With Bending The Golden Hour, the third album from Memphis, Tennessee's Aquarian Blood, husband and wife team J.B. Horrell (Ex-Cult) and Laurel Horrell (formerly of the Nots) continue the gorgeously stripped-down and atmospheric direction set on their critically acclaimed previous effort A Love That Leads to War. While Aquarian Blood has roots as a chaotic punk rock six-piece, the band shifted gears after two raucous cassette-only releases on ZAP Cassettes, a pair of seven-inches, and 2017's Last Nite In Paradise, released on Goner Records. After drummer Bill Curry broke his arm, the Horrells redefined Aquarian Blood, reemerging in early 2018 as the more intimate, mostly acoustic balladeers behind the staccato, fever dream sound of A Love That Leads to War. Like it's immediate predecessor, Bending The Golden Hour was recorded at the Horrells' Midtown Memphis home. The band turned over forty-three tracks to Goner co-owner Zac Ives, who handpicked seventeen songs for the album. The final result is shimmering and hopeful; as beautiful and sparse as a Rockwell Kent snowscape.

Writhing Squares - the Philadelphia duo of Kevin Nickles (sax, flute, synth) & Daniel Provenzano (bass, vocals) - have been refining the nuts & bolts of their sound over their previous two albums. Their latest (and second for Trouble In Mind), "Chart For The Solution" is a double album chock full what makes them tick; heady, progressive, psychedelic space-rock-cum-minimal synth slop, punctuated by MacKay/Chance-style blasts of brass & woodwinds that definitely scratch an itch. Over the course of "Chart For The Solution"s four sides, Nickles & Provenzano utilize the extended format to stretch out & settle into a groove all their own. From the relentless synth pulse of opener "Rogue Moon", thru the aggro-throb of "Geisterwaltz" & four-on-the-floor scree of "Ganymede", The Squares have no mercy for your weary ears. After a brief, (slightly) mellow respite thru three tunes ("The Abyss Is Never Brighter"/"A Chorus of Electrons"/"The Library"), the band ratchets up the intensity with the cacophonous clatter of "NFU" (featuring Philly legend "Harmonica" Dan Balcer RIPPING thru runs on his harp) leading right into the album's centerpiece; all of Side Three's "The Pillar", a near-nineteen minute epic suite that launches the listener straight into the maw of a black hole & thru the other side. Side Four closes out "Chart For The Solution" starting with the slinky stomp of "North Side of The Sky" into "Resurrect Dead On Planet Whatever"s unsettling, cosmic-funeral dirge. Fittingly, "Epilogue" closes out the album, with Nickles' sax dive bombing around Provenzano's bass throb like an alien interpretation of "Funhouse"s howling anarchy,augmented by live drums by John Schoemaker & organ by Alex Ward. Recorded by the band themselves & utilizing recordings made from 2015 all the way thru earlier this year, "Chart For The Solution" really is a ZONE, & the perfect auditory cleanser to scrub away the stain of the previous year.

On limited Bright Blue vinyl. As a band who has been around for thirteen years and toured all corners of the world, there comes a point when the veil of mystique must be fully lifted. Up until now, experimental rockers SUUNS have revelled in mystery like a silhouette disappearing into the mist, releasing albums that rest comfortably in ambiguity, detachment and innuendo. But lately, the band appears to be more comfortable coming clean with their own inner workings. That newfound sense of ease is undeniable on SUUNS' fifth full-length album The Witness - their first for Joyful Noise Recordings. Self-recorded and self-produced over the majority of 2020 - a year of strife, solitude and reflection -The Witness finds the band holding a magnifying glass over their own default state of playing and performing. It's a swift departure from previous album Felt, which harvested haphazard ideas in their embryonic, demoed versions, as if letting loose a glorious fireworks display into the heavens. The Witness, meanwhile, pours SUUNS' music into a more intricate mold, compelling the band to embrace the vibrancy of their live performances and urging vocalist Ben Shemie to approach his lyricism with unabashed directness. "There's something interesting about the idea of a collective witness, being a witness to the time we're living in now," Shemie reflects. "And the connectedness of what we all have in common. But also, literally: bearing witness to all sorts of things and how that desensitises you. There's a recurring line that comes back on the record: 'I know that you've seen it too.' It kind of comes down to being true to yourself and acknowledging what is and isn't real." Perhaps unintentionally, SUUNS have always been a strangely intimate band, and with The Witness, they themselves became aware of the extent of this. Though the world is becoming a more distorted, confusing place, The Witness extends a sonic lifeline to latch onto, one bolstered by years of friendship, chemistry and trust.

