Archive for the ‘CLASSIC ALBUMS’ Category

SPICE

Bay Area emo supergroup SPICE is Ceremony’s Ross Farrar (vocals), Sabertooth Zombie’s Cody Sullivan (bass), Ceremony’s Jake Casarotti (drums), Creative Adult’s Ian Simpson (guitar) and Victoria Skudlarek (violin). They used what they call “the power of groupthink” to create a full, all-encompassing world on their self-titled album, and it shows. The melodies are enveloping, and the atmosphere is rich; the songs feel carefully crafted.

As a collective thought, Spice’s self-titled debut album offers a deliberate isolation of pain as interpreted through different vehicles. Less than 30-minutes in length, the record diverts from a singular mood, tempo, or delivery, instead focusing on orchestrating emotional drain as single impulses—fast, slow, driving, simple, and layered—that coalesce in their machinations. At its core, Spice’s debut is wired together by brawny and brittle guitars, lock-groove rhythms, and vocals announce each moment and mood.

Formed in 2018 and based across California, each members’ roots are in the North Bay of San Francisco. Spice’s sound pulls from the sense of melody and drive inherent to Bay Area pedigree, peppered with modernity and awash with an anthemic haze. The hook is in the connection as much as melody, with each song building its inner narrative and exploration of affliction.

Traversing guitar-driven indie-pop and call-to-action impulse, Spice balances their urgency by interspersing violin melodies and layers, creating depth without oversaturating the heart of each song. Building complexity with laser focus, Spice shares the authoritative drive of Jawbreaker, J Church, The Horrors, and Fugazi, set in their own world of unrest. The treatment of each song is a statement that informs the whole – anecdotes that can bleed slowly or swirl quickly. In a sense, the album itself is an entire song, with each track becoming the verses, choruses, and interludes that narrate its intent. Ending with the final track they workshopped for the album titled “I Don’t Wanna Die in New York,” the album ends with a punch before winding back into meditation.

The third single “I Don’t Wanna Die in New York,”, from SPICE’s debut album on Dais Records, out now. Spice is: Ross Farrar (vocals), Cody Sullivan (bass), Jake Casarotti (drums), Ian Simpson (guitar), and Victoria Skudlarek (violin).

Honed over late nights at Panda Studios in Fremont, California with producer Sam Pura (Basement, The Story So Far, Self Defense Family), Spice spent hours tweaking it until it became a little world formed by what they refer to as “the power of groupthink.” Sprinkled with field recordings—audio snapshots from the member’s every-day-lives—the record offers an intimate twist that builds on its theme of a single thread that connects everything with continuity, making it a single organism with as many depths as questions.

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Release Date: July 17th, 2020

This EXCLUSIVE bundle comes with a 10″x14″ paper placemat that is a replica of the original Pleased To Meet Me promo item from 1987, a bumper sticker, a 3″ Patch and a limited edition cassette. The cassette features a previously unreleased interview with Paul Westerberg recorded just before the release of the Pleased To Meet Me album. Brief excerpts from the interview were originally included in a radio promo LP that was released in 1987 but this marks the first time that the complete interview has been made available.

Pleased To Meet Me is the critically acclaimed fifth studio album by the American rock band The Replacements. Released in 1987 by Sire RecordsPleased To Meet Me is the only album recorded by the band as a trio, after original guitarist Bob Stinson acrimoniously left the band.

Following last year’s widely acclaimed Dead Man’s Pop release, Pleased To Meet Me will be receiving a similar ‘deep dive’ treatment with a 3-CD/1-LP deluxe boxed set, which will tell the story of the album in ways not previously possible with more than 50% of the content previously unreleased

  • New remaster of the original album by Justin Perkins, who was also behind the boards for our Dead Man’s Pop regimaging
  • 1986 demo session with Bob Stinson – his last recorded Replacements performance
  • Additional 1986 demos with the band as a three-piece outfit (sans Bob)
  • Previously unreleased rough mix of the album with alternate track listing
  • Studio outtakes from the album recording sessions (Memphis, 1987)
  • Rare single mixes

The making of Pleased To Meet Me was a transformative journey for The Replacements, one that began with the combustible Minneapolis combo on the brink of collapse and culminated in one of the definitive albums of the band’s career. That transformation is chronicled in-depth on the group’s latest boxed set, Pleased To Meet Me (Deluxe Edition).

