes are more interesting than perfection. In a way, it harks back to the title itself and the way that with this record, the band are embracing frailty and by doing so, are tapping into a new source of bravery.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Oh boy, I've been HANKERING for this one! The third outing for shame, 'Food For Worms' has been declared by the band as "the Lamborghini of shame records" and we'd be hard pressed to argue with that. From the anthemic combo of 'Adderall'/'Orchid', to the psych-wail of 'Six-Pack' and the beautiful 90s emo tinged closer 'All The People', shame recapture that unbridled excitement that we all felt and fell in love way back in 2016 - stellar stuff!

TRACK LISTING

1. Fingers Of Steel
2. Six-Pack
3. Yankees
4. Alibis
5. Adderall
6. Orchid
7. The Fall Of Paul
8. Burning By Design
9. Different Person
10. All The People

“The first three are innocent in a way, because we didn’t have an audience when we were making them,” says Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. “But from ‘Lifted’ on, I was definitely aware of an audience. ‘Lifted’ was well received right away, and then everything happened with ‘Wide Awake’ and ‘Digital Ash’.”

Those two albums came out simultaneously. And their lead singles - ‘Take It Easy (Love Nothing)’, from the austere, remote ‘Digital Ash’, and ‘Lua’, from the warm, folky ‘Wide Awake’ - debuted in the top two slots on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘First Day of My Life’, also from ‘Wide Awake’, would later be voted the Number One Love Song Of All Time by NPR Music’s readers’ poll. 

Bright Eyes had officially broken through. It was a heady, exciting time, but also fraught and tense, both because of the band’s careening new fame, and because of the state of the world. When Bright Eyes made their Tonight Show debut in 2006, they chose to perform none of their shiny new hits, instead delivering a searing, harrowing rendition of their caustic anti-Bush anthem, ‘When The President Talks To God’. 

TRACK LISTING

Time Code
Gold Mine Gutted
Arc Of Time (Time Code)
Down In A Rabbit Hole
Take It Easy (Love Nothing)
Hit The Switch
I Believe In Symmetry
Devil In The Details
Ship In A Bottle
Light Pollution
Theme To Piñata
Easy/Lucky/Free

TRACK LISTING

Hit The Switch
Down In A Rabbit Hole
Arc Of Time (Time Code)
Ship In A Bottle
Agenda Suicide
Gold Mine Gutted

“The first three are innocent in a way, because we didn’t have an audience when we were making them,” says Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. “But from ‘Lifted’ on, I was definitely aware of an audience. ‘Lifted’ was well received right away, and then everything happened with ‘Wide Awake’ and ‘Digital Ash’.”

Those two albums came out simultaneously. And their lead singles - ‘Take It Easy (Love Nothing)’, from the austere, remote ‘Digital Ash’, and ‘Lua’, from the warm, folky ‘Wide Awake’ - debuted in the top two slots on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘First Day of My Life’, also from ‘Wide Awake’, would later be voted the Number One Love Song Of All Time by NPR Music’s readers’ poll. 

Bright Eyes had officially broken through. It was a heady, exciting time, but also fraught and tense, both because of the band’s careening new fame, and because of the state of the world. When Bright Eyes made their Tonight Show debut in 2006, they chose to perform none of their shiny new hits, instead delivering a searing, harrowing rendition of their caustic anti-Bush anthem, ‘When The President Talks To God’. 

TRACK LISTING

At The Bottom Of Everything
We Are Nowhere And It’s Now
Old Soul Song (For The New World Order)
Lua
Train Under Water
First Day Of My Life
Another Travelin’ Song
Land Locked Blues
Poison Oak
Road To Joy

TRACK LISTING

Old Soul Song (for The New World Order)
First Day Of My Life
Fare Thee Well, Miss Carousel
We Are Nowhere And It’s Now
Road To Joy
Land Locked Blues

TRACK LISTING

The Big Picture
Method Acting
False Advertising
You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.
Lover I Don’t Have To Love
Bowl Of Oranges
Don’t Know When But A Day Is Gonna Come
Nothing Gets Crossed Out
Make War
Waste Of Paint
From A Balance Beam
Laura Laurent
Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (to Love And To Be Loved)

TRACK LISTING

The Big Picture
You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.
Laura Laurent
Nothing Gets Crossed Out
November
Waste Of Paint

Ali Farka Touré trekked the world, bringing his beloved Malian music to the masses. Dubbed “the African John Lee Hooker,” one could hear strong connections between the two; both employed a bluesy style of play with gritty textures that elicit calm and fury in equal measure. While the influence of Black blues music prevailed, Touré created a West African blend of 'desert blues' that garnered Grammy awards and widespread reverence.

Though he transcended in 2006, Ali’s musical legacy lives on through his son, Vieux aka “the Hendrix of the Sahara,” an accomplished guitarist and champion of Malian music in his own right. On Ali, his collaborative album with Khruangbin, Vieux pays homage to his father by recreating some of his most resonant work, putting new twists on it while maintaining the original’s integrity. The result is a rightful ode to a legend. Ali isn’t just a greatest hits compilation. It’s a lullaby, a remembrance of Ali's life through known highlights and B-sides from his catalog. It is a testament to what happens when creativity is approached through open arms and open hearts. “To me, music is magic, it is spontaneous, it is the energy between people,” Vieux says. “I think Khruangbin understands this very well.” The genesis of the album dates back to 2019, when Khruangbin, coming off their breakthrough album Con Todo el Mundo, was beginning to play to bigger crowds. The record was finished in 2021, as a global pandemic shuttered businesses and forced us to take stock of what Earth was becoming. Indirectly, Ali captures this as a moment of peace within a raging storm, a conversation between past and present without allegiance to suffering. Now, given Khruangbin’s reach as a unit with legions of fans (including the likes of Jay-Z and Paul McCartney), they’re poised to bring Malian music to broader groups of listeners. Ali is a masterful work in which the love surrounding it is just as vital as the music itself, driving it to unforeseen places; Vieux and Khruangbin are spreading the good word to a completely new generation. “I hope it takes them somewhere new, or puts them in a place they haven't felt or heard,” Lee says. “It is about the love of new friendship and making something beautiful together,” Vieux continues. “It is about pouring your love into something old to make it new again. In the end and in a word it is love, that's all.”

My Boy, the third solo record from New Zealand singer/ songwriter Marlon Williams, announces an artist emerging anew. Gone is the solemn, country-indebted crooner with the velvet voice – in his place comes a playful, shapeshifting creature. Following the release of his second album, 2018’s Make Way For Love, Williams’ toured the world, playing major festivals and collaborating with Lorde, Yo-Yo Ma and Florence Welch.

He also forged a fledgling acting career with roles in films The True History of the Kelly Gang and Netflix series Sweet Tooth, as well as a cameo in Oscar winning film A Star Is Born. My Boy parlays this flush of worldly experience into a vivid record as spirited and kinetic as the unfolding life of its performer. “I’ve always explored different character elements in my music,” says Williams. “And the more I get into acting, the more tricks I’m learning about representation and presentation. To get braver and bolder with exploring shifting contexts and new ways of doing things.”

As the pandemic paused global travel, Williams found himself at home in New Zealand, reconnecting with family and friends. Soon new demos and lyrical themes emerged: of self-identity and escapism; tribalism and a gnarled family tree; and ruminations on the role of masculinity and mateship. Co-produced with Tom Healy and recorded at Roundhead Studios in New Zealand, My Boy finds Williams’ leading a new band through a set of genre-hopping tunes: from the cheery sway of ‘My Boy’ and chugging ‘80s noir sheen of ‘Thinking Of Nina’, to the charging synth of ‘River Rival’, and the sultry pop jam ‘Don’t Go Back.’ All this sonic and emotional whiplash is intentional, and ultimately My Boy sees Williams having fun, even while interrogating the behaviors of himself and those around him.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Boy
2. Easy Does It
3. River Rival
4. My Heart The Wormhole
5. Princes Walk
6. Don’t Go Back
7. Soft Boys Make The Grade
8. Thinking Of Nina
9. Morning Crystals
10. Trips
11. Promises

MUNA is magic. What other band could have stamped the forsaken year of 2021 with spangles and pom-poms, could have made you sing (and maybe even believe) that “Life’s so fun, life’s so fun,” during what may well have been the most uneasy stretch of your life? “Silk Chiffon,” MUNA’s instant-classic cult smash, featuring the band’s new label head Phoebe Bridgers, hit the gray skies of the pandemic’s year-and-a-half mark like a double rainbow. Since MUNA — lead singer/songwriter Katie Gavin, guitarist/producer Naomi McPherson, guitarist Josette Maskin — began making music together in college, at USC, they’d always embraced pain as a bedrock of longing, a part of growing up, and an inherent factor of marginalized experience: the band’s members belong to queer and minority communities, and play for these fellow-travelers above all. But sometimes, for MUNA, after nearly a decade of friendship and a long stretch of pandemic-induced self-reckoning, the most radical note possible is that of bliss.

MUNA, the band’s self-titled third album, is a landmark — the forceful, deliberate, dimensional output of a band who has nothing to prove to anyone except themselves. The synth on “What I Want” scintillates like a Robyn dance-floor anthem; “Anything But Me,” galloping in 12/8, gives off Shania Twain in eighties neon; “Kind of Girl,” with its soaring, plaintive The Chicks chorus, begs to be sung at max volume with your best friends. It’s marked by a newfound creative assurance and technical ability, both in terms of McPherson and Maskin’s arrangements and production as well as Gavin’s songwriting, which is as propulsive as ever, but here opens up into new moments of perspective and grace.

Here, more than ever, MUNA musters their unique powers to break through the existential muck and transport you, suddenly, into a room where everything is possible — a place where the disco ball’s never stopped throwing sparkles on the walls, where you can sweat and cry and lie down on the floor and make out with whoever, where vulnerability in the presence of those who love you can make you feel momentarily bulletproof, and selfconsciousness only sharpens the swell of joy.

TRACK LISTING

1. Silk Chiffon (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)
2. What I Want
3. Runner’s High
4. Home By Now
5. Kind Of Girl
6. Handle Me
7. No Idea
8. Solid
9. Anything But Me
10. Loose Garment
11. Shooting Star

It’s the desire to celebrate their sonic bounty that first got Oberst and the band excited about the idea of comprehensive reissues. But this wouldn’t be a Bright Eyes project if a moment devoted to appreciating the past weren’t turned into an opportunity to connect with the future. That’s where the nine companion EPs come in. Or as Oberst puts it, “the supplemental reading” for the primary reissues: One six-track EP per reissued album, each featuring five reworked songs from that album. “My thing was they had to sound different from the originals, we had to mess with them in a substantial way.” Plus one cover that felt “of the era” in which that particular albums was made – a song that meant something to the band at the time. To help the EPs come alive in the fullest way, Bright Eyes called in lots of old friends, like Bridgers, M. Ward, and Welch and Rawlings, as well as new ones like Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1.The Invisible Gardener
2. Patient Hope In New Snow
3. Saturday As Usual
4. Falling Out Of Love At This Volume
5. Exaltation On A Cool Kitchen Floor

SIDE B:
6. The Awful Sweetness Of Escaping Sweat
7. Puella Quam Amo Est Pulchra
8. Driving Fast Through A Big City At Night
9. How Many Lights Do You See?
10. I Watched You Taking Off

SIDE C:
11. A Celebration Upon Completion
12. Emiy, Sing Something Sweet
13. All Of The Truth
14. One Straw
15. Lila

SIDE D:
16. A Few Minutes On Friday
17. Supriya
18. Solid Jackson
19. Feb. 15th
20. The ‘Feel Good’ Revolution

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. If Winter Ends
2. Padraic My Prince
3. Contract And Compare
4. The City Has Sex
5. The Difference In The Shades
6. Touch

SIDE B:
7. June On The West Coast
8. Pull My Hair
9. A Poetic Retelling Of An
Unfortunate Seduction
10. Tereza And Tomas

It’s the desire to celebrate their sonic bounty that first got Oberst and the band excited about the idea of comprehensive reissues. But this wouldn’t be a Bright Eyes project if a moment devoted to appreciating the past weren’t turned into an opportunity to connect with the future. That’s where the nine companion EPs come in. Or as Oberst puts it, “the supplemental reading” for the primary reissues: One six-track EP per reissued album, each featuring five reworked songs from that album. “My thing was they had to sound different from the originals, we had to mess with them in a substantial way.” Plus one cover that felt “of the era” in which that particular albums was made – a song that meant something to the band at the time. To help the EPs come alive in the fullest way, Bright Eyes called in lots of old friends, like Bridgers, M. Ward, and Welch and Rawlings, as well as new ones like Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee.

TRACK LISTING

A Spindle, A Darkness, A Fever, And A Necklace
A Scale, A Mirror, And Those Indifferent Clocks
The Calendar Hung Itself…
Something Vague
The Movement Of A Hand
Arienette
When The Curious Girl
Realizes She Is Under Glass
Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh
The Center Of The World
Sunrise, Sunset
An Attempt To Tip The Scales
A Song To Pass The Time

Mary Lattimore’s version of 'Love Is The Tune' alongside Bill Fay's original.

TRACK LISTING

Mary Lattimore - Love Is The Tune
Bill Fay - Love Is The Tune

Bill Fay has always sung about attempting to understand the most universal questions: those of nature, spirituality, humanity. His songs are “calming hymns for another chaotic time,” he says. His influence can be traced through many artists’ works, so it only seemed right to celebrate this with a collection of newer voices interpreting his timeless tracks.

Originally released in 2010 by David Tibet (Current 93), ‘Still Some Light’ was issued as a double CD, made up of 70’s album demos (Disc One) and 2009 home recordings (Disc Two). This year, for the first time, this collection of recordings will be pressed to vinyl as a double LP with reimagined artwork, presented alongside contemporary reimaginings of the tracks by Julia Jacklin and Mary Lattimore. Bill Fay’s words and melodies remain unaffected by the passing of time and changing trends; and here alongside the original recordings, these reinvented versions still calmly guide us through another moment of chaos.

Toro y Moi’s seventh studio album, Mahal, is the boldest and most fascinating journey yet from musical mastermind Chaz Bear. The record spans genre and sound—encompassing the shaggy psychedelic rock of the 1960s and ‘70s, and the airy sounds of 1990s mod-post-rock—taking listeners on an auditory expedition, as if they’re riding in the back of Bear’s Filipino jeepney that adorns the album’s cover. But Mahal is also an unmistakably Toro y Moi experience, calling back to previous works while charting a new path forward in a way that only Bear can do. Mahal is the latest in an accomplished career for Bear, who’s undoubtedly one of the decade’s most influential musicians. Since the release of the electronic pop landmark Causers of This in 2009, subsequent records as Toro y Moi have repeatedly shifted the idea of what his sound can be. But there’s little in Bear’s catalog that will prepare you for the deep-groove excursions on Mahal, his most eclectic record to date.

The second the album begins we’re immediately transported into the passenger seat, jeep sounds and all, ready for the ride Chaz and company have concocted for us. Seeds of some of Mahal’s 13 songs date back to the more explicitly rock-oriented What For? from 2015. MAHAL was mostly completed last year in Bear’s Oakland studio with the involvement of a host of collaborators, Sofie Royer and Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Neilson to Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo and the Mattson 2.

“I wanted to make a record that featured more musicians on it than any other record of mine,” he explains. “To have them live on that record feels grounded, bringing a communal perspective to the table.” As a result, Mahal is lush and surprising at every turn, from the cool-handed “The Loop,” which recalls Sly and the Family Stones, to the elastic psych rock of “Foreplay” and the dizzying Mulatu Astatke-recalling of “Last Year.”

