Golden Years is the latest record from Whigs frontman, Parker Gispert. Golden Years is the follow up release to 2018’s critically acclaimed, Sunlight Tonight. Much like Sunlight Tonight, Golden Years finds Gispert embracing introspective, personal lyrics that also delve into the current social divide while at the same time writing lyrics meant to encourage the listener to get up, have fun and enjoy rock and roll. Musically, the nine-song effort finds Gispert embracing his roots with the familiar sound of the raw and jangly southern-garage rave-ups that his band, The Whigs came to be known for. Golden Years was recorded at Haptown Studios in Nashville, TN with producer Roger Moutenot (Lambchop, Yo La Tengo, Tennis) at the helm.

Recorded live on September 15, 1981, Live At Gilley's captures Kris Kristofferson at a time in his career where he and his band were firing on all cylinders. Kristofferson was with a full band out of the road that featured Stephen Bruton, Donnie Fritts and Billy Swan. On this night, the band stopped by Gilley's Honkytonk in Pasadena, Texas to deliver a one in a lifetime performance featuring the hits, "Me And Bobby McGee", "The Pilgrim" and "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down."

Megadeth’s explosive new album features twelve new songs from the titans of thrash metal! Produced by Dave Mustaine and Chris Rakestraw, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed, Grammy® award-winning album Dystopia will melt Megadeth fans’ minds worldwide with songs like “We’ll Be Back,” the new radio hit “Soldier On!” and “Night Stalkers” – the latter of which features icon Ice-T. Indie Exclusive CD includes 3 exclusive stickers.

As you can probably glean from the title, Bret McKenzie-whom you know from such modern musical treasures as comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, the Muppets movie reboots and other ace kid-film soundtracks, Lord of the Rings fan blogs, guest songs for The Simpsons, cycling around the streets in his native New Zealand, and more- has a new solo record coming out filled with songs that ARE NOT COMEDY SONGS! There. Doesn't that feel better? Sometimes it helps just to get it out in the open. So, yeah, Bret's a ridiculously funny dude, and you might even call him one of the best comedy songwriters in the biz. (In Bret's own words, there are fewer than a dozen people in the world writing comedy songs today, but who's counting?) He's had smash hits, he's won major awards, he's the better-dressed part of his duo... he's got a good thing going! So, what gives with this whole "songs without jokes" solo stuff, man? The Conchords landed McKenzie and Jemaine Clement a hit HBO TV show, a BBC Radio series, chart-topping records, world tours, a Best Comedy Album Grammy, and a 2018 "reunion" special. McKenzie transitioned to Hollywood, writing songs for 2011's The Muppets (winning a Best Original Song Oscar for "Man or Muppet"), 2014's Muppets Most Wanted, and films in the Pirates! And Dora canons. While he enjoyed and excelled at the work, he wondered where his songs might go if set free of all that plot-bound specificity. And so, while in Los Angeles a few years back, recording movie music with a crack assemblage of legendary session musicians, McKenzie started playing around with a tune or two he had written simply as songs-songs without any external direction, songs without plot-pushing concerns, songs without jokes. The results reveal McKenzie's talents on multiple instruments (he's a veteran of several non-comedy bands in New Zealand back in the day, most notably the reggae-based fusion group The Black Seeds), and his affinity for wry, literate artists like Harry Nilsson, Steely Dan, Randy Newman and Dire Straits. Written mostly during the quieter moments of 2019, with his life split between work in Los Angeles and his family in Wellington, the songs of Songs focus on themes of escape, the perpetual search for peace, and navigating a life being pulled in multiple directions at once. There are also simple meditations on driving through a city, and the weather. McKenzie was inspired by the path icons like Newman and Nilsson had paved, where a silly or playful number could be sandwiched directly between a song about heartbreak or an earnest redemption and a scathing satire or character commentary. He threw a bit of everything into the mix, recording ideas on his phone at home in New Zealand after the kids had gone to sleep. Back in LA, he fine-tuned the songs with his longtime producer and collaborator, Mickey Petralia, and longtime film collaborator Chris Caswell created charts for that same ensemble of session players with whom they'd recorded so many pieces for film. The majority of songs were then recorded at United Studio in Los Angeles in just a few takes. While the album may be free of traditional punch lines, it doesn't lack a sense of humor. It showcases a new stage of McKenzie's career, to be sure, but one that isn't so far removed from his past work and true artistic self. Like Jim Henson before him, who made a career of blending the silly with the sincere and the playful with the profound, McKenzie also aims to connect rainbows to the ridiculous.

