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CD: $13.98
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Army of Me
Citizen
Army Of Me was named one of the top unsigned bands in America by Alternative Press, and the article started a barrage of major label interest for the Washington, DC-based band. On the surface, their music could fit snugly into the playlist of any mainstream radio station. The epic guitars and soaring vocals are more reminiscent of early Coldplay and U2 than of quirkily trendy indie pop. Below the surface, however, Army Of Me carries the self-starter scars of one of the hardest working bands in showbiz. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Doghouse
Genre/Style: Pop / Rock
MP3 Army of Me
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CD: $14.98
LP: $14.98
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Andrew Bird
Armchair Apocrypha
Now available on vinyl
Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist and lyricist Andrew Bird picked up his first violin at the age of 4. Actually, it was a Cracker Jack box with a ruler taped to it, and the first of his many Suzuki music lessons involved simply bowing to the teacher and going home. He spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear so when it came time for a restless teen-ager to make the jump to Hungarian Gypsy music, early jazz, country blues, south Indian etc., it wasn't such a giant leap. It's fitting that now, though classically trained, he has instead opted to play his violin in a most unconventional manner, accompanying himself on glockenspiel and guitar, adding singing and whistling to the equation, and becoming a pop songwriter in the process.
A cast of collaborators was drawn from the surrounding music scene: Drummer and keyboard player Martin Dosh, singer Haley Bonar, bassist Chris Morrissey, and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Ylvisaker (who, along with Dosh, now features in Andrew's live lineup) added their talents to the album, which was mixed at the famed, haunted Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. It is an album that sums up where Andrew's career has taken him, yet is completely very much of his artistic present.
Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist and lyricist Andrew Bird picked up his first violin at the age of 4. Actually, it was a Cracker Jack box with a ruler taped to it, and the first of his many Suzuki music lessons involved simply bowing to the teacher and going home. He spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear so when it came time for a restless teen-ager to make the jump to Hungarian Gypsy music, early jazz, country blues, south Indian etc., it wasn't such a giant leap. It's fitting that now, though classically trained, he has instead opted to play his violin in a most unconventional manner, accompanying himself on glockenspiel and guitar, adding singing and whistling to the equation, and becoming a pop songwriter in the process.
A cast of collaborators was drawn from the surrounding music scene: Drummer and keyboard player Martin Dosh, singer Haley Bonar, bassist Chris Morrissey, and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Ylvisaker (who, along with Dosh, now features in Andrew's live lineup) added their talents to the album, which was mixed at the famed, haunted Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. It is an album that sums up where Andrew's career has taken him, yet is completely very much of his artistic present.
The album opens with "Fiery Crash," which Bird describes as a superstitious incantation to protect him from plane crashes ("just a nod to mortality before you get on the plane"). As the album progresses, songs of "Dark Matter" ("do you wonder where the self resides, is it in your head or between your sides, and who will be that one who will decide its true location?), "Heretics" and "Plasticities" are sung with humor and lightnessthe belies their lyrical depth. "Scythian Empire," amid lush pizzicatoviolin, considers an obscure corner of history and its lost civilizations, and apocalyptic horsemen. And so it goes through to the final notes of "Yawny at the Apocalypse," varied and stunning musical tapestries embellished with lyrical vignettes and musings that veer fluidly from almost childlike innocence to seasoned, darkly comic wit, with brilliant and unexpected twists at every turn. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Fat Possum
Genre/Style: Pop / Rock
MP3 Heretics
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CD: $13.98
CD: $13.98
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Blonde Redhead
23
Blonde Redhead's last album - Misery Is A Butterfly - established them once and for all as one of the most distinctive and precious bands of their generation. Although conceived and recorded during a time of trauma, the album was a confident, thrilling and delicately-nuanced sweep of sound which enraptured
the already-converted and won the band a whole new legion of fans. And although it marked a modulation away from the bittersweet starkness of previous releases, it was by far the most commercially successful release of the band's career, continuing the steady upward trajectory in sales.2007 sees Blonde Redhead return with something even more spellbinding : 23.
