2x GRAMMY Award-winning artist Patty Griffin has announced the upcoming release of TAPE, a collection of rare demos and home recordings to be released on her own PGM Recordings label via Thirty Tigers. "At some point in the pandemic, I was digging through my own music streaming to relearn some of my own oldies and found something that had been compiled (perhaps by a computed algorithm) that was titled as a 'rarities' or 'deep cuts' collection," Griffin says. "I looked of course, and it was a pretty boring list for the most part. I later dug through some recordings I had done on cheap home recording apps, including my favorite one called TapeDeck which I'm not sure exists anymore. I really liked some of the songs. They were better than I had remembered. I dug around some more and found things from some GarageBand recordings, and then also a couple of things from an in-studio demo session in Nashville that were pretty interesting, including a duet I did with Robert Plant when we first met. It all seemed worth listening to. Back then I didn't think so, but I do now."

"The sound quality of the majority of things on TAPE is pretty low, but the performances are what really matter to me. My home recordings are almost always my favorite recordings, as far as capturing a fresh, direct feeling. The shy introvert's dilemma...I've always had a hard time creating that same feeling in a studio full of people whose talent is in sound quality. These songs have a feel you can only get when you're by yourself at three o'clock in the morning. To listen to the bulk of these recordings, you do have to let go of the idea of good sound quality and just listen to the performance. I feel better getting some true rarities out there for people to listen to...not compiled by a computer algorithm."

Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind welcomes us back to “The Amory Wars” as the 2nd installment of the new five-part “Vaxis” arc about a couple on the run from tyrannical forces and their mysterious new addition. 

Joan Shelley returns with "The Spur" her first new album in three years. The twelve song set is a profound meditation on light and darkness, recorded in the spring of 2021 at Earthwave Farm in the Kentucky countryside. James Elkington serves as co-producer (alongside Shelley) and the album features collaborations with Bill Callahan, Meg Baird and the British novelist Max Porter along with Shelley’s musical partner Nathan Salsburg. 

In this time of strife, insanity and confusion, only one band is depraved enough to offer themselves up as herald. Like sin-eaters if sins had to be ingested from a very small spoon, Viagra Boys have consumed the utterly incomprehensible chaos of our era and distilled it into 12 immaculate tracks of post-truth-cow-funk-kraut-wave-enlightenment.

Eric Clapton’s lifelong passion for the blues burns brightly inNothing But The Blues. The CD of the soundtrack features 17 previously unreleased live performances recorded in 1994 during the legendary guitarist’s tour supportingFrom The Cradle, his GrammyÒ-winning, multi-platinum blues album. Clapton’s longtime co-producer, Simon Climie, has remixed the audio from those performances from the original multi-tracking recordings. -The previously unreleased live performances onNothing But the Bluesserve as a vital counterpart toFrom The Cradle, which was recorded in the studio. While several songs appear on both (“Motherless Child,” “Standing ’Round Crying,” and “I’m Tore Down”), the performances are entirely different. The release also includes songs that did not appear onFrom the Cradle, including Jimmy Rogers’ “Blues All Day Long” and Robert Johnson’s “Malted Milk,” as well as the standards “Every Day I Have The Blues” and “Forty-Four.”

Following upon the success of his combined Eps, Take Time & When Its All Said And Done, the 7x Grammy nominated R&B’s singer’s album, Give Or Take, continues a narrative of heart felt songwriting in singles “For Tonight” and “Lie Again” and will undoubtedly become one of this new decade’s acclaimed developing artist stories.

Bob Marley with the Chineke! Orchestra reimagines some of Bob Marley’s most recognized and listened to songs with contemporary classical orchestration. The Chineke! Orchestra provides opportunities to a diverse range of up-and-coming and internationally respected classical musicians.

