Briana Marela "All Around Us"Briana Marela "All Around Us"
$12.99 CD $16.99 LP $9.99 MP3Briana's lyrics are forceful, and throughout her second album, All Around Us, traditional song structure gives way to plainspoken declarations that pull back the record's shroud. Her first single,"Surrender" is musically delicate at first, with flickering blips and chords that float into earshot like fireflies. "Take Care of Me" is the album's brightest and most immediate song, a buoyant celebration of friendship with a skittering beat and a warm, sweet melody. And title track "All Around Us" is a stark but inspiring beauty, built on the memory of a family member of Briana's who passed away, and the sadness of not being able to say "goodbye" or "I love you" one last time. It is the balance of the abstract and the intimate that makes Briana Marela and All Around Us so special.
Cut Worms "Hollow Ground"Cut Worms "Hollow Ground"
$12.99 CD $16.99 LP $16.99 LPMax Clarke has a knack for conjuring up warmth in his music, like endless summer or ageless youth. The 27-year-old's debut LP, Hollow Ground, crackles with the heat of a love-struck nostalgia, woven together with a palpable Everly Brothers' influence and retro sound. It reaches back into decades of plainspoken, unfussy, and squarely American storytelling and pulls it forth into 2018.
Some of Hollow Ground bloomed from that same period of driven creativity that yielded EP Alien Sunset; both "Like Going Down Sideways" and "Don’t Want To Say Good-Bye" find new life on the LP.
The rest is new. There's "Till Tomorrow Goes Away," a sheepish love song, thrumming with twangy guitar and a two-step rhythm. "Cash For Gold" channels buoyancy; a doo-wop effect on the sleepy backing vocals build out the dreaminess of Clarke's own affecting croon.
Hollow Ground strikes the balance between cerebral and simplicity in his storytelling. His lyrics explore the raw realm of youth, its weightlessness and possibilities, but channeled through a lens of restraint. Someone who's old enough to know better but still gets drawn back in to the romanticism of teenage feelings - and knows how to take the listener along, too.
Dasher "Sodium"Dasher "Sodium"
$12.99 CD $17.99 LPAfter a string of well-received 7" releases on labels like Suicide Squeeze and Die Slaughterhaus, Dasher songs new and old have finally been smelted down into their debut album, Sodium. Dasher knifes out the chop-crunch guitar of latterday post-punk with a seething screech echoing the hardest horizons of the early 90’s underground.
DIANA "Perpetual Surrender"DIANA "Perpetual Surrender"
$12.99 CD $15.99 LP $9.99 MP3DIANA are an enigmatic foursome from Toronto, where they must be putting something in the water with the number of great bands hailing from there. Consisting of Joseph Shabason, Kieran and singer Carmen Elle, with Paul Mathew recently joining the live line up, Shabason and Adams met while studying jazz at music college where they played extensively together. Having lent their skills (saxophone and drums, respectively) to many bands, including Bonjay, The Hidden Cameras and Shabason's recent contributions to Destroyer's excellent Kaputt, it was a leap of faith to make their own full-length. But the time had come.
After a songwriting sabbatical in the Canadian countryside, Shabason and Adams went into the studio with engineer and co-producer Roger Leavens. They asked Toronto musician and vocalist Carmen Elle to sing on a track, as both Kieran and Joseph knew her from her work with other bands such as the much feted but short-lived Spiral Beach, all of whose members have since gone on to play in various successful Canadian bands from Austra to Doldrums. The pair thought her voice might add something special, this turned out to be a huge understatement. Even though Shabason and Adams wrote the songs, the lyrics and melodies belonged to Elle the moment they escaped her mouth, each nuance of phrasing and melody deepening the sentiments. With this last dazzling piece of the puzzle in place, DIANA was born. Right from the first note we’re reeled into DIANA’s intimate world, with the dense, ambient swell that begins album opener ‘Foreign Installation’. A heady mix of drums, electric guitar and lush production, all sewn together and lifted by Carmen’s soothing vocal, their sound is addictive from the off. The pace is picked up with ‘That Feeling’, the detached refrain "We were blind to all the ways we sat and watched it fade away…" echoing through a mist of synths layered over insistent drums and bass. It is future music with an undeniable pop sensibility, though never overwhelming, the glossy yet sparse production always leaving just enough room for the imagination. Album highlight ‘Perpetual Surrender’ boasts an impressive travelling bassline, with Carmen’s gorgeous vocal repeating “I need saving from myself” over blown beats and perhaps the year’s best indie sax solo, all coming together to create well over four minutes of eerie, blissed-out ambience. Though there are glances to music past and kinship with music present, there is a progressive and contemporary feel to the record. DIANA comparisons traverse eras and genres; from the soft-focus soft rock and pop of Roxy Music to the dreamy production of jj and Chromatics, topped off with the Balearic disco swirl of Studio. While referencing so many, Carmen’s unique vocal brings them their own voice. For DIANA, the point is to push things forward, summed up with the embryonic bliss of instrumental closer ‘Curtains’, a startling piece of atmospheric production that stays with you long after the last sound has echoed into the ether.
