7/9 Featured Releases
And you always hear it with The Wallflowers. For the past 30 years, the Jakob Dylan-led act has stood as one of rock’s most dynamic and purposeful bands – a unit dedicated to and continually honing a sound that meshes timeless songwriting and storytelling with a hard-hitting and decidedly modern musical attack. That signature style has been present through the decades, baked into the grooves of smash hits like 1996’s Bringing Down the Horse as well as more recent and exploratory fare like 2012’s Glad All Over.
But while it’s been nine long years since we’ve heard from the group with whom he first made his mark, the Wallflowers are silent no more. And Dylan always knew they’d return. “The Wallflowers is much of my life’s work,” he says simply. That life’s work continues with Exit Wounds, the brand-new Wallflowers studio offering. The collection marks the first new Wallflowers material since Glad All Over.
Exit Wounds, which, true to its title, is an ode to people – individual and collective – that have, to put it mildly, been through some stuff.
“I think everybody – no matter what side of the aisle you’re on – wherever we’re going to next, we're all taking a lot of exit wounds with us,” Dylan says. “Nobody is the same as they were four years ago. That, to me, is what Exit Wounds signifies. And it's not meant to be negative at all. It just means that wherever you’re headed, even if it’s to a better place, you leave people and things behind, and you think about those people and those things and you carry them with you. Those are your exit wounds. And right now, we’re all swimming in them.”
Lucinda Williams
Lu's Jukebox Vol. 2: Southern Soul: From Memphis To Muscle Shoals
ON SALE $13.97 CD: $10.99 Buy
Like thousands of artists, Williams cut her teeth and developed her craft by playing in small, medium, and large clubs throughout the country, and the world. These venues are vital to the development of artists and their music. Williams has never forgotten her roots, and often performs special shows in some of her favorite halls.
This year, the Lu's Jukebox Series will be made widely available on Vinyl and CD. Volume 1, Running Down A Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty, was released on April 16, 2021, and featured songs from the namesake's celebrated career.
Oliver Wood is a testament to slow and steady wins the race. Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, he relocated to Atlanta in his early twenties to pursue a career in music. Gaining a reputation over a ten year period as one of the premier working musicians on the local Georgia music scene, he was invited to join blues legend Tinsley Ellis’ road band. From there, Oliver would form his own group, King Johnson, who’d build a loyal regional following. When opening for his brother Chris’ band, Medeski Martin & Wood, he was invited to sit in, which instantly reminded them of the deep musical bond they shared. Soon thereafter, The Wood Brothers were born. They’ve since gone on to release seven studio albums, perform high profile shows from Red Rocks to Bonnaroo and earn a Grammy Award-nomination.
Until the release of “Soul Of This Town” and “The Battle Is Over," in 2020, Oliver had never stepped out under his own name as a solo artist. 'Always Smilin'' is a strong opening statement from Oliver as a solo artist, and one that sets him apart as an accomplished singer and songwriter outside of his day job with The Wood Brothers.
Almost 50 years after the sessions that would make them an “accidental Texas supergroup” (Rolling Stone), The Flatlanders have returned with Treasure of Love, their first new album in more than a decade. Completed during COVID-19 lockdowns with the help of longtime friend and collaborator Lloyd Maines, the record finds the iconic trio of Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock in classic form, serving up a rollicking collection of twang-fueled, harmony-laden performances full of wry humor and raw heartbreak. While a few songs here are never-before-heard originals, the vast majority of the tracklist consists of tunes the band picked up during their half-century together, some stretching as far back as the group’s earliest performances in the honkytonks around Lubbock, TX, where you might have spotted Willie Nelson or Townes Van Zandt in the audience.
Largely ignored by press and radio, the initial incarnation of The Flatlanders lasted only a few years before disbanding in 1973. In the decades to come, however, Ely, Gilmore, and Hancock would all go on to considerable success as solo artists, and with the 1990 reissue of their long lost debut, The Flatlanders finally received their due. Critics hailed them as visionaries and craftsmen of the highest caliber (The New York Times dubbed their first LP a “founding document of the alternative country movement”), and the trio would spend the next 30 years collaborating and touring on and off again to widespread acclaim.

The long awaited third album from The Goon Sax, Mirror II.
Since forming in high school, Brisbane band The Goon Sax-the trio of Riley Jones, Louis Forster, and James Harrison, best friends who take turns writing, singing, and playing each instrument- have been celebrated for their unpretentious, kinetic homemade pop. Mirror ll, The Goon Sax's first album for Matador, is something else entirely: a new beginning, a multi-dimensional eclectic journey of musical craftsmanship that moves from disco to folk to no wave skronk with staggering cohesion. Gone are the first-person insecurities of their school days-they've been made expansive, more universal, more weird.
Mirror II is intense, the sum of everything that has always made The Goon Sax great: robust sprechgesang, raw lyrical candor, ascending guitar pop structures that would make the most storied jangle bands blush, elevated into their newfound narra- tive verisimilitude and expanded sonic experimentations. Each member's idiosyncratic style comes across on record: Riley's bubblegum noise is more present than ever before, Louis' moody, super- natural avant-pop, and James' psychedelic folk.
GOON SAX / MIRROR II
Lucinda Williams
Lu's Jukebox Vol. 2: Southern Soul: From Memphis To Muscle Shoals [LP]
ON SALE $27.97 Vinyl: $23.77 Buy
Like thousands of artists, Williams cut her teeth and developed her craft by playing in small, medium, and large clubs throughout the country, and the world. These venues are vital to the development of artists and their music. Williams has never forgotten her roots, and often performs special shows in some of her favorite halls.
This year, the Lu's Jukebox Series will be made widely available on Vinyl and CD. Volume 1, Running Down A Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty, was released on April 16, 2021, and featured songs from the namesake's celebrated career.
Oliver Wood is a testament to slow and steady wins the race. Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, he relocated to Atlanta in his early twenties to pursue a career in music. Gaining a reputation over a ten year period as one of the premier working musicians on the local Georgia music scene, he was invited to join blues legend Tinsley Ellis’ road band. From there, Oliver would form his own group, King Johnson, who’d build a loyal regional following. When opening for his brother Chris’ band, Medeski Martin & Wood, he was invited to sit in, which instantly reminded them of the deep musical bond they shared. Soon thereafter, The Wood Brothers were born. They’ve since gone on to release seven studio albums, perform high profile shows from Red Rocks to Bonnaroo and earn a Grammy Award-nomination.
Until the release of “Soul Of This Town” and “The Battle Is Over," in 2020, Oliver had never stepped out under his own name as a solo artist. 'Always Smilin'' is a strong opening statement from Oliver as a solo artist, and one that sets him apart as an accomplished singer and songwriter outside of his day job with The Wood Brothers.