FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2018
Alt-J – Reduxer
Ava Luna – Moon 2
Mickey Baker – Blam
Tim Cohen – Modern World
Dave Grohl – Play
Janelle Monae – Dirty Computer
Mudhoney – Digital Garbage Since the late ’80s, Mudhoney – the Seattle-based foursome whose muck-crusted version of rock, shot through with caustic wit and battened down by a ferocious low end – has been a high-pH tonic against the ludicrous and the insipid. Thirty years later, the world is experiencing a particularly high-water moment for both those ideals. But just in time, vocalist Mark Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, bassist Guy Maddison, and drummer Dan Peters are back with Digital Garbage, a barbed-wire-trimmed collection of sonic brickbats. Arm’s raw yawp and his bandmates’ long-honed chemistry make Digital Garbage an ideal release valve for the 2018 pressure cooker. “My sense of humor is dark, and these are dark times,” says Arm. “I suppose it’s only getting darker.” Digital Garbage opens with the swaggering “Nerve Attack,” which can be heard as a nod both to modern-life anxiety and the ever-increasing threat of warfare. The album’s title comes from the outro of “Kill Yourself Live,” which segues from a revved-up Arm organ solo into a bleak look at the way notoriety goes viral. Arm says: “people really seem to find validation in the likes—and then there’s Facebook Live, where people have streamed torture and murder, or, in the case of Philando Castile, getting murdered by a cop. In the course of writing that song, I thought about how, once you put something out there online, you can’t wipe it away. It’s always going to be there—even if no one digs it up, it’s still out there floating somewhere.” Appropriately enough, bits of recent news events float through the record: “Please Mr. Gunman,” on which Arm bellows “We’d rather die in church!” over his bandmates’ careening charge, was inspired by a TV-news bubblehead’s response to a 2017 church shooting, while the ominous refrain that opens the submerged-blues of “Next Mass Extinction” calls back to last summer’s clashes in Charlottesville. Mudhoney’s core sound—steadily pounding drums, swamp-thing bass, squalling guitar wobble, Arm’s hazardous-chemical voice—remains on Digital Garbage, which the band recorded with longtime collaborator (and Digital Garbage pianist) Johnny Sangster at the Seattle studio Litho. The anti-religiosity shimmy “21st Century Pharisees” builds its case with Maddison’s woozy synths, which Arm says “add a really nice touch to the proceedings.” Digital Garbage closes with “Oh Yeah,” a brief celebration of skateboarding, surfing, biking, and the joy provided by these escape valves. “I would’ve really just loved to write songs about just hanging out on the beach, and going on a nice vacation,” says Arm. “But, you know, that probably doesn’t make for great rock.” Mudhoney, however, know what does make great rock—and the riffs and fury of Digital Garbage will stand the test of time, even if the particulars fade away. “I’ve tried to keep things somewhat universal, so that this album doesn’t just seem like of this time—hopefully some of this stuff will go away,” Arm laughs. “You don’t want to say in the future, ‘Hey, those lyrics are still relevant. Great!’”
Os Mutantes – Tudo Foi Feito
My Chemical Romance – The Black Parade Picture Disc
Parquet Courts – Wide Awake Remixes
Justus Proffit & Jay Som – Nothing’s Changed
Ural Thomas & The Pain – The Right Time
Uriah Heep – Your Turn To Remember, the Definitive Anthology 1970-1990
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2018
Jorge Ben – Big Ben
Bomb The Music Industry – Vacation
Tina Brooks – True Blue
Chicano Batman – Cycles of Existential Rhyme
Chicano Batman – Joven Navegante
Holly Cole – Temptation
Billy Gibbons – Big Bad Blues
Goo Goo Dolls – Dizzy Up The Girl
Macy Gray – Ruby
Woody Guthrie – I Saw A Sign
Lonnie Holley – Mith
Femi Kuti – One People One World
MC5 – Total Assault Singer Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson came together as the MC5 in 1965. The band performed for several years before making its first record. This set includes Kick Out The Jams (red vinyl), Back In The USA (white vinyl) and High Time (blue vinyl). The albums come in sleeves that faithfully re-create the original releases, including gatefolds for Kick Out The Jams and High Time. All three are housed in a hard slipcase with new art
The set also includes a new essay by Creem magazine founding editor/writer Jaan Uhelszki, who writes: “Turned loose on a bare stage, the MC5 were among the most awe-inspiring perpetrators of sheer bombast and rock and roll brinkmanship alive…They tore through the stuff they heard on the radio with a fierce intensity that transcended the original artists’ intent. Tunes by James Brown, Chuck Berry, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones vibrated at a higher frequency when the Motor City Five tackled them.”