2022 release. Vocalist Chris Motionless elaborated on the ambitious new project stating, "this is my love letter to you, our fans, for everything you have done for me over the course of some of the most mentally taxing few years I've had to go through. At times where I felt like my world was ending, as well as the world around us, it was always in my mind that I was able to turn to the special relationship we have created together for help, and I cannot thank you enough for that. Outside of my own personal experiences, it has been equally as fulfilling to me to see that in the face of tireless forces that continue to try and perpetuate hatred and negativity towards so many of us coexisting on this planet, we have all stood together to resist and fight back knowing that love and compassion will always prevail. We ARE the resistance. We ARE Cyberhex. I love you. Thank you." Scoring The End of the World fully encompasses the expanse of the band's dynamic, deep, and dark vision, and marks the band's first full-length body of work in three years since 2019's Disguise. The latter has quietly made a major impact on rock music and culture.

Stay Proud of Me is the debut album from LA-based Korean-American artist NoSo (real name, Abby Hwong). Their stage name is shorthand for North/South: a nod to their Korean heritage, and the inane origin question (""Which Korea are you from?"") that so many Korean Americans inevitably face at some point in their lives. Across 10 tracks, NoSo indirectly grapples with the insecurities and frustrations that can arise from the Asian American experience, with the end result feeling like a balm for the alienated.

Stay Proud of Me offers a deeply earnest coming-of-age story, a nuanced introduction to NoSo's universe and Hwong's rapidly expanding musical abilities. The marriage of their lyrics and captivating guitar performance feels magical, as if NoSo can open up portals to fantastic new realms, guided by an emotional honesty that breaks you down in one moment and fills you with joy in the next.

Home, before and after is ReginaSpektor's eighth studio album and most quintessentially “New York” in years. Recorded in upstate New York, produced by John Congleton and coproduced by Spektor, the album is Spektor at her most inspired, heralded by "Becoming All Alone," a surrealist ballad that swells with arrangements and comes alive in your head. During the summer of 2019, Spektor completed a successful five-night Broadway residency at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, marking her debut on the Great White Way. The Daily Beast called the run “both whimsical and thunderous,” with Gothamist saying Spektor “delights on Broadway with a fun, zany show.” Spektor’s most recent album, 2016’sRemember Us To Life, has been the subject of extensive critical praise from the likes of NPR, Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine,Peopleand many more. ReginaSpektor is synonymous with New York City. The Russian-Jewish-American singer, songwriter and pianist got her own Sign on the Bronx Walk of Fame,as well as “Regina Spektor Day,” (June 11, 2019) proclaimed by Mayor Bill DeBlasio. The Grammy Award nominee first saw commercial success with the RIAA Gold-certified LPBegin to Hopewhich includes singles “On the Radio,” “Better,” “Samson,” as well as “Fidelity” which climbed the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Spektor’s fifth album,Far(2009), and sixth album,What We Saw From the Cheap Seats(2012), both debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Spektor has performed at The White House as well as on Broadway, Saturday Night Live and contributed to many projects spanning film, television, and music includingThe Hamilton Mixtape.

Hey Doll Baby is a newly remastered 17-track compilation that collects some of the lesser-known, buried treasures in the Everly Brothers’ rich catalog with songs assembled by Adria Petty, Tom Petty’s daughter, who worked closely with both Everly families on the project, with help from Phil’s widow Patti and son Jason, who provided track-by-track commentary for the liner notes, as well as Don Everly, prior to his passing last summer, and his widow Adela. Hey Doll Baby holds the bittersweet distinction of being the final project Don worked on.

