Music Releases 02-05-21

"It is music to uplift, heal, and inspire listeners dealing with racial injustices as well as other social injustices. It's affirmation. It's recognition. It's elevation. It's music to go with a movement. Because the truth is, there is still so much work to do. Regardless of the outcome of the election, we need to make sure things do not return to the status quo. The intention of A Beautiful Revolution Pt. I is to channel all of our pain and outrage into something productive, inspirational, and good. It’s to help lead a movement into our next phase of the work to be done.” – Common

Medicine at Midnight is the new album from Foo Fighters, and packs nine new songs into a tight-ass 37 minutes. This collection includes the smoldering new single, “Shame Shame.” Medicine at Midnight is produced by Greg Kurstin and Foo Fighters, and is the band’s 10^th album.

Foo Fighters are Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett, Pat Smear, and Rami Jaffee.

Every now and then an artist comes along who makes you remember why you started listening to albums in the first place: Aaron Lee Tasjan is that artist. With his off-center charm and restless creative dazzle, he makes music with conviction that has its roots in rock’s murky past, armed with an arsenal of songs that spill over with humor, intelligence, irony, and at times prophecy.He updates the idea of androgyny but dispels the emotional and social ambiguity with lyrics that reflect his own geographic and artistic wanderings.

Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! is 11 songs. The man who began the album, is not the same man who completed it, transformed both by the experiences that inspired the songs and crafting them. This is not anxious music for anxious times, but rather music as an antidote for anxious times. It is the sound of the future arriving.

'For the first time' is the highly anticipated, debut album from 'Black Country, New Road' - a new UK based seven-piece, who have gained huge tastemaker press and radio support in the UK, US and internationally including NPR, KEXP, WFUV, The Fader, The Guardian, Loud & Quiet and more, off the back of just two singles releases in 2019. They are the latest stars from the famed Brixton Windmill scene - other acts from this scene include black midi, Squid, Fat White Family and Shame. First single 'Athen's France' was released on tastemaker label Speedy Wunderground, helmed by producer Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, Natasha Khan), 'Sunglasses' followed on Thurston Moore affiliated, Blank Editions. Recorded with Andy Savours (My Bloody Valentine), the album is the perfect capturing of a new band and all the energy, ferocity and explosive charge that comes with that.

On February 5th, XO/Republic will be releasing a career spanning album from The Weeknd pulling together a collection of his biggest songs from the last ten years.

Throughout their career, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings remained in high demand both publicly and privately to recreate and often re-imagine songs by other artists. More often than not, these covers were recorded by request ' commissioned for placement in movies, television programs, tribute albums, or for samples. This album compiles some of their most popular as well as never-before-heard renditions.Though the band has mostly built their career on a prolific catalog of originals, these forays into other artists' compositions lay bare their gift for arrangement and the unmatched studio prowess that earned them their reputation as The Baddest Band in the Land.

There are box sets and then there are BOX SETS. John Mayall’s The First Generation 1965-1974 set sits firmly in the latter category, being substantial both in the artefacts contained within and the superb music it encompasses.

The first set of this size to be released documenting John Mayall’s early years sees not only all albums from his much lauded formative career, but also unreleased tracks aplenty. Featuring Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Harvey Mandel, Blue Mitchell, Jon Mark and many more outstanding musicians, this mammoth package contains 35 CDs, a beautiful hardback book and much more.

Not for nothing did Mayall earn the moniker ‘Godfather of the British Blues’. For a short but compelling time in the 60s and 70s he recognised raw talent, took it in, nurtured it, and everyone thrived and benefitted as a result. Many of the best musicians of the period passed through the hallowed ranks of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. All are on show here in a stunning set crammed with musical highlights.

Put together with John Mayall’s full co-operation, the full list of contents is as follows:

• 35 DISCS, inc. 3 CD singles & 8 previously unreleased discs, alongside newly remastered versions of the original Decca & Polydor albums
• MUSIC FROM SEVEN UNRELEASED GIGS (inc. Windsor 1967, Gothenburg 1968, Berlin 1969 and San Francisco 1970)
• 28 PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED BBC TRACKS featuring Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor
• HARDBACK BOOK inc. many rare photos and memorabilia plus a full gig listing for the period • INDIVIDUALLY SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH
• FAN CLUB BOOK of letters and correspondence • 2 REPLICA POSTERS - Ten Years Are Gone and 1968 tour poster
• REPLICA PRESS PACK for John Mayall Plays John Mayall