The new album is as rich and densely-layered as the last one, but Misery's overall mood of wistfulness,
melancholy and regret, has been replaced by one of mystical wonder and renewed energy. The
opening, and title, track is hypnotic and rapturous - a hymn to the magic of change which sets the tone
for the whole album. Ballads like "The Dress" and "Silently" are as emotionally resonant as anything the
band have recorded, while uptempo moments like "Spring And By Summer Fall" and "SW" will take their
place alongside long-time favourites "Melody Of Certain Three" and "In Particular" as highlights of the
band's live set. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: 4AD
Genre/Style: Rock / Pop
MP3 Myspace
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CD: $15.98
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The Book of Knots
Traineater
The second installment from The Book Of Knots is here. With their new full-length "Traineater," the New York based quartet of Matthias Bossi, Joel Hamilton, Carla Kihlstedt, and Tony Maimone have ditched schooners and destroyers in favor of mud-caked bulldozers and forklifts. Gone are the squawking seagulls, rotting scows, and whale carcasses of the Earths great oceans, and here to stay are the creaking girders, rusting chains, and grinding gears of the American Rust-Belt. Having marooned themselves in our country's once fabled but now crumbling promised land, the group paints a haunting modern day portrayal of cities like Cleveland, Youngstown, Toledo, and Detroit, places that once were the definition of American motivation, progress, and industry, but now are home to ruined monuments of an era gone by.
Guests such as Carla Bozulich, Megan Reilly, Jon Langford, David Thomas, Mike Watt, and Tom Waits give telling accounts of foremen, assembly linemen, pensioners, and the neglected mining and steel towns they're inextricably linked to. Fans of speaker-bending doom-rock take heed, the maximalist orchestral production of Joel Hamilton and The Book of Knots has returned full force for record number two, with no end to the scraping and swirling guitars, soaring string arrangements, rupturing bass, and plate-shattering drums. Sure to be one of the most ear-opening releases of 2007. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Anti
Genre/Style: Rock / Pop
MP3 Midnight
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CD: $14.98
LP: $18.98
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The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Bravery Repetition and Noise
FIRST TIME RELEASE ON VINYL!!! Bravery, Repetition and Noise is a dark dreamy album, rich in atmosphere, layered in waves of sound. The album's antecedents are clear, inspired by psychedelia as they were by punk's nihilism, pulling both strands into a doom-laden, experimental sound quite distinct from anything that had come before or since. BJM uses this as their touchstone, lovingly re-creating the moods and atmospheres of the past. The Brian Jonestown Massacre is a psychedelic rock band originally from San Francisco, California, led by guitarist/singer Anton Newcombe . Since 1995 the band has released numerous albums, first for Bomp! Records, the label which gave them their start, and later for TVT and Tee Pee. BJM has been essential in the development of the modern US garage scene, and many LA and SF musicians got their start playing with Newcombe, including Peter Hayes of The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Originally Newcombe was heavily influenced by The Rolling Stones' psychedelic phase, but his work in the 2000s has expanded into aesthetic dimensions approximating the UK Shoegazing genre of the 1990s and incorporating influences from world music, especially Middle Eastern and Brazilian music. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: A Records
Genre/Style: Rock / Psychedlic / Shoegaze
MP3 Myspace
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CD: $13.98
LP: $16.98
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Bright Eyes
Cassadaga
Once tagged "rock's boy genius" by the music press, Conor Oberst turned 27 on February 15th and even without that in mind it's hard to listen to Cassadaga without hearing a newfound sophistication to the Bright Eyes sound. Producer, multi-instrumentalist and permanent band member Mike Mogis has crafted a swirling, euphonious record, at times bursting with bombastic confidence and country swagger, and at others loose-limbed and mesmeric. Trumpet and piano player Nate Walcott, a Bright Eyes player since 2003 and now the third permanent member, is responsible for the cinematic string arrangements.
