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Art Moore [Art Moore] August 5 street date. Art Moore make vivid, heartbreaking short stories. Each song on the newly formed band's self-titled debut album is its own individual universe of bittersweet feeling: a brief snapshot of a moment in time that ptures the fragility and ocsional impossi-bility of human connection. These songs are deft character studies, zeroing in on shy beginners, jilted friends and friendly exes, chronicling minute moments - road trips, sual dates, games of truth or dare - with rich detail and subtle wit. Featuring the inimitable songwriting of beloved Oakland luminary Taylor Vick of Boy Scouts set in sharp relief against lush production from Ezra Furman collaborators Sam Durkes and Trevor Brooks, it's a quietly wondrous record - a set of songs that sketch out the struggle and beauty of coping with everyday life. These are songs about tiny, unspoken feelings rendered on a grand sle, moments that often get brushed aside given the weight that they should be. |
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Basement Jaxx [Remedy (2LP/gold vinyl)] July 29 street date. "Remedy" is Basement Jaxx's joyous debut album from 1999. It was one of the most assured, propulsive full-lengths the dance world had seen since Daft Punk's "Homework". A set of incredibly diverse tracks, "Remedy" is indebted to the raw Amerin house of Todd Terry and Masters at Work, and even shares a penchant for Latin vibes (especially on the horn-driven "Bingo Bango" and the opener, "Rendez-Vu", which trades a bit of salsa wiggle with infectious vocoderized disco). The double LP "Remedy" reissue arrives July 29th on golden vinyl. |
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Bibi Club [Le Soleil Et La Mer] August 26 street date. Like a song through an open window, it feels like we've been waiting a long time for "Le soleil et la mer". The debut release by Bibi Club, aka real-life lovers Adèle Trottier-Rivard and Nicolas Basque, is sun-kissed and wave-washed, shimmering and chic, a party overdue after two years that have felt (to everyone!) like winter. Adèle has been singing for others for years, notably with Nico's band, Plants and Animals, but "Le soleil et la mer" stunningly and confidently reveals the extent of her skills. Bibi Club effortlessly moved from home to the stage, with infectiously easygoing, fun-loving charm. You n immediately feel this euphoria on the album, which quickly makes you forget about the worries of the daily grind. It's summertime, come out and dance! Throughout "Le soleil et la mer", Adèle and Nico set out to create music that is intimate, honest, sparkling with an energy that animates even its quiet moments - and inspired by artists as diverse as Stereolab, Suicide, Alice Coltrane, and Tirzah. It's a sound as ready for revels as it is for rainy days. Bibi Club will remind you: if it's not sunny here, it's sunny somewhere. |
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Boygenius [Boygenius] Available now. CD edition. Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus formed boygenius after booking a tour together, but the trio had subconsciously been in the works for longer than that. Through a series of performances, chance encounters, and greenroom hangouts, the group felt an instant compatibility and comfort. The lyrilly and musilly arresting singer-songwriters and kindred spirits got to know each other on their own terms, producing their first EP along the way. With gut-wrenchingly personal yet easily relatable verses and spare, lilting melodic arrangements, all three are leading a new rock vanguard that values unflinching self-awareness and unassailable songcraft. Praise for "boygenius": 8.3/10 - Pitchfork (BNM), 8/10 - Exclaim!, 8.8/10 - Paste. |
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rolan, Robin & Sebastian Gainsborough [The Northman (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2LP-black)] Please note new street date: July 22. Composers Robin rolan (Tri-Angle Records) and Sebastian Gainsborough (Vessel) were given a task of epic proportions when director Rob Eggers ("The Witch", "The Lighthouse") asked them to create the score for his ambitious and highly anticipated new film "The Northman". They needed to make a score that both honored the immense research that had gone into the authenticity of this Viking era period piece and complimented the cinematic maximalism of the film for a modern audience. The artists stretched themselves to the depths of their creativity and the resulting album is a gorgeous sonic tableaux that places the listener right in the center of the film. While arranging the score the composers consulted musician and ethnographer Poul H?xbro for inspiration and insight into the history of Viking music. Having backgrounds in leftfield electronic music, Robin and Sebastian felt liberated by the constraint of using a small selection of musil tools for this piece. The album as a whole is a cinematic masterpiece of sound and ambiance, both gorgeous and disturbing, like the film it so beautifully accompanies. |
