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

The band that started it all, Superchunk, is back with a surprise new studio album! Acoustic Foolish is a complete re-recording of their classic 1994 album, Foolish,. Long considered to be one of their most tender & well-received albums in their storied history, the band was interested in re-exploring what the songs mean to them 25 years later.

The second Lowe/Los Straitjackets studio collaboration EP features only four selections, running a total of 14 minutes. Three are new Lowe originals that, well, sound like others of his tunes, and the fourth, “Raincoat In The River,” is an obscure Phil Spector cover, initially recorded by the little known Sammy Turner.

This is the funkiest record of Mac DeMarco’s career, with its serene charm and more introspective songs proving its creator now cares less about what will play well on the festival stages and more about letting us inside his head. The record is paced slower than his previous work, with the coked-out synths of

Over the course of their previous two albums, New York foursome Big Thief pruned their meaty alt-rock back into mellow indie. UFOF sees them pare things down further still, in a collection of gentle folk that seems dazed by its own exquisite beauty. Sometimes, the results bring to mind a sugar-coated Elliott Smith: acutely lovely melodies are layered over beds of softly hypnotic guitar,

It shouldn’t bother anyone that Kelly Finnigan, frontman for the Bay Area-based Monophonics, has decided to throw his solo hat into the retro soul ring. It’s akin to another Democrat running for the party’s nomination for president in 2020. Sure, the field is a little crowded, but an additional point of view is welcome to make things more interesting.

Through their first three albums, The Yawpers divined a signature style—what Pitchfork described as “an expansive vision of rock ‘n’ roll, one that cherrypicks from various folk traditions: punk, rockabilly, blues, whatever they might have on hand or find in the trash.” The sound is a front-heavy, groovy, fire & brimstone punk-blues overlying a dynamic and metaphysical roots rock. On their fourth album Human Question, the Denver trio zooms out to a more vast and accessible stylistic and spiritual universe.

The Budos Band have spent the last 15 years slowly-but-surely adding elements of proto-metal to their groove-drenched instrumental Afrobeat. 2014’s Burnt Offering feels like a confession of sorts, the band copping to their stoned-teenager proclivities by giving the album a grim title, artwork depicting a

Old soul practitioners who are still alive, well and touring are getting mighty scarce these days. In the last few years, we’ve lost Aretha, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, to name a few. That leaves Al Green, Aaron Neville, Mavis Staples and …. Lee Fields, plus some others, to keep that gritty spark alive, at least for those artists fortunate enough to be exposed to the raw, roots testifying of icons like Otis Redding,

It was inevitable that Steve Earle would eventually pay tribute to one of two his major mentors, Guy Clark, having done the same for Townes Van Zandt ten years ago. On Guy, Earle and his newly recast band, The Dukes, deliver 16 Clark tunes, both the well-known and relatively obscure in heartfelt, admirable style. As Earle says, “No way I could get out of doing this record.”

Astrologists apparently believe the annual “Strawberry Moon” (christened not for any red color but because it appears around the time the fruit is harvested) signals a time of transition. It’s an appropriate name then for this unusual collaborative project helmed by blues-based artist Luther Dickinson. The guitarist/producer convened six female roots-based musician/vocalists