Prince – Piano & A Microphone 1983 Two versions: 1) 180 gram vinyl and 2) limited edition deluxe set which is 180 gram vinyl and a CD plus an exclusive print and booklet.
Thelonious Monk – Blue Monk
Thelonious Monk – Reflections
Nas – Nasir
Pharrell – In My Mind
Marc Ribot – Songs of Resistance 1942 – 2018
Vinyl LP pressing. “Every movement which has ever won anything has had songs,” says Marc Ribot. With his new LP, Songs of Resistance 1948-2018, Ribot – one of the world’s most accomplished and acclaimed guitar players – set out to assemble a set of songs that spoke to this political moment with appropriate ambition, passion, and fury. The 11-songs on the record are drawn from the World War II anti-fascist Italian partisans, the U.S. civil rights movement, and Mexican protest ballads, as well as original compositions, and feature a wide range of guest vocalists, including Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Meshell Ndegeocello, Justin Vivian Bond, Fay Victor, Sam Amidon, and Ohene Cornelius. Over a forty-year career, Ribot has released twenty-five albums under his own name and been a beacon of New York’s downtown/experimental music scene, leading a series of bands including Los Cubanos Postizos and Ceramic Dog. Since his work with Tom Waits on 1985’s Rain Dogs album, though, he is best known to the world as a sideman, playing on countless albums by the likes of Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp, Norah Jones, the Black Keys, and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Grammy-winning collaboration Raising Sand.
Sonny Rollins – Way Out West
Slash – Living The Dream
Carla Thomas – Gee Whiz
Throbbing Gristle – Heathen Earth
Throbbing Gristle – Journey Through A Body
Throbbing Gristle – Mission of Dead Souls
Soundtrack – The Norwood Suite, music by CosmoD
Soundtrack – Wild Wild Country, music by Brocker Way
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2018
Aphex Twin – Collapse
Dorothy Ashby – Afro-Harp
Tony Bennett – Love Is Here
Blitzen Trapper – Furr 10th anniversary edition
Dennis Brown – Tracks of Life
Capital Punishment – Roadkill
Chills – Snow Bound
Dick Dale – Singles Collection
Dilly Dally – Heaven
Alejandro Escovedo – The Crossing On his scorching, cinematic new concept album ‘The Crossing’ (Sept 14 / Yep Roc), Alejandro Escovedo tells the story of two young immigrants – Salvo from Italy, and Diego from Mexico – working in a Texas restaurant in pursuit of the American dream. Mirroring Escovedo’s own experience as the child of Mexican immigrants, and drawing inspiration from his relationship with Italian co-writer Antonio Gramentieri, their journey navigates cultural identity, ancestral weight, minority rights and racism as they realize they have arrived in a different America – one that’s not as open and free as they believed it would be.
Says Escovedo: “Early on I’d play in San Marcos, San Antonio and get all these Chicano kids in denim vests and Iron Maiden patches. I remember thinking they were into us, not necessarily for the music, but for the fact that we were on stage. They loved that we were doing what we were doing.”
Escovedo crossed borders of his own for ‘The Crossing’ sessions, recording outside the US for the first time ever at a farmhouse in Villafranca, Northern Italy with the help of co-producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Gomez, Iron & Wine). Italian all-instrumental group Don Antonio – helmed by co-writer Antonio Gramentiere – bring the record’s narrative to life with their sweeping arrangements, while cameos from Kramer and The Stooges’ James Williamson serve as remin
ders that Escovedo’s punk ethos burns bright (both bands name are checked in the lyrics as well). Elsewhere on the record, alt-country pioneer Joe Ely features on both the title track and his self-penned “Silver City”, while Peter Perrett and John Perry from UK legends The Only Ones reunite for their first recording in almost 40 years on “Waiting For Me.”
