Elvis Costello and Cat Power, Broken Social Scene and Blood Red Shoes, FKA Twigs and BÖC covers, Punch Brothers and Earl Sweatshirt — there’s something for everyone on next week’s playlist. Peep the gory details:
Blood Red Shoes
Ghosts On Tape
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: Like David Lynch’s The Lost Highway, nothing is linear in the world of Blood Red Shoes. Written and recorded before their most recent EP, Ghosts on Tape is a huge jump into new terrain for the band. Musically and emotionally their most mature work, it is a complex, imaginative, and very gothic development on their sound. Musically, it leaves almost no trace of their former selves. Obsessed by true crime and murder podcasts, many songs on the record are told in character and explore the dark psyche of those at the pinnacle of outsiderdom: Serial killers. Ghosts on Tape paints a picture of a dark and unsettling world. It is the sound of a unified and confident duo who know exactly who they are, even if the wider world doesn’t really get it. The sound of two people who have spent their entire adult lives making music together and who, more than ever, are finding new pathways for their creativity.
Broken Social Scene
Old Dead Young: B-sides & Rarities
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Toronto indie rock collective Broken Social Scene’s Old Dead Young: B-Sides & Rarities is a career-spanning collection of B-sides, rarities, and outtakes pulled from 20 years of 7″, compilations, soundtracks, and hard-to-find releases. Despite being a compilation, it has the same cohesion of a meticulously considered full-length album with all the familiar euphoric highs and meditative lows.”
Elvis Costello & The Imposters
The Boy Named If
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Elvis Costello & The Imposters’ The Boy Named If is a new album of urgent, immediate songs with bright melodies, guitar solos that sting and a quick step to the rhythm. Costello tells us, ”The full title of this record is The Boy Named If (And Other Children’s Stories). If is a nickname for your imaginary friend; your secret self, the one who knows everything you deny, the one you blame for the shattered crockery and the hearts you break, even your own. You can hear more about this ‘Boy’ in a song of the same name.” Produced by Sebastian Krys & Costello, The Boy Named If is a collection of 13 snapshots “that take us from the last days of a bewildered boyhood to that mortifying moment when you are told to stop acting like a child — which for most men (and perhaps a few gals too) can be any time in the next 50 years.”
The Dream Syndicate
What Can I Say? No Regrets... Out of the Grey + Live, Demos & Outtakes
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Dream Syndicate’s 1986 album is back on CD for the first time in 24 years. Hidden inside of Out of the Grey are some of Steve Wynn’s strongest songs — Slide Away is delightful pop, Now I Ride Alone is moody and intense “like the hardboiled typewriting of novelists Jim Thompson, Ross MacDonald and James Cain” that Wynn dug back in July ‘85. The epic Boston imagines the era in which Van Morrison was holed-up in that city circa 1967-68 writing the songs that comprised Astral Weeks while 50 in a 25 Zone is a vehicle for a band-driven, slow burn groove. Deliciously remastered with new liner notes from the band’s historian Pat Thomas, the package compiles 51 songs spread across 3 CDs, including a previously unreleased live album (from July 1985) and many unreleased demos and out-takes. The deluxe reissue also features interviews with Wynn, Mark Walton, Paul Cutler and Dennis Duck, plus plenty of rare photos.”
FKA Twigs
Caprisongs
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Hey, I made you a mixtape, because when I feel you, I feel me and when I feel me, it feels good. Caprisongs is my journey back to myself through my amazing collaborators and friends. It’s bronzer in the sink, alco pop on the side, a cherry lolly, apple juice when ur thirsty, friends in the park, your favourite person, that one sentence somebody said to you that changed everything, a club pre-game, your bestie who is always late but brings the most to the party, meeting a friend at the airport, just togetherness.”
Cat Power
Covers
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Chan Marshall’s latest covers album as Cat Power arrives, as all of her music does, at just the perfect time. Covers is a deeply felt, intimate, and altogether holistic collection of songs intended as a healing salve for the artist and listener alike, showcasing Marshall’s singular chronicling of the ever-evolving great American songbook. Self-produced and featuring renditions of classic songs from artists like Jackson Browne, The Replacements, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Billie Holiday, and the Cat Power catalog itself, Covers is at once a reminder of Marshall’s artistically intuitive power and the latest chapter in a truly illustrious career. Covers is Marshall’s third collection of covers, following 2000’s seminal The Covers Record and the blockbuster Jukebox from 2008. “When I do covers, I feel such a responsibility to the artists I love — some I’ve never met, some I have,” Marshall explains, and longtime fans will instantly recognize some of the covers included here from live sets in recent years.”
Punch Brothers
Hell on Church Street
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In November of 2020, when the world felt so full of uncertainty, the Grammy-winning folk band Punch Brothers did the one thing that they could rely on: They stood in a circle, facing one another, and made music together. A weeklong recording session, after quarantining and little rehearsal outside of a few Zoom calls, had culminated in their new record, Hell on Church Street — a reimagining of bluegrass great Tony Rice’s landmark solo album, Church Street Blues. Hell on Church Street is a potent work by a band realizing its own powers and returning to the foundations of its music. The record finds the band at its most spontaneous — taking risks, listening deeply to one another, and approaching the music with a kind of immediacy only accessible to musicians of their particular ability who have also forged a deep trust over their decade and a half together. Bassist Paul Kowert considers this album to “harken back to our early days in the band when we were playing regularly on The Lower East Side, learning all this new material to expand our sonic arsenal.”
Earl Sweatshirt
Sick!
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Sick! is my humble offering of 10 songs recorded in the wake of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns. Before the virus I had been working on an album I named after a book I used to read with my mother (The People Could Fly). Once the lockdowns hit, people couldn’t fly anymore. A wise man said art imitates life. People were sick. People were angry and isolated and restless. I leaned into the chaos cause it was apparent that it wasn’t going anywhere. These songs are what happened when I would come up for air.”
Various Artists
Döminance & Submissiön | A Tribute To Blue Öyster Cult
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Dominance and Submission: A Tribute to Blue Öyster Cult featureS covers by Steve Hanford, Mark Lanegan, Billy Anderson, Zeke, Mondo Generator, members of High On Fire, Quasi, Fu Manchu and many other names of the heavy rock world. This special tribute album was initiated by Poison Idea’s departed drummer Steve Hanford, in conjunction with Ian Watts of Ape Machine. Founded in 1967, Blue Öyster Cult are considered pioneers of occult rock’n’roll, marking generations with timeless anthems such as (Don’t Fear) The Reaper, Burnin’ for You, Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll and Godzilla. The New York outfit has since then remained a reference act of the ’70s rock scene alongside The MC5, The Stooges or Steppenwolf.”