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Copeland, Shemekia [Done Come Too Far (crystal clear)] August 19 street date. Shemekia Copeland is a Grammy-nominated blues, soul, and Amerina singer is revered worldwide for her defiant music and fire-breathing performances. "Done Come Too Far" continues Shemekia's riveting, clear-eyed testimony about our troubled world while celebrating the blessings that keep hope alive. The new album is again produced by Will Kimbrough, and an all-star supporting st includes slide guitar whiz Sonny Landreth, Hill Country blues great Cedric Burnside, and Hi Rhythm Section organist Charles Hodges. "Done Come Too Far" is another exhilarating Shemekia Copeland showse, as her rousing vols bring the heat in an infectious array of muscular rockers, stomping blues, swampy soul, and heartbreaking ballads. Intense, topil new originals make up most of the tracks and spirited versions of songs by Ray Wylie Hubbard and her father, Johnny Copeland, fit right into the mix. |
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Dinosaur Jr. [Seventytwohundredseconds (EP)] August 26 street date. ptured at the height of their powers during the heyday of the grunge movement that they inspired, J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr perform tracks from their back talogue live on MTV's 120 Minutes show. Loud and heavy as ever, the band turn in an inspired performance, which has since become a legendary favourite among fans. Never officially released until now, and produced in association with MTV and the band, ‘Seventytwohundredseconds’ is the latest in Cherry Red's ongoing extensive exploration of Dinosaur Jr's brilliant Sire Records period. A must hear glimpse of one of the treasures from the rich seam of Amerin alternative rock and grunge artists who reinvigorated guitar orientated music in the late 1980s and 1990s. 5 tracks. |
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Donnelly, Stella [Flood (black)] August 26 street date. Like the many banded stilts that spread across the cover of her newest album "Flood", Stella Donnelly is wading into uncharted territory. Here, she finds herself discovering who she is as an artist among the flock, and how abundant one individual n be. "Flood" is Donnelly's record of this rediscovery: the product of months of risky experimentation, hard moments of introspection, and a lot of moving around. Donnelly accumulated 43 tracks as she moved around Australia, often finding herself displaced due to border restrictions, a tough rental market, and once from the joys of finding black mould in the walls. While each song on "Flood" is a singular artwork unto itself, the collective shares all of Stella Donnelly in abundance: her inner child, her nurturing self, her nightmare self; all of herself has gone into the making of this record, and although it would take an ocean to fathom everything she feels, it's well worth diving in. |
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Elfman, Danny [Bigger. Messier.] August 12 street date. Following his triumphant performances at the 2022 Coachella Music and Arts Festival, Danny Elfman delivers "Bigger. Messier.", an ambitious double album collection of remixed and re-imagined tracks from his highly acclaimed "Big Mess" album. This sprawling 23 track collection features tracks reworked by some of the most groundbreaking and subversive artists around today. "Bigger. Messier." views the Grammy and Emmy Award-winning composers songs through the lens of luminaries from diverse sides of the music business, including Trent Reznor, Iggy Pop, Squarepusher, and Ghostemane. Elfman once again has achieved a kind of artistic liberation on the record that had been eluding him for dedes, and connecting him to a brand new audience. |
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Esmerine [Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More (180g)] September 2 street date. Esmerine presents "Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More", its first album in five years, following a celebrated run of Juno Award winning and nominated records throughout the preceding dede. Founded by ex-Godspeed You! Black Emperor percussionist Bruce wdron and cellist Rebec Foon (Saltland, Silver Mt Zion, Set Fire To Flames), the acclaimed instrumental music ensemble and has long embroidered emotive chamber works using threads of post-classil, post-rock, Minimalism, neo-Baroque, jazz, pop and a wide array of folk traditions. Esmerine conjures a distinctive and immediately identifiable sound that consistently defies the trappings of "fusion", forging emotive cinematic soundtracks under the overriding sonic sensibilities of postpunk grit, Wall-of-Sound, drone and dark ambient. Recorded by longtime co-producer Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes), the new album manifestly rries on in this fine tradition. |