Lyrically, the album zooms in on generational concerns, picking up where the Outer Peace standout “Freelance” effectively left off. Bear seems to be surveying the ways in which we connect with technology, media, each other, and what disappears as a result. Cuts like the squishy “Postman” and “Magazine” take a deep dive into our relationship with media in a changing digital world. “It’s interesting to see how we adapt to this new age. We’re so connected, but we’re still missing out on things,” Bear ruminates while discussing the album’s themes. It’s not all introspection. Bear cools things down near the album’s end with the Mattson 2-featuring “Millennium,” a laid-back jam with tricky guitar licks about ringing in new times even when everything else seems upside down. “It’s about enjoying the new year, even when it’s been shitty,” Bear explains. “There’s nothing else to do.” Finding a sense of joy in the face of adversity is embedded in MAHAL’s DNA, right down to the jeepney that literally and figuratively brings the music out into the community. “We know that touring is messed up for now, and large gatherings are a fluke,” he explains. “It’s about the notion of us going out to the people and bringing the record to them.” And with the wide-open atmosphere of Mahal, Toro y Moi stands to connect with more listeners than ever before.

STAFF COMMENTS

Ryan says: Airy, funky psychedelia from Chaz Bear on the endlessly shifting, beautifully produced 'Mahal'. there are more than whispers of Beck's sugar-sweet drawl, but floating smoothly atop road-trip radio grooves and lysergic melted soul. Lovely.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. The Medium
2. Goes By So Fast
3. Magazine (feat. Salami Rose Joe Louis)
4. Postman
5. The Loop
6. Last Year
7. Mississippi

SIDE B:
8. Clarity (feat. Sofie)
9. Foreplay
10. Déjà Vu
11. Way Too Hot
12. Millennium (feat.
The Mattson 2)
13. Days In Love

An extension of the two’s chart-topping four-song Texas Sun journey, Texas Moon is an introspective stroll through the dark. “Without joy, there can be no real perspective on sorrow,” says Khruangbin. “Without sunlight, all this rain keeps things from growing. How can you have the sun without the moon?”

Crediting their mutual home state for inspiration, Texas Moon pensively examines Texas’ musical perception, while paying homage to the marriage of country and R&B that’s become synonymous with the lone star state. Propelled by rolling guitar licks, conga and bongo, lead single “B-Side” meditates on meeting in a dream and frolics across the nearing contemplative nighttime state with its longing’s joy.

Elsewhere on Texas Moon, the artists channel a newly intimate musical scope that’s illustrated most dramatically when the spacy sensuality of the minimalistic “Chocolate Hills” leads into the stark spirituality addressed on “Father Father,” a reminder of both acts’ gospel roots. Over a simple rolling guitar figure, Bridges pleads with the heavens—“Look at the mess that I made/Just a man with unclean hands”—only to be reminded of God’s eternal love.

For Khruangbin, one song in particular was indicative of the trust that Bridges put in them. “The song ‘Doris’ is about his grandmother making the transition from this world to the next realm,” says Johnson. “It’s a very somber, very deep record. And when someone places that kind of work into your hands, the last thing you want to do is junk it up, overproduce it, or do too much. We treated it with the respect it deserved, and treated Doris with the respect she deserves.”

“It’s like a short story...,” Lee says of the music. “And it leaves room to continue having these stories together. It’s not Khruangbin, it’s not Leon, it’s this world we created together.”

Upon its release, Texas Sun soared to the No. 1 slot on Billboard’s Emerging Artists Chart along with landing the No.1 on spot on “Americana/Folk Albums,” No. 2 on “Vinyl Albums,” No. 4 on “Top Rock Albums” and No. 6 on “Top R&B Albums.” Significantly, both parties’ musical directions were deeply affected by their time working together on Texas Sun.

Khruangbin’s most recent studio album, Mordechai, moved their own vocals to the forefront, a change they readily admit was a direct result of working with Bridges. Their sound was also tapped for remix/reinterpretation of a Paul McCartney song for the McCartney III Imagined project. Meanwhile, in addition to his genre-defying Grammy-nominated album Gold-Digger’s Sound, Bridges has put out several other challenging, shared collaborative tracks, including work with John Mayer, Lucky Daye and most recently Jazmine Sullivan. Each of the artists appeared recently on Austin City Limits and will tour throughout the new year.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The last Khruangbin album with Leon Bridges was a perfect distillation of their respective sounds into a familiar sounding, but entirely new concoction. This latest offering continues that effortless melting pot of downbeat, Balearic and soul but with a woozy, crepuscular groove. You really can't go wrong here.

TRACK LISTING

1. Doris
2. B-Side
3.Chocolate Hills
4. Father Father
5. Mariella

Fenne was born in London and moved to Dorset as a toddler, where she grew up in the picturesque English countryside. She was a “free range kid,” as she calls it, after her parents took her out of school for a period at the age of seven. Over the following year, they taught her while the family travelled Europe in a live-in bus. Even after she returned to traditional school at 9, her home education never ended, extending to music. Her mother gifted Fenne with her old record collection, through which she discovered her love for T-Rex and the Velvet Underground and Nico. Soon after she fell for the strange genius of PJ Harvey and came to worship Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, and the richly crafted worlds of Feist, which inspired Fenne to pick up a guitar.

“On Hold,” a tender collection of expressive, open-hearted songs, was Fenne’s first foray into songwriting, written during her teenage years. Writing her own songs was initially a “therapy exercise” for Fenne, who is normally reserved when it comes to talking about her feelings. The album, self-released in 2018, organically found a large audience online, which grew after she opened for Lucy Dacus and Andy Shauf’s North American tours last spring. Surrounding its release, The Line of Best Fit deemed Fenne “a new and extraordinary voice capable of wringing profound and resonant moments out of loss.”

In Fenne’s words, “To have this record physically rereleased is a big deal for me and the person I was when I made it. A lot’s changed since then but these songs and what they’ve given me will remain dependable reminders of beginnings and endings that shaped me as a teenager. For an album whose title is half ‘hold’, it makes sense that now whoever wants to can finally do that again.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Car Park
2. Three Oh Nine
3. What’s Good
4. The Hand You Deal
5. More Than You Know

SIDE B:
6. On Hold
7. Top To Toe
8. Bud
9. Brother
10. For A While
11. Car Park (Overflow)

We don’t typically look to pop albums to answer our cultural moment, let alone to meet the soul hunger left in the wake of global catastrophe. But occasionally, an artist proves the form more malleable and capacious than we knew. With Laurel Hell, Mitski cements her reputation as an artist in possession of such power - capable of using her talent to perform the alchemy that turns our most savage and alienated experiences into the very elixir that cures them. Her critically beloved last album, Be the Cowboy, built on the breakout acclaim of 2016’s Puberty 2 and launched her from cult favorite to indie star. She ascended amid a fever of national division, and the grind of touring and pitfalls of increased visibility influenced her music as much as her spirit.

Like the mountain laurels for this new album is named, public perception, like the intoxicating prism of the internet, can offer an alluring façade that obscures a deadly trap—one that tightens the more you struggle. Exhausted by this warped mirror, and our addiction to false binaries, she began writing songs that stripped away the masks and revealed the complex and often contradictory realities behind them. She wrote many of these songs during or before 2018, while the album finished mixing in May 2021. It is the longest span of time Mitski has ever spent on a record, and a process that concluded amid a radically changed world. She recorded Laurel Hell with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland throughout the isolation of a global pandemic, during which some of the songs “slowly took on new forms and meanings, like seed to flower.” Sometimes it’s hard to see the change when you’re the agent of it, but for the lucky rest of us, Mitski has written a soundtrack for transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgment, and ultimately, love.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Valentine, Texas
2. Working For The Knife
3. Stay Soft
4. Everyone
5. Heat Lightning
SIDE B:
6. The Only Heartbreaker
7. Love Me More
8. There’s Nothing Left For You
9. Should’ve Been Me
10. I Guess
11. That’s Our Lamp

Bill Fay has always sung about attempting to understand the most universal questions: those of nature, spirituality, humanity. His songs are “calming hymns for another chaotic time”, he says. His influence can be traced through many artist’s work, and so it only seemed right to celebrate this with a collection of newer voices interpreting his timeless tracks. Originally released in 2010 by David Tibet (Current 93), Still Some Light was released as a double CD, made up of 70’s album demos (Disc One) and 2009 home recordings (Disc Two). This year, for the first time, this collection of recordings will be pressed to vinyl and released digitally, presented alongside contemporary reimaginings of the tracks by Kevin Morby, Steve Gunn, Julia Jacklin and Mary Lattimore. Bill Fay’s words and melodies remain unaffected by the passing of time and changing trends; and here alongside the original recordings, these reinvented versions still calmly guide us through another moment of chaos.

Bill Fay’s Still Some Light was originally released on compact disc as a two CD collection in 2010. Reimagined with new artwork and available for the first time ever on vinyl, Dead Oceans is pleased to present Still Some Light Pt. 1, collecting Fay’s archival recordings from 1970 and 1971. Many of the songs are intimate sketches which were eventually re-recorded for Fay’s self-titled debut and for his landmark album, Time of the Last Persecution. This double LP set includes heart wrenching versions of some of his timeless works, such as “I Hear You Calling” and “Pictures of Adolf Again”, and features equally powerful songs like “Arnold is a Simple Man” and “Love is the Tune,” which only appear in this collection

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Plan D
2. Sing Us One Of Your Songs May
3. I Will Find My Own Way Back
4. Love Is The Tune
SIDE B: 
1. Backwoods Maze
2. The Sun Is Bored
3. There's A Price Upon My Head
4. Time Of The Last Persecution
SIDE C: 
1. Pictures Of Adolph
2. Tell It Like It Is
3. Release Is In The Eye
4. Dust Filled Room
5. I Hear You Calling
SIDE D: 
1. Laughing Man
2. Arnold Is A Simple Man
3. Just To Be A Part
4. Inside The Keeper’s Pantry

“A big part of the project and why I did it,” says Sloppy Jane’s Haley Dahl of her Saddest Factory debut Madison, “Was because it felt similar to being a little kid and buying an outfit that was too big that I’d have to grow into. I really valued from the start that making Madison gave me someone I had to become.” The record, which Dahl first conceived of back in late 2017, is a grand gesture, a statement about big love, and about growing into yourself in the process.

Dahl and her 21 bandmates recorded all of Madison at the Lost World Caverns in West Virginia from 3pm to 8:30am each day over the course of two weeks (they also made four music videos on location during this time). To access the space, they’d enter through the back of a gift shop, down a long tunnel where they’d walk down 200 feet of stairs to reach the entrance. Dahl and her bandmates did this steep walk with a piano. The ceiling of Lost World Caverns is massively high and is a perfect dome. The inside was also 98 percent humidity, leading to both stellar sound and also problems with tuning and gear.

Engineer Ryan Howe sat in his parents Subaru above the cave with his mixing board and computer, and threaded cables down 90 feet through a hole in the ground to the ceiling of the cave. It’s the first time someone has ever recorded an entire album in a cave, and the results are pretty sonically stunning. That alone is a marvelous thing. Madison is an astounding, glorious record of melodrama of the highest order

TRACK LISTING

1. Overture
2. Party Anthem
3. Jesus And Your Living Room Floor
4. Judy’s Bedroom
5. Bianca Castafiore
6. Lullaby Formica
7. Madison
8. Wilt
9. Wonderama
10. The Constable
11. Epilogue

There are moments on Drunk Tank Pink where you almost have to reach for the sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s Songs Of Praise. Such is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest. The genius of Drunk Tank Pink is how these lyrical themes dovetail with the music. Opener Alphabet dissects the premise of performance over a siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle across a mosh pit.Songs spin off and lurch into unexpected directions throughout here, be it March Day’s escalating aural panic attack or the shapeshifting darkness of Snow Day. There’s a Berlin era Bowie beauty to the lovelorn Human For A Minute while closer Station Wagon weaves from a downbeat mooch into a souring, soullifting climax in which Steen elevates himself beyond the clouds and into the heavens. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in the pink.

This deluxe edition includes the full tracklist as early demos. These previously unreleased versions tell the story behind the James Ford produced album that cemented the band as one of the most exciting in British music today.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Alphabet
2. Nigel Hitter
3. Born In Luton
4. March Day
5. Water In The Well
6. Snow Day

SIDE B:
7. Human, For A Minute
8. Great Dog
9. 6/1
10. Harsh Degrees
11. Station Wagon

SIDE C:
12. Alphabet (Demo)
13. Nigel Hitter (Demo)
14. Born In Luton (Demo)
15. March Day (Demo)
16. Water In The Well (Demo)
17. Snow Day (Demo)

SIDE D:
18. Human, For A Minute (Demo)
19. Great Dog (Demo)
20. 6/1 (Demo)
21. Harsh Degrees (Demo)
22. Station Wagon (Demo)

Born in 1999, Charlie Hickey grew up in South Pasadena, just minutes from Downtown Los Angeles. Raised by two singer-songwriter parents, Charlie’s second language was music since day one. As early as grade school, he was making sense of the world through songwriting, and by middle school he was writing, recording and performing songs that attracted a community of collaborators and could silence a room.

A turning point for Charlie came at around the age of thirteen, when he covered a song by then up-and-coming artist Phoebe Bridgers, who was still in high school herself. The two quickly became friends and collaborators, setting Charlie on an exciting new musical path. Years later, Bridgers introduced Charlie to songwriter, drummer, producer and her bandmate Marshall Vore, who noticed something special about Charlie. The two began writing and recording songs together, and soon Charlie dropped out of school to work on his music full-time.

Charlie Hickey’s first proper single is “No Good At Lying.” The Marshall Voreproduced track introduces us to Charlie’s evocative storytelling and features Phoebe Bridgers on backing vocals. “I’m no good at lying / on my back or through my teeth / but I’m good at dreaming / I can do it in my sleep,” he sings over hushed guitars and a whimsical banjo, searching for truth as his unconscious mind runs wild and bleeds into reality. It’s a slow, quiet, and understated peek to the world of Charlie Hickey, who is barely of legal drinking age, but taps into such universal themes that showcase a wisdom beyond his years and exudes promise for what’s to come

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. No Good At Lying
2. Count The Stairs
3. Two Haunted Houses

SIDE B:
4. Seeing Things
5. Ten Feet Tall
6. Notre Dame

Remixes not from, but of the entire outstanding Khruangbin album, "Mordechai"! Personal as ever, the list of remixers has been hand picked by the band, not simply a whose who of hype and click bait.  All have some connection to the band, sometimes personal friendships, musical connections, or simply mutual musical appreciation. Harvey Sutherland and Ginger Roots have both toured with the band, Kadhja Bonet and Ron Trent had their own mutual fan club going on, Knxwledge sampled "White Gloves" on a recent mixtape, Natasha Diggs and Soul Clap’s Eli’s are recent buddy-ups, Quantic is a mutual friend of Bonobo (crucial in the KB origin story), while Laura is also godmother to one of Felix Dickinson’s kids. 

It would be tiresome to detail each and every mix, but rest assured this is an exceptionally executed project. Bolstered by the sincere and detailed sleeve notes, which journey each artists' relationship with their band, a bit about their musical legacy, and why they were chosen. 