Other than a handful of live appearances and the release of a collection of B-sides & rarities, Bright Eyes kept mostly out of sight in 2006 after the busy 2005 which saw the simultaneous release of the sister albums Digital Ash In A Digital Urn and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. Should you have looked for them you'd have found them tucked away in various studios around the country. Recording for the first time outside of the Lincoln, NE studio belonging to Mogis, the Bright Eyes cast of players were busy in studios in Portland, OR, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The result is the band's most confident work so far, an album so full of soaring strings and female harmonies that it feels almost buoyant in comparison to previous releases. While many latched onto the smattering of political commentary in 2005's I'm Wide Awake..., Cassadaga is less blunt in its depiction of youthful exasperation in the Bush era. References to Hurricane Katrina, holy wars and polar ice-caps may crop up, but they're buried deep amongst the ruminations on life, love, history, death and the afterlife.
If I’m Wide Awake... was "the New York City album", then Cassadaga is "the America album", in which Oberst diaries his travels around the country and articulates his sense of history in the landscape. In first single "Four Winds" he is "off to old Dakota where genocide sleeps/in the Black Hills, the Badlands, the calloused East/I buried my ballast, I made my peace." Cassadaga itself crops up in the same song. The town, a community for psychics in central Florida, is visited in order to "commune with the dead". This wandering spirit is crystalized in "I Must Belong Somewhere" a song which was already a staple of live shows by the end of the 2005. "Hot Knives" is particularly spirited, bringing to mind the true energy of a Bright Eyes show. Likewise, "Soul Singer In A Session Band" - a rousing paean to an oxymoronic profession - enlists all of the elements which make the Bright Eyes live band such a euphoric experience. "Make A Plan To Plan To Love Me" is Bright Eyes at their most playful; a straight-up love song, replete with girl group vocals and Burt Bacharach strings. Oberst, the fumbling guitarist whose impassioned prose tumbles out under stark stage spotlights, is still recognizable in every track, but the songs are rich with elaborate production, cinema-sized orchestration and, at times, sprawling, almost psychedelic, atmospherics.
The line up of Bright Eyes players includes Andy LeMaster (Now It's Overhead), Ben Kweller, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Janet Weiss (ex-Sleater Kinney), Jason Boesel (Rilo Kiley), John McEntire (Tortoise) M.Ward, Maria Taylor and Rachael Yamagata. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Saddle Creek
Genre/Style: Americana / Pop
MP3 Four Winds
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CD: $14.98
LP: $15.98
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Brother Ali
Undisputed Truth
In the year 2000, Brother Ali Joined Rhymesayers with a self-prroduced demo called Rites of Passage. Three years later Ali took the underground by storm with an undeniable stage presenceand his critically acclaimed debut full-length Shadows On The Sun. The impact was unquestionable and that next year Ali solidified his place amongst the independent Hip Hop elite with the release of 2004's The Champion EP.
Like deja vu, here we are three years later and Ali is ready to take the world by storm with his latest creation. After struggling through a series of personal roadblocks, from parting ways with his wife of 10 years, becoming homeless and trying to secure custody of his only son... Brother Ali along with Atmosphere producer and Shadows & Champion collaborator Ant, present the long awaited sophomore full-length album The Undisputed Truth. Personal, political and more powerful than ever, simply put, the truth is here. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Rhymesayers
Genre/Style: Hip Hop
MP3 Truth Is
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CD: $13.98
LP: $14.98
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The Chinese Stars
Listen to Your Left Brain
Now Available on vinyl!
