Caylee Hammack’s debut album begins with a good scolding. “You should’ve never come over,” she exclaims. “You should’ve left early and kept your hands to yourself / You knew better / You should’ve never promised me bliss if you couldn’t keep it.” Stand back—she’s breathing fire. But as the album opener, titled “Just Friends,” continues, it becomes clear that the issues in this relationship weren’t entirely to blame on the handsy guy. Hammack continues, “I should’ve listened to my mama / And not let you in my head / I should’ve told ya that I loved ya / But not let you in my bed.” Her predicament is a familiar one to anybody who hustled into a relationship with a friend too quickly.
The 26-year-old Hammack wrote or co-wrote and produced all 13 tracks on If It Wasn’t For You, her debut album released earlier last month, and the Georgia native peels back the curtain on everything from failed friends-with-benefits arrangements and redhead stereotypes to existential woes and family issues (namely on “Family Tree,” which is akin to Kacey Musgraves’ “Family is Family”).
The album’s 13 songs are packed with Hammack’s clever and relatable song writing, as well as stories that are entirely true to her real life. From tales about her childhood, to stories about heartbreak, to fiery songs about life, the Georgia-born artist infuses her personality and vulnerability into every word.
While some tracks tell her story through a more upbeat lens, Hammack also delves into some of her biggest heartbreaks and losses on the project. In “Forged in the Fire,” which was inspired by a fire that ravaged her home in 2017, the singer describes how to rise from the ashes of life. And in the genuine “Looking For A Lighter,” Hammack sings of unintentionally finding a few items in a junk drawer—such as an old fake ID and letters from a past love—that cause locked away memories to start flooding back. These stories are set to music that is also deeply personal, as the production features nods to Hammack’s influences,
“I wanted every single song to have a real, true story behind it that I can tell onstage or in an interview and explain where every single lyric came from,” she said in an exclusive interview. “In Nashville, so many times you just go in a room and you write something to write it. I wanted to make sure the songs I put out were my stories because I feel like your debut album is like a name tag you put on at a new party.”
The official album release show for Caylee Hammack’s debut album “If It Wasn’t For You” live from The Steel Mill.
We’re now in the double digits of brilliant long-lost, rare, and unreleased hard rock, heavy psych, and proto-metal tracks from the 60s-70s and clearly this has become a bonafide archaeological movement as each new edition leads us to more exciting new discoveries. Like we’ve done throughout this series, all of these tracks were painstakingly licensed legitimately and the artists were paid. Make yourself comfortable and prepare for yet another deep, deep dive into the treasure trove of dank, subterranean, wild-eyed and hairy rock ’n’ roll.
This Trip opens with Adam Wind’s “Something Else,” featuring groovy crooning and a very acid-damaged guitar riff that meanders across key signatures like it ain’t no thing. This 1969 single by the Tacoma, WA band predates grunge by 20 years, but the band’s heavy psych and murky tones are just the stuff Northwest heroes Mudhoney sought so fervently at their peak. Lead singer Leroy Bell’s excessive vibrato gives the tune its charm, but the heavy breakdown in the middle is the real payoff.
Boston bruisers Grump return to the series with a previously unreleased dose of raw soul layered in greasy horns, plucky harmonized guitar leads and chirping organs on “I’ll Give You Love.” The track packs twice the punch of their cover of Elvis Presley’s classic “Heartbreak Hotel” heard back on The Eighth Trip, itself a fan favourite.
Stevens Point, WI is the actual origin of Bagshot Row, a little-known band taking its name from a street in The Hobbit. However, they sound much less fantasy obsessed than their name suggests and more akin to Sugarloaf of “Green Eyed Lady” fame. Their swaggering “Turtle Wax Blues” of 1973 will put some extra hair on your feet and send you searching for this lone 45 single like a ring that possesses magical powers to control all of Middle Earth (or at least Middle America.)
Larry Lynn’s “Diamond Lady” is the B-side to his 1970 single “Back On The Street Again.” Larry Leonard Ostricki adopted his stage name while performing with The Bonnevilles in the mid-1950s in Milwaukee, WI, and later with The Skunks. Larry Lynn’s eponymous band explored bluesy psychedelic rock from 1969 to 1978, only to reunite in 2009 and they still perform to this date.