Drift, their fifth studio album sees PIANOS BECOME THE TEETH taking another sonic step forward to craft a musical statement that truly transcends genres.

For the recording of Drift, the band took it back to basics, starting at a family-owned cabin in the woods of Virginia, that they transformed into an analog recording studio. The band lived together, recorded together and ate dinners together where they would listen to the day’s recordings, talk about them and pull them apart and reworking them, creating what may be their finest album to date.

Per front man Kyle Durfey, “Something that we really took away from this experience was just the connection we had together. We produced the record ourselves with our longtime friend/collaborator/engineer Kevin Bernsten who recorded our first two records.” The recordings that the band created using innovative recording techniques, recording 100% analog are sonically transportive and certain to mystify and inspire generations of recording artists. All the echoes were made with old echoplexes and tape delay, which made for a really organic record. With Bersten’s help the band was able to take some of the weirder and more ambitious ideas they had and turned them into reality making this a fantastic album for immersive headphone listening.

As a singer, songwriter, and author whose incendiary music has soundtracked the Netflix show Sex Education, Ezra Furman has for years woven together stories of queer discontent and unlikely, fragile intimacies. She has a knack for zeroing in on the light that sparks when struggling people find each other and ease each other's course. All of Us Flames widens that focus to a communal scope, painting transformative connections among people who unsettle the stories power tells to sustain itself. Produced by John Congleton in L.A., All of Us Flames unleashes Furman's songwriting in an open, vivid sound world whose boldness heightens the music's urgency. The record arrives as the third installment in a trilogy of albums, beginning with 2018's Springsteen-inflected road saga Transangelic Exodus and continuing with the punk rock fury of 2019's Twelve Nudes. "This is a first person plural album," Furman says. "It's a queer album for the stage of life when you start to understand that you are not a lone wolf, but depend on finding your family, your people, how you work as part of a larger whole. I wanted to make songs for use by threatened communities, and particularly the ones I belong to: trans people and Jews."She wrote much of Flames during the early months of the pandemic. "I had no time alone anymore; my house was super crowded," she says. She drove to seek solitude, parked in arbitrary quiet spots around Massachusetts, and began to write. The songs that came flowed toward ideas of communality and networks of care, systems of survival cultivated by necessity among people who have been historically deprived of them

2022 release, the eighth studio album by the California reggae-influenced band. Features the single "Heavy Water," featuring Grammy-nominated band Common Kings.

Brotherkenzie is the solo output from Minneapolis producer and songwriter Nathan Stocker – and, through the project, lives in the shadows, operating on the outskirts of the music industry, something he’s grown increasingly less interested in as he ages. Brotherkenzie’s music is a chasm carved from honesty and earnestness, the result teetering between catchiness and pop, but with sharp edges.

On the cover of Nathan, Stocker is about to be enveloped by an enormous black box in a deadened Minnesotan sprawl, framed by the eeriness of placid blue skies, the suggestion of a cold wind. It’s like a snapshot of calm caught in a moment before something bad happens, but you don’t know quite what that bad is yet. The looming black mass is a physical manifestation of narcissism – and Nathan is an exhaustive exploration of that. It’s an artifact of what happens when you listen to, and obey, your demons. A final look-a-round at the dirt you’ve known your whole life before descending to the eternal what-have-you.

The record is a re-introduction to Stocker’s solo output as brotherkenzie; his last release, 2020’s BIG WHAT closed the first chapter of the project, while Nathan explores the afterlife of a creative death. The 12 songs collected here are intended to signify a new brotherkenzie era: one embracing sex and heathen ideals. Even the title vies for blasphemy; Stocker’s attempt to divorce his first name from its loaded religious meaning and instead take ownership of it. It’d be easy to say it’s in response to Stocker’s deeply religious upbringing, but that’s too simple – instead, it’s an exercise in “what if’s?,” leaning into the dark side, interested in exploring what it means to be satanic without ever mentioning a devil – or any type of God, or religion – by name. Instead, Stocker wonders what happens when you die and are reborn as a demon. When you operate without goodness in mind. Is that a mode for something true? Even if it’s evil?

