In The Groove

The album from Nashville's finest evolves from years of experimental compositions written by bandleader Kurt Wagner on the piano (a first for the lauded song-writer). It's described by the artist as almost a post-modern twist on the American Songbook/ballad genre. Think of it almost like the cosmic cousin to the likes of early Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Gershwin, etc.

This also marks the first-time use of a new back-up group that includes James McNew (Yo La Tengo), Ryan Olson (Gayngs), Andrew Broder, techno producer Twit One, Eric Slick (Dr. Dog) and others. This switch-up revisits the original Lambchop motto that “anyone could be part of lambchop (so long as they behaved themselves)". This one was recorded at Battle Tapes in Nashville with Jeremy Ferguson & album art was once again created by Elise Tyler.

It's been over 15 years since Greg Cartwright uprooted to Asheville NC, but this new Memphis-made record shows the songwriter in top form and wholly inspired by his birthplace. And it's not only the terrain that's familiar: For this new LP, Cartwright also reunited with Reigning Sound's original "Memphis lineup" of Jeremy Scott (bass), Greg Roberson (drums), and Alex Greene (keyboards), all of whom played on the band's earliest recordings. The new songs explore fresh lyrical and musical territories but at times also tastefully echo back to Reigning Sound's Break Up, Break Down and Time Bomb High School. That's not by chance-it's just what happens when these musicians get in the same room. Their sonic chemistry hasn't faded a bit.

Since breaking out in 2018, Chai have been associated with explosive joy. At their live shows, the Japanese four-piece of identical twins MANA (lead vocals and keys) and KANA (guitar), drummer YUNA, and bassist-lyricist YUUKI have become known for buoyant displays of eclectic and clever songwriting, impressive musicianship, matching outfits, delightful choreography, and sheer relief. At the core of their music, Chai have upheld a stated mission to deconstruct the standards of beauty and cuteness that can be so oppressive in Japan. Following the release of 2019's second album PUNK, Chai's adventures took them around the world, to music festivals like Primavera Sound and Pitchfork Music Festival, and touring with indie-rock mainstays like Whitney and Mac DeMarco. Like all musicians, Chai spent 2020 forced to rethink the fabric of their work and lives. But Chai took this as an opportunity to shake up their process and bring their music somewhere thrillingly new. Having previously used their maximalist recordings to capture the exuberance of their live shows, with the audiences' reactions in mind, Chai instead focused on crafting the slightly-subtler and more introspective kinds of songs they enjoy listening to at home-where, for the first time, they recorded all of the music. Amidst the global shutdown, Chai worked on Garageband and traded their song ideas-which they had more time than ever to consider-over Zoom and phone calls, turning their limitations into a strength. Their third full-length and first for Sub Pop, WINK contains Chai's mellowest and most minimal music, and also their most affecting and exciting songwriting by far. While the band leaned into a more personal sound, WINK is also the first Chai album to feature contributions from outside producers (Mndsgn, YMCK) as well as a feature from the Chicago rapper-singer Ric Wilson. Chai draw R&B and hip-hop into their mix (Mac Miller, the Internet, and Brockhampton were on their minds) of dance-punk and pop-rock, all while remaining undeniably Chai. Whether in relation to this newfound sense of openness or their at-home ways of composing, the theme of WINK is to challenge yourself. WINK is a fitting title then: a subtle but bold gesture. A wink is an unselfconscious act of conviction, or as Chai puts it: "A person who winks is a person with a pure heart, who lives with flexibility, who does what they want. A person who winks is a person who is free." YUUKI noted that "With this album, we're winking at you. We're living freely and we hope that when you listen, you can wink and live freely, too." Chai came to see the album-with it's home-y feel-as a collection where each song is like a new friend, something comforting to rely on and reach out to, as the album was for them throughout 2020. This impulse towards connection is in WINK's title, too. After the "i" of their debut album PINK and the "u" of PUNK-which represented the band's act of introducing themselves, and then of centering their audiences-they have come full circle with the "we" of WINK. It signals Chai's relationship with the outside world, an embrace of profound togetherness. Through music, as Chai said, "we are all coming together." In that act of opening themselves up, Chai grew into their best work: "This album showed us, we're ready to do more."