Dinosaur Jr. "Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not"Dinosaur Jr. "Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not"
$12.99 CD $18.99 LPLet's face facts - in 2016 it is remarkable that there's a new Dinosuar Jr album to go ape over. After all, the original line-up of the band (J Mascis, Lou Barlow & Murph) only recorded three full albums during their initial run in the 1980s. Everyone was gob-smacked when they reunited in 2005. Even more so when they opted to stay together, as they have for 11 years now (on and off). And with the release of Give a Glimpse Of What Yer Not, this trio redivisus has released more albums in the 21st Century than they did in the 20th. It's enough to make a man take a long, thoughtful slug of maple-flavored bourbon and count some lucky stars.
Dinosaur Jr. "I Bet On Sky"Dinosaur Jr. "I Bet On Sky"
$12.99 CD $17.99 LP $9.99 MP3I Bet on Sky is the third Dinosaur Jr. album since the original trio – J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph – reformed in 2005. And, crazily, it marks the band’s 10th studio album since their debut on Homestead Records in 1985. Back in the ‘80s, if anyone has suggested that these guys would be performing and recording at such a high level 27 years later, they would have been laughed out of the tree fort.
The trio has taken everything they’ve learned from the various projects they tackled over the years, and poured it directly into their current mix. J’s guitar approaches some of its most unhinged playing here, but there’s a sense of instrumental control that matches the sweet murk of his vocals (not that he always remembers to exercise control on stage, but that’s another milieu). This is head-bobbing riff-romance at the apex. Lou’s basswork shows a lot more melodicism now as well, although his two songs on I Bet on Sky retain the jagged rhythmic edge that has so often marked his work. And Murph…well, he still pounds the drums as hard and as strong as a pro wrestler, with deceptively simple structures that manage to interweave themselves perfectly with his bandmates’ melodic explosions.
After submerging myself in I Bet on Sky, it’s clear that the album is a true and worthy addition to the Dinosaur Jr. discography. It hews close enough to rock formalism to please the squares. Yet it is brilliantly imprinted with the trio’s magical equation, which is a gift to the rest of us. For a combo that began as anomalous fusion of hardcore punk and pop influences, Dinosaur Jr. have proven themselves to be unlikely masters of the long game.
Dinosaur Jr. "Farm"Dinosaur Jr. "Farm"
$12.99 CD $17.99 2xLP $9.99 MP3The worry about the reunion of the original Dinosaur Jr. line-up, more than 20 years after their formation and legendary dissolution, was that these guys were just flogging the back catalog as a marketing gimmick. With the release of Beyond, in 2007, the band gave a hearty Marshall-driven "F**K YOU!" answer to those inquiring ears. Restoring the sound established by the opening hat-trick gambit of Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me, and Bug, the Beyond record continued the band's march into rock greatness by making old ears smile and new ears bleed afresh. And now comes Farm, the fifth full length record by the original line-up-J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph--set to release on their new label home Jagjaguwar on June 23rd.
