Previous Week
Music Releases 01-27-23
- Sam Smith
Gloria [LP]
Video PlayARt - Quinn XCII
The People’s Champ
Video PlayARt - White Reaper
Asking For A Ride - Tyler Hubbard
Tyler Hubbard [Cobalt Blue 2LP]
Video PlayARt - The Arcs
Electrophonic Chronic [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Clear w/Black Splatter LP] - Samia
Honey [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Blue LP+Flexi Disc] - SG Lewis
AudioLust & HigherLove [2 LP] - Elle King
Come Get Your Wife [LP] - Eminem
The Eminem Show: 20th Anniversary Expanded Edition [4LP]
Video - Bob Dylan
Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997): The Bootleg Series Vol. 17 [Deluxe CD Box Set] - JW Francis
Dream House [Cream LP] - Illiterate Light
Sunburned [LP] - The Cure
Wish: 30th Anniversary Edition [LP] - Ghost
Meliora [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Deluxe Translucent Yellow 2LP] - Bass Drum Of Death
Say I Won’t [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Ivory LP] - Avril Lavigne
Let Go: 20th Anniversary Edition [LP] - Marvin Gaye
Greatest Hits Live in '76 [LP] - Ava Max
Diamonds & Dancefloors [LP] - Kimbra
A Reckoning - Green Day
Nimrod: 25th Anniversary Edition [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Silver 5LP Box Set] - Elvis Presley
Elvis On Tour [CD Box Set] - Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Sea Blue LP] - Fucked Up
One Day [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Peak Blue In Milky Clear LP] - Steve Vai
Vai/Gash - R. Ring
War Poems, We Rested [Yellow LP] - Nathan Hanson & Chris Bates
Weights and Measures - H.C. McEntire
Every Acre [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition LP] - Various Artists
Winspear Volume 01 [LP] - Smino
Luv 4 Rent - Cordae
From A Birds Eye View - TOMORROW X TOGETHER
The Name Chapter: TEMPTATION [Daydream] - Stephen Sondheim, Sara Bareilles, Into The Woods 2022 Broadway Cast
Into The Woods (2022 Broadway Cast Recording) - Curtis Mayfield
Curtis / Live! [SYEOR 23 Exclusive 2LP] - Curtis Mayfield
Curtis [SYEOR 23 Exclusive Light Blue LP] - Lil Yachty
Let’s Start Here. [2 LP] - The Sounds Of Animals Fighting
Apeshit [Clear Orange LP]
Current Week
Music Releases 02-03-23
Five-time GRAMMY® award winning and multi-platinum selling icon, Shania Twain, announces her new album, Queen Of Me, out February 3, 2023 on Republic Nashville, a division of Republic Records. Her sixth original full-length album, Queen Of Me, is the superstar's most triumphant-feeling body of work; an album about standing in your own power and worshipping yourself. Its lead single “Waking Up Dreaming” was co-written and produced with BTS hitmaker David Stewart.

SYML
The Day My Father Died [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Bone Blue Jay LP]
Vinyl: $34.98 Buy

The Go! Team
Get Up Sequences Part Two [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Yellow LP]
Vinyl: $29.98 Buy
Get Up Sequences Part 2 is The Go! Team’s new album due on 3 February 2023, the follow up to 2020’s Get Up Sequences Part 1. Part 2 is the big, bold, brother to Part 1 with the anti amped and upped. The Go! Team, band leader Ian Parton, MC / rapper Ninja, guitarist / vocalist Nia Radical, bass player Adam and multi instrumentalist Sam Dook, have taken scissors to the technique, slamming noise rock into soda fountain soul and jump ready rhymes. It’s a school’s out, Friday free for all in the me frequency. The album features contributions from Detroit rapper IndigoYag (Divebomb), Benin’s The Star Feminine Band (Look Away, Look Away and The Me Frequency), Hilarie Bratset (drummer in Apples in Stereo) as well as Tokyo duo Lucie Too, French artists Tapeworms and Freschard, Indian singer Neha Hatwar and Brooklyn rapper Nitty Scott.
