California rappers. British post-punks. Blues legends. Rock icons. Indie popsters. And the first of four — count ’em, four — Weezer albums due this year. Are you ready for another interesting week in music? Well, ready or not, here it comes:
Cypress Hill
Back In Black
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Cypress Hill shifts culture. The California rap group championed cannabis before it before fashionable, ushered in a genre-shifting sonic tapestry, performed thousands of shows at a time when rappers were having a hard time getting booked for live gigs, and helped pave the way for rappers to use Spanish in their rhymes. Along the way, Cypress Hill earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, sold more than 9 million albums, and were nominated for three Grammy Awards. During a time increasingly defined by singles of the moment, rappers B-Real and Sen Dog wanted to make a statement by releasing an album. Back in Black, the group’s 10th studio project, finds the group flexing its musical muscles and pushing itself creatively. With a mesmerizing mix of celebratory, confrontational, inspirational, reflective, and rugged songs, Cypress Hill shines throughout Back in Black. Entirely produced by Black Milk (Slum Village, Lloyd Banks, Pharoahe Monch), the LP is an homage both to Cypress Hill’s return and its collaboration with Black Milk.”
Peter Doherty & Frédéric Lo
The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Peter Doherty & Frédéric Lo’s The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime is another piece de resistance from this constantly evolving and challenging artist, showcasing Peter’s proudly European poetry and comment on la bete humaine married to Frederick’s delicious francophone musical arrangements. Written during lockdown and produced by Lo, The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime was recorded at Cateuil in Étretat (Normandy) and Studio Water Music in Paris and mixed by François Delabrière at Studio Moderne, Paris. All words are by Doherty and music by Lo.”
Son House
Forever On My Mind
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Forever On My Mind, the new album of previously unreleased Son House recordings from Easy Eye Sound, the independent label operated by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, is the premiere release from collector Dick Waterman’s personal cache of ’60s recordings by some of the titans of Delta blues. His collection of quarter-inch tapes — which are being restored to remarkable clarity by Easy Eye Sound — have gone unreleased until now. Forever On My Mind is the earliest issued full-length House solo performance recorded after House’s rediscovery, at an appearance captured on Nov. 23, 1964 at Wabash College, a small men’s school in Crawfordsville, Ind. In terms of power and intensity, it rivals, and in some cases surpasses, the Columbia album cut five months later in a New York City studio. It also reflects a sharp musical focus that diminished in House’s later concert appearances and recordings.”
Ray Wylie Hubbard
Co-Starring Too
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rogue. Poet. Rocker. Texas Texture. Ray Wylie Hubbard made such a mark with Co-Starring, his first major label outing with an all-star lineup of his vast network of friends, the always shape-shifting songwriter decided once was not enough. So the louche beacon of cool went even wider and deeper into his coterie of confidantes, emerging with Co-Starring Too. The second set features a surprisingly eclectic and Texas-centric collection — Willie Nelson, The Bluebonnets, Band of Heathens, The Last Bandoleros and Steve Earle plus a Red Dirt collab with Wade Bowen, Randy Rogers and Cross Canadian Ragweed’s Cody Canada. The next wave of Lone Star songwriting icons — Hayes Carll, James McMurtry, — appear next to tracks from Wynonna, Jaimee Harris, Charlie Sexton and Gurf Morlix. The far-reaching team of Ringo Starr, Lucas Hubbard, Steve Lukather, Eliza Gilkyson and Ann Wilson assemble alongside Metal slayers Lzzy Hale and John 5 with an amplified blues-fusion from Kevin Russell and the Shiny Soul Sisters.”
Mattiel
Georgia Gothic
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Georgia Gothic, a magic third in Mattiel’s run of full-length albums, was shaped in the quiet seclusion of a woodland cabin in the north of the Atlanta duo’s mother-state; “Some faraway place that just Jonah and I could go where there would be no distractions, nothing else going on, and we could turn everything off and only focus on writing songs”, reflects Atina Mattiel Brown. Where 2017’s self-titled debut and its 2019 followup Satis Factory were written with what Jonah Swilley refers to as a “hands-off” approach — he arranging the music and Brown the lyrics and vocals, the two working largely separately — the making of Georgia Gothic was, for the first time, a truly collaborative undertaking. “This was the first time we made a point to just be together and work out ideas in the same room. That was the initial intention … it was about learning what each other wanted to accomplish on a sonic level, and then just trying different things out” Swilley continues. “Everything happened backwards. Normally, you’d have friends that make a band … with us, we started making music from the jump, and then became homies.”