If Beyond was Dinosaur Jr.'s return to form, Farm is proof that this band continues to deliver that which makes rock worth cranking to 11. At times wholly 70's guitar-epic, at times perfect for sitting by a babbling brook with Joni and Neil, Farm encompasses Dinosaur Jr.'s signature palette - soaring and distorted guitar, unshakable hooks, honey-rich melodies - songs that get into your head and, bouncing around happily, stay there. The ear-catching "Plans" is nearly 7 minutes of classic whipped-topping rock dessert, while "I Don't Wanna Go There" is a meat-and-potatoes main dish, mixing unapologetic lead guitar with straight-ahead delivery a la James Gang or Humble Pie. These two tunes round out twelve tracks propelled by the unique energy of one of America's greatest living rock bands hitting their stride.
Farm was recorded in J Mascis' Bisquiteen studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was produced by Mascis.
Drunk "Raised Toward"Drunk "Raised Toward"
$11.00 CD $9.99 MP3RAISED TOWARD -- thirteen songs for sufficience and disregard. Drunk's third full-length release features the gently effective words of Rick Alverson set amidst the workings of a full range of musical contraptions. The songs Alverson and crew have put together on RAISED TOWARD are cut from the same cloth as those of many of the great lyrical composers of our time (and slightly before our time): Leonard Cohen, Tim Foljahn, Nick Cave and Mark Eitzel, to name a few. If RAISED TOWARD resonates in that special, timeless style, it is not for want of fragility or the grace of inexperience, or for lack of innovation and youthful exuberance. Drunk has all of these to spare. They are, according to one magazine, "far ahead... in the race to the define the new American sound."
Drunk "To Corner Wounds"Drunk "To Corner Wounds"
$11.00 CD $11.00 LP $9.99 MP3Drunk's harrowing second release is borne of circumstance and built on the back of various folk traditions. Whether the subjects conjured on TO CORNER WOUNDS arise from nostalgia or from fantasy, nothing is really stated. There are no morals. According to one magazine, TO CORNER WOUNDS evokes "a dreamworld where ghosts of the old world commingle diffidently with those of the new."
Drunk "a derby spiritual"Drunk "a derby spiritual"
$11.00 CD $9.99 MP3Celebratory, contemplative, melancholic: a quick description of Drunk's stunning debut, A DERBY SPIRITUAL. This is the album that established both Drunk as an important musical entity. According to one writer, "Drunk, all arpeggios and sentiment, are a cross between slow Sparklehorse, the Band singing about Dixie, and Russian dirges -- true smart rock for smart people (and really, really beautiful to boot)." According to Jennifer Nine, writer for Melody Maker, "Drunk, whose no-bones name could scarcely do justice to their graceful sweetness, know just what bones hold you together... [they] move with the drowsy precision of music-box figurines. They sound like a sleepy chamber orchestra in threadbare clothes..."
Foxygen "Seeing Other People"Foxygen "Seeing Other People"
$17.99 LP $12.99 CD $7.99 CassetteSeeing Other People is curiously positioned as Foxygen's most recent last-ever album. With every album the band dies; with every album the band is reborn. But unlike the last-ever Foxygen albums before it, this one seems to have a self-effacing bittersweetness to it that signifies some sort of passing; some sort of white flag. But it SOUNDS in no way like a band giving up. It has experiments in tone and genre the likes of which we've not heard on a Foxygen record since….Starpower?; since 21st Century?; since Take the Kids??? You don't need our hot take on this thing.
Foxygen "Hang"Foxygen "Hang"
$6.99 Cassette $12.99 CD $17.99 LPFoxygen is the Big Bang of two combusting minds. It's the splayed Galaxy of polar geniuses Sam France and Jonathan Rado. It's a handshake with a knife behind your back. A sleepless night in a five star hotel.
You listen to Hang properly. You take in each moment. Each new melody that threads forward from the fingertips of one of this generation's finest piano men in Jonathan Rado. And you fall in line behind Sam France's sprawling and reckless lyric. Witness his mastery. Feel them struggle against the walls of their own creations. Follow them there. To the perimeter. To the exit sign.
Notice that the two young guys aren't there anymore. They're outside looking for another joint to haunt. They're already out of sight.
Foxygen "...And Star Power"Foxygen "...And Star Power"
$13.99 2xCD $18.99 2xLP $9.99 MP3Foxygen have joined Star Power. It is a punk band, and you can be in it, too. Star Power is the radio station that you can hear only if you believe. We're all stars of the scene.
