Lucinda shares some stories, Frank gets funky, Andy joins a new club, the Dead drop another live box, The Baseball Project get back in the game, the Fontaines’ frontman goes it alone and more. These are your plays of the week:
Angelo De Augustine
Toil And Trouble
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The fourth solo album from Angelo De Augustine, Toil And Trouble exists according to its own quixotic logic, inhabiting a psychic landscape as sublimely mystifying as a fever dream or fairy tale. In creating such an all-enveloping body of work, the Southern California-based artist spent nearly three years working alone and exploring the vast expanse of his imagination. “This album came from thinking about the madness of the world right now and how overwhelming that can be,” says De Augustine. “I used a sort of counter-world as a guide to try to gain some understanding of what’s actually going on here — I had to take myself out of reality in order to try to understand reality.” At turns bewitching and devastating and ineffably lovely, the result is the most visionary work yet from a singular songwriter, revealing his profound capacity to alchemize pain into extraordinary beauty.”
The Baseball Project
Grand Salami Time
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Grand Salami Time is the fourth release from the indie supgroup of Scott McCaughey (Minus 5 / Young Fresh Fellows), Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate), Peter Buck, Mike Mills (R.E.M.) and Linda Pitmon (Filthy Friends). In 2008 they busted out of the box and easily reached first with their Frozen Ropes And Dying Quails. The Baseball Project got on base and immediately posed a threat to go further. In 2011, they moved on to second with some wildness aptly called High And Inside. They were halfway home. Three years later in 2014, the quintet moved on down the line to the aptly titled 3rd, an epic double dip delight of craftsmanship and savvy. And there they stayed. For nine long years at the hot corner, but we’re happy to say that The Baseball Project are finally coming home, scoring big and touching ’em all with their fourth album Grand Salami Time. The scoreboard is lighting up and the fireworks are illuminating the sky.”
Bdrmm
I Don’t Know
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “While the world became socially distanced in 2020, Hull’s post-shoegaze, dream pop, heavy guitar effects quartet Bdrmm and their debut album Bedroom made the kind of impact any young band would dream about. The stunning debut was championed and hailed far and wide, entered the U.K. chart three times, ended up in on top albums of 2020 lists and turbo-boosted the band’s online following. Three years on, the band’s new album I Don’t Know takes the adventure somewhere else. It’s contemporary shoegaze in a way but much, much more. The band’s trademark effects-laden guitars and motorik Neu! grooves have now been augmented by piano, strings, electronica, sampling and even occasional dance beats. Fragile ambient pieces line up against pulverising guitar chords, sometimes within the same song. There are ambient washes and delicate piano pieces, while influences or reference points veer from Radiohead to My Bloody Valentine to The Cure to Brian Eno to Erik Satie. It’s a bigger-sounding, more tuneful, really rather fantastic second statement by four young men who are rightly sure about what they’re doing and loving every minute of it.”
Grian Chatten
Chaos For The Fly
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Chaos For The Fly is the debut solo album from Grian Chatten, vocalist of Dublin’s critically acclaimed band Fontaines D.C. Rare moments of respite from a relentless touring schedule afforded Chatten the opportunity to start work on something for himself, occupying a completely different headspace from his hugely successful work within Fontaines D.C. Co-produced by the band’s longstanding producer Dan Carey, the album is arguably the most poetic we’ve heard from Chatten. Each song here has a sweep of colour and textures that breathe life into his lucid tales. Over its nine tracks, Chaos For The Fly is a record that takes in all of life’s rich emotions, transporting the listener to a place you not only want to visit, but will find yourself returning to again and again.”
The Grateful Dead
Here Comes Sunshine 1973
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Here Comes Sunshine 1973 is a limited-edition, 17-CD box set with five previously unreleased, highly sought-after Grateful Dead shows, including: Iowa State Fairgrounds, Des Moines, IA (5/13/73), Campus Stadium, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA (5/20/73), Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA (5/26/73), and Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, Washington, D.C. (6/9/73) and (6/10/73). During this run, the band road-tested most of the songs they would record that summer for Wake Of The Flood — their first studio album in three years — including early live versions of Mississippi Half-Step Toodeloo, Row Jimmy, Stella Blue, Eyes Of The World and, the set’s namesake, Here Comes Sunshine. Also tucked into the collection are songs destined for the Dead’s 1974 studio album, From The Mars Hotel — China Doll, Loose Lucy and Wave That Flag, a precursor to U.S. Blues.”
