Category Archives: New Release Section

VIA PRESS RELEASE | L.A. Guns have announced the upcoming release of their latest studio album, Black Diamonds on April 14, 2023. Produced by founding member and guitarist, Tracii Guns, Black Diamonds is a tour-de-force of rock ‘n roll that fans have come to expect from the long-running hard rockers.

Written and recorded over the course of 2022, Black Diamonds sees Tracii Guns, Phil Lewis, and company continuing on the same successful and inspiring sonic journey that they’ve been taking on their most recent albums, Checkered Past, The Devil You Know’ and The Missing Peace.

The band doesn’t shy away from flexing their hard rock influences as they always have, but also incorporate more introspective acoustic tracks reflective of their classic rock influences from the ’70s. This makes for a potent and highly listenable cocktail of an album in Black Diamonds.

Since their self-titled debut in 1988 to their widely praised recent suite of “comeback” albums, L.A. GUNS, led by Tracii Guns and Phil Lewis, have always delivered solid rock ‘n’ roll to their fans. Since core members Tracii and Phil reunited under the banner of L.A. Guns in 2017, a rekindling of the band’s creative energy has been continuing unabated over the course of, now, four studio albums. Black Diamonds shows no signs of this renaissance slowing down…

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The DIY post-punk, new wave, and ska pioneer Kate Fagan shares “Say It,” the second previously unreleased song made available from the forthcoming I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool (Expanded Edition). Originally a coveted self-released single put out in 1980, this version of I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool has been re-mastered and made into a full-length vinyl album featuring four additional, previously unreleased, ahead-of-their-time tracks, due out February 24th, 2023 via Captured Tracks. The release of “Say It” comes with a new video edited by Timothy Watson with archival footage by James Pasta.

The reggae-tinged “Say It” features production from the reggae legend Peter Tosh and Bob Marley’s guitarist Donald Kinsey who flew in from Jamaica to record with Heavy Manners (the seminal ska group that Fagan co-founded) after witnessing their impassioned live show. “Say It” is among 4 previously unreleased songs originally composed for Fagan’s rock opera The Kissing Concept, a semi-autobiographical love story inspired by the ‘70s/’80s nightclub scene that Fagan had explored during her time in New York, which premiered at Park West and Limelight nightclubs.

Fagan shares the following about “Say It”: “Emotions become overwhelming when lovers’ expectations collide and the lyrics of the song express a sad reckoning.” Further adding: “Peter Tosh and Don Kinsey locked in the groove and accentuated the reggae bubble. This is a stripped down mix with a clap track added by Peter. He intended to make this the bottom floor of a dancehall dub.”

“Peter Tosh‘s greatest contribution to our sessions was that his presence made us focus, really listen to what was going down, and he motivated us to give our best performances. My recollection about Don Kinsey is he knew how to enhance a groove; he doubled guitar and bass tracks throughout the song to give the bottom a heavier feel.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Jake Shears (the multidisciplinary musician and frontman of seminal NYC indie glam-pop greats Scissor Sisters) is back with a kinetic new single “Too Much Music,” the first taste of his new forthcoming solo album Last Man Dancing, that will see release on June 2nd, 2023 on his new label home of Mute.

One of modern pop’s true trailblazers, “Too Much Music” is an instant Jake Shears anthem that feels as much a fresh start as it does a return to self. An experimental mix of glam-rock overture, disco groove, and soulful harmony, it asks why you’d ever stand still in life, when “there can never be too much music for me.” Directed by Callum Macdiarmid, the stunning “Too Much Music” video sees Shears in suitably subversive form, with cinematic and unexpected results.

“Too Much Music” is an exhilarating introduction to Jake Shears’ new album Last Man Dancing. Recorded between the US, Portugal and London—where he relocated from his New Orleans home during the pandemic—the project features production from the likes of Boys Noize (Kelis, Skrillex), Vaughn Oliver (Latto’s ‘Big Energy’) and includes the sort of head-turning party guestlist that, in Shears’ universe, somehow make total sense: Kylie Minogue, Big Freedia, and Amber Martin all feature, with a cameo from Jane Fonda and some timeless words of wisdom from Iggy Pop.

