New Releases - 9/4/20
Hitting The Racks
Here's your weekly rundown of what's hitting the new release racks at Grimey's
New Releases
All Them Witches - Nothing As The Ideal CD/LP (New West)
All Them Witches have built a career out of playing music that cannot be pigeonholed into one specific genre. Nothing As The Ideal was recorded in Studio 2 at the world famous Abbey Road with the help of longtime mixing engineer Mikey Allred. The history and vibe of that setting laid the groundwork for what was to come. The band's signature psychedelic blues riffs, relentless drums, melodic bass lines and non-linear lyrics are all present. The resulting album is a thought provoking head banger that is the band's most cohesive album to date. [Indie exclusive clear vinyl & limited edition picture disc vinyl pressing are available, limited to one per customer. We will have standard black vinyl next week.]
Gabby Barrett - Goldmine LP (Warner Nashville)
Recently released on CD - now available on vinyl. Debut album from ACM New Female Artist of the Year nominee.
Afel Bocoum - Lindé CD/LP (World Circuit)
Afel Bocoum is among the last of a breakthrough generation of African musicians who cross-pollinated their own traditional music with the new sounds that arrived from all over the world throughout the 20th century. With the support of executive producers Damon Albarn and Nick Gold, Lindé stitches together the age-old music of the Niger bend, featuring performances from eminent Malian musicians including Madou Kouyaté, the late 'Hama' Sankaré and Madou Sidiki Diabaté, with interventions as diverse as the drums of Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen, the trombone of Vin Gordon (Bob Marley/Skatellites), and the violin of Joan as Police Woman. Traditional instruments like the ngoni, the njurkele, the kora and the calabash blend with guitars, percussion and call-and-response vocals. The result is a gently undulating flow that emanates from a source hidden deep in the historical and mystical traditions of Bocoum's native land, enriched along its way by tributaries and cross-currents.
Carolina Story - Dandelion CD/LP (Black River Americana)
Blending folk intimacy, country grit, and alt-rock muscle, Carolina Story's resilient new album, Dandelion, is an ode to survival in the face of struggle, a full-throated tribute to the power of hope and the unbreakable bonds of family. Recorded with acclaimed producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Moak (Joy Williams, Ashley Monroe), the collection is fueled by raw, honest storytelling and lush, cinematic arrangements, expanding the homespun craftsmanship of the Nashville duo's debut to draw on a broader, more ambitious palette, one that hints at everything from The Jayhawks and Lucinda Williams to R.E.M. and Nirvana. [Limited colored vinyl pressing.]
Sara Evans - Copy That CD/2xLP (Born To Fly)
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and Sara Evans is about to put smiles on a lot of faces with the release of Copy That. The 13-song collection finds Evans putting her distinctive creative stamp on some of the most iconic songs in country and pop music as well as shining a spotlight on some little-known gems, including tracks by Old Crow Medicine Show, Dexy's Midnight Runners, The Knack, and more.
Immaterial Possession - Immaterial Possession LP (Cloud Recordings)
Immaterial Possession was conceived by Atlanta natives, Cooper Holmes and Madeline Polites, whom share a history of the underground DIY Atlanta music, theater, and arts scene.The duo moved to Athens, GA and was soon granted the seasoned drummer, John Spiegel, and eventually fulfilled with Kiran Jeremy Fernandes (keyboards, clarinets, flutes)- descendant of Elephant 6's beloved John Fernandes (Circulatory System, Olivia Tremor Control, Cloud Recordings). All members bring forth a spectral hue unique to the ear - with Holmes' dark and driving punk-rooted base interwoven with Spiegel's vast repertoire of drumming artistry and sacral ardor.
Josiah Johnson - Every Feeling On A Loop 2xLP (ANTI-)
Josiah Johnson - a former and founding member of The Head And The Heart - releases his debut solo album Every Feeling On A Loop. On lead single "Nobody Knows", Johnson sings for people to have courage in sharing and receiving the truths of their hearts. The messages, like the man himself, are a welcome breath of air. "A lot of the growth documented on this album is about taking responsibility for how I'm showing up in the world, and that song was about taking responsibility for how I care for myself," Johnson says. "Part of my experience with addiction was that I was having a hard time, but I wasn't raising my hand to get the help I needed."With time, though, came clarity. Although the music came regularly, Johnson still allowed himself to fantasize about a life never returning to professional music. He still contemplates earning a degree in social work. Yet, the songs kept bubbling up. On Every Feeling On A Loop, lush musical arrangements and harmonies support Johnson's baritone crooning. At times, the songs sound like prayers. At others, his exuberance feels like the euphoria he'd always sought, this time hard-earned and wiser. He says he feels like a new person making it, charting his journey out of the dark into the wide-awake of the morning, using the magic that was his all along.
