Classic rockers, Norwegian oddballs, indie troubadours, beloved singer-songwriters — and The Stooges! I’d call that a pretty good week. Read on and see if you agree:
Deep Purple
Whoosh!
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Deep Purple’s Whoosh! follows their worldwide chart-topping albums inFinite (2017) and NOW What?! (2013) — and the suspense and speculations among the fan community created by cryptic messages and interviews by singer Ian Gillan last December. For the third time, Deep Purple join forces with producer Bob Ezrin, who invited the band to Nashville to write and record new songs. Together they created the most versatile album in their collaboration. Deep Purple “stretched out in all directions” without any limitation, letting their creativity go. “Deep Purple is putting the Deep back into Purple” was the half-joking motto in the studio after the first songs made it clear that Ezrin and Purple were on their path to creating an album pushing the boundaries of time, while voicing their resentment about the current situation of the world and addressing all generations.”
Jaga Jazzist
Pyramid
THE PRESS RELEASE: “On their new album Pyramid, legendary Norwegian eight-piece Jaga Jazzist take a deep dive into post-rock, jazz and psychedelia influences. It’s their first album since 2015’s Starfire and their ninth album in a career now spanning four decades. On Pyramid, Jaga Jazzist have crafted a suitably cosmic sound, all the while nodding to forebears spanning from ’80s jazz band Out To Lunch and Norwegian synth guru Ståle Storløkken to contemporaries Tame Impala, Todd Terje and Jon Hopkins. Each of the album’s four longform entries evolves over carefully plotted movements, the tracks’ technicolour threads dreamily unspooling. The band, led by Lars Horntveth and his compositions, took a direct approach to the creation of Pyramid, retreating to a secluded woodland studio in neighbouring Sweden, they bunkered into the studio for 12-hour days. “The most important thing is that we didn’t want to over-analyze every musical idea” says co-founder and drummer Martin Horntveth.”
Jason Molina
Eight Gates
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Eight Gates is the last collection of solo recordings Jason Molina made before he passed away from complications related to alcoholism in 2013. Sometime in 2006, or 2007, Molina moved from the Midwest to London. Separated from his bandmates and friends, and never one for idleness, Molina explored his new home with fervor. He’d pick up on arcane trivia about London’s rich history, and if the historical factoids weren’t available — or weren’t quite to his liking — Molina was quite comfortable conjuring his own history. When he learned of the London Wall’s seven gates, Molina went ahead and called it eight, carving out a gate just for himself. The eighth gate was Molina’s way into London, a gate only passable in the mind.”
Mary Chapin Carpenter
The Dirt And The Stars
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Produced by Ethan Johns (Ray LaMontagne, Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon) and recorded entirely live at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, in southwest England, the album finds the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter pondering life’s intimate, personal moments and exploring its most universally challenging questions at an unprecedented time. Written at her rural Virginia farmhouse before stay-at-home orders became the “new normal,” the songs celebrate invaluable experiences and irreplaceable wisdom, while also advocating exploration of the best in all of us.”
The Microphones
Microphones In 2020
THE PRESS RELEASE: “The Microphones — the hibernating moniker of Phil Elverum — returns with his first new album for The Microphones since 2003’s Mount Eerie. The album is made entirely of one, 44-minute song. “I used to call my recordings a different name. A small clump of albums from 1997-2002 were called The Microphones, including some popular ones … In the summer of 2019 I played a little local concert under the old name for no big reason. The little flurry of weird attention around this announcement got me thinking about what it even means to step back into an old mode. Self commemoration would be embarrassing. I don’t want to go backwards ever. There is nothing to reunite. So I nudged into the future with these ideas and came up with this large song. It took almost a year to write and record, working constantly at home, digging through the archives, playing the same two chords forever on the same $5 first guitar. In it I have tried to get at the heart of what defined that time in my life, my late teens and early 20s, but even more importantly, I tried to break the spell of nostalgia and make something perennial and enduring. All past selves existing at once in this inferno present moment. The song doesn’t seem to end. That’s the point.”
The Stooges
Live at Goose Lake August 8, 1970
THE PRESS RELEASE: “The apocryphal tale of The Stooges’ performance at the Goose Lake festival has been told countless times. Bassist Dave Alexander, due to nerves or overindulgence, spaces in front of 200,000 attendees. He does not play a single note. He is summarily fired by Iggy Pop immediately following the gig. Here starts the beginning of the end of The Stooges. But what if that simply…wasn’t the case? Found buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse, the 1/4” stereo two-track tape of the Stooges’ show is not only the last performance of the original godhead Stooges line-up, but it is the ONLY known soundboard recording of said line-up. Playing the entirety of their canonical 1970 masterpiece Fun House, the sound, the performance, everything about this record is revelatory. Would you believe that Alexander actually DID play? Or that despite grievous failures on some songs, he is damn solid on others? Especially on the bass-led songs Dirt and Fun House? Does Iggy provoke the crowd to tear down festival barriers? Did the powers that be pull the plug? So many questions are answered only to have more arise. This rare release rewrites the history of these Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.”
