Jon Batiste plays the radio, Osees have a message for you, Margaret Glaspy cuts a diamond, Hozier unearths something unreal, Rhiannon Giddens chooses you, Grace Potter hits the road, Sonic Youth and Talking Heads do it live and more. Here are your plays of the week:
Jon Batiste
World Music Radio
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “World Music Radio is the new musical transmission from multi-Grammy and Oscar winner Jon Batiste, following his historic and acclaimed hit record We Are. This concept album stars Batiste as interstellar traveling griot/DJ Billy Bob Bo Bob (aka B4), who examines popular music from around the globe on a radio broadcast from Earth to the rest of the universe — begging the question, isn’t all music world music? Inspired by his decades-long study of music and culture, World Music Radio is a sonic passport for the ears, seeing Batiste reach new artistic heights with global collaborators Jon Bellion, Lil Wayne, Fireboy DML, J.I.D., Camilo, NewJeans and others — blurring the sonic boundaries known as ‘genre’ and transforming your Tuesday morning into Saturday night.”
Bat Sabbath
Masters Of Duality EP
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Juno-nominated Canadian hardcore punk heavyweights Cancer Bats are thrilled to announce that their legendary alter egos, Bat Sabbath, will release Masters of Duality, a live off-the-floor EP and accompanying video. Recorded and filmed at Private Ear Studios in Winnipeg with John Paul Peters as engineer and Jim Agapito as director, the five track offering features all three Bats — Liam Cormier, Mike Peters and Jaye Schwarzer (on both bass and guitar) — paying homage to metal pioneers Black Sabbath. Slamming through some of their favourite Sabbath classics, the EP/video features covers of Children of The Grave, Iron Man, Into the Void, N.I.B. and the iconic War Pigs. Says Cormier: “The time has come for us to gather once more in faithful worship to the true gods of metal! The devoted souls known as Cancer Bats will take on their legendary form as Bat Sabbath to once more pay homage to the almighty lords of all things heavy, Black Sabbath!!! Join us in worship of the five greatest albums to ever be crafted!”
DeYarmond Edison
Epoch
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Let’s cut straight to the quick, OK? The only reason you may know DeYarmond Edison — the short-lived band at the core of this 5-LP, 4-CD, 60,000-word tome Epoch — is that it birthed two other bands you almost absolutely know: Bon Iver and Megafaun. When the Wisconsin-founded quartet broke up in August 2006 in their new hometown of Raleigh, N.C., three-quarters of the band started Megafaun within days. Within weeks, Justin Vernon was returning north, shaping Bon Iver amid his season of hibernation. The ideas that DeYarmond Edison developed together unequivocally prompted its more famous successors, splitting it apart before you or most anyone else could know about it. One aim of Epoch is to offer retrospective insight, or to trace For Emma, Forever Ago and Bury the Square, Heretofore and 22, A Million back to true headwaters: These bonds of small-town childhood friendship and collective artistic ambition, even if they became too much to bear.”
Rhiannon Giddens
You’re The One
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A Grammy and Pulitzer-winning singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art. For her third solo album You’re The One, she recruited producer Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Tank and the Bangas) to help her bring this collection of songs she’d written over the course of her career — her first album of all originals — to life at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami. Together with a band composed of Giddens’s closest musical collaborators from the past decade alongside Miami musicians from Splash’s own Rolodex, and topped off with a horn section making an impressive ten- to twelve-person ensemble, they drew from the folk music that Giddens knows so deeply and its pop descendants.”
Margaret Glaspy
Echo The Diamond
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The third full-length from Margaret Glaspy, Echo The Diamond emerged from a deliberate stripping away of artifice to reveal life for all its harsh truths and ineffable beauty. Like the precious gem of its title, the result is an object of startling luminosity, one capable of cutting through the most elaborately constructed façades. “This record came from trying to meet life on life’s terms, instead of looking for a happy ending in everything,” says the New York-based musician. “The whole experience of creating it felt like effortless catharsis.” Produced by Glaspy with co-production from her partner, guitarist/composer Julian Lage, Echo The Diamond expands on the frenetic vitality of her widely acclaimed debut Emotions and Math. “I love music with a big element of risk to it, which was really the heartbeat of this album,” she says. “A lot of what you hear are the very first takes.” Anchored in the raw yet mesmerizing vocal presence and impressionistic guitar work she’s brought to the stage in touring with the likes of Spoon and Wilco, Echo The Diamond holds entirely true to the spirit of its lyrical explorations, presenting a selection of songs both unvarnished and revelatory.”
