VIA PRESS RELEASE | Acclaimed indie pop band Lucius returns with their highly-anticipated new album Second Nature—set to be released April 8 on Mom + Pop Music (U.S. and Mexico), Dine Alone (Canada), and Second Nature Records/Secretly Distribution (RoW). Produced by Dave Cobb and Brandi Carlile, the album features ten new songs, including the first single, “Next To Normal,” which is out today.
In celebration of the album, the band will embark on a North American headline tour this spring followed by a series of European shows in September. Stops include New York’s Beacon Theatre, Philadelphia’s The Fillmore, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire among many others. The newly confirmed performances will go on-sale this Friday, January 14 at 10:00am local time with pre-sale beginning tomorrow. In addition to the headline shows, the band will join Carlile on several marquee concerts this summer including Washington’s Gorge Amphitheatre, L.A.’s The Greek Theatre, and Colorado’s Red Rock Amphitheatre.
Second Nature is a portrait of singer and songwriters Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe’s shared reflection, chronicling each other’s seismic life shifts—motherhood, divorce, unplanned career pauses—and setting it to music. “It is a record that begs you not to sit in the difficult moments, but to dance through them,” says Wolfe. “It touches upon all these stages of grief—and some of that is breakthrough, by the way. Being able to have the full spectrum of the experience that we have had, or that I’ve had in my divorce, or that we had in lockdown, having our careers come to a halt, so to speak. I think you can really hear and feel the spectrum of emotion and hopefully find the joy in the darkness. It does exist. That’s why we made Second Nature and why we wanted it to sound the way it did: our focus was on dancing our way through the darkness.”
You’ll hear Eric’s story of how he went through the restaurant ranks and learned his craft so well that he now mostly coaches servers and managers in the hospitality industry. But, it’s more than just food that Eric and I discuss; we explore how you can become your best self, how some of these skills can be used in any business that thrives on relationships, and – really – what business doesn’t? Of course, I don’t let Eric off the hook without giving us some great restaurant recommendations.
Baton Rouge, LA | Downtown record shop to close for a week after customers get verbally abusive over mask policy: Tess Brunet is taking a much-needed break to focus on her mental wellbeing after a trying holiday season at her downtown vinyl record shop during the fifth wave of the pandemic. Brunet announced in a Tuesday Facebook post that she would close Lagniappe Records for a week after some customers were verbally abusive and one physically assaulted her when she reinstated a masking policy as coronavirus cases skyrocketed in Acadiana. She plans to reopen Wednesday. “We’re just asking you to wear a mask when you are inside. None of the rest of it matters when you’re in our store,” Brunet said in a Wednesday phone interview. “There are some regulars who don’t buy into the whole mask thing. Some are anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers, but they respect us and they wear a mask and they’re friendly with us. It’s when you cross a line and you treat someone like sh– because you feel entitled to — to verbally abuse someone or physically assault someone—
Midland, MI | Radio Wasteland Records celebrates fifth anniversary: Just for the record, Jim Gleason is a vinyl enthusiast. He prefers the warm, rich sounds of records over CDs any day. In fact, he’s got about 15,000 of the big flat discs in storage and on the shelves in his business, Radio Wasteland Records. The store, located at 716 George St. in Midland, opened its doors on Jan. 13, 2017, and is celebrating its fifth anniversary this Saturday. Gleason says he made the move from acquiring records for his collection to selling records, eventually leading to opening up his first business. “For me, this has always been about the love of vinyl,” he says. “I’ve been collecting since the early ‘80s and became a serious collector around 1991 or 1992.” Gleason’s wife researched opening up a record shop, and shortly after, Midland had a record store again after The Turntable shuttered in 2003. Since the store opened in 2017, the business model has remained the same: 
NEW RELEASE PICK: Tony Malaby’s Sabino, The Cave of Winds (Pyroclastic) “Everything was nuts, so I just had to go down there and throw sound with my guys. It got me through and kept me positive.” The speaker is saxophonist Tony Malaby. The nutzoid everything is Covid and the Presidential election of last year. Down there is a New Jersey turnpike (nicknamed in this CD’s title) where Malaby met up with numerous improvising contemporaries during the height of the pandemic. These activities led him to reconvene Sabino, the group heard on his debut album from 2000, a self-titled affair released by the Arabesque label. That means Michael Formanek is on double bass and Tom Rainey on drums here, but with guitarist Ben Monder instead of Marc Ducret, who played on the debut.
