Rhiannon Giddens’ You’re the One is the Grammy- and MacArthur-winning singer, composer, and instrumentalist’s third solo studio album and her first of all original songs; her last solo album was 2017’s critically acclaimed Freedom Highway. This collection of 12 songs written over the course of Giddens’ career bursts with life-affirming energy, drawing from the folk music that she knows so deeply, as well as its pop descendants. The album was produced by Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Tank and the Bangas) and recorded at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami with a band composed of Giddens’s closest musical collaborators from the past decade alongside musicians from Splash’s own Rolodex, topped off with a horn section, making an impressive ten- to twelve-person ensemble.

Giddens made You’re the One with some of her closest musical collaborators from the past decade, including her partner, Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, plus multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell, bassist Jason Sypher, and Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu. The album features electric and upright bass, conga, Cajun and Piano accordions, guitars, a Western string section, and Miami horns, among other instruments, capturing the inclusive spirit that channels through all of her work.

"I hope that people just hear American music," Giddens says. "Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock – it's all there. I like to be where it meets organically. They're fun songs, and I wanted them to have as much of a chance as they could to reach people who might dig them but don't know anything about what I do. If they're introduced to me through this record, they might go listen to other music I've made and make some new discoveries.”

You’re the One opens with ‘Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad’, an R&B blast (complete with background "shoops" and horns) that takes a titan for inspiration. "I listened to a bunch of Aretha Franklin, and then turned to fellow Aretha-nut Dirk Powell and said, ‘Let’s write a song she might have sung!'" Giddens recalls. Her danceable, vivacious tribute to Franklin's sound is a vocal showcase, spotlighting her soaring high notes and nearly-growling low ones. Another highlight, ‘If You Don't Know How Sweet It Is', intentionally puts an edgier spin on the sass of Dolly Parton's early work.

TRACK LISTING

1. Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad
2. You’re The One
3. Yet To Be (feat. Jason Isbell)
4. Wrong Kind Of Right
5. Another Wasted Life
6. You Louisiana Man
7. If You Don’t Know How Sweet It Is
8. Hen In The Foxhouse
9. Who Are You Dreaming Of
10. You Put The Sugar In My Bowl
11. Way Over Yonder
12. Good Ol’ Cider

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 22ND ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 24TH).

To follow this September’s 20th anniversary Grammy Winning Yankee Hotel Foxtrot releases, this is a limited edition vinyl release comprising alternate versions of the album’s 11 songs, including previously unreleased takes.

Nonesuch Records releases Natalie Merchant’s Keep Your Courage, her ninth solo studio album and first of new material since 2014’s self-titled record. An eclectic album, produced by Merchant, it features two duets sung with vocalist Abena Koomson-Davis (Resistance Revival Chorus), contributions from the Celtic folk group Lúnasa and Syrian virtuoso clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, and horn arrangements by jazz trombonist Steve Davis. There are lush orchestrations throughout by seven composers including: Gabriel Kahane, Stephen Barber, Colin Jacobson, and Megan Gould. Keep Your Courage comprises nine original songs by Merchant as well as an interpretation of ‘Hunting the Wren’ by Ian Lynch of the Irish band Lankum. The vinyl LP edition of Keep Your Courage includes four bonus tracks from earlier albums, previously unreleased on vinyl.

Merchant writes in her album’s liner notes, “The songs contained within this album were written and recorded during the global pandemic that began in the winter of 2019 and is in its fifth wave as I write, in the autumn of 2022. It has been, and continues to be, a period of great flux and fear on every level: global, national, communal, familial, personal. But this is not an album about the coronavirus or the chaos it caused. For the most part, this is an album about the human heart.” She continues, “The word ‘courage’ has its root in the Latin word for heart, cor, and we see it over and over in many languages: le coeur, il cuore, o coração, el corazón. This is a song cycle that maps the journey of a courageous heart.”

Over her forty-year career Natalie Merchant has attained a place among America’s most respected recording artists. She has earned a reputation for being a songwriter of quality and a captivating stage performer and has distinguished herself as a social justice and environmental activist. Merchant began her musical career as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the pop music band 10,000 Maniacs and released one platinum, two double-platinum, and one triple-platinum records with the group: The Wishing Chair (1985), In My Tribe (1987), Blind Man's Zoo (1989), Hope Chest (1990), Our Time in Eden (1992), and 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged (1993). Merchant left the group in 1994 and has subsequently released nine albums as a solo artist with combined sales of seven million copies: Tigerlily (1995), Ophelia (1998), Natalie Merchant Live (1999), Motherland (2001), The House Carpenter’s Daughter (2003), Leave Your Sleep (2010), Natalie Merchant (2014), Paradise Is There (2015), and Butterfly (2017).

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Big Girls (feat. Abena Koomson-Davis)
2. Come On, Aphrodite (feat. Abena Koomson-Davis)
3. Sister Tilly
Side B:
1. Narcissus
2. Hunting The Wren
3. Guardian Angel
Side C:
1. Eye Of The Storm
2. Tower Of Babel
3. Song Of Himself
4. The Feast Of Saint Valentine
Side D:
1. Spring & Fall: To A Young Child (2023 Remaster)*
2. Butterfly (2023 Remaster)*
3. Giving Up Everything (2023 Remaster)*
4. Frozen Charlotte (2023 Remaster)*

*Vinyl Only Bonus Content

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was widely acclaimed as one of 2002’s best albums, appearing in year-end lists of Mojo, NME, Q, Rolling Stone, and Uncut, among many others. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot also was featured in multiple decade-end lists, with Rolling Stone naming it #3 Album of the 2000s, as well as many Greatest Albums of All Time lists, including in the NME.

Among Yankee’s inspirations was a recording Tweedy bought at Tower Records in the late 1990s, The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. As Bob Mehr points out in his new album note, the record got “deep under Tweedy’s skin.” Tweedy said in his 2017 memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), “It was as fascinating to me as anything being made by actual musicians using actual instruments… I wanted to know why it was so hypnotic to me. Why could I listen to hours of this stuff, even though I had no clue what any of them were saying. That question became the foundation for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot… the way people communicated or ultimately failed to communicate.” The album takes its title from a haunting recording of a woman repeating those words that is included in The Conet Project; that recording is sampled in the penultimate song on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, ‘Poor Places’.

“Conceptually, Tweedy had decided to focus on a big idea for the next album: the state of America. His lyrics – often distilled from scribbled pages of free verse or poetry – became a form of inquiry,” Mehr continues. Tweedy said, in 2004, “I wanted to write about the stuff right in front of my eyes, microscopically looking at America and asking questions about each little thing… How can there be all these good things and things that I love about America, alongside all of these things that I’m ashamed of? And that was an internal question, too; I think I felt that way about myself.”

Mehr says, “Exploring those questions, while weaving in strands of Eastern philosophy and bits of autobiography – Yankee lyrics would be loaded with the pained imagery of someone suffering from migraines and mental health issues – Tweedy would conjure a deep examination of both country and self.”

Describing the uncanny, strangely prescient feeling of the album, which Wilco began offering as a free stream on its website in 2001, Mehr notes: “In the wake of 9/11, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would be burdened with unintended meaning. The disc had originally been scheduled for a September 11 release. Its cover – a Sam Jones-shot image of Chicago’s twin Marina Towers angled in looming fashion – bore an eerie resemblance to the felled World Trade Center towers. And the songs – with titles like ‘Ashes of American Flags’ and ‘War on War,’ and lyrics about how ‘tall buildings shake, sad voices escape’ – took on a terrible new resonance.”

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the first Wilco release on Nonesuch Records following the band’s infamous split with Reprise (both labels are part of Warner Music Group). It was also the first release featuring the line-up of drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach joining founding members Jeff Tweedy and John Stirratt. The 2002 Sam Jones film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart documented the fraught recording and mixing process, personnel changes, and label issues.

The relationship with Nonesuch would last nearly a decade and include three more studio albums – the Grammy Award-winning A ghost is born, Sky Blue Sky, and Wilco (the album) – along with a live album and a live DVD, plus reissues of earlier records, before Wilco began its own label, dBpm. The band’s current lineup of Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Patrick Sansone, and Nels Cline has been together for nearly twenty years.

