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When the team at Atlantic Records sat down to compile the soundtrack album from the filmed account of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair, they had their work cut out for them. How could they capture the essence of such a momentous event, one that went on for three days and nights on a recorded album? The “Woodstock” concert film, released on March 26th, 1970 had, after all, run for more than three hours. How could that possibly be condensed onto a record?
The answer was that it could not, so Atlantic put it out as a three-LP set. “Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More”, released on May 11th, 1970, on Atlantic’s Cotillion subsidiary, was embraced by record buyers much as the film had been.
The soundtrack couldn’t really lose. After all, presumably each of the 400,000 attendees would want it as a souvenir copy those sales alone would propel the set to platinum level. But its appeal, naturally, was much wider within a year of the fest, the name Woodstock had already taken on great cultural significance, and the music was of such consistently high quality that any fan of rock and folk music would want to add this one to the collection.
Atlantic Records made a wise decision not to follow the actual sequence of the performances from the festival on the album. Where singer Richie Havens had actually opened the event on Friday, August 15th, here he was relegated to the third position, following John Sebastian’s solo “I Had a Dream”—which captured the spirit of Woodstock so simply and sublimely—and Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country,” used in the film as intro music to set the scene. Most of the acoustic music is relegated to the first two discs before the electric rock, soul and blues take over. Most, but not all, of the real heavyweights are represented—the Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Joe Cocker, Santana and, of course, Jimi Hendrix, the last artist to perform.
For whatever reason, the label included one track by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, “Sea of Madness,” that was actually recorded the month after Woodstock at New York City’s Fillmore East. They wisely included CS&N’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from the festival.
In those days, most listeners played record albums on phonographs that allowed them to stack one disc atop the other, so in order to allow for a relatively uninterrupted stream of music, Atlantic placed side six on the flip side of side one, and so forth. For the cover, the label chose a now-iconic photograph of a drained-looking, blanketed couple embracing toward the end of the event, litter all about them. (They were still together as of 50 years later.)
The “Woodstock” soundtrack raised the bar for rock concert albums, and did so well that Atlantic, to no one’s surprise, released a two-LP sequel, “Woodstock Two”, in 1971. Even then, between the two set, several key acts that played the festival were not included, among them Janis Joplin, the Band, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ravi Shankar, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Johnny Winter.
Most of those omitted artists were finally represented on the four-CD boxed set of Woodstock performances released by Rhino Records on the fest’s 25th anniversary in 1994, and on the even more expansive six-disc set from 2009.
For the 50th anniversary in 2019, Rhino produced a huge, 38-disc boxed set containing nearly every note played at the 1969 festival. The set, limited to 1969 copies, included 432 tracks, 267 of which had never before been released. It quickly sold out.
A singer, songwriter, and author whose incendiary music has sound-tracked all three seasons of the Netflix show Sex Education, Ezra Furman has for years woven together stories of queer discontent and unlikely, fragile intimacies. Her new album ‘All of Us Flames’ widens that focus to a communal scope, painting transformative connections among people who unsettle the stories power tells to sustain itself.
Ezra says: Big day, my darlings. Our new song “Forever in Sunset” is here, with a beautiful music video accompanying it, AND I finally get to tell you that we are putting out a new album August 26th
Produced by John Congleton in L.A., ‘All of Us Flames’ unleashes Furman’s song writing in an open, vivid sound world whose boldness heightens the music’s urgency. The record arrives as the third instalment in a trilogy of albums, beginning with 2018’s Springsteen-inflected road saga “Transangelic Exodus“and continuing with the punk rock fury of 2019’s “Twelve Nudes”.
This is a first person plural album, Furman says. It’s a queer album for the stage of life when you start to understand that you are not a lone wolf, but depend on finding your family, your people, how you work as part of a larger whole. I wanted to make songs for use by threatened communities, and particularly the ones I belong to: trans people and Jews.
New Album ‘All Of Us Flames’ Out August 26 On Anti Records + Bella Union.
“Half a Human” is a collection of six songs created between two different worlds. While the architecture of each was constructed during sessions for 2020’s “The Main Thing“, the tracks came to life when the band began trading the material back and forth remotely throughout the pandemic. They found new ways of working together as they further explored the emotional landscapes they’ve been perfecting for more than a decade, and in taking stock of themselves and the uncertainty of their future, “Half a Human” helped them arrive at a new thesis statement for the band.