Lang Lang - Bach: Goldberg Variations 2xLP (Deutsche Grammophon)
Bach's monumental Goldberg Variations stand alone in the piano literature as a work of unique artistry and brilliance. Lang Lang first began exploring this masterpiece more than 20 years ago and presents this recording as the outcome of a long personal and emotional journey. Marking a new stage in Lang Lang's artistic development, it is the project of a lifetime. Alongside a studio recording is a contrasting performance, a single take from a recital in Leipzig's iconic St Thomas Church, where Bach worked and is now buried.
Declan McKenna - Zeros CD/LP (Tomplicated)
Declan McKenna's sophomore studio album Zeros was recorded here in Nashville, produced by Jay Joyce (Cage The Elephant, Eric Church) and released via his own Tomplicated Records. The album is available here as a limited edition picture disc (indie exclusive) vinyl LP, a 180 gram standard black vinyl LP, and a CD (Declan is very environmentally conscious and the print/shrink is recyclable). All vinyl purchases will also include a colored vinyl 7" single "Beautiful Faces" / "The Key to Life on Earth." Customers who purchase the album will also receive an email with a link to stream a full band performance by Declan McKenna, set to air on September 15th at 6PM CST (links will be emailed on a date TBD). Zeros is a world-building, not destroying, album. The unshakeable confidence and boldness of McKenna's voice, as well as the stories he tells, are reinforced by the empathy and compassion with which he tells them. The "wisdom beyond his years" label McKenna's often charged with stems from this as well: his recognition that as diverse as his generation is, their struggles with the modern world are similar, and that as disquieting and absurd as these experiences might feel, no one is in it alone.The album's opening track, "You Better Believe!!!" combines a retro, '70s space-race inspired energy with a modern tale of anxiety. Musically and lyrically, it provides a perfect blueprint to the album. Throughout Zeros, McKenna also manages to encapsulate both a very human psyche and a more absurd, dystopian future. The songs, while they stand as a reflection of our own culture, are also the warped carnival mirror- funny, bizarre, otherworldly but always close enough to see a familiar face staring back.
Naked Roommate - Do The Duvet LP (Trouble In Mind)
Cherry red colored vinyl pressing also available.Oakland group Naked Roommate began as a side project while the duo of Amber Sermeño and Andy Jordan were on a break from their band, The World. Not content to lie dormant while the creative juices were flowing, they recorded a set of tunes in their home studio that would make up their self-released 2018 cassette. Those six tunes rooted around in the same musical slop The World enjoyed; skeletal, danceable post-punk sprinkled with a smirk of humor and playfulness, but they became the genesis and jumping off point for Naked Roommate's debut album, Do The Duvet.
The Neverly Boys - Dark Side Of Everything LP (BMG)
The Neverly Boys is a band from Los Angeles, made up of David Andrew Sitek (TV On The Radio) and Daniel Ledinsky. The Neverly Boys know you are many things. You are a pilot, flying on a giant rock through space. You are an explorer, navigating the depths of modern living. You are an animal seeking shelter from the blue flickering light of modern living. If you can manage to cultivate stillness in the midst of the hustle, The Neverly Boys would like to present to you a human story. An honest story about finding your place in the world. With all its glory and all its drama, they seek to give a voice to the unknown, the magic, the heartbreaks and the aspirations. They hope you find comfort in their songs. Please listen to the album. It's important. Now, more than ever.
Grant-Lee Phillips - Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff CD/LP+7"+MP3 (Yep Roc)
Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff is a turbulent and highly musical rumination that finds the veteran singer-songwriter addressing the strange fragility of life. His tenth solo release bears the markings of his prolific output, a melodic prowess and an ear for lyric in everyday conversation. The album offers a salve to a wounded world, struggling to regain equilibrium. This is GLP at his most reflective, wrestling with the most pertinent of questions.
