8/13 New Release CDs

The Killers return with their 7th studio album. The album is about the small town of Nephi, Utah where Brandon Flowers spent his youth. The songs are extremely personal and cover a spectrum of emotions in connection to growing up in a rural setting. Their classic song “Mr. Brightside” has logged over 5 years on the UK Official Singles Chart and all 6 of their prior studio albums have hit the Top 10 on the Billboard 200.

Nicki Minaj - "Beam Me Up Scotty" - Nicki Minaj is blessing fans with the commercial release of her third and iconic mixtape, Beam Me Up Scotty. The original version was released in 2009 with classic tracks like "I Get Crazy" and "Itty Biggy Piggy." The 2021 rerelease arrives with loosies from that era like "Boss Ass Bitch (Remix)" with PTAF and "Chi-Raq" with G Herbo, as well as three brand new tracks to hold fans over: "Seeing Green" with Drake & Lil Wayne, "Crocodile Teeth" with Skillibeng and "Fractions."

2021 release, the sophomore album from the award-winning singer, songwriter, and actor best known for starring in Broadway productions of The Book of Mormon and Dear Evan Hansen. He is also the star of the 2021 film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen.

Continuing the success from The Baby and The Baby Reimagined, this EP showcases the distinct sides of Samia with each song: a midtempo pop/rock track, a ballad, an atmospheric indie track, and a cover (When In Rome’s “The Promise” with Jelani Aryeh). The release of the EP is also in front of her support dates with Sylvan Esso and headline dates featuring Savannah Conley. 

Jade bird has returned with second album, different kinds of light, coming august 2021. Translating the 2020's conflicting emotional into sharply observed narrative vignettes, she shows her flair as a storyteller. With the help of grammy- winning producer dave cobb (brandi carlile, john prine, lady gaga), bird let's her sound find it's groove. The defining album joins british influences-the smiths, cocteau twins-with 90s alt-rock-blur, oasis and iggy pop. "that rock element that i've been missing and deeply love," is how jade describes it.

Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz - who over the past decade have achieved grassroots success as Mandolin Orange, going from coffee shop performers to festival headliners -announce that they are now called Watchhouse and are set to release their self-titled album.

The great state of Kentucky is world renowned for many things. Bluegrass music? Of course. The smoothest, best-tasting Bourbon created by the hands of man? It doesn't get any better. One thing that folks don't always associate with Kentucky however is visceral, in-your-face rock and roll. The Cold Stares are determined to change that perception.

Chris Tapp and Brian Mullins have known one another for a long, long time. They grew up in Western Kentucky, just a stone's throw from the border or Indiana, and attended different High School mere minutes down the road from one another. They originally started playing together in their early twenties before going their separate ways only to reunite in another outfit a decade down the line. "We were playing together in 2009 in another band that was doing really well," Tapp said. "It didn't work out, so we both kind of exited that band and contemplated retirement." It didn't take long before they were thankfully disabused of that notion.

That band is an intense amalgam of Led Zeppelin meets Free, Soundgarden meets Black Crowes; rock and roll wizardry where the riffs are hard, the vocals are searing, and the low end is capital "H," heavy. Most of the album was recorded in a single day at Sam Phillips fabled recording studio in Memphis. "That's our second record there, so there was a lot of familiarity going back in," Mullins said. "The thing about that studio is that it's old, and vibey. Sometimes you gotta bang on the gear a little bit to make it work. It's kinda like the Millennium Falcon. It's badass, but you just gotta get it running right."

`Heavy Shoes' is Cold Stares' best record yet, and they know it. It took a lot of blood, sweat, tears and doubt before Chris Tapp and Brian Mullins reached this moment, but it's all the sweeter knowing they did it their way. "We've been through some tough times, and I'd say our band is a pretty good representation for blue collar people in general. People that work hard. We're just a blue-collar American rock and roll band." `Heavy Shoes' is available August 13th through Mascot Records.

FEATURES:

• 5th studio album, debut release on Mascot Records.
• 15.8 million+ streams on Spotify, with 179k monthly listeners.
• 15.5k followers on social media.
• Their song "Suffer Me" is featured on the soundtrack for the video game, `CyberPunk 2077'. Recent licensing includes Dodge Motor Company, ESPN, NFL, X-Games, TNT Network, and Monster Energy

HEAVY SHOES

Jungle’s new album ‘Loving In Stereo’ is the soundtrack for a summer quite unlike any other. The British producer duo have created a huge disco record for the post-social distancing age, with a life-affirming, dancefloor-igniting, sun-kissed celebration of all the things that make music irresistibly joyful.