'A good remix is when the remixer's sonic fingerprint is present, without sounding forced. It should feel like its own story, with at least some of the same characters as the original' - Khruangbin state on these highly impressive sleeve notes - and each and every track on the album represents such forethought. Very few remix albums are put together with such love, dexterity and sympathy as this one - so much so it's bound to stand as a masterpiece in its own right, just as many of the classic 'dub' LPs did from Jamaica (an influence the band themself have highly creditted in informed their sound). 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Father Bird, Mother Bird (Sunbirds)
2. Connaissais De Face (Tiger?)
3. Dearest Alfred (MyJoy)
4. First Class (Soul In The Horn Remix)
SIDE B:
5. If There Is No Question (Soul Clap’s Wild, But Not Crazy Mix)
6. Pelota (Cut A Rug Mix)
SIDE C:
7. Time (You And I)(Put A Smile On DJ’s Face Mix)
8. Shida (Bella’s Suite)
 SIDE D:
9. So We Won’t Forget (Mang Dynasty Version)
10. One To Remember (Forget Me Nots Dub)

Friends! I am so pleased to announce A Night At The Little Los Angeles - the 4-track version of Sundowner. Recorded at home and in my back shed - aka The Little Los Angeles - in suburban Kansas during the summer and winter seasons of 2017 and 2018. This is quite simply the sound of me alone in a room with a four-track to catch my songs as they fell out of my mouth. When I later went into a proper studio to make Sundowner my goal was to capture the essence of these initial recordings, and here you will now have access to the very essence I was chasing. In many ways, this feels like a proper album to me, as it’s my initial attempt to capture the Kansas sunset and put it into sound, where as Sundower was an attempt of an attempt. I love and am proud of them both, of course, but am happy to - for the first time - share this vulnerable side of my songwriting process with the public. Many of my favorite recordings have been made inside of an artist’s home without regard of the outside world, but instead deep in their own world that they’re creating in real time. And with that - I’d like to invite you into my own little world here and now and ask you to please....step inside of....and spend A Night At The Little Los Angeles! - Kevin Morby

****** Sundowner is Morby’s “attempt to put the Middle American twilight -- its beauty profound, though not always immediate -- into sound.” Released in fall 2020 on Dead Oceans, Morby’s distinctively conversational and reflective writing style was received with open arms and was beloved by fans and critics alike. Pitchfork lauded it as “a vision of the Midwest that feels mythical and enormous.” Sundowner’s vision was further fleshed out in comprehensive features in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Stereogum, The FADER, Vice, Aquarium Drunkard, and more. In addition to traditional music publications, Morby appeared on Adult Swim’s Fishcenter and Office Hours with Tim Heidecker. Morby also made his network television debut on CBS This Morning, where he performed the songs “Campfire” and “Sundowner” as part of a special joint performance with his partner and fellow songwriter Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee.

TRACK LISTING

1. Campfire (4-Track Version)
2. Sundowner (4-Track Version)
3. A Night At The Little Los Angeles (4-Track Version)
4. Wander (4-Track Version)
5. Velvet Highway (4-Track Version)
6. Valley (4-Track Version)
7. Brother, Sister (4-Track Version)
8. Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun (4-Track Version)
9. Provisions (4-Track Version)
10. U.S. Mail (4-Track Version)

Last spring, Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson started to make a record that was like nothing they had made before — an ambient album that would be both a haven from a suddenly terrified world and a heartfelt musical dialogue between two artists who have been friends and collaborators for over two decades. Refuge is an album of profound meditative beauty which offers the listener a much-needed sense of peace and renewal. But while it was recorded in 2020 its roots go back much further — all the way to the start of their friendship and, beyond that, to the shared sounds and ethics of their childhoods.

Devendra grew up in Venezuela while Noah, six years older, is a native of Nevada City, California. But as they got to know each other, they realised that they had a similar history in the New Age subculture of the 1980s: a world of meditation, Eastern music, the Bhagavad Gita and The Whole Earth Catalog. Childhood memories were coloured by the aromas of health food stores and the sound of New Age labels like Windham Hill Records. Noah, whose production and mixing credits include Joanna Newsom and the Strokes, came on board as co-producer of Devendra’s 2005 album Cripple Crow and they have been working together ever since.

It was while making Devendra’s 2019 album Ma that the pair finally decided to make their ambient record. Despite complicating logistics, 2020 created an emotional craving for music with this contemplative, therapeutic quality. Inspired by both memories of the past and the needs of the present, Refuge is an act of companionship and generosity which gives the listener room to breathe. “We’re hoping to create a sense of comfort and coming back to the moment,” Devendra says. “It’s really important to have a little bit of space between us and our anxieties and impulses. What you do with that space is up to you.” Dorian Lynskey May 2021

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Book Of Bringhi
2. A Cat
3. Rise From Your Wave
4. Peloponnese Lament

SIDE B:
5. In A Cistern
6. Into Clouds
7. For Em

SIDE C: 
8. Three Gates
9. Horn In Deep Night
10. Sky Burial

SIDE D:
11. Asura Cave
12. Aran In Repose
13. Lament Return

Private Space, the group’s third album, is a previously untapped vibe at the heart of The Indications. Pushing beyond the boundaries of the funk and soul on their previous releases, Private Space unlocks the door to a wider range of sounds and launches boldly into a world of synthy modern soul and disco beats dotted with strings. It’s an organic, timeless record that’s as fresh as clean kicks and familiar as your favorite well-worn LP.

Developed after being apart for much of the year, Private Space is creatively explosive and delights in upending expectations. Its 10 tracks are both an escapist fantasy and a much-needed recentering after a tumultuous 2020. Throughout, The Indications highlight a collective resiliency – as well as the power of a good song to be a light in the darkness.

Durand Jones and The Indications have long provided the soulful soundtrack for such deep thoughts, both on stage and on your turntable. But as the world slowly resets from the chaos of the past year, Durand Jones and The Indications’ Private Space is arriving at just the right time.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It was always a brilliantly inventive maelstrom of sound emanating from a Durand Jones release, bridging the (admittedly small) gap between funk and soul, but this time sees them broaden their horizons into a wonderfully realised and perfectly weighted groove-laiden disco masterpiece. A stunning and completely essential outing.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Love Will Work It Out
2. Witchoo
3. Private Space
4. More Than Ever
5. Ride Or Die

SIDE B:
6. The Way That I Do
7. Reach Out
8. Sexy Thang
9. Sea Of Love
10. I Can See

From the moment she began writing her new album, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner knew that she wanted to call it Jubilee. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish; Psychopomp was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while Soft Sounds From Another Planet took the grief she held from her mother‘s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos. Now, at the start of a new decade, Japanese Breakfast is ready to fight for happiness, an all-too-scarce resource in our seemingly crumbling world.

Jubilee finds Michelle Zauner embracing ambition and, with it, her boldest ideas and songs yet. Inspired by records like Bjork’s Homogenic, Zauner delivers bigness throughout -- big ideas, big textures, colors, sounds and feelings. At a time when virtually everything feels extreme, Jubilee sets its sights on maximal joy, imagination, and exhilaration.

It is, in Michelle Zauner’s words, “a record about fighting to feel. I wanted to re-experience the pure, unadulterated joy of creation…The songs are about recalling the optimism of youth and applying it to adulthood. They’re about making difficult choices, fighting ignominious impulses and honoring commitments, confronting the constant struggle we have with ourselves to be better people.”

Throughout Jubilee, Zauner pours her own life into the universe of each song to tell real stories, and allowing those universes, in turn, to fill in the details. Joy, change, evolution—these things take real time, and real effort. And Japanese Breakfast is here for it.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Japanese Breakfast has an uncanny knack to sit right at the intersection of so many genres, while simultaneously defying them all. 'Jubilee' comes across as a celebration, taking the tried and tested sounds of synthpop and soul and fusing them with a wealth of influence from all over the musical spectrum, resulting in a gloriously well produced and uncannily uplifting end product.

TRACK LISTING

1. Paprika
2. Be Sweet
3. Kokomo, IN
4. Slide Tackle
5. Posing In Bondage
6. Sit
7. Savage Good Boy
8. In Hell
9. Tactics
10. Posing For Cars

Copycat Killer is a 12” featuring 4 exclusive new versions of songs from Phoebe Bridgers’ wildly acclaimed Punisher album. Collaborating with arranger Rob Moose (Sufjan Stevens, The National, Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, Jay-Z), these are brand new orchestral arrangements of the songs Kyoto, Savior Complex, Chinese Satellite and Punisher, all given a luscious revamp that is sure to delight any fans of Phoebe’s album and serve as perfect gateway for new listeners into what makes her one of the most special artists of 2020 and beyond.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Kyoto (Copycat Killer Version)
2. Savior Complex (Copycat Killer Version)
SIDE B:
3. Chinese Satellite (Copycat Killer Version)
4. Punisher (Copycat Killer Version)

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., Chastity Belt’s Annie Truscott descended into a state of mourning. Her plan had been to join her partner, Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, as violinist on tour, a privilege rarely afforded since both maintain busy road schedules, and for Truscott, the prospect of spending most of the year in a van wasn’t met with exhaustion so much as exhilaration. At long last, she’d be making a living playing music, no side hustle needed. The cancellation of the tour represented a sidelined dream. Routine was born of this disappointment. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, Truscott and Duterte’s collaborative project offers a glimpse of the creative possibilities that can emerge from a state of defeat. Written and recorded over the course of a month in Joshua Tree, Routine’s lush debut EP And Other Things finds the couple trying on new roles. Truscott, who plays bass in Chastity Belt, wrote the bulk of the material and sings on the EP, while Duterte, normally a band leader, used the project as an opportunity to, in her words, “Take the backseat,” as accompanist, producer, and engineer.

Duterte describes the making of the EP as “seamless.” In the mornings, Truscott sat outside of the cabin in the not-yet-blazing sun and worked out chord progressions on guitar while Duterte slept in. Staring out at the horizon, Truscott could see a smattering of houses and the sharp outline of a mountain range, but overall the property felt remote, far removed from home in Los Angeles. On long walks Truscott admired the recently bloomed spring flowers and pondered the legacy of friendships and experiences that made her. “I spend a lot of my time thinking about the people who’ve impacted my life,” she says. “Routine gave me an opportunity to explore those relationships through music.” It was on one of these walks that Truscott began writing “Cady Road,” a contemplative, country-tinged pop song that urges listeners to sit in the discomfort of the present moment. “Relax/ It’s fine/ You don’t have to know this time,” Truscott sings on the chorus, reflecting on the unsuredness that gripped her in those early days of the pandemic. Duterte joins in harmony, giving a song about being alone with your thoughts a collaborative dimension. “In Annie’s songs I hear a yearning for something just out of reach, something unachievable,” Duterte says. “She’s such a great singer, so it felt good to just layer instruments to make her vision for it feel fully fleshed out.” That impulse is heard vividly on “Cady Road,”where an abundant arrangement accompanies Truscott, replete with the spry notes of a banjolele. A true collaboration requires trust, intimacy, and patience, three elements that cohered almost mystically in the process of making this EP.

“Melina is the most calming presence. She’s so good at sitting with silences in a conversation and just observing,” Truscott says. The quality not only makes Duterte a good partner, but also a good bandmate and producer. “Calm and Collected” is a tribute to that enviable ability to maintain serenity amidst the chaos of experience. Though it was written in Joshua Tree, Duterte and Truscott recorded it in the attic of their home in LA, where Duterte set up a studio in the free time afforded by the pandemic. The song is the quietest of the collection, a gentle ode underscored by atmospheric swaths of synth that swaddle the listener. “I think of And Other Things as a series of vignettes,” Truscott says. “We aren’t telling one story here, we’re telling a series of short stories that people can hopefully relate to.” Asked how it feels to offer the EP up to the world during a time of major uncertainty in the music industry, Truscott offers only one word: “Cathartic.”

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Cady Road
2. Numb Enough

SIDE B:
3. Song 5
4. And Other Things
5. Calm And Collected

There are moments on Drunk Tank Pink where you almost have to reach for the sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s Songs Of Praise. Such is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest.

The genius of Drunk Tank Pink is how these lyrical themes dovetail with the music. Opener Alphabet dissects the premise of performance over a siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle across a mosh pit. Songs spin off and lurch into unexpected directions throughout here, be it March Day’s escalating aural panic attack or the shapeshifting darkness of Snow Day. There’s a Berlin era Bowie beauty to the lovelorn Human For A Minute while closer Station Wagon weaves from a downbeat mooch into a souring, soullifting climax in which Steen elevates himself beyond the clouds and into the heavens. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.

From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in the pink.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As uncompromising and incendiary as ever, Shame's 'Drunk Tank Pink' takes all of the riotous guitars and pummeling percussion and twists them into a recognisable but refreshing take on their trademark sound. A lot more intricate, elaborate and nuanced, Shame go from strength to strength.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Alphabet
2. Nigel Hitter
3. Born In Luton
4. March Day
5. Water In The Well
6. Snow Day

SIDE B:
7. Human
8. Great Dog
9. 6/1
10. Harsh Degrees
11. Station Wagon

In the winter of 2017 I moved back to my hometown of Kansas City from Los Angeles. The move was sudden and unforeseen, just as I was tying a bow on the writing process for what would become my 2019 album, Oh My God. I bought a Four Track Tascam model 424 off of an old friend to help me get to the finish line, but much to my surprise and excitement, this new piece of equipment in my all-but-bare home didn’t help complete one album but rather inspire another: Sundowner. The new collection of songs came quickly and effortlessly as I did my best not to resist or refine the songs, but instead let them take shape all on their own.

As the songs kept coming I cleared out the crowded shed that was sitting dormant in my backyard and built a makeshift studio before adding drums, lead guitar and piano to complete the demos. Each day I would teach myself basic recording techniques, watching the channels illuminate and pulse as if the machine were breathing, and then emerge in the evenings as the sun was getting low: - around 5:30 in the winter, when the Kansan sunsets look icy and distant, like a pink ember inside of a display case, and 9 o’clock in the summer, when the sunsets are warm and abstract.

Landing back home felt jarring juxtaposed with a life full of chaos and adventure with my band on the road. But at the very least, I was happy to have - for the first time in my adulthood - a place to close the door, with no temptations other than to work on music and reflect on what I had built since I left. It was a new form of isolation, one I had never explored or expected to experience. Not ready to let go of the hand of the California desert, I spent the winter decorating the best I knew how; with mementos from my previous home, cactus and aloe vera and covering the walls in pinewood - immediately earning my house it’s nickname, The Little Los Angeles.

In January 2019 I contacted my friend and producer Brad Cook to help recreate what I had made in my shed. We chose to work in Texas; we wanted to make sure the record was done far away from any coastline, and in the heart of America. Brad played bass and some keys on the album, but beyond that he encouraged and inspired me to play almost everything else. All lead guitar, proper drums (save the drums on “A Night At The Little Los Angeles”), mellotron and what I believe to be the albums secret weapon - a WWII era collapsible and slightly out-of-tune pump organ - were performed by me. We did, however, bring in James Krivchenia towards the end of the session to fill out the percussion. It was an honor to work with him as he built maracas from pecans and played on the floor of the live room, adding flourish wherever he saw fit.

On the last evening of the session, after everything had wrapped, we all climbed on top of an empty water tower on the property, giving us a view in all directions. To the North you could see an endless Texas, with long wisps of cirrus clouds above the desert floor, and to the South there was Mexico, the recent detention camps only a mile beyond, with large cumulus clouds hovering over, bringing us to an ominous pause. To the West, towards the setting sun, the two families of clouds merged, holding the last light of the day in purple and orange. Below, a freight train cut the landscape in half as it whistled in the distance.