Through Ignorance, Tamara Lindeman has remade what The Weather Station sounds like, using the occasion of a new record to create a novel sonic landscape, tailor-made to express an emotional idea. Ignorance is sensuous, ravishing, as hi-fi a record as Lindeman has ever made, breaking into pure pop at moments, at others a dense wilderness of notes; a deeply rhythmic and painful record that feels more urgent and clear than her work ever has. The natural world is everywhere on this record, intruding with force and poignancy. Ignorance began when Lindeman became obsessed with rhythm; specifically straight rhythm, dance rhythm, those achingly simple beats that had never showed up on a Weather Station album before. Embracing straight time opened new musical territory for her; "I saw how the less emotion there was in the rhythm, the more room there was for emotion in the rest of the music, the more freedom I had vocally." She began to envision a band and music as a sort of bedrock, a structure firm enough to hold the vulnerability of the songs.

A Benefit For Equality Vol. 1 celebrates Black Artistry in the blues genre. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the NAACP. 

In the fall of 1978, Chicago singer-songwriter John Prine returned home for a concert performance at the city's famed Park West. This show, captured on the limited edition album September 78, featured another side of John Prine --- backed by an electric band.  September 78 will be released on 180 gram, 12-inch, orange vinyl. Each LP is individually-numbered and comes with a digital download of the record's ten tracks.

Danny Kroha’s Detroit Blues could be considered part two of his solo debut LP - Angels Watching Over Me. In his own words, “it was me in a room playing acoustic instruments and doing my own arrangements of some old songs”.

Not so fast man!, when you hear this record and dig a little deeper into the facts, you’ll have a heightened awareness of the sonic beauty found in the simplicity. On many of these traditional songs, Danny dropped, added or rearranged verses from various sources, mixing up music from one song and words from another and unintentionally created his own amalgamation of early blues and ‘60s folk.

Keep your ears peeled for familiar and wild homemade sounds. There’s a DIY one string washtub bass made out of some kinda bug spray can. There’s a lot of jug bass, blowing the bass notes over the jug opening, frequently heard in early rural American music but also with the 13th Floor Elevators who ran their jug thru an amplifier. The one string guitar, aka The Diddley Bow, on “Come Out Of The Wilderness” is extremely rare, aside from Danny, one of the last times we heard one was on One String Sam's “I Need A Hundred Dollars”. You have your traditional assortment of spoons, jawbones and other percussion instruments, but during one session, Danny and the album supervisor tried out several pairs of Danny's work boots to find the best tone for the foot stomps. We’ll report back soon on what brand was chosen.

Instead of following all the rules rooted the early blues and ‘60s folk, Danny Kroha mixed up all the rural and urban traditions and kicked out a new surreal sound that could really only happen in Detroit - “I listen to both genres, for sure. I just wasn’t TRYING to make a record that sounds like that. It just came out that way”.

Release Details:
- Recorded at Royal Oak Music Theatre in Michigan during the Hazards Of Love tour (2009)
- The first volume in the Decemberists' Live Home Library series, from the band's own label Youth and Beauty Brigade
- Vinyl exclusive, not available on streaming services
- Mixed by Hazards of Love co-producer/mixer Tucker Martine

Packaging Details:
- 140-gram Double LP on limited edition black vinyl, custom wide-spine jacket
- Etched Vinyl D-Side
- 24" fold-out insert with oral history and photos of the tour from the band.

Hounds - Cattle In The Sky Described by Hounds bassist/vocalist Jack McCoy as "a juxtaposition of things," the album is set for release in February 2021. It follows the band's 2017 self-titled LP. A lot has changed for the group in those three years - not to mention the decade since the band first took off as Clockwork, when the original members were young teenagers in St. Charles. The band now offers up a more aggressive style of rock than it's earlier sound. On St. Louis on the Air, Slone described the new album as featuring "energetic rock 'n' roll that's honest."

Good Woman was written and recorded in a time of tremendous turmoil and change forthe band, between theending of relationships,thedeath oftheir beloved mother, andthebirth of Emily’s first child. The album is a testament tothe Stavely-Taylors’ strength and that of other women; to sisters, mothers, and daughters; to love, loss, and change; and to trying to be a good woman.The band explains: “We have been working on this for a long time and are thrilled to share the title track. When we think about making this album we think about moments and snapshots of all the different contexts we were in as it was made. Living in each other’s pockets and then living with oceans between us. Of voice notes and field recordings and ideas in emails sent across continents. We think of homesickness and family. Of being an outsider. Of endless notebooks and scraps of paper. Of studios in the winter and recordings under the summer sun. Of rainy London days and long American nights with coffees and beers, dogs, and cats. We think of love. Big, big love. Our Mum. Our Dad. Our friends. And of loss. Death and birth. Womanhood, motherhood. Sisterhood.“And coming home.”