Both their Mercury Prize-nominated, Gold-certified debut and 2018’s follow-up ‘For Ever’ landed in the UK Top 10 & charted globally. Those two records have since accumulated 750,000 equivalent album sales and close to a billion streams worldwide. Atop that, Jungle have embarked on global sell out tours - notably in the UK, London’s 10k capacity Alexandra Palace & filling the Hollywood Palladium - two coveted Glastonbury performances, slots at numerous International festivals including Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Roskilde, Primavera & enjoyed shows across five continents.

A "live" collection of 15 classic Sepultura tracks recorded on the band's pandemic-born podcast "SepulQuarta", a live stream organized once a week during the quarantine to talk with experts and musical colleagues from all over the world. On each episode the band and guest prepared & performed a special recording of one song from the band's catalog

Little Girl Blue (also known as Jazz As Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club) is the debut album by Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Nina Simone. It was originally released by Bethlehem Records in February 1959. At the time, Simone was in her mid-20s and still aspiring to be a classical concert pianist. The album includes the classic tracks "My Baby Just Cares For Me," "Mood Indigo," as well as "I Loves You, Porgy," which was her first Top 20 hit (#18 / #2 "US R&B"). 

'Naturally Live' was recorded on March 24, 2018 at the HsD Museumkeller in Erfurt (Germany) during the tour that followed the release of their most recent studio album 'A Sting In The Tale'. As well as original members Ric Lee and Chick Churchill, the band features Bass Icon Colin Hodgkinson and multi-award winning Guitarist Vocalist Marcus Bonfanti. This line-up was also responsible for 'A Sting In The Tale' that was released 50 years after the release of their eponymous debut album in 1967.

Incisive and insightful folk music by Tamara Lindeman. A beautifully sung depiction of the growing things, and the crawling things, and the loving and hurting things that move around, bewildered and dazzled. All Of It Was Mine is fast approaching legendary status. Produced by Daniel Romano.

2021 release. Brandee Younger is a performer, composer and educator. She leads her own ensemble and has worked with such musicians as Pharaoh Sanders, Lauryn Hill, John Legend, and Common. Somewhere Different was recorded in New York City and at the legendary Van Gelder Studios. The record evokes nostalgic Black soul, informed by pioneering harpists Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby as well as '90s R&B groups like SWV and Xscape. The album features appearances by legendary bassist Ron Carter, and Tarriona "Tank" Ball.

Joan Armatrading / Consequences - Her 22nd studio album - UK singer-songwriter veteran Joan Armatrading is releasing her 22nd studio album this summer. VThe record label describes Armatrading's new album in a press release as an "intrinsically intimate" look at "love in it's many guises," something we hear in the invigorating-yet-vulnerable single "Already There. " The song travels to a punchy synthesizer pulse, and in soaring atmospheric locals, Armatrading reflects on losing oneself in a moment of pure affection, and falling into another person's arms.

