Any week that includes a new Bruce Springsteen album should be pretty good. And any week when a new Springsteen album has to compete with releases from Jeff Tweedy, Bootsy Collins, clipping., Mountain Goats and more should be even better. Make some time in your schedule for these titles:
Bootsy Collins
The Power of the One
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bootsy Collins has announced a new album, The Power of The One. In addition, Collins has shared the title track from the record, as well as an accompanying video. “Music is always a soother, a healer, and that’s how I want to use this record,” said Collins. “The Power of the One is what pulls us through. Everyone has “The One” inside of them. You never know who is using you for guidance, so always be pure and never fake the funk. Everybody’s got a light. Everybody needs to shine. It’s there, we just have to trust and use the guidance that is within us, and know that The One knows your program. It was written inside your heart before you made that mad dash racing to be the first one to the egg! You are perfect in the eyes of The One.” The album was co-written, produced and arranged by Collins, and the recording process began prior to the current pandemic at Sweetwater Studios in Fort Wayne, Ind. Ultimately, it was completed during quarantine at Collins’ own Boot-Cave Studios in Cincinnati, Ohio. The album includes an all-star cast of features including: Christian McBride, Snoop Dogg, Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Victor Wooten, Béla Fleck, Steve Jordan and more.”
clipping.
Visions Of Bodies Being Burned
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In the horror genre, sequels are perfunctory. As the insufferable film bro Randy explains in Scream 2, “There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate — more blood, more gore. Carnage candy. And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead.” Last Halloween, Los Angeles experimental rap mainstays clipping. ended their three-year silence with the horrorcore-inspired album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. This October, rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson return with an even higher body count, more elaborate kills, and monsters that just won’t stay dead. Visions of Bodies Being Burned is less a sequel than it is the second half of a planned diptych. Before the release of There Existed an Addiction to Blood, clipping. divided the material up into two albums, designed to be released only months apart. However, a global pandemic and multiple canceled tours pushed the release of the project’s “part two” until the following Halloween season. Visions of Bodies Being Burned contains 16 more scary stories disguised as rap songs, incorporating as much influence from Ernest Dickerson, Clive Barker, and Shirley Jackson as it does from Three 6 Mafia, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Brotha Lynch Hung.”
The Fleshtones
Face of the Screaming Werewolf
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Legendary garage rockers The Fleshtones have been pumping out hits for over four decades, earning them the honor of being “America’s Garage Rock Band.” They’re one of the final remaining original CBGB bands, they’ve played on Andy Warhol’s short-lived MTV show while Sir Ian McKellen read Shakespeare over their jamming, and were the last band to publicly perform at the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World. However, what’s most incredible about The Fleshtones is that they’re putting out some of their best music yet 40 years into their career, as evidenced by their new album Face of the Screaming Werewolf. Featuring soon-to-be-hits done in the inimitable Fleshtones style, such as Alex Trebek, Spilling Blood at the Rock & Roll Show, and their cover of the Stones’ classic Child of the Moon.”
The Mountain Goats
Getting Into Knives
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On the first of March, 2020, John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster, aka the Mountain Goats band, visited legendary studio Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, TN. Darnielle armed his band with new songs and reunited with producer Matt Ross-Spang who engineered last year’s In League with Dragons. In the same room where The Cramps tracked their 1980 debut album, The Mountain Goats spent a week capturing the magic of a band at the top of its game. The result is Getting Into Knives, the perfect album for the millions of us who have spent many idle hours contemplating whether we ought to be honest with ourselves and just get massively into knives. Getting Into Knives includes guest performance on Hammond B-3 organ by Charles Hodges (of numerous Al Green records) & guest performance on guitar by Chris Boerner (of the Hiss Golden Messenger band).”
Bruce Springsteen
Letter To You
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Letter To You is Bruce Springsteen’s new studio album with The E Street Band, and is a rock album fuelled by the band’s heart-stopping, house-rocking signature sound. Recorded at his home studio in New Jersey, Letter To You is Springsteen’s 20th studio album, and is his first album including The E Street Band since 2012’s High Hopes and their first performances together since 2016’s The River Tour. “I love the emotional nature of Letter To You,” says Springsteen. “And I love the sound of The E Street Band playing completely live in the studio, in a way we’ve never done before, and with no overdubs. We made the album in only five days, and it turned out to be one of the greatest recording experiences I’ve ever had.” Letter to You includes nine recently written Springsteen songs, as well as new recordings of three of his legendary, but previously unreleased, compositions from the 1970s, Janey Needs a Shooter, If I Was the Priest, and Song for Orphans. Springsteen is joined on Letter To You by Roy Bittan, Nils Lofgren, Patti Scialfa, Garry Tallent, Stevie Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Charlie Giordano and Jake Clemons. The album was produced by Ron Aniello with Springsteen, mixed by Bob Clearmountain and mastered by Bob Ludwig.”
Thin Lizzy
Rock Legends
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “To celebrate 50 years of Thin Lizzy, Universal are proud to announce the first installment of an archive release programme that will cover the career of one of the most iconic and respected bands of the 1970s. Rock Legends is a six-CD one-DVD Super Deluxe Edition that features 99 Tracks in total, 74 of which are unreleased and 83 of which have never been released on CD or streaming. It is simply the ultimate Thin Lizzy box set. Rock Legends covers the bands whole career over six discs newly mastered by Andy Pearce encompassing a raft of unreleased material including demos, radio sessions, live recordings and rare single edits. The track listing has been compiled by Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham and Lizzy expert Nick Sharp from a collection of newly discovered tapes most of which have never been heard before. In addition, the box contains a DVD with the hour-long Bad Reputation BBC documentary and the band’s legendary performance on the Rod Stewart A Night on the Town TV Special from 1976. The set also contains replicas of the bands tour programmes bound into a hard-backed book, the very sought-after Phil Lynott poetry books, four prints by legendary Lizzy cover artist Jim Fitzpatrick and a book containing quotes by all the members of the band about their experiences playing with Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy. It also has a selection of famous fans such as Slash, Lemmy, Joe Elliot, Geddy Lee, James Hetfield, Ian Gillan, Henry Rollins, Billy Corgan, Bobby Gillespie, Craig Finn, John McEnroe and Pat Cash talking about the band.”
https://youtu.be/EcI3AyMJxkE
Jeff Tweedy
Love Is The King
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “It was inside Jeff Tweedy’s second home, The Loft in Chicago, that Love Is The King was recorded in April of 2020. Surrounded by an assemblage of treasured instruments and loved ones in a world that felt more and more alien by the day. Out on dBpm Records, Love Is The King, a “beautifully honest ode to love and hope,” is the followup to 2018’s Warm and 2019’s Warmer, and comes on the heels of Tweedy’s second book, How To Write One Song. “At the beginning of the lockdown I started writing country songs to console myself. Folk and country type forms being the shapes that come most easily to me in a comforting way. Guess Again is a good example of the success I was having at pushing the world away, counting my blessings — taking stock in my good fortune to have love in my life,” comments Tweedy. “A few weeks later things began to sound like Love Is The King — a little more frayed around the edges with a lot more fear creeping in. Still hopeful but definitely discovering the limits of my own ability to self soothe.”