Almost as soon as the session wrapped, I was off and away on press trips and then proper tours for Oh My God, which came out in April that same year. Sundowner sat inside of a hard drive back at Sonic Ranch and did not see the light of day, until I found myself, as did the rest of the world, stuck inside their home and in quarantine in March 2020. My second year of touring for Oh My God was cancelled. Brad, Jerry and I worked from our respective homes, sending notes back and forth as we worked alone but together to mix the album, and suddenly, just like that, Sundowner was finished.

Songs, like sunsets, are fleeting, and it’s only due to a willingness and desire to catch them that you ever, if even only for a moment, grab a hold of one. When writing Sundowner, I was lucky to have had the Tascam 424 there to help capture both. Sundowner is my attempt to put the Middle American twilight -- it’s beauty profound, though not always immediate -- into sound. It is a depiction of isolation. Of the past. Of an uncertain future. Of provisions. Of an omen. Of a dead deer. Of an icon. Of a Los Angeles themed hotel in rural Kansas. Of billowing campfires, a mermaid and a highway lined in rabbit fur. It is a depiction of the nervous feeling that comes with the sky’s proud announcement that another day will be soon coming to a close as the pink light recedes and the street lamps and house lights suddenly click on. -- Kevin Morby, Kansas, 2020.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a blessing in a way, that all of the artists we know and love have had a chance to get through some unfinished work sitting around on their hard drives (obviously the circumstances surrounding it are less than ideal..). Here we have a fully fledged gorgous new album from Morby that just wouldn't have been given the attention it deserved had his tour for the last album gone ahead. Thank goodness it got finished, 'Sundowner' is a triumph.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A: 
1. Valley
2. Brother, Sister
3. Sundowner
4. Campfire
5. Wander
SIDE B:
6. Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun
7.A Night At The Little Los Angeles
8. Jamie
9. Velvet Highway
10. Provisions

A lone pair of footsteps meanders down a street in omaha, into the neighborhood bar and then into a near-imperceptible tangle of conversations – about wars, sleepless nights – a surrealist din pushing against the sound of ragtime. Then, as the background quiets, a line rings out clearly: “i think about how much people need – what they need right now is to feel like there’s something to look forward to. We have to hold on. We have to hold on.”

Thus we enter the fitting, cacophonic introduction to bright eyes’ tenth studio album and first release since 2011. Down in the weeds, where the world once was is an enormous record caught in the profound in-between of grief and clarity – one arm wrestling its demons, the other gripping the hand of love, in spite of it.

The end of bright eyes’ unofficial hiatus came naturally. Conor oberst pitched the idea of getting the band back together during a 2017 christmas party at bright eyes bandmate nathaniel walcott’s los angeles home. The two huddled in the bathroom and called mike mogis, who was christmas shopping at an omaha mall. Mogis immediately said yes. There was no specific catalyst for the trio, aside from finding comfort amidst a decade of brutal change. Sure, why now? Is the question, but for a project whose friendship is at the core, it was simply why not?

The resulting bright eyes album came together unlike any other of its predecessors. Down in the weeds is bright eyes’ most collaborative, stemming from only one demo and written in stints in omaha and in bits and pieces in walcott’s los angeles home. Radically altering a writing process 25 years into a project seems daunting, but oberst said there was no trepidation: “our history and our friendship, and my trust level with them, is so complete and deep. And i wanted it to feel as much like a three-headed monster as possible.”

As a title, as a thesis, down in the weeds, where the world once was functions on a global, apocalyptic level of anxiety that looms throughout the record. But on a personal level, it speaks to rooting around in the dirt of one’s memories, trying to find the preciousness that’s overgrown and unrecognizable. For oberst, coming back to bright eyes was a bit of that. A symbol of simpler times, vaguely nostalgic. And even though it wasn’t actually possible to go back to the way things were, even though there wasn’t an easy happy ending, there was a new reality left to work with.

And here, there is a bleary-eyed hopefulness – earnest, emotive recommitments to love appear on “dance and sing” and “just once in the world.” And throughout, down in the weeds features snippets of oberst’s loved ones speaking, in late-night conversations. The fleeting loveliness of intimate moments punctuates the bleakness of the record’s existential crisis, crackling like lightning bugs illuminating the long night.

Down in the weeds is a distillation of a prolific, enduring canon. It’s immediate and urgent, the product of its creators’ growth across a decade apart, as well as the need to make a record together to find solace from loss. Through deliberate, fearless experimentation in process, the trio made the truest bright eyes sound: the sound of a deep bond, of a band coming home, but also a seamless continuation, like bright eyes never went away. It’s the impossible, sprawling mess of human experience that bright eyes has always sought to put to tape, since the beginning – the sound of holding on. Why now? Why not?

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's been far too long since the last Bright Eyes album, and this one shows why we've missed him so much. Beautifully tender melodies, orchestral swoon and soaring crescendos aplenty. This is a new journey for Oberst & crew, but also warmingly familiar.

TRACK LISTING

Pageturners Rag
Dance And Sing
Just Once In The World
Mariana Trench
One And Done
Pan And Broom
Stairwell Song
Persona Non Grata
Tilt-a-whirl
Hot Car In The Sun
Forced Convalescence
To Death’s Heart (in Three Parts)
Calais To Dover
Comet Song

Khruangbin has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf-rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony. But on its third album, it’s finally speaking out loud. Mordechai features vocals prominently on nearly every song, a first for the mostly instrumental band. It’s a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting Khruangbin’s transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that’s always defined it. And it all started with them coming home.

By the summer of 2019, the Houston group—bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, guitarist Mark Speer, drummer DJ Johnson—had been on tour for nearly three-and-ahalf years, playing to audiences across North and South America, Europe, and southeast Asia behind its acclaimed albums The Universe Smiles Upon You and Con Todo El Mundo. They returned to their farmhouse studio in Burton, Texas, ready to begin work on their third album. But they were also determined to slow down, to take their time and luxuriate in building something together. Musically, the band’s ever-restless ear saw it pulling reference points from Pakistan, Korea, and West Africa, incorporating strains of Indian chanting boxes and Congolese syncopated guitar. But more than anything, the album became a celebration of Houston, the eclectic city that had nurtured them, and a cultural nexus where you can check out country and zydeco, trap rap, or avant-garde opera on any given night.

In those years away from home, Khruangbin’s members often felt like they were swimming underwater, unsure of where they were going, or why they were going there. But Mordechai leads them gently back to the surface, allowing them to take a breath, look around, and find itself again. It is a snapshot taken along a larger journey—a moment all the more beautiful for its impermanence. And it’s a memory to revisit again and again, speaking to us now more clearly than ever.

STAFF COMMENTS

Emily says: The international peddlers of smooth, stylish grooves are back, and this time they’ve returned with a slightly revamped sound. They haven’t stopped trawling the globe for sonic inspiration and this could be some of their most eclectic work to date, adding elements of East and West African music to their already diverse sound palette. The vocals are far more present on ‘Mordechai’ than previous albums, but Khruangbin haven’t completely abandoned the deep instrumental format that they started out with. There is plenty of stripped back Cymande style elegance to be enjoyed in tracks like “If There is No Question” and “Father Bird, Mother Bird”. Perhaps one of the prettiest tracks is “One to Remember”, a shimmering dub incarnation of “So We Won’t Forget” which makes for a satisfying self-referential moment. Let’s hope their winning streak endures until they’ve distilled the essence of the entire globe into their singular soundworld.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. First Class
2. Time (You And I)
3. Connaissais De Face
4. Father Bird, Mother Bird
5. If There Is No Question

SIDE B:
6. Pelota
7. One To Remember
8. Dearest Alfred
9. So We Won’t Forget
10. Shida

Phoebe Bridgers doesn’t write love songs as much as songs about the impact love can have on our lives, personalities, and priorities.

Punisher, her fourth release and second solo album, is concerned with that subject. To say she writes about heartbreak is to undersell her blue wisdom, to say she writes about pain erases all the strange joy her music emanates. The arrival of Punisher cements Phoebe Bridgers as one of the most clever, tender and prolific songwriters of our era.

Bridgers is the rare artist with enough humour to deconstruct her own meteoric rise. Repeatedly praised by publications like The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Pitchfork, The Fader, The Los Angeles Times and countless others, Bridgers herself is more interested in discussing topics on Twitter, deadpanning meditations on the humiliating process of being a person, she presents a sweetly funny flipside to the strikingly sad songs she writes. Fittingly, Punisher is fascinated with, and driven by, that kind of impossible tension. Whether it’s writing tweets or songs, Bridgers’s singular talent lies in bringing fierce curiosity to slimy and painful things, interrogating them until they yield up answers that are beautiful and absurd, or faithfully reporting the reality that, sometimes, they are neither.

Bridgers pulls together a formidable crew of guests, including the Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, Christian Lee Hutson and Conor Oberst as well as Nathaniel Walcott (of Bright Eyes), Nick Zinner (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Jenny Lee Lindberg (of Warpaint), Blake Mills and Jim Keltner as well as her longtime bandmates Marshall Vore (drums), Harrison Whitford (guitar), Emily Retsas (bass) and Nick White (keys). The album was mixed by Mike Mogis, who also mixed Stranger In The Alps. On the album’s epic, freewheeling closer, “I Know The End,” Bridgers orchestrates wails and horns, drums and electric guitar into a sumptuous doomsday swirl, culminating in her own final whispered roar.

This is Punisher in a nutshell: devastating elegance punctuated by a moment of deeply campy self-awareness.

Driving anywhere in Texas can cost you half a day, easy. For example, it’ll take you over four hours just to get from R&B singer Leon Bridges’ hometown of Fort Worth down to Houston, where the psychedelic wanderers in Khruangbin hail from. The state is vast, crisscrossed with rugged expanses of road flanked by limestone cliffs and granite mountains, forests of pine and mesquite, miles of desert or acres of sprawling grassland, all depending on what part you’re in. And it’s all baking under the "Texas Sun" that lends its name to Bridges and Khruangbin’s new collaborative EP.

“Big sky country, that’s what they call Texas,” Khruangbin bassist Laura Lee says. “The horizon line goes all the way from one side to another without interruption. There’s something really comforting about that.”

On "Texas Sun", these two members of the state’s musical vanguard meet up somewhere in the middle of that scene, in the mythical nexus of Texas’ past, present, and future - a dreamy badlands where genres blur as seamlessly as the terrain. It calls equally to the cowboys bootscooting at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, the chopped-and-screwed hip-hop fans rattling slabs on the southside of Houston, the art-school kids dropping acid in Austin, the cross-cultural progeny who grew up on listening to both mariachi and post-hardcore out on the Mexican borders of El Paso. All of these things, overlapping in a multicolored melange, purple hues as vivid and unpredictable as one of the state’s rightfully celebrated sunsets.

A journey through homesick reminiscences, backseat romances, and late-night contemplations, the kind of record made for listening with the windows down and the road humming softly beneath you. Like the highways that inspired it, "Texas Sun" is guaranteed to get you where you’re going -especially if you’re in no particular hurry to get there.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A mild departure for Khruangbin here, enlisting soulful maestro Leon Bridges on vox duties, adding a silky overtone to their nigh-horizontal grooves. A superb, hazy dream of an album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Texas Sun
2. Midnight
3. C-Side
4. Conversion

Bill Fay returns with the third album in the celebrated second phase of his recording career. A prime Fay song is a deceptively simple thing which carries more emotional weight than its concision and brevity might imply. There are ten of these musical haikus on Countless Branches, as pointed and as poignant as anything he’s ever recorded. For decades now - it’s almost 50 years since he cut his classic albums “Bill Fay” and “Time of the Last Persecution” - songs like these have been Fay’s ambassadors helping rave reviews and endorsements from the likes of Jim O’Rourke (Tortoise) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) which led to a huge revival of interest in his music. He had continued to make music almost every day in the intervening decades. For Countless Branches he’s completed new toplines over some of his cache of backing tracks, most of them 20 to 40 years old.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brittle and almost entorely unadorned (safe for a guitar and a guitar at most), Bill Fay's crackling voice soars above these perfectly produced and stunningly stripped back Americana gems. Evocative and stunning, this is a gem in an already hugely influential career.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Human Hands
2. How Long, How Long
3. Your Little Face
4. Salt Of The Earth
5. I Will Remain Here
6. Filled With Wonder Once Again
7. Time’s Going Somewhere
8. Love Will Remain
9. Countless Branches
10. One Life

Deluxe LP Bonus Tracks:
11. Tiny
12. Don’t Let My Marigolds Die (Live In Studio)
13. The Rooster
14. Your Little Face (Acoustic Version)
15. Filled With Wonder Once Again (Band Version)
16. How Long, How Long (Band Version)
17. Love Will Remain (Band Version)

Back in January, Better Oblivion Community Center, surprise-released their self-titled debut album. The record is available digitally and physically via Dead Oceans. Today, the new band from Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst follow the release with two new songs, as well as a live set for NPR's Tiny Desk featuring stripped-down performances of "My City," "Exception to the Rule," and the album's lead single "Dylan Thomas."

We've only got a handful of these so get in there quick!

TRACK LISTING

Little Trouble
Sleepwalkin' (Daydreamin' Version)

‘Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough?’ is what Jennifer Clavin asked herself when she hit a turning point in her life. It’s also the title of the new record from Bleached, Jessie and Jennifer Clavin’s first album written from a place of sobriety. That newfound perspective serves as the guiding force, yielding a courageous, honest and sonically ambitious album. It’s a record about fighting both literally and figuratively for your life - and the clarity born from that struggle.

Writing began in early 2018, both in a Los Angeles practice space and with friends and co-writers in Nashville. Producer Shane Stoneback (Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells) helped open every door to experimentation, wanting to be exploratory while keeping the sound singularly Bleached.

The resulting album is explosive, grappling with the past; its twelve tracks mark some of the sisters’ most visceral, rawest songwriting to date - and some of their best. The work glimmers with inspiration found in touring with the likes of The Damned and Paramore. That arena-ready pop, incisively catchy, was a palpable influence helping to push Bleached’s sound in a new direction.

TRACK LISTING

Heartbeat Away
Hard To Kill
Daydream
I Get What I Need
Somebody Dial 911
Kiss You Goodbye
Rebound City
Silly Girl
Valley To LA
Real Life
Awkward Phase
Shitty Ballet

“Well, this is the largest amount of people we’ve ever had in a room to watch us, so it feels pretty damn special,” Marlon Williams says, sitting down to the piano during the first night of two sold-out shows at the historic Auckland Town Hall. May 25th, 2018 was special in many respects. Williams had returned home to New Zealand to close a 60-date world tour for his new album, Make Way For Love. He shared the stage with his second family, The Yarra Benders, with the two evenings at Auckland Town Hall serving as a fitting cap after having toured the globe together over the course of two album campaigns.

Across the past several years on the road, the Marlon Williams live show has taken on an almost mystical status — not just for Williams’ extraordinary voice, but also for the hypnotic command he has over an audience, his seamless blending of genres, and the effortless, instinctive relationship he shares with his band. Live at Auckland Town Hall showcases Williams at his finest, performing a set that includes songs from his acclaimed self-titled debut album, as well as 2018’s Make Way For Love, and standalone single, “Vampire Again.” The live album also includes previously unreleased covers of Barry Gibb, Yoko Ono, the late Lhasa De Sela, and a Williams live favorite, “Portrait of a Man” by Screaming Jay Hawkins.