Band History: being made right now. This sophomore full length is sicker and sexier than their previous attempts to impregnate the World of Dancing Your Ass Off. Christened after the "Chinese Star Epidemic" of the early '80s which found legions of grade school kids across America armed with "shuriken" throwing stars, the band pledge to follow in this tradition: terrorizing parents, authority figures and the psyche of the free world. The Chinese Stars include Craig Kureck and Eric Paul formerly of Arab On Radar. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: 31G / Skin Graft
Genre/Style: Post Punk / Dance Punk
MP3 Cold Cold Cold
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CD:$15.98
LP:$15.98
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CocoRosie
The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn
Their third release represents another stride onward from previous works, where the girls continue to experiment with their disparate voices and clashing personalities, juxtaposing devastating ballads like "Werewolf" with exhilarating tracks like "Japan" and the jaunty single "Rainbowarriors". It's a lush, orchestral array of sounds and beauty; a vaudevillian opera, if you will. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Touch & Go
Genre/Style: Chamber Pop / Gothic Folk
MP3 Myspace
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CD: $16.98
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DJ Shadow
Funky Skunk
Indie Store Exclusive - 'Funky Skunk' is an hour long hip-hop mix, showcasing the finest tracks from over the last few decades. The majority of the set focuses on the early stages of the genre, with Shadow selecting the best in 80's hip hop and early electro - where tracks were made the good old fashioned way; a tight loop of beats, sampled breaks, primitive scratching and an MC. There are also freakout pysch moments and absurd rapid breaks perfect for any budding samplers out there. Funky Skunk ranks highly as one of DJ Shadow's best mix albums, acting as a brilliant party album but also as an introduction to prehistoric hip hop. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: DJ Shadow / Obey Reconstruction
Genre/Style: Hip Hop
MP3 Myspace
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CD: $15.98
LP: $24.98
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The Green Arrows
4 Track Recording Session
Now available on vinyl.
2LP version of the CD which has been out for awhile on the Analog Africa label. Deluxe gatefold packaging, with large-scale 12 page booklet of notes/photos inside. The Green Arrows, led by the immortal Zexie Manatsa, dominated the Zimbabwean music scene in the 1970s. This extraordinarily progressive group took the country by storm, fusing the different rhythms of the region into one unique and ebullient sound. This compilation presents 20 critical tracks that The Green Arrows recorded from 1974-1979, all painstakingly remastered. Carefully prepared liner notes are absolutely overflowing with a complete history of the band (edited by renowned critic Banning Eyre), a full detailed discography, and numerous extremely rare photographs and artifacts. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Analog Africa / Open House
Genre/Style: Afro Beat / African Jazz
MP3 Myspace
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CD: $16.98
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Grinderman
Self-titled
The story of Grinderman begins within the working processes of another band: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds. At the start of 2004, when Nick Cave took a small team of Bad Seeds members - violinist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn P Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos - off to the tiny Misčre studio in Paris for a songwriting session, they effectively established a new working process.
Rather than compose songs on his own and present them to the band, Cave began to spin lyrics out of the air around Ellis, Sclavunos and Casey's tight, intuitive trio. When expanded out to the full Bad Seeds personnel, the result was Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus, a double album with a raw, organic, driving sound that some consider the best the Bad Seeds have ever produced, selling in excess of half a million copies worldwide.
Nick: "There was only a certain amount I could write in the office any more... With that little session in Paris with Warren, Jim and Marty, suddenly it was so easy to get a song out because you had the bass and drums behind everything and you're singing a different way. Your mind works in a completely different way."
The small combo configuration of Nick, Warren, Marty and Jim had its public debut in a showcase performance to promote the Bad Seeds' Nocturama album; the foursome continued working in this streamlined format, getting together frequently for Nick Cave "solo" tours, and functioning as a vital, active band. The prolific output of the Misčre sessions, as well as various soundtracks and theatre scores that the four were working on during this period, began to suggest potential for a brand new band that might operate autonomously from the Bad Seeds, with a radically different sound and musical approach.
In February 2006, the four musicians booked themselves into London's Metropolis Studios for a five-day marathon of non-stop demo sessions, resulting in several hours of raw material.
Warren: "It was meant to be really open liberating thing. We went to places we would not normally go... and then tried to push it even further..."
Marty: "Having Nick on the guitar changes the whole dynamic."
The following month, Grinderman called in the producer behind the last two Bad Seeds album, Nick Launay.
Warren: "Launay gets good sounds down. We didn't want any obstacles between the band sound and the production, so Launay was perfect."
Together they recorded thirteen songs at RAK Studios in London, and then returned to Metropolis in October to mix their self-titled album, Grinderman.
Jim: "The name Grinderman seemed to suit the band. It sums up the sort of music we are making. We grind."