FOXYGEN... AND STAR POWER is the new DOUBLE ALBUM from Foxygen, a CINEMATIC AUDITORY ADVENTURE for the speedy freaks, skull krunchers, abductees, and misfits... Made by Foxygen at Dream Star Studios in their Secret Haunted House with the UFOs flying around in the sky.
A gaggle of guest stars. Roman-numeraled musical suites. Vocals recorded on a shoddy tape machine at The Beverly Hills Hotel and Chateau Marmont. A svelte 82-minute run time of psych-ward folk, cartoon fantasia, songs that morph into each other, weaving in and out of the head like UFO radio transmission skullkrush music. ADHD star power underground revolution. Soft-rock indulgences, D&D doomrock and paranoid bathroom rompers. Process is the point. A kaleidoscoping view. Blasphemy even the gods smile one. Rock and roll for the skull...*
*From Patty Smith's 1973 CREEM review of Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star. The section concludes "Todd Rundgren is preparing us for a generation of frenzied children who will dream in animation."
Foxygen "...And Star Power Jewel Case Version"Foxygen "...And Star Power Jewel Case Version"
$13.99 2xCDFoxygen have joined Star Power. It is a punk band, and you can be in it, too. Star Power is the radio station that you can hear only if you believe. We're all stars of the scene.
FOXYGEN... AND STAR POWER is the new DOUBLE ALBUM from Foxygen, a CINEMATIC AUDITORY ADVENTURE for the speedy freaks, skull krunchers, abductees, and misfits... Made by Foxygen at Dream Star Studios in their Secret Haunted House with the UFOs flying around in the sky.
A gaggle of guest stars. Roman-numeraled musical suites. Vocals recorded on a shoddy tape machine at The Beverly Hills Hotel and Chateau Marmont. A svelte 82-minute run time of psych-ward folk, cartoon fantasia, songs that morph into each other, weaving in and out of the head like UFO radio transmission skullkrush music. ADHD star power underground revolution. Soft-rock indulgences, D&D doomrock and paranoid bathroom rompers. Process is the point. A kaleidoscoping view. Blasphemy even the gods smile one. Rock and roll for the skull...*
*From Patty Smith's 1973 CREEM review of Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star. The section concludes "Todd Rundgren is preparing us for a generation of frenzied children who will dream in animation."
Foxygen "We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic"Foxygen "We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic"
$12.99 CD $17.99 LP $16.99 LP $8.99 MP3We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is a precocious and cocksure joyride across California psychedelia with a burning, bursting punk rock engine. In the same year as Scott McKenzie the singer of "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" leaves this mortal coil, Foxygen delivers unto us the dandy Glockenspiel-packing "San Francisco," which both circumvents and dissects McKenzie's tune and its many cousins of the era. "I left my love in San Francisco/(That's okay, I was bored anyway)/I left my love in a field/(That's okay, I was born in LA)" goes the lovely call-and-response chorus, slamming together the archetypal flower children of the 60s and the archetypal ADHD vapidity of our recent generations. Another highlight, "Shuggie," manages to fit all the light bounce of the song's namesake and the climbing choruses of ELO into it's 3 minutes while still filling the tune with imagery of "rhinoceros-shaped earrings" and haunted parlors. Every nook and cranny of the record is loaded with their unflappable, brazen personalities. Foxygen takes "swagger," that as-of-late misused adjective, back once and for all. It's flipping pyramids old and new upside down — from the miracle demo hand-off to their Richard Pryor-as-Jagger live shows to their singular idiosynchratic vision of rock n' roll.
Gayngs "Relayted"Gayngs "Relayted"
$17.99 2xLP $12.99 CD $9.99 MP3When Ryan Olson decided to make a record with Solid Gold members Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt, it was clear to them what the result would be: a collection of drugged-up keyboards and slick bedroom production almost exclusively inspired by 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love.” What they didn't know was that it would spiral into a project of epic proportions, enlisting the talents of over 25 musicians from various scenes around the country, relocating the base of operations from Olson's Minneapolis bedroom/studio to the Wisconsin-based studio April Base, and the genesis of a musical super-family, Gayngs.