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Five Finger Death Punch [AfterLife (indie exclusive/2LP-yellow)] August 19 street date. "AfterLife" is the ninth album from the Las Vegas-based metal band Five Finger Death Punch. The band has amassed over 8 billion streams and 3 billion video views to date and have sold over one million tickets between 2018 and 2020 alone. Afterlife features the singles "Welcome to the Circus", "IOU", and the title track. The band's longtime collaborator Kevin Churko helmed the producer duties of arguably their most diverse record to date. "AfterLife" implores fans to fight for their rights to be unapologetic and straightforward about their opinions. |
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Friendship [Love the Stranger] July 29 street date. Friendship's Merge debut, "Love the Stranger", moves like a country record skipping in just the right spot, leaving its fellow travelers longing for a place they've only visited in their dreams. Guitarist Peter Gill, drummer Michael Cormier-O'Leary, bassist Jon Samuels, and hawkeyed balladeer Dan Wriggins map out the group's particular, breathtaking landspe and invite the listener to share in its glory. "Love the Stranger"'s invitation is all the more wondrous beuse its characters have clearly been hurt before. Wide awake, vulnerable, and gimmickless, Friendship won't hesitate to confide in us, or even ask for help when the moment lls. The record's images craft a symbolic language of high and low Amerina, both evotive and consistently accessible. Spending time with "Love the Stranger" creates a community - one in which the window between the listener and the musicmaker shatters in full, until all that remains are the fragments you decide to pick up together. |
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Fucked Up [Year Of The Ox (blue/green)] July 29 street date. 2022 colour vinyl repress, 12-inch vinyl. Recorded over 6 months by Jon Drew at Giant Studios, 'Year Of The Ox' is the band's fourth record in a continuing 12 year cycle and adds to its evolving retinue of guest musicians. The patient and building "Year Of The Ox" features Nika Rosa Danilova of Zola Jesus for a guest vol passage and Toronto's string quartet, New Strings Old Puppets. The other track, "Solomon's Song", is a gothic vampire love tribute to 'Twilight', featuring a saxophone solo from Aerin Fogel of the Bitters and heavy synthing from Trust. |
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Harper, Ben [Bloodline Maintenance] July 22 street date (CD) / September 30 (LP). "Bloodline Maintenance" is a fearless and immensely soulful work largely inspired by the loss of a longtime friend and the lingering influence of a mercurial and charismatic father. Along with guitar and bass, Ben Harper also played the drums, including an eclectic assortment of percussions. The deliberately open spaces and accented beats influenced in large part by the exploratory rhythms of the hip-hop he has loved since his teens. The result is less a direct influence than the applying of hip-hop's inventiveness to longstanding paradigms of soul, blues and jazz, spinning it all forward into a reconfiguration of a new black Amerina. "If this is my "Mule Variations", then hallelujah", Harper says, referencing the groundbreaking Tom Waits record. "Bloodline Maintenance" is both a politil and personally revealing work. It is soul music, but never a stylistic tribute to some bygone era. The sound and words are essential and undeniably timely. |
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House Of Pain [House Of Pain (Fine Malt Lyrics)] July 22 street date. Tommy Boy Records celebrates the 30th anniversary of House of Pain's debut album "House of Pain (Fine Malt Lyrics)" with this remastered, limited edition release. Everlast, DJ Lethal, and Danny Boy formed House of Pain while attending high school and were signed to Tommy Boy Records after fashioning themselves as rowdy Irish-Amerin hooligans, hitting the lol rap and alternative music scene. Their debut album "House of Pain (Fine Malt Lyrics)" was released in 1992 and went multi-platinum, thanks to the smash hit single "Jump Around" which was produced by Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs. The song hit #3 on the Billboard Top 100 Chart in the US and charted Top 10 globally. |