In James McMurtry’s new effort, The Horses and the Hounds, the acclaimed songwriter backs personal narratives with effortless elegance (“Canola Fields”) and endless energy (“If It Don’t Bleed”). This first collection in seven years spotlights a seasoned tunesmith in peak form as he turns toward reflection (“Vaquero”) and revelation (closer “Blackberry Winter”). Familiar foundations guide the journey. “There’s a definite Los Angeles vibe to this record,” McMurtry says. “The ghost of Warren Zevon seems to be stomping around among the guitar tracks. Don’t know how he got in there. He never signed on for work for hire.”

The Horses and the Hounds is a reunion of sorts. McMurtry recorded the new album with legendary producer Ross Hogarth (Ozzy Osbourne, John Fogerty, Van Halen, Keb’ Mo’) at Jackson Browne’s Groovemaster’s in Santa Monica, California. Hogarth recorded McMurtry’s first two albums, Too Long in the Wasteland and Candyland and later mixed McMurtry’s first self-produced album, Saint Mary of the Woods. Another veteran of those three releases, guitarist David Grissom (Joe Ely, John Mellencamp, Dixie Chicks), returns with some of his finest work.

The War On Drugs announce I Don’t Live Here Anymore, their first studio album in four years, out October 29th on Atlantic Records. Over the last 15 years, The War on Drugs have steadily emerged as one of this century’s great rock and roll synthesists, removing the gaps between the underground and the mainstream, making records that wrestle a fractured past into a unified and engrossing present.

Just a month after A Deeper Understanding received the 2018 Grammy for Best Rock Album, the band retreated to upstate New York to jam and cut new demos. It was the start of a dozen-plus session odyssey that spanned three years and seven studios, including some of rock’s greatest sonic workshops like Electric Lady in New York and Los Angeles’ Sound City.

The War On Drugs’ 2022 tour takes the band to some of the largest venues they’ve ever played, including their first headlining show at MadisonSquare Garden, as well as Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium, the Bill Graham Civic Center in San Francisco, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, two nights at the Chicago Theatre, Philadelphia’s Metropolitan, the House of Blues in Boston, and beyond.

In the midst of a global pandemic, John Hiatt walked into Historic RCA Studio B and opened up a lifetime full of leftover feelings. A half-century ago, Hiatt lived in a ratty, $15-a-week room on Nashville’s 16th Avenue, less than a mile away from the RCA and Columbia studios that were the heartbeat of what had come to be known as “Music Row.” In the ensuing 50 years, he went from a scuffling young buck to a celebrated grand master of song.

With Leftover Feelings, Hiatt teamed up with multi-grammy winning artist and producer, Jerry Douglas and his band, The Jerry Douglas Band. There’s no drummer, yet these grooves are deep and true. And while the up-tempo songs are, as ever, filled with delightful internal rhyme and sly aggression, the Jerry Douglas Band’s empathetic musicianship nudges Hiatt to performances that are startlingly vulnerable. 

In life, leftover feelings can remain unresolved, no matter how often explored. Explicated in a place of history, a place of comfort. A sacred place, if you believe the documentation of human expression to be a holy thing. Here then, with this album,  there is a meeting of bruised and triumphant American giants. Here are Hiatt and Douglas, creating the meant-to-be: Love songs and road songs, sly songs and hurt songs. Their songs, and now our songs.  Leftover feelings that edify and sustain.