Olson began calling upon an eclectic cast of contributors whom he thought would share his vision, and relish in the idea of exploring uncharted musical territory within them. The first people to join the cause were Megafaun and Ivan Howard of the Rosebuds. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Mike Noyce were soon to follow. By mid-2009 the studio sessions were becoming more and more frequent, bouncing back and forth between April Base and Olson's bedroom. In Minneapolis, Olson brought in Rhymesayers rapper P.O.S and his fellow Doomtree artist Dessa, psych-rockers Jake Luck and Nick Ryan (Leisure Birds), song-birds Channy Moon-Casselle and Katy Morley, jazz-saxophonist Michael Lewis (Happy Apple, Andrew Bird), retro-pop duo Maggie Morrison and Grant Cutler (Lookbook), and slide-guitarist Shön Troth (Solid Gold).
Vocally, Gayngs is a triumph. Zack Coulter (Solid Gold) shines from the jump, floating over the record with his airy, haunting melodies. Fans of Bon Iver will recognize Vernon's familiar falsetto, but will flip when they hear his Bone Thug's-style R&B, while P.O.S. abandons his genre entirely for a soul inspired tenor. With over a dozen people contributing vocals, its incredible how cohesive the album sounds.
After a year of tracking and mixing, Gayngs is officially ready to release the album, entitled "Relayted". With each song written at 69 BPM's, and tripped-out transitions from song to song, it is truly an audio experience from start to finish.
Gordi "Our Two Skins"Gordi "Our Two Skins"
$12.99 CD $19.99 LP $19.99 LPLosing someone close to you creates an almost phantom limb-like effect. Often, it feels like they're a phone call away. But that instant between when you reach for the phone and when your brain delivers the new reality to you is a strange, momentary eternity. It’s both an uncompromising void and maybe as close as you’ll ever come to communing with that loved one again. On her new song “Sandwiches,” Gordi harnesses all the sadness and glory of this feeling into a soaring, post-new wave anthem. One of the first true Gordi “guitar songs,” it shimmers with the lush-yet-fragile momentum of The Cranberries’ classic “Dreams.”
Gordi wrote “Sandwiches” as a tribute to the matriarch of her family. Her late grandmother was, in Gordi’s words, “a great feeder of people.” So when she fell ill, Gordi and her mother took it upon themselves to nourish the visitors gathered around her hospital bed. As they passed around sandwiches, “someone called out that she was gone.” The gravity of the moment was poignant for its softness and mundanity. Gordi approaches the totality of a loved one’s life as measured in the small memories that stay with us. She sings, "When I think of you a movie-reel of moments plays / We’ll be in the car or after mass on Saturdays / You’ll be walking down the driveway, you’ll be in your chair / You’ll say 'See you round' or 'Say your “Three”' / And now you’re everywhere.” Gordi called on long-time collaborators and Bon Iver production duo Chris Messina and Zach Hanson to make “Sandwiches” at her family home in Canowindra, Australia — an old cottage littered with some of Sophie’s favorite pieces of musical arsenal combined with some flown in from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The tiny farm town where her family has lived for over a century, Canowindra, and the heart of the matriarch, is embedded in this song. “Her whole life was in Canowindra…we made it in a house that’s a hundred meters from her house.”
Gordi "Reservoir"Gordi "Reservoir"
$17.99 LP $17.99 LP $12.99 CDOn the farm in rural Australia where 24-year-old Sophie Payten - AKA Gordi - grew up, there's a paddock that leads down to a river. A few hundred meters away sits another house, which belongs to her 93-year-old grandmother. The rest, she says, "is just beautiful space. And what else would you fill it with if not music?"