LISTEN NOW!
Renaissance Fair take things in a very weird, very fun and undeniably heavy direction with an insanely distorted organ that sounds like a monstrous vacuum cleaner over dirge rhythms and growling vocals on their — we reiterate — weird 1968 track “In Wyrd.” Think if someone left a copy of The Doors’ Strange Parade out to warp in the sun on a blown-out toy record player, and then visiting space creatures attempted to imitate what they’d heard.
Chicago, IL’s Zendik bring it all back down to Earth with their politically-charged 1970 firestorm “Mom’s Apple Pie Boy” which echoes the unabashed rage of The MC5 and anthemic sarcasm of CCR’s “Fortunate Son.” The band’s only publicly released single “Is There No Peace” (previously heard on Brown Acid: The Sixth Trip) boasts the proto-punk refrain “God is dead!” This equally direct polemic was recorded during the same sessions, but unreleased until now.
The opening cowbell of Daybreak’s kicked back 1977 rocker “Just Can’t Stay” affirms that the boogie is back on this swaggering nugget of FM-ready rock from San Mateo, CA. “Just Can’t Stay” closes the band’s lone 4-song EP, and the band delivered on the promise, vanishing into the ether shortly thereafter.
West Minist’r of Fort Dodge, IA make their desires clear on “I Want You” with an undeniably driving riff and particularly beefy sounding synth leads that would fit in fine on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. The song, originally released on Magic Records, is the B-side to “Sister Jane” and the band’s last of three singles issued between 1969 and 1975.
Debb Johnson of Saint Louis Park, MN is a BAND, not an individual member of the band. The 7-piece group featured a full horn section and three-part harmonies on their 1969 self-titled album. The backstory on their name is: three of the group’s seven members shared the last name Johnson, so they then took the first letters of the last names of the other four members and combined them into the word “debb.” The politically minded “Dancing In The Ruin” speaks a truth all-too-familiar to this day backed by a brand of wailing acid rock crossed with Buddy Miles’ Expressway To Your Skullstyle funk.
Crazy Jerry sends us off on a high note with “Every Girl Gets One,” featuring crunching riffs, rollicking electric piano, stop ’n’ start rhythms and a curious telephone call sounding like a creepy answer to the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace.” Crazy Jerry is the alter-ego of guitarist Jerry Ciccone, who can also be heard on a few soul/funk and rock records from the 70s, including The Left Banke’s second album. But here, Jerry is…well, simply crazy.
Sylvan Esso Nick Sanborn and Amelia Meath have shared a new single from their forthcoming album Free Love. “Frequency” arrives with an accompanying music video directed and styled by the group’s friend and collaborator Moses Sumney. Free Love marks Sylvan Esso’s third studio album, following the duo’s 2014 self-titled debut and 2017’s What Now. The new LP is out September 25 via Loma Vista, and it includes previously-shared tracks “Ferris Wheel” and “Rooftop Dancing.”
The video for “Frequency” was choreographed by North Carolina-based Stewart/Owen Dance. Of the visual, Sylvan Esso said in a press release:
We had a fantastic and rewarding time collaborating with our friend and fellow North Carolinian, Moses Sumney, on building a visual world for “Frequency.” He had such a beautiful vision for the project, one that ran parallel to the song’s initial source in a way that showed us new spaces it could inhabit. It’s a beautiful exploration of being together and apart at the same time—we feel it rings clearly in this moment.
After a ten year hiatus, Doves return with their fifth studio LP The Universal Want. The headline is; it’s really good. Ten tracks that slowly evolve and echo into one another, it’s full of ebbs and flows with building and brooding instrumental sections that flourish into really euphoric arrangements. Doves remain masters of driving and euphoric anthems. Whether this is a return or a final transmission, it’s another fine addition to their excellent discography. Our Record of the Week and one we’ll be playing a lot.
After an 11-year hiatus, their fifth album captures the sound of organic inspiration manifesting in inquisitive, yet masterful, genre chemistry and vast, immediate song writing.