Midlake
For The Sake Of Bethel Woods
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Loss and hope, isolation and communion, the cessation and renewal of purpose. Timeless and salient, these themes echo throughout the fifth album from Midlake, their first since Antiphon in 2013. Produced to layered, loving perfection by John Congleton, For The Sake Of Bethel Woods is an album of immersive warmth and mystery from a band of ardent seekers, one of our generation’s finest: a band once feared lost themselves by fans, perhaps, but here revivified with freshness of intent. From the cover to the title and beyond, a longing to reconnect with that which seems lost sits at the record’s core. The cover star is keyboardist/flautist Jesse Chandler’s father, who, tragically, passed away in 2018. As singer Eric Pulido explains, “He was a lovely human, and it was really heavy and sad, and he came to Jesse in a dream. I reference it in a song. He said, ‘Hey, Jesse, you need to get the band back together.’ I didn’t take that lightly. We had already had these feelings with everyone in the band of, oh, this could be a cool thing to do. But the dream was a kind of beautiful depiction of a purpose to reconvene and make music together as friends.”
Keith Richards
Main Offender 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Main Offender, the second solo album by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, was released in 1992, four years after Talk Is Cheap, and features Richards’ band The X-Pensive Winos, comprised of drummer Steve Jordan, guitarist Waddy Wachtel, bassist Charley Drayton, keyboard player Ivan Neville, singer Sarah Dash and backing vocalists Bernard Fowler and Babi Floyd. Richards says: “This is the second time around and the Winos are kind of developing…If I hadn’t have taken the Winos on the road, this record would probably have been totally different than it is. I tried to avoid making too much sense on this record because to me that ambiguity and mystery, and a little provocation to make you think, is something far more powerful and more important than just wagging your finger and saying, ‘I know what he’s saying — don’t do this, do that.’ If you’re a musician, silence is your canvas, and you never want to fill in the whole thing because then you’ve just covered it all … One of the most interesting parts about music is where you don’t play.”
Weezer
SZNZ: Spring
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “This year we’re releasing four EPs each inspired by magic, Pagan myths, religious rituals, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Shakespeare and more (so much more). Each one will take you on an enchanting journey. The first of the four EPs, SZNZ: Spring is coming out on the Spring Equinox, March 20. Your first taste of Spring will come on Wednesday, March 16 when our new single A Little Bit of Love blooms. Lots more coming soon, so mark your sundial for the coming solstices and equinoxes. Spring is kind of like happy chill and then we move through dance-rock, and like a Strokes–style album for the fall, and sad acoustic, Elliott Smith–style for the winter.”
Frank Zappa
The Mothers 1971
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Released in August 1971 just two months after it was recorded, Fillmore East – June 1971 was Frank Zappa and The Mothers’ masterstroke conceptual live album, a well-oiled and well-edited aural treatise chronicling the prurient feast and famine of a certain band’s somewhat salacious life on (and off) the road. In effect, it was the seemly predecessor to October 1971’s expansive, groundbreaking magnum opus, 200 Motels, the surrealistic documentary and soundtrack which ultimately took on a life of its own. Even so, Fillmore East – June 1971, the landmark live recording with the scrawled “penzil” cover art made to resemble a bootleg of the day, managed to capture its own level of then-modern zeitgeist in patented Zappa-reconstructed form. Produced by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers, the 100-track, nearly 10-hour set brings together every note of the fabled four shows that closed down the vaunted Fillmore East in New York City on June 5-6, 1971, including the entire John Lennon and Yoko Ono encore, along with the full Rainbow Theatre performance in London, England, on Dec. 10, 1971 — a show which ended when a crazed fan attacked Zappa by violently shoving him off the stage into the orchestra pit 12 feet below. The Rainbow Theatre show would end up being the last ever performed by the Flo and Eddie lineup as the group disbanded while Zappa was in the hospital as they needed to continue to work while he recuperated.”
