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Alice in Chains’ acclaimed Jar of Flies is being reissued in celebration of its 30th anniversary. The EP made history as the first of its format to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in its first week of sales. Hit tracks like "No Excuses," "I Stay Away," and "Nutshell", extended the group's popularity.
The Fear of Standing Still is a record about growing up and growing older. I am not the wild partying 21 year old rock n roll front man that I used to be. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I've been sober for a decade now. It's a record that proves you don't have to always be going 100mph to find success in this business. It's a record that says "it's ok to take a minute to reflect on how far you've come, not worry about how much further you have to go". For the longest time I thought that if I took my foot off the gas for even a second, I would lose all the ground that I had gained. Fatherhood changed that. I've found a really beautiful balance between rock n roll and family and I wanted a record that showcased that freedom. In the studio, I've always strived to find the perfect balance between showcasing the songwriting and the fact that I have a really great rock n roll band. This record is the closest we've ever come to that intersection. These songs are big, anthemic rock songs but also stand on their own two feet when they are played on an acoustic guitar. We have always taken a lot of pride in that fact. Thematically, I cover a lot of ground on this record: nostalgia, death, regional identity, marriage, fatherhood, redemption, mental health. My records have always been a snapshot of the person I was when I wrote it and this record really finds the band and my songwriting both really hitting a stride. I feel extremely confident that this batch of songs will be in the set for years to come.
Charley Crockett will release his latest album The Man From Waco on September 9th via Son of Davy/Thirty Tigers. Crockett wrote or co-wrote all 14 songs on the album, and in many ways The Man From Waco is the purest distillation of his artistry to date. What started as a demo session with producer Bruce Robison at Robison’s studio The Bunker outside Austin, TX turned into the first album Crockett has ever made with his band The Blue Drifters backing him from start to finish. Mostly first takes with only a handful of overdubs, The Man From Waco finds Crockett refining his singular “Gulf & Western” sound which continues to captivate an ever-growing legion of fans.
“I just wanted an honest partnership: do it at your place, live to tape, everybody in the room,” Crockett says of the recording experience, and Robison was happy to accommodate. “The magic is in the performances on that tape. That’s what Bruce wanted to do, that’s what I wanted to do. When we were done, I said ‘these are masters, not demos.’”
There’s a loose narrative thread that ties the album together, but at the center of The Man From Waco is Crockett, who continues to trust his instincts and carve out his own singular space. Eschewing the ever-growing siren song of major labels and GRAMMY-winning producers, Crockett is forging ahead as a mostly DIY artist, calling his own shots and giving himself the space to strive for greatness on his own terms.
“Everybody was telling me: ‘go right, go right, go right,’” says Crockett. “I went left. I had to hold on to what has gotten me this far.”
The Man From Waco will be in a record store near you on September 9th on CD, Vinyl, and an indie record store exclusive edition featuring alternate album artwork.
The new album from Charley Crockett is perhaps even more potent proof of his literal heartbreak than the scar on his chest. After undergoing open heart surgery that saved his life, Charley says he considered calming down for “just a minute” but once he recovered he did just the opposite. He states boldly with one eyebrow raised, “I wanted to make an album that would change the entire conversation about country music.”
That album is Welcome to Hard Times , an aptly-named collection that perfectly fits these troubled days even though it was made just before the pandemic hit. The music was shaped by his heart issues and producer Mark Neill’s desire to make “a dark gothic country record.” Charley certainly knew how to deliver that. “I think you can hear that deep, dark sadness in this record,” he says, “but I think it’s the kind of darkness that will uplift others.”