Live at Auckland Town Hall captures an artist both early enough in his career to be humbled by the occasion, and developed enough to present a stunning catalogue of music and quality of performance. As Williams’ first official live release, Live at Auckland Town Hall feels sure to enter the canon of great live albums in the years to come, a dazzling snapshot of Marlon Williams’ musical singularity.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Come To Me
2. I Know A Jeweller
3. Everyone’s Got Something To Say
4. Beautiful Dress
5. I Didn’t Make A Plan
6. The Fire Of Love

SIDE B:
7. Is Anything Wrong?
8. Can I Call You
9. Dark Child
10. I’m Lost Without You
11. What’s Chasing You

SIDE C:
12. Party Boy
13. Carried Away
14. Vampire Again
15. Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore
16. Make Way For Love

SIDE D:
17. Love Is A Terrible Thing
18. Portrait Of A Man
19. When I Was A Young Girl

On her sophomore LP, The Best of Luck Club, 26-year-old Melbourne, Australia native Alex Lahey navigates the pangs of generational ennui with the pint half-full and a spot cleared on the bar stool next to her. Self-doubt, burn out, break-ups, mental health, moving in with her girlfriend, vibrators: The Best of Luck Club showcases the universal language of Lahey’s sharp songwriting, her propensity for taking the minute details of the personal and flipping it public through anthemic pop-punk. Lahey’s 2017 debut I Love You Like a Brother encases Lahey’s knack for writing a killer hook and her acute sense of humor delivered via a slacker-rock package and, in a way, The Best of Luck Club picks up where that record left off.

Lahey co-produced the album alongside acclaimed engineer and producer Catherine Marks (Local Natives, Wolf Alice, Manchester Orchestra), and dives headfirst into a broader spectrum of both emotion and sound through polished, arena pop-punk in the vein of Paramore with the introspective sheen of Alvvays or Tegan & Sara. Here, Lahey documents the highest highs and the lowest lows of her life to date. After a whirlwind of global touring in support of breakout debut I Love You Like a Brother, Lahey wrote the bulk of her follow-up in Nashville during 12-hour days of songwriting. There, she found the inspiration for The Best of Luck Clubís concept: the dive bar scene and its genuine energy.”Whether you’ve had the best day of your life or the worst day of your life, you can just sit up at the bar and turn to the person next to you - who has no idea who you are - and have a chat. And the response that you generally get at the end of the conversation is, "Best of luck", so The Best Of Luck Club is that place.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Don’t Get Invited To Parties Anymore
2. Am I Doing It Right
3. Interior Demeanour
4. Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself
5. Unspoken History
6. Misery Guts
7. Isabella
8. I Need To Move On
9. Black RM’s
10. I Want To Live With You

This is Kevin’s opus - a 2LP concept album on spirituality and religion. Throughout his four solo albums and myriad records of various collaboration, Kevin Morby has recognized in his work the ubiquity of an apparent religious theme. Though not identifying as “religious” in the slightest, Morby—the globetrotting son of Kansas City who has made music while living on both coasts before recently returning to his Midwestern stomping grounds—recognizes in himself a somewhat spiritual being with a secular attitude towards the soulful. And so, in an effort to tackle that notion head-on and once-and-for-all, he sat down in his form of church—on planes and in beds—and wrote what would become his first true concept-album: the lavish, resplendent, career-best double LP Oh My God.

“This one feels full circle, my most realized record yet,” he says. “It’s a cohesive piece; all the songs fit under the umbrella of this weird religious theme. I was able to write and record the album I wanted to make. It’s one of those marks of a life: this is why I slept on floors for seven years. I’ve now gotten the keys to my own little kingdom, and I’m devoting so much of my life to music that I just want to keep it interesting. At the end of the day, the only thing I don’t want is to be bored. If someone wants to get in my face about writing a non-religious religious record? Thank god. That’s all I gotta say.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Although Matt and I agree that the front cover of this looks unbelievably like a topless Dom Kozubik, don't let that put you off. 'Oh My God' is a tenderly delivered and perfectly measured slice of indie songwriting. Morby's ear for a tune and perfectly balanced juxtaposition of tender, brittle balladry and uplifting soulful soothe make this one for every collection.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Oh My God
2. No Halo
3. Nothing Sacred / All Things Wild
4. OMG Rock N Roll

SIDE B
5. Seven Devils
6. Hail Mary
7. Piss River
8. Savannah

SIDE C
9. Storm (Beneath The Weather)
10. Congratulations
11. I Want To Be Clean

SIDE D
12. Sing A Glad Song
13. Ballad Of Faye
14. O Behold

“When I was writing these songs, every day I would walk on the beach and I was completely alone and overwhelmed by fear...but then I realized how there really aren’t any rules for who you are, who you’ll become, or who you think you need to be. Eraserland is just that. It’s death to ego, and rebirth to anything or anyone you want to be.”

In December 2017, Tim Showalter was uncertain about his next record and the shape it would eventually take. With no new songs written, he was unprepared for the message he would receive from his friend Carl Broemel, the conversation that would follow, and the album that would become Eraserland. Leading off with standout track “Weird Ways” and his powerful declaration of “I don’t feel it anymore,” Eraserland traces Showalter’s evolution from apprehension to creative awakening, carving out a new and compelling future for Strand of Oaks.

Revived by the support of Broemel and his bandmates, Showalter felt the pressure to deliver songs worthy of musicians he had admired long before and after a 2015 Oaks/MMJ tour. So in February 2018, he spent two weeks alone in Wildwood, New Jersey writing and demoing all of the songs that would eventually comprise Eraserland. And in April, he went into the studio to record with Kevin Ratterman at La La Land Studios in Louisville, Kentucky, and with Broemel, Hallahan, Koster, and Blankenship as his band. Jason Isbell also contributed his Hendrix-esque guitar work to Eraserland, while singer/ songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle provided gorgeous vocals. Every song was recorded live, with all musicians playing together in one room and working to bring Showalter’s ideas to fruition. “I remember sitting next to Tim and Kevin listening to the final mixes with tears rolling down my cheeks,” said Hallahan. “From start to finish, this one came from the heart.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Weird Ways
2. Hyperspace Blues
3. Keys
4. Visions
5. Final Fires
6. Moon Landing
7. Ruby
8. Wild And Willing
9. Eraserland
10. Forever Chords
11. Cruel Fisherman

Durand Jones & the Indications aren’t looking backwards. Helmed by foil vocalists in Durand Jones and drummer Aaron Frazer, the Indications conjure the dynamism of Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, AND the Impressions. Even with an aesthetic steeped in the golden, strings-infused dreaminess of early ‘70s soul, the Indications’ sophomore LP, American Love Call, is planted firmly in the present, with the urgency of this moment in time.

The Indications’ 2016 self-titled debut was the product of friends who met as students at Indiana University in Bloomington, In., recorded for $452.11, including a case of beer. American Love Call, the band’s sophomore LP is instead the record the Indications dreamed of making, fleshed out with strings, backing vocals, and a newfound confidence in songwriting.

Blending a slew of influences from years spent crate-digging, guitarist Blake Rhein says the Indications approach songs in the same way hip-hop producers do, as likely to pull inspiration from ‘70s folk-rock or classic R&B as they are Nas’ Illmatic.

“Did I expect to do this shit once I got out of college? Hell no,” Jones relays, laughing. “Totally not. But this is what God is telling me to do – move and groove. So I’m gonna stay in my lane.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliantly emotive and smoothly contrasting duo of voices over this classic soul, brought to the modern day with crisp, clean production and the perfectly sunny songwiting Durand Jones has become known for. From mournful, lost-love ballads to swinging, dancefloor ditties, this is yet another mindblowing LP from Jones & co.

TRACK LISTING

1. Morning In America
2. Don’t You Know (feat. Aaron Frazer)
3. Circles
4. Court Of Love (feat. Aaron Frazer)
5. Long Way Home
6. Too Many Tears (feat. Aaron Frazer)
7. Walk Away
8. What I Know About You (feat. Aaron Frazer)
9. Listen To Your Heart
10. Sea Gets Hotter (feat. Aaron Frazer)
11. How Can I Be Sure (feat. Aaron Frazer)
12. True Love

On ‘The Lillywhite Sessions’, Ryley Walker and the similarly indebted trio of drummer Ryan Jewell and bassist Andrew Scott Young cover Dave Matthews’ infamously abandoned 2001 art-rock masterpiece of the same name, a record where he and his band indulged a new adult pathos and a budding musical wanderlust.

With a delicate rhythmic latticework and vocals that ask you to lean in, ‘Busted Stuff’ recalls Jim O’ Rourke’s golden Drag City days. Emerging from a wall of distortion, ‘Diggin’ a Ditch’ becomes a power trio wallop à la Dinosaur Jr, shaking off existential malaise like twenty-something pals writing rock songs in the garage. Walker’s ‘Grace is Gone’, the most faithful take here, is a testament to his unflagging love for the music that helped make him a musician.

This end-to-end interpretation of youthful fascination is a collective reminder that we are all just kids from somewhere, reckoning with our upbringing the best we can. Walker has stepped through the door long ago opened by the Dave Matthews Band to find a world teeming with musical possibilities. On ‘The Lillywhite Sessions’, he has, in turn, created his own.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As well as being a VERY good follow on the ol' Twitter, Ryley Walker is also a superb chap and undeniably brilliant songwriter and musician. Although the songwriting doesn't really get a look in on this release (it being entirely covers), it is clear that his laid-back style and impeccable vocal performance is only improving. Even if you've never heard this Dave Matthews Band release before, I implore you to hear Walker's take on things. Stunning.

TRACK LISTING

Busted Stuff
Grey Street
Diggin’ A Ditch
Sweet Up And Down
JTR
Big Eyed Fish
Grace Is Gone
Captain
Bartender
Monkey Man
Kit Kat Jam
Raven

Hailed as the new vanguard of indie rock following the breakout success of 2016’s Puberty 2, Mitski returns with Be The Cowboy, via Dead Oceans.

Mitski’s carefully crafted songs have often been portrayed as emotionally raw, overflowing confessionals from a fevered chosen girl, but in her fifth album, Mitski introduces a persona who has been teased before but never so fully present until now—a woman in control.

“For this new record, I experimented in narrative and fiction,” comments Mitski. Though she hesitates to go so far as to say she created full-on characters, she reveals she had in mind “a very controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. Because women have so little power and showing emotion is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount of control she can get. Still, there is something very primordial in her that is trying to find a way to get out.”

In Be The Cowboy, Mitski delves into the loneliness of being a symbol and the loneliness of being someone, how it can feel so much like being no one. Lead single “Geyser” introduces us to a woman who can’t hold it all in any more. She’s about to burst and unleash a torrent of desire and passion that has been building up inside. While recording the album with her long-time producer Patrick Hyland, the pair kept returning to “the image of someone alone on a stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room. For most of the tracks, we didn’t layer the vocals with doubles or harmonies, to achieve that campy ‘person singing alone on stage’ atmosphere.”

There is plenty of buoyant swagger on Be The Cowboy, but just as much interrogation into self-mythology. Throughout these 14 songs, the music swerves from the cheerful to the plaintive. Mournful piano ballads lead into deceptively uptempo songs. “I had been on the road for a long time, which is so isolating, and had to run my own business at the same time. A lot of this record was me not having any feelings, being completely spent but then trying to rally myself and wake up and get back to Mitski.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: We aren't the only ones who've been eagerly awaiting a new Mitski album, with the news on this outing being VERY warmly received online, and listening to it, it's no surprise. Forward thinking synth-pop progressions, beautifully balanced song structures and Mitski's unmistakeable vocals. Superb stuff.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Geyser
2. Why Didn't You Stop Me?
3. Old Friend
4. A Pearl
5. Lonesome Love
6. Remember My Name
7. Me And My Husband

SIDE B
8. Come Into The Water
9. Nobody
10. Pink In The Night
11. A Horse Named Cold Air
12. Washing Machine Heart
13. Blue Light
14. Two Slow Dancers

For a limited period both formats include a FREE 4 track 'Remixes' CD bonus disc.

Lump was born of good timing and predestined compatibility. It began when Mike Lindsay – a prolific, Mercury prize-winning producer – was introduced to Grammy-nominated, Brit award-winning singer-songwriter Laura Marling after her show supporting Neil Young in London.

Lump is a heady blend of wonked-out guitars, Moog synths and pattering drums, set against droning, coiling clouds of flutes and voices. The lyrics are inspired by early-20th-century Surrealism and the absurdist poetry of Edward Lear and Ivor Cutler - a bizarre but compelling narrative about the commodification of curated public personas, the mundane absurdity of individualism, and the lengths we go to escape our own meaninglessness.

The composers are keen to stress that LUMP is a creation that passed through them, and they look upon it parentally. It is their understanding that, now it has come into being, LUMP is the artist, and it will continue to create itself from here on. Lindsay and Marling will assist it as necessary.

TRACK LISTING

Late To The Flight [05:36]
May I Be The Light [04:46]
Rolling Thunder [04:29]
Curse Of The Contemporary [04:14]
Hand Hold Hero [05:26]
Shake Your Shelter [05:23]

CD Bonus Disc:
Curse Of The Contemporary (Charles Cave Remix)
Curse Of The Contemporary (Jata Remix)
The Light (IYEARA Remix)
Hand Hold Hero (Ball And Chain Mix - Wrangler)

“I was under a lot of stress because I was trying to make an anti-folk record and I was having trouble doing it. I wanted to make something deep-fried and more me-sounding. I didn’t want to be jammy acoustic guy anymore. I just wanted to make something weird and far-out that came from the heart finally. I was always trying to make something like this I guess, trying to catch up with my imagination. And I think I succeeded in that way — it’s got some weird instrumentation on there, and some surreal far-out words.

I’m lucky enough to have some people who are playing on it who had a big part in shaping the songs and writing with me. Cooper Crain, the guy who engineered it, and played all the synthesizers. And when the flute guy, Nate Lepine came in, that was really something that made it special. The producer was this guy LeRoy Bach. I love LeRoy, he’s a really talented guy. He did the last record too.

And it’s more Chicago-y sounding. Chicago sounds like a train constantly coming towards you but never arriving. That’s the sound I hear, all the time, ringing in my ears.” – Ryley Walker.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Narcotics enthusiast and all-round ledge Ryley takes us on his newest journey into the wilderness with 'Deafman Glance', with the same tender plucking acousticry we've come to know and love, but with the psychedelic element all the more pronounced. Brilliantly progressive and nuanced songwriting with Walker's imitable style.

TRACK LISTING

1. In Castle Dome
2. 22 Days
3. Accommodations
4. Can't Ask Why
5. Opposite Middle
6. Telluride Speed
7. Expired
8. Rocks On Rainbow
9. Spoil With The Rest

Try, if only for a moment, to envision a scenario in which you could still be completely *surprised* by a rock band. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s increasingly rare.

A couple of years ago, A Place to Bury Strangers were in search of a new drummer. Lia Simone Braswell, an L.A. native, had recently moved to New York, and was playing drums in shows around Brooklyn "just to keep her chops up." As it turned out, APTBS bassist Dion Lunadon caught one of those shows and, after seeing her play, was moved to ask her if she’d want to come to a band practice sometime.

"I told some of my friends about it before I met up with them," Braswell says, of the rehearsal that would soon lead to her joining the band. "They told me, 'You’re just gonna have to keep up as much as you possibly can.’"

"To be fair, she had also never seen us live," Lunadon adds. "She didn’t necessarily know what she was getting into."

