!!! [Chk Chk Chk]– Let It Blue CD/LP+MP3 (Warp)
Let It Be Blue contains 11 tracks that incorporate a multitude of styles and genres, easily becoming their most eclectic release yet. The band has taken a new approach to recording over the past two years, primarily working in the box to start, as opposed to their usual studio focused approach. The result, a prominent electronic / dance-leaning edge pervades the band’s familiar sonic motifs and songwriting, pushing the towards new dynamic limits for the New York mainstays. [Indie store exclusive blue vinyl.]
The Americans – Stand True LP (Loose Music)
Every few years, musicians arrive on the scene with an undeniably fresh approach to a tried-and-true genre. Showcasing this with unparalleled proficiency is the acclaimed Los Angeles-based Americana band The Americans. Upon hearing their sophomore studio effort Stand True it’s evident why revered producer T Bone Burnett raved, calling them, “genius twenty-first century musicians that are reinventing American heritage music for this century.’
Arcade Fire – WE CD/LP (Columbia/Sony)
WE is the new album from Canadian rock band Arcade Fire. This is the sixth Arcade Fire studio album and is made up of seven songs that speak to this moment with unique directness. Written, recorded, and released during a critical historical juncture, they are divided into two distinct sides, “I” and “WE.” If the “I” side of the record evokes and embodies our holed-up anxiety and lack of physical connection, the “WE” side captures the excitement of new possibilities and the elevating thrill of committing to one another socially and personally. Produced by Nigel Godrich, Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, WE is a 40 minute epic as much about the forces that threaten to pull us away from the people we love, as it is inspired by the urgent need to overcome them. [Indie store exclusive white vinyl with alternate gray cover.]
Aurora – The Gods We Can Touch CD/2xLP (Glassnote)
Aurora’s The Gods We Can Touch is an elegant and celestial but provocative album about shame, desire, and morality, all seen through the narrative prism of Greek mythology. In each of the album’s 15 songs we meet a different God. On “Exist For Love”, it’s Aphrodite; We also meet Persephone, queen of the damned (on “Heathens”), Morpheus (“This Could Be A Dream”) and Peitho, the personification of seduction and persuasion (“A Dangerous Thing”). “The Greeks had gods and goddesses for everything,” Aurora notes. “For anxiety, for wine, for sex… Long ago when this concept of gods and goddesses started, they were more human, more relatable, and almost touchable. Most importantly, they had flaws.”
Belle And Sebastian – A Bit Of Previous CD/LP+MP3 (Matador)
A Bit Of Previous is a classic Belle And Sebastian album preoccupied with songs and melodies that won’t leave your head and lyrics that can make you smile and ponder and sometimes be melancholic. It’s an album self-produced and recorded by Belle And Sebastian (with contributions from Brian McNeil, Matt Wiggins, Kevin Burleigh and Shawn Everett) and their most hands-on since The Boy With The Arab Strap. So, what is a A Bit Of Previous? It’s a bit of everything, and a lot of what makes Belle And Sebastian so special and enduring. It’s a band tackling the insight, experience and responsibility that come with getting older with humor and irreverence and lyrical exactitude and musical bravado. It’s one of the UK’s most beloved pop portraitists asserting themselves as an infallible source of energy and fun. [Indie exclusive alternate cover.]
Benny Sings – Beat Tape II LP (Stones Throw)
Benny Sings’ latest release Beat Tape II is the successor to Benny’s 2018 project Beat Tape, and follows his 2021 album, Music. Beat Tape II is a mixtape-style record with some of the best beats Benny has created over the years. It features wide variety of artists including JONES, Cola Boyy, Mocky, Marc Rebillet, St. Panther, Rae Khalil, Kenny Beats, GRAMMY nominee Cory Henry, the Koreatown Oddity and more.
The Black Crowes – 1972 CD/LP (Silver Arrow)
The Black Crowes return with a new collection of covers entitled 1972. The six-track set features takes on The Rolling Stones’ “Rocks Off”, Rod Stewart’s “You Wear It Well”, Little Feat’s “Easy To Slip”, T-Rex’s “The Slider”, David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream”, and The Temptations’ “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone”.
Halestorm – Back From The Dead CD/LP (Atlantic)
Halestorm has grown from a childhood dream of siblings Lzzy and Arejay Hale into one of the most celebrated rock bands of the last two decades. Produced by Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Mastodon, Alice In Chains) with co-production by Scott Stevens (Shinedown, Daughtry, New Years Day), new album Back From The Dead quickly evolved from songwriting exercises into a matter of survival for Halestorm. Lead singer Lzzy Hale says: “We started writing this album about three months B.C. (Before COVID). Once we went into lockdown and were unable to perform and tour, I fell into a dark place and something of an identity crisis. This album is the story of me carving myself out of that abyss. It is a journey of navigating mental health, debauchery, survival, redemption, rediscovery, and still maintaining faith in humanity.” [Indie store exclusive translucent red vinyl shipped late and will arrive early next week. Black vinyl is in stock now.]