As Memphis Slim put it back in 1941, "While everything is quiet and easy/ Mr. Grinder can have his way..." -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Anti
Genre/Style: Rock
MP3 Myspace
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LP: $27.98
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Growing
Live
Growing is a band from Olympia, WA formed in 2001 by Kevin Doria, Joe Denardo, and Zack Carlson who left the band following the release of their first album. The band plays instrumental drone rock with elements of noise and ambient music. Its live shows are known for being incredibly loud, playing straight through without break or pause. The band has released albums on Kranky, Animal Disguise, Archive, and Megablade, and currently has a new full length out on Troubleman. Live, originally released on CD by Archive in 2005, contains 180 gram vinyl inside a full color gatefold double LP sleeve. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Conspiracy
Genre/Style: Experimental / Free Noise
MP3 Myspace
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CD: $9.98
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Guster
Satellite EP
Guster boasts one of the most devoted followings in the country. It follows with an EP featuring a remix of "Satellite," a handful of outtakes from the Ganging Up On The Sun sessions plus two new covers- the early 80's hit "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" and The Beatles' "The Two Of Us." -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Reprise
Genre/Style: Country / Pop
MP3 Apreludes (in C Sharp Major)
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CD:$13.98
LP:$13.98
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Jana Hunter
There's No Home
There's No Home is the second full-length formal release from Jana Hunter. Recorded over two consecutive weeks in Fall 2006 at a friend's home in Houston, TX (known locally as "Feagan House"), the album features Hunter writing, playing and producing throughout.
As extroverted as Hunter's previous release Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom was introverted, There's No Home focuses on community involvement. While Hunter plays most of the instruments herself, she's aided and abetted here by her brother John (Inoculist, Dethro Skull), John Adams (Fatal Flying Guilloteens) and Matt Brownlie (Bring Back the Guns), among others.
In 2004, Hunter made a big splash among fans of distinctive music with "Farm, CA," a track featured on the Devendra Banhart-curated Golden Apples of the Sun collection released by Arthur magazine's Bastet label, followed by a vinyl-only split with Banhart on Troubleman.
Late the following year, Hunter's full-length debut was the inaugural release on Gnomonsong, a label founded by Banhart and Vetiver's Andy Cabic in conjunction with Revolver USA. A thirteen-song "best of," compiled in part from various CDR releases, this collection garnered impressive critical acclaim.
Hunter spent the bulk of 2006 touring Europe and the US (including one string of East Coast dates traveled by sailboat). She hits the road again April, 2007 -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Gnomonsong
Genre/Style: Folk
MP3 Valkyries
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CD: $14.98
LP: $13.98
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Love of Dagrams
Mosaic
Closely following their January-released limited-edition self-titled EP, Melbourne, Australia's LOVE OF DIAGRAMS release their US debut album, Mosaic, this April. The record was made in Chicago at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio, with producer Bob Weston (Shellac, Mission of Burma). It perfectly captures the urgency of their stripped-down guitar-bassdrums racket and call-and-response vocals. Love of Diagrams join and draw from the long tradition of bands that stripped rock back to its essentials -- including classic early 80's performers like PiL and early B-52s, seminal Flying Nun bands The Clean and Bailter Space, and guitar innovators like The Jesus and Mary Chain and early My Bloody Valentine. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Matador
Genre/Style: Post Punk
MP3 Pace Or The Patience
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CD: $16.98
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Madlib
Other Side of LA
The fifth installment in The Other Side series features rapper/producer Madlib on the mix CD and Stones Throws Peanut Butter Wolfs visual guide to LAs sites and sounds on DVD. Madlibs diverse audio tour includes tracks from the eclectic jazz conciousness originator - Sun Ra Arkestra, 60s psychedelic blues quintet Outlaw Blues Band, legendary reggae drummer (Burning Spear) Leroy Horsemouth Wallace, Jamaican record label head/ DJ producer Prince Jazzbo, and Madlibs own tunes. Once again, Madlib expands his abilities beyond the core hop-hop that hes known for. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Deaf, Dumb, & Blind
Genre/Style: Hip Hop
MP3 Myspace
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CD:$11.98
LP:$9.98
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Magrudergrind
Rehased
MAGRUDERGRIND have led the recent charge of youth thrash bands to infest the USA in the last few years. After highly acclaimed records on labels such as Robodog, RSR, Punks Before Profits, To Live A Lie and Torture Picture Garden, its high time they released a full length LP of their own. Now, Six Weeks presents Rehashed, a deadly grinding thrahscore record 18 hymns long and sure to devastate the grindcore and hardcore scenes alike!! -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Six Weeks
Genre/Style: Metal / Grindcore
MP3 Myspace
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CD:$16.98
LP:$18.98
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Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Now Available on vinyl!