James Brandon Lewis is a New York-based jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. His instrumental voice marries the emotional power of gospel and the grit and groove of blues and R&B to the modal and vanguard influences of Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins’ expressive melodic and tonal discipline. Moments, his 2010 debut, was followed by two outings for Sony Masterworks’ revived OKeh imprint: Divine Travels in 2014 and the widely celebrated Days of Freeman the following year. After working American stages and clubs, he toured European and Asian festivals. Radiant Imprints, a duo outing with drummer Chad Taylor, appeared in 2018 and was followed by the quintet offering An UnRuly Manifesto a year later. In 2021, after he was selected as the “Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist” in the Downbeat International Critics Poll, Lewis issued The Jesup Wagon, his debut for Tao Forms.
Along the way, Lewis drew the attention of many improvising artists, most notably the saxophonist and jazz deity Sonny Rollins, who doesn’t offer effusive praise very often. Moved by Lewis’ deep, spirit-seeking sound, Rollins said “When I listen to you, I listen to Buddha, I listen to Confucius ... I listen to the deeper meaning of life. You are keeping the world in balance.”
Eye of I opens with 44 seconds of gritty, high-throttling low-down groove, an ear pulverizing opening designed to cleanse all traces of ordinary from the palette. From there, Lewis offers a prayerful cover of Donnie Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free” and then the first of his disarmingly addictive originals, “The Blues Still Blossoms” in addition to many others.
“I feel like there are two sides of me,” says the Nashville-based singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso known as Sunny War. “One of them is very self-destructive, and the other is trying to work with that other half to keep things balanced.” That’s the central conflict on her fourth album, the eclectic and innovative Anarchist Gospel, which documents a time when it looked like the self-destructive side might win out.
Extreme emotions can make that battle all the more perilous, yet from such trials Sunny has crafted a set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles, as though she’s marshaling all her forces to get her ideas across: ecstatic gospel, dusty country blues, thoughtful folk, rip-roaring rock and roll, even avant garde studio experiments. She melds them together into a powerful statement of survival, revealing a probing songwriter who indulges no comforting platitudes and a highly innovative guitarist who deploys spidery riffs throughout every song.
Because it promises not healing but resilience and perseverance, because it doesn’t take shit for granted, Anarchist Gospel holds up under such intense emotional pressure, acknowledging the pain of living while searching for something that lies just beyond ourselves, some sense of balance between the bad and the good.
Featuring: David Rawlings, Allison Russell, Jim James, Micah Nelson
Brit Taylor’s highly anticipated sophomore album, Kentucky Blue, is a drive down the famed Country Music Highway – Route 23 -- back to her Appalachian roots. Grammy-winner Sturgill Simpson and renowned engineer and producer David Ferguson caught wind of the Kentucky gem after her self-reflective debut album, Real Me, garnered praise from Rolling Stone, American Songwriter and NPR’s World Café. The two legends didn’t hesitate to jump in and get their hands dirty, producing the next musical chapter of Brit’s life story. The album is to be released on Brit’s own Cut A Shine Records in collaboration with Thirty Tigers.
Having the courage to find her “real me” set Brit free. Kentucky Blue is a musical celebration of her healing and rebirth. It exudes confidence with a touch of attitude that replaces the melancholy, contemplative sound of Real Me. It is a progression of her life and her music and an introduction to the stand-your-ground and know-your-worth Brit of today. It is a shift back to her East Kentucky influences where the cry of the fiddle, the moan of the steel guitar, the twangy banjo and the atmospheric string section are like a journey floating through space and time.
Brit continues to unabashedly write and sing about what she lives and what she knows and sees. It’s genuine. It’s who she is.
Kentucky Blue is Brit’s personal invitation to you to join her at her cabin in the woods for a bourbon, a swing on the porch and a story-telling song.
'Weird Al' Yankovic
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
CD: $12.96 Buy
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story stars Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al" Yankovic in the unexaggerated true story about the greatest musician of all time. From an unconventional upbringing where playing the accordion was considered a sin, Al rebelled and made his dream of changing the words to world-renowned songs come true. An instant success and sex symbol, Al lived an excessive lifestyle and pursued an infamous romance that nearly destroyed him. The movie is available to stream via Roku, Fire TV or Samsung devices, or online on the Roku Channel.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Original Soundtrack) features 46 tracks - a mix of newly-recorded classic Weird Al parodies, a new Weird Al original (“Now You Know”), various other artists’ tracks, and the film’s orchestral score by Leo Birenberg & Zach Robinson (the team behind the score for the Netflix blockbuster Cobra Kai) on a jam-packed single CD.