 

Stocker wrote these songs from March to November of 2020. It was isolating in the usual ways for that time, of course, but he was also juggling a number of relationships that were unhealthy for a myriad of reasons. He was stuck in a cycle, unable to escape, and every time he sat down the self-loathing and demons came out. Here he examines that self-destructive tenderness, observant of the way he was then but not fraught over it. Instead, he’s like a documentarian of trying times; of what it feels like to grow a new epidermis instead.

Twisting and contorting the English language to fit the meter and his every whim, Lupe Fiasco uses his superb lyrical skill to process the changing world in which he lives. Drawing connections between the concrete and spiritual in his hometown of Chicago, Lupe announces DRILL MUSIC IN ZION, his next album. The product of a burst of thoughtful spontaneity, Lupe created the new album over a short period, diving into a folder of beats sent by his longtime producer Soundtrakk and emerging with a fully-realized album in just three days. “Soundtrakk is the swordmaker, I’m the samurai," says Lupe. "He’s the mechanic, and I’m the driver.” Armed with Soundtrakk's soulful sounds, Lupe creates a focused statement that reflects on the past and paves a way forward, preaching strength through mindfulness and self-sustaining community. DRILL MUSIC IN ZION arrives digitally on June 24th via 1st & 15th/Thirty Tigers. The physical release is set for August 26 (CD, Black Vinyl, and Indie-retail exclusive blue vinyl).

His first new album since 2018's DROGAS WAVE, DRILL MUSIC IN ZION marks the start of another chapter in Lupe's illustrious career. The proud Chicago native has already had a busy 2022, marked with sold out shows, new music, and much more. Lupe recently closed out his "Food & Liquor Tour," a series of performances in which he plays his debut album in full. He paid tribute to his hometown in the reflective, self-produced "100 Chicagos," and dug into the archives to share "Hustlaz," a previously-unreleased song originally recorded before the release of the now-classic debut album Food & Liquor. Beyond music, Lupe continues to focus on the community organizations he founded, including We Are M.U.R.A.L, The Neighborhood Start-Up Fund, Society of Spoken Art, and his cross-cultural content venture, Studio SV.

A special collection of cover songs curated and performed by GRAMMY®-nominated artist Valerie June. Under Cover features singular interpretations of some of her favorite songs including Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You,” Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed,” Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon,” and more.

This album was created in Los Angeles and London and is influenced by the increasing uncertainty and instability in the world. A pandemic, new wars in Europe, massive protests & riots, an attempted insurrection, Western democracy wavering, rising authoritarianism, wildfires and natural disasters and the destabilisation of the global order all informed Will Of The People. It has been a worrying and scary time for all of us as the Western empire and the natural world, which have cradled us for so long are genuinely threatened. This album is a personal navigation through those fears and preparation for what comes next. - Matt Bellamy

PRE PLEASURE, the beautiful new full-length album from Australian native Julia Jacklin, finds the musician at her absolute peak, delivering ten of the most personal, raw, and devastating songs of her career. Featuring stand-outs such as "Lydia Wears A Cross," "Love, Try Not To Let Go," and the driving "I Was Neon," the album is a clear portrayal of Jacklin's captivating strength as a lyricist, and her undeniable talents as one of the most gifted songwriters of the decade.

Steve Earle has been creating intimate and personal music for well over four decades now. His songwriting has wound itself along a path from Texas to Tennessee and his education came in the form of learning from the best. 2009’s Grammy-nominated record, TOWNES, was a tribute to his dear friend and mentor, Townes Van Zandt. Ten years later Earle released, GUY. An album concentrated on paying homage to the late Guy Clark and the indelible friendship that they had formed in stories told through song. 2022 welcomes the release of JERRY JEFF. A 10-song collection of songs written by the gypsy songman, Jerry Jeff Walker. Featuring hits like, “Mr. Bojangles” and “Gettin’ By”, Earle & The Dukes honor the late Texan by amplifying the concept and sound of each song with a full-band recording. 