Last Man Dancing is full of incandescent nods to fellow dance music pioneers, a Sylvester falsetto here, a Patrick Cowley cowbell there and a Berghain pulse, all modernized, personalized and right at home in 2023. Hedonistic, poignant and surreal, Jake Shears has now turned a lifelong love-affair with club culture into his most ambitious material to date.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | For her austere new album Domestic Sphere, Josephine Foster performs solely with her electric guitar and then subverts the usual range of her voice to embody other frequencies and sounds beyond the surface layer of the songs.

“Since first hearing it, I’ve been listening to Domestic Sphere on repeat. It cuts through every bad feeling I’ve been having and sends me into a place I want to live in always, which is art itself. Josephine Foster communes so completely with every sound on the record, with the past and the future, animals and insects and birds, those so tenderly dead, and those of us who are alive. I don’t say it lightly: listening to the record is a transcendent experience. It’s an exorcism, one that exorcises you.” —Amina Cain

Josephine Foster’s Domestic Sphere is an altar cloth of songs stitched together as liturgical music for a restless homestead, whose values insist simply that everything is music and that our daily life is a sacred, innately creative practice. In such a world creaking doors reveal natural orchestras with wailing cats in service of melodic collaborations with Tennessee songbirds, Foster’s world is an extra-sensory radio play in two acts, where songs overlay structures like creeping vines.

“Domestic Sphere is also a seance by song. Josephine channels sounds from her interior and exterior landscapes, whether integrating field recordings reflecting daily life in a Spanish village and other moments in her life as a nomadic musician, or, as in one tender cameo, the voice of her great-grandmother comes from the other side, framed in a union aided by her co-production with Daniel Blumberg. These songs are vigils, melodies sung intently, to be set aflame and sung off with the wind.”
—Chris Davis

VIA PRESS RELEASE | “I think it’s important for us to share some of our most basic and common experiences with each other, however we can. That’s what we really, really need right now. I know we have common experiences, and it’s important to telegraph those back because they don’t have to be lonely experiences.” —Josh Ritter

Renowned singer, songwriter, musician, artist and best-selling author Josh Ritter will release his anticipated new album, Spectral Lines, April 28 via Thirty Tigers—pre-order here. In advance of the release, two album tracks are debuting today: “Sawgrass” and “For Your Soul.” Watch a video for both songs, created by flatspot and filmed in Alaska and Brooklyn below.

Produced by Ritter’s longtime collaborator Sam Kassirer (Lake Street Dive, Langhorne Slim), Spectral Lines finds Ritter expanding beyond the bounds of his previous work to create a record both atmospheric and profound. Dedicated to the memory of his mother, Ritter searches for commonality across these ten seamless tracks by exploring life’s most universal ideas—love, devotion and what it means to be connected, to both each other and to ourselves.

One of today’s most thoughtful and prolific voices, Ritter has released ten studio albums including 2019’s widely acclaimed, Fever Breaks, of which NPR Music praised, “He remains a hydrant of ideas while embodying an endless capacity for empathy and indignation, often within a single song.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Legendary post-punk musician, artist, and filmmaker Gina Birch has shared the title track from her debut solo album, I Play My Bass Loud, arriving via Third Man Records on Friday, February 24, 2023. Pre-orders are available now. “I Play My Bass Loud” is available now at all DSPs and streaming services and is joined by the release of an official music video directed by Vice Cooler (who is also a multi-talented musician and performer himself), with concept and choreography by Brontez Purnell.

“Vice asked his long-term friend writer, dancer, and choreographer, Oakland-based Brontez Purnell, to be the central character of the video,” explains Birch. “There are five women bass players performing in the video, Emily Elhaj (Angel Olsen), Hazel Rigby (TBHQ), Mikki Itzigsohn (Small Wigs), Staz Lindes (The Paranoyds), and myself. We shot the video in L.A. so the bass players in the video are not primarily the ones on the track apart from Emily Elhaj who plays bass with Angel Olson and Gina B. The song is a celebration of bass guitar as a voice, simple or layered, pounding or dancing, or everything at once. A celebration of a shout, a yell from the window, and the I am Here, of a woman’s creativity on the bass guitar. I play my bass, my bass my bass my bass, I play my bass loud.”