The High Water Marks – Proclaimer Of Things LP (Minty Fresh)
The fourth album from The High Water Marks, a band comprised of Hilarie Sidney, co-founder of Elephant 6, one of the most influential musical collectives of the past 30 years and songwriter/drummer of The Apples In Stereo. Proclaimer of Things is a 39-minute blast of hook-laden numbers that careen and roll mightily away with jangling precision and indie rock smarts.
Ryan Hurd – Pelago LP (SME Nashville)
Released last October on CD – now available on vinyl. New release from the country music singer/songwriter.
Ibaraki – Rashomon CD/2xLP/Cassette (Nuclear Blast)
Ibaraki – the name for a terrifying Japanese demon taken from feudal legend – is more than a solo record for Trivium frontman, Matt Heafy. As he tells it, it’s the end-result of a journey to find his voice. It’s personal, it’s deep, and as he explains, its inspirations include everything from an adoration for the extremes of black metal, to the exuberant storytelling of Gerard Way, to the adventuresome worldliness of tragic bon viveur Anthony Bourdain. It’s a reflection of his multifaceted interests as well as a profound affirmation of his Japanese American identity, and one that led him to confront one of his family’s most tragic moments. [Limited edition clear w/ red, white & black splatter color vinyl.]
Ibeyi – Spell 31 CD/LP+MP3 (XL Recordings)
Ibeyi features French Afro-Cuban twin sisters Lisa-Kainde and Naomi Diaz. Performing from a young age, the daughters of famed Cuban percussionist Ánga Diaz, have released two critically acclaimed albums, a self-titled debut in 2015 and Ash in 2017. Spell 31 is their boldest offering yet, an antidote to apathy in a divided world. Ethereal, crystalized signature Ibeyi harmonies are fused with gospel, persuasive percussion, momentous deeply resonant bass, and electronic neo soul expressions, transporting us into a sublime rawness that is refined by Richard Russell’s precise hand and synthesized into astonishing clarity.
Jackson+Sellers – Breaking Point LP+MP3 (ANTI-)
Released last October on CD – now available on vinyl. Jackson+Sellers’ (the collaborative creation of singer-songwriters Jade Jackson and Aubrie Sellers) L.A.-written, Nashville-recorded album, Breaking Point is a masterclass in unexpected vocal harmonic convergence, soundtracked by raw guitars, driving drums and a singular pop-rock sound that weaves a sonic thread between ‘70s rock, ‘90s raucous roots, and modern indie pop. They exchanged lead vocals, reflecting on their own experiences of vulnerability, isolation, sensitivity, and autonomy. They drew on changes in their personal relationships, intuitively capturing each other’s personal experiences, often before they had even discussed them with each other. Jackson reflected, “This is an album that pays homage to unique, independent women who created their own path, wrote their own songs, and had their own sounds.”
Joyfultalk – Familiar Science LP+MP3 (Constellation)
Another vibrantly divergent stylistic take on the analog materiality and sensibility of electronic composer-producer Jay Crocker. Familiar Science rallies contributions from a quintet of musicians into a cosmic recombinant combo-still shot through with Joyfultalk’s singular mixing desk kinetics, but this time deep-diving into gnarled and twisted, sliced ,and diced out-jazz. Crocker draws inspiration from 1980s M-Base music, Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic funk, and more recent touchstones like The Comet Is Coming, later Tortoise, or Squarepusher’s Music Is Rotted One Note.
Mary LaRose – Out Here LP (Little (I) Music)
Forward looking jazz vocalese artist Mary LaRose leads a stellar ensemble including Jeff Lederer (clarinet), Tomeka Reid (cello), Patricia Brennan (vibes), Nick Dunston (bass) and Matt Wilson (drums) with special guests through her vocalese interpretations of the compositions of Eric Dolphy.
Brennen Leigh w/ Asleep At the Wheel – Obsessed With The West CD/LP (Signature Sounds)
On twelve all original songs, Leigh’s supple winking voice and multi-instrument fluency, her interplay with Ray Benson, and the undeniable chops of the Wheel serve up a treat on Leigh’s seventh album, Obsessed With The West. With cameos from Emily Gimble and Katie Shore, and all the players getting their moments in the sun, Leigh – a two-time winner of the Texas Music Awards Best Female Vocalist award – demonstrates on the terrific jump ‘40s rhythm and blues of “Comin’ In Hot” and the lonesome cowboy musing of “Riding Off Onto Sunset Boulevard” why Rodney Crowell and Lee Ann Womack have recorded her songs.