Country singer/songwriter Hayes Carll returns with his eighth album You Get It All, produced by Allison Moorer and Kenny Greenberg. Carll's talent for storytelling and creating compelling lyrical narratives shines through as brightly as ever, and You Get It All exemplifies his ability to span a wide range of musical styles while staying true to himself. Featuring songs co-written by Brothers Osborne, Brandy Clark, and Sean McConnell, You Get It All is both heartbreaking and lighthearted, a combination that Carll has honed on his records throughout his entire career. "I like to tug at heartstrings, find commonality with others, reflect on my own life, and sometimes I do it in a lighthearted way," says Carll. "A lot of musical styles found their way onto this record, but my first and most formative influences came from country music. This is a country singer-songwriter record. It's just unapologetically me."

On May 14, The Black Keys release their tenth studio album, Delta Kream, via Nonesuch Records. The record celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards that they have loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover. 

Big Mess marks Elfman’s first solo collection in more than thirty years, but it’s no return to form. Clocking in at 18 tracks, the sprawling, ambitious double album finds the Grammy and Emmy Award-winning composer breaking bold new ground as both a writer and a performer, drawing on a dystopian palette of distorted electric guitars, industrial synthesizers and orchestra in an effort to exorcise the demons brought about by four years of creeping fascism and civil rot.
The songs here call to mind everything from Nine Inch Nails, to David Bowie to XTC at times, balancing dense, harmonically complex arrangements with biting, acerbic wit as they reckon with the chaos and confusion of the modern world. Elfman wrote almost all of the record during quarantine, and while the anger, frustration, and isolation of it all is palpable in his delivery, Big Mess is about more than simply blowing off steam. In making the space to truly sit with his emotions and write without limitations, Elfman achieved a kind of artistic liberation on the record that had been eluding him for decades, rediscovering his voice and reinventing himself all at once in the process.
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.

One of the quintessential Charles Mingus recordings regardless of label, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus finds a mini-big-band playing some of Mingus' best-known compositions - albeit with new titles! Features Mingus favorites Eric Dolphy, Booker Ervin and Jaki Byard among its all-star cast. Verve's Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging.

Flock' is the record that Jane Weaver always wanted to make, the most genuine version of herself, complete with unpretentious Day-Glo pop sensibilities, wit, kindness, humour and glamour. A consciously positive vision for negative times, a brooding and ethereal creation. The album features an untested new fusion of seemingly unrelated compounds fused into an eco-friendly hum; pop music for post-new-normal times. Created from elements that should never date, its pop music reinvented. Still prevalent are the cosmic sounds, but 'Flock' is a natural rebellion to the recent releases which sees her decidedly move away from conceptual roots in favour of writing pop music. Produced on a complicated diet of bygone Lebanese torch songs, 1980's Russian Aerobics records and Australian Punk. Amongst this broadcast of glistening sounds is 'The Revolution Of Super Visions', an untelevised Mothership connection, with Prince floating by as he plays scratchy guitar; it also features a funky

In 1970, nine years after leaving the United States to study music in Canada, Beverly Glenn-Copeland released two self-titled albums. Both were a stunning showcase of classical and jazz acumen, layered with poetry and accompanied by some of the best players of the time. Original pressings now fetch thousands of dollars. Glenn-Copeland then vanished as a recording artist until his re-emergence in 1986 with the release (just a few hundred copies on cassette) of what many now believe to be his masterpiece, Keyboard Fantasies. This seminal album just celebrated it's 35th anniversary, and this new reimagining features indie all-stars from Bon Iver to Blood Orange.