Sepultura - Quadra 2xLP (Nuclear Blast)
Released earlier this year on CD - now available on vinyl. Recent album from the Brazilian thrash metal icons.
Serpent Omega - II 2xLP (Icons Creating Evil)
Serpent Omega meld sludge, doom, metal and crust into a unique, sordid brew. [Limited orange colored vinyl pressing.]
Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith - Peradam LP+MP3 (Bella Union)
The sounds of Himalayan winds, sacred mantras and water rippling in the holy river Ganges, invite us to Peradam, the transcendent new album by Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith. After albums devoted to Antonin Artaud (The Peyote Dance) and Arthur Rimbaud (Mummer Love), Peradam takes as its entry point René Daumal's early 1940s novel Mount Analogue: a Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, in which the French writer, critic and poet mapped a metaphysical journey to the ultimate symbolic mountain in search of meaning. In it, Daumal introduced the idea of the peradam, a rare, crystalline stone harboring profound truths that is only visible to seekers on a true spiritual path.
Tennessee Jet - The Country CD/LP (Tennessee Jet Music)
Long before Tennessee Jet began crisscrossing America as a one-man band, playing nightly shows full of fuzz guitar, primal percussion, and songs that split the difference between country and raw rock & roll, he traveled the interstates of Oklahoma with his bronc-riding father and barrel-racing mother. Sitting on the bench seat of an old Ford pickup truck pulling a horse trailer while heading to the next rodeo, he'd watch the grasslands of his home state fly past the windshield at highway speed. Country music was always on the radio back then, and those songs - honest, heartfelt classics by icons like Willie Nelson and Dwight Yoakam, both of whom he'd eventually join on tour - left a permanent mark. The Country, Tennessee Jet's third album, nods to that childhood soundtrack. A salute to the sounds of his youth, these songs double down on Jet's country and folk influences, without sacrificing the left-of-center approach that's earned him a reputation as a genre bender.The result is a richly textured album that's both classic and modern in the same breath. This is raw, truthful country music - a reinvention of the sound that's always formed the bedrock of Tennessee Jet's artistry, even during his most amplified moments.
Thor & Friends - 3 CD/LP (Joyful Noise)
Thor & Friends - 4 CD/LP (Joyful Noise)
Polymath percussionist Thor Harris inaugurated Thor & Friends in the autumn of 2015 after five years of touring as the percussionist of iconic avant-rock ensemble Swans. The project is intended as a vehicle for experimentation with the conceptual vocabulary of American Minimalism collaborating with a rotating cast of Austin based musicians. The ensemble has three core members, Thor Harris, Peggy Ghorbani and Sarah Goat Gautier - with its line-up expanding and contracting with the flux of compositional and improvisational contexts. Thor & Friends draws on classic Minimalist composers, including Terry Riley and Steve Reich, but also amalgamate such diverse influences as Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Moondog and The Necks around a polyrhythmic core of mallet-struck instruments, primarily marimba, xylophone and vibraphone.
Throwing Muses - Sun Racket LP (Fire)
New album from the legendary Boston trioconsisting of Kristin Hersh, David Narcizo and Bernard Georges. Sun Racket is an outpouring of modal guitars, reverbed shapes, echoey drums and driving bass set behind Kristen Hersh's well-thumbed notebook of storylines. A ten-song opus of suitably wrought tales set against a wall of sound that's at once calm and ethereal before building into glorious cacophonous crescendos.
Reissues & From The Archives
Blonde Redhead - Melody Of Certain Damaged Lemons [Reissue/2000] LP (Touch And Go)
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Blonde Redhead's classic album, Melody Of Certain Damaged Lemons, Touch And Go present a deluxe vinyl edition pressed on colored 180-gram vinyl courtesy of RTI and packaged in a full-color gatefold jacket with revised cover art and never-before-seen photos from the original recording sessions. The mix of the guitars, the power of the drums, and the infectiousness of the rhythms, combined with the remarkable vocals and lyrics, make Melody Of Certain Damaged Lemons a true masterpiece.
Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac: 1973-1974 4xLP+7" (Rhino)
Fleetwood Mac: 1973-1974 collects Penguin, Mystery To Me, and Heroes Are Hard To Find plus an unreleased December 1974 live date at the Record Plant. The live performance captures the band - Fleetwood, Welch and the McVies - on tour supporting their latest album, Heroes Are Hard To Find. Originally, the show was simulcast on the legendary rock radio station KSAN-FM in San Francisco.
Grateful Dead - Skeletons From The Closet: The Best Of The Grateful Dead [Reissue/1973] LP (Grateful Dead)
The Grateful Dead rose out of their mid-'60s San Francisco roots as a hippie-blues-jam band to become one of the biggest acts on the planet. The group's free-form musical brew and free-spirited psychedelic vision are now legendary, as are their fans. Featuring eleven early classics like "Casey Jones", "Truckin'", "Friend Of The Devil", "Uncle John's Band", and "Sugar Magnolia", the band's 4x Platinum-certified 1974 hits collection Skeletons From The Closet: The Best Of The Grateful Dead remains a fine jumping off point and perennial bestseller.
Quantic - Apricot Morning [Reissue/2002] 2xLP (Tru Thoughts)
Will Holland aka Quantic has developed a sound combining influences from jazz, hip-hop, Afro, funk, soul and breakbeats to forge a style that is truly original. 2002's Apricot Morning has a melting pot of techniques and tempos that has influences from across the world but with an indubitably UK-centered sound.
The Rolling Stones - Goat's Head Soup [Reissue/1973] CD/LP/2xCD/3xCD+Blu-ray/4xLP (Interscope)
Digitally remastered edition features the new stereo album mix, sourced from the original session tapes. [Both the double-CD edition and deluxe half-speed master vinyl pressing add 10 bonus tracks including three previously unreleased songs "Scarlet", "All The Rage", and "Criss Cross" as well as The Brussels Affair, recorded live at the Forest National Arena in October 1973. The Super Deluxe set features 35 tracks on three CDs and one Blu-ray disc (Dolby Atmos, 96kHz/24-bit high resolution stereo, and 96 kHz/24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1).]
Various Artists - AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs Of Marc Bolan & T. Rex CD/2xLP (BMG)
The genius and pioneering influence of Marc Bolan's T. Rex - 2020 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and one of the great rock musicians of all time - is celebrated with AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs Of Marc Bolan & T. Rex. The collection features 26 songs culled from Bolan's vast body of work released as T. Rex and Tyrannosaurus Rex from 1968-'77. A wide-ranging cast of wizards and cosmic dancers have joined together to re-imagine Bolan's work including Nick Cave, U2 featuring Elton John, Joan Jett, and Peaches among others - sometimes in radical fashion - resulting in a collection that is less tribute than bold new work. [Indie store exclusive vinyl pressing.]
Various Artists - Heat [OST/1995] 2xLP (WB)
Original soundtrack to the 1995 motion picture. "Michael Mann films are notable for their high-quality soundtracks. Heat is no exception." - Q. "An artfully assembled montage of industrial rock, darkly romantic symphonics and moody jazz guitar, evokes a nightmarish Los Angeles of dashed hopes and soiled glamour..." - New York Times
Various Artists - Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil [OST/1994] 2xLP (WB)
Contemporaneously newly recorded versions of repertoire written by Johnny Mercer by k.d. lang, Paula Cole, Brad Mehldau, Tony Bennett, Alison Kraus, Kevin Mahogany, Diana Krall, Joshua Redman, Rosemary Clooney, Joe Williams, Cassandra Williams, Kevin Spacey, Alison Eastwood and Clint Eastwood.
Yo La Tengo - Electr-O-Pura [Reissue/1995] 2xLP+MP3 (Matador)
For Electr-O-Pura's 25th anniversary, the 58 minute master has been expanded into a 2xLP edition for the highest quality audio. Now in a gatefold sleeve.Reuniting with Painful producer and engineer Roger Moutenot, Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew set up shop at Alex the Great studios in Nashville, TN to record their seventh studio album Electr-O-Pura. Chock full with moments of pop gold like "Tom Courtenay", melancholic ballads such as the gorgeous, Hubley-fronted "Don't Say A Word (Hot Chicken #2)", and sweeping, feedback-laden jams like the show-stopping "Blue Line Swinger", Electr-O-Pura expands on the venturous songwriting established on Painful with stunning craft and a deepened exploration of contrasting textures, moods and atmospherics.