What she was getting into: For well over a decade now, A Place to Bury Strangers-Lunadon, founding guitarist/singer Oliver Ackermann, and, officially, Braswell-have become well known for their unwavering commitment to unpredictable, often bewildering live shows, and total, some might say dangerous volume. They don’t write setlists. They frequently write new songs mid-set. They deliberately provoke and sabotage sound people in a variety of cruel yet innovative ways. They can and will always surprise you. "When something goes wrong on-stage, a lot of bands will crumble under the pressure," says Ackermann. "We like the idea of embracing the moment when things go wrong and turning it into the best thing about the show."

This April marks the release of Pinned, their fifth full-length and an album that finds them converting difficult moments into some of their most urgent work to date. It’s their first since the 2016 election, and their first since the 2014 closing of Death By Audio, the beloved Brooklyn DIY space where Ackerman lived, worked, and created with complete freedom. "After DBA closed, I moved to an apartment in Clinton Hill," he says. "I couldn’t make too much noise, couldn’t disturb my neighbors. I would just sit there and write with a drum machine. It had to be about writing a good song and not about being super, sonically loud."

There are searing meditations on truth and government-led conspiracies ("Execution"), as well as haunting, harmonized responses to the tensions of our current political climate ("There’s Only One of Us"). It all opens with "Never Coming Back," a frightening crescendo of group vocals, vertiginous guitar work, and Lunadon’s unrelenting bass. "That song is a big concept," Ackermann says. "You make these decisions in your life…you’re contemplating whether or not this will be the end. You think of your mortality, those moments you could die and what that means. You’re thinking about that edge of the end, deciding whether or not it’s over. When you’re close to that edge, you could teeter over."

It’s a clear and honest statement of intent, not just for everything that follows, but for this band as a whole. "As things go on, you don’t want them to be stagnant," Ackermann says. "Being a band for ten years, it’s hard to keep things moving forward. I see so many bands that have been around and they’re a weaker version of what they used to be. This band is anti-that. We try to push ourselves constantly, with the live shows and the recordings. We always want to get better. You’ve got to dig deep and take chances, and sometimes, I questioned that. It took really breaking through to make it work. I think we did that."

They definitely did. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Throbbing bass, snappy distorted vocals and churning, machinated minimal-wave vox and NIN-esque claustrophobic ambience, all held withing a solid and impenetrable shell of gnarly, saturated guitars. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

Single CD/LP
Never Coming Back
Execution
There’s Only One Of Us
Situations Changes
Too Tough To Kill
Frustrated Operator
Look Me In The Eye
Was It Electric
I Know I’ve Done Bad Things
Act Your Age
Attitude
Keep Moving On

Double CD/LP
Never Coming Back
Execution
There’s Only One Of Us
Situations Changes
Too Tough To Kill
Frustrated Operator
Look Me In The Eye
Was It Electric
I Know I’ve Done Bad Things
Act Your Age
Attitude
Keep Moving On
When You’re Alone
The World Dies
She Goes Out With The Devil
Flickering Fly
Punch Back
Delusion Of Time
Now That You’ve Left It All
I Will Follow You

Known for his effortlessly distinctive voice, Make Way For Love marks Marlon's exponential growth as a songwriter. Throughout 11 original songs, he explores new musical terrain and reveals himself in an unprecedented way in the wake of a fractured relationship. While Make Way For Love draws on Marlon's own story, it captures the vagaries of relationships we've all been through: the bliss, ache, uncertainty, and bitterness. Like the best breakup records, Make Way For Love doesn't shy away from heartbreak, but rather stares it in the face, and mines beauty from it. Delicate and bold, tender and searing, it's a mightily personal new step. Make Way For Love was recorded with producer Noah Georgeson and his backing band, The Yarra Benders, in North California's Panoramic Studios after several weeks of pre-production in his native Lyttelton, New Zealand with regular collaborator Ben Edwards. The finished result is an expansive record that moves Marlon several paces from "country" - the genre that's been affixed to him more than any in recent years - with forays into cinematic strings, reverb, rollicking guitar, and at least one quiet piano ballad.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Heartfel odes, tinkling keys and powerful confident guitars weave into an engrossing and confident whole. Superbly written melodies and pitch-perfect production make this a sure-fire winner.

TRACK LISTING

Come To Me
What's Chasing You
Beautiful Dress
Party Boy
Can I Call You
Love Is A Terrible Thing
I Know A Jewller
I Didn't Make A Plan
The Fire Of Love
Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore
Make Way For Love

Shame thrives on confrontation. Whether it be the seething intensity crackling throughout debut LP Songs of Praise or the adrenaline-pumping chaos that unfolds at Shame’s shows, it’s all fueled by feeling. NPR’s Bob Boilen noted, “Of the 70 bands I saw at this year’s SXSW, the band Shame seemed to mean what they played more than any other.”

Comprised of vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist John Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes, the London-based five-piece began as school boys. From the outset, Shame built the band up from a foundation of DIY ethos while citing The Fall and Wire among its biggest musical influences.

Utilizing both the grit and sincerity of that musical background, Shame carved out a niche in the South London music scene and then barreled fearlessly into the angular, thrashing post-punk that would go on to make up Songs of Praise, their Dead Oceans debut. From “Gold Hole,” a tongue-in-cheek takedown of rock narcissism, to lead single “Concrete” detailing the overwhelming moment of realizing a relationship is doomed, to the frustrated “Tasteless” taking aim at the monotony of people droning through their day-to-day, Songs of Praise never pauses to catch its breath.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dust On Trial
2. Concrete
3. One Rizla
4. The Lick
5. Tasteless
6. Donk
7. Gold Hole
8. Friction
9. Lampoon
10. Angie

Of his 12th studio album and its enigmatic title, Destroyer’s Dan Bejar offers the following:

Sometime last year, I discovered that the original name for “The Wild Ones” (one of the great English-language ballads of the last 100 years or so) was “Ken.” I had an epiphany, I was physically struck by this information. In an attempt to hold on to this feeling, I decided to lift the original title of that song and use it for my own purposes. It’s unclear to me what that purpose is, or what the connection is. I was not thinking about Suede when making this record. I was thinking about the last few years of the Thatcher era. Those were the years when music first really came at me like a sickness, I had it bad. Maybe “TheWild Ones” speaks to that feeling, probably why Suede made no sense in America. I think “ken” also means “to know.”

ken was produced by Josh Wells of Black Mountain, who has been the drummer in Destroyer since 2012. The album was recorded in its entirety in the jam space/studio space that the group calls The Balloon Factory. However, unlike Poison Season, ken was not recorded as a “band” record, though everyone in the band does make an appearance.

TRACK LISTING

1 Sky's Grey
2 In The Morning
3 Tinseltown Swimming In Blood
4 Cover From The Sun
5 Saw You At The Hospital
6 A Light Travels Down The Catwalk
7 Rome
8 Sometimes In The World
9 Ivory Coast
10 Stay Lost
11 La Regle De Jeu

I Love You Like A Brother is the highly anticipated album from Melbourne’s Alex Lahey. An infectious debut that shines with a rare confidence, I Love You Like A Brother is a riotous record, packed with relatable fuzzpop gems. 

After finishing school, Lahey initially went to university to study jazz saxophone, but unimpressed with “learning music in such a regimented way” she switched to an arts degree. While studying, Alex cut her teeth as a member of cult party collective Animaux, which allowed her restlessly rebellious streak to flourish. Alex began to form the blueprint for her own solo material by writing songs inspired by the two people she considers the greatest songwriters of all time, Dolly Parton and Bruce Springsteen, whilst retaining the punk spirit of her first musical outing. These songs found themselves on her first solo EP, the acclaimed B-Grade University.

The EP included the single. ‘You Don’t Think You Like People Like Me’; a mainstay on Australian radio, landing on triple j’s prestigious Hottest 100 of 2016. The song’s universal tale of rejection took Lahey global - its message, she says, is the flipside of the usual break-up scenario: “Yeah, you’re right. It’s not me. It IS you”. This no-shit-taken attitude forms the backbone of I Love You Like A Brother as evidenced by the uproarious opening track ‘Every Day’s The Weekend’.

Throughout the records’ ten songs, Alex’s lyrics deftly move between wry, often hilarious witticism to heartbreaking poignancy. For every uplifting anthem, such as ‘I Love You Like A Brother’ and the unruly ‘Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder’, there’s painfully relatable tracks like ‘Backpack’ and ‘Awkward Exchange’. Despite the instant pop chops of I Love You Like A Brother, there’s introspection, self-doubt and sense of working out the complexities of growing up in this limbo period between youth and adulthood.

The themes of Alex Lahey’s album might be universal, but it’s the unique approach she takes unpacking them that’s earned her millions of Spotify streams, buzz-worthy showcases at SXSW and festival sets alongside the likes of Flume, The Kills, At The Drive-In and James Blake as well as guesting on tours with Tegan & Sara and Blondie.

TRACK LISTING

1 Every Day's The Weekend
2 I Love You Like A Brother
3 Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder
4 I Haven't Been Taking Care Of Myself
5 Backpack
6 Awkward Exchange
7 I Want U
8 Lotto In Reverse
9 Let's Call It A Day
10 There's No Money

Phoebe Bridgers wrote her first song at age 11, spent her adolescence at open mic nights and busked through her teenage years at farmers markets in her native Los Angeles. By age 20, she’d caught the ear of Ryan Adams, who listened to her perform her song ‘Killer’ in his LA studio, inviting her to come back and record it there the next day. The session blossomed into the three song ‘Killer’ EP, released to much acclaim on Adams’s Pax-Am label in 2015. In the two short years since, Bridgers has toured or played with Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, City And Colour, Violent Femmes, Mitski, Television and Blake Babies among others.

Now Phoebe Bridgers releases her debut full-length, ‘Stranger In The Alps’. From the weeping strings and ‘Twin Peaks’ twangs of opening track ‘Smoke Signals’, to the simple heartbreak of ‘Funeral’ and melancholic crescendo of ‘Scott Street’, ‘Stranger In The Alps’ is a swooningly beautiful record with a gothic heart.

‘Stranger In The Alps’ features guest vocals by Conor Oberst and John Doe.

TRACK LISTING

1 Smoke Signals
2 Motion Sickeness
3 Funeral
4 Demi Moore
5 Scott Street
6 Killer
7 Goergia
8 Chelsea
9 Would You Rather
10 You Missed My Heart

Japanese Breakfast’s ‘Soft Sounds From Another Planet’ is less of a concept album about space exploration so much as it is a mood board come to life.

Over the course of 12 tracks, Michelle Zauner explores a sonic landscape of her own design, one that’s big enough to contain her influences. There are songs on this album that recall the pathos of Roy Orbison’s ballads, while others could soundtrack a cinematic drive down one of ‘Blade Runner’s endless skyways.

Zauner’s voice is capacious; one moment she’s serenading the past, the next she’s robotically narrating a love story over sleek monochrome, her lyrics more pointed and personal than ever before.

While ‘Psychopomp’ was a genre-spanning introduction to Japanese Breakfast, this visionary second album launches the project to new heights.

TRACK LISTING

Diving Woman
Road Head
Machinist
Planetary Ambience
Soft Sounds From Another Planet
Boyish
12 Steps
Jimmy Fallon Big
Body Is A Blade
Till Death
This House
Here Come The Tubular Bells

The world has finally caught up with Slowdive. A band whose reach goes far beyond just influencing music is back, with their first new album in 22 years.

The album is called ‘Slowdive’ - self-titled in an echo of their debut EP from 1990, and is remarkably direct.

Deftly swerving what co-vocalist/guitarist Rachel Goswell terms “a trip down memory lane”, these eight new tracks are simultaneously expansive and the sonic pathfinders’ most direct material to date.

Self-titled with quiet confidence, Slowdive’s stargazing alchemy is set to further entrance the faithful while beguiling a legion of fresh ears.

TRACK LISTING

1 Slomo
2 Star Roving
3 Don't Know Why
4 Sugar For The Pill
5 Everyone Knows
6 No Longer Making Time
7 Go Get It
8 Falling Ashes

Hard Love, Tim Showalter’s latest release as Strand of Oaks, is a record that explores the balancing act between overindulgence and accountability. Recounting Showalter’s decadent tour experiences, his struggling marriage, and the near death of his younger brother, Hard Love emanates an unabashed, raw, and manic energy that embodies both the songs and the songwriter behind them. “For me, there are always two forces at work: the side that’s constantly on the hunt for the perfect song, and the side that’s naked in the desert screaming at the moon. It’s about finding a place where neither side is compromised, only elevated.”

During some much-needed downtime following the release of his previous album, HEAL, Showalter began writing Hard Love and found himself in a now familiar pattern of tour exhaustion, chemically-induced flashbacks, and ongoing domestic turmoil. Drawing from his love of Creation Records, Trojan dub compilations, and Jane’s Addiction, and informed by a particularly wild time at Australia’s Boogie Festival, he sought to create a record that would merge all of these influences while evoking something new and visceral. Showalter’s first attempt at recording the album led to an unsatisfying result—a fully recorded version of Hard Love that didn’t fully achieve the ambitious sounds he heard in his head. He realized that his vision for the album demanded collaboration, and enlisted producer Nicolas Vernhes, who helped push him into making the most fearless album of his career.

TRACK LISTING

1 Hard Love
2 Radio Kids
3 Everything
4 Salt Brothers
5 On The Hill
6 Cry
7 Quit It
8 Rest Of It
9 Taking Acid And Talking To My Brother

Ryley Walker is pleased to announce his new album, Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, coming out August 19th on Dead Oceans. It’s the triumphant follow up to his breakout album, Primrose Green, which earned critical hosannas from the likes of NPR, Village Voice, Uncut, and Mojo and admiration of musicians who had chalked up no shortage of turntable miles in Walker’s life. Robert Plant declared himself a fan – as did double-bass legend Danny Thompson, with whom Ryley embarked on a British tour.

In November 2015, at the end of a ten-month period which saw Ryley play over 200 shows in support of Primrose Green, Ryley decided that he should probably head home. However you wished to measure it, he was surely due some sort of holiday. Although, a holiday was the last thing on Ryley’s mind – and certainly not a holiday in his adopted hometown. After a year spent on the road, all that Ryley could associate with Chicago was the emotional debris he had left behind.

He went into the studio over the Christmas vacation to record Golden Sings That Have Been Sung whose songs were directly wedded to Ryley’s return to Chicago. Some of his formative musical memories had been shaped by the work of pioneering Chicago acts such as Gastr del Sol and Tortoise. “Jeff Parker was the guitarist with Tortoise, and I used to listen to him a lot,” recalls Ryley, who figured that, for the first time in his career, it might be helpful to enlist the services of a producer. With only one person on his shortlist, once again, all roads led back to Chicago.

Ryley had been a long-time admirer of sometime Wilco multi-instrumentalist LeRoy Bach. Back in 2009, still in his teens, he had frequented the improv nights hosted by Bach at a restaurant/gallery space called Whistler. “For me, it was an incredible opportunity,” recalls Ryley, “…because you would sometimes also have Dan Bitney, the drummer with Tortoise, and I’d get to play with these people. I mean, they were twice my age. I’m sure they thought I was annoying at first, maybe some of them still do, but I kind of looked at them like gurus – and to have these old school Chicago heads taking me in was just amazing.”

For Ryley then, the prospect of having Bach produce his album was something of a no-brainer. “It was everything I wanted it to be,” he enthuses. “I would go to LeRoy’s house every other day with a riff, and we would take it from there.” Perhaps more than any other song on the record, the somnambulant sun-dappled intimacies of opening track and lead single “The Halfwit In Me” most audibly bear the imprint of those Whistler sessions.

