Pink Floyd and The Black Angels. Miles, Mars Volta, Murlocs and Rhett Miller. CCR, Clutch and Coltrane. Joe Strummer and Jessie Reyez. Lou Reed and London Suede. And let’s not forget Wilco, Death Cab For Cutie, Gogol Bordello and No Age. Yep, it’s a big week for good music. Let’s get right down to it:
The Black Angels
Wilderness of Mirrors
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The best music reflects a wide-screen view of the world back at us, helping distill the universal into something far more personal. Since forming in Austin in 2004, The Black Angels have become standard-bearers for modern psych-rock that does exactly that, which is one of many reasons why the group’s new album, Wilderness Of Mirrors, feels so aptly named. Says vocalist/bassist Alex Maas, “a big focal point of this record is just the overall insanity that’s happening. What’s true? What’s not?” Adds guitarist Christian Bland, “We leave our music open to interpretation, but our topics are always universal themes — problems mankind has had since the beginning of time. You can relate them to any period.”
Clutch
Sunrise On Slaughter Beach
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Sunrise On Slaughter Beach has been chosen as the title for the 13th studio album from the perpetually touring blues rockers Clutch. Recording sessions for this opus took place with Tom Dalgety (Ghost, Royal Blood) overseeing the production and mixing duties at The Magpie Cage Recording Studio in Baltimore. Jawbox’s J. Robbins assisted with engineering. A few firsts for the band will be featured among some of the new tracks, including vibraphone played by the band’s drummer Jean-Paul Gaster, Theremin from Robbins and female backing vocals from Deborah Bond and Frenchie Davis.”
John Coltrane
Blue Train: The Complete Masters
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On Sept. 15, 1957, John Coltrane went into Rudy Van Gelder’s living room studio in Hackensack, N.J. and recorded his first great masterpiece: Blue Train. It would be the legendary saxophonist’s sole album as a leader for Blue Note, a locomotive five-track album fuelled by the bluesy title track that featured a dynamic six-piece band with Lee Morgan on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Kenny Drew on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. To mark the 65th anniversary of the album’s recording, Blue Train will be released in two special editions as part of Blue Note’s acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series: A 1-LP mono pressing of the original album and a 2-LP stereo pressing of Blue Train: The Complete Masters which includes a second disc of alternate and incomplete takes which have never been released before. The two-LP set comes with a bound booklet featuring never-before-seen session photos by Francis Wolff and an essay by Coltrane expert Ashley Kahn.”
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When Creedence Clearwater Revival stepped onto the Royal Albert Hall’s stage on April 14, 1970 — just days after The Beatles announced their breakup — the California rockers had arguably just become the biggest band in the world. Leading up to the show, CCR had enjoyed an unprecedented “magical year,” as Jeff Bridges narrates in the film of the performance. “In only 12 months the band had achieved five Top 10 singles and three Top 10 albums (Bayou Country, Green River, Willy and the Poor Boys) on the American charts, outselling The Beatles. They had appeared on the legendary Ed Sullivan Show and played to over a million people across America, including the hundreds of thousands gathered at Woodstock. John, Tom, Stu and Doug may not have had the familiar ring to it of John, Paul, George and Ringo, but Creedence were challenging The Beatles for the title of the biggest group in the world.” During their two-night sold-out residency at the iconic venue, CCR not only followed in the footsteps of acts like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Beatles, but they proved they were equals.”
Miles Davis
That’s What Happened 1982-1985: The Bootleg Series Vol. 7
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The latest chapter in the acclaimed Miles Davis Bootleg Series shines a fresh light on an underrated period of the musician’s restless career-spanning quest for sublime and transcendent sounds. The 3CD set includes two discs of previously unreleased studio material — from the Star People, Decoy and You’re Under Arrest sessions — and a third disc showcasing Miles Davis Live in Montreal on July 7, 1983; the collection comes in a slipcase with individual album mini-jackets and a booklet featuring liner notes by Marcus J. Moore and revelatory new interviews with Miles’ ’80s players including Vince Wilburn, Jr. (drummer), John Scofield (electric guitarist), Darryl Jones (bassist), Marcus Miller (bassist) and Mike Stern (guitarist).”
Death Cab For Cutie
Asphalt Meadows
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When the writing of Asphalt Meadows began in the early part of the pandemic, Death Cab For Cutie weren’t sure how to make a record. Singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard, bassist Nick Harmer, drummer Jason McGerr, guitarist/keyboardist Dave Depper, and keyboardist/guitarist Zac Rae lived in four different cities. Being in the studio together wasn’t an option. Though Gibbard started writing songs at the end of their last tour, he felt like he was hitting a wall after being trapped in his home studio for months. So he hatched a plan to shake things up. “A work week is Monday through Friday and there are five members of the band,” Gibbard explains. “So on Monday, someone put together a piece of music and shared it. And then the next person took it, with the order decided randomly. On your day, you had complete editorial control.” At the end of each week, they finished a rough song mix. Sometimes, songs were transformed entirely, with a key change or altogether different tempo. “After we started, we had a lot of success,” Gibbard says. This unconventional recording process managed to push the veteran rockers in entirely new and unexpected directions creatively. And ironically, the isolated circumstances in which it began led to the creation of Death Cab For Cutie’s most collaborative album to date.”