The album was announced in November of last year with the propulsive first single, “Wish I Was You.” The track – co-written and co-produced by the legendary Youth and featuring guitar by longtime fan Thurston Moore – was also joined by an official music video, directed by Gina’s filmmaker daughter Honey Birch and streaming now on YouTube.

“The album distills my years of musical, political, and artistic life with these genre-breaking songs,” says Gina Birch. “It’s a personal diary using sounds and lyrics, full of fun, rage, and storytelling.” This year will see Birch celebrate I Play My Bass Loud with an eagerly anticipated UK/Ireland headline tour, getting underway March 21 at Brighton’s Hope and Ruin. Additional dates will be announced soon.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Legendary British duo Sleaford Mods are pleased to announce a new album, UK GRIM, out March 10, 2023 on Rough Trade Records. The album will be available on LP, CD, and cassette, including black and white vinyl on the webstore, and an exclusive silver vinyl variant available via independent record stores. Sleaford Mods will tour North America this April in support of the new record, with stops in most major cities and appearances at both weekends of Coachella.

Lead track “UK GRIM” is out now and is accompanied by the first-ever music video created by British collage artist and satirist Cold War Steve, who has previously done covers for Time magazine and The New Statesman. The track continues Sleaford Mods’ uncanny ability to call out our times with anger and art, electronic innovation and erudite vision. Though no strangers to the dancefloor, the track’s minimal yet immersive beats add a physical power to the duo’s ever-insightful take on society.

War, rising energy costs, inflation. A sclerotic political class and a divided country. Malaise, acts of national self-harm and other doomed flights from reality. Despair, anger and alienation. Has it ever been worse out there?

Welcome to UK GRIM. Building on the unique, insurrectionary strengths of previous records while refining them in gripping new ways, Sleaford Mods’ newest album is a stunning step up. This is nothing less than a defining band and a voice of the people—like The Jam, The Clash, or Public Enemy were—more fully realized than ever before. It is, unmistakably, the real deal.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rock & Roll Hall of Famers The Zombies have released a brand new track and animated lyric video, “Dropped Reeling & Stupid” on streaming services ahead of a full album CD, vinyl and digital release March 31st worldwide on UK indie label Cooking Vinyl Records. In support of the release, and a forthcoming feature documentary, the band will resume their “Life Is A Merry-Go-Round” Tour in 2023 with appearances at Austin’s famed music & film festival, South by SouthWest (SXSW), new concerts announced in Texas and New Orleans, followed by a full UK run in the Spring, and more extensive touring planned this year.

The Zombies began work on the album, title Different Game, after their 2019 induction into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a USA tour with Beach Boys auteur Brian Wilson. The band, which features founding keyboardist Rod Argent and lead singer Colin Blunstone, along with drummer Steve Rodford, guitarist Tom Toomey, and bassist Søren Koch, hoped to finish writing and recording the follow-up to their Billboard-charting 2015 album Still Got That Hunger during a busy 2020 touring schedule, but COVID-19 had other plans for them.

As primary songwriter and producer Rod Argent relates, the band was not content to record remotely: “Making this album has been a joy from start to finish. Post-lockdown, we were absolutely determined to come together and record in as “live” a way as we could—to capture the magical, fleeting quality of energy and immediacy of performance… “Dropped Reeling & Stupid” is our first streamed release… Can’t wait for you to hear it!”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sunny War will release her New West Records debut Anarchist Gospel on February 3rd, 2023. The 14-song set was produced by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and features appearances by Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Allison Russell, David Rawlings, Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs, Micah Nelson, John James Tourville of The Deslondes, Kyshona Armstrong, Dennis Crouch, and more.

All songs were written by Sunny War with the exception of “Baby Bitch” (Ween) and “Hopeless” (Van Hunt). With Anarchist Gospel, Sunny has crafted an eclectic set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles: ecstatic gospel, dusty country blues, thoughtful folk, rip-roaring rock and roll, even avant garde studio experiments. She melds them together into a powerful statement of survival, revealing a probing songwriter who indulges no comforting platitudes.