Weezer are proud to present one of their most exciting projects to date: SZNZ, a four EP song cycle of sorts. Already mythical across the internet, SZNZ will, fittingly, be released at the start of every season via Crush Music/Atlantic Records. Each EP will offer it's own palette of colors, creatures, and emotions to explore. They're also being created in real time, made in tandem with the season themselves; the band only just finished SZNZ: Spring, and have yet to begin work on SZNZ: Summer, SZNZ: Autumn, and SZNZ: Winter. Once they've all been released, however, the EPs will create an incredible collection of some of Weezer's best songs yet, which is no small feat for a band that never leaves the Zeitgeist.
NOW 85 features 16 major current hits from today’s hottest artists including Taylor Swift, Sam Smith & Kim Petras, Nicki Minaj, Selena Gomez, Lil Nas X, OneRepublic, Lizzo, Elton John & Britney Spears, Meghan Trainor and more. Each numerical NOW release also features “NOW Presents What’s Next” tracks, previewing tomorrow’s biggest hits.
NOW That’s What I Call Music! Hip Hop Party features 18 of the best of the hip hop repertoire with tracks from Outkast, DMX, Busta Rhymes, Flo Rida, Migos, Eve, Notorious B.I.G. and more.
Even if you’ve never heard this 1974 album, you’ve heard it. What do we mean? Well, the drum break from the song “Ashley’s Roachclip” is probably the single most sampled track in all of hip hop. Everybody, and we mean EVERYBODY, has used it—Run-D.M.C., Eric B. & Rakim, and LL Cool J to name a few (and Public Enemy sampled “Blow Your Whistle” for good measure). And when you throw in the fact that the D.C.-based Soul Searchers were led by the soon-to-be “Godfather of Go-Go” himself, Chuck Brown, you can understand why Salt of the Earth—which originally came out on the lightly distributed Sussex label—ranks among the most collectible R&B albums of all time. For its first-ever American LP reissue, we’ve pressed this puppy up on coke clear vinyl. You need to own this record! A1. I Rolled It You Hold It A2. Blow Your Whistle A3. Close to You A4. Funk to the Folks B1. Ain’t It Heavy B2. Windsong B3. Ashley’s Roachclip B4. We Share B5. If It Ain’t Funky
"After a year and a half writing and recording rock music, I needed to clear my head. I listened to and made music where things generally happen gradually rather than suddenly. I would set up patches on a Monomachine or Analog Four and listen to them, hearing one sound morph into others, making changes to a patch only after having listened for quite a while, gradually adding elements, and finally manipulating the sounds on the fly. All tracks were recorded live to CD burner, with no overdubs, and executed on one or two machines. While I was almost exclusively listening to artists such as Chris Watson, Peter Rehberg, Bernard Parmegiani, CM Von Hausswolff, Jana Winderen, Oren Ambarchi, Hazard, Bruce Gilbert, Klara Lewis, Ryoji Ikeda, and so on, I was also inspired by my mental image of John Lennon's tape and mellotron experiments he made at home during his time in the Beatles, as well as events like the first minute of Bowie's Station To Station, '...And The Gods Made Love' by Jimi Hendrix, the synths in the song 'Mass Production' by Iggy Pop, and the general idea of Eno's initial concept of ambient music. Music being a solitary sculpture in sonic space was the main motivating thought. I was looking at pictures of sculptures and trying to make music that simultaneously conveyed both movement and stillness. I refrained from sudden musical changes, especially avoiding sequences of notes and rhythms. In fact, this music was made from sequences which never exceed a single note, many of these pieces being made on a single pattern. The movement which a good sculptor conveys when the shape of his medium meets the eyes of the viewer who walks around the piece, or the sun changes its position, are the kinds of movement which it was the role of the synth patches to communicate . . . I also cannot overstate the role that being in my band played. I had previously spent 12 years programming and engineering my own music, and then spent a year and a half making music where my role was basically to write songs and play guitar. When the band's recording phase was completed, I needed to go back to my adopted language. I had done enough with chords, rhythms, notes, defined sections, sharp transitions, etc. What I needed was to create music from the ground up with nothing but sound, and have that music reflect 'being' rather than 'doing'. It was a therapeutic way of re-balancing myself, before and during my band's mixing process..." --John Frusciante
Originally released on XL in 2009, Discovery is the collaborative synth pop project from Rostam Batmanglij (founding member and producer of Vampire Weekend) and Wes Miles (lead singer / songwriter of Ra Ra Riot). The album features guest appearances from Ezra Koenig and Angel Deradoorian, and is reissued for the first time in 5 years on limited edition Orange vinyl, with an unlisted bonus track that was not on the XL pressing
When the world came to a halt, Jim Ward couldn’t stop moving. He’d just released a reunion album, Trust the River, as the frontman of Sparta when the pandemic hit, and as tour dates dried up, Ward returned to the studio. A year later, he debuted his raucous solo record Daggers and now he’s offering up yet another Sparta album to the world.