First Aid Kit – Tender
Flaming Lips – Death Trippin’ At Sunrise
Flaming Lips – In A Priest Driven Ambulance
Good Charlotte – Generation RX
Guerilla Toss – Twisted Crystal
Lee Hazlewood – Cruisin’ For Surf Bunnies
Betty LaVette – 1972 Muscle Shoals Session In 1972, Bettye signed with Atlantic/Atco and was sent to the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama to record a full length album. Produced by Brad Shapiro and featuring the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, the album was supposed to originally be titled as Child of the Seventies but Atco chose to shelve the project at the time. Years later, after Bettye played her own personal recordings of the sessions for French soul music collector, Gilles Petard, he chased down the master recordings at Atlantic Records where they were thought to have been destroyed in a fire. In 1999 after obtaining the masters, he licensed the material and released it on CD in 2000 as Souvenirs through his Art and Soul label (Rhino Handmade would later reissue Child of the Seventies on CD with previously unreleased 1973 tracks).Now it is available on vinyl on the Run Out Groove label and limited to 2310 copies worldwide.
Betty’s versions of Joe Simon’s “Your Time To Cry” and John Prine’s “Souvenirs” are worth the price of admission.
Lemon Twigs – Go To School
Low – Double Negative To make Double Negative, Low reenlisted B.J. Burton, the quietly energetic and adventurous 
producer who has made records with James Blake, Sylvan Esso, and The Tallest Man on Earth in recent years while working as one of the go-to figures at Bon Iver’s home studio, April Base. Burton recorded Low’s last album, 2015’s Ones and Sixes, at April Base, adding might to many of it’s beats and squelch and frisson beneath many of it’s melodies. This time, though, Sparhawk, Parker, and bassist Steve Garrington knew they wanted to go further with Burton and his palette of sounds, to see what someone who is, as Sparhawk puts it, “a hip-hop guy” could truly do to their music. Rather than obsessively write and rehearse at home in Duluth, MN, they would often head southeast to Eau Claire, WI, arriving with sketches and ideas that they would work on for days with Burton.
Madonna – The Immaculate Collection
Mogwai – Hawk Is Howling
Willie Nelson – My Way
Robert Pollard – Waved Out
Pharoah Sanders – Thembi
Siouxsie & The Banshees – A Kiss In The Dreamhouse
Siouxsie & The Banshees – The Scream
Siouxsie & The Banshees – Superstition
Sleaford Mods – Stick In A Five EP
Richard Thomson – 13 Rivers
Tom Waits – Heartattack & Wine
Paul Weller – True Meanings
Ann Wilson – Immortal
Soundtrack – Batman Forever
Various Artists – Basement Beehive, the Girl Group Underground
Double vinyl LP pressing. Who do we become when we live our dreams? It’s all here- the high hairdos, the dreams and schemes, the tender camp, the wedding bell fantasias and chaste tragedies. Sister acts, studio receptionists, classmates, angelic voices of the 1960s; some legendary, many hidden in the basement of expired rainbows. Gathered on this deluxe double LP are 28 foiled escape attempts, now free to soar in girl group heaven.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2018
Eric Bachmann – No Recover
David Bowie – Zeroes 7″ pic disc
Gaslight Anthem – Sink or Swim
David Gilmour – On An Island
Grateful Dead – Pacific Northwest 73-74
Willie Hightower – Out of the Blue
Lenny Kravitz – Raise Vibration regular edition or picture disc
L7 – Hungry for Stink Red vinyl edition, limited to 1700 copies
Led Zeppelin – The Song Remains the Same Deluxe 4 LP set on 180 gram vinyl. 15 tracks recorded at Madison Square Garden in 1973 accompanied by a 28-page book. Produced and remastered under the supervision of Jimmy Page.
Paul McCartney – Egypt Station
Mirah – Understanding
Saint Paul & The Broken Bones – Young Sick Camelia
Screaming Trees – Sweet Oblivion
Paul Simon – In The Blue Light
Spiritualized – And Nothing Hurt
Sundial – Science Fiction
Swervedriver – Ejector Seat
Various Artists – Prince In Jazz Ten tracks listed below:
1 Nina Simone – Sign O’ the Times [Outtake]
2 Bob Belden Project Feat. Holy Cole – the Question of U
3 Clotilde Rullaud – Kiss
4 Angela Galuppo – I Feel for You
5 Ray Lema & Laurent de Wilde – Around the World in a Day
6 Herbie Hancock – Thieves in the Temple
7 Bob Belden Project Feat. Cassandra Wilson & Dianne Reeves – When Doves Cry
8 Heath Brandon – Little Red Corvette
9 Viktoria Tolstoy Feat. Lars Danielsson & Jacob Karlzon – Strollin’
10 Osunlade – Crazy You
Soundtrack – Music From the Motion Picture Go Pressed on “gopaque” yellow vinyl.
