‘Overstimulated’ is the highly anticipated new album from Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, and musician Miranda Joan. Co-produced by multi-instrumentalist, and bass extraordinaire CARRTOONS, the release features offerings from Sly5thAve, Hailey Niswanger, Jake Sherman, Kristine Kruta aka Lil Kruta (The Eagles), Clairo keys player Danae Greenfield and Grammy-winning bassist Ben Williams.

Simultaneously leaning into and letting go of the excessive and overstimulating, the ‘Overstimulated’ LP sees Miranda’s developed songwriting and storytelling shift into a space of contemporary Jazz and Soul. An accumulation of years of growth and development, both personally and professionally, the album was created closely alongside CARRTOONS over several months.

Overall, underpinning every aspect of ‘Overstimulated’ is friendship. Moments of acceptance and appreciation sit alongside moments of recognition for the the beauty, resilience and importance of friendships, during both joyful and difficult times. “There is as much pain in this music as there is joy, but the connective tissue of it all that stands out most to me now is perseverance. We keep going, we keep moving and we keep learning. These were my lessons, these were my challenges, and these were my joys.”

TRACK LISTING

Circle
Overstimulated
Zero Gravity Feat. Sly5thAve
Coffee
Too Much
Where Did You Go?
I’m Good
Bada Bing! Feat. CARRTOONS
Butterflies Feat. Hailey Niswanger
She Knows
Kiss A Stranger

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH 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 22ND.

The sweeping poem ‘Cofio’ by the great Welsh poet Waldo Williams has inspired a remarkable collaboration between Ibiza-based record label NuNorthern Soul, Welsh DJ, performer and cultural commentator Gareth Potter, composer and musician Joan Bibiloni, poet and actor Pep Tosar Vaquer, actor Rhys Ifans and musician James Baron aka JIM / Ron Basejam.

1st March is St Davids Day and Balearic Day. St David’s Day honours the death of the patron saint of Wales and the Day of the Balearic Islands the day when islands Ibiza, Mallorca and Menorca became an autonomous region of Spain.

Cofio Recorda Remembrance is made up of two powerful and haunting tracks drenched in NuNorthern Soul’s unique take on the globally popular Balearic Chillout style. Un Adéu features music by Joan remixed by James Baron with Pep reading the poem in Catalan and Spanish. Badia Onírica is a tremendously atmospheric reading of ‘Cofia’ in Welsh and English by Rhys with music again arranged by James.

It connects Wales and Ibiza but, on a more universal level, Cofio Recorda Remembrance links the fundamental aspects of human existence, of, as Waldo Williams puts it ‘earth’s innumerable generations’.

TRACK LISTING

A1. 'Badia Onírica' [Welsh Version]
A2. 'Badia Onírica' [English Version]
A3. 'Un Adéu' [Instrumental Version]
B1. 'Un Adéu' [Catalan Version]
B2. 'Un Adéu' [Spanish Version]
B3. 'Badia Onírica' [Instrumental Version]

Sarabeth Tucek emerges from a decade-long hibernation with a new double-album ‘Joan of All’ under the new moniker SBT – a longtime nickname given to her by the many musicians she has worked with throughout her career.

After retreating from the fevered pace of the record business to concentrate on other creative endeavors, Sarabeth began to piece together the music that would eventually become her most ambitious, personal project yet – the sprawling double-album Joan Of All, which will be released world-wide on 19th May 2023 via her own freshly-minted imprint Ocean Omen.

Sarabeth Tucek officially broke onto the music scene 2003 performing a series of spellbinding duets with Bill Callahan on the acclaimed Smog album Supper. This was swiftly followed by a memorable appearance in the prize-winning Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary DiG! Sarabeth also contributed material to their 2005 EP release, We Are the Radio. One of Sarabeth's compositions covered by the band on that EP, "Seer," would later be retitled and released in 2006 as Tucek's debut single, "Something for You”, which became Steve Lamacq’s Single Of The Week on BBC Radio 6 Music.

Her self-titled debut album produced by Luther Russell and Ethan Johns hit stores the following year and garnered rave reviews in the press, leading her to supporting Bob Dylan and unfaltering support at the BBC.