Refusing once more to fall into predictable, guitar-bass-drums dynamics, the record’s overwhelming sense of intrigue owes everything to Doves’ three decades experience and an autobiographical trip through the sounds of their own lives. from seaside amusements (Carousels) and the remembered heat of acid house (Universal Want) to the aimless summer days of youth (Forest House), each song sets a new reel running to show fragments of their lives and, in turn, those of their listeners. shadows of Bowie, rare 70’s soul, detroit house and afrobeat are cast subtly across the shapeshifting album. “this time Doves shift their gaze from upward to inward and the results are spellbinding and beautiful” 9/10
+ The Indie Edition is pressed on heavyweight white vinyl.
+ Also available as a very limited Box Set Edition that is going to go pretty quick.
Joni Mitchell – the artist, songwriter, and singer who has created some of the most influential music of all time – has a reputation for not looking back. Despite her considerable legacy and personal archive full of treasures, it wasn’t until recently that she began began really celebrating her past. Films, tribute concerts, and a recent book of art and lyrics have done their part to reaffirm her influence and artistry in the public consciousness, but now Joni Mitchell has approved something long thought unthinkable; something that will surely leave diehard fans’ jaws on the floor: a series of box sets and archival albums that shows the arc of her artistry, to be released over the next several years. Rhino promises that Joni “has been intimately involved in producing the archive series, lending her vision and personal touch to every element of the project.”
The Five-CD box set kicks off the long awaited ‘Archives’ series
Joni Mitchell opens her vaults for the first time for the Joni Mitchell Archives, a new series of box set releases that will span the next few years and start Next Month with a five-disc box set, “Archives – Volume 1″ and two associated vinyl releases.
Mitchell has been “intimately involved in producing the archive series” and Archives Volume 1: The Early Years (1963-1967) features nearly six hours of unreleased home, live, and radio recordings that flow chronologically to map Joni’s rapid growth as a performer and songwriter during the period leading up to her debut album.
The collection begins in 1963 with her earliest-known recording as a 19-year-old Mitchell performs at CFQC AM, a radio station in her hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The box culminates with a stirring, three-set 1967 nightclub performance recorded at the Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In total, the five-CD box includes 29 original Mitchell compositions that have never been released before with her vocals.
Volume 1: The Early Years (1963-1967) is a five-CD box set
As you can probably guess, it focuses on the period prior to the release of her 1968 debut album, Song To a Seagull. The staggering 119-track, 5CD box set is a treasure trove of unreleased rarities from her archive, including significant upgrades to certain dubiously sourced radio material – all finally made canon some 50 years on. You’ll hear her perform Child ballads and Guthrie covers in the folk club setting, work out early versions of classics like “Both Sides Now,” “Chelsea Morning,” and “He Comes For Conversation” – the latter with interesting lyric variants – years before their official versions. And you’ll hear 29 previously unheard songs, among them “Jeremy,” “Free Darling,” and “Gemini Twin,” which had been slated for Seagull, plus other early favourites like “Urge For Going,” and “Eastern Rain.” And for the guitarists and banter-lovers, you’ll hear her tune up to those mystifying alternate tunings and tell stories about her songs as she puts them to tape. It totals nearly 6 hours of incredible material, an in-depth testament to the undeniable talent of an artist finding her way, building an impressive oeuvre of original material, and wooing crowds with her stunning music and lyrics.
The box set includes a 40-page booklet that features many unseen photos from Mitchell’s personal collection as well as new liner notes featuring conversations between Cameron Crowe and Mitchell, who recently spent a couple of Sunday afternoons together discussing her archives. Crowe will continue to provide liners for future releases in the series.
Looking back, Mitchell reflects on her early label of “folk singer”: “The early stuff, I shouldn’t be such a snob against it. A lot of these songs, I just lost them. They fell away. They only exist in these recordings. For so long I rebelled against the term, ‘I was never a folk-singer.’ I would get pissed off if they put that label on me. I didn’t think it was a good description of what I was. And then I listened and…it was beautiful. It made me forgive my beginnings. And I had this realisation…I was a folk singer!”