Jim Lindberg – Songs From The Elkhorn Trail CD/LP+MP3 (Epitaph)
On his new solo acoustic debut, Songs From The Elkhorn Trail, Jim Lindberg takes a much more introspective turn, producing an album that is at once a personal reflection of life, a testament to family and friends, and a look at the fleeting nature of those relationships, and the resulting consequences of loneliness and alienation. With many of the songs being over 25 years in the making, the album is a heartfelt look at Lindberg’s life story. His late father who passed away in 2018 of Alzheimer’s Disease is a huge inspiration for the record, having encouraged him in many aspects of his life; from buying him his first guitar to supporting him quitting his job and going on tour with Pennywise.
Ella Mai – Heart On My Sleeve CD (Interscope)
Heart On My Sleeve, Ella Mai‘s sophomore album, is finally here. When speaking about the new album, Mai shared, “I poured my whole heart into this album, more so than ever before. I am overly excited for this sophomore journey. Let’s do it all over again!” she continued. Earlier this year, Mai released “DFMU”, which was her first single in two years. The artist’s last album debuted back in 2018. The eponymous project includes some of her chart-topping hits such as “Boo’d Up” and “Trip”. “It’s still me and it’s elevated,” Mai spoke to Billboard about Heart On My Sleeve. “Just in life, I’m a different woman. I’m more mature and I’ve experienced different things than I did when I was a 23-year-old. I’m surer of myself as an artist. I’ve been able to tour the world and I think that opens your eyes up a lot more.”
Leyla McCalla – Breaking The Thermometer CD (ANTI)
Haitian American artist Leyla McCalla draws upon her experience as a bilingual multi-instrumentalist and New Orleans resident to create distinctive music that reflects both her past and present. Her new album, Breaking The Thermometer, is captivating, fueled by rich, sophisticated melodic work and intoxicating Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and the juxtaposition of voices – English and Kreyòl, personal and political, anecdotal and journalistic – is similarly entrancing, raising the dead as it shines a light on the enduring spirit of the Haitian people. McCalla isn’t just some detached observer here, though; she writes with great insight and introspection, examining her own personal journey of growth and self-discovery as she uncovers the Radio Haiti story as well as the broader understanding of what Democracy and unalienable human rights means to each of us, no matter where we’re from. [Vinyl edition due June 24.]
Midland – The Last Resort: Greetings From CD (Big Machine)
Midland likes their music straight-up. Hardcore country, the kind you find in forgotten bars in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, wherever the neon’s buzzing, but not quite dead. The Grammy-nominated trio plots a resurgence of their thick harmonies, tart lyrics, and steel guitar with The Last Resort: Greetings From. Unfiltered, they want their country 120 proof. Whether it’s a cheating song, a heartbreak ballad, or a shoot-out-the-lights romper, they savor the emotions with a gusto unseen for decades. [Vinyl due 7/08.]
Mom Jeans. – Sweet Tooth LP (Mom Jeans)
Pink & black color vinyl pressing. Sweet Tooth feels like an eternal dessert-before-dinner, a rejection of the idea that we need to suffer before we get to the good stuff.
My Idea – Cry Mfer CD/LP (Hardly Art)
The closer you are to someone, the crueler you can treat them, but if they love you, they’re inclined to forgive you. Lily Konigsberg and Nate Amos forgive each other now, but they were in a bad way when they recorded Cry Mfer – which is not to say their debut album is a sonic bum out. Cry Mfer proves you can still make pop music while spiraling. When not using the other party as an emotional punching bag, Nate and Lily used one another as a creative filter and sounding board – pushing, prodding and challenging themselves to “mess with different sounds,” harkening to, Nate says, “songwriting duos who seem to have their own language that other people don’t quite understand.” In life, as in art, they share a language, a hive mind. Cry Mfer is, true to the band’s vision, a beautiful mess of different sounds, completely and effortlessly genreless (though if pressed to label it, the band settles on “Truth Or Dare Pop”). While a milieu of myriad styles, from folk to dance, the album’s main through line is truth, regardless of how much the expression thereof may hurt. [Loser edition color vinyl.]