Following the commercial success of the 2021 album Unf*ckwitable and an overall banner year for the Detroit rapper, Babyface Ray comes with the aptly titled and highly anticipated album, FACE, which sees him stake his claim as "The Face of the City." Production on the twenty-track album is largely handled by 808 Mafia, DJ Esco and others, and features appearances from Icewear Vezzo, Yung Lean, Pusha T, G Herbo, Wiz Khalifa, 42 Dugg & Landstrip Chip. With an already impressive list of cosigns from artists such as Future and Tyler, The Creator, Babyface Ray continues his all-out assault to put Motor City on the map and isn't taking his foot off the gas anytime soon.

Bleed Out is all pent-up energy and explosion, executed by a bunch of friends who were mainly happy to be in a room together making loud noises. In January 2021, just weeks after Darnielle had started writing, his bandmates Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster joined him at a studio in the woods near his home in Chapel Hill. Everything was finished inside a week.

Physical Thrills, Silversun Pickups’ sixth studio album and the follow-up to 2019’s Widow’s Weeds, is produced by Butch Vig (Nirvana, Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Foo Fighters) and mixed by Billy Bush. Physical Thrills spans through an eclectic mix of distorted synths, pop-tinged danceable tunes, pared-down ballads, and a collection of “dream shanties” melodies that are all interconnected with each other into a cohesive body of work. Features “Scared Together” and “Alone on a Hill.”

2022 release, the ninth album from the Las Vegas-based metal band. Five Finger Death Punch has amassed over 8 billion streams and 3 billion video views to date and have sold over one million tickets between 2018 and 2020 alone. Afterlife features the singles 'Welcome to the Circus', 'IOU', and the title track.

Two CDs. 2022 marks the 25th year since US singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters first set foot on a UK stage and she is celebrating the anniversary in style with the release of a live album recorded during a 2019 UK tour with her band and an all-female Scottish string quartet. The Show: Live from the UK is a beautifully presented set featuring a hardback cover and a collection of evocative live photographs documenting the concerts at which the recordings took place. CD 1 captures 10 tracks Gretchen and her band performed with the string quartet and CD 2 highlights 8 tracks from Gretchen and her band.

The Player's Club, a division of Mascot Label Group, is proud to announce the debut solo album from Toto co-founder, David Paich, entitled, 'Forgotten Toys'- available everywhere August 19th, 2022. If you've listened to music in the last 50 years, you were most likely hearing David Paich. Boz Scaggs, Mötley Crüe, Michael Jackson, Steely Dan, Miles Davis, Dolly Parton, Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand, Elton John, and countless iconic artists wrote some of their best work alongside David Paich. As a six-time Grammyr Award Winner, Paich has contributed to over 2,000 albums, shaping the sound of popular music as a songwriter, performer, producer, arranger, vocalist and primary composer of the seminal band TOTO. With TOTO, Paich has released 17 albums, sold over 40 million records and garnered over 3 billion streams worldwide. Paich wrote or co-wrote TOTO's biggest hits, "Hold the Line", "Rosanna" and "Africa". "Forgotten Toys is made up of odds and ends of tunes that I've carried in my head for years," David states. "It seemed like it was time to put something together. Some of these really are forgotten toys. It had been awhile since I've been in my studio and I found myself listening to these little pieces continuously. For as much as it may be a "solo" album, Paich couldn't help but invite a few friends to play. Joined by Joseph Williams as co-producer and sometimes co-vocalist, he welcomed everyone from Toto's Steve Lukather to Brian Eno, Michael McDonald, Ray Parker Jr., Don Felder, and Steve Jordan of The Rolling Stones. For David, music is much more than the soundtrack of his life. As one of it's architects, it is his life.

On Heartmind, Cass McCombs enters the double-digit-album phase of his career, a quantitatively rarified place for any songwriter; rarer still, though, is the fact that he does not yet seem to have settled into a qualitative sound or pattern, of singing the same thought twice (or perhaps even once). Songs like “Karaoke” are a god-level burst of power-pop perfection, as fetching as anything Cass has ever cut. The springy staccato guitar, the vaporized electric keys, the melody seemingly born for singing or clapping or dancing along: Cass triangulates a perch of his very own out among The Go-Betweens, The dB’s, and The Cure, and vibrates there, a beacon. And then, of course, there is the song’s playful if painful lyrical conceit—the lover who is making all the sacred motions of commitment but whose feelings may be no more deep or real than someone simply reading the lyrics for “Vision of Love” or “Stand by Your Man” from some crowded bar’s TV screen.