REISSUE/ARCHIVAL PICKS: Reiko & Tori Kudo, Tangerine (A Colourful Storm) Tori Kudo remains most associated with Maher Shalal Hash Baz, but his contributions to the Japanese underground span back to the late ’70s-early ’80s and Noise, a band which also featured contributions from Reiko Omura; Tori and Reiko later married. In addition to a string of solo records, Reiko was also part of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, as she and Tori released a handful of duo albums, of which Tangerine was the last, issued on CD in 2013 by the Hyotan label. This edition is Tangerine’s vinyl debut, and with a new cover. The sound is wonderfully sparse and gentle, categorized as folk, which isn’t wrong but doesn’t communicate the music’s reach, which resists easy comparisons, though there are few; Peter Jefferies’ solo work fleetingly came to mind, and by extension John Cale. But it’s “The Swallow II,” which manages to combine Young Marble Giants and elements of God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It, that delivers the record its standout track. Comes with an insert, a postcard and lyrics in Japanese and English. A
Rapoon, Fallen Gods (Abstrakce) Rapoon is the project of Robin Storey, who co-founded the noted experimental-industrial outfit Zoviet France in 1980, a group he exited in 1992, the same year Rapoon’s debut Dream Circle emerged. Released in 1994, Fallen Gods is Rapoon’s third in what would become a insanely voluminous discography; two more releases followed in ’94, with Vernal Crossing already reissued by Abstrakce in 2020. As was the case with that set, this is Fallen Gods first time on vinyl. Irrefutable is that Storey digs repetition in the music, though unlike others in the industrial field, he’s not dancey but tribal, as Rapoon’s been tagged as ethno-ambient. While there are aspects that date this set, things never tip over into the corny or the lame. Potentially of interest to Jon Hassell fans. Please note that Fallen Gods is being offered for purchase in bundles with the expanded reissue of Erik Wøllo’s Silver Beach (1986), or the reissue Juan Belda’s eponymous LP (also ’86), or with the Belda and D.K.’s Eighteen Movements (2021), all releases from this highly interesting Spanish label. A-
Braselton, GA | Carden Records spinning vinyl in downtown Braselton: Tables are turning at a textured, nostalgic decibel in downtown Braselton, harking the open doors of Carden Records — North Georgia’s newest source for new and used vinyl, CDs and cassette tapes. The namesake of owner John Carden, the record store is the first of eight tenants to officially open inside The 1904 formerly known as the Braselton Brothers department store. “I told my wife, ‘Vinyl’s coming back; now would be a good time to figure out how to open a store,’” he said. “Younger kids are getting into vinyl now; it’s kind of cool to watch them do the same thing that I do even now, listening to vinyl instead of streaming music.” While streaming is convenient here in the digital age, Carden noted there’s a prevailing resistance to those platforms in favor of supporting artists’ livelihood. ” Fans are starting to figure out that if they buy physical copies of music again, 
Album Buyers Keep It Old School: While overall album sales have gradually declined in the United States over the past decade as music consumption shifted to streaming services, vinyl LPs have gained popularity as a physical token in the digital age. Between 2007 and 2021, album sales dropped from 501 million to 109 million according to MRC Data. LP sales, meanwhile climbed from 2.5 million to 41.7 million, making vinyl the big winner of the streaming age (next to streaming services obviously). As the following chart shows, CD sales in particular have dropped precipitously over the past decade, while the age of digital albums was cut short by the advent of streaming services. Interestingly, LP sales surpassed both CD and digital album sales last year, making vinyl records the most popular format outside of streaming services. While the album has been losing relevance in recent years as streaming services pushed playlist-based listening, some music fans still value the work that some artists put into creating 
Einstürzende Neubauten may translate as Collapsing New Buildings to English speakers, but they don’t sound like an architectural disaster to me. They sound like the foundry where I worked during my summer years at college only worse, because Einstürzende Neubauten are both foundry and insane asylum, and the lunatics have taken over the machinery.