CDs four and five of the box set feature Mitchell’s previously unreleased, entire three- set performance at Canterbury House in 1967. Those three sets are also issued as a special 3LP vinyl package: Live at Canterbury House – 1967.
To complete the physical archive releases, a single 180g vinyl, Early Joni – 1963 features the nine-song CFQC AM performance in her hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Here, the 19-year-old Mitchell performs at her hometown. The next year, she’s working through two sets of folk music in a Yorkville, Toronto folk club and preserving a clutch of favourites on tape at her parents’ house. Just months later, Joni begins writing her own original material, and lays down some early compositions from her apartment in Detroit for her mother Myrtle’s birthday – “Urge For Going,”“Born To Take The Highway,” and “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow.” By August 1965, she’s preparing a demo tape for Jac Holzman of Elektra Records with “Day After Day” – considered her first composition – the unheard tracks “Student Song” and “What Will You Give Me,” plus a cover of “Let It Be Me”! That’s before we get to the wealth of CBC TV recordings, radio sessions from Philadelphia, intimate home tapes of some of her best early work, and recently unearthed tapes from three sets at Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, in October 1967.
This is featured on CD 1 of the box set. The enclosed 40-page booklet features unseen photographs from Mitchell’s personal archives and new liner notes by Cameron Crowe, who will pen the notes for future volumes. The liner notes are drawn from new conversations with Joni Mitchell where she discusses her beginnings as a folk singer, her transition into song writing, and her ascent as an artist.
As an added bonus for collectors, the new Official Joni Mitchell Online Store will offer two additional vinyl variants: a clear vinyl edition of Early Joni – 1963 and a white vinyl configuration of Live At Canterbury House – 1967. Each exclusive colour vinyl configuration will be limited to 1,500 units. No matter your choice of format, if you order from the official store you’ll also get an exclusive 7″x7″ lithograph featuring two images of Joni Mitchell.
The five-CD box set, the 3LP Canterbury package and Early Joni will all be released on 30 October 2020.
Delta Spirit? more like belter spirit! every single one of these anthemic americana pop sizzlers has been kissed under the Californian sun and – fortunately for us – imported into England.
As much as it reflects their journey thus far, it also ushers them into new territory as both musicians and, most importantly, friends. in the end, Delta Spirit not only return but move forward together on ‘what is there’. “the album has a Side A and Side B feel to it with the first half comprised of layered, dense tunes as is mixer Blake’s penchant. side b (if you will) lightens the sonics a bit, giving the band more room to breathe and, for these ears, an easier listening experience” – glide magazine.
“…it’s tempting to frame What Is There, their first record in six years, as a comeback. There are several moments that make the case. Opener “The Pressure” is a spirited, up-tempo track guided by a screeching guitar and a sing-along chorus. “It Ain’t Easy” recalls the soul of their earliest work and makes good use of the band’s biggest strength, frontman Matthew Logan Vasquez’s passionate voice. “Home Again” feels like the best example of what Delta Spirit could have been, beginning with their characteristic sound before gradually deconstructing it in a mind-bending solo designed for headphones.”
Hannah Georgas has a seemingly endless capacity for crafting textured pop songs. Since her debut, the Toronto-based musician has won numerous awards and racked up multiple nominations, including four JUNO nods, for everything from Best New Artist to Songwriter of the Year.
Masterfully produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, this has all the hallmarks of a breakthrough album, as melding electronics and acoustics frolic about Hannah’s spellbinding vocals.
The eagerly anticipated follow-up production to the work that Dessner did on Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’, ‘all that emotion’ comprises deeply personal songs reckoning with the past, set in a warm, enveloping sound world with lyrical themes of change and resilience. for fans of Eve Owen, Feist, Phoebe Bridgers, Daughter and the National. “… sparse, staggering… [Aaron Dessner’s] immersive production, including layered keyboards and twinkling harmonics, pairs perfectly with her elegant voice” – uncut.
we’re equally enamoured with Hannah Georgas’ soon-to-be-breakthrough fourth album. with studio controls helmed by the National’s Aaron Dessner, who recently gave Taylor Swift’s latest album an extra shot of pizzazz, delicate acoustic instrumentation nuzzles up to magical electronics as they bear witness to Hannah’s emotionally charged vocal performance.
Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings have announced a brand-new collection that celebrates The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s near-mythic performances on Maui, Hawaii in 1970. Live In Maui brings together audio and video with a new feature-length documentary called Music, Money, Madness: Jimi Hendrix In Maui. The collection will be available in 2-CD/Blu-ray and 3-LP/Blu-ray configurations, all due on November 20th.
Hendrix’s performances on Maui in 1970 caught him at another pivotal point in his too-short career. Following the success of Electric Ladyland, he alternated between playing arenas and festivals with his revamped Experience alongside bandmates Billy Cox (bass) and Mitch Mitchell (drums), and overseeing the creation of his state-of-the-art Greenwich Village studio, Electric Lady Studios. In need of additional financing to complete building the studio, manager Michael Jeffery convinced Warner Bros. to advance Hendrix $500,000.00. The studio would also finance a film to be shot in Maui: Rainbow Bridge. Warner would then receive the soundtrack rights to the exclusive Hendrix music in the movie.
The impressionistic film, directed by Chuck Wein, would explore themes of enlightenment, with the titular rainbow bridge connecting the enlightened and unenlightened worlds. It wasn’t much of a concert movie, though, as only 17 minutes of footage were included from the free show Hendrix held on a Maui cattle ranch on July 30th, 1970 (one day before a Honolulu arena performance). Even those weren’t “pure” as Mitch Mitchell had to re-record his parts at the recently-opened Electric Lady to make the footage useable. Sadly, Jimi Hendrix was gone before the film was ever completed. He died in London on September 18th, 1970. Upon the film’s release in 1971, fans were confused by it as well as the meticulously overdubbed soundtrack album which premiered Hendrix studio material but didn’t actually include any music from the film or the two Maui sets.
Director John McDermott’s new documentary film chronicles the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s visit to Maui and the story of the film by incorporating period footage with new interviews with Chuck Wein, Billy Cox, Eddie Kramer, and others key figures. It’s presented in both editions of Experience Hendrix/Legacy’s release on Blu-ray, and the discs will also feature all of the existing 16mm colour footage from the two afternoon sets captured on July 30th, 1970 mixed in stereo and 5.1 surround.
The accompanying 2-CD set features Hendrix, Billy Cox, and Mitch Mitchell’s restored Maui sets, newly mixed by Eddie Kramer and mastered by Bernie Grundman. “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” has been released as a preview single for the box. “Jimi loved adventure and there was certainly no shortage of it during his time in Hawaii, a place he also loved,” comments Janie Hendrix in the press release. “The back story of Rainbow Bridge and these recordings paint a picture of Jimi’s uncanny ability to turn the bizarre into something amazing! We’re excited about this release because it gives the world a closer look at Jimi’s genius.”
U2 will celebrate the 20th anniversary of All That You Can’t Leave Behind on October 20th with the release of a super deluxe edition of the album. It will be available both as single disc remaster of the original LP and a 51-track Super Deluxe box set packed with B-sides, outtakes, remixes and a complete show taped at a Boston stop on the 2001 Elevation tour.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind brought U2 back to the center of the music universe after their 1997 LP Pop underwhelmed at record stores. (They faced large sections of empty seats during some shows on the American leg of the PopMart tour.) It was the album that put the band back on the charts and heralded something of a return to form after some experimental excursions in the mid-to-late ’90s. The Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno-produced album won seven Grammy Awards including Best Rock Album, Song of the Year (“Beautiful Day”) and, for the only time in history, two consecutive Record of the Year nods (“Beautiful Day” in 2001 and “Walk On” in 2002). “Beautiful, Day,” “Elevation,” “Stuck in a Moment That You Can’t Get Out Of” and “Walk On” all became sizable worldwide hits, all reaching the Top 5 in the U.K. (with the first three going straight to No. 1 in their native Ireland), and All That You Can’t Leave Behind remains one of their biggest-selling albums.
Hit singles like “Beautiful Day,” “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” and “Elevation” helped All That You Can’t Leave Behind sell by the millions and rack up seven Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year. “This is our night,” Bono said at the ceremony. “It is a very unusual emotion I am feeling. I think it is called humility.”