Soundtrack – True Romance Limited edition of 1700 pressed on clear with white splatter vinyl.
(Numero 074) From a basement in New Jersey, Tommy Falcone remade himself into a DIY Phil Spector. From 1962 to 1970, he founded and ran Cleopatra Records, discovered and mentored young Garden State talent, wrote songs and produced wild studio effects, and quit his day job to promote it all himself. Trained as an accordionist, Falcone had a whirlwind imagination and an omnivorous approach to genre, expressed through acts like the Centuries, the Tabbys, Johnny Silvio, the Inmates, Bernadette Carroll, the Hallmarks, Vickie & the Van Dykes, the Shandillons, Eugene Viscione, the Shoestring, and more. Cleopatra became a time-capsule of every 1960s pop style imaginable—garage rock, psychedelia, surf, girl groups, soul, novelties, exotica, even a crooner—a kaleidoscope of sound in search of the ever-elusive hit record.
Chet Baker – For Lover
2018 marks the 25th anniversary of Liz Phair’s landmark Exile in Guyville album. On May 4th, Matador Records will release Girly-Sound To Guyville, an extensive limited edition box set to celebrate the anniversary. The box set contains the first ever official release of the legendary Girly-Sound songs, which have been restored from their original three cassettes and mastered onto vinyl. It also contains a remastered double LP edition of Exile In Guyville and a 44 page book containing an extensive oral history, essays by Liz Phair and journalist Ann Powers, never before seen photographs, artwork and ephemera. Originally released in 1993, Exile In Guyville is a seminal album and a feminist landmark. Its legendary status has only grown over the years. It’s continually included in countless lists…Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest albums of all time + 100 best albums of the 90s, Pitchfork’s Top 100 albums of the 90s, etc. Numerous essays and think pieces have been written about it and the number of accolades piled on is endless. Since the release of Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair has continued to defy expectation and break barriers. She has released five albums, and is currently working on a new one with Ryan Adams. She has also composed music for television shows and received awards for that work. In November, it was announced that she would be fulfilling a longtime dream to be an author, and she received a two-book deal with Random House. Her first book will be called Horror Stories which focuses on “heartbreak, motherhood, and everything in between.” “A landmark of foul-mouthed, compromised intimacy, a tortured confessional, a workout in female braggadocio, and a wellspring of penetrating self-analysis and audacity.” – The New Yorker “Maybe the greatest work of traditional American indie rock that anyone has ever made. It’s also probably the best road-trip album of its generation and the signal of a rare talent’s arrival. It deserves to be celebrated. Let’s do that.” – Stereogum
Walter Wolfman Washington is a soulful musician of rare talent, as well as a deep thinker and hip philosopher, and his hometown is New Orleans. Walter has cut his teeth for the last 50 years playing everywhere from European festivals to bars that Google Maps will never find. New Orleans is notorious for its wildness, parades, and celebrations. New Orleans is Mardi Gras, but it’s also the uptown class of Allen Toussaint and hip style and language of Dr. John. Walter has always embodied both, but finally we have a set of songs that reflects the yin to Walter’s bring-the-party yang. This is the record that we all have known he has in him. This is the night after that party, or maybe just the after party. He’s been given free rein to express himself, and that’s special. Producer Ben Ellman has assembled a sympathetic group of musicians from keyboardists Jon Cleary and Ivan Neville to a versatile rhythm section of bassist James Singleton and drummer Stanton Moore. Soul Queen of New Orleans Irma Thomas lends her voice to a cut and matches Wolfman note for note. Those two go back a long way. Walter played guitar in Irma’s band in the late 1960s. Can you picture how much fun that might have been? And this is their first recording together. His future is his past indeed. — DAVID KUNIAN, WWOZ New Orleans/ Curator, New Orleans Jazz Museum
Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing including digital download. 2018 release. Years solidifies the point: Sarah Shook & The Disarmers have moved from getting people’s attention to commanding it. The bands’ new album-with it’s sharpened songwriting, unique perspective, deepened sound and roll-up-your-sleeves attitude-will grab you by the collar and put a defiant finger to your chest. It is resolute, blunt, and unflinching.