Last spring, Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson started to make a record that was like nothing they had made before - an ambient album that would be both a haven from a suddenly terrified world and a heartfelt musical dialogue between two men who have been friends and collaborators for over two decades. Refuge is an album of profound meditative beauty which offers the listener a much-needed sense of peace and renewal. But while it was recorded in 2020 it's roots go back much further - all the way to the start of their friendship and, beyond that, to the shared sounds and ethics of their childhoods. "When the pandemic began, we realised we needed to make this record," Devendra says. "But we've been talking about it for so long. It's kind of been 20 years in the making." Devendra and Noah met on the night of Halloween, 1999. Noah lived on Castro Street, the epicentre of San Francisco's Halloween celebrations, so their first encounter was in costume. "He was wearing a skirt and I was dressed as Bjorn Borg," Noah remembers. "I wasn't sure if this was Halloween or just him and it was the same for me. His first impression was that I was a French drug dealer." Having established that he was not, in fact, a French drug dealer, they became fast friends. Noah, whose production and mixing credits include Joanna Newsom and the Strokes, came on board as co-producer of Devendra's 2005 album Cripple Crow and they have been working together ever since. Devendra grew up in Venezuela while Noah, six years older, is a native of Nevada City, California. But as they got to know each other, they realised that they had a similar history in the New Age subculture of the 1980s: a world of meditation, Eastern music, the Bhagavad Gita and The Whole Earth Catalog. Childhood memories were coloured by the aromas of health food stores and the sound of New Age labels like Windham Hill Records. "We recognised that in each other," Devendra says. "Our whole childhoods were spent in health food stores. I have visceral memories of a Windham Hill album playing, the old worn-in wood, the Birkenstocks - all the hippie accoutrements. We wanted to make an album that evoked that nostalgic feeling." Twenty years ago, though, this music was deeply unfashionable. "It wasn't cool for a long time," Noah says. "I went to grad school for music composition. Coming from an academically rigorous world, I rejected this kind of music because it's simple, gestural music. It took me a while to come to a place where I was OK with that. It was not our intention to mimic these records but that New Age world is part of the musical foundation." He also cites the influence of the maverick composers Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison and Pauline Oliveros, whose practice of "Deep Listening" was very influential for this record. Oliveros has described "Deep Listening" as "an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation," and came up with the term after she recorded a piece in a cistern. Refuge's track "In A Cistern" is a direct nod to this. It was while making Devendra's 2019 album Ma that the pair finally decided to make their ambient record. At one point there was a rather expensive plan to travel around capturing "natural sounds of the dying world," but the global lockdown in March 2020 demanded a radical change of strategy. Even though they only live a short drive away from each other in Los Angeles, they were unable to meet, so Devendra and Noah had to record their tracks separately and weave them together remotely. "It feels like the most intimate thing we've done but it's the first time we haven't been in the same studio," Devendra says. "This would be the only record we could possibly make like this." Despite complicating logistics, 2020 created an emotional craving for music with this contemplative, therapeutic quality. "It's been such an uncertain, frightening time," Devendra says. "I was turning more than ever to ambient music, particularly Harold Budd. I met Harold a few years ago and we got to play together. In many ways I made this to share with my favourite ambient composer but unfortunately he passed away from Covid last year. That was heartbreaking." "For us, it's not specifically about the last year but it necessarily became about that in a way because of how we had to make it," Noah says, "and it's probably going to resonate that way." The two men approach a similar mood from very different compositional angles, ranging from weightless synth drones to luminous lattices of woodwind and strings. "Noah's are more composed," Devendra says. "Mine are a bit more ethereal. The ambient music I'm interested in is quite utilitarian. It's kind of like incense: it heightens the mood and the environment. The interplay between my ethereal songs and his very definite, clearly constructed songs is complementary." As the tracks took shape, the duo asked musicians in their circle to record parts remotely: Mary Lattimore on harp, Nicole Lawrence on pedal steel, Tyler Cash on piano, Todd Dahlhoff on bass, Vetiver's Jeremy Harris on synthesizer and additional production, and David Ralicke on brass and woodwind. Devendra, who has been studying Vajrayana Buddhism for the last decade, also invited contributions from spiritual teachers. "I probably wouldn't be able to navigate the world if it wasn't for spiritual practice," he says. "Buddhism is about cultivating compassion, for myself and for others." Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg ("she's one of the people who introduced the word mindfulness to the west") adds a little guided meditation to "Sky Burial", Venezuelan guru Sri Mataji Shaktiananda appears on "A Cat", and Devendra's own Bhutanese teacher Neten Chokling Rinpoche recites a mantra at the end of "Asura Cave", which features field recordings of Buddhist ceremonies Devendra gathered in Nepal. "'Asura Cave' is supposed to feel like travelling from monastery to monastery," Devendra says. "How do you create the feeling of travel when everyone's stuck at home?" There are stories tucked inside Noah's tracks, too. The exquisite final track "Aran in Repose" is an ode to his wife Erin, while the minimalist opener "Book of Bringhi" was inspired by a surprising discovery in one of his parents' spiritual books. "Bringhi is an insect that takes on the likeness of the insect that consumes it, which I thought was such a wild, beautiful, and interesting concept," he explains. Inspired by both memories of the past and the needs of the present, Refuge is an act of companionship and generosity which gives the listener room to breathe. "We're hoping to create a sense of comfort and coming back to the moment," Devendra says. "It's really important to have a little bit of space between us and our anxieties and impulses. What you do with that space is up to you."

Sheryl Crow has defined the essential place of a woman in Rock since releasing her 7X PLATINUM-certified TUESDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB and self-titled Best Rock Album Grammy-winning follow-up. With Rock & Roll is at its best live and at a time when concerts suspended, Crow delivers LIVE FROM THE RYMAN AND MORE, a 27-song set captured live in 2019 at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, Los Angeles’ cutting edge Ace Theatre and the legendary Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.

Matador Records will release GANG OF FOUR: 77-81, a stunning, limited edition box set gathering Gang of Four's influential early work.

The book details the history and legacy of the original Gang of Four with never before seen photos, contributions from surviving original band members, rare posters, ephemera, flyers, essays, artwork, liner notes and more. It also marks the first official publication of their lyrics.