Nonesuch Records releases the first recording of Steve Reich’s Reich/Richter, performed by Ensemble intercontemporain and conducted by George Jackson. The composition was originally written to be performed with German visual artist Gerhard Richter and Corinna Belz’s film Moving Picture (946-3).

Reich describes Richter’s book Patterns, which served as source material for the film: “It starts with one of his abstract paintings from the ’90s. He scanned a photo of the painting into a computer and then cut the scan in half and took each half, cut that in half and two of the four quarters he reversed into mirror images. He then repeated this process of ‘divide, mirror, repeat’ from half to quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, all the way up to 4096th. The net effect is to go from an abstract painting to a series of gradually smaller anthropomorphic ‘creatures’ (since the mirroring produces bilateral symmetry) to still smaller very fine stripes.

“Belz described the film in terms of ‘pixels’. It begins with two-‘pixel’ stripes and the music begins with a two-sixteenth note oscillating pattern. When the film moves to four ‘pixels’, the music moves to a four-sixteenth note pattern, then to eight, and sixteen,” the composer continues. “After that, I began introducing longer note values – initially eighth notes, and later to quarter notes. By the middle of the film, when the images move from 512 to 1064 pixels, the music really slows to dotted half notes. Finally, as the ‘pixel’ count begins to diminish, the music moves back into more rapid eighths and then ending with the most intense rapid sixteenth movement.”

After more than one hundred performances of Reich/Richter at The Shed in New York in 2019, it was performed in London at the Barbican by the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Colin Currie and then in Paris at the Philharmonie, where this recording was made. The Austrian ensemble Windkraft Tirol, led by Kasper de Roo, will perform Reich/Richter on September 8 at Szentrum, Silbersaal in Schwaz, and the LA Phil New Music Group, led by Brad Lubman, performs the piece, accompanied by Richter and Belz’s film, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on April 1, 2023.

Nonesuch has recorded every new piece of music by Steve Reich since 1985, beginning with The Desert Music and continuing through 2018’s Pulse/Quartet, resulting in twenty-two albums and the two box sets Phases in 2006 and Works: 1965-1995 in 1997. The label will put out a collection of his complete works in 2023.

Reich released a book last month, Conversations, that includes dialogues with past collaborators, fellow composers, musicians, and visual artists who have been influenced by his work, including: David Lang, Brian Eno, Richard Serra, Michael Gordon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Russell Hartenberger, Robert Hurwitz, Stephen Sondheim, Jonny Greenwood, David Harrington, Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, David Robertson, Micaela Haslam, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly, Beryl Korot, Colin Currie, and Brad Lubman. Booklist said in its review, ‘Iconoclastic American composer Steve Reich is singular in his own right, and when he is in conversation with other equally iconoclastic composers, conductors, sculptors, musicians, percussionists, and video artists, sparks not only fly, they sparkle. Reich and his colleagues conduct lovely give-and-takes during which they share stories, creative approaches, and viewpoints. Reich's Conversations is the best kind of eavesdropping.’

Steve Reich has been called ‘America’s greatest living composer’ (Village Voice), ‘the most original musical thinker of our time’ (New Yorker), and ‘among the great composers of the century’ (New York Times). His music has influenced composers and mainstream musicians all over the world. Music for 18 Musicians and Different Trains have earned him two Grammy Awards, and in 2009, his Double Sextet won the Pulitzer Prize. Reich’s documentary video opera works – The Cave and Three Tales, done in collaboration with video artist Beryl Korot – have been performed on four continents. His recent work Quartet, for percussionist Colin Currie, sold out two consecutive concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London shortly after tens of thousands at the Glastonbury Festival heard Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) perform Electric Counterpoint followed by the London Sinfonietta performing his Music for 18 Musicians.

In 2012, Reich was awarded the Gold Medal in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has additionally received the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo, the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, the BBVA Award in Madrid, and the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. He has been named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Royal College of Music in London, The Juilliard School, and the Liszt Academy in Budapest, among others. ‘There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them’, states the Guardian.

Pierre Boulez founded the Ensemble intercontemporain in 1976 with the support of Michel Guy (who was France’s Minister of Culture at the time) and the collaboration of Nicholas Snowman. The Ensemble’s thirty-one soloists share a passion for twentieth and twenty-first century music. Under the artistic direction of Matthias Pintscher, the musicians work in close collaboration with composers, exploring instrumental techniques and developing projects that interweave music, dance, theater, film, video and visual arts. In collaboration with IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), the Ensemble intercontemporain is also active in the field of synthetic sound generation. New pieces are commissioned and performed on a regular basis. Resident of the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris, the Ensemble performs and records in France and abroad, taking part in major festivals worldwide.

George Jackson, winner of the 2015 Aspen Conducting Prize, came to attention after stepping in at short notice with Orchestre de Paris, where he stepped in for Daniel Harding. Recent highlights include leading Ensemble intercontemporain at Festival Romaeuropa, the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg, and Festival D’Automne in Paris, as well as conducting the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of Opéra de Rouen and the world premiere of Tscho Theissing’s Genia with Theater an der Wien. His varied operatic experience includes performances at Opera North, Hamburg State Opera and Opera Holland Park, as well as conducting a new production of Hänsel und Gretel at Grange Park Opera.

TRACK LISTING

Reich/Richter: Opening
Reich/Richter: Patterns & Scales
Reich/Richter: Cross Fades
Reich/Richter: Ending

After 10 albums, the last five of which have gone top 10 or better, six Grammy awards, and sold-out tours around the world, The Black Keys are back: the duo, called ‘America’s Most Trusted Band’ by Stephen Colbert, and ‘One of the best rock’n’roll bands on the planet’ by Uncut, releases its eleventh studio album, Dropout Boogie, via Nonesuch Records. Dropout Boogie features collaborations with Billy F. Gibbons (ZZ Top), Greg Cartwright (Reigning Sound), and Angelo Petraglia (Kings of Leon).

Dropout Boogie is released one day before the twentieth anniversary of The Black Keys’ first album, The Big Come Up. As they have done their entire career, the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney wrote all of the material in the studio, and the new album captures a number of first takes that hark back to the stripped-down blues rock of their early days making music together in Akron, Ohio basements.

“That’s always been the beauty of the thing Pat and I do. It’s instant,” Auerbach says. “We’ve never really had to work at it. Whenever we’d get together, we’d just make music, you know? We didn’t know what we were going to do, but we’d just do it and it would sound cool. It’s the natural chemistry Pat and I have. Being in a band this long is a testament to that. It was a real gift that we were given. I mean, the odds of being plopped down a block-and-a-half from each other in Akron, Ohio – it just seems crazy.”

After hashing out initial ideas as a duo at Auerbach’s Nashville-based Easy Eye Sound studio, Auerbach and Carney welcomed new collaborators Billy F. Gibbons, Greg Cartwright, and Angelo Petraglia to the Dropout Boogie sessions. Although The Black Keys previously co-wrote songs with frequent producer/collaborator Danger Mouse, this is the first time they have invited multiple new contributors to work simultaneously on one of their own albums. Both Cartwright and Petraglia can be heard on the new album’s first single, ‘Wild Child’.

“Living in Nashville and making records here has opened both of our minds to that experience a little bit more,” said Auerbach. “I knew Pat would love working with both of these guys, so we decided we’d give it a shot. It was the first time we’d ever really done that. It was fun as hell. We just sat around a table with acoustic guitars and worked out a song ahead of time.” “The cool thing with Greg is that he wants to approach stuff with a story in mind – there’s a plot, almost,” added Carney.

The Black Keys had previously jammed with ZZ Top guitar legend Billy F. Gibbons more than a decade ago in Los Angeles, while ZZ Top was working on an album with producer Rick Rubin. “We never even really wrote one song – we just had some ideas we put down,” Carney said. “We really just wanted to hang out with him. We stayed in touch, and Dan invited him to the studio once we started working on this album.”

