Cat Power does Dylan. Jimi Hendrix goes to Hollywood. Chris Stapleton aims higher. Helmet turn left. Todd Snider is doomed. And more. Things are starting to get interesting. See for yourself:
AJR
The Maybe Man
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Gearing up for a very special next era, the unparalleled multi-platinum chart-topping band AJR return with The Maybe Man, their anxiously awaited fifth full-length album. “We put absolutely everything we had into this album, visuals, and tour,” they say. “Down to every little detail. Get ready to immerse yourself in this world.” AJR have teased The Maybe Man throughout the past year or so with a series of singles. AJR make the kind of music that encourages you to keep going. For as much as their multi-dimensional soundscapes, theatrical delivery, and big screen-worthy vision provide an escape, the multiplatinum chart-topping trio of brothers — Adam (vocals/bass), Jack (vocals/guitar) and Ryan Met (guitar/piano/vocals) — also manage to intimately empathize with listeners everywhere. The band constructed an inimitable and immersive world soundtracked by a truly alternative vision for pop. The Maybe Man might just be their most identifiable body of work yet. In true AJR fashion, they came up with a larger-than-life way to explain the existential crisis of growing up and also process and deal with their father’s passing. Enter The Maybe Man. The title character is “a big sad superhero who is always questioning who he is.” Like a giant out of your favorite fairy tale (remade in kickass 3-D), emotion hangs over his head, so it doesn’t have to hang over yours.”
https://youtu.be/fSb64GF5_Ww?feature=shared
Beirut
Hadsel
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In the first days of 2020, I arrived on Hadsel, an island in the middle of Vesterålen, far up in the northern part of Norway,” says Zach Condon. “The cabin I rented had a beautiful view of the mountains and water but my personal highlight was that it came complete with a pump organ on “infinite” loan from an organ-loving neighbor. This unique instrument is what had inspired me to bring my studio with me, a nightmare transit process that I was too stubborn to avoid. Besides the usual recording equipment, a set of small monitors, an old portable Austrian tape machine, my ever-present trumpet, and some winter clothes, I decided to also take two large rigs of modular synthesizers complete with a midi keyboard controller with me. I worked hard on the music, lost in a trance and stumbling blindly through my own mental collapse that I had been pushing aside since I was a teenager. It came and rang me like a bell. I was left agonising many things past and present while the beauty of the nature, the northern lights and fearsome storms played an awesome show around me. The few hours of light would expose the unfathomable beauty of the mountains and the fjords, and the hours-long twilights would fill me with subdued excitement. I’d like to believe that scenery is somehow present in the music.”
Helmet
Left
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Left sees Helmet — comprising frontman Page Hamilton, drummer Kyle Stevenson, guitarist Dan Beeman and bassist Dave Case — carve out a musical landscape that is taut, muscular, and direct. Hamilton’s lead guitar lines feel like everything from downed power lines arcing to exploding resistors in shortwave radios. On Left, every snare crack hits like gunfire, every solo seemingly a manifestation of rabies-induced psychosis. Guided by Hamilton alongside co-producers Jim Kaufman and Mark Renk, and mastered by Howie Weinberg, the 11 songs on the new album are leaner and meaner in their execution than previous aural throwdowns. Left is powered by unbridled determination, a renewed sense of purpose and a desire to create more new dialects within the musical language Hamilton invented via his use of drop-D tuning.”
Jimi Hendrix Experience
Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “More than half a century after it was recorded, Jimi Hendrix and his legendary band’s historic and pivotal L.A. performance from 1967 is finally seeing the light of day in Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967. This live concert performance, captured just five days before the U.S. release of Are You Experienced, their album debut, is notable for being one of the last times the band performed in front of an audience as relative unknowns. Although Hendrix had established a U.K. base and stormed Europe over the previous 10 months, the vast majority of the 17,000-plus Los Angeles concertgoers were there to see headliners The Mamas & The Papas, and were caught offguard by Hendrix’s electrifying musicality and showmanship. Finally, the set can be enjoyed by the rest of the world for the first time ever; amazingly, not a single second of this unique, two-track live recording has ever been released before in any capacity, either via official channels or elsewise.”