Captured in Las Vegas while touring in support of "The Ladder", "House Of Yes" captures a mix of Yes classics, along with more recent compositions. The Yes lineup for this show consists of: Jon Anderson (vocals), Steve Howe (guitars and vocals), Chris Squire (bass and vocals), Alan White (drums and vocals), Billy Sherwood (guitars and vocals), and Igor Khoroshev (keyboards and vocals). On limited edition translucent blue vinyl.

Over the past three decades, A.J. Croce has established his rep as a piano man and serious vocal stylist who pulls from a host of American traditions and anti-heroes - it's part New Orleans, part juke joint, part soul. While his last album, JUST LIKE MEDICINE, paired him with soul legend Dan Penn and an all-star cast of players, his new album was born of memories - of favorite artists and shows, but mostly, of late-night gatherings with groups of friends, many of them fellow musicians, with Croce at the piano taking requests. Croce revisits these musical evenings with BY REQUEST, 12 personally curated covers that traverse decades and genres, propelled by his spirited, loose-and-easy piano mastery and emotive vocals. It's a tribute to Croce the music fan as well as Croce the musician that both the variety - from pop to RnR to soul - and execution is inspired, aided by a full band and horns. BY REQUEST is the first album Croce has released since losing his wife of 24 years, Marlo Croce, after a sudden heart ailment. From sharing an obscurity by Motown artist Shorty Long, "Ain't No Justice," to his funky, dead-on version of Billy Preston's "Nothing from Nothing," Croce keeps the virtual party hopping. While he delivers faithful recreations of such nuggets as The Five Stairsteps' "Ooh Ooh Child" and Allen Toussaint's "Brickyard Blues," he puts his own spin on piano-driven arrangements of songs by Neil Young, The Beach Boys, Sam Cooke, The Faces and more. Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" is re-interpreted as a gospel song, and The Beach Boys' "Sail On Sailor" becomes a trippy, rollicking ride. Although he lost his famous father, music legend Jim Croce, when he was just two years old, he pays tribute by covering Randy Newman's "Have You Seen My Baby" since the first show he attended was a bill featuring his dad and Newman. "BY REQUEST is my way of inviting you over for a private gathering at my place," Croce says of the collection. "We listen to great music, laugh, make great food and after a few drinks and maybe a few more we end up in my music room and I start taking requests of every genre and era."

Vinyl LP pressing. Glasgow's mainstream hitmakers Deacon Blue have achieved major worldwide success since their formation in 1985 and have remained on that path of greatness ever since. Riding On The Tide Of Love is the companion album to their recent hit record City of Love. Recorded during the ongoing pandemic, Riding On The Tide Of Love presents a mix of newly written songs and previously unheard material from the City of Love writing sessions. Explains Ricky Ross: "We never expected to be here but here we are, Riding On The Tide Of Love. This is a continuation of City Of Love, a companion piece that we recorded piece by piece, going into the studio one by one to record our individual parts. But despite being apart it's brought us all together, and we hope it will bring you together too. It was made with love by us for you, to help with the ride. Until we see you again, with love from Deacon Blue."

ROLE MODEL has shared his new EP 'our little angel'. The Maine-born, LA-based pop artist’s latest six-track effort is now available on Milky White Vinyl, via Interscope. He says: "This sort of stemmed from ‘alive’…that song felt like a middle finger to everything I’ve been through. I've accepted that this world is fucked, that my brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to, that I'm not perfect...I've just learned to accept the imperfections, and I can only hope it will help others do the same.”

Editors frontman and multi-instrumentalist Tom Smith, and the similarly multi-facetted musician and songwriter Andy Burrows, release their second full length collaboration as Smith & Burrows. Celebrated artists in their own right, and friends for the past fifteen years, the pair have finally managed to coordinate diaries. Almost a decade on from their 2011 debut, Funny Looking Angels, they have emerged with Only Smith & Burrows Is Good Enough. As songwriters, both Tom and Andy have scored some big hits. The album is a collaborative writing experience and the pair share vocal duties across it's tracks from the propulsive power-pop of "All The Best Moves," to the calypso-tinged virtuosity of "Buccaneer Rum Jum" and the engaging traces of OMD amidst "Bottle Tops." The songs were nurtured and written in the UK, but recorded in Nashville with the Grammy Award winning producer Jacquire King (Tom Waits, Kings Of Leon, Norah Jones). The record is on occasion, tongue-in-cheek while at other times depicts the advancing of age and family life, changed priorities, and all that it entails.