Gang of Four was formed in Leeds in 1976 by bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugo Burnham, guitarist Andy Gill, and singer Jon King. The band pioneered a style of music that inverted punk's blunt and explosive energies - favoring tense rhythms, percussive guitars, and lyrics that traded in Marxist theory and situationism. They put every element of the traditional "rock band" format to question, from notions of harmony and rhythm to presentation and performance.

This original lineup of the band released two monumental albums, Entertainment! (1979) and Solid Gold (1981). A third, Songs of the Free (1982), was recorded with bassist Sara Lee replacing Dave Allen. After Songs Of The Free, Burnham departed the band and Andy Gill and Jon King continued on to release Hard in 1983. After this release, the band broke up. In 2004, the original quartet reformed for tour dates and released Return The Gift (2005).

Gill's untimely death in February 2020 was cause for many to once again re-examine the group's catalog and the legacy of these early releases was widely cited. Not only did Gang of Four's music speak to the generation of musicians, activists, writers, and visual artists that emerged in the group's immediate wake, but the generation after that. And the generation after that, even.

In the last few years, their songs have continued to resonate with and been sampled by artists far afield from "post-punk," including Run the Jewels ("The Ground Below") and Frank Ocean ("Futura Free"). Now forty years since the original release of Entertainment!, Gang of Four's legacy cannot be overstated.

MATADOR RECORDS - GANG OF FOUR / 77-81

The annotations to the 1968 Grateful Dead album Anthem of the Sun identify "Feb. 14, '68 - Carousel Ballroom, S.F." as a source for the recordings on the LP, which has nearly the same track listing, in the same order, as disc two of the 2009 Grateful Dead album Road Trips, Vol. 2, No. 2: Carousel 2-14-68. Yet a legend on the back of that album reads, "All selections are previously unissued recordings." Is it possible to reconcile these seemingly conflicting statements? Actually, yes. The Grateful Dead's Valentine's Day 1968 performance at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco was only one of the many live and studio sources for Anthem of the Sun, an elaborately edited and overdubbed effort the assembly of which stretched over many months. The unadorned, unedited Carousel performance really hasn't been issued before. That is, it hasn't been issued on a commercially released album. Since the Grateful Dead have been putting out archival recordings for quite a few years, it may seem surprising that an early concert in such good sound quality (not to mention that it's a killer show) has gone unnoticed by the band's archivists for so long. But that's the point. The second set was broadcast over the radio, and it would have seemed that any self-respecting Deadhead already had a tape of it. It's not that 2-14-68 was overlooked. Far from it. It's that it must have seemed too obvious for commercial release. As it is, annotator Blair Jackson makes a point of noting that "this marks the first time the entire show has been mixed down completely from the 8 tracks." And the key phrase here really is "the entire show." Deadheads didn't have their hands on the first set, with a relatively short "Dark Star" and two Pigpen showcases in "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "Turn on Your Lovelight." As if that weren't enough, four tracks have been appended to disc one drawn from the Grateful Dead's Northwest tour of January-February 1968, just before 2-14-68, among them a 20-minute "Viola Lee Blues." Yet all of that is gravy. The meat is really found on disc two, with a 12-minute "Spanish Jam" in between "Born Cross-Eyed" and "Alligator," a portion of the show edited out in the much altered version on Anthem of the Sun. Disc two is so good, and such an impressive summation of what the Grateful Dead were about in 1968, that in retrospect it seems amazing they didn't just release it instead of Anthem of the Sun. More than four decades later, however, it is finally available beyond the Deadhead taping community. - William Ruhlmann

LUKE HEMMING'S forthcoming debut solo album When Facing The Things We Turn Away From. The debut solo single is "Starting Line," which showcases Luke's introspective and reflective songwriting alongside a driving beat and otherworldly guitar that takes hold as the track builds with production from Luke's collaborator and Grammy Award-winning producer and songwriter Sammy Witte (Maggie Rogers, Jessie Ware).

Bernard Herrmann - "The Film Scores Of Bernard Herrmann" To celebrate the composer's 110th birthday, Bernard Herrmann's complete film score recordings made for Phase 4 Stereo will be released. All albums have been remastered at 24bit 96kHz from the original analogue master tapes. 7 original albums presented in original sleeves and programming. Features his classic scores for the Hitchcock films Psycho, Vertigo, North by Northwest and Marnie and other thrillers. 7 CD Box Set.

RESPECT soundtrack starring Jennifer Hudson - 18 tracks; 17 Aretha Franklin covers and one original, all performed by Jennifer Hudson.