And so she did, first tinkling away on an out-of-tune piano, and then on the acoustic guitar she got for her 12th birthday. Gordi's first foray into songwriting came in the form of performances at her school’s weekly chapel. There the chrysalis of the music she's making now — a brooding, multi-layered blend of electronica and folk, with lyrics that tend to avoid well-trodden paths -- began to form. "I often find that writing about platonic relationships," she says, "can be a great deal more powerful than writing about romantic ones." "Heaven I Know," the first single from Gordi's debut album Reservoir, is an example of just that. With the breathy chant of "123" chugging along beneath the song's sparse melody and melancholic piano chords, "Heaven I Know" gazes at the embers of a fading friendship. The ramifications of loss ripple throughout Reservoir, which she wrote and recorded in Wisconsin, Reykjavik, Los Angeles, and Sydney. Gordi produced two of the tracks herself ("Heaven I Know" and "I'm Done"), and co-produced the rest.
When it comes down to it, the running thread of the album is its lyrics. "Music is kind of what encases this story that you're trying to tell," says Gordi. Her stories are stark, honest, and soul-searching. Like "the trifecta" of Billy Joel, Carole King and James Taylor that sound-tracked her upbringing, she's unafraid to sit in contemplative melancholy — a place she calls, fittingly, "the reservoir."
Jad Fair & Daniel Johnston "Lucky Sperms: Somewhat Humorous"Jad Fair & Daniel Johnston "Lucky Sperms: Somewhat Humorous"
$11.00 CD $9.99 MP3The Lucky Sperms: Somewhat Humorous by Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston is being released hot on the heels of the Jagjaguwar reissue of Jad and Daniel's once-sadly-overlooked opus It's Spooky (originally released in 1989.) It is a timely reunion of two of the most compelling and idiosyncratic songwriters to emerge from the post-punk rubble of the late-'70s. Their initial collaboration on It's Spooky seemed too good to be true. This time they have entered into the proverbial bat-cave with co-conspirator Chris Bultman and have created a piece of heaven on earth.
Recorded and produced by Jad Fair, The Lucky Sperms: Somewhat Humorous is made up mostly of songs composed skeletally and separately by Bultman, Fair and Johnston. With Bultman being the x-factor notwithstanding, what makes all of Jad and Daniel's shared works so special is the natural chemistry between them that is so readily apparent upon first listen of the record. There is an unrefined playfulness in their work, a playfulness not much unlike what was present on Bob Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes.
Both Fair and Johnston have enjoyed long careers making music in their own unique way. They have forged their own paths and created their own mythologies, borrowing little from anybody else. Since 1977, Fair has--with his iconoclastic band Half Japanese, as a solo artist, or with collaborators Yo La Tengo, the Pastels or Teenage Fanclub--defied convention while continually tapping that primal-root-without-inhibition that most every artist strives for. Johnston, likewise, has unflinchingly plowed forth for the past twenty years with his own artistic vision. Since the early days of hawking his boombox-recorded cassettes on Austin, Texas, street corners, through his classic mid-period Shimmy-Disc albums, through the major label fiasco and to now, as he is at long last re-emerging as a public artist, Johnston has been making a clear case for his being one of this past quarter century's most important songwriters. He is nothing less than a visionary. It is no surprise, then, that each of Jad and Daniel's trademark personalities are in full-regalia on this new record. (How could such large personalities be anything but?) It blissfully follows--true to the form of all of their past works--that The Lucky Sperms: Somewhat Humorous is another chapter in a magical trip through the child-like universe of two kids at heart. On it, both of them uninhibitedly walk you through their best fantasies and worst dreams.
Jamila Woods "LEGACY! LEGACY!"Jamila Woods "LEGACY! LEGACY!"