In 2011, Sarabeth followed up her extraordinary debut with a raw, uncompromising album entitled Get Well Soon, praised as an unflinching meditation on the subject of grief. This release made many year-end lists and the title track was featured on the first season of HBO’s Girls. The new album features lead-off single “The Gift”, as featured heavily on Marc Riley’s BBC 6 Music show, which is taken from the double A-side 7”, “The Gift / 13th St. #2”. Also featured on the album is an entirely different, heavier version of the flip side, entitled “13th St. #1”.

Sarabeth will support the epic Joan Of All with a 18-date tour of the UK May/June 2023, including a BBC 6 Music live session for Marc Riley.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Joan Says/Amber Shade
The Living Rool
Cathy Says
The Gift

Side B
The Box
Work
Make Up Your Mind
!3th St. #1

Side C
Swings
Happiness
Something/Anything
Sheep

Side D
The Tunnel
Unmade/The Dog
Creature Of The Night

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).



Lemonade coloured LP Vinyl. 'Warchild' charity release. - Up Your Alley, the sixth studio album from Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, will be released on Lemonade Yellow colored vinyl exclusively for Record Store Day. The Grammy nominated album, originally released in 1988, features ìI Hate Myself For Loving You,î ìLittle Liar,î and ìI Wanna Be Your Dog.î

Joan Shelley returns with "The Spur" her fi­rst new album in three years. The twelve song set is a profound meditation on light and darkness, recorded in the spring of 2021 at Earthwave Farm in the Kentucky countryside.

James Elkington serves as co-producer (alongside Shelley) and the album features collaborations with Bill Callahan, Meg Baird and the British novelist Max Porter along with Shelley’s musical partner and husband Nathan Salsburg.

Shelley says: “The Spur” is the result of a period of opposite extremes: of intellectual hyper-connection and physical isolation. This album will forever be fused with the memory of our marriage, the birth of our child, and the intense joy despite the darkness”.

"The Kentucky singer-songwriter has come to fully master a sense of radiant calm." - NPR Music.

"Her poetic imagery is dazzling" - The Guardian.

TRACK LISTING

1. Forever Blues
2. The Spur
3. Home
4. Amberlit Morning
5. Like The Thunder
6. When The Light Is Dying
7. Breath For The Boy
8. Fawn
9. Why Not Liver Here
10. Bolt
11. Between Rock & Sky
12. Completely

The follow up to Bad Reputation was Joan Jett's first record with The Blackhearts and the band gave her a tougher, more coherent sound. Their dynamic, glam rock sound gave her a worldwide hit with the classic title track "I Love Rock'n'Roll.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1 I Love Rock 'N Roll
2 (I'm Gonna) Run Away
3 Love Is Pain
4 Nag
5 Crimson And Clover
6 Victim Of Circumstance

Side B
1 Bits And Pieces
2 Be Straight
3 You're Too Possessive
4 Little Drummer Boy
5 Oh Woe Is Me
6 You Don't Know What You've Got

Of the album Joan Wasser says :
Damon Albarn introduced me to Afrobeat legend, Tony Allen, at the March 2019 Africa Express event “The Circus” and we hit it off. Tony and I played a version of Nina Simone's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free" and decided to record together. I asked my old friend and fierce musician, Dave Okumu, to join from London and that November, in a Parisian studio, we improvised all night. When the world shut down, I used those recordings to write a record entitled “The Solution Is Restless”. This first single, “Take Me To Your Leader”, is the most incendiary on the new record. I wrote it watching Jacinda Ardern, PM of New Zealand, navigate 2020. In my dreamworld, the US asks to meet her in order to learn how to better run the country. “Take me to your leader/ ‘cause I’m ready to play/ can’t hold my breath any longer/ word on the street is she’s a healer/ I’m know I’m down to obey/ and don’t we need a break in the chaos”

Tony Allen was the drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti’s band Africa '70 from 1968 to 1979, and was one of the primary co-founders of the genre of Afrobeat. Fela once stated that, "without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat” and he was described by Brian Eno as "perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived". Besides many other musical milestones and collaborations, in recent years Tony teamed up with Damon Albarn, Paul Simonon and Simon Tong to form The Good, the Bad & the Queen.