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Interrupters [In the Wild] August 5 street date. After three studio albums and over a dede deep into the music game, The Interrupters deliver their new album, "In The Wild". This 14-track opus is the real deal; it's a story of survival, a story of resilience, by a band being bold and rejecting the easy impulses of simply repeating what's worked before. Together during lockdown, Aimee Interrupter, partner and guitarist Kevin Bivona, and his younger twin brothers, Jesse (drums) and Justin (bass), decided to put idle hands to work. After building a home studio in their garage together, Kevin stepped up and took charge of production duties to become "the accountable one" this time around. The record took shape in an unforced and organic fashion, and the recording process was evidently a fun one, which is reflected in the sound of the album, gliding across a spectrum of breathless punk rock, doo-wop, gospel, dancehall, and the band’s customary nods to the lineage of two-tone. |
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Mountain Goats [Bleed Out (2LP/yellow w'OBI strip)] August 19 street date. In the depths of the pandemic end of 2020, Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle passed the time trapped at home watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound espism. French thrillers like 2008's "Mesrine", vintage Italian poliziotteschi, and the 1974 Donald Pleasence mad-scientist vehicle "The Freakmaker" brought him back to his formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked his songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings, and in turn inspired his 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure - and futility - of vengeance. The resulting performance is "Bleed Out", a cinematic experience unto itself. One song about preparing to exact bloody revenge begat another song about the act of exacting bloody revenge and then more songs about and the uses and the aftermath of being driven to exact bloody revenge, each delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of their narrators and circumstances. Darnielle was drawn to the antiheroes of the hard-boiled action flicks he was bingeing, particularly the ways in which their quests for justice were almost all inevitably doomed. |
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Osees [A Foul Form] August 12 street date. "Brain stem cracking scum-punk recorded tersely in the basement of my home. After a notoriously frustrating eon, the knee-jerk song path was aggressive and hooky. This is an homage to the punk bands we grew up on - the weirdos and art freaks that piqued our interests and pointed us on the trail head to here/now. Bad times make for strong music is something I agree with. I would say that is evident by the past few years of output from the underground. "A Foul Form" represents some of our most savage and primal instincts. And the importance of a sense of humour in the darkest hour. Nothing wrong with keeping it snappy in the meantime. For fans of Rudimentary Peni, Crass, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Screamers, Abwarts, Stooges, and all things aggressively tilted towards your face" - John Dwyer. |
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Pavement [Slanted And Enchanted (30th Anniversary/splatter)] August 12 street date. This year we celebrate 30 years of Pavement's debut full-length, "Slanted and Enchanted". First released by Matador Records on April 20, 1992, it remains a truly monumental album - one that defined/ruined a generation and a genre, depending on who you ask. To mark the ocsion the iconic album is going to be reissued on limited red/white/black splattered vinyl. In their own way, Pavement changed the face of 1990s rock just as much as Nirvana, at least for those with an ear closer to the ground of the indie scene. In fact, they virtually defined the indie scene for that dede, and "Slanted and Enchanted" was the non-anthem of slacker rock. For years after its release, every hip indie band seemed to imitate their Fall-influenced, off-kilter sound and post-functional, obscurantist lyril approach. Pavement are set to bring their unique brand of indie-rock back for 2 nights at Toronto's Massey Hall this September. |
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Staples, Mavis [We'll Never Turn Back (blue/15th Anniversary)] August 12 street date. Coloured vinyl 15th anniversary edition of Mavis Staples' 2007 album "We'll Never Turn Back". "When we started our family group, The Staple Singers, we started out mostly singing in churches in the south. Pops saw Dr. Martin Luther King speak in 1963 and from there we started to broaden our musil vision beyond just gospel songs. Like many in the civil rights movement, we drew on the spirituality and the strength from the church to help gain social justice and try to achieve equal rights. We beme a major voice for the civil rights movement and hopefully helped to make a difference in this country. It was a diffiicult and dangerous time but we felt we needed to stand up and be heard. So for us, and for many in the civil rights movement, we looked to the church for inner strength and to help make positive changes. And that seems to be missing today. Here it is, 2007, and there are still so many problems and social injustices in the world. With this record, I hope to get across the same feeling, the same spirit and the same message as we did with the Staple Singers and to hopefully continue to make positive changes. Things are better but we're not where we need to be and we'll never turn back" - Mavis Staples. |