$12.99 CD $0.00 Cassette $22.99 2xLP $0.00 2xLPJamila Woods has a voice and lyrical sensibility that transcends generations, and so it makes sense to have this lush and layered album that bounces seamlessly from one sonic aesthetic to another. This was the case on 2016's HEAVN, which found Woods hopeful and exploratory, looking along the edges resilience and exhaustion for some measures of joy. Her new album, Legacy! Legacy! is the logical conclusion to that looking. From the airy boom-bap of "Giovanni" to the psychedelic flourishes of "Sonia," the instrument which ties the musical threads together is the ability of Woods to find her pockets in the waves of instrumentation, stretching syllables and vowels over the harmony of noise until each puzzle piece has a home. The whimsical and malleable nature of sonic delights also grants a path for collaborators to flourish: the sparkling flows of Nitty Scott on "Sonia" and Saba on "Basquiat," or the bloom of Nico Segal's horns on "Baldwin." More than just giving the song titles the names of historical black and brown icons of literature, art, and music, Jamila Woods builds a sonic and lyrical monument to the various modes of how these icons tried to push beyond the margins a country had assigned to them. On "Sun Ra," Woods sings "I just gotta get away from this earth, man / this marble was doomed from the start" and that type of dreaming and vision honors not only the legacy of Sun Ra, but the idea that there is a better future, and in it, there will still be black people. Soul music did not just appear in America, and soul does not just mean music. Rather, soul is what gold can be dug from the depths of ruin, and refashioned by those who have true vision. True soul lives in the pages of a worn novel that no one talks about anymore, or a painting that sits in a gallery for a while but then in an attic forever. Soul is all the things a country tries to force itself into forgetting. Soul is all of those things come back to claim what is theirs. Jamila Woods is a singular soul singer who, in voice, holds the rhetorical demand. The knowing that there is no compromise for someone with vision this endless. That the revolution must take many forms, and it sometimes starts with songs like these. Songs that feel like the sun on your face and the wind pushing flowers against your back while you kick your head to the heavens and laugh at how foolish the world seems.
Jamila Woods "HEAVN"Jamila Woods "HEAVN"
$17.99 LP $17.99 LP $12.99 CDJamila Wood's cultural lineage - from her love of Lucille Clifton's poetry or letters from her grandmother or the late 80s post-punk of The Cure - helped structure the progressive, delicate and minimalist soul of HEAVN, her debut solo album released summer of 2016 on Closed Sessions, now set for a re-release by Jagjaguwar and Closed Sessions in October 2017. "It’s like a collage process," she says. "It's very enjoyable to me to take something I love and mold it into something new." A frequent guest vocalist in the hip-hop, jazz and soul world, Jamila has emerged as a once-in-a-generation voice on her soul-stirring debut.
Born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, Woods grew up in a family of music lovers. An artist of substance creating music crafted with a sturdy foundation of her passions and influences. You'll find the bits and pieces of her past and present that make Jamila: family, the city of Chicago, self-care, and the black women she calls friends. True and pure in its construction and execution, her music is the best representation of Jamila herself: strong in her roots, confident in her ideas, and attuned to the people, places and things shaping her world.
Julie Doiron "I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day"Julie Doiron "I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day"
$12.99 CD $12.99 LP $9.99 MP3Everything is coming together in Julie Doiron's world, from embracing her electric past, to embarking on a new and energetic phase of her solo career with some of the most upbeat and inspiring songs of her recording career. I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day — which arrives on the heels of the album Lost Wisdom, Doiron and her bandmate Fred Squire’s recent critically-acclaimed collaboration with Mt. Eerie — presents listeners with an album that reflects both her continued growth as an artist and a renewed optimism as a songwriter as well. As has often been the case, Doiron’s songwriting is rooted in what’s happening around her.
More than any other songwriter, you can tell exactly what's going on in her life. Direct and painfully honest, she lays it all out in her lyrics. "I just sing about what's happening," she admits, resigned to her style. "I don't know how to do anything else. I don't know how to write any other way. I've wanted to... I've tried! Because sometimes I feel like maybe I shouldn't be so direct, but I don't know how."
In addition to this new perspective, Doiron has made an album which showcases a thick distortion and melodic pop not heard since her days with indie heroes Eric's Trip in the '90s. It's part of a desire to get back to her electric days with that band. The past couple of years have seen Eric's Trip regroup for triumphant reunion tours, and a rekindling of her work with Trip mainstay Rick White (who produced her 2007 Polaris Prize-nominated album Woke Myself Up, and returned for this album). I Can Wonder was recorded at White's isolated home studio, just northwest of Toronto. Doiron handled the electric and acoustic guitar parts, Rick played all the bass and keyboards, and Fred Squire performed all the drums and some lead guitar. Squire, who comes from Sackville, New Brunswick, is Julie's bandmate in another of her projects, Calm Down It's Monday.