Golden Sings That Have Been Sung was made for the dewy magic hour when night and day have yet to meet and, as long as the song is playing, you feel might briefly leave the corporeal world with them. This is the music you might imagine the woodland animals making once the humans have left for the night. This is Ryley Walker’s coming of age.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having been one of our end of year favourites in 2015, Ryley Walker had a lot to live up to with this follow-up (obviously he had impressing us in mind). It turns out that this is just as monumental, if not moreso. There is a sense of assurance here, a confidence gained through years of honing his craft. Perfectly sculpted Americana-tinged acoustic guitars are bolstered but never overpowered by frenetic violin slashes, molasses-slow drums perfectly compliment the unhurried and confident instrumentation. Walker and band have got a lot of bettering to do if they'll ever top this, but going on previous form, i'm sure they will. An absorbing and rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

2CD Tracklisting
1 The Halfwit In Me
2 A Choir Apart
3 Funny Thing She Said
4 Sullen Mind
5 I Will Ask You Twice
6 The Roundabout
7 The Great And Undecided
8 Age Old Tale
9 Sullen Mind (Live At SiriusXMU The Loft)

2LP Tracklisting
1 The Halfwit In Me
2 A Choir Apart
3 Funny Thing She Said
4 Sullen Mind
5 I Will Ask You Twice
6 The Roundabout
7 The Great And Undecided
8 Age Old Tale
9 Sullen Mind (Live At SiriusXMU The Loft) - Part 1
10 Sullen Mind (Live At SiriusXMU The Loft) - Part 2

In November 2015, at the end of a ten month period which saw him play over 200 shows, Ryley Walker decided that he should probably head home. The preceding months had been extraordinary. In March, his second album ‘Primrose Green’, emerged to critical hosannas from the likes of NPR, Village Voice, Uncut and Mojo and in the process earning admiration of musicians who had chalked up no shortage of turntable miles in Walker’s life. Robert Plant declared himself a fan, as did double-bass legend Danny Thompson, with whom Ryley would later embark on a British tour. A sprawling tour of the USA around ‘Primrose Green’ presented a perfect chance to workshop ideas for what would eventually become this, his third studio album, ‘Golden Sings That Have Been Sung’.

‘The Roundabout’ represents a symbolic return to Chicago, while other songs are directly wedded to Ryley’s actual return there. Perhaps more than any other song on the record, the somnambulant sun-dappled intimacies of opening track ‘The Halfwit In Me’ most audibly bear the imprint of Ryley’s improvisational sessions with Wilco multi-instrumentalist, Chicagoan and producer Leroy Bach, while ‘Funny Thing She Said’ is an unflinching study of separation set to a shimmeringly supple ensemble performance.

Soft, slo-mo explosions of melody intermittently burst through the distant thunder of the verses on ‘A Choir Apart’. Intriguing, surreal images are meted out by ‘I Will Ask You Twice’, like a malfunctioning slide projector and, perhaps best of all, the stunning finale, ‘Age Old Tale’, which spiders out from an Alice Coltrane-inspired reverie into a sustained rapture that very few artists have managed to achieve.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having been one of our end of year favourites in 2015, Ryley Walker had a lot to live up to with this follow-up (obviously he had impressing us in mind). It turns out that this is just as monumental, if not more so. There is a sense of assurance here, a confidence gained through years of honing his craft. Perfectly sculpted Americana-tinged acoustic guitars are bolstered but never overpowered by frenetic violin slashes while molasses-slow drums perfectly compliment the unhurried and confident instrumentation. Walker and band have got a lot of bettering to do if they'll ever top this, but going on previous form, i'm sure they will. An absorbing and rewarding listen.

TRACK LISTING

The Halfwit In Me
A Choir Apart
Funny Thing She Said
Sullen Mind
I Will Ask You Twice
The Roundabout
The Great And Undecided
Age Old Tale

Mitksi’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2014 breakout album ‘Bury Me At Makeout Creek’.

Ask Mitski about happiness and she’ll warn you: “Happiness fucks you.” It’s a lesson that’s been writ large into the New Yorker’s gritty, outsider-indie for years but never so powerfully as on her newest album, ‘Puberty 2’. “Happiness is up, sadness is down, but one’s almost more destructive than the other,” she says. “When you realize you can’t have one without the other, it’s possible to spend periods of happiness just waiting for that other wave.” On ‘Puberty 2’ that tension is palpable: a both beautiful and brutal romantic hinterland, in which one of America’s new voices hits a brave new stride.

“No one else can make shattering sound like such an act of strength.” - Stereogum

“Her songs build a quiet fury with lyrics that pulverize the heart while still making a break-up seem almost beautiful.” - Paste Magazine

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Puberty 2 is very original and distinctive in every sense. A strong element of both mixed electronic riffs and heavy guitars gives it a fierce prominent essence; it’s pieced with authentic and wistful lyrics. Her voice begins as a soft lullaby then builds into this astonishing provoked voice of passion.

TRACK LISTING

Happy
Dan The Dancer
Once More To See You
Fireworks
Your Best American Girl
I Bet On Losing Dogs
My Body’s Made Of Crushed Little Stars
Thursday Girl
A Loving Feeling
Crack Baby
A Burning Hill

Julianna Barwick’s revelatory third album, ‘Will’, is the Brooklyn experimental artist’s most surprising left turn to date. Conceived and self-produced over the past year in a variety of locations, the compelling ‘Will’ departs from the weighty lightness of 2013’s ‘Nepenthe’.

If ‘Nepenthe’ conjured images of gentle fog rolling over desolate mountains, then ‘Will’ is a late afternoon thunderstorm, a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures that sounds ominous and restorative all at once.

‘Will’ comes after Barwick’s busiest period to date in her career following ‘Nepenthe’ - a spate of activity that included playing piano for Yoko Ono, performing at the 25th annual Tibet House Benefit Concert alongside such kindred spirits as The Flaming Lips and Philip Glass, releasing the ‘Rosabi’ EP and delivering a reimagining of Bach’s ‘Adagio’ from Concerto In D Minor.

Her life over the past several years has largely been lived in transit and as such the genesis of ‘Will’ was not beholden to location; Barwick reflects on this cycle of constant motion. “You’re constantly adjusting, assimilating, and finding yourself in life-changing situations.” That sense of forward propulsion is largely owed to ‘Will’s synth-heavy textures, an ingredient she was inspired to add to her vocal loop-heavy formula after demoing a new prototype analogue sequencer for Moog.

Another new wrinkle ‘Will’ introduces in Barwick’s sound: Mas Ysa’s Thomas Arsenault, who lends his richly complex vocals to ‘Same’ and ‘Someway’.

The beguiling, beautifully complicated ‘Will’ is the latest proof yet of Barwick’s irresistibly engaging talent as a composer and vocalist.

Julianna has recently collaborated with Moog and MoMa, lending her prestige as both a musician and artist as a whole.

TRACK LISTING

St. Apolonia
Nebula
Beached
Same
Wist
Big Hollow
Heading Home
Someway
See, Know

Destroyer's Poison Season opens swathed in Hunky Dory strings. Dan Bejar’s a dashboard Bowie surveying four wracked characters—Jesus, Jacob, Judy, Jack—simultaneously Biblical and musical theatre. This bittersweet, Times Square-set fanfare is reprised twice more on the record—first as swaying, saxophone-stoked “street-rock” and then finally as a curtain-closing reverie.

Broadway Danny Bejar dramatically switches scenes with “Dream Lover,” all Style Council strut and brassy, radio-ready bombast (echoes of The Boo Radleys’ evergreen earworm “Wake Up Boo!”). This being Destroyer, its paramours-on-the-run exuberance is judiciously spiked by his deadpan delivery: “Oh shit, here comes the sun…”

Like the other DB, Mr. Bejar has long displayed a chameleonic instinct for change while maintaining a unified aesthetic (rather than just pinballing between reference points). No two records sound the same, but they’re always uniquely Destroyer. His latest incarnation often appears to take sonic cues from a distinctly British (usually Scottish, to be precise) strain of sophisti-pop: you might hear traces of Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout, Orange Juice, or The Blow Monkeys. These songs merge a casual literary brilliance with intense melodic verve, nimble arrangements, and a certain blue-eyed soul sadness.

Playfully rueful, “Sun in the Sky” foregrounds cryptic lyrical dexterity over pop-classicist strum before gradually left-fielding into rhythmically supple, delirious avant-squall. It’s as if Talk Talk took over a Lloyd Cole show. Originally released on a collaborative EP with electronic maestros Tim Hecker and Loscil (the latter’s drones are retained here), a retooled “Archer on the Beach” suggests Sade swimming in The Blue Nile, smooth-jazz marimba melancholy dilated by ecstatic ambience. Flecked in heady dissonance, elusively alluring, Dan hymns its eponymous “impossible raver on your death bed” while implicitly beckoning the listener: “Careful now, watch your step, in you go.”

That’s Poison Season in essence: familiar yet mysterious, opaquely accessible. Arch, for sure, but ultimately elevatory.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: After the incredible Kapputt, Destroyer change style again but crucially Keep The Tunes!

TRACK LISTING

1 Time Square, Poison Season
2 Dream Lover
3 Forces From Above
4 Hell
5 The River
6 Girl In A Sling
7 Times Square
8 Archer On The Beach
9 Midnight Meet The Rain
10 Solace's Bride
11 Bangkok
12 Sun In The Sky
13 Time Square Poison Season II

Night Beds, the musical project of 26-year-old Colorado Springs native Winston Yellen, received much acclaim for his 2013 debut album, Country Sleep, scoring plaudits for its tortured take on alt country and Yellen’s soaring vocals. But Yellen has always been much more than another singer-songwriter. “When Country Sleep came out, I had never made songs like that before,” explains Yellen, who currently splits his time between Nashville and Los Angeles. “That was a departure for me. That wasn’t my bread and butter.” The charismatic, enticingly unhinged Yellen had been living in a house that used to belong to Johnny Cash and the atmosphere had taken an effect, but after finishing that album and before Country Sleep was even released, Yellen began experimenting with the kind of melancholic, neon-tinged R&B that makes up the mesmerising Ivywild.

Dark Bird Is Home, the fourth album from The Tallest Man On Earth, doesn’t feel like it came from one time, one place, or one tape machine. The songs and sounds were captured in various countries, studios, and barns, and they carry a weather-worn quality, some dirt and some grit.

Early in Dark Bird, toward the end of the opening track, we hear other voices and sounds backing Kristian Matsson’s own. One of them, later credited in the liner notes with Angel Vocals, shows up several times throughout the record, adding new color to the familiar palette. And so the story grows and expands. That first song has horns and a piano, keyboards, synthesizers, and other modern noisemakers . . . and by track two you’ve got The Tallest Man on Earth as full-throttle rock and roll.

While Dark Bird is The Tallest Man at his most personal and direct, deeper and darker than ever at times, it’s also an album with strokes of whimsy and the scent of new beginnings — which feels fresh for The Tallest Man on Earth, and well timed. Reliably, the melodies and arrangements are sturdy and classic, like old cars and tightly wound clocks. The lyrics and their delivery are both comforting and alarming, like tall trees and wide hills.

The other musicians and layers on this recording put a wide lens on familiar themes. Fear and darkness, sleep or lack of it, dreams in the dark and in the light. Moving, leaving, going. Distance and short stops, long straight lines, temporal places. More hopefully, a grateful nod to a traveling partner, a healing mind. Maybe a little forgiveness needed. Definitely some things to forget.

TRACK LISTING

01. Fields Of Our Home
02. Darkness Of The Dream
03. Singers
04. Slow Dance
05. Little Nowhere Towns
06. Sagres
07. Timothy
08. Beginners
09. Seventeen
10. Dark Bird Is Home

Noctilucence is a new EP from the prolific artist Mark McGuire, it's the second release from him this year and comes off the back of the critically acclaimed LP Along The Way. Noctilucence was recorded between in 2013 and 2014 between Los Angeles, California, and McGuire's home of Cleveland, Ohio.

"Noctilucence" is the 12 minute centerpiece of the EP, a sprawling and expansive track which might be the most ambitious track McGuire has ever released.

The term "noctilucence" comes from "noctilucent clouds", the name given to clouds which, for some reason, emit a brilliant vibrance at night. On this recording we find our subject diving into the electric waters of the night sky, in long drives across the vast deserts of America. It's a recording about the discovery and understanding of the shadow, entrance to the realm not controlled by the light of day, or the logic of reason. It's about confronting nocturnal terrors and all of those things that go bump in the night. Understanding that the ancient archetypes which watch over us don't flinch, and stand firm across the spell of time.

On Along The Way McGuire sought the Macrobes for guidance, and on Noctilucence we see them taking real shape. Opening with a mantra to the perpetual regeneration of the spirit of love, crying out for new levels of confidence and consciousness to emerge from the human race, Noctilucence is a deep stare into the infinite eye of the shimmering night sky of the future, and all it holds in its gaze.

Like the wild goose the Portland-based trio are named after, the members of Greylag have all undertaken amazing journeys, migrating as if by homing instinct from different parts of the US to create a self-titled debut album that’s the latest must-have slice of verdant, far-reaching Americana.

‘Greylag’ is rich in melody, mood and detail with a range that mirrors the distance between their individual birthplaces, creating a personal twist on some timeless musical traditions, embracing electric and acoustic with a sound that’s both subtle and forceful.

Bear In Heaven’s new album is aptly titled ‘Time Is Over One Day Old’. It’s a record with a visceral relationship to time and its processes. Where invulnerability and ambition can support you as you grow, at some point they become dead weight and being true to yourself means casting them off, starting anew. This plays out as a powerful analogy for the band across the arc of their career.

They’ve always made intriguing records, here especially. It’s easy to see why musicians fall hard for this band. They entice and envelop you. Any ‘Bear In Heaven’ song will most likely greet you with a provocative beat, textural synthesizers and unassuming but adeptly supportive bass and guitar, all exquisitely arranged and glistening. Jon Philpot’s high, smooth, strong voice is so tightly wound into the music that it can be easy to overlook the lyrics, Bear In Heaven’s capacious third dimension. Philpot is a centre seeking, contemplative writer who captures the fleeting thoughts that underscore our emotional lives, the interactions with the world that are both difficult to express and anathema in daily conversation.

While all of this can be said of any Bear In Heaven album, each varies wildly in tone and approach. 2007’s ‘Red Bloom Of The Boom’ is ambitious and experimental. ‘Beast Rest Forth Mouth’ (2009) was a pivotal record that still feels important, seductive and intense. On their 2012 album ‘I Love You, It’s Cool’ the structural and musical ideas are challenging and masterfully developed. For ‘Time Is Over One Day Old’, we witness the band once again turning their gaze inward and prioritizing their evocative abilities in line with or even slightly ahead of technical skills. It feels very much in the tradition of BRFM in that way. It’s beautiful; it’s moving.

Here Philpot and partner Adam Wills are more deeply collaborative than ever. This album is darker at times, louder than their others; it feels personal and direct. ‘If I Were To Lie’ places Wills’ bass groove front and centre, ‘Demon’ is riveting and propulsive in spite of its dark pointed lyric and ‘They Dream’ dissolves into three and a half minutes of deeply satisfying ambient synth work in its second half. Wills has always been the band’s anchor, providing rock solid, rhythmic bass lines and guitars that blur the boundaries of Philpot’s synth. Though in moments such as the final track ‘You Don’t Need The World’ Wills cuts through with an audacious, biting guitar hook. It’s a great culmination of the album’s sense of release. This album isn’t about being dark, it’s about releasing darkness and frustration.