More than half of the music (29 tracks) on this Deluxe Edition set has never been released, including demos, rough mixes, and outtakes as well as Bob Stinson’s last recordings with The Replacements from 1986.

The music is presented in a 12 x 12 hardcover book loaded with dozens of rarely seen photos along with a detailed history of the Pleased To Meet Me era written by Bob Mehr, who authored The New York Times bestseller, Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements.

Pleased To Meet Me was recorded over three months at Ardent Studios in Memphis with legendary producer Jim Dickinson before it debuted in June 1987. The collection opens with a newly remastered version of the original 11-track album along with a selection of B-sides and a version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” that was remixed by Jimmy Iovine. All of the music included in this boxed set has been remastered by Justin Perkins, who remastered the band’s widely acclaimed 2019 boxed set, Dead Man’s Pop.

The second disc explores the creative process behind Pleased To Meet Me with 15 unreleased demos recorded at Blackberry Way Studios in Minneapolis during the summer of 1986. The first seven of these demos represent the last recordings made by all four original members of The Replacements. After those demo sessions stalled out, singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson and drummer Chris Mars made the painful decision to part ways with lead guitarist Bob Stinson after recording five albums together.

The disc’s remaining eight demos feature the band as a trio and include “Shooting Dirty Pool,” two versions of “Kick It In,” and “Even If It’s Cheap,” whose opening line (“Pleased to meet me/the pleasure’s all yours”) would ultimately inspire the title of the album.

The collection’s final disc features 13 previously unreleased rough mixes by studio engineer John Hampton that include the majority of the album along with non-album tracks like “Election Day” and “Birthday Gal.” These rough mixes are also featured on the 180-gram vinyl record included in the set.

Rounding out the collection are several unreleased tracks (Westerberg’s “Run For The Country” and “Learn How To Fail,” Stinson’s “Trouble On The Way”) along with a selection of outtakes (“Beer For Breakfast” and “I Don’t Know”) that debuted on the 1997 compilation, All For Nothing/Nothing For All.

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In April , 2020, Toronto’s Scott Hardware will be releasing “Engel”, his second full-length album, and first on Telephone Explosion Records. It will mark the end of a three-year process of writing, recording and letting down his guard (for better or worse.)

Engel, the recently-released sophomore album from this Toronto artist is literally and figuratively seraphic. It was inspired by the 1987 film Wings of Desire, which followed angels around a pre-unified Berlin as they comforted its populace. On Engel, Hardware imagines these angels hovering over him and his loved ones, and the backdrop is piano-led art-pop, filled with graceful swells of tender vocals and off-kilter instrumentals.

His last album, 2016’s Mutate, Repeat, Infinity, was the culmination of a years-long obsession with the HIV/AIDS crisis and how it was shaped by capitalism. Hardware’s early years after coming out were shaped by the courage of people close to him who were dealing with difficult diagnoses.“Looking at these situations from a macro/societal lens must have been the only way I could process and share those years of my life and my loved ones’ lives with an audience” Hardware recalls. “From a writing and production standpoint, I was trying to re-imagine various eras of dance music and sound as urgent and vital as they would have in their heyday of the ‘80s and ‘90s.”