Nowhere Generation’s unabashedly outspoken 11 songs explore the tight bonds and the distances we share, the struggles of everyday life, our personal failings and triumphs, as well as how the social and economic decks can be stacked against us. But Nowhere Generation also hints at the reclamation of ourselves, a call to resurrect who we are at our core, who we want to be and what we want to do with our lives, despite the rampant weaponizing of our culture. As lyricist Tim McIlrath wrote on “The Numbers”:  …these cold nights are almost unbearable, but purpose keeps us warm.

Nowhere Generation was recorded at The Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado under the tutelage of Jason Livermore, Andrew Berlin, Chris Beeble and long-time producer/engineer Bill Stevenson (Black Flag, The Descendents) who has worked with the band on nearly all of their acclaimed releases since their sophomore effort, 2003’s Revolutions Per Minute, and is often described as Rise Against’s fifth member.

Van Weezer, the band’s fifteenth studio album, is produced by Suzy Shinn (Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy).The inspiration for this album derives from the deepest roots of Weezer - metal! What has metal got to do with Weezer, you ask? In his earliest years, Rivers was a huge KISS fan; Brian was a big Black Sabbath fan; Pat worshipped at the altar of Van Halen and Rush; Scott loved Slayer and Metallica. The last time this vein of harder rock was mined by Weezer was on their much-loved 2002 album Maladroit; Van Weezer is primed to take that album's sonics many steps further.

black midi's follow-up to Schlagenheim is a dynamic, hellacious, inventive success. Cavalcade, their second studio album for Rough Trade, scales beautiful new heights, reaching ever upwards from an already lofty base of early achievements.

When Smoke Rises is the debut project from Toronto-based poet and singer-songwriter Mustafa. Writing in the aftermath of losing several friends to gun violence, Mustafa has sewn these departures - and his attempts to cope with them - into song, immortalizing friends in the most honest way he knows how: through his interpretation of folk music. The project features production from heavy-hitters Frank Dukes and Jamie xx, as well as contributions from Sampha and James Blake. GQ calls it "an impossibly personal collection of songs as heartbreaking as they are beautiful."

After a fantastic 2020 leading up to the release of their long-awaited 3rd album We Will Always Love You, The Avalanches are set to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of their groundbreaking debut album Since I Left You, with a deluxe edition release featuring new content. 2 CD, original 18 track album + 21 track exclusive mix. Exclusive mix includes 7 unreleased tracks + their own remixes of The Manic Street Preachers, Badly Drawn Boy, Belle & Sebastian + Franz Ferdinand. New album art.

On May 14, The Black Keys release their tenth studio album, Delta Kream, via Nonesuch Records. The record celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards that they have loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover. 

Moby’s eclectic career has cast him in the roles of electronic dance music pioneer, singer and songwriter, producer, activist, and restaurateur, but for his latest venture he presents his music in a whole new light.

Together with Deutsche Grammophon, he is releasing an album of his best known tracks in stunning new arrangements for classical instruments – featuring Moby himself and a stellar lineup of collaborators from across the musical spectrum.

Always a daring and imaginative thinker, Moby’s first classical collaboration happened in October 2018, when he performed a selection of his songs alongside the LA Phil and conductor and friend Gustavo Dudamel. This was the inspiration for the current project, which features not only full orchestral versions but new electronic arrangements, as well as sophisticated smaller-scale acoustic interpretations.

The 14-track album includes classic Moby songs like “Porcelain”, “Why Does My Heart”, and “Extreme Ways” in innovative new versions, featuring eye-catching collaborations including both Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Víkingur Ólafsson on “Porcelain”; Gregory Porter and Amythyst Kiah on “Natural Blues”; and Kris Kristofferson as well as original vocalist Mark Lanegan on “The Lonely Night”. The album concludes with a cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes”.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard return with ‘L.W.’, their seventeenth studio album and the third volume in the band’s explorations into microtonal tunings. A companion piece to its 2020 predecessor, ‘K.G.’, as well as a stand-alone work of art in its own right, L.W. displays a collision of musical worlds. After a decade of frenzied productivity and a recent inability to tour, the band was able to “reset [their] brains” and embark upon a search for “the notes between the notes”. Out via KGLW

 

Throughout their career, Blackberry Smoke has embodied Georgia’s rich musical legacy, honoring the people, places and sounds of their home state. As the band celebrates their 20th anniversary this year, their reverence for Georgia has only deepened.