Dave Okumu is best known for fronting the Mercury Music Prize band The Invisible and more recently announcing the release of a solo album ‘Knopperz’ due for release in September.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Barbarian
2. Get My Bearings (feat. Damon Albarn)
3. Take Me To Your Leader
4. Masquerader
5. Dinner Date
6. Enter The Dragon
7. Geometry Of You
8. The Love Has Got Me
9. Perfect Shade Of Blue
10. Reaction 

Joan Shelley’s out of print 2014 album is repackaged here in a deluxe tip-on jacket and pressed on purple vinyl. Limited to 2,000 copies worldwide.

Electric Ursa was recorded out of the spotlight in Louisville, Kentucky. A quiet, 8 song record which owes much to the post-rock history of its hometown on songs like “Something Small” and “Rising Air”, while “River Low” and “Electric Ursa” hint at the brilliant Over and Even waiting just around the corner. Electric Ursa brought Shelley to the national stage. Rolling Stone noted that the songs project “a huge, resplendently pained serenity” while Pitchfork declared that while the album “isn’t [her] debut, it is her absolute arrival.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Something Small
2. Rising Air
3. First Of August
4. River Low
5. Remedios
6. Long Way To Night
7. Moss & Marrow
8. Electric Ursa

Pressed on Sea Green vinyl, packaged in a deluxe tip-on jacket, and limited to 2,000 copies worldwide.

The debut album by Joan Shelley pressed on vinyl for the first time. Originally released in 2012 and long-elusive to fans, Ginko is the starting point for Shelley, now revered for her songwriting, “dazzling poetic imagery” (The Guardian) and “radiant sense of calm” (NPR Music). Standout tracks “By The Ohio” and “Siren” show what is to come, while “Sure As Night” was her first collaboration with guitarist Nathan Salsburg.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ginko
2. Ice
3. The Pain For Your Pleasure
4. Siren
5. Sure As Night
6. Into The Sea
7. Sweet Dark-Haired Man
8. Your Doll
9. The Door
10. Unbound
11. By The Ohio

The new album from Joan As Police Woman with her incredible band, captured live in the studio in New York documenting their 2018 ‘Damned Devotion’ world tour. In a year when most of the world pressed ‘Pause’ Joan has guested on the new Gorillaz album, released her second album of covers (‘Cover Two’), written a new studio album (expected in late 2021) and finished work on ‘Live'.

Recorded live at Faraway Jazz Studios New York at the end of 2018 and mixed during lockdown, this is an oft-requested, long-awaited chance to hear Joan As Police Woman and her amazing band in all their free, live expansive glory.

Joan Wasser: “Between the time ‘Damned Devotion’ was released on Feb 14th 2018 and when we recorded the live album on November 27th, 2018 we had been on the road for a good six months. The show we presented at the first gig in Istanbul was very different from the hometown show we played in NYC upon our return. Music is a living thing that grows and morphs and fills each new space like water. This album is the record of this progression. Parker Kindred, Jacob Silver, Eric Lane and I love playing together. This fact is clear if you’ve had the chance to catch us live. Over time, we developed a trust and dedication to creating music in the moment and rolling with it as it finds new expression. Each night felt like taking a new path through an enchanted forest.

“After we’d slept off a bit of jet lag, we assembled at Robin Macmillan’s Faraway Jazz Studios. We were fortunate to be Robin’s final session due to the everchanging whims of Brooklyn landlords. We recorded our 17-song set straight through without pause. While we didn’t have our fans there to catch it in real time, we played like it was our final show of the year, which it was.

“When lockdown happened in March 2020, I rode my bike each day to Trout Recording to meet the house engineer, Adam Sachs, to mix the record. Working with these tracks, which felt so full of life, helped us get through that time. I am forever grateful to Adam for his incredible focus and dedication to the music. I’ve been asked many times to make a live album. HERE IT IS. I hope you enjoy as much as we enjoyed making it.”