Within a year of moving back (to Toronto) from Berlin, Scott watched Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire and was immediately filled with its inherent curiosity. The film, in short, follows angels around pre-unification Berlin as they listen to the thoughts of the mortals they are surrounded by. “I sought with this album to capture the film’s velvety feeling – in turns funny, depressing, dark and mundane – in LP form” Hardware says. “These songs imagine Wenders’ angels buzzing around my friends, my family and I. Writing from their point of view allowed me unfettered access to my own thoughts about them and myself.” In the title track, the subject is in a relationship with a mischievous angel (named Engel,) who is probing his mind against his will. “Here he comes to comfort me, but like a fly around my head I’d sooner swat him dead,” is sung over an off-the-grid deconstructed house piano. A symphony of creaking trains and industry envelops the banging piano and delicate strings on the chorus while our hero complains “He’s here with that look again, he knows what’s happening, inside,” not, it would seem, ready for this level of vulnerability.

 Engel is filled with touching, elegant art-pop that evokes the flaws and triumphs of everyday people. Plush strings and piano are perfectly suited to this brush with angels while the occasionally jarring electronic textures that adorn this LP point to the world’s beautiful yet cruel disarray. Hardware’s rich vocals are so gorgeous that they embody the noble, supernatural and biblical qualities of these winged healers.

Taken from Engel – TER055 out April 3rd on Telephone Explosion Records.

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We said Joining the Spacebomb family not only gave Nadia Reid more visibility in the US, it also allowed her to work with the label’s in-house production team of Matthew E. White and Trey Pollard, who have earned themselves a reputation for their grand string arrangements thanks to their work on recent albums by Foxygen, Natalie Prass, Bedouine, and more. The strings do wonders for Out of My Province, which is a beautiful sounding record and the most massive sounding album Nadia has released yet. But as much of a sell as they are, Nadia never relies on any of the embellishments to drive these songs home. Just like her first two records, Out of My Province brings you to the edge of your seat with the power of Nadia’s words and voice alone.

The New Zealand singer/songwriter Naida Reid released “Out of My Province”, her debut LP for Spacebomb Records, this year, and it’s one of the most eloquent, shockingly overlooked folk-pop releases from 2020. Reid cites Joni Mitchell and Rufus and Martha Wainwright as influences (especially for her song “Oh Canada,” which serves as a tribute to the country and Mitchell, the Wainwrights and all its many musical exports), and it’s not such a stretch to hear little bits of those accomplished lyricists in Reid’s soft-spoken inflection.

These are the kind of songs you might fancy listening to over a cup of coffee in the morning, or maybe moodily by a window during a summer rain shower. This is all to say they have a lovely vintage bent to them and will make you feel things. Reid can shift from sharply written soft rock “High & Lonely,” “Other Side of the Wheel” to contemplative folk “Heart to Ride” to wistful radio pop à la KT Tunstall or Colbie Caillat “Best Thing” at a moment’s notice, and all together, Out of My Province displays an artist gracefully establishing her sound through the art of genre-mixing.

Get The Devil Out is up for an APRA Silver Scroll. If you’re a member, don’t forget to vote. It’s such a strange feeling having released this record in March without touring it properly. The build-up to releasing an album is so immense; full of elation and terror…! There was a big rush of relief when it finally came out on 6 March. My highlight being the little listening party I held in Dunedin, New Zealand. I feel proud of this record and proud of this song… (written under a bunk bed at the Grace Emily Hotel in Adelaide). And is about all the big things. I can’t wait to tour this album in due time.

‘Out Of My Province’, the amazing new record from Nadia Reid  the album released March 6th, 2020, on Spacebomb Records.

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Dramatic country with a rough-and-tough flare: That’s what you get when you check into Jaime Wyatt’s smoky, swirling fun house. The Washington-born, California-built, Nashville-based country singer has lived a lot of life in her 34 years, including eight months in jail, one marriage and a battle for sobriety. “Neon Cross” feels like the exultant freedom on the other side of all that mess—and lots of hard work. Wyatt’s crisp, commanding voice will capture you from the first few bars of intoxicating album opener “Sweet Mess,” which you can imagine hearing from the back of a misty club as you, clad in a 10-gallon cowboy hat, pull from a fancy cigarette, and keep a tight hold on you through the sweltering “Make Something Outta Me” all the way to the Shooter Jennings-featuring “Hurt So Bad.” Neon Cross is honky-tonk with an added dose of bad-assery (Is that a word? It should be).

