New Music Releases Thread



My first batch of mini-reviews for the week:

Yo la Tengo - I'm never sure whether the la/La is capitalised. cracking EP anyway. Covers aren't too obvious, quite mellow, not really much in the way of their wall of noise stuff.
Mary Lattimore - the psych/indie/folk world's go to harpist gets a little bit, subtly, shoegazey here thanks to Neil Halstead's production. It's lovely TBH!
Andy Bell - his official solo debut. It lies somewhere between Ride and his Glok alter-ego and is a very enjoyable 42 minutes or so.
Crippled Black Phoenix - bloomin' brilliant as ever! Quite why they're not massive, I'll never know. It rocks, it makes you think, it has hooks, it has noise, it's brilliantly overly self indulgent at points.
North Americans - kind of a companion to the Mary Lattimore album in that she supplies the harp here when harp is required. It's primarily instrumental ambient Americana. Very good!
The cover CD from the new Uncut - this has arrived quite early. The CD is very good. Some stuff I was familiar with (Drive-By Truckers, Fleet Foxes, North Americans) but some stuff I'm learning about and a lot that's familar. If the piano version of "The Crystal Lake" is indicative of the rest of the album then the piano based version of Grandaddy's "The Sophtware Slump" will be marvellous!
METZ - raucous, unrelenting post-hardcore, as per. Excellent if you're in the right mood.
Pillow Queens - I'm a couple of weeks behind with this. They're from Dublin and an all female four piece indie guitar band. Really, really very good. Ireland seems to be in a good place for guitar bands currently but, until this lot, they were primarily male. Their song "Gay Girls" is quite anthemic.
Linda Buckley - so The Guardian alternate their specialist music reviews on a Friday so they go roughly folk, world, jazz, contemporary (modern classical-ish). This was their folk album of the month so I've given it a listen. It's intriguing, it may well become bloody brilliant with repeated listens but it's very much in the contemporary category. Modern classical music that alludes to folk.

More to come.
 
Arkle said:
My first batch of mini-reviews for the week:

Yo la Tengo - I'm never sure whether the la/La is capitalised. cracking EP anyway. Covers aren't too obvious, quite mellow, not really much in the way of their wall of noise stuff.
Mary Lattimore - the psych/indie/folk world's go to harpist gets a little bit, subtly, shoegazey here thanks to Neil Halstead's production. It's lovely TBH!
Andy Bell - his official solo debut. It lies somewhere between Ride and his Glok alter-ego and is a very enjoyable 42 minutes or so.
Crippled Black Phoenix - bloomin' brilliant as ever! Quite why they're not massive, I'll never know. It rocks, it makes you think, it has hooks, it has noise, it's brilliantly overly self indulgent at points.
North Americans - kind of a companion to the Mary Lattimore album in that she supplies the harp here when harp is required. It's primarily instrumental ambient Americana. Very good!
The cover CD from the new Uncut - this has arrived quite early. The CD is very good. Some stuff I was familiar with (Drive-By Truckers, Fleet Foxes, North Americans) but some stuff I'm learning about and a lot that's familar. If the piano version of "The Crystal Lake" is indicative of the rest of the album then the piano based version of Grandaddy's "The Sophtware Slump" will be marvellous!
METZ - raucous, unrelenting post-hardcore, as per. Excellent if you're in the right mood.
Pillow Queens - I'm a couple of weeks behind with this. They're from Dublin and an all female four piece indie guitar band. Really, really very good. Ireland seems to be in a good place for guitar bands currently but, until this lot, they were primarily male. Their song "Gay Girls" is quite anthemic.
Linda Buckley - so The Guardian alternate their specialist music reviews on a Friday so they go roughly folk, world, jazz, contemporary (modern classical-ish). This was their folk album of the month so I've given it a listen. It's intriguing, it may well become bloody brilliant with repeated listens but it's very much in the contemporary category. Modern classical music that alludes to folk.

More to come.
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The second half of this:

Future Islands - I dare say that, if they were new to me, I'd think this was top notch. As it is, it's good but nowhere near as good as the career highlight so far that was Singles.
Emmy the Great - as @chunkylover53 says, this is surprisingly rather good. I'd had her down as the female Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly.
Josephine Davies - jazz, sax fronted. Pretty good. Titles suggest something mystical/spiritual.
Steve Arrington - he's a proper old school funk veteran and this is a proper old school funk album. Very good!
Garcia Peoples - they're becoming an excellent band. Some very good songs here that you'd loosely class as psych-rock. A host of influences here from the obvious (Grateful Dead, Flaming Lips) to the less obvious (Jethro Tull)
Ustad Saami - Sufi spiritual music. Fascinating, if somewhat nice for this thread. Well worth investigating if you're curious.

Album of the week: probably Crippled Black Phoenix, although Pillow Queens, Mary Lattimore, North Americans and Garcia Peoples go close.
 
chunkylover53 said:
Disagree

Taylor Swift is as mainstream as they come
The National
Arcade Fire
Bon Iver

all have been all over the US election
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Maybe. I like Swiftie's album.
I was on about lyrical content though and I wouldn't count Bob Igor or The National as mainstream artists anyway. Most normal people won't have heard of them but everyone knows Jon.
 
Arkle said:
Future Islands - I dare say that, if they were new to me, I'd think this was top notch. As it is, it's good but nowhere near as good as the career highlight so far that was Singles.
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That’s a spot on analysis. I like the record as I really love what they do. However, they’ve made this record before on a good few occasions just made it better.
 
Arkle said:
Pillow Queens - I'm a couple of weeks behind with this. They're from Dublin and an all female four piece indie guitar band. Really, really very good. Ireland seems to be in a good place for guitar bands currently but, until this lot, they were primarily male. Their song "Gay Girls" is quite anthemic.
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Rather enjoying this. Obvious comparisons but some of the tracks are reminiscent of Catalonia along with Florence and the Machine.
 
There are new releases this week from Juicy J, Don't Know How But They Found Me, Autechre, Gord Downie (posthumous), HEALTH, Jennifer Castle, Kevin Morby, Osees (seemingly their second in not long ), Pluralone, Sam Robets, Sturgill Simpson (a bluegrass album), The Struts, Evie Sands, Quintron & Miss Pussycat, The Phoenix Foundation, Mav Karlo, Hawkwind Light Orchestra, Cordovas, the Blue Note reimagined compilation, Beabadoobee, Steep Canyon Rangers, Matt Berninger and Catherine Anne Davies & Bernard Butler.
 
Arkle said:
There are new releases this week from Juicy J, Don't Know How But They Found Me, Autechre, Gord Downie (posthumous), HEALTH, Jennifer Castle, Kevin Morby, Osees (seemingly their second in not long ), Pluralone, Sam Robets, Sturgill Simpson (a bluegrass album), The Struts, Evie Sands, Quintron & Miss Pussycat, The Phoenix Foundation, Mav Karlo, Hawkwind Light Orchestra, Cordovas, the Blue Note reimagined compilation, Beabadoobee, Steep Canyon Rangers, Matt Berninger and Catherine Anne Davies & Bernard Butler.
Click to expand...
Not a bad list there for the last day of my annual leave. Gord Downie, Matt Berninger, Davies/Butler, Kevin Morby and Sturgill Simpson for me I think.
 

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