“I feel like there are two sides of me,” says the singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso. “One of them is very self-destructive, and the other is trying to work with that other half to keep things balanced.” That’s the central conflict on Anarchist Gospel, which documents a time when it looked like the self-destructive side might win out. Sunny says, “Everybody is a beast just trying their hardest to be good. That’s what it is to be human. You’re not really good or bad. You’re just trying to stay in the middle of those two things all the time, and you’re probably doing a shitty job of it. That’s ok, because we’re all just monsters.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Returning with their first studio album for seven years, Stereo Mind Game is a new chapter for Daughter. Released on April 7 on Glassnote Records, the group’s third record follows Not to Disappear (2016) and soundtrack Music from Before the Storm (2017). After more than a decade spent depicting the darkest emotions, the trio of Elena Tonra, Igor Haefeli, and Remi Aguilella present their most optimistic record yet.

The album’s lead single, “Be On Your Way” is accompanied by a video created by Tiff Pritchett. The track is a longing but resilient song about an enduring connection that is also indefinable. The romantic figure Tonra addresses in the song is someone she met in California while writing the record. They shared a significant connection but she knew the Atlantic lay between them. The video for “Be on Your Way” evokes a collection of memories, with footage of Tonra superimposed with images of beautiful passing moments—the flight of a bird, a field of flowers. “Be On Your Way” is not a loss of hope but a confidence in and acceptance of the passage of time.

Connection and disconnection permeate Stereo Mind Game’s twelve songs literally and figuratively. In the intervening years since the Ivor Novello-nominated Music from Before the Storm (2017), the band has moved away from their initial London base—Aguilella relocated to Portland, Oregon, Haefeli to Bristol, England—and spent time on their own projects (including Tonra’s debut solo album under the moniker Ex:Re in 2018). However, despite the physical distance—further exacerbated by the pandemic—Daughter continued to meet and write together. Produced by Haefeli and Tonra, Stereo Mind Game was written and recorded in various locations including Devon, Bristol and London, England, San Diego, California, and Vancouver, Washington.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Presenting their unique pop music that defies categorization, Death And Vanilla today release new single “Looking Glass” from their new album Flicker set for release on 17th March on Fire Records.

New track “Looking Glass” unzips with a slow paced intro, it’s organic, a grower that goes modal and multi-layered behind Marleen Nilsson’s evocative vocals; like a fevered Fleetwood Mac dream, lingering in the sub conscious with luscious melodies from the post-future.

Housed in a beautifully austere post-ironic de-constructed sleeve, “Flicker” is a modern reflection on these difficult times. World crises and lockdowns notwithstanding, Death And Vanilla return reborn, re-arranged and revitalised after assimilating dub reggae, the motorik spirals of Can, the modal meander of Philip Glass and The Cure’s dreamier pop sounds; plus the twice removed symphonic ambience of Spiritualized and Talking Heads under heavy manners from Brian Eno.

By osmosis their period of transition since 2019’s much darker Are You A Dreamer? has hatched new eclectic electronica anthems riddled with melody lines, and layered for lush love.

It’s been ten years since Death And Vanilla formed in Malmö, Sweden, Marleen Nilsson and Anders Hansson and Magnus Bodin—fashioned by the city’s austere industrial past and flat pack present, all in the shadow of the Oresund Bridge that links their dreamworld to mainland Europe and a darker reality. Death And Vanilla at once sound like everything is possible; but nothing else at all. There is a flicker of hope for everyone.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | It’s been seven strange years since The Veils’ last studio album Total Depravity, and Finn Andrews has a new double LP to show for it. …And Out Of The Void Came Love is the result of this tumultuous period of injury, isolation and new life… “Time is a tempest tearing you apart / Time has a well-known distrust of the heart.”

Following the release of Total Depravity, Andrews released a solo album and began a worldwide tour. One night, while lashing out at a particularly intense moment on piano, he broke his wrist on stage. “It sounds wild and Jerry Lee Lewis-esque, but it was an absolute fucking nightmare,” Andrews says. He played on and finished the rest of the tour, but it wasn’t until he got it examined much later that he realized what a bad move that was. “The scaphoid bone in my wrist had died, which I didn’t know was possible. My sister said that at least it was a really ‘on brand’ injury for me.”

Finn’s convalescence meant a lengthy hiatus from touring, so he did what he does best and stayed at home and wrote songs. “I was in a cast and couldn’t use my right hand. I sang the melody lines, then recorded the right hand piano part, then the left hand part. It might have been an interesting, avant-garde process if it wasn’t also just profoundly annoying.”