But sometimes the most badass thing about her is Cross’ openness and bare humanity. “Because I’ll be honest — it feels like I’m gonna die if I don’t tell people how I feel and who I am,” she said in a statement upon the album’s release. “It sounds so dramatic, but that’s the truth. It’s been just this gnarly, gnarly process, but one that is so human. So there’s been a lot of turmoil and drama. But this record is a lot about rebirth, too. If there’s one lesson to be gleaned from Jaime Wyatts latest album, “Neon Cross”, it’s that life goes on. And through it all—good times and bad, dreaming and desperation, there is truth. When it came to capturing that truth on tape, Wyatt had some assistance from Shooter Jennings, who produced Neon Cross. Together, she and Jennings boldly color outside the country lines, taking a wide-lens sonic and stylistic approach to the songs on Neon Cross.

From the album ‘Neon Cross,’ available May 29th:

Produced by The Avett Brothers’ Scott Avett (and featuring him throughout), Clem Snide’s recently released album “Forever Just Beyond” follows a tumultuous season of life for singer/songwriter Eef Barzelay. His marriage, money and band all fell apart within a matter of years, and he turned around and channelled his anguish into an album of thoroughly thoughtful, beautiful and imaginative indie-folk songs. On “Roger Ebert,” Barzelay ponders the film critic’s “dying words,” allowing his metaphor to take a much larger shape. “There is a vastness that can’t

“By pure coincidence, “Forever Just Beyond” came out when it could potentially have the strongest impact. Let’s be honest, with the (COVID-19) virus working its way across the globe so many of us are thinking about mortality in clear and present terms. It was always in this album’s DNA that it would address death without dwelling on it and life without pretending it’s perpetual.”

“There have been many iterations of Clem Snide over the years but by now it’s turned into a personal alias for Eef Barzelay. “Forever Just Beyond” shows him and his current ensemble at their most quietly devastating.” “The last ten years have been a rollercoaster of deep despair and amazing opportunities that somehow present themselves at the last possible second,” says Eef Barzelay. “That this record even exists, as far as I’m concerned, is a genuine miracle.”

Indeed, the road to Forever Just Beyond, Barzelay’s stunning new album under the Clem Snide moniker, was an unlikely one, to say the least. Produced by Scott Avett of The Avett Brothers, the record is a work of exquisite beauty and profound questioning, a reckoning with faith and reality that rushes headlong into the unknown and the unknowable. The songs here grapple with hope and depression, identity and perception, God and the afterlife, all captured through Barzelay’s uniquely off-kilter lens and rendered with an intimate, understated air that suggests the tender comfort of a late-night conversation between old friends.

Avett’s production is similarly warm and inviting, and the careful, spacious arrangement of gentle guitars and spare percussion carves a wide path for Barzelay’s insightful lyrics and idiosyncratic delivery. Listening to the album now, Avett and Barzelay sound like an obvious pairing, but the truth is that there was nothing obvious about the survival of Clem Snide, and the series of cosmic coincidences that led to Forever Just Beyond remains inexplicable even to Barzelay himself.

There’s levelheaded maturity and even acceptance of our collective fate that songwriter Eef Barzelay, who could be a bit of a goof on earlier albums, seems to have gained over the five years since his last Clem Snide LP. Indeed, these were hard years, defined by crises: Barzelay’s marriage floundered; the songwriter faced bankruptcy, On the Scott Avett-produced Forever Just Beyond, Barzelay is a gentle indie-folk philosopher that will share a couch with us and talk hard existential talks with patience, gravity, humour, and grace

Clem Snide from ‘Forever Just Beyond’ (2020, Ramseur Records) produced by Scott Avett.