Gogol Bordello
Solidaritine
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “This is music of survival and perseverance. That’s always been our main driving force,” declares Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz about their new album Solidaritine. “We just want to give the world a timeless album with messages of human potential and power.” Their eighth full-length album is inspired by survival in the face of adversity — a theme that can be applied to the pandemic just as much as it can be applied to the war going on in his native Ukraine. “Our music was always about perseverance,” exclaims Eugene. “Rock ‘n’ roll comes out of a real place. Take a group of people who have endured immigrant traumas and dislocation. They create music, get successful together, become more baroque and experimental, and experience some years of relative calm. All of a sudden, humankind encounters these problems like the pandemic and the war. This is when rock ’n’ roll is the most necessary and where we perform the best.”
The London Suede
Autofiction
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Autofiction is The London Suede’s ninth studio LP, and sees the band deciding to go back to basics. “Autofiction is our punk record,” Brett Anderson says. “No whistles and bells. Just the five of us in a room with all the glitches and fuck-ups revealed; the band themselves exposed in all their primal mess.” Writing the songs that would become Autofiction, Anderson, Mat Osman, Simon Gilbert, Richard Oakes and Neil Codling schlepped to a rehearsal studio in deserted Kings Cross to collect a key, hump their own gear, set up and start playing. Later recording live at Konk studios in North London, The London Suede teamed with long-time collaborator Ed Buller. “Autofiction has a natural freshness, it’s where we want to be,” Anderson says. And where The London Suede want to be is, in a way, the same place as they were when they began 30 years ago — a group of people living off the raw sensation of creating music together in a room.”
The Mars Volta
The Mars Volta
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Breaking a decade of omertà, The Mars Volta reawaken from their lengthy hiatus with an eponymous track that radically reshapes their paradigm. Formed by guitarist/composer Omar Rodríguez-López and singer/lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, The Mars Volta rose from the ashes of El Paso punk-rock firebrands At The Drive-In in 2001. After the group fell silent, a legion of devotees kept up an insistent drum-beat for their return. Now the duo are back, accompanied by founder bassist Eva Gardner, drummer Willy Rodriguez Quiñones and keyboard player Marcel Rodríguez-López. This is The Mars Volta at their most mature, most concise, most focused. Their sound and fury channelled to greatest effect, The Mars Volta finds Rodríguez-López’s subterranean pop melodies driving Bixler-Zavala’s dark sci-fi tales of the occult and malevolent governments. Distilling all the passion, poetry and power at their fingertips, The Mars Volta is the most accessible music the group have ever recorded.”
Rhett Miller
The Misfit
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rhett Miller’s The Misfit is his first solo full length album in four years. The 11 songs that comprise The Misfit are an elegant blurring of psychedelia, dream pop, and electronic-leaning indie-rock, grounded by the vulnerable songwriting and unaffected vocal presence Miller has perfected as the frontman for legendary alt-country band Old 97’s for the last three decades. “Making this album was the closest thing I’d ever experienced to being part of something magic,” Miller explains of his collaborative process with Sam Cohen. “As we were working we kept returning to the relationship between David Bowie and Brian Eno and the records they made together, and how fearless they were in their approach to finding the songs,” says Miller of the collaborative process. “It turned into a routine where every morning I’d leave home and drive over the mountain to his house, and by that evening we’d have a rough mix of a new song. The speed of creation was absolutely wild; in some ways I can’t even believe it happened.”
The Murlocs
Rapscallion
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The sixth full-length from The Murlocs, Rapscallion is a coming-of-age novel in an album form, populated by an outrageous cast of misfit characters: Teenage vagabonds and small-time criminals, junkyard dwellers and truck-stop transients. Over the course of 12 hypnotic and volatile rock ’n’ roll songs, the Melbourne five-piece dream up a wildly squalid odyssey partly inspired by frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s own adolescence as a nomadic skate kid. The most magnificently heavy work yet from The Murlocs, the result is an endlessly enthralling album equally steeped in danger and delirium and the wide-eyed romanticism of youth.” Naming Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian among his inspirations in crafting Rapscallion’s high-tension narrative, Kenny-Smith deliberately challenged himself to stray from the more introspective songwriting of The Murlocs’ past work. “I ended up coming with a story of a teenage boy who’s the black sheep of his family, and one day decides to leave home and travel to the city on his own. It was a nice way to escape at a time when we couldn’t go anywhere, and made me feel like I was a feral kid again.”