Between the duo’s albums, Auerbach, through his Easy Eye Sound studio and label, has produced and co-written with artists including Yola, Marcus King, Robert Finley, Ceramic Animal, and the Velveteers.

Carney has also been busy as a producer at his Nashville-by-way-of-Akron studio Audio Eagle, where he has worked with Michelle Branch, Tennis, Jessy Wilson, Calvin Johnson, and The Sheepdogs, among others.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The inimitable Black Keys return for their sleekest and most groove-filled outing yet. Funky af, swimming with the spirit of southern rock and hazy rock and/or roll.

El Camino was produced by Danger Mouse and The Black Keys and was recorded in the band’s then-new hometown of Nashville during the spring of 2011. The Black Keys won three awards at the 55th annual GRAMMY Awards for El Camino – Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album – among other worldwide accolades. In the UK, the band was nominated for a BRIT Award (Best International Group) and an NME Award (Best International Band). The week of release, the band performed on Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, and the Late Show with David Letterman, and later that year, went on to perform their first Madison Square Garden show.

Rolling Stone, which featured the band on their cover around the release, hailed El Camino for bringing ‘raw, riffed-out power back to pop’s lexicon,’ and called it ‘the Keys’ grandest pop gesture yet, augmenting dark-hearted fuzz blasts with sleekly sexy choruses and Seventies-glam flair.’ The Guardian said, ‘They sound like a band who think they've made the year's best rock'n'roll album, probably because that's exactly what they've done.’

In the newly written liner notes for El Camino (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), David Fricke says:
The story of the Black Keys' seventh album, named after an automobile, long out of fashion and featured nowhere in the artwork, begins on a sidewalk in the middle of a blizzard. On the afternoon of January 9, 2011, singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney stood on the pavement outside the Bowery Hotel in New York City, saw the weather turning vicious, looked at each other and came to the same decision: They had to get off the road.

The night before, the duo scored another first in a season getting crowded with them: The Black Keys' debut appearance on Saturday Night Live, performing ‘Howlin' for You’ and ‘Tighten Up’, the breakout singles from their latest release, Brothers. Two days earlier, Brothers – the Keys' first Top 5 album, released in May 2010 – became their first Gold record, passing a half-million in sales thanks to heavy FM rotation and a near-year of gigging, now set to run deep into 2011 including a prestige slot at Coachella and victory laps in Europe and Australia.

The Keys "tried to settle down" after cancelling the tour, Carney says. But that didn't last. "I said, 'We should just make another record.' And I asked Dan if we should get Danger Mouse" – the hip-hop and modern-rock producer, real name Brian Burton, who worked on the Keys' 2008 record, Attack & Release, and co-produced ‘Tighten Up’. Auerbach and Carney did not have any new songs, but as the drummer notes, "Most of our records – we don't have material when we start. Brothers was made up in the studio."

In the UK, the record gave the band their first top 10 hit, and in the US it debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200. The band was also the #1 most played artist at Alternative and AAA radio formats for 2012 in the US. The album’s first single, ‘Lonely Boy’: reached #1 on the Alternative and AAA charts; it also entered the top 10 at Rock radio. The second single, ‘Gold on the Ceiling’, also reached #1 on Alternative radio and the third single, ‘Little Black Submarines’, reached the top 3 at Alternative radio.

El Camino has been certified Double Platinum in the US; Platinum in the UK, Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands; Triple Platinum in Australia and New Zealand; Quadruple Platinum in Canada; and Gold in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. Of the album’s singles, ‘Lonely Boy’ was certified Double Platinum in the US, nine-times Platinum in Canada, Triple Platinum in Australia, Platinum in New Zealand, and Gold in Denmark and the UK. ‘Gold on the Ceiling’ was certified Platinum in the United States, Australia, and Canada. ‘Little Black Submarines’ was certified Platinum in the United States. The Black Keys also were nominated for an MTV European Music Award in 2012.

TRACK LISTING

DISC 1: EL CAMINO (2021 REMASTER)
Side A
1. Lonely Boy
2. Dead And Gone
3. Gold On The Ceiling
4. Little Black Submarines
5. Money Maker
Side B
1. Run Right Back
2. Sister
3. Hell Of A Season
4. Stop Stop
5. Nova Baby
6. Mind Eraser

DISC 2: LIVE IN PORTLAND, ME.
(PART 1)
Side C
1. Howlin’ For You
2. Next Girl
3. Run Right Back
4. Same Old Thing
5. Dead And Gone
Side D
1. Gold On The Ceiling
2. Thickfreakness
3. Girl Is On My Mind
4. I'll Be Your Man / Your Touch
5. Little Black Submarines

DISC 3: LIVE IN PORTLAND, ME.
(PART 2)
Side E
1. Money Maker
2. Strange Times
3. Chop And Change
4. Nova Baby
5. Ten Cent Pistol
Side F
1. Tighten Up
2. Lonely Boy
3. Everlasting Light
4. She’s Long Gone
5. I Got Mine

DISC 4: BBC SESSION
Side A
1. Howlin’ For You *
2. Next Girl *
3. Gold On The Ceiling *
4. Thickfreakness *
5. I’ll Be Your Man *
6. Your Touch *
Side B
1. Little Black Submarines *
2. Dead And Gone *
3. Tighten Up *
4. Lonely Boy *
5. I Got Mine *

DISC 5: ELECTRO-VOX SESSION
Side A
1. Dead And Gone *
2. Gold On The Ceiling *
3. Howlin’ For You *
4. Lonely Boy *
Side B
1. Money Maker *
2. Next Girl *
3. Run Right Back *
4. Sister *
5. Tighten Up *

* Super Deluxe Editions Only.

The Black Keys release their tenth studio album, Delta Kream, via Nonesuch Records. The record celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards that they have loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover.

Auerbach says of the album, “We made this record to honor the Mississippi hill country blues tradition that influenced us starting out. These songs are still as important to us today as they were the first day Pat and I started playing together and picked up our instruments. It was a very inspiring session with Pat and me along with Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton in a circle, playing these songs. It felt so natural.”

Auerbach says of Delta Kream’s first single ‘Crawling Kingsnake’: “I first heard [John Lee] Hooker’s version in high school. My uncle Tim would have given me that record. But our version is definitely Junior Kimbrough’s take on it. It’s almost a disco riff!” Carney adds, "We fell into this drum intro; it's kind of accidental. The ultimate goal was to highlight the interplay between the guitars. My role with Eric was to create a deeper groove."

The music from northern Mississippi, which came to life in juke joints, has long left an imprint on the band’s music, from their cover of R.L. Burnide’s ‘Busted’ and Junior Kimbrough’s ‘Do The Romp’ on their debut album, The Big Come Up; to their subsequent signing to Fat Possum Records, home to many of their musical heroes; and to their EP of Junior Kimbrough covers, Chulahoma.

TRACK LISTING

1. Crawling Kingsnake
2. Louise
3. Poor Boy A Long Way From Home
4. Stay All Night
5. Going Down South
6. Coal Black Mattie
7. Do The Romp
8. Sad Days, Lonely Nights
9. Walk With Me
10. Mellow Peaches
11. Come On And Go With Me

Laurie Anderson’s 1982 debut album, Big Science, will return to vinyl for the first time in 30 years with a new red vinyl edition on Nonesuch Records. The release includes the re-mastered original album first released on CD for the 25th anniversary in 2007.

In the early 1980s, Laurie Anderson was already respected as a conceptual artist and composer, adept at employing gear both high-tech and homemade in her often violin-based pieces, and she was a familiar figure in the cross-pollinating, Lower Manhattan music-visual art-performance circles from which Philip Glass and David Byrne also emerged. While working on her now-legendary seven-hour performance art/theater piece United States, Part I–IV, she cut the spare ‘O Superman (For Massenet)’, an electronic-age update of 19th century French operatic composer Jules Massenet’s aria ‘O Souverain’, for the tiny New York City indie label 110 Records. In the UK, DJ John Peel picked up a copy of this very limited-edition 33⅓ RPM 7” and spun the eight-minute-plus track on BBC Radio 1. The exposure resulted in an unlikely #2 hit, lots of attention in the press, and a worldwide deal with Warner Bros. Records.

’Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!

At the time of its original release, the NME wrote of Big Science, ‘There’s a dream-like, subconscious quality about her songs which helps them work at deeper, secret levels of the psyche.’ With instrumentation ranging from tape loops to found sounds to bag pipes, Big Science anticipated the tech-savvy beats, anything-goes instrumentation and sample-based nature of much contemporary electronic and dance music. On the album’s 25th anniversary, Uncut noted, ‘The broader themes of alienation and disconnection still resonate, while Anderson’s use of loops and traditional/synthesized instrumentation is prescient.’

“In the ’70s I traveled a lot,” Anderson recounts. “I worked on a tobacco farm in Kentucky, hitchhiked to the North Pole, lived in a yurt in Chiapas, and worked on a media commune. I had my own romantic vision of the road. My plan was to make a portrait of the country. Big Science, the first part of the puzzle, eventually became part two of United States I–IV (Transportation, Politics, Money, Love). My goal was to be not just the narrator but also the outsider, the stranger. Although I was fascinated by the United States, this portrait was also about how the country looked from a distance. I was performing a lot in Europe, where American culture was simultaneously booed and cheered. But the portrait was also a picture of a culture inventing a digital world and learning to live in it. Big Science was about technology, size, industrialization, shifting attitudes toward authority, and individuality. It was sometimes alarmist, picturing the country as a burning building, a plane crash. Alongside the techno was the apocalyptic. The absurd. The everyday. It was also a series of short stories about odd characters – hatcheck clerks and pilots, preachers, drifters and strangers. There was something about Massenet’s aria ‘O Souverain’ – which inspired ‘O Superman’ – that almost stopped my heart. The pauses, the melody. “O souverain, ô juge, ô père” (O Lord, o judge, o father). A prayer about empire, ambition, and loss.”

Laurie Anderson is one of America's most renowned – and daring – creative pioneers. Her work, which encompasses music, visual art, poetry, film, and photography, has challenged and delighted audiences around the world for over 40 years. Anderson released her first album with Nonesuch Records in 2001, the critically lauded Life on a String. Her subsequent releases on the label include Live in New York (2002), Homeland (2010), the soundtrack to Anderson’s acclaimed film Heart of a Dog (2015), and her Grammy-winning collaboration with Kronos Quartet, Landfall (2018). Additionally, Anderson’s virtual-reality film La Camera Insabbiata, with Hsin-Chien Huang, won the 2017 Venice Film Festival Award for Best VR Experience, and, in 2018, Skira Rizzoli published her book All the Things I Lost in the Flood: Essays on Pictures, Language and Code, the most comprehensive collection of her artwork to date.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. From The Air
2. Big Science
3. Sweaters
4. Walking And Falling
5. Born, Never Asked

Side B
1. O Superman (for Massenet)
2. Example #22
3. Let X=X/It Tango

The Black Keys release Brothers (Deluxe Remastered Anniversary Edition), an expanded version of their watershed 2010 multi-platinum, Grammy-winning sixth studio album via Nonesuch Records, on which the record is newly available throughout the world. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Brothers will be re-released with three added bonus songs: ‘Keep My Name Outta Your Mouth’, ‘Black Mud Part II’, and ‘Chop and Change’. It will be available in three formats: a 7” box set, a 2-LP set, and a CD. This will be the first in an annual series of archival releases from the band.

Brothers, originally released on May 18, 2010, was largely recorded at the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. It was a career breakthrough for The Black Keys, receiving critical praise and earning three Grammy Awards, for Best Alternative Album, Best Rock Performance, and Best Recording Packaging for Michael Carney’s design. Upon release, Rolling Stone hailed the album ‘a masterpiece’, and Uncut named them ‘one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands on the planet’.

TRACK LISTING

Everlasting Light
Next Girl
Tighten Up
Howlin' For You
She's Long Gone
Black Mud
The Only One
Too Afraid To Love You
Ten Cent Pistol
Sinister Kid
The Go Getter
I'm Not The One
Unknown Brother
Never Gonna Give You Up
These Days
Chop And Change*
Keep My Name Outta Your Mouth**
Black Mud Part Ii**

* Previously Released On The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

** Previously Unreleased

Nonesuch releases on vinyl, for the first time, k.d. lang’s 2008 landmark album, Watershed, which represented the first time she assumed the role of producer, as well as writer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. As the title suggests, it represents a milestone in lang’s groundbreaking career.

As with any challenge she’s met in her unparalleled career, lang is a natural behind the boards in the studio. Watershed has an intimate feel and a sophisticated sound that highlights the warmth in lang’s voice, the maturity of her songwriting and the simple beauty of her arrangements. The Grammy Award-winning artist draws on her wealth of experience with an impressively wide range of genres to fashion a revealing portrait of the artist at that time. She explained that “Watershed is like a culmination of everything I’ve done – there’s a little bit of jazz, a little country, a little of the Ingénue sound, a little Brazilian touch. It really feels like the way I hear music, this mash-up of genres, and I think it reflects all the styles that have preceded this in my catalogue. I didn’t feel the need to be genre-specific because this experience felt so wide open.” The New York Times observed ‘Few singers command such perfection of pitch. Her voice, at once beautiful and unadorned and softened with a veil of smoke, invariably hits the middle of a note and remains there.’

lang recorded Watershed in Los Angeles with such longtime collaborators as keyboardist Teddy Borowiecki, guitarist David Pilch and pedal steel player Greg Leisz, plus special guests the trumpeter Jon Hassell and banjo virtuoso Noam Pikelny (The Punch Brothers).

TRACK LISTING

1. I Dream Of Spring
2. Je Fais La Planche
3. Coming Home
4. Once In A While
5. Thread
6. Close Your Eyes
7. Sunday
8. Flame Of The Uninspired
9. Johanna
10. Upstream
11. Shadow And The Frame
12. Jealous Dog

To coincide with its 20th anniversary, Clint Mansell's haunting score to Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film, Requiem for a Dream, performed by Kronos Quartet, returns to vinyl. This was Mansell’s second of several collaborations with Aronofsky, following 1997’s π, and features arrangements by David Lang of Bang on a Can.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Summer Overture
2. Party
3. Coney Island Dreaming
4. Party
5. Chocolate Charms
6. Ghosts Of Things To Come
7. Dreams
8. Tense
9. Dr. Pill
10. High On Life
11. Ghosts
12. Crimin' & Dealin'
13. Hope Overture
14. Tense
15. Bialy & Lox Conga

Side B
1. Cleaning Apartment
2. Ghosts-Falling
3. Dreams
4. Arnold
5. Marion Barfs
6. Supermarket Sweep
7. Dreams
8. Sara Goldfarb Has Left The Building
9. Bugs Got A Devilish Grin Conga

Side C
1. Winter Overture
2. Southern Hospitality
3. Fear
4. Full Tense
5. The Beginning Of The End
6. Ghosts Of A Future Lost
7. Meltdown
8. Lux Aeterna
9. Coney Island Low

Side D
1. Purple In The Morning, Blue In The Afternoon, Orange In The Evening, Green At Night
2. 30 Days To Revolutionize Your Life!!! 1-900-976-JUICE

Nonesuch Records releases the Magnetic Fields’ Quickies, a set of five vinyl EPs that features twenty-eight new short songs by Stephin Merritt, ranging in length from thirteen seconds to two minutes and thirty-five seconds. Quickies also will be available on CD.

Merritt explains his thinking behind the Quickies concept: “I’ve been reading a lot of very short fiction, and I enjoyed writing 101 Two-Letter Words, the poetry book about the shortest words you can use in Scrabble. And I’ve been listening to a lot of French baroque harpsichord music. Harpsichord doesn’t lend itself to languor. So I’ve been thinking about one instrument at a time, playing for about a minute or so and then stopping, and I’ve been thinking of narratives that are only a few lines long. Also, I had been using a lot of small notebooks, so when I reach the bottom of the page, I’ve only gone a short way. Now that I’m working on a different album, I’m enforcing a large notebook rule so that I don’t do Quickies twice in a row.”