 

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Expanding beyond the homespun rootsiness of her critically acclaimed debut to incorporate a grittier, more experimental palette, Becca Mancari’s captivating new collection, ‘The Greatest Part,’ lives in a liminal space between grief and joy, pain and forgiveness, sorrow and liberation. The record, produced by Paramore drummer Zac Farro, marks a significant sonic and emotional evolution, balancing unflinching self-examination with intoxicating grooves and infectious instrumental hooks fueled by explosive percussion and fuzzed out guitars. The lyrics are raw and gutsy to match, peeling back old scars to explore the emotional and psychological turmoil Mancari weathered growing up gay in a fundamentalist Christian home, while at the same time examining the ties that continue to bind her to the family she loves. Though personal reflection is nothing new for the Nashville-based songwriter, ‘The Greatest Part’ finds Mancari digging deeper than ever before, excavating new layers of her psyche in an effort to make sense of where she’s been, where she’s headed, and most importantly, who she’s become.

“This record was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write,” she explains. “At the same time, it was also the most freeing.”

Born on Staten Island to an Italian/Puerto Rican family with strict religious beliefs, Mancari spent much of her childhood wrestling with issues of identity and belonging. After college, she set out on her own, following the wind from Appalachia to Arizona, from south Florida to India, drifting in search of purpose and community. Mancari eventually found both in East Nashville, where she garnered widespread acclaim for her strikingly honest song writing and emotionally riveting performances. ‘Good Woman,’ her 2017 debut, was a critical smash, praised by NPR for its “exquisite self-awareness” and hailed as one of the year’s best by Rolling Stone, who lauded its “confident vocals [and] spacious, hazy production.”

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Songs from the record racked up millions of streams on Spotify and helped land Mancari dates with the likes of Margo Price, Hurray For The Riff Raff, Shovels & Rope, Natalie Prass, and Julien Baker among others. On top of her solo work, Mancari also teamed up with Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard and fellow songwriter Jesse Lafser to form the supergroup Bermuda Triangle, which earned similarly glowing reviews as they performed sold-out headline shows across the country and landed festival slots from Newport Folk to XPoNential.

Released June 26th, 2020

From Eric D. Johnson:
This recording is cut down from a much larger show, a rare “evening with Fruit Bats”—no opener, two sets—that ran a little over two hours. Which was really long for me. How does Phish pull it off every night?

Revolution Hall is one of my favourite venues. It’s a nice theater with comfy seats, which is plush but also leads to people sitting down. I mean, a seated audience is kinda classy in a lot of ways, but I’m always looking for that extra rush of energy as the songs ramp up. At one point, you can hear me (gently) implore folks to stand up (!!). But as it was a long evening—and it being Portland, the beer selection was dank and flowing—naturally the audience got rowdier (and on their feet) as the night progressed, which you can clearly hear in the later points of this recording.

This was the last night of a short tour of the Pacific Northwest in January 2019, so in it you hear some of the earliest live versions of songs off of Gold Past Life which didn’t come out until a few months later. It also includes the only live version of “The Banishment Song” ever, plus a couple of rarely played cuts off of Spelled in Bones.

The band lineup was really special here, an expanded 7-piece lineup that included my stellar frequent co-conspirators Josh Mease (guitar), David Dawda (bass), Josh Adams (drums), and Frank LoCrasto (keys), plus extra special sauce provided by the members of the great Pure Bathing Culture: Sarah Versprille, taking the harmony vocals to a heavenly level (and playing Mellotron), and Daniel Hindman, giving the whole show a delicious gauzy Fender Strat flavor. I’m really happy that our excellent front-of-house engineer Aly Carlisle-Steinberg thought to hit record that evening.