The Pink Stones
You Know Who
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “This record was me trying to take everything I love as a listener and a player and shove it all into one thing without it sounding random,” says Hunter Pinkston, former punk turned cosmic country auteur, describing You Know Who, the boisterous, ambitious sophomore album by his band The Pink Stones. Ostensibly they play country music, yet all the pedal steel sobs, the two-steppin’ rhythms, twangy harmonies, and lyrics about broken hearts and long days on the road are launchpads for wild experiments and unexpected stylistic forays. “There’s obviously a lot of country and rock in our music, but there’s a lot of gospel and soul and psych and dub. I really wanted to get all of those things living peacefully together in one record.”
Sweeping Promises
Good Living Is Coming For You
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In 2020, Sweeping Promises read our pandemic minds with Hunger For A Way Out. In 2023, they return with a new message: Good Living Is Coming For You. At first glance, this nouveau wave slogan offers hope wrapped around relief. At first listen, we realize this may actually be a warning. Darker still, a threat. A band famous for their unfussy, monolithic anthems, Sweeping Promises elegantly ravage us again with another future classic. They return as a fist of velvet rose petals roaring inside a compact wrecking ball. Gone is the Boston brutalist ambience of their subterranean concrete laboratory and the revelatory single mic recording technique. In its place, a retired and resplendent nude painting studio in Lawrence, Kansas, bathed in light with high ceilings and hardwood floors. Guided once again by their surrounding architecture, a reverb-rich space remains the defining element at the heart of their highly stylized sound. A watery ghost from the golden age of art-punk now wields sharper knives and more microphones.”
The 3 Clubmen
The 3 Clubmen
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The 3 Clubmen are a new project made up of XTC’s Andy Partridge, Jen Olive and Stu Rowe. They are the culmination of a decade of antics from these longtime collaborators, with the writing and recording of this material starting years ago. While each artist has worked with the others in some form since 2008, The 3 Clubmen marks the first time that Stu, Andy and Jen have combined forces as a trio, an inevitable partnership once described as “a three-headed Frankenstein’s monster dancing at a neurodivergent singles club.”
12 Rods
If We Stayed Alive
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When Ryan Olcott, songwriter and frontman of Twin Cities’ iconic indie rock band 12 Rods, found unfinished Rods demos during lockdown, he was surprised. When he realized they were good, he was shocked. He set to finishing and recording the compositions, which became If We Stayed Alive, the first 12 Rods album in 21 years. “These are songs that I forgot about,” he explains, “but upon finding them, I thought, ‘Wow, these are actually OK.’ ” That was the easy part. Scraping off 20 years of musical rust was harder. He recorded the instruments in a week, but vocals took longer. “Oh my god!” he laughs, “it took a couple days to get my voice back with that range and that power, but I could do it.” Any cobwebs that needed dusting are long gone. If We Stayed Alive is everything longtime fans have wanted, and the perfect introduction to what some called “America’s Radiohead” and what others have called one of the best indie bands of the ’90s.”
Lucinda Williams
Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Lucinda Williams’ music has gotten her through her darkest days. It’s been that way since growing up amid family chaos in the Deep South, as she recounts in her candid memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I told You. The last couple years have been especially challenging for her. In 2020, a tornado damaged her new home in Nashville, followed two weeks later by the beginning of the COVID lockdown. That November, Williams suffered a stroke that partially impaired some of her motor skills on the left side of her body, forcing her to learn to walk again. But her masterful, Grammy-winning songwriting has never deserted her. Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart marks a triumphant return from one of our most revered artists and songwriters. Her 16th studio album brims over with some of the best work of her career. And though Williams can no longer play her beloved guitar — a constant companion since age 12 — her distinctive vocals sound better than ever.”
Frank Zappa
Funky Nothingness
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In 1969, after The Mothers of Invention disbanded, Frank Zappa released his groundbreaking solo debut Hot Rats. Fusing jazz and rock, the innovative album became one of the artist’s best-selling releases, thanks to classic tracks like Peaches En Regalia and Willie the Pimp. Over the following year, he assembled a core group to lay down tracks at L.A.’s recently opened Record Plant. The sessions, which took place primarily in February and March 1970 at the studio, featured Zappa once again in the producer’s chair and joined by several of the musicians that played on Hot Rats, including Mothers member Ian Underwood (keyboard, saxophone, rhythm guitar), violinist and vocalist Don “Sugarcane” Harris, and Wrecking Crew bassist Max Bennett. The band was rounded out by drummer Aynsley Dunbar, who had just relocated to Los Angeles and moved in with Zappa following his invite to join the band. Together the group recorded hours of original compositions, inspired covers and extended improvisations that drew from Zappa’s R&B and blues roots, while blending influences of the emerging jazz fusion scene. Largely instrumental, these recordings showcased the guitarist’s virtuosity, while offering what could have easily been the sequel to Hot Rats, had it ever been released.”