I've been playing since I was 11 years old," says Charlie Gabriel, the most senior member of the legendary Preservation Hall Band, "I never did anything in my life but play music. I've been blessed with that gift that God gave me, and I've tried to nurse it the best way I knew how." While he's faced plenty of challenges nursing that gift for more than 78 years, none likely rank with last winter's passing of his brother and last living sibling, Leonard, lost to COVID-19. For the first time ever, Gabriel put down his horn, filling his days and weeks instead with dark reflection, a stubborn despondency broken now and then by regular chess matches in the studio kitchen of Hall leader Ben Jaffe, working overtime to bring his friend some light. One such afternoon also included Joshua Starkman, sitting off in a corner playing his guitar and half-watching the chess from a distance. When Charlie returned the next day, he brought his saxophone. "I was just inspired to try it, to play again. It had been a long time, and a guitar makes me feel free. I do love the sound of a piano, but it takes up a lot of a space, keeps me kind of boxed in." That day was to be the first session for Eighty Nine, almost entirely the work of Gabriel, Jaffe and Starkman, recorded mostly right there, in the kitchen, by Matt Aguiluz. Charlie Gabriel's first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans' Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band then included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer J.C. Heard. While he's also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader. Since 2006, Gabriel has been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, featuring prominently on That's It, So It Is, and Tuba to Cuba. Eighty Nine was different, and not simply due to a smaller ensemble. "We had no particular plan, or any particular insight on what we were gonna do. But we were enjoying what we were doing, jamming, having a musical conversation," Charlie says, further musing, "Musical conversations cancel out complications." Eighty Nine includes six standards and three newer pieces on which Gabriel is a writer: "Yellow Moon," "The Darker It Gets" and "I Get Jealous." The record also marks Charlie's return to his first instrument, clarinet, on many of the tracks. "The clarinet is the mother of the saxophone," he says. "I started playing clarinet early in life, and this [taught me] the saxophone." Finally, Eighty Nine includes three tracks of Charlie singing. "I always sung, but it wasn't my forte to become a singer," he says. "The truth is, people often develop a real relationship with a song once they hear the words. Sometimes I enjoy singing them.

'Heart Under', Just Mustard's second album, asks you to forget what you know. At every turn, this remarkable record reconfigures and stretches the ideas and ambition of a rock band, and turns a year of lockdown and personal struggles into a breathtaking artistic statement. The music the five friends from Dundalk, Ireland make is strikingly untraditional. Though to look at them, it appears that the band are a five-piece with uniform make-up of a vocalist, two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer, not a single one of them utilizes their instrument in a confined or regular fashion. Guitarists David Noonan and Mete Kalyoncuoglu make their six-strings shriek and wail, the sounds produced sounding like everything from whirring machinery to horror movie monsters. Behind them, drummer Shane Maguire uses the rim of his drums almost as much as the skins, providing a clattering, metallic backbeat. Most of the melodies on offer poke through from Rob Clarke's inventive, nodding bass lines. Then there's Katie on vocals; she's the transfixing focal point of the band. Across its 10 tracks, the album presents a coherent style and ethos ' those scything guitars, Katie's magical vocals ' but still incorporates a wide and untethered vision. There are brooding, atmospheric rock songs and others that apply a lighter, dreamier touch, all tied together with impeccable instrumentation and a united vision. 'Heart Under' serves as the next stage of this development, with every instrument brilliantly pushed to its limit and every boundary of the band stretched.

Set It Off has never been your standard emo band. Or pop group. Or pop-punk band. They are all of those things and more. Just listen to the lead singles from the new album Elsewhere - moody, melodious pop-rock with fast rapping tearing up the break. The album is about embracing who you are unapologetically and without filters. Elsewhere epitomizes Set It Off now - a group both fully committed to its roots and diving into its future by embracing inevitable change.

Pharis and Jason Romero are pure craftspeople. A renowned banjo builder, Jason spent years developing his own personal designs, and on Tell 'Em You Were Gold, his handmade instruments take center stage. Over a half dozen uniquely crafted banjos are played by the duo in the course of the album. There's conviction and delicacy in this music, which ranges from duets that showcase the pair's deep psychic and artistic connection to solo banjo meditations and full band romps. Recorded over six days in an old barn in Horsefly, British Columbia, the album displays the multiple Juno Award-winning duo playing music that is honest, direct, and reflective of life's beauty and knottiness.