This might be off-topic, but I have to say it. Whenever I watch cooking shows, one thing always drives me nuts: Every time they use a charcoal BBQ, they heat up a massive pile of coals — and then cook something that takes, like, eight minutes from start to finish. Gee, thanks. There’s nothing I like better than blowing $10 on charcoal to char a sliver of food — and then waiting hours for the coals to cool before I can put away the grill. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about any of that with these new albums — they’re all cooking with gas. Hey, I guess it wasn’t that far off-topic after all. Bon appetit!
Can
Live In Paris 1973
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Live in Paris 1973 finds Can in magical form for a performance recorded at L’Olympia in Paris on 12 May 1973, marking the first of the live series to feature Damo Suzuki on vocals. From 1970-73 the core lineup of Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli and Holger Czukay were joined by the Japanese improviser and vocalist. They met after a chance encounter while Suzuki was busking in Munich, and several months after the Paris 1973 performance his wanderlust would take him back on the road. This new album in the series allows us to witness the band at a particularly important stage of their career, with two of their most acclaimed albums — Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi, the latter feeding into the Paris performance — recently released. The recording itself was uncovered and pieced together from recordings within the Spoon Records vaults and those sent in by helpful fans, and brought into the 21st century by founding member Schmidt and producer / engineer René Tinner who have compiled and edited all the albums in this series.”
Ace Frehley
10,000 Volts
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rock ’n’ roll and heavy metal simply wouldn’t sound, look, or feel the same without Ace Frehley. Among hundreds of accolades, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 2014 as a co-founder and the original lead guitarist of KISS. 10,000 Volts is the latest chapter in an incredible legacy spanning 50-plus years in the limelight. Back in 1978, while still in KISS, he delivered his solo debut, Ace Frehley. It reached platinum status and exploded as the highest-selling of the four band solo albums. In 1987, he dropped Frehley’s Comet. Following Anomaly in 2009, he went on to make history once again when his 2014 Space Invader LP hit No. 9 on the Billboard 200 and emerged as the only solo album by a KISS member to reach the Top 10. 2016’s Origins Vol. 1, bowed at No. 1 on the Top Hard Rock Albums Chart and in the Top 5 of the Top Rock Albums Chart.”
Glitterer
Rationale
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Glitterer are a band from Washington, D.C. Initially, and for some time, it was a solo project: A man and his laptop, with occasional in-studio and onstage assistance from other human beings. Four records were released in that one-guy period. But now Glitterer are a band: Four charter members writing and recording songs and performing them at shows together, driving around the country, getting on each other’s nerves. They play loud melodic post-hardcore rock music that can sometimes seem simple but is always subtly weird and complex. To an extent even greater than with previous Glitterer releases, Rationale is steeped in the many streams of indie rock and post-punk/hardcore that course through the variegated musical landscape of the band’s homebase. Ned Russin cites Lilys and Unrest as key influences on his recent song writing, but the record also evokes heady and formally adventurous local legends like Fugazi and Nation of Ulysses, as well as some of the more theatrical and conceptual ’70s and ’80s British groups (Wire, Siouxsie and The Banshees) that made early and lasting impressions on the D.C. scene.”
Hurray For The Riff Raff
The Past Is Still Alive
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “With their latest and most liberating album to date, Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra) open the doorway to a language and world that are finally their own. The Past Is Still Alive represents a new beginning in Segarra’s lauded evolution as a storyteller. During a period of pain and personal grief, they found inspiration in radical poetry, railroad culture, outsider art, the work of writer Eileen Myles, and the history of activist groups. Discovering a stronger, more singular style of writing, Segarra uses their lyrics as memory boxes to process their trauma, identity and dreams for the future. They immortalize and say goodbye to those they have loved and lost, illustrate the many shapes and patterns of time’s passing, and honor the heartbroken and the hopeful parts of themselves, as they deliver a first-person telling of their life so far. It is both a memoir and a roadmap, and though The Past Is Still Alive was made in North Carolina and produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee), the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based Segarra brings listeners to places far beyond: Vivid experiences of small shops and buffalo stampedes in Santa Fe, childhood road trips to Florida, struggles of addiction in the Lower East Side, days-long journeys to outrun the cops in Nebraska, and more across their most magnetic collection of songs yet.”
I Dont Know How But They Found Me
Gloom Division
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The sophomore album from I Dont Know How But They Found Me, Gloom Division (produced by Dave Fridmann) is a glimpse into the gloriously strange wonderland of Dallon Weekes’ mind. Over the course of 12 shapeshifting songs, the Salt Lake City singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist follows his wildest impulses toward a combustible sound encompassing everything from R&B to post-punk to art-pop, approaching each with equal parts unfettered imagination and exquisite attention to detail. As he shed all creative inhibitions, Weekes widened the scope of his songwriting and expounded on such matters as love and sex, satanic panic, and his lived experience with neurodivergence (to name just a few). The most autobiographical work to date from Weekes, a former member of Panic! at the Disco, Gloom Division ultimately leaves listeners with the very same sense of euphoric fascination that sparked the album’s creation.”