There are, at least, some basic facts to share about Heartmind, logistical evidence that may in turn shape your own questions: Cass recorded these songs in multiple sessions on both coasts, in Brooklyn and Burbank. The great Shahzad Ismaily not only cut the staggering “Unproud Warrior” and four others here but also played lots of bass. Buddy Ross tracked “New Earth,” a paean of post-humanity renewal with several sharp wisecracks. Ariel Rechtshaid—now a dozen years into his collaboration with Cass, which began with 2009’s Catacombs—captured Cass’ scintillating guitars on “Belong to Heaven,” a thoughtful consideration of what we all lose when we lose an old friend to the inevitable end. The steadfast Rob Schnapf (who previously produced McCombs’ ANTI- debut, Mangy Love) mixed and merged it all. Wynonna Judd (yes, that one) offers harmonies, while her beau Cactus Moser provides some lap steel. Joe Russo, Kassa Overall, Danielle Haim, Nestor Gomez are featured on the album, too.

Since first forming in 2014, New York trio THICK have triumphed at turning the harshest truths into wildly exhilarating punk songs. On their second album Happy Now, vocalist/guitarist Nikki Sisti, vocalist/bassist Kate Black, and vocalist/drummer Shari Page deliver their most complex and confessional work yet, exploring everything from self-sabotage and insecurity to victim-blaming and destructive relationships. Raw, irreverent, and brutally honest, Happy Now ultimately offers both joyful catharsis and much-needed instruction for living well in turbulent times. 

The follow-up to 5 Years Behind (a 2020 release praised by Under the Rader as a “dazzling debut album...laced with anger, humor, killer guitar riffs, and soaring punk melodies”), Happy Now finds THICK working again with producer Joel Hamilton (Iggy Pop, Juiceboxxx) and recording at Studio G Brooklyn. In a profound evolution of their previous work, the 11-track album encompasses sharper arrangements and stickier hooks and a more explosive energy—an effect often achieved through the sheer force of their three voices singing in unstoppable unison.

Digitally remastered edition of this 1976 album by legendary singer/songwriter Johnathan Richman and his band the Modern Lovers.

'Fairy Rust', the new album from Wombo contemplates the spaces in-between, a meeting of the physicality of the land with the fluidity of the imagination, to uncanny effect. Across twelve tracks, sharpened guitar work, distorted freakouts and downtempo musings weave together a tapestry of sound that's both intoxicating and effortless. Where one minute it's all deadpan post-punk energy, and the next Stereolab on a mountain top. The music functions as their own localized language that feels uniquely out-of-body. Conceived over the course of the last two years, the record is steeped in its own time warp of escapism, and influenced by fairy tales like the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson that blend surreal situations with the mundane. Flirting with prog, pop and effervescent post-punk, Wombo's forward-thinking approach set them apart as one of the most exciting up-and-coming bands right now. Mixed by Dave Vettraino (Dehd, Deeper, Lala Lala) & Mastered by Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Snail Mail, Pottery).

The 8th studio album from Hot Chip, Freakout/Release is another dizzying high in a multi-decade career that's seen Hot Chip continuing to innovate and develop a rich, resonant songcraft. And while they continue to operate at peak form, the album also feels like a new chapter for the group - a collection of flesh-and-blood songs that finds the band reaching into the darkness to emerge as a true creative unit, their gazes fixed positively on the future ahead.

Alabama's native son, Early James, returns with his sophomore album, Strange Time To Be Alive. The lyrical wordsmith conjures the ghosts of great southern gothic writers from Eudora Welty to William Faulkner, while channeling the haunted spirits of Tom Waits and Townes Van Zandt. The album evokes a timeless amalgam of forsaken blues, wistful folk, and Tin Pan Alley crooning, anchored by the singer’s unmistakable voice that sways from gravel-filled shouts to pained, forlorn whispers.

VIVA LAS VENGEANCE shows a change in process for frontman/songwriter Brendon Urie, having cut everything live to tape in Los Angeles alongside his friends and production partners, Jake Sinclair and Mike Viola. The cinematic musical journey is about the fine line between taking advantage of your youth, seizing the day and burning out. The songs take an introspective look into his relationship with his decade plus career including growing up in Las Vegas, love, and fame.