On their latest album, You Hear Georgia, the follow-up to 2018’s critically acclaimed Find a Light, Blackberry Smoke is further celebrating these roots with 10 new songs that feel like Georgia, accented by the addition of Grammy-winning producer and fellow Georgia-native, Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile). “Dave and I had spoken for the last few years about making a record,” Starr says. “Finally, it worked out, our schedule and his schedule, and we said, yes—let’s make a record.”

Blackberry Smoke worked quickly, spending just 10 days at Nashville’s famed RCA Studio A, Cobb’s home base since 2016. The band recorded live on the floor, giving You Hear Georgia a crisp, outgoing feel. Like other Blackberry Smoke efforts, this album leans into well-crafted Southern rock driven by jagged guitar riffs and rich instrumentation, as the band layers on rollicking piano (“Live It Down”), funky grooves (“Hey Delilah”), and introspective acoustic sounds (the stripped-down, folk-leaning “Old Enough to Know”).

The title song, “You Hear Georgia” features a narrator who’s underestimated because of outward appearances and misguided stereotypes, which is a theme of Starr’s lyrics this time around, particularly as it relates to the band’s Southern roots. “Lyrically, the song is about the South being misunderstood. It’s obviously a rough and tumble world, and there’s a lot of bad people. But there’s a lot of good people too. It started with the idea of how people might have a preconceived opinion of you because of a thick Southern accent, then expanded into the reality of how some people just seem to have such a hard time getting along, thanks to political or religious views, or simply what part of the country you come from.”

Many of You Hear Georgia’s songs describe characters that are restless and prone to seeking out a change of scenery, in hopes of finding a place where they belong. Against cinematic backdrops with vivid details, it’s easy to empathize with these protagonists as they share pearls of wisdom (“Don’t ever trust a grown man with a nickname”) and exhibit deep self-awareness (“Anywhere’s better than staying here, with the ghosts running thru his mind”) along the way.

You Hear Georgia reinforces that the band members have come so far together because they also can rely on one another for support and creative direction, no matter what the circumstances.

On June 15th 2014, Jason Isbell reunited onstage with former Drive By Truckers bandmates Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley for a special round-style night in Muscle Shoals Music. The setlist includes acoustic versions of Isbell-era Truckers gems including “Heathens,” “Decoration Day” and “Zip City” as well as post-Isbell Truckers tracks like “Space City” and solo Isbell faves such as “Cover Me Up.” The set opens and closes with a pair of classic Hood-sung numbers, 2004′s “Tornadoes” and 2001′s “Let There Be Rock.”  

Mark Collie presents the adventures of the Rockabilly Hitman in - “Book Of My Blues”, a ground-breaking new album. This smokey fifteen song project chronicles the tale of Jessie Wayne Hardin aka the “Rockabilly Hit-man”. The audience joins this journey of misadventure as Hardin balances the moral scales of good and evil in the service of rock and roll. The story of the Book of My Blues springs to life through music and videos in what is sure to become a collector’s classic.

"Listening to the story of Canadian duo cleopatrick is a bit like hearing the plot of the best, most righteously validating coming-of-age film never made. Two friends meet aged four in Hicksville, Nowheretown (real name: Cobourg, Ontario, population 19,000), grow up completely inseparable, form a band and, against numerous obstacles, blossom into a genuine, global underground sensation. There are heroes and villains, highs and lows and, crucially, some of the most poetic plot twists that could seem almost too perfect, were they not completely true.

Take the story of 2017 breakthrough track ‘hometown’ for example. “It’s one of the craziest, most ironic things that’s ever happened,” begins vocalist and guitarist Luke Gruntz. “I was going to college because I was too scared to put all my chips in the band pile, and that’s what ‘hometown’ is about: it’s a song about feeling like we’re doing all this stuff and we’re working so hard and we’re just never going to be heard. It’s literally a song about people probably never hearing our songs. And then by some act of the universe, that song ended up unlocking all the doors for us.”