For over 20 years, The Decemberists have been one of the most original, daring, and thrilling American rock bands. Their distinctive brand of hyperliterate folk-rock set them apart from the start, releasing nine full-length albums that are unbound by genre and highly ambitious. Now the beloved indie band is back with their first new album in six years, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again - not only the longest Decemberists album to date (and their first intentional, proper double-LP) but also their most empathetic and accessible, its 13 songs like semaphores of mutual recognition for our fraught times and faint hope. The first dozen songs are punchy, pithy gems all, reflections on mortality and loneliness, longing and cynicism, expectation and unease. The band animates them brilliantly, pushing out and pulling in at the perfect moments. John Moen practically dances beneath the jangle of opener “Burial Ground,” breathing the life into this song about spiraling toward the end. From the irrepressible “Oh No!" and guileless tenderness and absolute surrender of “All I Want Is You,” to the romantic ghost story that shimmers behind pedal steel in spite of the specter in "Long White Veil," these 12 songs alone would constitute a dazzling Decemberists album, rich with woe and love, anxiety and honesty. But a keening little choir and arid electric guitar invoke “Joan in the Garden,” the band’s first full-on prog escapade since The Crane Wife. Though rooted in doubt, much like the album it ends, “Joan in the Garden” ultimately lands as a celebration of music’s ability to convey valence and ambiguity, to frame an endlessly complicated story in instantly compelling terms.
This, songwriter Colin Meloy will tell you proudly, is the best Decemberists albums and perhaps the ultimate realization of 22 years of work. In many ways, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again feels like an aptly titled renewal for The Decemberists. The first full-length release on YABB Records, the band’s own label, after a run of nearly two decades with Capitol. As they were once, here are the Decemberists again, now an independent band empowered by singing stories that sound instantly familiar and convey some bit of hard-won wisdom.
Stranger Things, Vol. 1 (A Netflix Original Series Soundtrack) [Interdimensional Blue 2LP]
Vinyl: $30.16 Buy
FALLING IN REVERSE makes anthems that provoke and inspire. Unnervingly ahead of the pack and yet always decisively right on time, their mix of bombastic declarations and intimate confessions connect with diverse crowds worldwide.
Popular Monster, is their first full-length album in over seven years; an eleven song masterpiece, featuring five tracks that are bonafide smash hits, (three certified gold and one certified 2x platinum). Not ones to rest on their laurels, the six new tracks are incredible, and feature unexpected collaborations with some of the music industry hottest hitters.
With hit songs like “Popular Monster” topping the rock radio charts and earning them their first 2x platinum single, the band’s momentum only grows stronger, and their live performances are big reason why. From playing top festivals, to arena opening stints for Avenged Sevenfold, and Disturbed, to co-headlining with legends like Papa Roach, and now selling out headline shows in arenas across the country!
This album package will include a 24-page, 4 color booklet with lyrics and imagery from their YouTube Trending music videos, sized for the formats CD and LP.
if i could make it go quiet, the debut album from girl in red, is the musical distillation of Marie Ulven’s solitary conversations on the road: it’s an album brimming with the things we wish we could say to others, but tell ourselves instead. The album is girl in red in its purest, elevated form. She has never been braver, and the music follows suit, whether it’s collaborating with pop mastermind and Billie Eilish collaborator FINNEAS on “Serotonin,” a huge pop anthem that speaks to Ulven’s struggles with mental health, or flexing her instrumental chops with album closer “it would feel like this.” Betrayal, lust, longing, pulling herself out of a depressive spell -- nothing is off-limits on if i could make it go quiet.
“I really poured my heart into a lot of these lyrics, fully,” she says. “I just feel like I emptied myself in this album.”
Gene Harris And The Three Sounds
Live At The 'it Club' (Blue Note Classics Series)
Vinyl: $28.15 PREORDER
Vinyl: $25.13 Buy
Jason Isbell's songs are filled with ghosts. They're haunted by spirits both welcome and unwelcome, by the personal and historical legacies that make us who we are. Nowhere Is this more evident than on his 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern. Isbell offers confessions. reflections. and promises that contront and make communion with those who have come before and remain wIth us still. Its twelve tracks represent an extended meditation on the concept articulated by another celebrated southern storyteller, author William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It isn't even past."
After promising to release only five studio albums under his own name, Simpson marks the
beginning of a new era with Johnny Blue Skies and the release of Passage Du Desir. Out July
12 on his own independent label, High Top Mountain Records, the album includes
eight songs produced by Johnny Blue Skies and David Ferguson and recorded at Clement House
Recording Studio in Nashville, TN and Abbey Road Studios in London, England.