Cat Power
Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Recorded Nov. 5, 2022 at London’s vaunted Royal Albert Hall, Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert sees Chan Marshall paying tribute to Bob Dylan with a complete live reimagining of his legendary performance at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in May 1966. Long known as the Royal Albert Hall Concert due to a mislabeled bootleg, the original performance saw Dylan switching from acoustic to electric midway through the show, drawing the ire of folk purists and forever altering the course of rock ’n’ roll. Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert both lovingly honors Dylan’s imprint on history and brings a stunning new vitality to many of his most revered songs. “More than the work of any other songwriter,” says Marshall, “Dylan’s songs have spoken to me, and inspired me since I first began hearing them at five years old.”
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
Fronzoli
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are back with their sixth studio album. The Australian psych-rock five-piece have been working on Fronzoli — a title meaning ‘something unnecessary added as decoration’ — since the release of 2022’s Night Gnomes. The record surges with the Perth-based band’s over-the-top, glittery sound, drawing influences from the likes of classic rock behemoths Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, as well as electronic experimental jazz. These rock influences are firmly on display in Fronzoli, with thrashy grunge tracks showcasing the band’s hyperactive guitars and offbeat lyrics. The band, who started out as friends, before coming together to pride themselves on their joyful and unpolished messiness when it comes to songwriting and production.”
Scream
DC Special
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “For this record, Scream invited their extensive music community to help create a unique project that weaves the history of music in Washington D.C. into the story of the band. Recorded by Don Zientara just weeks before his studio was evicted from its longtime location, the record is rich with both the sounds of Inner Ear and those of friends and musicians who influenced Scream and who shaped D.C. music over the past six decades. DC Special embodies the same sense of community and politics that inspired Scream from the start and is a truly special collection of new music that speaks to the present and also tells the story of D.C. music, Scream, and the influences that shaped them. Special guests on the record include: Mark Cisneros, Joe Lally, Derrick Decker, Bob Berberich, Clint Walsh, Dave Grohl, Onam Emmett, John Goetchius, Jerry Busher, Amy Pickering, Ian MacKaye, Amanda MacKaye, Brian Baker, Randy Austin, Martha Hull, Michael Reidy, Nate Bergman, Bobby Madden.”
Todd Snider
Crank It, We’re Doomed
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Sometimes an artist makes a record and then decides not to release it. Neil Young and Prince did it multiple times. Todd Snider is also in that club — he’s left three albums on the shelf over an equal number of decades. But now Snider has decided to take one of those albums off the shelf. Some 16 years after it was recorded, Crank It, We’re Doomed will finally arrive. Snider was in the midst of one of the most creative periods of his career when he recorded Crank It, We’re Doomed in 2007. He was writing at a frenetic pace and experimenting with musical ideas he would develop more fully on later releases. He not only finished and recorded the 15 songs on Crank It that year, he also wrote and recorded the seven songs that appeared on Shit Sandwich, the digital-only EP released in 2010 by his alter ego Elmo Buzz & the Eastside Bulldogs. “It was very much a blur,” he says, looking back on that year. “A blur not because of the party going on, but because of how many songs I was coming up with. It was probably the pinnacle of my time making up songs. Like they were really coming at me, and I didn’t know what to do with them all.”
Chris Stapleton
Higher
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Produced by Dave Cobb, Morgane Stapleton and Chris Stapleton, Higher was recorded at Nashville’s RCA Studio A. Across its 14 songs, Stapleton showcases his supernatural voice and musical versatility with songs that span genres and defy easy categorization. Alongside Stapleton (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, slide electric guitar), the album features Cobb (acoustic guitar, eclectic guitar), J.T. Cure (bass), Paul Franklin (pedal steel), Derek Mixon (drums), Morgane (background vocals, synthesizer, tambourine) and Lee Pardini (organ, piano). Kentucky-born Stapleton is a multiple Grammy, CMA and ACM Award-winner and one of the country’s most respected and beloved musicians.”
