Archive for the New Stuff / What’s On Sale Category

Béla Fleck is the world’s premier banjo player, a 16-time Grammy Award winner nominated in more categories than any other musician, a genre-busting collaborator, a film producer and a composer. Foremost, though, he is a dad. The impact of fatherhood on Béla is reflected in Juno Concerto, named for his firstborn son with fellow folk musician Abigail Washburn. The album was recorded with the Colorado Symphony, conducted by José Luis Gomez and also includes two tracks with the Brooklyn Rider string quartet: ‘Griff’ and the second movement of ‘Quintet for Banjo and Strings,’

It’s an interesting week here at New Releases central. We’ve got a potpourri of new stuff that ranges all over the map, genre-wise, from the return of Old 97’s to Wesley Stace’s return to his true name, to a double-album of weirdness from The Brian Jonestown Massacre to some serious loveliness from Rhiannon Giddens. There’s […]

The new Nikki Lane album sidles right down the fine line between country and rock iu this week’s new releases, along with a spankin’ new Ryan Adams, the first Son Volt record in four years, Alison Krauss’ first solo album since 1999, and some fresh bluegrass from The Gibson Brothers! Read on… NIKKI LANE, Highway […]

Greetings from New Release central, where we’re tickled to have the new Black Joe Lewis album in-stock, not to mention a look back from Kris Kristofferson, some big fun from Elvin Bishop, and there’s even some classical/jazz love for Mr. Gene! Read on…. BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS, Backlash (CD/LP) Recorded in the band’s […]

At his best, Ty Segall is a master songwriter trapped in the body of a punk — although the limitations of his garage-inflected rock actually keep him grounded and focused rather than restricted. The California bandleader’s prolific output over the past decade has grown increasingly ambitious in its own humble and rough-hewn way; at the […]

Cloud Nothings’ latest offering, the bursting, brimming, and brisk Life Without Sound, is a remarkable expansion. Three years down the line, and with a second guitarist growing the trio into a quartet, the band seems to be hitting their stride ever more intently (each record could perhaps be assessed as the band ‘hitting their stride,’ which speaks to the group’s impressive consistency). It’s a chugging, nimble-footed affair, showing a matured and restrained group; no more eight-minute-plus pounding, slashing jams, replaced instead with a sense of clarity and focus, a driving, raw sonic thesis statement. The record stirs from the band’s three-year recording slumber with the aptly named “Up to the Surface”, with slate-colored, melancholic piano, followed by ever-so-slightly out-of-tune, icy guitars poking through and a rumbling, dissonant, melodic build to the full-band waterfall. It’s an enthralling, unsettling handshake: “I knew peace in the terror of the mind,” Baldi mutters as the song fades. Producer John Goodmanson’s slick Death Cab-colored hand is immediately obvious, as the band trades in their previously gray, at times muddled, sound for a broad, angular upgrade.

According to the band’s website, “Susto” is a Spanish word that roughly translates into “panic attack,” or more specifically, the time when your soul is separated from your body. After an early start in the music business led to some burn-out at 26, the relatively young Justin Osborne felt the need for spiritual renewal, so he headed to Cuba to hopefully find some meaning beyond music. Instead, he came away with a perfectly apt band name more convinced than ever to pursue his musical whims. & I’m Fine Today is his second album since that sojourn. Mostly comprised of laid back, country-tinged, acoustic numbers, Osborne’s mournful compositions are nicely surrounded by ideal musical decorations (horns, organ, strings), reminding me a bit of The Band and 90’s world music act Rusted Root (the latter felt heaviest on closer “Jah Werx,” a great song to celebrate your Rastafarian faith). He wrote this album as a reflection of what he considers his place in the world and making peace with where he is. Certainly not novel, but there are enough thoughtful yet engaging songs here to overlook the well-trodden philosophical approach.

“When I started this band, didn’t see no plans,” says El-P on this album’s double-headed closer. “Just run with the craft, have a couple of laughs, make a buck and dash.” That isn’t how it turned out for the 41-year-old New Yorker and his Atlantan partner Killer Mike. Rather than a side project for two rappers with a shared interest in lyrical exuberance, Run the Jewels has become its own branch of alternative hip-hop. Industrial beats are the bed for raps that veer from politics to sex and visceral humour, often in the space of two lines. It has won awards and a sizeable fanbase. The politics has drawn greatest attention, especially for Mike, a prominent protester against police violence and supporter of Bernie Sanders. Those hoping for a manifesto won’t find it here; what politics there are are personal. 2100 begins with a call for resistance but passes into more poignant observations and ends with a sigh and a call for peace. The most vivacious track of all, Call Ticketron, is the least political, with Mike performing a fantastic feat of double-time rhyming while El-P jokes about doing “push-ups nude off the edge of cliffs”. The formula is probably becoming familiar, but its time is now.

Nineteen albums in, after working with the top-drawer jazz masters, like Antonio Sanchez, Christian McBride, Nasheet Waits, Sean Jones, Marcus Gilmore, Steve Wilson, Jeremy Pelt, Lewis Nash, Billy Hart, Larry Grenadier, Rudy Royston, and Bobby Militello, among others, pianist Lisa Hilton strips her music down to the essentials and returns to the solo format with Day & Night. For this album, Hilton looked to Cole Porter, one of her favorite composers, for inspiration, Hilton includes a searing and simple take on Porter’s classic, “Begin the Beguine”, which turns wondrously seductive under her touch. Her original tunes, “Stepping into Paradise”, “A Spark in the Night” and “So This is Love” do convey the some of Porter’s cosmopolitan essence, but also embedded in Hilton’s realization of her nine original compositions is the vibrating energy and bluesy soul of fellow composer/pianists “Count” Bill Basie, and Horace Silver.