Night Tempo – Ladies In The City CD/LP/Cassette (Hip-O)
Night Tempo, the South Korean producer/DJ, and instrumentalist in the recent international boom of City Pop, releases his first major-label album, Ladies In The City. It includes the preceding singles, “Love Actually (featuring Crystal Tea)”, “Wonderland (featuring BONNIE PINK)”, and “Night Light (featuring Sayumi Michishige)”, as well as “Tokyo Rouge (featuring Maki Nomiya)”. [Limited-edition clear vinyl.]
Jerry Paper – Free Time LP (Stones Throw)
Free Time by Jerry Paper is a synth-pop, weird-rock, bizarro-muzak masterpiece. This playful and joyous album captures Jerry Paper’s unique persona and tells the story of their self-discovery as a nonbinary artist.
Aaron Raitiere – Single Wide Dreamer CD/LP (Dinner Time)
When a few friends offered to make a debut record on him, Nashville songwriter Aaron Raitiere simply agreed to go along with it. In the four years since that first session for what would become Single Wide Dreamer, the auspicious project has retained its casual charm even as its guest list gradually expanded. Anderson East and Miranda Lambert, who co-produced the album, now appear alongside Nashville musicians like Dave Cobb, Natalie Hemby, Ashley Monroe, and Waylon Payne, as well as Robert Randolph, Foy Vance, and Bob Weir. With a laid-back, speak-singing delivery, Single Wide Dreamer immediately conveys Raitiere’s contentment in living a low-key life. And although every song on the album could be considered a love song in its own way, what really ties them together is his observant writing, which is sometimes reflective, sometimes irreverent, but always inspired by his own experiences.
Sadurn – Radiator LP (Run For Cover)
Coke bottle clear vinyl pressing. Intimacy is manifested in every moment of Radiator, the debut album from Philadelphia’s Sadurn. This feeling of closeness, of being able to lend your every sense to one’s confessions of internal conflict, is due in large part to the circumstances under which this album was created. Much of the world fell apart in 2020, but Sadurn tucked themselves away in a Pocono’s cabin, creating and recording what would become their first full-length. Within the confines of their close quarters, passing animals as the only auditory witness to a makeshift recording studio created by moving furniture, Sadurn created an album that will break your heart and then slowly piece it back together.
Emeli Sandé – Let’s Say For Instance CD (Chrysalis)
Internationally renowned British singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé delivers the new album Let’s Say For Instance. Her first release on an independent label, Let’s Say For Instance marks a new era of Emeli’s expansive artistry after a decade on stage and on the airwaves. Exploring new sonic territory through shades of classical, disco, nostalgic R&B and more, it sees Emeli freeing herself from the expectations of others, flexing her holistic skills as a songwriter, producer, and vocalist in new, versatile ways. In her words: “‘an ode to resilience, rebirth, and renewal.” The album features the hit single “Brighter Days”, alongside fellow singles “Look What You’ve Done”, and “Family”. [Vinyl due September 9.]
John Scofield – John Scofield CD (ECM)
With a career spanning over half a century, marked by influential collaborations with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Joe Henderson as well as several dozen genre-bending leader dates, it’s striking that this is Scofield’s first ever guitar-solo recording.
Silverstein – Misery Made Me CD (UNFD)
Filled with moments of relentless energy throwing back to their punk and hardcore roots to visionary moments of modern heavy, Silverstein’s Misery Made Me fastens the group’s status as torchbearers of the scene on all fronts. It’s both intriguing and inspiring that a band – who could have merely rested on the impressive legacy they’ve already cemented – would continue to dig deep and find the inspiration to reach people in meaningful new ways. On Misery Made Me, Silverstein ultimately find themselves spring-boarding off the heights they’ve reached over the past handful of years. [Vinyl edition – including an indie store exclusive translucent blue color pressing – due July 22.]
Soft Cell – *Happiness Not Included CD/LP (BMG)
Soft Cell – legendary frontman Marc Almond and producer/instrumentalist Dave Ball – return with their fifth studio album *Happiness Not Included. It represents their first new album since they issued Cruelty Without Beauty back in 2002. One play of *Happiness Not Included reveals all the traits that fans first adored Soft Cell for: that distinctive and striking balance between light and shade, hope and despair, the personal and the universal. “In this album I wanted to look at us as a society: a place where we have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality and decency, food before the rights of animals, fanaticism before fairness and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others,” Almond notes. “But in the album, there is also a belief that there is a utopia if we can peel back the layers and understand what really matters.” Bell adds, “Recorded remotely during a world pandemic. Science fiction stories for the 21st century.”