Bob Marley & the Wailers -"Songs Of Freedom: The Island Years" A newly revised 'Island Years' edition of the Classic Bob Marley Box Set, first time on vinyl outside Jamaica and on vinyl anywhere in nearly 30 years. Featuring Marley's many classics from "Concrete Jungle" through "Redemption Song," plus rare 12" mixes, B-Sides, Jamaican singles, and alternates. This 6LP set with custom labels also includes a 20-page booklet with rare photos, essays and track information.

Created by bringing together Étienne Daho, Jean-Louis Piérot and Jane Birkin, Oh Pardon tu dormais is her most intimate album so far. “ Étienne helped me release a past pain, which saved me from melancholy and inertia. We gave each other everything, we took everything from each other and I’m still stunned by how the 3 of us worked together. We are this album’s parents… and this moves me” said Jane Birkin, who speaks for the first time about the death of her daughter Kate, the absence, love anxiety, ghosts from the past…

In this first single “Les Jeux Interdits” Jane Birkin brings back a tender memory : when they were children, her daughters were so obsessed with the movie Les Jeux Interdits that they would bury everything with extremely formal rituals and they would have fun redecorating graves in the little cemetery nearby their house in Normandie (France).

Limited green colored vinyl LP pressing. Blueprints is the debut studio album by American metalcore band Wage War, originally released in 2015. Prior to their release, they have been through three name changes and an EP called The Fall of Kings when named Empires.

Double purple vinyl LP pressing. Platinum Best Of that's never been released on vinyl. Includes the holiday favorite 'This Christmas' as well as his famous duets with Roberta Flack 'The Closer I Get to You' and 'Where Is The Love'. This collection has been the go-to for Donny Hathaway fans old and new for 30 years.

Limited colored vinyl LP pressing. Classic Grammy winning album that contains 2 sought after classics: 'This Masquerad'e and 'Breezin'.

A collection of the J5's biggest group and solo hits, first issued in 1995 and now, for its 25th anniversary, on vinyl for the first time. Also includes the rare vault track, "It's Your Thing," in two mixes available only on this 2LP set.

It’s tempting to think that you have all the answers, screaming your gospel every day with certainty and anger. Life isn’t quite like that though, and the debut album from London four-piece TV Priest instead embraces the beautiful and terrifying unknowns that exist personally, politically, and culturally. Posing as many questions as it answers, Uppers is a thunderous opening statement that continues the UK’s recent resurgence of grubby, furious post-punk music. It says something very different though – something completely its own. Four childhood friends who made music together as teenagers before drifting apart and then, somewhat inevitably, back together late in 2019, TV Priest was borne out of a need to create together once again, and brings with it a wealth of experience and exhaustion picked up in the band’s years of pursuing ‘real life’ and ‘real jobs’, something those teenagers never had. Last November, the band – vocalist Charlie Drinkwater, guitarist Alex Sprogis, bass and keys player Nic Smith and drummer Ed Kelland – played their first show, to a smattering of friends in what they describe as an “industrial freezer” in the warehouse district of Hackney Wick. “It was like the pub in Peep Show with a washing machine just in the middle…” Charlie laughs, remembering how they dodged Star Wars memorabilia and deep fat fryers while making their first statement as a band. Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a precedent for launching a band during a global pandemic, but among the general sense of anxiety and unease pervading everything at the moment, TV Priest’s entrance in April with the release of debut single “House Of York” - a searing examination of the Monarchy set over wiry post-punk and fronted by a Mark E. Smith-like mouthpiece - served as a breath of fresh air among the chaos, its anger and confusion making some kind of twisted sense to the nation’s fried brains. It’s the same continued global sense of anxiety that will greet the release of Uppers, and it’s an album that has a lot to say right now. Taking musical cues from post-punk stalwarts The Fall and Protomartyr as well as the mechanical, pulsating grooves of krautrock, it’s a record that moves with an untamed energy. Over the top of this rumbling musical machine is vocalist Charlie, a cuttingly funny, angry, confused, real frontman. Uppers sees TV Priest explicitly and outwardly trying to avoid narrowmindedness. Uppers sees TV Priest taking musical and personal risks, reaching outside of themselves and trying to make sense of this increasingly messy world. It's a band and a record that couldn’t arrive at a more perfect time.