Today, cleopatrick has logged 77 million streams and counting - all from an increasingly dedicated fanbase who’ve found the duo, completed by drummer Ian Fraser, their own way: no major label, no big budget, just two best pals knuckling down, cementing a unique sonic alchemy and filling a space of honest, empathetic yet undeniably heavy-hitting rock music that they’d been searching for themselves for years. Between multiple sold out tours in Canada, the US and the UK/EU and appearances at Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Reading/Leeds, the pair have been crafting BUMMER: a debut album that sees cleopatrick harness all the magic they’ve been brewing over their two-decade friendship and funnel it into a record that aims to reinvigorate the rock landscape from the ground up. Taking the ethos of their New Rock Mafia collective - a group of friends and fellow bands, united in making a more inclusive, equality-driven space in rock music - and imbuing it with the sonic ambition and ferocity of a record designed to be played hard and loud, it’s an album about two friends, who’ve been with each other since the formative first steps that adorn ‘BUMMER’’s heartwarming cover image and made something that’s a testament to the power of sticking to your guns."

With over a million albums already sold, Nashville-based, Oregon-born singer songwriter and producer Mat Kearney returns with his new album January Flower.  January Flower sees Kearney in his rawest form, distilling the songwriting process and rediscovering the joy of making music. Physical available May 21st, 2021 via Tomorrow Music/Caroline.

EUREKA, the third studio album from Canadian avante pop quintet MOTHER MOTHER, is the band's most tenacious and undaunted record to date.

Deluxe CD in clamshell box with 4 x exclusive artcards and 1 x poster (only available in this boxset). 2 x CD with second CD containing a collection of the band’s much loved covers released in the last eight years for Record Store Day, featuring Brody Dalle, Brian Aubert, Screaming Females and John Doe & Exene Cervenka as well as a cover of Bowie’s Starman.

Garbage return with their seventh studio album ‘No Gods No Masters’, to be released 11th June 2021

“This is our seventh record, the significant numerology of which affected the DNA of its content.

The seven virtues

The seven sorrows

and the seven deadly sins.

It was our way of trying to make sense of the craziness of the world and the astounding chaos we found ourselves in.”

Shirley Manson

The term “Front Porch Singin’” may actually be a metaphor for many creative and conceptual musical ideas. But, for us, this title has become more of an attitude than anything else. What if the four of us were sitting on a porch together and someone begins to sing a favorite old Gospel song, like “Swing Down Chariot,” or a country and Western standard like “Red River Valley,” and everyone else just joined in? That is what happened at RCA Studio A. But, as usual under producer Dave Cobb’s leadership, this album turned into so much more. The Front Porch Singin’ attitude remained prevalent throughout, as songwriters, musicians, Dave and all four of us kept coming to the table with terrific creative ideas to enhance our Front Porch experience.

This project is quite honestly one of the most heartfelt albums we have ever recorded. Perhaps it is because we recorded these songs in the middle of a raging pandemic that changed the face of America and obviously took a huge toll on those of us in the music business. It was a bit strange to social-distance from each other in the studio, but we believe it drew us all closer and, in doing so, we may have inadvertently recorded the perfect project for this time period. These songs, whether new or old, reflect a certain optimism and a deep-seated faith that God will work all of this out as we move forward. “Life is beautiful,” as one song says. We must embrace it and celebrate it with all of our being.

Join us on The Front Porch and, if it is God’s will… Let’s keep on SINGIN’.

—The Oak Ridge Boys

The album was written and recorded during the pandemic, and though COVID-19 restrictions didn't allow Jim to record the album in person with other musicians, it does feature a very notable rhythm section: bassist Ben Kenney of Incubus (and briefly of The Roots) and drummer Tucker Rule of Thursday. "My friends did this for the pure love of making music with a friend," he said of Ben and Tucker. "There's no higher compliment. I don't know how I'll repay them."

The brand new studio album from one of the biggest reggae bands in the world. IN THE MOMENT finds Rebelution ruminating on time, living in the present and making your future better. The grammy-nominated band's first full length studio album since FREE REIN in 2018. It brings 15 new tracks including guest appearances by Busy Signal, Kabaka Pyramid, Durand Jones and Keznamdi.