NEW RELEASE for the Week of Feb. 5, 2021 PRIORITIES & HIGHLIGHTS >> Pre-Order Now!
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NEW RELEASE for the week of Feb. 5, 2021 PRIORITIES & HIGHLIGHTS >> Pre-Order Now! FLOCK OF DIMES "Head Of Roses" (SUB POP) SP1405 CD/ LP FLOCK OF DIMES "Head Of Roses (LOSER (SUB POP) SP1405LOSER LP edition-coloured vinyl)" April 2 street date. On her second full-length record, "Head of Roses", Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak) follows a winding thread of intuition into the unknown and into healing, led by gut feelings and the near-spiritual experience of visceral songwriting. The result is a combination of Wasner's ability to embrace new levels of vulnerability, honesty and openness, with the self-assuredness that comes with a decade-plus career as a songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and prolific collaborator. Simply put, "Head of Roses" is a record about heartbreak, but from a dualistic perspective. It's about the experience of having one's heart broken and breaking someone else's heart at the same time. But beyond that, it's about having to reconcile the experience of one's own pain with the understanding that it's impossible to go through life without being the source of great pain for someone else. Carefully curated and culled from the depths of Wasner's heartbreak and healing, it's deeply, intensely personal. KING GIZZARD & THE "Teenage Gizzard (pink (ORG MUSIC) ORGM2210 LP LIZARD WIZA splater on yellow transparent" April 2 street date. "Teenage Gizzard" is a compilation album featuring early recordings of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, recorded between 2010 and 2011 in Victoria, Australia. Org Music is participating in the band's official "bootlegger" series to release the album on vinyl. A portion of the proceeds from the release will be donated to Save Our Stages. Pressed on transparent yellow with pink splatter colored vinyl, this edition is limited to just 600 copies worldwide. SEGALL, TY & CORY "She's A Beam/Milk Bird (DRAG CITY) DC804 10" HANSON Flyer" February 12 street date. Smash-cut to 2015. Two boys with guitars on their chests, stretching songwriting muscles and finding, to their delight, new possibilities at every run up the neck - a new normal every second. This means trading vocal parts mid-song, then trading back again, modulating madly through rhythm changes, looking for a note in the harmony they'd never played or sung before. All in the service of locating the feelgood pop alchemy in a song in which no parts are repeated. Whatever happened to "She Is a Beam" has been a question/passive-aggressive demand from Ty and Cory aficionados over the past few years. This is what happened! It went to heaven and lived a beautiful life there. This is the sound of it. Guitars and harmonies. Helium-coated keyboards. A celestial, Steve Millerish synth transformation. Positivity! Lightness. Rock. Epic. "Milk Bird Flyer" is a perfect other A to pair with "She's A Beam", hovering on a fade-in fanfare of gleaming guitar godness before shifting into a countryish tripper with cheerful Psilo-sci-fi-bin lyrics to bend and stretch the ecstatic shuffle of the beat. WEYES BLOOD "Cardamom Times EP (MEXICAN MEX2094 LP (indie exclusive-coloured vinyl)" March 19 street date. After an overwhelming response to the fifth anniversary edition of "Cardamom Times" in 2020, Weyes Blood's (Natalie Mering) warm, elegiac early career record manifests once again in 2021 as an indie exclusive edition on transparent light blue vinyl with purple and maroon splatter, only available from the artist and at independent retail worldwide. The songs of "Cardamom Times" demonstrate Mering's reverence of devotional music and the avant-garde, channeling the domestic hymns of Sybille Baer through the lens of Baltimore's experimental DIY scene; the minimal, melodic drones of Terry Riley accompanied by the voices of the Sacre Coeur; the confrontational words of Anaïs Nin along with the warm embrace of St. Augustine. Exclusive >> ROCK/POP/PUNK/ALTERNATIVE/INDIE >> MONO "Beyond The Past (TEMPORARY TRR363 CD March 19 street date. For two decades, MONO have defined and refined a kind of orchestral rock that is as emotional as it is experimental. Their 10 studio albums over those 20 years have established MONO as what Pitchfork described as "one of the most distinctive bands of the 21st century". Meanwhile, their live concerts are typically more subdued in instrumentation - and more supercharged in volume and voltage. "Beyond the Past: Live in London with the Platinum Anniversary Orchestra" documents MONO's extraordinary performance from the Beyond the Past event that celebrated the band's 20th anniversary, which took place at the historic Barbican Centre in London, England on December 14, 2019. For that once-in-a-lifetime event, MONO selected a memorable lineup of old and