Just when his hand had healed sufficiently for him to play again, The Veils found themselves in need of a new record label but Finn set about starting to make a new record regardless. Producer Tom Healy invited Finn to his small studio underneath the old Crystal Palace ballroom in Mount Eden, and they listened through the legions of songs he had amassed throughout the previous year.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Lemon Twigs release “Corner Of My Eye,” a poignant, ’60s-tinged rock song and their first single for the esteemed Brooklyn based independent label Captured Tracks. The release marks their first new music in two years, following the 2020 album Songs For The General Public. “Corner Of My Eye” is a warm, guitar-led ode to a new love interest, written and produced entirely by The Lemon Twigs.

On the release, The Lemon Twigs say, “We recorded this track winter of 2021 in our old rehearsal studio in Midtown, NYC. Apart from the vibraphone, the instrumental track was recorded live with Andres Valbuena on drums and Daryl Johns on upright bass. We laid down the vocals late that night once the traffic outside had died down. We’ve had the song for a while now, so we’re excited to share it with fans who may have heard it live over the years!” “Corner Of My Eye” is accompanied by a wistful video set in a cemetery, directed by Hilla Eden and Brian D’Addario.

The prodigiously-talented duo first emerged as The Lemon Twigs in 2016 with their debut LP Do Hollywood, whose showstopping melodies are mined from every era of rock quickly earned fans in Elton John, Questlove, and Jack Antonoff. Go To School, the ambitious 15-track coming-of-age opus, followed in 2018 and solidified the band’s reputation for building grand walls of sound around an audacious concept. 2020’s Songs For The General Public earned critical praise from NPR, Vice, Teen Vogue, Stereogum, and more.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Ahead of the release of his forthcoming solo album Turn The Car Around, due January 13th 2023 via Hot Fruit Recordings / Virgin Music, Gaz Coombes has released his latest new single “Long Live The Strange” and accompanying music video.

Recently Gaz announced a UK/EU headline tour for 2023 and also debuted music from the new album to a packed audience at London’s intimate Lafayette, a first taste of the masterfully written and recorded songs contained within, and a timely reminder of why Coombes remains one of the UK’s most enduring and gifted songwriters.

Gaz explains “This song was written as a celebration of the weird and wonderful and as a reminder to embrace that at all times.” The single stands as an ode to how music has the power to bring people together. He wrote it after taking his daughter Tiger to see Cavetown in Oxford in 2020. “The show had a big impact on me,” he recalls.

“It was what live performance is all about, connecting with an audience that consists of anybody and everybody who wants to be part of it, it’s fully inclusive and I found that quite powerful.” It was heartening to Coombes to discover, 30 years after he listened to Inspiral Carpets and Pixies and The Wedding Present and felt like he was part of a gang, there was still a place where the strange ones go. “It’s obviously strange in the nicest sense of the word,” he adds.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Today, Matthew Sweet is releasing his version of Kate Bush’s landmark 1978 single, “Wuthering Heights,” on all digital platforms. This is the first new recording from Sweet since his January 2021 album Catspaw, which was recorded pre-covid. Sweet, known for his collaborations with hotshot guitarists over the years, plays the searing guitar solo on the track as well as all the additional instruments save for the drums, played by longtime Sweet sideman Ric Menck.

“As the latest season of Stranger Things (Netflix) came and went this year, it was hard not to notice the resurgence of Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” in this covid recovering world of 2022.

I do love that song, but this got me thinking about a piano and vocal demo I once made of “Wuthering Heights,” the 1978 hit that first brought the 19 year-old Kate to the attention of the world of music. Like Kate herself, I have a strong amount of Irish blood in me, as my mother, like hers, was 100% Irish. In fact, I have dual citizenship between Ireland and America. Maybe this helps account for my always feeling a mystic kinship with Kate, despite our music being worlds apart in so many ways.

Regardless, my wife recently urged me to dig up that demo of mine, and although I couldn’t find a multitrack of it, I did locate a rough of the song I had bounced down many years ago. And so it is I came to overdub some guitars and other instruments and produce this single track for release in tribute to Kate. In this streaming world we live in, there is nothing to stop me from doing so.

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