Hozier
Unreal Unearth
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Unreal Unearth is the incredible third album by Hozier. The peerless singer-songwriter recorded this remarkable record with a stellar cast of producers including Bekon (Kendrick Lamar, Drake), Jennifer Decilveo (Miley Cyrus, Bat For Lashes) and Jeff Gitelman (The Weeknd, H.E.R.). The sounds, style and influences throughout the record range from folk, to rock, to blues, to soul, to anthemic pop, and all that’s in between. “I’m proud of this record and enjoyed watching it come to life over the past year,” the musician wrote on Instagram. “Thank you as always for your support and patience while it was coming to fruition, it’s my great pleasure to share with you the release date at long last.”
Osees
Intercepted Message
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A pop record for tired times.
Sugared with bits of shatterproof glass to put more crack in your strap.
At long last, Verse / chorus
A weathered thesaurus
This is Osees bookend sound
Early grade garage pop meets proto-synth punk suicide-repellant
Have a whack at the grass or listen while flat on your ass
Heaps of electronic whirling accelerants to gum up your cheapskate broadband
Social media toilet scrapers unite!
Allow your 24 hour news cycle eyes to squint at this smiling abattoir doorman
You can find your place here at long last
All are welcome
From the get go to the finale …. A distant crackling transmission of 80s synth last-dance-of-the-night tune for your lost loves
Suffering from Politic amnesia?
Bored of AI-generated pop slop?
Then this one is for you, our friends
Wasteland wanderer, stick around.”
Grace Potter
Mother Road
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “An audacious and heart-pounding map of the soul, Mother Road finds Grace Potter deconstructing her deepest fears and darkest regrets, charting the fallout with brutal honesty and emotional daring. “In Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck called Route 66 the ‘The Mother of all roads…the road of flight,’ ” Potter explains. “As I zeroed out my odometer and started west on my road trip across the U.S., I hoped that driving the road of flight would give me a bird’s eye view of my life. But it didn’t take long to realize that I was not flying; I was running away. In the solitude, I found myself smashing open the piggy bank of deeply-buried memories. Those gems of my real-life exploits spilled into my creative consciousness and emboldened me to write an album that reaches far beyond what actually happened–launching me down the alternate-reality roads of what could have happened.”
Sonic Youth
Live in Brooklyn 2011
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On Aug. 12, 2011 Sonic Youth played their final U.S. show on an outdoor stage overlooking the East River at the Williamsburg Waterfront in Brooklyn. Fitting that their storied career would bookend with a panoramic view of New York City where it all began 30 years before, having left in their wake one of one of the most powerfully influential careers in rock music. As the sun went down over the city, Sonic Youth ripped through a 17-song set that spanned from deep cuts off their first studio album and highlighting many other albums all the way through to their last, like a band with everything to prove. “The stage was facing the East River from the Williamsburg, Brooklyn waterfront, and I recall the sun going down in the west during our set,” Lee Ranaldo says. “It was a pretty magical, if kinda weird day. Fitting, somehow, that our last (American) show should be in New York City, our home and where it all began.”
Talking Heads
Stop Making Sense Deluxe Edition
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Talking Heads joined forces with director Jonathan Demme for the groundbreaking concert film Stop Making Sense. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the concerts filmed for Stop Making Sense, a newly restored 4K version of the film will return to theaters for a global theatrical run. Rhino will also release a deluxe version of the soundtrack that will now include the complete concert for the first time, featuring two that have never been released: Cities and Big Business / I Zimbra. The limited edition vinyl version features a 28-page booklet with previously unpublished photos along with new liner notes from all four band members: Tina Weymouth, David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison. Stop Making Sense focuses mainly on music by Talking Heads but does include a few songs recorded outside the band: Genius Of Love by Tom Tom Club, Weymouth and Frantz’s side-project, and What A Day That Was and Big Business from Byrne’s 1981 album The Catherine Wheel.”