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Tops [Empty Seats (EP) (black)] August 19 street date. New 5 track EP from TOPS. TOPS were formed in Montreal when songwriting duo David rriere and Jane Penny decided to join forces with drummer Riley Fleck. Since then they have become one of the most influential underground bands of the past dede, creating a space for sophistited pop music in the indie world. Their tendency to opt towards making straight-forward, stripped down and honest recordings lets their pop songwriting shine out in the open. With a heart firmly attached to their sleeves, their songcraft delves into the emotional intricy of personal relationships, asking questions about power and desire. The result of this mixture is a collection of four self-produced records and a handful of singles that cover a range of moods and a complex emotional realm while maintaining a groove and musility. Soft rock infused pop hits flow easily, surrounded by their signature moody ballads. |
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Trout, Walter [Ride (2LP)] August 19 street date. However fast or far a man travels, he n never truly outrun his past. Walter Trout knows this better than anyone. As he embarked on his 30th solo album, "Ride", the iconic US blues-rock guitarist found himself eyeing the horizon and the green shoots of his triumphant late reer. Even now, aged 70, Trout was still writing fresh chapters of his life story. The last time we saw Trout stepping out, he was on the road in support of 2020's "Ordinary Madness": a universally acclaimed album that debuted at #2 on the Billboard Blues Chart. Since then, Walter has taken some much-needed time off to refocus. "I've been at this since 1969, when I started out in the New Jersey bars", he reflects. "Suddenly, I'm sat on my ass for sixteen months, although I did still practice guitar every day. This album is a snapshot of how I was feeling through this pandemic. I think I still have something new to say about the world, and that's important to me". By now, Trout knows that nobody ever really leaves their old selves behind. But with "Ride" providing an emotional release-valve - both for its creator and his loyal listeners - perhaps this veteran artist n reconcile with his past, accept his future, and live in the present as it unfolds. |
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V/A [Eccentric Soul: The Shiptown Label (2LP-black)] August 12 street date. From a humble storefront studio loted in a shoeshine parlor on Norfolk, Virginia's Church Street, Noah Biggs built a world. Hustler by day, gambler by night, the always-in-a-suit Biggs took a gaggle of off-brand singers and combined his connections and charisma to forge timeless soul music during a period of deep upheaval. Compiled here are 25 of Shiptown's most compelling sides recorded between 1965-1977, from the likes of Ida Sands, The Soul Duo, The Anglos, Dream Team, The Grooms, Positive Sounds, Barbara Stant, Wilson Williams, Art Ensley, and yes, Flip Flop Stevens. |
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Yo La Tengo [I n Hear the Heart Beating As One (2LP/yellow/25th Anniversary)] July 29 street date. New Jersey indie rockers Yo La Tengo had already been slowly growing into their sound for over a dede by the 1997 release of their revelational eighth album, "I n Hear The Heart Beating As One". Now, 25 years later, this "stone cold classic" (Rolling Stone) by "the greatest band in the universe" (Pitchfork) is getting reissue treatment on translucent yellow vinyl as part of Matador's 2022 Revisionist History talogue mpaign. Featuring their eclectic blend of folk, rock, shoegaze, electronic, and what n be widely termed experimental, "I n Hear The Heart Beating As One" subtly shifts moods with their wide curious palette of stylistic exploration. For the album's 25th anniversary, Yo La Tengo expanded the double-LP to include a smorgasbord of unearthed live takes from a 1997 Peel Session, as well as remixes of ‘Autumn Sweater’. Though the band turned in standout albums before and after, this fan-favourite announced itself as their definitive master statement. |
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