The Super Deluxe edition of the album will come with a 32-page hardback book, previously unseen photos by Anton Corbijn, B-sides like “Summer Rain” and “Always,” 11 remixes, 19 songs taped at their 2001 Boston concert and outtakes from the sessions, including “Levitate,” “Love You Like Mad” and “Flower Child” along with “Stateless” from the soundtrack to the Million Dollar Hotel. There’s also an acoustic version of “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” which they’re promoting with a new lyric video.
U2 wrapped up the international leg of their Joshua Tree tour on December 19th, 2019 with a show at DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai, India. Since then, they have focused a lot of their energy on the new SiriusXM station U2 X-Radio. They are also working on their followup to 2018’s Songs of Experience.
The set also includes a disc of B-sides and session material, and a further disc of hard-to-find or unreleased remixes. Among these bonus tracks are “Levitate,” Flower Child,” and “Love You Like Mad,” three tracks that make their wide-release physical media debut here. Prior to this set, they were only available on an iTunes-exclusive bonus album or a fan club-only CD pressing of that collections. The new 20th Anniversary box set will also feature the soundtrack stray cut “Stateless,” and a wealth of non-album tracks, including the Johnny Cash cover “Don’t Take Your Guns To Town.”
The 11-LP super deluxe set contains all the material from the 5-CD, presented in eight sleeves: one for the remastered album, another for the B-Sides and Demos disc, and a further one for the 19-track Boston set. The remixes will be spread across 5 discs, each in its own sleeve.
“We did some recording last year that got us some really great starting points and complete songs,” bassist Adam Clayton told Rolling Stone in July. “There’s an album ready to go, we’re just not quite sure when we want to press that button. When I say ready to go, I mean ready to be completed. Let’s put it that way.”
As we’ve come to expect from U2, the design of the box promises to be impressive.
Almost nothing is known about Bruce Springsteen’s follow up to 2019’s Western Stars, including any timeframe for its release, but he’s indicated that it’s a collection of rock songs recorded with the E Street Band. Last year, he told Martin Scorsese that the songs came to him after a long period where he found himself unable to write for a rock band. “It just came out of almost nowhere,” he said. “And it was good. I had about two weeks of those little daily visitations [of songs], and it was so nice. It makes you so happy. You go, ‘Fuck, I’m not fucked, all right?’”
Bruce Springsteen will release Letter to You, a new rock album recorded live in his New Jersey home studio with the members of the E Street Band, The title track is also the first single and is available now.
“I love the emotional nature of Letter To You,” he said in a statement. “And I love the sound of the E Street Band playing completely live in the studio, in a way we’ve never done before, and with no overdubs. We made the album in only five days, and it turned out to be one of the greatest recording experiences I’ve ever had.”
In addition to nine new songs, the album also includes fresh recordings of three songs that predate Springsteen’s 1973 debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.: “Janey Needs A Shooter,” “If I Was the Priest” and “Song for Orphans.” Assuming Springsteen keeps the lyrics from the early bootlegged versions, “If I Was the Priest” (covered by Hollies singer Allan Clarke in the Seventies) is a sacrilegious fantasy (“If Jesus was the sheriff and I was the priest/If my lady was an heiress and my mama was a thief”), while “Song for Orphans” is a Dylan-esque tale of “aimless quest-less renegade brats who live their lives in songs,” and “Janey” is a slightly twisted love song.
Springsteen wrote at least some of Letters to You last spring, judging from comments he made in a public conversation with Martin Scorsese last year. “I couldn’t write anything for the band,” he said. “And I said, ‘Well, of course … you’ll never be able to do that again!’ And it’s a trick every time you do it, you know? But it’s a trick that, because of that fact that you can’t explain, cannot be self-consciously duplicated. It has to come to you in inspiration. And then about a month or so ago, I wrote almost an album’s worth of material for the band. And it came out of just… I mean, I know where it came from, but at the same time, it just came out of almost nowhere. And it was good, you know. I had about two weeks of those little daily visitations, and it was so nice. It makes you so happy.