Clairo has revealed her new single, “Blouse,” as well as the news of her forthcoming sophomore studio album, Sling, which will see its global release on July 16th via FADER Label/Republic Records. Written and recorded in upstate New York at Allaire Studios, Sling was co-produced by Clairo and Golden Globe/GRAMMY  Awardwinning producer Jack Antonoff and was announced following Clairo’s live performance of “Blouse” on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician Liz Cooper will release her anticipated new album, Hot Sass, September 3. Produced by Benny Yurco (Michael Nau, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals), mixed by Dan Molad (Lucius, Emily King) and recorded live at Little Jamaica Recordings in Burlington, VT, the new album marks multiple departures for Cooper—from her nine-year home of Nashville to Brooklyn, from her band addendum of the Stampede, and from the genre-based expectations she’s accumulated throughout her career.  After heavy touring in support of 2018’s Window Flowers, where her songs stretched out in live settings, she felt constricted by the Americana-adjacent associations that "the Stampede" carried. So with her bandmates’ blessing, she dropped the moniker, pursuing sounds and songs that let her chase the inspiration lent to her by the likes of Courtney Love, Lou Reed, and David Bowie. With these twelve new songs, Cooper comes into her own—both musically and as a person—embracing a newfound sense of independence, honesty, maturity and creativity.  In addition to Cooper and Yurco, Hot Sass also features Cooper’s longtime bandmates and collaborators Joe Bisirri (bass), Ryan Usher (drums, percussion) and Michael Libramento (guitar, synthesizer).

Reflecting on the album, Cooper shares, “It’s me learning about what kind of woman I am and it’s not pretty all the time…I’m still processing these songs. Still reflecting. And I think that’s the thing—Hot Sass is just a stamp in time of what was happening in my life. I just want to continue making art that displays myself, the moments, and the people around me.”

The new record follows Cooper’s 2018 full-length debut album, Window Flowers, which was released to widespread critical acclaim. Of the album, NPR Music praised, “a gorgeously arranged and performed bouquet of psychedelia-tinged folk-rock,” while Rolling Stone hailed,  “Cooper pushes her strand of folk rock deep into psychedelic territory by merging her idiosyncratic vocal style with swirling, droning guitar effects and lacerating solos that feel dusted with otherworldly magic,” and Paste declared, “If we’re lucky, we are going to hear a lot more artists in the future like Liz Cooper.” Originally from Baltimore and now based in Brooklyn, Cooper has continued to tour consistently since her debut, performing alongside artists such as Dr. Dog, Shakey Graves, Bermuda Triangle, Lord Huron and Phosphorescent as well as special festival performances at Austin City Limits, Newport Folk Festival, BottleRock Music Festival, Lockn’ and more.

Cooper will also continue to tour throughout 2021 including upcoming performances at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Railbird Festival, Telluride Blues and Brews, Sea Hear Now Festival and Freakout Festival, with additional headline dates to be announced soon.

Watch the music video for the album’s first single, “Slice of Life,” directed by Daniel Yocum on YouTube.

Acclaimed alternative-pop band The Marías released their eagerly awaited debut album CINEMA, on June 25th via Nice Life Recording Company/Atlantic Records. CINEMA was written and produced entirely by Zardoya and her partner - producer and multi-instrumentalist Josh Conway - within their LA apartment. The duo is joined by their closest friends Jesse Perlman (guitar) and Edward James (keys) to round out the band. CINEMA features tracks in both English and Spanish, when dreaming up their first full-length, Zardoya and Conway mined inspiration from such hyper-imaginative filmmakers as Pedro Almodóvar and Wes Anderson, achieving an untamed emotionality that acutely amplifies the most intimate of feelings. In addition to those influential classic films, the album's title also pays homage to the work María and Josh first collaborated on - creating music for film + television scores. (In a nod to the bilingualism of their work, the title CINEMA carries the same meaning in both English and Spanish).

"The debut album by Emma-Jean Thackray feels exactly like the sort of thing we've been longing for over the last 12 months: a transcendent, human, shared experience. Across its 49 minutes, Yellow draws glowing lines between '70s jazz fusion and P-Funk, the cosmic invocations of Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane, and the gorgeous orchestration of the Beach Boys. 'I wanted the whole thing to sound like a psychedelic trip,' explains Thackray. 'You put on the first track, it takes you through this intense experience for almost an hour, and then you emerge on the other side transformed.' The result is an album that speaks the language of positivity, as rich lyrically as it is musically. You might best understand what Thackray does through reference to auteur figures like Brian Wilson or Madlib, who straddle instrumentation, arrangement and production in order to bring the sound in their head to fruition. As a composer, producer, singer, multi-instrumentalist and DJ, Emma is just as at home working with the London Symphony Orchestra as she is hosting her show on Worldwide FM. Production credits and collaborations include the likes of Squid, Makaya McCraven, BLU and Pinty.