TRACK LISTING

Wonderful
Warning Bell
Tell Me
Eternal Flame
Damned Devotion
Start Of My Heart
What Was It Like
Valid Jagger
Rely On
I Defy
Steed
Talk About It Later
Silly Me
Run For Love
The Silence
The Magic
Kiss (Prince)

Tim Melina Theo Bobby, Joan of Arc's final album, might be their most personal and adventurous to date, culminating the band's many inspired, divergent sounds into one self-reflective, conclusive statement. Joan of Arc always felt like an experimental intersection of its members interests. As prolific of a band as they have been, none of the albums sounded the same, none of the albums imagined themselves as too big to fail in the name of trying something new. They always felt like more of a collective than anything else. A smattering of gifted contributors, fighting their way through their own creative whims. Their shows, a type of controlled chaos.


A chaos that required a close and gentle ear, or else one might miss the delicate daggers of lyric woven into the walls of sound, the walls of slow movement. It is good to determine your own endings; for yourself, but also for the sake of whatever comes next. To have the band going out on their own terms, still steeped in their own sound—melancholic, but biting; cynical, but also witty; a sonic forest that is both comfortable, but also a little treacherous. We are used to mourning moments like this, letting go of a beloved band. But a listener can hear in this album that these people still love making music together. They’re still excited by how far they can push each other creatively. And to know that and still decide that you have given all you can give as a band is a real gift. It is better this way, to lay a project down at the feet of fans, and listeners, and have it treated with joy, and not sadness. Musicians owe growth to themselves, they owe exploration, and excitement, and eager noise-making to themselves. Whatever fans get out of that, at the end of the day, is something we should all be grateful for. And in the case of Joan of Arc, we got over two decades of it. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Destiny Revision
2. Something Kind
3. Karma Repair Kit 
4. Creature And Being
5. Land Surveyor
6. Feedback ¾
7. The Dawn Of Something
8. Cover Letter Song 
9. Rising Horizon
10. Upside Down Bottomless Pit. 

Wildly acclaimed Brooklyn songwriter Joan As Police Woman returns with her new album “Cover Two”. This is Joan’s second album re-working songs by other artists and again, Joan makes some very interesting choices. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Kiss (Prince)
2. Spread (Outkast)
3. Under Control (The Strokes)
4. Not The Way (Cass McCombs)
5. I Keep Forgettin’ (Michael Macdonald)
6. Life’s What You Make It (Talk Talk)
7. Out Of Time (Blur)
8. On The Beach (Neil Young)
9. There Are Worse Things I Could Do (Warren Casey And Jim Jacobs)
10. Running (Gil Scott-Heron) 

Much of this album was recorded in Iceland. Breath warm from singing rises into frozen air. Atomized. A million bright blue crystals — the fractal branching of the lungs — drift back to earth. Radiant, refracting. Clear notes melt like perfect soft snow. Straight lines curve and curve again.

Much of this album was recorded in Iceland, but Joan Shelley wrote these songs in Kentucky. That’s the dirt clinging to their roots. The wind blowing through Osage orange and pine trees is the joy and ache and urgency of these songs. It’s the silence and the music. It’s the space between time and words and the stillness in Joan’s voice. The world spins more slowly. Moss overtakes a fallen tree.

Kentucky is where we plant seeds of regret and stay to watch them flower.

Maybe Mark Twain said that Kentucky (always five years behind the times) was the perfect place to ride out the apocalypse. Maybe it’s twenty years. Maybe it’s apocryphal. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

“And oh, Kentucky
Stays in my mind it’s sweet to be five years behind
That’s where I’ll be
When the seas rise
Holding my dear friends and drinking wine...”

Maybe the world outside has already vaporized. Maybe we’re already living on borrowed time. Nathan Salsburg’s guitar pours out clean as water through his fingers, turning over every smooth stone. Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s harmonies stretch time tight enough to break without breaking. Joan’s voice calls us back. Birds are singing outside. Insistent. Don’t miss what’s right in front of you.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: We've had a few great country albums in in the past few weeks (either that or my country appreciation is inexplicably growing), with Lillie Mae's 'Other Girls' on Third Man last week, and now this tender beauty possibly trumping it, all shimmering guitars and soaring vocals over the balmy shimmering Americana-isms working their way underneath.