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Released June 5th, 2020
The Band:
Eric D. Johnson – vocals, guitar, banjo
Josh Mease – guitar
David Dawda – bass
Josh Adams – drums
Frank LoCrasto – pianos, organs, synths
Sarah Versprille – vocals, Mellotron
Daniel Hindman – guitar

Recorded January 19th, 2019, at Revolution Hall, Portland, OR

Aly Carlisle-Steinberg – live mixing / engineering / recording
Nathan Vanderpool – additional post-production engineering and mastering

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Mikal Cronin experienced a creativity boom in late 2018/early 2019, inspired in part by the massive wildfires in Southern California that forced him to evacuate from the Idyllwild cabin where he’d been writing songs. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he recorded two full albums: Seeker, released in October 2019, and its electronic counterpartSwitched-On Seeker”, which is out digitally June 30th and on vinyl August 29th via Record Store Day Drops. Mikal  Cronin experienced a creativity boom in late 2018/early 2019, inspired in part by the massive wildfires in Southern California that forced him to evacuate from the Idyllwild cabin where he’d been writing songs. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he recorded two full albums: Seeker, released in October 2019, and its electronic counterpart Switched-On Seeker, which is out digitally now and on vinyl August 29th via Record Store Day Drops.

While Cronin’s self-assured vocals and the overarching theme of destruction and rebirth unite Seeker and Switched-On Seeker, everything else about the two albums is different. Support your local record store on August 29 to experience the songs from Seeker in a whole new way!

Playing garage-accented pop, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Mikal Cronin was raised in Laguna Beach, CA, where as a teenager he developed a passion for both surfing and rock & roll. While attending Laguna Beach High School, he fell in with a handful of like-minded music fans, many of whom he still collaborates with to this day.

On July 1st, Cronin will perform a “Switched-On” set from Zebulon in Los Angeles, on Zebulon’s YouTube channel.

The idea for Switched-On Seeker, whose title was inspired by a series of early electronic music records by Wendy Carlos playing classical music on an early Moog system, arose from Cronin’s interest in synths and electronic music, and he set out to record the songs of Seeker track by track using only his collection of synthesizers and drum machines. Alone in his garage, Cronin made the album with a variety of synths including Arturia DrumBrute, Moog Sub 37, Moog Mother-32, Hohner String Performer, Mellotron, Omnichord, various little Casios, Roland SH-01A, Korg R3, and classic drum machine samples.
While Cronin’s self-assured vocals and the overarching theme of destruction and rebirth unite Seeker and Switched-On Seeker, everything else about these two albums is different. Support your local record store on August 29th to experience your favourite songs from Seeker in a whole new way!

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Limited edition companion piece to Mikal Cronin’s 2019 Seeker album, Switched-On Seeker is a completely synth-based, full-length reworking of 2019’s Seeker in the vein of Wendy Carlos’ “Switched-On” series.Mikal Cronin will continue his world tour across the calendar in 2020, including a confirmed BBC 6 Music session with Marc Riley at the end of February.

recordstore day

The pretenders hate for sale 1584456023

Following up 2016’s acclaimed Alone, “Hate For Sale” is the Pretender’s first album to be recorded with the now long-standing touring line-up of the group. Produced by the revered Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur) Hate For Sale is the Pretenders’ eleventh studio album overall and the first to be written collaboratively by Chrissie Hynde and electrifyingly dynamic guitarist James Walbourne. “I wanted to write with him since day one,” says Chrissie. “James is especially sought after and has recorded with Jerry Lee Lewis, Dave Gahan, and The Rails, to name but a few.” And on the single “The Buzz”, she adds, “I think we all know that love affairs can take on the characteristics of drug addiction. It’s about that.”

Hate For Sale, produced by the revered Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur), is the latest studio album by The Pretenders via BMG. The album features 10 new songs written collaboratively by Chrissie Hynde and the electrifyingly dynamic guitarist James Walbourne, in what is the first Hynde/Walbourne song writing collaboration to date.

The official video for Hate for Sale by The Pretenders, from the new album ‘Hate For Sale’, out July 17th 2020.