New Jersey’s Real Estate have seen it all, The band are the closest thing to the power pop and jangle current renaissance. Since their first album in 2009, The suburban sky-gazers have survived the acrimonious departure of a disgraced founding member, been welcomed onstage by Special Agent Dale Cooper, The band have five flawless albums under their red blazers. With a timbre that can most aptly be described as—and I’m reluctant to use the word as such breezy, their feathery pop textures are accessible enough for your parents, while their Tom Verlaine–indebted guitar lattices endear and intimidate peers.
Real Estate have their formula locked and loaded, avowed abiders of the “if it ain’t broke” platitude—and isn’t that what jangle pop is all about? Finding a new way to tell an old story.
Real Estate – “Half a Human” EP,’ out now on Domino Record Co.
Wilco have announced a new album, “Cruel Country”, and shared its first single, “Falling Apart (Right Now),” via a video for the new song. “Cruel Country” is due out May 27th via the band’s own dBpm label. The album is due out the same weekend as the band’s Solid Sound Festival in North Adams, MA and they will perform the album at the festival. The black & white “Falling Apart (Right Now)” video showcases the band in the studio working on the song.
As its title suggests, “Cruel Country” embraces the band’s Americana side. “There have been elements of Country music in everything we’ve ever done,” says frontman Jeff Tweedy in a press release. “We’ve never been particularly comfortable with accepting that definition, the idea that I was making Country music. But now, having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making Country.”
Wilco—Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Pat Sansone, and Nels Cline recorded almost everything on the album live in the studio together, with minimal overdubs, recording at the band’s own The Loft recording studio in Chicago. “It’s a style of recording that forces a band to surrender control and learn to trust each other, along with each others’ imperfections, musical and otherwise,” says Tweedy. “But when it’s working the way it’s supposed to, it feels like gathering around some wild collective instrument, one that requires six sets of hands to play.”
“Cruel Country” is a concept album of sorts, one that loosely chronicles the history of the United States. “It isn’t always direct and easy to spot, but there are flashes of clarity,” Tweedy explains. “It’s all mixed up and mixed in, the way my personal feelings about America are often woven with all of our deep collective myths. Simply put, people come and problems emerge. Worlds collide. It’s beautiful. And cruel.”
Tweedy adds: “The specifics of an American identity begin to blur for me as the record moves toward the light and opens itself up to more cosmic solutions—coping with fear, without belonging to any nation or group other than humanity itself.”
“Cruel Country” isn’t just about history, but also comments on the troubled times we’re currently living in. “More than any other genre, Country music, to me, a white kid from middle-class middle America, has always been the ideal place to comment on what most troubles my mind—which for more than a little while now has been the country where I was born, these United States,” says Tweedy. “And because it is the country I love, and because it’s Country music that I love, I feel a responsibility to investigate their mirrored problematic natures. I believe it’s important to challenge our affections for things that are flawed.
“Country music is simply designed to aim squarely at the low-hanging fruit of the truth. If someone can sing it, and it’s given a voice… well, then it becomes very hard not to see. We’re looking at it. It’s a cruel country, and it’s also beautiful. Love it or leave it. Or if you can’t love it, maybe you’ve already left.”
Wilco also recently announced a massive 20th anniversary reissue of their 2002 album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” that features a whopping 82 previously unreleased tracks, including a 2002 live recording of “Reservations,” which they shared when announcing the reissue. They also performed the album’s “Poor Places” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The reissue is due out September 16th via Nonesuch Records.
The band’s annual Solid Sound Festival will take place this May, featuring Japanese Breakfast, Sylvan Esso, Hand Habits, Iceage, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, among many others. Their last studio album, “Ode to Joy”, came out in 2019 via dBpm.
The dynamic Chicago rock band Wilco returns with its 12th studio album, the first of its kind. “Cruel Country” is the band’s exploration of the genre they’ve often been defined by but, until now, never fully embraced. The double album features 21 Jeff Tweedy-penned tracks, made almost entirely of live takes, created with all six members together in The Loft for the first time since the 2011 release “The Whole Love“. “Cruel Country” will be available as a digital download on May 27th.
Black Midi have announced a new album, “Hellfire”, and a North American tour. Check out Gustaf Holtenäs’ video for new song “Welcome to Hell” below, along with the dates and the album art, which was, once again, designed by David Rudnick. If “Cavalcade” was a drama, “Hellfire” is like an epic action film,” the band’s Geordie Greep said in a press release.