TRACK LISTING

1 Haven
2 Coming Down For You
3 Teal
4 Cycle
5 When What It Is
6 The Fading
7 The Sway
8 Awake
9 Stay All Night
10 Tell Me Something
11 High On The Mountain
12 Any Day Now

‘To Survive’ (2008) is reissued on sun / gold transparent vinyl and features the classic tracks ‘To America’ featuring Rufus Wainwright and ‘Honor Wishes’ featuring David Sylvian.

TRACK LISTING

Honor Wishes
Holiday
To Be Loved
To Be Lonely
Magpies
Start Of My Heart
Hard White Wall
Furious
To Survive
To America

Joan Wasser’s first ever career retrospective, spanning the first fifteen years of her remarkable musical output.

Includes new, rare and unreleased material alongside more than thirty of her most loved songs.

Includes two brand new recordings - ‘What A World’ and ‘Kiss’, a cover of the Prince classic and live favourite.

Features her best-loved songs ‘I Defy’ (featuring Antony), ‘To America’ (featuring Rufus Wainwright) and ‘Honor Wishes’ (featuring David Sylvian).

Released as a great value deluxe triple CD set including ‘Live At The BBC’. 

‘Live At The BBC’ presents a collection of songs recorded in session for BBC 6 Music.

TRACK LISTING

CD1
My Gurl
The Ride
Real Life
Eternal Flame
I Defy (ft Antony)
We Don’t Own It
Christobel
Honor Wishes (ft David
Sylvian)
Hard White Wall
Start Of My Heart
To America (ft Rufus
Wainwright)
To Be Lonely
The Magic
Human Condition
Run For Love
Forever And A Year

CD2
What A World
Flash
Whatever You Like
Holy City
Get Direct
Good Together
Your Song
Myrrhman (TALK TALK)
Broke Me In Two
Valid Jagger
Steed
Tell Me
Silly Me
Warning Bell
Kiss

CD3
‘Live At The BBC’
To Be Loved
Start Of My Heart
Human Condition
She Watch Channel Zero
Sacred Trickster
Holy City
The Classic
Magic Lamp
Let It Be You
The Silence
Damned Devotion
Steed

Live At The BBC’ presents a collection of songs recorded in session for BBC 6 Music.

TRACK LISTING

To Be Loved
Start Of My Heart
Human Condition
She Watch Channel Zero
Sacred Trickster
Holy City
The Classic
Magic Lamp
Let It Be You
The Silence
Damned Devotion
Steed

Brand new album from Joan As Police Woman, which sees a return to the darker, sensual sound of her celebrated early releases. Damned Devotion finds Joan Wasser at her rawest yet

The first track to be shared from the album is ‘Warning Bell’, a tender, bewitching song of regret Joan wrote about “being a romantic and the naiveté that goes along with it”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Smooth, soulful grooves interspersed with mournful minor-key melodies and flickering funked-out guitar echoes. By far the most refined and emotive JAPW outing yet, lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wonderful
2. Warning Bell
3. Tell Me
4. Steed (for Jean Genet)
5. Damned Devotion
6. The Silence
7. Valid Jagger
8. Rely On
9. What Was It Like
10. Talk About It Later
11. Silly Me
12. I Don’t Mind

Twenty years now there’s been this thing, our band, Joan of Arc. We have shifted shapes and modified our approaches quite a number of times in the course of twenty years. And we’ve done so always aiming to stay true to ourselves at that moment, by instinct and with conscious intent. This time, it took us a long time to figure out how to start back up. We threw away a lot of songs and started over, over and over. But here’s the thing: We are getting better at being ourselves. So many of the postures of youth just fall away with time. Most bands break up by that point, or become caricatures of their younger selves. Because money is tricky, or I should say, it comes to be that energy is tricky to muster after all of it goes into the basics of sustaining yourself.

Every day, at some point, it occurs to me that Richard Brautigan killed himself at the age that I am now. But I got this community of weirdo collaborators to lean on that he never had. We’ve never had an audience that gets any validation of its coolness through liking us. We’ve mangled, juxtaposed, and collaged too many elements for that social contract. But we trust each other. This time, finally, we trusted each other enough to throw all the songs away, to even throw away every preconceived idea about which one of us should take position at which instrument. We hit Record and played, and our collective tastes emerged. And they, our tastes in the moment, were the only standards in all the expanse of the stupefying and beautiful unknown universe, that we regarded as relevant in the least. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Smooshed That Cocoon
2. This Must Be The Placenta
3. Stranged That Egg Yolk
4. Full Moon And Rainbo Repair,
5. Cha Cha Cha Chakra,
6. Grange Hex Stream,
7. Two-Toothed Troll,
8. New Wave Hippies,
9. Never Wintersbone You,
10. F Is For Fake,
11. Ta-ta Terrordome.