New Career-Spanning Compilations Celebrate The Icon’s Record 50 #1 Club Hits Across Four Decades

2022 release from the enigmatic world music collective. Heilung comment in their own words: "Drif means "gathering". A throng of people, a horde, a crowd, a pack. In symbiosis with the album title, Drif consists of a flock, a collection, a gathering, a collage of songs, that much like little flames were seeking towards each other, to join, to bond, to create, and be greater together. This album has very clearly dictated it's own path. Our attempts to tame it was repeatedly fruitless and once we came to this realization, the creative flow surged forward with immense force. So much so that sometimes it felt like the songs wrote themselves. All the songs on Drif have their own stories. They have each their place and sense of belonging, with inspiration not only from Northern Europe, but from the ancient great civilizations."

Chaos in Bloom, arriving August 12th, 2022 via Warner Records. Marking the first album of their career to be produced by frontman John Rzeznik, the record finds the band at the top of their game and continuing to constantly evolve just as they have for nearly four decades together. Consisting of 10 tracks, Chaos in Bloom is an album of biting sarcasm, stadium-ready choruses, and the type of spear-sharp songwriting that’s led them to becoming one of the most influential alternative rock groups of all time.

While Chaos in Bloom isn’t necessarily an album borne out by the pandemic, many of the tracks reflect on all of the things in daily life that became amplified while everyone was isolated from one another and sequestered at home. “Chaos in Bloom reminded us how special this whole thing is and to cherish the relationships that we have together,” says Rzeznik about the album. “Where we’ve been, and where we’re going.” Oscillating from personal reflections on the state of the world to societal commentaries, the songs on the album grapple with observations about our dystopian modernity while searching for optimism and pushing for a more empathetic world. “I’ve been trying to have a relationship with the bigger picture,” adds bassist and songwriter Robby Takac, “and refining happiness and what it means from that perspective.”

To record the album, Rzeznik and Takac retreated to Dreamland Studios just outside Woodstock, New York during the pandemic. An environment as remote as it is rich with historic rock music roots, the location proved to be the perfect setting for clearing the noise and creating such a record, which carries a true live quality that the band captured by blending vintage instruments and gear with new-age recording processes and techniques.

2022 release. Cheat Codes is Danger Mouse's first hip-hop album in seventeen years - since his 2005 DangerDOOM collaboration with the late, great MF DOOM - and Black Thought's only full length collaboration beyond his pioneering music in The Roots. On "No Gold Teeth," Danger Mouse's soulful, freewheeling production serves as the perfect backdrop to Black Thought's metronomic, pin-sharp and chorus-free lyrical deluge. The result is a dizzying, thrilling opening single from two of contemporary music's most respected artists. The natural chemistry between Brian (Danger Mouse) and Tariq (Black Thought) comes through in the ease with which the artist and listener move through this album. Moreover, it's an album untethered to any genre, era or trend - uncategorizeable and timeless. It is the sound of the pair observing their own culture and asking questions they still may not have the answers to.

Smash cut to Kiwi Jr.'s third album, Chopper, overseen by trusted pilot Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs) on storied Sub Pop Records. Turning nocturnal with necks mock turtle, our Local Kiwi Jr. Takes neon flight off the digital cliff - like The Monkees starring in Blade Runner; like Michael Mann directs Encino Man. Ten songs with synth shimmer, zen gongs with yard strimmer. The signs along the highway read "LESS BAR, MORE NOIR AHEAD." Ah, those late summer, Joe Strummer, Home on the Range Rover Blues. There's a melancholy to all forms of flight, and the view out the Chopper is as hazy as it gets: mission-oriented, both stealth and self-realized. This album is decidedly (yet almost secretly) anti-patio-sunscreen-Beach Boys bachelor cruise sing-a-long. Sure, these songs let a little light through the blinds, but they sting insomnia, corrupt mayors, Kennedy Curses, sex tapes, and deer rifles. Chopper is the bird's eye view of the big event - a real nighttime character of oil stain, film grain, search light, night flight. It is muscular and fragile; loud yet quiet: both an observer and somehow the observed spectacle itself. What was slack in the slacker phase, got tauter, with lacquer glaze. Slick gloss, rightened wrongs; murdered boss, promoted pawns. With Boeckner transmitting high-voltage shocks upon every reach for a familiar instrument, Kiwi Jr. #expands the palette with string machine song, synthesizered oblong, and Dentyne Classic Menthol vocals from area soprano Dorothea Paas (US Girls, Badge Epoch Ensemble) like the missing piece all along. Kiwi Jr. #brings the Chopper to a new space, demilitarizing the technology just like flasks, aviators, and cargo shorts. Graceful in the air above, but when the Chopper lands, there's chaos on the ground. Kiwi Jr. #shout, "Look Out!" When it gets close, it'll blow the hat right off of your head.Hold onto your hats, Babies.Kiwi Jr. #is Jeremy Gaudet vocals and guitar, Brian Murphy guitar, Mike Walker bass, Brohan Moore drums, and everybody played a little bit of keyboard.