Double vinyl LP pressing. Legendary activist and Afrobeat originator, Fela Kuti, used his music to lament social injustices and political corruption in his native Nigeria. Fela's legacy spans decades and genres, touching on jazz, pop, funk, hip-hop, rock, and beyond. While this impact can be felt in Nigeria and the entire world, it also greatly affected Fela's son Femi and his son Made, both of whom carry his legacy as torchbearers for change. These are the two albums from Femi and Made, packaged together and appropriately titled Legacy +. Both albums that make up 'Legacy +' are steeped in the tradition of Afrobeat invented by Fela, but each also offers their own unique vision. Femi's 'Stop The Hate' honors Fela in a traditionally fun, sharply political, and affirming way. Meanwhile Made's 'For(e)ward' is a modern and progressive freedom manifesto, pushing boundaries of the subgenre even further. Made also performs every instrument on his album. Both albums also feature portraits of Femi and Made, done by Brooklyn-based artist Delphine Desane, whose work was recently featured on the cover of Vogue Italia.

Much has changed in the musical life of renowned composer and director John Carpenter since 2016's Lost Themes II. Following the release of that album, he went on his first-ever concert tour, performing material from the Lost Themes albums, as well as music from his classic film scores. He re-recorded many of those classic movie themes for 2017's Anthology album, working alongside son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies. The following year, he was asked to executive produce and compose the music for the new Halloween movie directed by David Gordon Green, which promptly became the highest-grossing install- ment in the series. Now, he returns with his first album of non-soundtrack music in nearly five years, Lost Themes III: Alive After Death.Underpinning Carpenter's renaissance as a musician has been his collaboration with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. They've composed and performed as a trio throughout this entire run, on studio albums, on soundtracks, and onstage. Here, the trio reaches a new level of creative mind meld. Richly rendered worlds are built in the interplay between Davies's guitar and the dueling synthesizers played by the Carpenters."We begin with a theme, a bass line, a pad, something that sounds good and will lead us to the next layer," John says of the trio's process. "We then just keep adding on from there. We understand each other's strengths and weaknesses, how to communicate without words, and the process is easier now than it was in the beginning. We've matured."Whereas the original Lost Themes album came as a pleasant surprise after years of relative silence from Carpenter, the third installment sees him in the midst of a resurgent moment as a cultural force. The 2018 Halloween score gave his music it's biggest audience in decades, and the world he releases his new album into is one that has, at long last, given him the credit he deserves as a founding father of modern electronic music.

Since Slash grew up in Stoke, the recording of his second live album at Victoria Hall was a very personal one. Featuring American vocalist Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge, the album also includes songs originally performed by Guns N’ Roses and Slash’s previous bands Slash’s Snakepit and Velvet Revolver.

A heartfelt band from Small Town, Texas, with a penchant for pop melodies and medieval harmonies, Tele Novella write songs the old-fashioned way and perform them in a minimal style filled with delicate arrangements. Influences include Connie Converse, Lee Hazlewood, Pentangle, Marty Robbins, The Magnetic Fields, and PRAM. Merlyn Belle is a homespun creative bricolage that pulls from influences as diverse as cowboy troubadours and folk baroque to tell stories that are at once cinematic and deeply personal. Painstakingly assembled using a blend of hi-fi and lo-fi recording gear, Tele Novella have crafted a cohesive pop record that feels equal parts mysterious, evocative, heartfelt, and sincere.

Over the course of two EPs, two singles and a stripped-back live album, Puma Blue has established himself as one of the UK's most vital new talents, quietly amassing over 50 million streams in the process and selling out shows from London to LA and Paris to Tokyo. His long-awaited debut album, In Praise of Shadows, is a delirious dreamland of soulful vocals, D'Angelo-ish guitars and muted electronic beats. It's fourteen tracks are a contemplation on "the balance of light and dark, the painful things you have to heal from or accept, that bring you through to a better place" says the 25-year-old Puma Blue, real name Jacob Allen "It's about finding light in darkness and realizing that it's what got me here today." It's nocturnal, soul-searching sound is born from a decade in which the he was plagued with insomnia, but there's also a new maturity and lucidity to the way in which Allen deals with his demons and celebrates beauty. Over the last two years, a blossoming romance and burgeoning career have not only helped him to sleep, but also forced the previously bedroom-bound songwriter out into the open and driven him to find a new perspective on loss, lust, love and everything in-between.

Spain's leading Thrash Metal band Angelus Apatrida returns with their 7th, self-titled album.