Quickies features Merritt and other Magnetic Fields band members Sam Davol, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, and John Woo. They are joined by longtime friends and collaborators Chris Ewen, Daniel Handler, and Pinky Weitzman.

To date, Stephin Merritt has written and recorded twelve Magnetic Fields albums, including the beloved 69 Love Songs and the 2017 critically acclaimed Nonesuch box set, 50 Song Memoir, which chronicled the first fifty years of the songwriter’s life with one song per year. New York magazine called the box set ‘a celebration of Merritt’s sky-high range as a writer and a player, through the exploration of the circumstances that helped cultivate it … a delightful flip through the untold back pages of one of rock’s most singular voices, and, all in all, the best damned Magnetic Fields album in the last ten years.’ Merritt has also composed original music and lyrics for several music theatre pieces, including an off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman’s novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of public radio’s This American Life. Stephin Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Castles Of America
2. The Biggest Tits In History
3. The Day The Politicians Died

Side B
1. Castle Down A Dirt Road
2. Bathroom Quickie
3. My Stupid Boyfriend

Side C
1. Love Gone Wrong
2. Favorite Bar
3. Kill A Man A Week

Side D
1. Kraftwerk In A Blackout
2. When She Plays The Toy Piano
3. Death Pact (Let's Make A)

Side E
1. I’ve Got A Date With Jesus
2. Come, Life, Shaker Life!

Side F
1. (I Want To Join A) Biker Gang
2. Rock 'n' Roll Guy

Side G
1. You've Got A Friend In Beelzebub
2. Let's Get Drunk Again (And Get Divorced)
3. The Best Cup Of Coffee In Tennessee

Side H
1. When The Brat Upstairs Got A Drum Kit
2. The Price You Pay
3. The Boy In The Corner

Side I
1. Song Of The Ant
2. I Wish I Had Fangs And A Tail
3. Evil Rhythm

Side J
1. She Says Hello
2. The Little Robot Girl
3. I Wish I Were A Prostitute Again

Nonesuch releases the cast album for the critically acclaimed Broadway production of David Byrne’s American Utopia, with music and lyrics by David Byrne. American Utopia began as an album, also released by Nonesuch, which received a Grammy nomination and was the first by Byrne to reach #1 on the Album Chart; it was also his first to reach the Top Five on the Billboard 200 chart. The concert tour in support of American Utopia, which inspired the Broadway show, included songs from the new album along with music from Talking Heads and Byrne’s solo career. Byrne and the ensemble performed more than 150 dates in twenty-seven countries over nine months. The NME said it ‘may just be the best live show of all time.’

David Byrne’s American Utopia features David Byrne with Jacquelene Acevedo, Gustavo Di Dalva, Daniel Freedman, Chris Giarmo, Tim Keiper, Tendayi Kuumba, Karl Mansfield, Mauro Refosco, Stéphane San Juan, Angie Swan, and Bobby Wooten III; Davi Viera also performs on the album. The show’s design team includes Rob Sinclair (lighting) and Pete Keppler (sound). Karl Mansfield and Mauro Refosco are Musical Directors. Choreography and Musical Staging is by Annie-B Parson. Alex Timbers serves as Production Consultant.

Fresh off a pre-Broadway engagement at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, David Byrne’s American Utopia began performances on October 4 at the intimate Hudson Theatre on Broadway and celebrated opening night on October 20. Byrne and company perform six times a week through January 19, 2020.

David Byrne’s American Utopia is the once-in-a-lifetime Broadway event that delivers ‘an experience unlike anything else’ (Billboard) and marks a major cultural milestone in the worlds of music and theatre. Innovative pop/rock icon David Byrne (Talking Heads, Here Lies Love) shares the spotlight with a diverse ensemble of eleven musical artists from around the globe to deliver ‘a marvel of staging and motion’ (Chicago Tribune) that’s a ‘thought-provoking example of the power of live music’ (Forbes).

David Byrne's Nonesuch Records debut album, Grown Backwards, first released in 2004, makes its vinyl debut almost fifteen years later. The vinyl edition comprises the original album plus six previously unreleased tracks, including a duet with Caetano Veloso on their song ‘Dreamworld’. The double LP was mastered for vinyl by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound and pressed on 140g vinyl at Record Industry in the Netherlands and comes in a metallic sleeve.

‘It fits alongside the best of his career and adds another solid release to a solo catalog which will hopefully become more cherished in time,’ said Pitchfork in its review in 2004.

‘In 20 years, as we straighten our faces with botulism, braces, and stem cells, the album will stand up’. Mojo gave Grown Backwards four stars, finding that ‘some of Byrne's most deliciously quirky lyrics ensure an event-packed listen.’ The Guardian called the album ‘one of Byrne's most rewarding experiments yet. These are wonderful exercises in songcraft.’ The Daily Telegraph said: ‘This must surely be Byrne's most satisfying album. An unexpected delight.’ Uncut named it among the Albums of the Year, and the Sunday Times declared: ‘Really rather wonderful.’

In conjunction with The Criterion Collection’s special-edition DVD and Blu-ray release of David Byrne’s 1986 film True Stories, Nonesuch and Todomundo Records release a comprehensive soundtrack, collected for the first time in one package and in film sequence: True Stories, A Film by David Byrne: The Complete Soundtrack. David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make his sole foray into feature-film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation of what was in his own idiosyncratic mind. Byrne plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyper-realistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings.

In True Stories, Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show. Byrne calls the record “an immersive audio voyage into the little town of Virgil, Texas, in the mid-eighties.” He continues, “I always imagined that the music written for True Stories should be heard as it is in the film. It makes the most sense this way. Me singing the song that was written for John Goodman’s character, Louis Fine, always felt weird to me. It was written for that character, not for me.”

American Utopia fits hand-in-hand with Byrne’s vision for his series ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’ - an ongoing series curated by Byrne of hopeful writings, photos, music, and lectures – named for the song by the late Ian Dury. Over the last year, Byrne has been collecting stories, news, ideas, and other items that all either embody or identify examples of things that inspire optimism, such as a tech breakthrough, a musical act, a new idea in urban planning or transportation – something seen, heard, or tasted. Just as the album questions the current state of society while offering solace through song, the content of the series recognizes the darkness and complexity of today while showcasing alternatives to the despair that threatens us. 

While David Byrne has collaborated on joint releases with Eno, Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim), and most recently St. Vincent over the past decade, American Utopia is Byrne’s first solo album since, 2004’s Grown Backwards, also on Nonesuch. American Utopia morphed during the writing and recording process, beginning with longtime collaborator Eno, and eventually growing to include collaboration with producer Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, King Krule, Sampha, Savages) alongside a diverse cast of creative contributors including Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never), Jam City, Thomas Bartlett (St. Vincent producer, aka Doveman), Jack Peñate, and others. The album was recorded in New York City at David’s home studio, Reservoir Studios, Oscilloscope, XL Studios, and Crowdspacer Studio and in London at Livingston Studio 1.

Speaking about the album, Byrne said:
Is this meant ironically? Is it a joke? Do I mean this seriously? In what way? Am I referring to the past or the future? Is it personal or political?

These songs don’t describe an imaginary or possibly impossible place but rather attempt to depict the world we live in now. Many of us, I suspect, are not satisfied with that world – the world we have made for ourselves. We look around and we ask ourselves – well, does it have to be like this? Is there another way? These songs are about that looking and that asking.

This album is indirectly about those aspirational impulses. Sometimes to describe is to reveal, to see other possibilities. To ask a question is to begin the process of looking for an answer. To be descriptive is also to be prescriptive, in a way. The act of asking is a big step. The songs are sincere – the title is not ironic. The title refers not to a specific utopia, but rather to our longing, frustration, aspirations, fears, and hopes regarding what could be possible, what else is possible. The description, the discontent and the desire – I have a feeling that is what these songs touch on.

I have no prescriptions or surefire answers, but I sense that I am not the only one looking and asking, wondering and still holding onto some tiny bit of hope, unwilling to succumb entirely to despair or cynicism.