Collective Soul's long-awaited 2022 album release VIBRATING sends the band's artistic spirit into the next stratosphere. All ten songs that comprise VIBRATING positively pulsate with the boundless energy that has been Collective Soul's aural calling card for going on three full decades. From the propulsively gnarly kiss-off of "Cut the Cord" to the reflective midtempo jangle of "Take" to the heart-wrenching reality check of "Rule No. 1" - replete with a soaring string section, no less! - to the choir-backed emotional crossroads of "Where Do I Go," VIBRATING contains 42 minutes of irrefutable sonic evidence of a band wholly uninterested in sitting still. "I think we're on a roll," observes Ed Roland, Collective Soul's frontman and chief songwriter. "We're not afraid to stretch the boundaries - but we do know how to stay in our lane when we need to. Sometimes, though, we just have to go faster." The many good vibrations embedded within the deep-rooted grooves of VIBRATING await your endless enjoyment. -Mike Mettler, official Soulographer

Forgiveness is the brand new full-length Girlpool album, which finds the duo embracing weirdo-pop decadence without sacrificing the poetic curi- osity that has always made their music so absorbing. Just like they did for What Chaos Is Imaginary, Harmony and Avery each wrote their Forgiveness songs separately, then came together to decide how to present them in a style that felt representative of what excites and inspires them now. This time, the process resulted in their slickest and most ambitious music to date, filled with idiosyncratic and provocative gestures that simultaneously support and complicate the emotionally intricate material. With its unique blend of introspective earworms and surreal party music, Forgiveness reaches beyond the loosely sketched parameters of “indie rock,” challeng- ing any preconceived notions of what a Girlpool album can or should be. “Faultline” the albums first single, is an effective introduction to the world of Forgiveness; the notion of straddling a fault line feels somewhat indicative of Forgiveness on the whole. These songs investigate the always-shifting boundaries between a number of elementally human concepts: pain and pleasure, sex and love, reality and delusion, insecurity and confidence, grief and growth.To support their vision of a sound at the intersection of Holly- wood futurism and post-grunge sincerity, Girlpool enlisted help from pro- ducer Yves Rothman (Yves Tumor, Miya Folick).

Following his triumphant performances at the 2022 Coachella Music and Arts Festival, Danny Elfman delivers Bigger.Messier., an ambitious double-album collection of remixed and reimagined tracks from his highly acclaimed Big Mess album. This sprawling, 23 track collection (available on 2 LP or 2 CD) features tracks reworked by some of the most groundbreaking and subversive artists around today. Bigger.Messier. views the Grammy and Emmy Award-winning composers songs through the lens of luminaries from diverse sides of the music business, including Trent Reznor, Iggy Pop, Squarepusher, and Ghostemane. Elfman once again has achieved a kind of artistic liberation on the record that had been eluding him for decades, and connecting him to brand new audience. Born and raised in southern California, Elfman began his career as part of a surrealist, avant-garde musical theater troupe known as The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo. The group would eventually morph into the critically acclaimed rock band Oingo Boingo, whose high-energy performances and genre-bending sound garnered them a fanatically devoted cult following in the 1980s and ’90s. Among the group’s early fans was fledgling director Tim Burton and Paul Reubens (aka Pee-wee Herman), who enlisted Elfman to score their first feature film, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The collaboration would prove to be the start of a long and fruitful partnership for Elfman and Burton, with Elfman going on to score a string of iconic Burton features like Batman, Beetlejuice, Big Fish, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. To date, Elfman has scored more than 100 films.