The band released that second album, “Cavalcade“, last year, followed by “Cavalcovers”, an EP featuring covers of Taylor Swift, King Crimson, and Captain Beefheart.
In a press release,
said: Almost everyone depicted is a kind of scumbag. Almost everything I write is from a true thing, something I experienced and exaggerated and wrote down. I don’t believe in Hell, but all that old world folly is great for songs, I’ve always loved movies and anything else with a depiction of Hell. Dante’s Inferno. When Homer goes to Hell in The Simpsons. There’s a robot Hell in Futurama. Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jewish writer who portrays a Satan interfering in people’s lives. There’s loads!.
If you preorder from select retailers you’ll receive one bonus 7” Flexi out of 6 possible songs, past and present, that we performed live at Electrical Audio – recorded by Steve Albini. 5 of them have been chosen already but the 6th, which is available from the BM and Rough Trade Webstores,
‘Hellfire’ is our Third Album for @roughtraderecords is out July 15th – Produced by Marta Salogni, Co-Produced by Max ‘Sizzle’ Goulding
New Album ‘Hellfire’ is out 15th July.
This Friday (May 13th), The Smile are digitally releasing their debut album “A Light for Attracting Attention”. Ahead of the release, the trio has shared the music video for the new song “Thin Thing.” The stop-motion animated visual was directed by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña.
According to a press release, León and Cociña spent six months on the “Thin Thing” video. They said in a statement: Hearing the song for the first time, we imagined a frenetic fluid that carries machines, pieces of human bodies and carnivorous plants. When presenting the idea to the band, Thom [Yorke] told us about a dream that made him write the song. We believe the video is the conjunction of these two things
Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Tom Skinner comprise line up of the Smile. In addition to “Thin Thing,” the trio’s debut album includes the singles “You Will Never Work in Television Again,” “The Smoke,” “Skrting on the Surface,” “Pana-vision,” and “Free in the Knowledge.”
And finally! A release date for our new album “A Light For Attracting Attention”, a new song, the artwork that Thom and Stanley have been painting all winter – and a sense that we will get to share, at last, our new music in full. I feel grateful that we managed, with Nigel’s help, to record these songs in a way they deserve. And the singles released so far have been liked – as far as I can tell – which makes me feel dangerously confident in the rest of the record.
So yes, we’re properly proud and excited for everyone to have the whole thing – but, it’s been a drawn-out process so far, with so many single songs released. I can only apologise for our tentativeness. But, come May 13th, all digital copies will be with you and physical copies will be available from June 17th.
“A Light For Attracting Attention”, out on XL Recordings
We’re so excited to announce Irish singer-songwriter and musician, Aoife Nessa Frances, as the newest addition to the Partisan Records roster!.
Following her critically lauded debut album Land of No Junction (2020), Aoife’s making her return with a new song, “Emptiness Follows” — a mesmerizing, pastoral psych-folk piece that pulls inspiration from magical realism, tarot, astrology, art-rock and avant-garde orchestrations.
Irish musician Aoife Nessa Frances has signed to Partisan and returns with a new recording “Emptiness Follows” — a meditation on the pain of friendships drifting apart.
“Emptiness Follows” presents a thrilling emotional and sonic landscape and carries a striking sense of grace. Pre-order the single now on metallic gold cassette, featuring the experimental alternative “Emptiness Follows (Dreams Of Our Love)” on Side B.
released May 9th, 2022
Last year, Wolf Alice returned with their third album “Blue Weekend”. The collection eventually earned them a Mercury Prize nomination. Today, they’re back with the news of a companion EP called “Blue Lullaby“, featuring stripped-down, reimagined versions of four “Blue Weekend” tracks.
“Blue Lullaby” came about because we wanted to strip down some of our more emotional songs from “Blue Weekend” and see if they hit any different,” Ellie Roswell said in a statement. “We also had a really nice moment during the “Blue Weekend” campaign singing one of our songs with a choir and we wanted to experience that again with a few other songs, especially as there are a lot of harmonies and a lot of vocal layering on “Blue Weekend”. Hearing multiple voices singing together is an unparalleled feeling to me so I’m happy we got to record this experience and I hope people enjoy it.”
The songs Wolf Alice chose to rework include “No Hard Feelings,” “Lipstick On The Glass,” “The Last Man On Earth,” and “How Can I Make It OK?”
“The Blue Lullaby” EP is out 24th June via RCA Records.