It’s not easy, but music helps. Music is a kind of model – it often tells us or points us toward how we can be.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: From what I garner from reading Byrne's comments on his newest release, he is commenting (possibly) sarcastically on the duality of American life... or possibly he wasn't. What is less ambiguous is just listening to the album, taking in the excellently written songs and the latent, wry politicism peppered throughout. It's wonderful, that's all you need to know.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Dance Like This
2. Gasoline And Dirty Sheets
3. Every Day Is A Miracle
4. Dog’s Mind
5. This Is That
6. It’s Not Dark Up Here
7. Bullet
8. Doing The Right Thing
9. Everybody’s Coming To My House
10. Here

Sonny Smith, of Sonny And The Sunsets, will release his tenth studio album, Rod For Your Love via Dan Auerbach's new label, Easy Eye Sound. The record, produced by Black Keys front man Dan Auerbach at his Nashville studio, roots itself in old-school, guitar-driven rock & roll, and is equally built for the garage and the dance floor, with big-hearted melodies and thick harmonies. "I think a lot of albums are made in reaction to the one that came directly before," says Smith, whose earlier recordings were released by labels like Fat Possum and Polyvinyl. "By the time we got to Nashville and began working with Dan, I was thinking 'let's just make a fun, guitar-driven record. I don't want to have any extracurricular stuff here. I just want it to be really pure.’” The album’s first single is ‘Pictures of You’.

Rod For Your Love was recorded at the end of a cross-country tour, and features Smith and his band firing on all cylinders, their rough edges sanded down by weeks of nightly shows. Hearing that The Arcs, Auerbach's side-project, had covered one of his own songs during their own tour, Smith reached out to the Black Keys singer. From there studio time was booked, and when Smith wound up finishing his countrywide tour in Nashville, he and his road band tracked the album at Auerbach's studio. The result is a deeply personal album, filled with heart-of-sleeve songwriting, which shines a light on the songs and the band, without many overdubs or assorted clutter.

Nonesuch Records releases Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet’s "Landfall". The piece, which was inspired by Anderson’s experience of Hurricane Sandy, is the first collaboration between the iconic storyteller/musician and the groundbreaking string quartet, who perform together on the recording. "Landfall" juxtaposes lush electronics and strings with Anderson’s powerful descriptions of loss, from water-logged pianos to disappearing animal species to Dutch karaoke bars. Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson have performed Landfall at commissioning presenters Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Adelaide Festival, Barbican Centre, Montclair State University, Perth International Arts Festival, Stanford Live, and the University of Texas at Austin, among other venues. The New York Times said the piece’s presentation at Brooklyn Academy of Music ‘set the auditorium awash in elegiac string sounds and postmillennial gloom. Performed by the composer and the tirelessly innovative Kronos Quartet, the work, written in New York during that epic storm, often resembled the flotsam bobbing on the receding floodwaters, with poignant snippets and small treasures.

‘(Anderson) doesn’t just tell stories; she draws out every word with a kind of physical pleasure, tasting its flavor as she probes the everyday mysteries of life. Those mysteries – and the nature of language itself – were at the heart of Anderson’s Landfall, a riveting, gorgeous new multimedia work that she premiered this weekend … in collaboration with the equally venerable Kronos Quartet.’ – Washington Post.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson blend together their venerable talents in this emotive and impeccably realised suite of ambient modern-classical and visceral spoken word. Superb.

Shannon & The Clams will release their fifth studio album, Onion, via Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound label. The album features the lead single, ‘The Boy’, with a video directed by Ryan Daniel Browne, described by Noisey as ‘a sparkling, hook-laden track that immediately gets under your skin with its wall-of-sound chorus, rife with crisp guitar strums, cascading riffs, and raw harmonies led by vocalist-guitarist Cody Blanchard.’ Onion, produced by The Black Keys front man Dan Auerbach at his Nashville studio, finds a finely tuned and tour-tested band stretching out from the 60s-inspired, surf inflected rock that has defined their previous releases, and delves into genres including soul and psychedelic pop. On their new LP, the band explores themes of origin and self-determination, loss and recovery, and the power of community to heal after tragedy. “It’s okay for people to interpret the songs,” Shannon Shaw says. “You can put your own story into it if that helps you heal. I just want people to feel something, whatever it is.” Recently, the band has been confirmed as openers for the 20-date Easy Eye Sound Revue Tour, with Dan Auerbach, Shannon Shaw, and Robert Finley.

‘Shannon Shaw and Cody Blanchard trick out warped Fifties-Sixties rock driven by space-age thrift-shop keyboards, shimmy-shake dance grooves and sexy moonlit vocals – Shaw's woozy Amy Winehouse-isms are backlit by Blanchard's shrieky falsetto.’ – Rolling Stone.

‘Shannon Shaw’s star is certain to ascend dramatically in 2018.’ – Mojo.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Boy
2. It's Gonna Go Away
3. Backstreets
4. If You Could Know
5. I Never Wanted Love
6. Onion
7. Did You Love Me
8. Love Strike
9. I Leave Again
10. Tryin'
11. Tell Me When You Leave
12. Strange Wind
13. Don't Close Your Eyes

Crack-Up is Fleet Foxes’ long awaited and highly anticipated third album. It comes six years after the 2011 release of Helplessness Blues and nearly a decade since the band’s 2008 self-titled debut. 

All eleven of the songs on Crack-Up were written by Robin Pecknold. The album was co-produced by Pecknold and Skyler Skjelset, his longtime bandmate, collaborator, and childhood friend. Crack-Up was recorded at various locations across the United States between July 2016 and January 2017: at Electric Lady Studios, Sear Sound, The Void, Rare Book Room, Avast, and The Unknown. Phil Ek mixed the album, at Sear Sound, and it was mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound. Fleet Foxes is Robin Pecknold (vocals, multi-instrumentalist), Skyler Skjelset (multi-instrumentalist, vocals), Casey Wescott (multi-instrumentalist, vocals), Christian Wargo (multi-instrumentalist, vocals), and Morgan Henderson (multi-instrumentalist).

Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut made a profound impact on the international musical landscape, earning them Uncut’s first ever Music Award Prize, and topping numerous ‘Best of’ lists, including Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of the 2000’s and Pitchfork’s 50 Best Albums of 2008. Fleet Foxes is certified Gold in North America and Platinum in both the UK and Australia. The follow-up album Helplessness Blues was met with the same critical praise as its predecessor (Mojo five stars, Rolling Stone four stars, Pitchfork Best New Music); that album debuted at No.4 on the Billboard Top 200, went Gold in the UK, and earned the band a GRAMMY nomination.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar
2. Cassius, -
3. Naiads, Cassadies
4. Kept Woman
5. Third Of May / Ōdaigahara
6. If You Need To, Keep Time On Me
7. Mearcstapa
8. On Another Ocean (January / June)
9. Fool's Errand
10. I Should See Memphis
11. Crack-Up

Nonesuch Records releases the Magnetic Fields’ 50 Song Memoir, a five-CD/five-LP set that chronicles the 50 years of songwriter Stephin Merritt’s life with one song per year. It was produced by Stephin Merritt with additional production by Thomas Bartlett and Charles Newman. The Magnetic Fields performed the 50 Song Memoir over two nights per city, beginning November 18 & 19 at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA, and continuing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on December 2 & 3. Further dates begin in spring 2017. 50 Song Memoir is available in five-LP and five-CD editions including an extensive interview by Daniel Handler and facsimile handwritten lyrics by Merritt, and as a standalone bound book with a full-album download card.

Merritt began recording on his 50th birthday: February 9, 2015. Unlike his previous work, the lyrics on 50 Song Memoir are nonfiction – in Merritt’s words, “a mix of autobiography (bedbugs, Buddhism, buggery) and documentary (hippies, Hollywood, hyperacusis).” As he says in the album’s liner note interview with Handler, “I am the least autobiographical person you are likely to meet. I will probably not write any more true songs after this than I did before, but it’s been interesting working on it.”

