New Releases - 12/20/19
Hitting The Racks
Here's your weekly rundown of what's hitting the new release racks at Grimey's
New on Vinyl
Soccer Mommy - lucy 7" (Loma Vista) "
lucy" is the first taste of music from Soccer Mommy since her critically acclaimed breakout debut and is a showcase of her songwriting prowess. Allison navigates her all-consuming dread with a sense of humor, tackling her inner demons through a literal seduction by the Devil.
David Byrne - American Utopia On Broadway (Original Cast Recording) 2xLP (Nonesuch)
Original Cast Recording of the critically acclaimed Broadway production of David Byrne's American Utopia, with music and lyrics by Byrne. The former Talking Heads mastermind shares the spotlight with a diverse ensemble of eleven musical artists from around the globe to deliver "a marvel of staging and motion" (Chicago Tribune) that's a "thought-provoking example of the power of live music" (Forbes). "Dazzling, rapturous and jubilant," exclaims the New York Times of the show. "Byrne puts the central tenet of making contact with a world outside your mind into dynamic, sensory practice onstage." "Gorgeously designed, deliciously fun," says the New Yorker, "backed by a rangy, versatile, exuberant band...Most important, the songs sound great." "Astonishing," raves Hollywood Reporter. "A knockout celebration of music, dance and song. Pure bliss." "A heady swirl of hope for our anxious times," says Rolling Stone. "The concert-theater-dance spectacle finds solace in human connections...a tonic for our tumultuous times..."
Queens Of The Stone Age - Lullabies To Paralyze 2xLP (Interscope)
Queens Of The Stone Age - Era Vulgaris LP (Interscope)
Vinyl reissues of QOTSA's fourth and fifth albums. Each includes bonus track(s).
IDLES - A Beautiful Thing: IDLES Live At Le Bataclan LP (Partisan)
A Beautiful Thing: IDLES Live at Le Bataclan is the brand-new live album from IDLES, recorded at Le Bataclan in Paris on December 3, 2018, at the close of a 90-date world tour. The album celebrates the band's success over the last two years, featuring songs from Brutalism and Joy As An Act of Resistance, and highlights their overall message of unity, and of healing through community. "Our show at Bataclan (the site of a horrific massacre on November 13th, 2015 which claimed 131 lives) was the end of a very long journey for us," notes Joe Talbot. "On that tour we learnt so much about ourselves, each other and the audiences we have grown with over the past 10 years. That show was nothing short of catharsis and nothing more than love. We love what we do and the people who have carried us here, there was no hiding that at Bataclan and we are so very grateful that the moment was captured in all its glory, love and fatigue. Long live the open minded and long live the moment." [Three colored vinyl pressings are available: orange, lime green, and pink.]
Soloriens Native Unity Quartet featuring Marshall Allen - Aerials and Antennas LP (Ornesco/Feeding Tube Records)
This first vinyl offering by a sporadically 20-something years unit, originally assembled under the name Cinema Soloriens by filmmaker/musician James Harrar in 1993, to play accompaniment to his films. The line-up usually includes legendary Sun Ra alto master (and current Arkestra leader) Marshall Allen with Harrar (who is also known for his work with Arthur Doyle and Daevid Allen). For this 2016 Nashville recording, the quartet was completed by a pair of musicians from the Atlanta underground -- jazz percussionist Kenito Murray, and new music-oriented bassist Maxwell Boecker. The quartet unspools out two side long gushes of splotchy pan-generic FLOW. The blend of electronics and reeds certainly brings to mind warped passages of many private press early '70s improv LPs, although any time the music starts to do something that might be described as 'simmering,' things quickly get weird. A horn takes off for Saturn, a voice starts mumbling as though spare change was just one prayer away, or the electronics emerge from wherever they were hiding to begin alien discussions.
Bishop Briggs - Champion LP (Island)
New release from the British singer/songwriter. "Bishop Briggs has never been shy about her badass side, and that rings especially true on her latest single 'Champion'. For Briggs, the object she looked to take back was confidence in herself. The singer says the track was written at a dark time when rules and societal norms were weighing down on her. ''Champion' is a song that I wrote when my self-esteem was at an all-time low,' she explains. 'As a woman, I feel like I have been socially trained to be so many things at once-sexy yet sweet, confident yet humble, independent yet submissive, smart but not too smart-the list is never-ending.'" - Alt Press
Liam Payne - LP1 LP (Republic)
Debut album by the British singer, best known as a member of One Direction.