Corb Lund
El Viejo
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Everything old is new again for Corb Lund. El Viejo is Lund’s first album of original material since 2020’s critically acclaimed Agricultural Tragic. Gathering around his living room, Lund & co. tapped into his most cherished musical influences of acoustic tone and lyrical aptitude — Marty Robbins, Kris Kristofferson, Bobbie Gentry, Jerry Reed. There is a common theme — possibly even a character thread — of the gambler, the outlaw who roams from place-to-place with no direction home. “It’s a lot of minor keys and gambling songs, is what it is,” Lund says in a matter-of-fact tone. “It was just a few of us in my house. No studio. No outside producer. No adults in the room. No stress.” He continues, “There’s not a single electric instrument on the whole thing, just acoustic sounds and singing. In terms of having a vision, this is a record I’ve had in my sights for a while and it came out exactly how I’d hoped. We cut all the songs live in the same room with lots of bleed. A bunch of the songs we captured in one take, first time through.”
Mick Mars
The Other Side Of Mars
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When Mick Mars stepped back from touring with Mötley Crüe — the band he co-founded more than 40 years ago — following their massive summer 2022 stadium tour, it seemed like the end of an era. Really, it was the beginning of a new one. The legendary guitarist, whose riffs, solos and overall devastatingly heavy sound powered the L.A. icons through four decades of world-conquering, multi-platinum sonic mayhem is, as he demonstrates on his debut solo effort, still a serious force to be reckoned with. Only now, listeners are reckoning with more Mars than ever before. “When it comes to my playing, there’s the Mötley side and the Mars side,” the guitarist says. “Either way, I always have a very clear vision of what I want to do.” On the aptly titled The Other Side Of Mars, fans get that vision in its full, multifarious glory. To be sure, there are plenty of characteristically riff-tastic, tough-as-nails hard-rock anthems. But The Other Side Of Mars also shows the 72-year-old guitarist heading into new and uncharted territory, tearing through caustic, modern metal, conjuring gothic-tinged soundscapes, digging into anguished, slow-burning power balladry and unspooling bluesy, cinematic instrumental workouts. The music throughout the 10-track collection, meanwhile, is otherwise studded with slide guitars, violins, violas, keyboards, glitchy freak-outs and all manner of sonic surprises.”
MGMT
Loss Of Life
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A joyous return and everything you couldwant from MGMT. A very ‘MGMT MGMT album’ which the band describe as “a group of songs about love and change, first and foremost.” Descriptors from the band include: Bold, flavorful, playful, sincere, optimistic, perceptive. Loss Of Life was produced by MGMT and Patrick Wimberly (Solange, Lil Yachty, MGMT), with mixing and additional production by Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Interpol, Spoon). The album includes the first-ever MGMT song with a feature, courtesy Christine and the Queens. The album artwork has been licensed from John Baldessari’s estate and is an artwork titled Noses and Ears, Etc. (Part Two).”
Remo Drive
Mercy
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Remo Drive, the longstanding project of brothers Erik and Stephen Paulson, want you to feel something. Following a six year run of pristine emo-influenced rock ’n’ roll records comes Mercy, the band’s fourth album. It’s the band’s most lyric-focused offering to date, a record about reinvention, trusting yourself, and wearing your heart on your sleeve even when it’s painful or vulnerable. Mercy has its origins in a move. Specifically: Erik moved to the sleepy city of Albany during the pandemic, Stephen stayed back in the duo’s native Minnesota. In his new environment, Erik wrote constantly. He’d play alone in his room, allowing himself to use his music to think existentially about life. About the complexities of being in a relationship, the complexities of making art and having it be received by a wide audience, the complexities of being in a new environment and finding your footing. Mercy, thus, is in some ways a record about getting in touch with your mental health, deprogramming what you thought you knew about yourself and using music to unlock inner honesty. It lends to some of the band’s strongest lyrical work in their career.”
Laetitia Sadier
Rooting For Love
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Laetitia Sadier issues a call to the traumatized civilizations of Earth: we’re urged to finally evolve past our countless millennia of suffering and alienation. Her songs score the complexities and harmonies within this directive: organ, guitar, bass, synth, trombone, vibraphone, live and programmed drums, and a vocal assembly of men and women billed as The Choir, working intricate chord/tempo/and dynamic changes, as Laetitia’s empathic presence leads the way.”