Stand Atlantic – F.E.A.R. CD/LP (Hopeless)
Australian four-piece, Stand Atlantic are back with their third album, F.E.A.R., which includes hit single “deathwish ft. Nothing, nowhere.” and “pity party ft. Royal & The Serpent.” F.E.A.R. was born out of chaos, frustration, and uncertainty. This album is for those who don’t fit the narrative, who see the cracks and exist in-between. It serves as a reminder that when you feel expectations are walking you down the wrong path, F* Everything And Run. [Limited edition orange vinyl.]
Sunflower Bean – Headful Of Sugar CD/LP (Mom & Pop Music)
Marked by two vocalists who often take turns within a song, Sunflower Bean is an indie rock trio out of NYC. The band describes Headful Of Sugar as “an album about outsiders, searching for meaning in the desert of modern life, disillusioned but hopeful. All of the opulence we’re surrounded by is just sugar, connection to others is the real sustenance.” [Limited-edition ‘orange crush’ vinyl.]
Terror – Pain Into Power CD/LP (Pure Noise)
For two decades Terror has been relentless. The band has achieved a kind of longevity that’s exceedingly rare, managing to stay both consistently active and consistently ferocious – a feat that’s taken them from their underground roots to being one of the most legendary groups in hardcore. Now on their eighth studio album, Pain Into Power, the band have bridged the gap between their past and present, with original guitarist Todd Jones returning to the fold to produce an extraordinarily visceral record that proves Terror’s future is looking as fast, heavy, and aggressive as ever. [Indie store exclusive translucent w/ black & silver color vinyl.]
Three Days Grace – Explosions CD/LP (RCA)
Canadian rockers Three Days Grace release their seventh studio album, Explosions. Of the album, singer Matt Walst states: “In these crazy and divided times, everyone needs something to take the edge off.”
Sharon Van Etten – We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong CD/LP+MP3/Cassette (Jagjaguwar)
Sharon Van Etten has always been the kind of artist who helps people make sense of the world around them, and her sixth album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, concerns itself with how we feel, mourn, and reclaim our agency when we think the world – or at least, our world – might be falling apart. [Limited-edition marbled smoke vinyl.]
Warpaint – Radiate Like This CD/LP (Virgin)
Radiate Like This – Warpaint’s anticipated new record and their first in almost six years – arrives with its own very modern mythology intact, continuing the strange, brilliant, beautiful story of the band and quite neatly picking up where 2016’s Heads Up left off. If the previous album was the coming of age, Radiate Like This presents Warpaint mk II in all their glory, a luminous coalescence of sound and vision, an album that pulsates with ideas, energy and – most crucially – gorgeous melodies. [Indie store exclusive translucent yellow vinyl.]
Waterboys – All Souls Hill CD (Cooking Vinyl)
After blazing a trail with 2020’s critically acclaimed Good Luck Seeker, The Waterboys waste no time in delivering again with All Souls Hill. Lead track “The Liar” is a creeping, groove-laden masterpiece, taking a powerful, descriptive swipe at Trump and the lies and deceit that infest those in power. “’The Liar’ is a comment on recent and still-current events, and both the song and video speak for themselves,” says frontman Mike Scott. “All Souls Hill is mysterious, otherworldly, tune-banging and emotional,” he continues. “Its nine songs tell stories, explore dreamscapes, and cast a cold but hopeful eye on the human drama.” [Vinyl edition – including an indie store exclusive color vinyl pressing – due June 24.]
Suki Waterhouse – I Can’t Let Go CD/LP+MP3 (Sub Pop)
Nowadays, voice memos, videos, and pictures chronicle our lives in real-time. We trace where we’ve been and reveal where we’re going. However, Suki Waterhouse catalogs the most intimate, formative, and significant moments of her life through songs. You might recognize her name or her work as singer, songwriter, actress but you’ll really get to know the multi-faceted artist through her music. Memories of unrequited love, fits of longing, instances of anxiety, and unfiltered snapshots interlock like puzzle pieces into a mosaic of well-worn country, ‘90s-style alternative, and unassuming pop. She writes the kind of tunes meant to be grafted onto dusty old vinyl from your favorite vintage record store, yet perfect for a sun-soaked festival stage. These compositions comprise her debut album, I Can’t Let Go. [A limited-edition metallic gold color vinyl pressing is available.]
Your Old Droog – Time 2xLP (Nature Sounds)
The latest release from the acclaimed Brooklyn rapper, “TIME” features appearances by MF DOOM, Aesop Rock, Mick Jenkins, Elzhi, Blu, and Wiki. As the title indicates, the project is the culmination of years of work. “This is basically my debut album,” Droog explains. “Some of this material was recorded back in 2017, but I suppose the universe felt it would make more sense if it was released at another point in the future. Hence the name, TIME.”