Yogi Lang - A Way Out Of Here LP (Gentle Art Of Music)
RPWL frontman Yogi Lang's new solo album not only offers a colorful palette of art rock with its nine songs, but also illuminates the essentials of life with all obstacles, fears and rays of hope. A song-serving brilliant band, analog synthesizers and epic choirs provide the basis for Yogi Lang's gilmouresque voice. [Limited colored vinyl pressing.]
Jpegmafia - All My Heroes Are Cornballs 2xLP (EQT Recordings LLC)
The third album from the Baltimore rapper was self-recorded and features guest appearances from Abdu Ali, Helena Deland and Buzzy Lee.
Brigitte Fontaine / Areski - L'Incendie LP (BYG Records)
2019 repress, gatefold sleeve. "L'Incendie is the first collaboration between Areski and Brigitte Fontaine. It's an exceptional album for BYG records. In a perfect symbiosis with Brigitte Fontaine's magnificent voice and surrealist texts, Areski creates a minimalist 'ethno-folk acoustic universe.' In the uniquely French 'dark chanteuse' genre, this is a classic. Originally released in 1974."
Lebron Brothers - Salsa Y Control LP (Cotique)
Exact repro, originally released in 1970. "In 1970, Jose Lebron composed 'Salsa Y Control,' a song that is credited with helping to give a broad category of Latin music the name 'salsa.' Up until then the mambo, son montuno, guaracha, guaguanco, cha cha cha etc. had no genre. 'Salsa Y Control' helped give this music the name that is now known and acknowledged worldwide."
Various Artists - From These Shores LP (Aloha Got Soul)
From These Shores is the otherworldly sound of softly psychedelic, cosmic folk and psych from Hawaii. Hazy, lazy, steeped in sunshine; these 13 tracks are gathered here thanks to Aloha Got Soul curators Roger Bong and Oliver Seguin. Spanning the 1960s throughout the 1980s, From These Shores offers curious finds from every corner of the Hawaiian Islands - from the North Shore of Oahu (Gordon Broad) to the streets of Honolulu (Burgess & Brooks), the spiritual escapes of Maui (Merrell Fankhauser) to the spirited efforts of Bahá'í musicians (East Of Midnight), the low-key lounges of Waikiki (Dennis Soares) to the disappearing beaches of Puna (Alice Wise).
Jeff Majors - For Us All (Yoka Boka) LP (Ice)
Private Press Spiritual Jazz from D.C's Jeff Majors. Featuring harp, drum machines and synths. Jeff was one of Alice Coltrane's students at the ashram. He also played in Brother Ah's band. Each song on this album is an inspired vision of the personal and the devotional via the harps universal glistening range and Linn drums. Comes with info booklet.
King Hannibal - Truth (featuring Lee Moses) LP (Tidal Waves Music)
James Shaw (aka King Hannibal) was an American R&B, soul and funk singer, songwriter and record producer known for his showmanship and outlandish costumes. Several of his songs often carried deeper social or political themes. His biggest hit was "Hymn No. 5," a commentary on the effects of the Vietnam War on servicemen, which was banned on radio. On this first (official) vinyl reissue of King Hannibal's 1973 masterpiece Truth, expect mad funky soul classics and intense dirty tracks backed by energetic musicians from the likes of Lee Moses, George McCurn (The Staple Singers) & Herman Hitson (Jimi Hendrix). At times the tunes on 'Truth' drift into a mellower southern type of soul and at other times the raw, fuzzy & gritty funky guitars make it a full-on funk-rock type of album more indebted to Funkadelic. Even on the slower tracks the psych-fuzz guitar from Lee Moses washes over everything, leaving a delightfully hazy gauze perched atop the simmering rhythms.
Various Artists - Disco with a Feeling 2LP (Athens of the North)
Compiled by deep disco head David Haffner, who helped Athens of the North license many of the label's rare disco 45s, Disco with a Feeling includes 70s Soul or Modern Soul 45s that fit into the disco sound, soulful and magical. The whole LP is straight up dance-floor fire, no matter who you are or where you're from - a soul boy, disco lady, or a house head you are going to feel the heat of these club smashers.