When bands age well, their vitality takes shape. They wear but with intention. They trim excesses. Throughout this album one can hear a band at peace with themselves. They’ve learned to cut back on that which is merely impressive and to concentrate on simply what is crucial. For Philpot this is about making something lasting. “A lot of shedding, getting rid of layers and preconceptions… breaking up with old ways of thinking, old ways of being, starting to look at this thing in a new way and finding something positive.” The result is a record that will stay with you.

Mixed by Nicolas Vernhes (Deerhunter, Matthew Dear, Wild Nothing, War On Drugs).

TRACK LISTING

Autumn
Time Between
If I Were To Lie
They Dream
The Sun And The Moon And The Stars
Memory Heart
Demon
Way Off
Dissolve The Walls
You Don’t Need The World

White Hinterland (aka Casey Dienel) returns with her most confident and assured album yet.

A deep, dark heady mix of songs, Dienel set forth to subvert the existing power structure of male producer as Svengali and female artist as figurehead.

For ‘Baby’ Dienel worked with friends and acclaimed musicians Sean Carey (Bon Iver), Neal Morgan (Joanna Newsome, Bill Callahan) and Cole Kamen-Green (Beyonce).

Her life-long love of R&B and gospel comes to the fore, complementing and contrasting the sharp dynamic shifts, booming drums and blasts of brass.

Already getting a very strong response at radio and with lots of great reviews lined up, this is sure to be White Hinterland’s moment to shine.

Produced by JC/DC and recorded at their studio in Vancouver earlier this summer, ‘Five Spanish Songs’ features musical contributions from Nicolas Bragg, David Carswell, John Collins, Stephen Hamm, and Josh Wells.

Destroyer’s Dan Bejar writes: “It was 2013. The English language seemed spent, despicable, not easily singable. It felt over for English; good for business transactions, but that’s about it. The only other language I know is Spanish, and the only Spanish songs I really know are those of Sr. Chinarro, led by Antonio Luque. I've been a decades-long fan of how he conducted his affairs, his strange words, his melodies that have always felt so natural (this is important), his bitter songs about painting the light. Something about them, I knew I could do it...”

Dead Oceans is proud to announce signing Strand of Oaks, currently about to embark on an extensive European tour to promote the Darker Shores EP, (a welcomed follow-up to last year's LP, Dark Shores). After long spells supporting both The Tallest Man On Earth and Phosphorescent, Strand of Oaks takes his newly informed sound to Europe for a headlining tour, plus London and Nijmegen dates with Damien Jurado and a stop at End of the Road Festival on September 1. Plan to see this powerful two-piece live.

Darker Shores is a collection of songs that continues to reveal itself. Its path leads back to the vintage synthesizers used to create a unique journey into the human experience. Beyond the bleak and uncertain lies a solace and comfort that comes when songs achieve their highest possible potential. These songs represent both a definite ending and an undeniable new beginning. Hope you enjoy the journey.

All of the songs the Strand of Oaks writes are based on true stories. Lovers get divorced, murder John Belushi’s drug dealer, go bowling with mythical giants, watch their youth slip away and commune with John F. Kennedy’s illegitimate son. Obviously, Timothy Showalter (who is Strand of Oaks) has allowed himself many liberties with what constitutes the truth, and his commingling of fact and fiction, of humor and heartbreak simultaneously distinguishes him from the bearded, acoustic-toting singer-songwriters he’s so easily compared to: immerse yourself in a Strand of Oaks record and confessionals turn into metaphor, autobiography transferred into tall tales.

‘Stitches’, the new album from Califone, touches on all permutable definitions of the word - sewing together, loops, yarn, abdominal pain. Archetypes and mythological figures rub shoulders with bruised civilians throughout this odyssey.

Intimate timbres - garage sale drum machines, slack guitar strings, hushed vocals - offset the album’s cinematic inclinations. The listener moves through a landscape of Old Testament blood and guts, spaghetti Western deserts and south western horizons, zeroing in on emotions and images that cannot be glanced over.

TRACK LISTING

Movie Music Kills A Kiss
Stitches
Frosted Tips
Magdalene
Bells Break Arms
Moonbath.brainsalt.a.holy.fool
Moses
A Thin Skin Of Bullfight Dust
We Are A Payphone
Turtle Eggs / An Optimist

Produced by Jacob Portrait (Unknown Mortal Orchestra), an the appropriately named The Cave studio, ‘Stills’ follows the once Denver-based band’s 2011 self-titled debut for Dead Oceans, and singles spread across labels like Forest Family and Mexican Summer.

After moving back to their hometown of Chicago last year, drummer Craig Nice and singer / guitarist Andy R looked to their teenage selves for inspiration. “I started listening again to the stuff I would have in my Discman in the back of my mom’s car,” says Nice. “White Zombie, Marilyn Manson - the production on those records is so amazing. Nothing sounds like that anymore.”

TRACK LISTING

Human Nature
Spew
Simple
Bad Apple
New To It
Obey Me
Heave
G.I.D.
Falling Out
Waste Your Art

On the heels of three well-received singles comes ‘Ride Your Heart’, the bombastic debut album by LA band Bleached.

Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin match their ability to blend a mix of freewheeling 1977 punk with vintage sunny Southern California melodic rock and roll, creating blindingly bright hooks and dark heartfelt lyrics about love, loss, and the crazy fun moments in between. That’s the goal - the sugary and sour, repurposed by two aggressively harmonic musicians and songwriters.

The band’s first single, ‘Next Stop’, epitomizes this movement - fun, raw, adventurous and free. Tossing you out onto the dancefloor, hair mussed from make-outs, cigarette still dangling from your fingertips.

Raised deep in the San Fernando Valley, their suburban isolation nurtured the girls’ creativity, as they started making their own music at a young age. Sneaking into punk shows over the hill in Hollywood, they grew up to become teenage underground staples at all-ages downtown DIY venue The Smell. “Me and Jen were punk kids who weren’t taught how to play instruments,” says Jessie. “We taught ourselves how to play, out in the garage.”

Eventually signing to Kill Rock Stars and Post Present Medium, their all girl punk band Mika Miko drew international acclaim, landing slots on tours with No Age, Black Lips, and The Gossip.

Bleached originally formed when the Clavin sisters resolved to continue working with each other after the break up of Mika Miko. Plans were postponed when the sisters joined other bands. Jennifer relocated to New York and toured extensively. With Jennifer away, Jessie began to play with various bands in LA. But in the fleeting moments they found together back home, the songs that became Bleached’s early 7” singles came together.

Since Jennifer moved back to her hometown, Bleached now serves as both girls’ chief creative outlet. “I was going crazy being in someone else’s band,” remarked Jennifer. “Me and Jessie are so proud and happy to be able to focus on our own music, together.”

As a whole, the twelve tracks on ‘Ride Your Heart’ reveal the many facets of Bleached’s music in a delicious vortex of playful harmonies, tangled guitars, and golden noise. Each song brings a new element, while also imbibing the classic moods of bands as varied and iconic in nature as The Ramones and The Cars, to The Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac.

From the syncopated backbeat and two-part chorus of ‘Dead In Your Head’, the rolling riffs and sparkling melodies of ‘Searching Through The Past’ and the pulsating energy and urgency of ‘Dreaming Without You’ and ‘Outta My Mind’, Bleached take you on a sweeping emotional roller coaster that churns and burns. ‘Ride Your Heart’ is a thrilling, beating, glorious wall of sound strong enough to withstand its own impact.

Animator, opens with ‘Montuno’, a 9-minute account of a hallucination about the repetition of days, the split seconds that define us, and the strangeness of the certainty of death.

There's something almost supernatural to the feel of this album: “‘Animator’ is supposed to be some weird resuscitation. The animator’s job is to create the semblance of movement in things that cannot move themselves. The musician’s is to make us feel like something is happening with a sound,” explains singer and multi-instrumentalist Jessie Stein.

Recorded and produced at the Treatment Room by band member and experimental brass player Pietro Amato, and mixed by Jace Lasek of The Besnard Lakes at his Breakglass Studios in the band’s hometown of Montreal, ‘Animator’ is a cathartic sophisticated collection of songs.

As melodically compelling as it is artistically rich, ‘Animator’ is intuitive, seductive, moody and textural. It slowly unfolds its beauty and trusts the listener to stay with it.

TRACK LISTING

Montuno
Fifty Fifty
The Quiet Way
Face
Your Name’s Mostly Water
Earth Turner
Talking Mountains
Traces
Crimes Machine
Channeling

‘Onwards To The Wall’ packs every bit of the searing sonic maelstrom listeners have come to expect from A Place To Bury Strangers. Yet, the adroit songcraft that’s always been there is brought more the fore, pop hooks are repurposed and more instantly recognizable.

Now joined by bassist Dion Lunadon, formerly of The D4, in whom the band have found a crucial companion in pulling timeless melodies from their jet engine textures.

Standout ‘So Far Away’ takes all the pure pop perfection of The Box Tops’ ‘The Letter’ and shoots it through with a barely-harnessed dark energy and snarling propulsion. The title track carries a similar balance of classic, 60s pop hooks and doomed-out vibes, employing a boy-girl vocal trade off that’s at once both sexy and menacing.

A handful of contemporary bands are currently exploring the new limits of loud. And here, A Place To Bury Strangers prove that they have not only been leading that charge for some time now, but that they are also evolving and maturing on those front lines.

‘Onwards To The Wall’ is a fresh, complete artistic statement. It’s a new chapter, a prelude for what awaits on the horizon. It is a taste of greatness to come.

‘The Clearing’ is Bowerbirds’ third album - a much bigger, bolder and broader record than the first two records could even hint at.

Recorded with Brian Joseph (Bon Iver) in Wisconsin.

From the first song onwards, this is a band willing to make a statement and develop all the finest moments heard on the previous two records. The band sing of the best and most important moments in life and, in turn, create new ones.

In this blistering world, these songs are the rarest sort of balm. A record sure to turn this much loved and well kept secret into one of the most acclaimed bands of 2012.

‘Wild Palms’ b/w ‘Symphony In White, No. 2’ is the first taste of new material from Sun Airway since the release of their acclaimed debut album, ‘Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier’.

Following tours with Bear in Heaven, Cults, Small Black, Lower Dens and more, the band went back into the studio and emerged with this stunning new single.

On this 7" the band's modern sounds glance backwards, with faint 80s pop melodies sneaking into the band's repertoire.

Although the sounds are lush, subtle and carefully crafted, Sun Airway once again proves the songwriting comes first, writing instantly classic pop tunes on their new single.

TRACK LISTING

Wild Palms
Symphony In White, No. 2

Destroyer is Dan Bejar from Vancouver, British Columbia. ‘Kaputt’ is his latest vision: an opulent, lyrical, game-changing masterpiece to rank with the choicest works of Sade, Scritti Politti, Simply Red and Steely Dan.

For a more contemporary touchstone, consider this album as the sad-eyed psychic cousin of GAYNGS’ smooth opus ‘Relayted’. These elaborate songs were lovingly crafted by a large studio ensemble of dedicated players; they are given fresh life on the road by an eight-piece touring band which will visit European shores for the first time this year.

‘Kaputt’ entered the Billboard chart at number 62 and received exultant hosannas from such publications as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin and The Washington Post. Pitchfork awarded it their Best New Music accolade, noting that “‘Kaputt’ feels wise. Like a mirror that actually points back at something better. ‘Kaputt’ rolls luxuriously in its own plush soft-rock grandeur, powerfully alluring and deeply sad at the same time.”

The Good Ones is a trio of Rwandan genocide survivors who play joyous, acoustic love songs written in the ancient local Kinyarwanda street dialect of their nation's capital, Kigali.

Adrien Kazigira, Stany Hitimana and Jeanvier Havugimana recorded the songs collected on "Kigali Y’ Izahabu" over the course of one summer evening on the back porch of a friend's home. The primary obstacle to recording the group was that the musicians showed up with only one guitar for two players, and that guitar was missing two strings. Hitimana ‘played bass’ on the 4-string and a beat-up acoustic was located for the second guitarist, the sullen, primary songwriter Kazigira, who interweaves intricate harmonies with cosinger Havugimana.

In a style often referred to as ‘worker songs from the streets’, these simple, direct and plaintive love songs speak more to the healing power of peace than a thousand academic treatises or preachy goodwill ambassadors ever could.

While it has only been 18 months since Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band's self-titled debut, they have traveled what feels like thousands of miles. "Where The Messengers Meet" is in real time, an expansion of the sound of the band's eponymous debut. They take the same frantic and skewed elements and stretch them out, giving them room to breathe and blossom.

Thematically, "Where The Messengers Meet" is an exercise in contrasts: the delicate and gentle, the dark and furious. Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band collects powerful compositions into one cohesive whole held together with lush production and a haunting atmosphere. They are imperceptibly inching away from an angular style influenced by Modest Mouse and Wolf Parade, instead incorporating an epic sound recalling both the modern masters such as Arcade Fire, and classic pioneers, like Pink Floyd.

Three years in the making, "Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph" marks Frog Eyes’ thunderous, frantic, fiery return. Carey Mercer also plays in the indie supergroup Swan Lake, alongside Dan Bejar (Destroyer) and Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade / Sunset Rubdown).
Informed by the likes of Scott Walker, Roxy Music, ‘Nuggets’ collections and the Everly Brothers.

On "Kairos", we find White Hinterland exploring the edges of minimal pop, accomplishing a delicate but lively seduction through deep, patient bass throbs, prismatic synth textures, and direct, intimate songs sung with an empowered gravitas. Here Casey Dienel tailors the acrobatics of her former songwriting into a slender focus, folding it into deeper grooves. Beneath the baroque arrangements and intellectual lean of Dienel's previous musical efforts was a sexiness that "Kairos" exposes, showing the artist for what she is: powerful and comfortable in her own skin, with a glittery voice weaned on pop R&B. With a sound so modern, so contemporary, "Kairos" fixes White Hinterland's gaze firmly on the future.

"Kairos" was written after Dienel and band-mate Shawn Creeden relocated to Portland, Oregon from Boston and Brooklyn, respectively. There, without regular access to a piano, the centrepiece of previous White Hinterland recordings, Dienel's writing process took on an innovative new shape. Soon she and Creeden delved excitedly into a new practice of collaboration centered around live looping, electronic and acoustic percussion, and kaleidoscopic sound, all providing a shimmery underpinning to intricate layers of Dienel's voice.  

TRACK LISTING

1. Icarus
2. Moon Jam
3. No Logic
4. Begin Again
5. Bow & Arrow
6. Amsterdam
7. Thunderbird
8. Cataract
9. Huron
10. Magnolias

Bishop Allen have been compared to many classic pop artists such as Jonathan Richman and The Kinks, but with a unique voice of their own. Principle songwriters, Justin Rice and Christian Rudder, are accomplished actors with appearances in Andrew Bujalski's 'Mutual Appreciation' and 'Funny Haha'. Rice in particular is in numerous upcoming films including 'Let Them Chirp Awhile'. The whole band appear (and play) in 'Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist' starring Michael Cera (Arrested Development, Superbad, Juno).

At a mere 20 years of age, this is Casey Dienel's second album. With echoes of Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, John Cage, Alice Coltrane and M. Ward throughout, Dienel understands the importance of hooks as well as invention – the melodies are distinct and clear throughout.