I’m rather convinced Modest Mouse can never succeed with the majority of their core fanbase ever again. To remake The Lonesome Crowded West or The Moon and Antarctica would be pointless; to diverge from them would be sacreligious. And maybe that’s why they’re making music “more accessible;” the indie eleite have already made up their minds and closed the door. We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank leaked weaks ago, and I’ve heard almost nothing and negativity from the old school fans, but I just can’t quite figure it out. I will certainly concede that Good News… was not a fantastic album, but We Were Dead… is really, really good. Close to great, even.
The constant recent complaint that Modest Mouse only make “pop records” anymore is a bit ridiculous. For one, no matter how gritty some of their songs were, their songs have always been based on a pop foundation. Secondly, though there certainly have been more “hits” on the last two releases (”Dashboard” has to be one of the catchiest pop songs since Talking Heads), no way could songs as rough as “March Into the Sea” and “Parting of the Sensory” make it anywhere near the airwaves. Brock still has the grit and the spit and the rasp to make the angry, atonal, rough numbers that have always worked their way into their records.
In fact, if the increased poppiness comes from anywhere here it’s from newest member Johnny Marr (guitarist for the Smiths), whose distinct catchy syncopated guitar picking marries with Brock’s style fantastically (this is especially evident on songs such as “Dashboard,” and “Florida,”). I could have picked no better addition to Modest Mouse than Marr, a man arguably responsible for the indie-pop genre as it stands today.
The complainers can say what they want; I love this record. The average songs are on par with Good News…’s best song (”The View”) and the best songs are new and full and layered and dark and catchy and marvelous (”March Into The Sea,” “Parting of the Sensory,” and “Spitting Venom”). The album is referential all the way back through the entire Modest Mouse Catalog and even to that of Marr’s work in the Smiths, and still I feel this is a record entirely different from anything they have done in the past. Even the radio single “Dashboard” is incredible in my opinion. Well done gentlemen. One and a half decades and you’re still one of the absolute best in the game. -JM
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Epic
Genre/Style: Rock
MP3 Myspace
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CD:$13.98
LP:$16.98
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Nekromantix
Life Is A Grave & I Dig It!
Nekromantix are quite simply the premier psychobilly band in the world. Founded in 1989, over the course of six albums (three in the US), Nekromantix have inspired a generation of rockabilly and psychobilly bands, earned a Grammy nod, and spawned the immensely popular side project Horrorpops, who have scanned over 80,000 CDs in their own right. Now comes Life Is A Grave And I Dig It!!!, a return to the raw, driving sound of early classics like Return of the Loving Dead. Anchored by leader Kim Nekroman's thumping upright bass, Life Is A Grave And I Dig It!!perfectly delivers on Alternative Press' description of the band as "a 1950s date with Motorhead." With a headlining national tour out of the box - the 2007 incarnation of the wildly successful Hellcat tour - and a world-wide following from extensive touring in Japan, the US, and Europe, Nekromantix will continue to lead the pack, all the way to the boneyard! -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Hellcat
Genre/Style: Punk / Psychobilly
MP3 NekroHigh
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CD:$14.98
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Panthers
The Trick
It’s seemingly impossible to orchestrate a complete refinement in a band’s sound these days. Fortunately, Panthers have returned from the sprawling highs of their 2004 LP Things Are Strange with a follow up record so concisely intense it demands attention from all areas, from jaded riff-rock devotees to the most indifferent pop listener and everyone in between.