No Age
People Helping People
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “No Age’s ethos sings to us from beyond the clouds, with words and without, a conceptual boost to everyone helping everyone. Ensconced in Randy’s Garage without a clock to spit on ‘em, Dean and Randy composted drums and guitar and life on planet earth into a stream of miniatures, vignettes and reembodied images — an infinity of hits. First thought, best thought. Until the next thought: a guiding principle for No Age in the 16ish years they’ve been around. Constantly responding to their own streams of consciousness with reductive flexibility, they’ve taken the basic duo of guitar and drums with vocals WAY farther than anyone listening in halcyon Weirdo Rippers days could have guessed. Expounding on those larval possibilities, they’ve zig-zagged in serpentine precision, in and out of the teeth of the wringer — ranging outside and back in again, as befits the present thought. And now, six albums into it, these principles have led them to make People Helping People. Composed in their studio of 10 years in the “pre pandemic” times, then an eviction from said space, and finished deep in the midst at their new basecamp: Randy’s Garage.”
Pink Floyd
Animals 2018 Remix Deluxe Edition
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Animals is the 10th studio album by Pink Floyd, originally released in January 1977. It was recorded at the band’s Britannia Row Studios in London throughout 1976, and was produced by the band themselves. The successful album peaked at No. 2 in the U.K. and No. 3 in the U.S., and is considered one of the band’s best works. The album was recorded by bandmembers David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright. The Animals 2018 Remix will be released on CD, LP (with gatefold artwork), Blu-ray, digital and deluxe gatefold formats. The Blu-ray and DVD audio include the 2018 remix in stereo, 5.1 surround (both by James Guthrie) and the original 1977 stereo mix. The 32-page booklet features rarely seen behind the scenes photographs of the album sleeve shoot along with live images and memorabilia. The album artwork has been reimagined for this release.”
Lou Reed
Words & Music, May 1965
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Released in tandem with late artist Lou Reed’s 80th birthday celebrations, Words & Music, May 1965. offers an extraordinary, unvarnished, and plainly poignant insight into one of America’s true poet-songwriters. Capturing Reed in his formative years, this previously unreleased collection of songs — penned by a young Reed, recorded to tape with the help of future bandmate John Cale, and mailed to himself as a “poor man’s copyright” — remained sealed in its original envelope and unopened for nearly 50 years. Its contents embody some of the most vital, groundbreaking contributions to American popular music committed to tape in the 20th century. Through examination of these songs rooted firmly in the folk tradition, we see clearly Lou’s lasting influence on the development of modern American music – from punk to art-rock and everything in between. A true time capsule, these recordings not only memorialize the nascent sparks of what would become the seeds of the incredibly influential Velvet Underground; they also cement Reed as a true observer with an innate talent for synthesizing and distilling the world around him into pure sonic poetry.”
Jessie Reyez
Yessie
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Yessie picks up where Grammy-nominated, Juno-winning singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez’s 2020 debut studio album Before Love Came To Kill Us left off — a highly anticipated release from a now-unforgettable era. Her writing on the new album captures the human experience in a way that is at once unique and relatable. On the single Mutual Friend, Jessie clears the air to an ex lover and releases any lingering emotion she carries while declaring her independence — shown as scenes of beautiful rage, dying flowers symbolic of the relationship, and fluid dancing in the music video directed by Peter Huang.”
Joe Strummer
002: The Mescaleros Years
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “2022 marks 20 years since the passing of the legendary Joe Strummer. While best known as the frontman for The Clash, between 1999-2002 Strummer produced some of his most exciting work alongside The Mescaleros. Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years is the first comprehensive collection highlighting this intense period of creativity and brings together the albums Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (1999), Global A Go-Go (2001), the posthumous Streetcore (2003), and Vibes Compass, a brand-new compilation of 15 B-sides and rarities, including never before heard tracks like Ocean of Dreams (featuring Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols on guitar) and early demos of some of the Mescaleros’ best-loved tracks (The Road To Rock ‘N’ Roll, X-Ray Style and more), through to some of the original recordings from Joe’s last sessions (Coma Girl, Fantastic and Get Down Moses), all in one box set.”
Wilco
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Super Deluxe Edition
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Super Deluxe Edition of Wilco’s landmark 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot comprises 11 vinyl LPs and one CD — including demos, drafts, and instrumentals, charting the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — plus a live 2002 concert recording and a September 2001 radio performance and interview. The box set includes 82 previously unreleased music tracks as well as a new book featuring an interview with singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, drummer Glenn Kotche and Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the acclaimed album; an in-depth essay by journalist/author Bob Mehr; and previously unseen photos of the band making the album in their Chicago studio, The Loft. For the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot recording, Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche and Jay Bennett with Craig Christiansen, Ken Coomer, Jessy Greene, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Jim O’Rourke.”