A true collaboration from studio to stage, from two artists well known for their ability to effortlessly cross musical genres. A deeply soulful artist Joan has famously worked with Antony (Anohni), Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed and David Sylvian and Benjamin is talented multi-instrumentalist who currently performs with Okkervil River, Cuddle Magic and Bridget Kearney.

The album will be preceded by a single on September 30th - 'Broke Me In Two' -with a video featuring not only Joan and Benjamin but also Fred Armisen famous for his comedy roles in Saturday Night Live, Portlandia and Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, amongst many others.

Joan and Ben met each other after separate trips to Africa. Ethiopia for Joan as part of Damon Albarn's Africa Express, and West Africa for Lazar to study traditional music. They initially bonded over Central African Republic Pygmy musical patterns and ended up writing this album together loosely inspired by this music. In Broke Me In Two you can hear this influence in the staccato bit-crushed guitar line that plays throughout. But ultimately it's a joyous, love-soaked pop song.

Fourth original album from New York’s dazzlingly original Joan Wasser aka Joan As Police Woman, the follow up to 2011’s critically acclaimed ‘The Deep Field’.

Features fellow New Yorkers Reggie Watts and Joseph Arthur, most notably on the album’s joyful doo-wop accapella title track.

Watts can also be heard scatting at the end of ‘The Classic’s lead single ‘Holy City’, a Motown influenced number inspired by new love and a trip to Jerusalem.

Elsewhere on the album other ‘classic’ influences are audible, such as the Barry White-esque sensuality of ‘Good Together’ and the gentle reggae of album closer ‘Ask Me’.

"Life Like" is Joan Of Arc distilled down to / embracing their rock essence.

Gone from the band’s music (for now) are the electronics and layers upon layers of tracks. Gone from their liner notes are an extensive list of musicians and instruments. Instead, ‘Life Like’ is the result of four men adhering to Thoreau’s famous principle, “Simplify, simplify, simplify!”.

"Life Like" is the first Joan Of Arc record to feature Victor Villarreal (Cap’n Jazz, Owls) as a member. The album was recorded at Chicago’s Electrical Audio with Steve Albini (who has previously engineered records for two other of Joan Of Arc singer Tim Kinsella’s projects: Owls and Make Believe).

TRACK LISTING

I Saw The Messed Binds Of My Generation
Love Life
Like Minded
Life Force
Night Life Style
Howdy Pardoner
Still Life
Deep State
After Life

Pope Joan are a four-piece avant-pop band from Brighton, England. Ambient walls of processed guitar noise, furious drum lines and quirky 8-bit synth keyboards are all underpinned by an incredibly demanding pop sensibility. Now releasing their debut mini-album "Hot Water, Lines, And Rickety Machines" on Brighton based label One Inch Badge Records (O.I.B. Records); Pope Joan have created a breathless assemblage of 8 tracks recorded over one hectic weekend. This collection of songs reflects the refinement of their sound and combines unforgettable pop-hooks with the lo-fi immediacy of their raw essence. The result is a firm introduction to a band with wide-reaching ambitions and a bucketful of great ideas.

Joan Osborne's debut album "Relish" was a huge worldwide hit but her second disappered without trace. It's a case of back to basics with "How Sweet It Is" her brand new third release. This album combines soul and rock classics from such artists as Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Jimi Hendrix with contemporary soul and funk arrangements resulting in music that is familiar yet cutting edge. Osbourne has one of the best voices in the business and her interpretaions put the likes of Eva Cassidy to shame and she's on familiar territory here - every track is a well known classic and her take on them is often suprisingly successful.

One of the chorus lines goes "Fucking strangers feels better, feels better...". Yes it's more alienated introvert emo from those experimental bunch Joan of Arc. This is the follow up to the critically acclaimed "Gap" album that came out last year. At once disturbing but accessible.