Milton Nascimento - Maria Maria 2LP (Far Out Recordings)
Originally released in 2003 as a double-CD package; first ever vinyl release. Recorded in 1974, the album was written as the soundtrack to a ballet which dealt with the legacy of slavery in Brazil. Milton Nascimento possesses one of the most immediately recognizable voices in Brazilian music: high and sweet and as breathtakingly sublime as that of any soul singer. This collection also displays his early fascination with evocative, non-verbal, scat-style singing, spare, harmonic guitar work and local folk music, jazz, and rock. The music on Maria Maria was performed by an impressive group of young Brazilian musicians, including Naná Vasconcelos (percussion and effects), Toninho Horta (guitars), and Paulo Moura (sax). Several vocalists, including Naná Caymmi, Fafá de Belém, Beto Guedes, and Milton himself, had hits in years to come with reworkings of these songs.
Joe Bataan - Singin' Some Soul LP (Fania Records)
Exact repro. Originally released in 1969. Features "Crystal Blue Persuasion" and "My Cloud".
Susumu Yokota - Cloud Hidden LP (Lo Recordings)
"Widely adored for his quintessential contributions to Japanese ambient electronica in the '90s and '00s, Susumu Yokota passed in 2015 after along battle with illness. His legacy is suitably sustained with 'Cloud Hidden', a lovely collection of 10 unfinished but charming works which are here adapted and remained by Jon Tye; proprietor of the Lo Recordings label behind many of Yokota's most prized releases. Working under a quote taken from Alan Watts' book 'Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown', the set comes together with a suitably dreamy resolution, drifting from frayed and gently febrile rhythm excursions to passages of schizoid carnival music and doom belch, and thru to Vangelis-like synth-brass scaping, desert-at-night guitar strums, and more psychedelic, pre-dawn ritual invocations." - Boomkat
Canned Heat - Future Blues [Reissue/1970] LP (Elemental Music)
Released in 1970, Future Blues was the last Canned Heat album to feature the band's classic lineup (Larry Taylor and Harvey Mandel departed soon after the LP was issued, and songwriter Alan Wilson died later that year).
Reissues & From The Archives
Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders - GarciaLive Volume 12: January 23rd, 1973 The Boarding House 3xCD (ATO)
GarciaLive Volume 12 chronicles Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders' performance at The Boarding House in San Francisco, CA on January 23, 1973, joined by John Kahn (bass), Bill Vitt (drums) and Sarah Fulcher (vox). Both sets from that evening were unique with rarely featured Motown composition "Honey Chile" and famous Carmichael/Gorrell penned "Georgia On My Mind".
Frank Zappa - The Hot Rats Sessions 6xCD (UMe)
Frank Zappa -Hot Rats [Reissue/1969] 2xLP (UMe)
The Hot Rats Sessions box set celebrates the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest albums in the history of recorded music. The original 1969 Frank Zappa album was the first record to be recorded on a prototype 16-track tape machine. Self-described as a 'Movie For Your Ears', Hot Rats was technically the second solo outing for the composer and the album that put FZ on the map as a guitar player. The recording sessions produced a wealth of material that ended up being sprinkled among multiple releases during his lifetime. This mammoth six disc collection documents and compiles every composition recorded during those days in July 1969, along with an abundance of rare mixes, vault nuggets and complete basic tracks mixed from the original multi-track masters. [Limited edition pink colored vinyl pressing also available.]
New on CD
Stevie D. & Corey Glover - Torn From The Pages CD (SPV)
Stephen Deacutis aka "Stevie D" has been working professionally as a guitar player, mixer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, engineer, writer, and performer since the early 1980's, having honed his skills and training under such studio heavyweights as Andy Wallace (Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana), Kevin Shirley (Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith), and Max Norman (Ozzy Osbourne) amassing credits that include such acts as Vanilla Fudge, Vinny Moore, Pat Travers, Carmine and Vinny Appice, Punky Meadows, and Cyndi Lauper to name a few. His new album Torn From The Pages features singer Corey Glover from Living Colour.