Recorded in 2006 by renowned producer and engineer Steve Revitte (Liars, Beastie Boys, Black Dice), The Trick is the third full length offering from this Brooklyn-based quartet and their second on Vice. Comprised of vocalist Jayson Green, bassist Geoff Garlock, drummer Jeff Salane (all formerly of Orchid), and guitarist Justin Chearno (Turing Machine, Pitchblende), it’s obvious that their long and storied pedigree has paid off with the experience and depth presented on this record as ten tracks of calculated abandon.
Eschewing the format of their previous work, the band sets their new tone early on The Trick with the first track “Goblin City,” a red-eyed, blistering rager clocking in at just under 3 minutes. Not to be outdone, the melee continues immediately with the next banger. Drummer Jeff Salane starts off “Listen To Me” with a few counts here, a tumultuous fill there, and the rest of the band follows with a descending wall of sound dictating the onslaught to come. Likewise, album closer “The Impeccableness” continues the process by building on a singular riff that with each passing adopts new textures and forms growing in ferocity while Jayson Green vocalizes the overwhelming sentiments: “Where do we look for inspiration/ when everything seems so cheap?” Get the picture? Panthers are going for the jugular. We could liken the highly concentrated sonic assault on The Trick to something akin to The Jesus Lizard mainlining the riffs of the Asheton brothers, but even that might be an understatement. From start to finish, The Trick is a tour de force concentrated into 32 minutes that needs little introduction to be completely captivating. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Vice
Genre/Style: Rock
MP3 Goblin City
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CD:$16.98
LP:$13.98
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Shearwater
Palo Santo: Expanded Edition
Austin's SHEARWATER sign to Matador and debut with a completely refurbished edition of their critically acclaimed - and frankly magnificent - 2006 album, 'Palo Santo.' The band have re-recorded 5 of the 11 tracks on the album, which in itself would make this a new version of the record. But in addition there is new cover art, deluxe packaging in the form of a gatefold digipak inside an O-card, PLUS an entire bonus CD containing 8 additional tracks, all for the price of one CD. More important is the music - a soaring, vast multi-instrumental song-cycle. Jonathan Meiburg's vocals and songwriting recall bands as diverse as Roxy Music / Bryan Ferry and late Talk Talk. But this is unabashedly rock music, anchored by Thor Harris's mighty Bonhamesque drums. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Matador
Genre/Style: Rock
MP3 Red Sea, Black Sea
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CD:$16.98
LP:$19.98
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Various Artists
Colombia! The Golden Age of Discos Fuentes
Now available on vinyl!
...The Powerhouse of Colombian Music 1960-76. Double LP version, in deluxe gatefold jacket. ...The Powerhouse of Columbian Music 1960-76. Soundway Records presents the tropical sound of Colombia. From the salsas and descargas of Cali, Medellin and Bogota to the Afro sounds and raw cumbias of Cartagena and Barranquilla, this is the sound of Colombian dancehalls and clubs in the '60s and '70s, when the legendary Discos Fuentes record label led the way. The sounds emanating from the barrios and beaches of Colombia are a unique mixture of Latin sounds and Afro rhythms, drawing influences from the New York and Puerto Rican Latin scenes, the highlife and rumba of West Africa and the calypso of the Caribbean, as well as the tropical rhythms of the Colombian cumbia, gaita, fandango and porro. Driving percussion, swinging horns, hot pianos and jumping bass lines -- this music was made for dancing. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Soundway
Genre/Style: Disco / Latin Funk
MP3 Fruko y Sus Tesos - Salsa Na Ma
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CD:$15.98
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Laura Veirs
Saltbreakers
Listening to Veirs is like looking up into the night sky and suddenly witnessing a meteor shower: there's something startling and magical, both intimate and awesome, about her songs. The nature-obsessed images she conjures up and the mesmerizing sound she creates are as indelible as the blaze of shooting stars. Her third Nonesuch release is her most beautifully realized, band-oriented yet. Produced by Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Built To Spill), it is by turns haunting, playful, tender, and fierce, embracing everything from machine-driven beats to angelic gospel choirs to fuzzed-out guitars, and driving alt-rock rhythms. -CP
Release Date: 04/10/07
Label: Nonesuch
Genre/Style: Rock / Yaw'ternative
MP3 Pink Light
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