Anna & Elizabeth’s The Invisible Comes to Us taps into their imagination-fueled arsenal to present an extraordinary work of unique, genre-bending storytelling and sonic exploration. Lauded by many well-known musicians and widely loved for their moving minimalist arrangements, Anna & Elizabeth’s partnership pioneers new ways of presenting old songs and stories to modern audiences. Co-producer Benjamin Lazar Davis (Cuddle Magic) and legendary avant-rock drummer Jim White (The Dirty Three, Xylouris White) assist in the duo’s vision of breathing life and new perspective into the crackling and disintegrating recordings and artifacts of the past. Rarely does an album based on traditional folk music resonate so strongly in modern times.
The 20th volume of our flagship Eccentric Soul series has all the boxes checked: Gun-toting, skip-tracing record producers, child stars, rip-offs, the “World’s Greatest Bail Bondsman,” swindles, soaring falsettos, and a dwindling rust-belt cityscape offering mere glimpses of hope before the record industry escaped for the coasts. Helmed by the O’Jays Bobby Massey, Saru was a creative vortex that pulled Cuyahoga County’s greatest talent in, making a strong case for Cleveland to contend with Detroit, Philly, and Memphis as America’s soul music’s capital. Includes obscure and unknown sides from the Out of Sights, the Elements, Pandella Kelly, David Peoples, Sir Stanley, the Ponderosa Twins + 1, Ba-Roz, Bobby Dukes, and of course, the O’Jays.
There’s a riot going on. You don’t need me, or Yo La Tengo, to tell you that. These are dark times, in our heads as much as in the streets. It’s easy to lose contact with the ground. Confusion and anxiety intrude into daily life and cause you to lose your compass. There are times that call for anthems, something to lift you out of your slump and put fire in your feet. And sometimes what is needed is a balm, a sound that will wrap around you and work out the knots in your neck. For Yo La Tengo, this is a slow-motion action painting. Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew did it all themselves, in their rehearsal studio, with no engineer and no complicated equipment (John McEntire later assisted in mixing). They did not rehearse together beforehand; they turned on the recorder and let things coalesce. Songs came together over long stretches, sometimes as much as a year going by between parts. You’d never guess this, since the layers are joined with such a liquid brush. You’d imagine most of the songs had sprung forth whole, since they will enter your head that way. Within two listens you will be powerless to resist the magnetic draw of “Shades of Blue,” will involuntarily hear “She May, She Might” on your internal jukebox first thing in the morning and “Let’s Do It Wrong” late at night. While there’s a riot going on, Yo La Tengo will remind you what it’s like to dream. The sound burbles and washes and flows and billows. If records were dedicated to the cardinal elements, this one would be water. There are shimmery hazes, spectral rumbles, a flash of backward masking. You are there. And even if your mind is not unclouded–shaken, misdirected, out of words and out of time–you can still float, ride the waves of an ocean deeper than your worries, above the sound and above the Sound.
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Will Toledo always knew he would return to Twin Fantasy. He never did complete the work. Not really. Never could square his grand ambitions against his mechanical limitations. Listen to his first attempt, recorded at nineteen on a cheap laptop, and you’ll hear what Brian Eno fondly calls “the sound of failure” – thrilling, extraordinary, and singularly compelling failure. Will’s first love, rendered in the vivid teenage viscera of stolen gin, bruised shins, and weird sex, was an event too momentous for the medium assigned to record it. Early next year, on the heels of the smashing success of Teens of Denial, Car Seat Headrest will release a new version of Twin Fantasy. “It was never a finished work,” Will says, “and it wasn’t until last year that I figured out how to finish it.” He has, now, the benefit of a bigger budget, a full band in fine form, and endless time to tinker. According to him, it took eight months of mixing just to get the drums right. But this is no shallow second take, sanitized in studio and scrubbed of feeling. This is the album he always wanted to make. It sounds the way he always wanted it to sound. It’s been hard, stepping into the shoes of his teenage self, walking back to painful places. There are lyrics he wouldn’t write again, an especially sad song he regards as an albatross. But even as he carries the weight of that younger, wounded Will, he moves forward. He grows. He revises, gently, the songs we love so much. In the album’s final moments, in those apologies to future me’s and you’s, there is more forgiveness than fury. This, Will says, is the most vital difference between the old and the new: he no longer sees his own story as a tragedy. 