Philip Sayce
The Wolves Are Coming
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Toronto guitarist Philip Sayce’s latest album The Wolves Are Coming was recorded at Station House Studios in Los Angeles with Grammy-winning engineer Mark Rains. The sessions were produced by Sayce, mixed by Brian Moncarz (Toronto) and Rains, and released on Sayce’s label Atomic Gemini. Sayce contacted his long-time collaborators, drummers Michael Leasure, Aaron Sterling and Fritz Lewak, Fred Mandel on piano and organ, and vocalist Bernie Barlow. Sayce effuses, “I am so excited about this record and where I am at this time. These new songs represent my personal journey since the release of Spirit Rising and my commitment to growing as a musician and a human being. I am grateful to have realized my vision for this record by incorporating these stellar musicians, songs carefully penned, and my determination around the overall creative process.”
Nadine Shah
Filthy Underneath
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Nadine Shah worries that too much time might have elapsed between her last album, 2020’s universally acclaimed Kitchen Sink and its extraordinary successor Filthy Underneath. Attention spans seem to be ever shrinking and, besides, what gives her the right to think she can sashay back into action and imagine that anyone will care? Three years might seem like a prolonged absence to some people, but it’s also a period of time in which the apparatus that holds your world in place can be dismantled and reassembled so that you can keep living, keep creating. And the more Nadine tells you about the last three years of her life — losing her mother to cancer at the height of lockdown; the suicide attempt that ended her marriage; the subsequent period in rehab that slowly endowed her with the tools to outwit the pernicious voices that once overwhelmed her — the more incredible it is that she has returned as soon as she has done. Back with a new label Filthy Underneath chronicles a period of unprecedented turbulence in Nadine Shah’s life. And yet, the experience of listening to it is oddly life-affirming — a parade of ghosts spanning the entirety of Nadine’s 37 years, moving with balletic beauty to the music that Nadine and long-time collaborator and producer Ben Hillier have created around them.”
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Of The Last Human Being
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “After 13 years of hibernation, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, onen of the most gloriously uncategorizable American bands in existence, have emerged from stasis wth their fourth studio album, Of The Last Human Being. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, comprised of multi-instrumentalists and rotating vocalists Nils Frykdahl, Carla Kihlstedt, Michael “Iago” Mellender, Matthias Bossi and Dan Rathbun, play an arsenal of instruments ranging from the somewhat standard (drums, electric guitars, bass, electric violin) to the rare (bass harmonica, nyckelharpa, marxophone) to the homemade (slide-piano log, electric pancreas, pedal-action wiggler). The group has consistently evaded easy categorization, garnering accolades from across the aisles of contemporary classical music, prog rock, industrial music, metal, avant-garde improv, and more. Their music, inturns bashing and bucolic, enveloping and unsettling, tends towards long-form epics interspersed with mysterious field recordings.”
Rod Stewart with Jools Holland
Swing Fever
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “This is the tale of Britain’s new partners in swing, and how they have come together to celebrate a glorious musical era on an exhilarating new album. Swing Fever is a sparkling salute to the timeless songs of the big band years, reignited by two true giants of their craft, Sir Rod Stewart and Jools Holland with his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra. For the first time, Rod and Jools have united on record to share their peerless dexterity on a 13-track tribute to such truly great songs as Ain’t Misbehavin’, Frankie And Johnny, Sentimental Journey and Lullaby Of Broadway. Swing Fever is the realisation of conversations between Rod and Jools that began in the pandemic years, and of Rod’s dream of making an album of the songs that were, in many ways, the rock ‘n’ roll of their day. As they discuss the evolution of the project together, Holland says: “I remember I was just packing up to go away for Christmas, and you rang me. We hadn’t really spoken at any length before. You said ‘I want to do a record.’ ‘Blimey,’ I thought, ‘that’s a thing to say for Christmas. OK, let’s have a look.’ ”
Mary Timony
Untame The Tiger
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Untame The Tiger is Mary Timony’s fifth solo album, her first in 15 years. It’s a startling document of an artist fully coming into her own power during the fourth decade of her career, the product of lessons learned during life-altering struggle. The mystical, guitar-driven album emerged after the dissolution of a long-term relationship, and was bookended by the deaths of Timony’s father and mother. The album was recorded during a two-year period during which she was the primary caregiver for her ailing parents. “This was the hardest thing I’ve been through. Every week I had to manage a new crisis.” The tectonic psychic shift Mary experienced informs many of her lyrics on the album. “I started realizing that I gotta control the things that I can,” says Timony, who would write songs while going on mind-clearing walks and bike rides around her native Washington, D.C. “Because I was making impossible decisions on behalf of my parents, creative choices now seemed more manageable. Since I had to confront the reality of loss, I realized what was important to me about being alive, and I became less scared. The record became my anchor in a time when I was losing so much around me. It felt like all I had — a guide that helped me through, and gave me hope.”