In addition to his vocals on all 50 songs, Merritt plays more than one hundred instruments on 50 Song Memoir, ranging from ukulele to piano to drum machine to abacus. In concert, the music will be played and sung by a newly expanded Magnetic Fields septet in a stage set featuring 50 years of artefacts both musical (vintage computers, reel-to-reel tape decks, newly invented instruments), and decorative (tiki bar, shag carpet, vintage magazines for the perusal of idle musicians). The seven performers each play seven different instruments, either traditional (cello, charango, clavichord) or invented in the last 50 years (Slinky guitar, Swarmatron, synthesizer). The stage extravaganza will be directed by the award-winning Jose Zayas (Love in the Time of Cholera, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter).

To date, Stephin Merritt has written and recorded eleven Magnetic Fields albums, including the popular and critically acclaimed 69 Love Songs. A song from that record, ‘The Book of Love’, has been covered by Peter Gabriel and has appeared in numerous TV shows and films; notably, the Nairobi Chamber Orchestra performed the song at an official state dinner in Kenya, before Presidents Barack Obama and Uhuru Kenyatta delivered their toasts. Merritt has also composed original music and lyrics for several music theatre pieces, including an off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of public radio’s This American Life. Stephin Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes. 

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
1. ’66 Wonder Where I’m From
2. ’67 Come Back As A Cockroach
3. ’68 A Cat Called Dionysus
4. ’69 Judy Garland
5. ’70 They’re Killing Children Over There
6. ’71 I Think I’ll Make Another World
7. ’72 Eye Contact
8. ’73 It Could Have Been Paradise
9. ’74 No
10. ’75 My Mama Ain’t

Disc 2
1. ’76 Hustle 76
2. ’77 Life Ain’t All Bad
3. ’78 The Blizzard Of ’78
4. ’79 Rock’n’Roll Will Ruin Your Life
5. ’80 London By Jetpack
6. ’81 How To Play The Synthesizer
7. ’82 Happy Beeping
8. ’83 Foxx And I
9. ’84 Danceteria!
10. ’85 Why I Am Not A Teenager

Disc 3
1. ’86 How I Failed Ethics
2. ’87 At The Pyramid
3. ’88 Ethan Frome
4. ’89 The 1989 Musical Marching Zoo
5. ’90 Dreaming In Tetris
6. ’91 The Day I Finally…
7. ’92 Weird Diseases
8. ’93 Me And Fred And Dave And Ted
9. ’94 Haven’t Got A Penny
10. ’95 A Serious Mistake

Disc 4
1. ’96 I’m Sad!
2. ’97 Eurodisco Trio
3. ’98 Lovers’ Lies
4. ’99 Fathers In The Clouds
5. ’00 Ghosts Of The Marathon Dancers
6. ’01 Have You Seen It In The Snow?
7. ’02 Be True To Your Bar
8. ’03 The Ex And I
9. ’04 Cold-Blooded Man
10. ’05 Never Again

Disc 5
1. ’06 “Quotes”
2. ’07 In The Snow White Cottages
3. ’08 Surfin’
4. ’09 Till You Come Back To Me
5. ’10 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
6. ’11 Stupid Tears
7. ’12 You Can Never Go Back To New York
8. ’13 Big Enough For Both Of Us
9. ’14 I Wish I Had Pictures
10. ’15 Somebody’s Fetish

Devendra Banhart was born in Houston, Texas, and moved with his mother to her native Caracas, Venezuela, when his parents separated. The family relocated to Los Angeles during his teenage years; it was there that he learned to speak English, skateboard, and play music. Banhart first began to perform in public while attending the San Francisco Art Institute. He has since lived in New York City, Paris, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where he currently resides.

Banhart first attracted international notice with his 2002 debut album, Oh Me Oh My… The Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit – a collection of recordings he had made for himself. Subsequent albums include Rejoicing in the Hands (2004), Niño Rojo (2004), Cripple Crow (2005), and Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon (2007), and What Will We Be (2009). Mala, his Nonesuch debut, was described by Q as a ‘career-best’ and by the Wall Street Journal as his ‘most concise, hushed and winsome effort to date’. Banhart has collaborated with fellow musicians including Anohni (formerly known as Antony) and the Johnsons, Beck, Vashti Bunyan, Os Mutantes, and Vetiver. He also has performed with both Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, and was part of a David Byrne–curated concert at Carnegie Hall.

An accomplished visual artist, Banhart’s distinctive, minutely inked, often enigmatic drawings have appeared in galleries all over the world, including the Art Basel Contemporary Art Fair in Miami; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels; and Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2015 Prestel published I Left My Noodle on Ramen Street, a collection of his of drawings, paintings, and mixed media pieces. He has created the cover art for most of his records, and in 2010 his artwork and packaging for What Will We Be was nominated for a Grammy.

Ape in Pink Marble, Devendra Banhart’s ninth album, was written, produced, arranged, and recorded in Los Angeles by the singer/songwriter/guitarist with his longtime collaborators Noah Georgeson and Josiah Steinbrick, both of whom also worked on Banhart’s most recent album, Mala (2013). 

TRACK LISTING

1. Middle Names
2. Good Time Charlie
3. Jon Lends A Hand
4. Mara
5. Fancy Man
6. Fig In Leather
7. Theme For A Taiwanese Woman In Lime Green
8. Souvenirs
9. Mourner’s Dance
10. Saturday Night
11. Linda
12. Lucky
13. Celebration

Natalie Merchant’s Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings is a collection of all-new recordings that revisits Merchant’s multi-platinum solo debut, Tigerlily, originally released in 1995 following her departure from 10,000 Maniacs. 

Tigerlily was described by the New York Times in 1995 as ‘an anomaly in a music scene in which reckless female performers reign supreme’. The album sold more than five million copies worldwide and featured the popular hit singles ‘Carnival’, ‘Wonder’, and ‘Jealousy’. Paradise Is There presents the songs as they have evolved over the past two decades of live performance. Joining Merchant on the album, which she produced herself, are her long-time band members Gabriel Gordon (guitar), Jesse Murphy (bass), Uri Sharlin (piano & accordion), and Allison Miller (drums), as well as a string quartet – Scot Moore (violin), Shawn Moore (violin), Marandi Hostetter (viola), and Stanley Moore (cello) – plus Sharel Cassity (saxophone), and guest vocals by Simi Stone, Gail Ann Dorsey, and Elizabeth Mitchell.

“Tigerlily is the most significant album I’ve made because it defined me as an independent songwriter after 12 years in 10,000 Maniacs,” Merchant explains, “It also created a bond between me and an audience that has supported and sustained me for 20 years. I decided to make the Paradise Is There album and film for them, to honor the journey that we, and these songs, have all taken. Songs have new life breathed into them every time they are sung. Time has changed them as much as it has changed me.’” She continues, “I wanted to record these songs again because it seemed unfair to confine them to the way that they were performed in the studio in 1995. They are so versatile, whether I strip them bare or enhance them with strings, and they lend themselves so well to re-arrangement. There are several songs from Tigerlily – ‘Carnival’, ‘Wonder’, ‘Beloved Wife’, ‘River’, and ‘Cowboy Romance’ – that remain at the core of my live shows. They still have relevance to me and, by the response they receive, I can tell that they still resonate with my audience,” Merchant says. “I’ve spent a full year preparing this album and film, and the process gave me a chance to take the measure of everything that’s happened because of Tigerlily. The distance this music traveled once it left my hands is humbling, and I am moved by how many lives it has touched along the way.”

Merchant’s career began in 1981 when, as a college student, she joined the seminal alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs, which signed to Elektra Records in 1984. As lead vocalist, lyricist, and sometimes pianist, Merchant released six critically acclaimed studio albums with the band, including the platinum-certified In My Tribe (1987), Blind Man’s Zoo (1989), Our Time in Eden (1992), and MTV Unplugged (1993). She left the group in 1993, and in 1995 released her multi-platinum solo debut, Tigerlily, followed by the platinum Ophelia (1998) and Motherland (2001). In 2003 she independently released an album of traditional and contemporary folk music, The House Carpenter’s Daughter, which also coincided with the birth of her child. For the next seven years she lived quietly in New York’s Hudson Valley devoting herself to family and community, while taking opportunities to collaborate with other musicians and strengthen her commitment to activism and philanthropy.