The resulting collection of songs were entirely written on keys in what Ward considers an effort to stretch musical muscles he wouldn’t otherwise have had the expanse of time to indulge in. Boldly self-titled some 20-odd years into Sparta’s career, the album serves as a kind of reintroduction to the band, what Ward calls “a fresh slate.”
He recorded the song at Red Bull Studios in Santa Monica, where for the first time in his long career, Ward had a state of the art recording space to himself, and an engineer able to help him enact his vision. The rest of the album was self-produced at Ward’s El Paso studio, Crowded Heart.
Next Week
Music Releases 02-10-23
- Paramore
This Is Why [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Clear LP]
- Andy Shauf
Norm [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Eco Mix LP]
Video PlayARt - Tennis
Pollen [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Opaque Green LP]
- Pierce The Veil
The Jaws of Life [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Dreamsicle LP]
- Kelela
Raven [Clear 2LP]
- The Academic
Sitting Pretty [LP]
- Yo La Tengo
This Stupid World [2LP]
- Chase Rice
I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell [LP]
- AJR
The Click [Limited Edition Deluxe 2LP w/Etching]
- The Rolling Stones
GRRR Live! [3 LP]
- CIVIC
Taken By Force [Translucent Red LP]
- Pale Blue Eyes
Souvenirs [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Recycled LP]
- Pierce The Veil
Collide With The Sky [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Aqua LP]
- Pierce The Veil
Misadventures [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Silver w/ Red Splatter LP]
- Baby Cool
Earthling On The Road To Self Love [Limited Edition Neon Yellow LP]
- Black Belt Eagle Scout
The Land, The Water, The Sky [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Blue/Smoke Marbled LP]
- Uniform & The Body
Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back: SB 15 Year Edition [Silver LP]
- Narrow Head
Moments of Clarity [LP]
- Post Malone
Twelve Carat Toothache [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Lemon Yellow 2 LP]
- Oliver Hart
The Many Faces of Oliver Hart [2LP]
- Young Devyn
Baby Goat 2 [LP]
- Sleep
Dopesmoker [2LP]
- Quasi
Breaking The Balls Of History [Limited Edition Pink LP]
- Various Artists
Marvel's Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur [Green Cassette]
- Bss (Seventeen)
BSS 1st Single Album ‘SECOND WIND’
- Mogwai
Come On Die Young [White 2LP]
- Mogwai
Mogwai Young Team: Remastered [Sky Blue 2LP]
- Maps
Counter Melodies [Limited Edition White LP]
- Lisa O'Neill
All Of This Is Chance [LP]
- Soul Glo
Diaspora Problems [Limited Edition White LP]
- Matisyahu
Light [LP]
- Matisyahu
Youth [LP]
- Hot Mulligan
You'll Be Fine [LP]
- Jill Barber
Homemaker [Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Blueberry Pie LP]
- Delain
Dark Waters [LP]
- El Ten Eleven
Valley Of Fire [Limited Edition Bone LP]