Julie Doiron "Loneliest In The Morning"Julie Doiron "Loneliest In The Morning"
$12.99 CD $9.99 MP3Originally released in 1997 by Sub Pop, Loneliest In The Morning was Doiron’s second solo release and her first release as Julie Doiron (having dropped the moniker Broken Girl). This re-issue comes complete with three bonus tracks: “Second Time” from split 7” with Snailhouse and the tracks “Who Will Be The One” and “Too Much” from the 7” release Doiron recorded with the Wooden Stars. Loneliest In The Morning — an album Pitchfork described as “catchy enough to knock Liz Phair upside the head” — is a critical piece to the Doiron catalog and given the wonderful relationship Doiron and Jagjaguwar have forged over the last decade, this re-issue is particularly significant.
Julie Doiron began her career in music in 1990 at the age of 18 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada playing bass in Eric's Trip, a folky yet psychedelic band that were to become the undisputed underground darlings of Canadian music. Eric's Trip were the first of many maritime Canadians signed to Sub Pop and found international recognition, releasing several albums and touring widely. Following 1996's Purple Blue, Eric's Trip announced their breakup and Julie Doiron embarked on her solo career, first releasing songs as Broken Girl and soon under her own name starting with Loneliest In The Morning, which was recorded in Memphis, TN with producer Dave Shouse of the Grifters. She has released seven full-lengths and three EPs, including the Juno Award-winning Julie Doiron & the Wooden Stars album.
Julie Doiron "Woke Myself Up"Julie Doiron "Woke Myself Up"
$12.99 CD $11.00 LP $9.99 MP3We all are driven to doing certain things and making certain decisions in our lives for any number of reasons, be it ambition, fear, greed or love. The last purpose is perhaps the most identifiable to most of us, and so it is no great mystery that that which drives us can both reward us immensely and plummet us into the greatest depths of inconsolable sadness and regret. On Julie Doiron’s first album of new material in over two years, she addresses in her signature intimate songwriting style both the heights and the fallout in a way that forces the listener to reexamine their own loves.
One of the most important and greatest loves in Julie’s life is that towards her family. The first half of Woke Myself Up details the joy and awe that her family has given her. Immediately, one knows that her unabashed and unaffected lyrics are coming from a woman truly moved. The second half sees Julie making mistakes, blowing second chances, and coming to terms with the sad truth that one cannot live up to expectations set by herself or those she loves. The harrowing untitled final track (recorded and added to the album at the eleventh hour by Doiron) may very well be the most affecting of Doiron’s performances ever committed to tape.
Also important to the recording of this album was a reunion of sorts with her musical family. Founding Eric’s Trip bandmate Rick White produced and played on the entire album, and a handful of the songs contain the entire original Eric’s Trip band nucleus that took the Canadian indie underground by storm 15 years ago. Working with an old friend and collaborator like White was key to this album’s intensely vulnerable and emotionally raw tone. What’s captured is timeless and universal, in the same way as Cat Power’s Moon Pix, Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love And Hate, and Joni Mitchell’s Blue.
Julie Doiron "Goodnight Nobody"Julie Doiron "Goodnight Nobody"
$12.99 CD $9.99 MP3Goodnight Nobody finds an unguarded Julie Doiron, efficiently but undeliberately creating her first masterpiece in only a few days time at three different locations. Ploughing through the studio in just a few days with a gangly crew of musicians, the result is a collection of songs that all are “allowed” to speak for themselves. Their instinctive “rawness” remains intact, not cooked out by incessant knob twiddling or second-guessing. With the help of friends like Herman Dune (who also perform as her European touring band) and ex-Eric’s Trip collaborator Rick White, she has taken the textures of her first widely released full-length Loneliest in the Morning and mixed them with the crystalline vocal performance of her most recent full-length Heart and Crime. Goodnight Nobody is the end product, the best of both worlds, downcast and moody pop tunes right from the heart, aimed straight at the heart. Even though she is described frequently in the press as an “indie-diva” or “chanteuse” of the highest power, Julie Doiron fits these well-intentioned approbations only in that she is a woman singer comfortable in her own skin. Under-reported are her signature guitar-stylings and her singular mastery of conveying mood and sentiment in song. For fans of Cat Power, Leonard Cohen and Hayden.
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