In 2010, Merchant returned with a thematic double album, Leave Your Sleep, her debut for Nonesuch Records. For this meditation on childhood and mothering Merchant set 19th- and 20th century American and British children’s poetry to music. She also collaborated with award-winning children’s book illustrator Barbara McClintock for a picture book based on the album. In 2014, Nonesuch released Natalie Merchant, her sixth solo album and first of entirely original songs in 13 years, which the New York Times called a ‘set of dark, brave, thoughtful and serenely startling songs’ and the Daily Telegraph praised for the ‘intelligence of her writing, and piercing character studies that thicken with each musical brushstroke’. Merchant remains dedicated to a wide array of social justice and environmental causes. Recently, she spearheaded the making of the protest concert film Dear Governor Cuomo (2013) with New Yorkers Against Fracking, actors Mark Ruffalo and Melissa Leo, and filmmakers Jon Bowermaster and Alex Gibney, and she directed and produced SHELTER: A Concert Film to Benefit Victims of Domestic Violence (2014).

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Her finest hour, even better than 10,000 Maniacs. Possibly! Either way: superb songs, gorgeous voice. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1. San Andreas Fault
2. Beloved Wife
3. Carnival
4. River
5. The Letter
6. Where I Go
7. I May Know The Word
8. Seven Years
9. Cowboy Romance
10. Jealousy
11. Wonder 

"Here Lies Love" is a double-disc song cycle, improbably poignant, decidedly surreal, surprisingly thought provoking - about the rise and fall of the Philippines' notorious Imelda Marcos. It was conceived by David Byrne; composed by Byrne and Fatboy Slim, AKA Norman Cook; and performed by a dream cast drawn from the worlds of indie rock, alt country, R&B and pop. Byrne's taste in collaborators is as imaginative as it is impeccable, including Cyndi Lauper (who recounts, to light-hearted disco beats, Imelda's courtship with Ferdinand Marcos), Steve Earle (as the power-hungry Ferdinand), Dap-Kings vocalist Sharon Jones (recalling Imelda's introduction into New York society) and Natalie Merchant (as spurned Imelda confidante Estrella, anticipating the onset of martial law). Along with vocals turns from such stars as Tori Amos and the B-52's Kate Pierson, Byrne works with rising indie rockers St Vincent and My Brightest Diamond; New York chanteuses Nellie McKay and Martha Wainwright; and dance-music divas Roisin Murphy and Santigold. Byrne himself appears as the voice of imperialistic America on "American Troglodyte", a send-up that wouldn't have seemed out of places in Talking Heads' "True Stories".

TRACK LISTING

Disc 1
1. Here Lies Love - Feat. Florence Welch (Florence & The Machine)
2. Every Drop Of Rain - Feat. Candie Payne & St. Vincent
3. You'll Be Taken Care Of - Feat. Tori Amos
4. The Rose Of Tacloban - Feat. Martha Wainwright
5. How Are You? - Feat. Nellie McKay
6. A Perfect Hand - Feat. Steve Earle
7. Eleven Days - Feat. Cyndi Lauper
8. When She Passed By - Feat. Allison Moorer
9. Walk Like A Woman - Feat. Charmaine Clamor
10. Don't You Agree? - Feat. Roisin Murphy
11. Pretty Face - Feat. Camille
12. Ladies In Blue - Theresa Andersson

Disc 2
1. Dancing Together - Feat. Sharon Jones
2. Men Will Do Anything - Feat. Alice Russell
3. The Whole Man - Feat. Kate Pierson
4. Never So Big - Feat. Sia
5. Please Don't - Feat. Santi White (Santigold)
6. American Troglodyte
7. Solano Avenue - Feat. Nicole Atkins
8. Order 1081 - Natalie Merchant
9. Seven Years - Feat. Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond)
10. Why Don't You Love Me? - Feat. Tori Amos & Cyndi Lauper

DVD
1. Eleven Days - Feat. Cyndi Lauper
2. When She Passed By - Feat. Allison Moorer
3. Don't You Agree? - Feat. Roisin Murphy
4. Dancing Together - Feat. Sharon Jones
5. Please Don't - Feat. Santi White (Santigold)
6. Order 1081 - Feat Natalie Merchant

Another uber-hyped album from a band that deserve all the impressive praise they've rapidly garnered, this beguiling record remains unrelenting in its sheer beauty. Appetites whetted by the absolutely stunning five-track EP "Sun Giant" (which, thank the lord, is included on the second record of the lovely double-vinyl package) this soon became a nailed-on Piccadilly album of the year, happily uniting all staff with its assured accessibility. Whilst many have been swift to dismiss their sound as too derivative – doubly accusing the Foxes of committing flagrant musical theft and lacking authenticity due to the tender age of lead singer Robin Pecknold - this record can be much better understood as a group of very talented music fans/singer-songwriters crafting effortlessly stellar tracks that, yes, borrow heavily from country-rock, gospel, baroque pop and the soft A.O.R of America, Dan Fogelberg and CSNY, yet make these influences sound utterly fresh and relevant today.

TRACK LISTING

1 Sun It Rises
2 White Winter Hymnal
3 Ragged Wood
4 Tiger Mountain Peasant Song
5 Quiet Houses
6 He Doesn't Know Why
7 Heard Them Stirring
8 Your Protector
9 Meadowlarks
10 Blue Ridge Mountains
11 Oliver James

Listening to Laura Veirs is like looking up into the night sky and suddenly witnessing a meteor shower: there's something startling and magical, both intimate and awesome, about her songs. The nature-obsessed images Veirs conjures up and the mesmerising sound she creates are as indelible as the blaze of shooting stars. "Saltbreakers", her third album release in three years, is her most beautifully realised band-oriented disc yet. Produced by Tucker Martine (Decemberists, Built To Spill), it is by turns haunting, playful, tender and fierce, embracing everything from machine-driven beats, to angelic gospel choirs, to fuzzed-out guitars and driving alt-rock rhythms. "To The Country", was recorded in the Nashville cabin once occupied by June Carter and Johnny Cash, with Veirs backed by an eight-member Baptist choir, some of whom had previously performed on the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou? With its gorgeous shape notes singing, it is the stunning centrepiece of an album that is as entrancing as staring at the sea or gazing at the stars, waiting for the next one to fall.

"A Boot And A Shoe" is produced by T Bone Burnett, and includes Phillips' distinct vocals and vintage guitar sound, plus piano vamps and string arrangements by Patrick Warren, electric bass by T Bone Burnett, and drums by Jim Keltner, Jay Belarose, and Carla Azar (Autolux). The New York Times said of Phillips that she possesses 'touches of Kurt Weill via Tom Waits, and of the Beatles via Elvis Costello, all turned inward,' and that she sings 'torch songs banked down to a low but persistent simmer, evading melodrama by keeping quiet.'

Robin Holcomb is a genre-defying singer/songwriter similar in many ways to Jane Siberry, who mixes folk and classical elements in her songs and layers a jazz sheen over them. Clever, literate lyrics and vituoso piano work makes "The Big Time" another intelligent and at times daring collection featuring contributions from artists of the calibre of Bill Frisell, Kate and Anna McGarrigle and husband Wayne Horowitz. Two traditional folk songs "A Lazy Farmer Boy" and "Engine 143" are included in the twelve tracks on display here but their treatment is anything but traditional and as with most of her own compositions they feature arrangements that have an edge and intelligence about them that makes this album rather special.

To hear a major artist of the stature of Joni Mitchell reinterpret 22 of her greatest works is a true revelation. In these new orchestral arrangements her lyrics shine like diamonds and her voice, aged like a fine wine, brings out new nuances in the words. There is a symphonic dimension to the arrangements, they are both sympathetic and melodious, and this acts as the perfect foil for Joni's new look at her tremendous body of work.

Sam Phillips (aka Mrs T Bone Burnett) has made a darkly atmospheric Americana album that owes much to Gillian Welch (who sings and plays on the album) and Lucinda Williams. M Burnett and Marc Ribot play on it too, the album is always interesting as she explores the darker side of the American dream like a female Tom Waits or Johnny Dowd.