new friends, including fellow Japanese underground icons, Boris and Envy, as well as French post-metal legends, Alcest, and UK collaborators A.A. Williams and Jo Quail. The event culminated with MONO performing with a full orchestra to a rapt, sold-out audience of 2000. CHEVAL SOMBRE "Time Waits For No (SONIC SCR180 CD CHEVAL SOMBRE "Time Waits For No One (SONIC SCR180LP LP (white vinyl)" March 5 street date. Cheval Sombre releases his third album - his first solo release for more than eight years, following 2018's critically acclaimed collaboration with Galaxie 500 and Luna frontman Dean Wareham, and the first of two new albums scheduled for 2021, both of which have been produced by Sonic Boom. Cheval Sombre is the nome d'arte of Chris Porpora, a poet from upstate New York whose otherworldly psychedelic lullabies on his self-titled album from 2009 and its follow-up, "Mad Love" (2012), won him a cult following. "Time Waits for No One" is also his finest and most fully realised body of work to date and, appropriately enough for a record that has taken so many years to come to fruition, across eight original songs, an instrumental and a closing cover of Townes Van Zandt's ‘No Place to Fall’, its overarching theme is time itself; what it is and what role it inevitably plays in all of our lives. But the record is also timeless, contrasting the musical simplicity of Cheval Sombre's open-tuned acoustic guitar curlicues with the beautiful, sweeping and ornate arrangements of Sonic Boom's keyboards and Gillian Rivers' and Yuiko Kamakari's strings. The end result is something akin to Daniel Johnston backed by the Mercury Rev of "Deserter's Songs". Elemental and earthbound, but simultaneously and very subtly shooting for the stratosphere. COOL GHOULS "At George's Zoo" (EMPTY EMP052 LP/ CD March 12 street date. Cool Ghouls - a band fledged in San Francisco on house shows, minimum wage jobs, BBQs in Golden Gate Park and the romance of a city's psychedelic history, turns ten this year. What better a decennial celebration than the release of their fourth album, "At George's Zoo"! Fortunately for everyone, the Ghouls got an album in before everything went to shit, and they made it count. This release includes 15 of the 27 tunes they managed to eke out while simultaneously working through major life moves. It was a five-month, all out, final sprint down the homestretch with affable engineer Robby Joseph, at his makeshift garage studio in the Outer Sunset (pictured on the cover). This is a fully realized Cool Ghouls album. It paints a remarkable portrait of these SF homegrown heroes and the many corners they've explored over the last decade. The songwriting, harmony and playing are solid and the lyrics are keen. Joseph's recording and mixing sound great start to finish and even better after mastering by Mikey Young. It's a triumphant addition to their catalogue. Recommended for Stooges and Beach Boys fans alike. Listen and see! DEAD ENDING "American Virus" (ALTERNATIVE VIRUS506 7" February 19 street date. Stemming from conversations between vocalist Vic Bondi (Articles Of Faith) and guitarist Jeff Dean (Airstream Futures, All Eyes West, The Bomb) about the obvious politicization of the pandemic, Dead Ending's latest release on Alternative Tentacles Records, "American Virus" presents two screaming new tracks; the title track and "Walter Benjamin At The Border" with a digital bonus cover track - "Complete Control" by The Clash. Using their access to different recording devices, Bondi and Dean each wrote a track, and along with the cover and sent them to drummer Derek Grant (Alkaline Trio), who laid down drums and the songs started to take shape. Bassist Nathan Voorhees (Ensign, Vision) was unable to record on this 7-inch, but founding bassist Joe Principe (Rise Against) was down to come back to play on the songs. In no time, once more the unrelenting, uncompromising, political hardcore sound that Dead Ending has long been known for was exploding out from the studio speakers and ready to be unleashed upon the masses. DEECRACKS "Serious Issues" (PIRATES PPR287 LP March 12 street date. In a world doused with problems, the eternal flame that is Rock‘n’Roll seems to provide the medicine we all need to get us through the day. Aptly named “Serious Issues“, this new album from your favorite Austrian rock n rollers fills that prescription completely. DeeCracks deliver, big time!! We need the world to return to normal, so these guys can literally bring the party to your doorstep - but in the meantime, grab a record, your favorite adult beverage and let the party come to you! ELEPHANT9 "Arrival Of The New Elders” (RUNE RCD2218 CD ELEPHANT9 "Arrival Of The New Elders” (RUNE RLP3218 LP March 5 street date. After a solid run of five studio albums and 2019's two double live albums, Elephant9 had taken their groovy mix of high energy rock and power jazz as far as they could.