Somewhere along the way, I got the idea that Richard Youngs’s ‘Sapphie’ was all about a dead dog. I don’t know if someone insinuated this idea in front of me or if I psychologically tethered the title to the tenderly printed dog paw on its cover. Either way, I’ve gone over a decade thinking this remarkable, windswept album of torch songs was about a dearly departed pet. And yet, as we approached a reissue of this Jagjaguwar classic and anew, reimagined version by artists Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Moses Sumney, Sharon Van Etten, and Perfume Genius, Richard Youngs was straight forward and unsentimental about its meanings. “The lyrics are not about anything in particular,” Youngs wrote. The paw prints on the cover are, in fact, that of a friend’s dog (“The first dog I ever loved,” Richard said.), but there is no devastating loss at its center. And so, I want to tell Richard how this album has become a centering album for a great many of us, a transcendent and meditative piece of art. “What does ‘the mindfulness drill’ have to do with it?” Richard asks dryly me in a note. It’s about being relentlessly present, Richard. It’s how when we listen to your album, we feel like a lonely traveler in a foreign country. How everything has a newness to it and there’s no one to share it with but the you inside of you. And that fine, fine line is where ‘Sapphie’ lives, Richard. Thank you for this, Richard.

Vinyl LP pressing. Pick A Day to Die is the first proper studio album from Sunburned Hand of the Man in 10 years. You would be forgiven if you had forgotten in the interim but while Sunburned is fully committed to vast, ritualistic summonings, they were perhaps uniquely capable of channeling that cosmic funk. There's a throb and a groove to the music that made it as much body music as head music. This is 'free your ass' weirdness that chugs and bounces. It makes us want to get out of our heads where we've all been trapped these past months and drive on the freeway or bop down the street. Pick A Die to Die. Sure, but definitely not today. The album marks a resurfacing of one of the great under-heralded psych outfits to roam over the past two plus decades. Join TLR in the cult of Sunburned.

Few contemporary artists have had as big an impact on global dance music as Joy Orbison. Whether through his own game-changing releases such as his breakthrough hit “Hyph Mongo”, his own GTA radio station “Still Slipping Los Santos” or 2019’s Slipping EP, collaborations with the likes of Mansur Brown, Overmono and cutting edge Japanese clothing label Cav Empt, a BBC Radio 1 residency and live appearances that span the most credible underground nights to festival headline slots around the world, the name Joy Orbison has been a constant byword for understated, uncompromising quality.

Defying categorisation at every stage of his career, Joy Orbison is more relevant and in-demand than ever. This year he teams up with XL Recordings to release his highly anticipated debut long-form project: a fourteen track mixtape titled still slipping vol. 1. A deeply personal project featuring close family members alongside a roll call of perfectly curated musical collaborators, it’s Joy Orbison’s most ambitious project to date and is set to be one of 2021’s defining releases.

GRAMMY®-nominated American singer/songwriter Lana Del Rey’s eighth studio album Blue Banisters follows the success of her previous album Chemtrails Over The Country Club, released earlier this year. Blue Banisters will include previously released songs "Wildflower Wildfire," "Blue Banisters," "Arcadia," and "Text Book."

Belfast-born, London-based duo Bicep (Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson) release their hotly anticipated second album, 'Isles', on 22 January 2021 via Ninja Tune. Two years in the making, 'Isles' expands on the artful energy of their 2018 debut 'Bicep', while digging deeper into the sounds, experiences and emotions that have influenced their lives and work, from early days in Belfast to their move to London a decade ago. 'We have strong mixed emotions, connected to growing up on an island' they say, 'wanting to leave, wanting to return'. 'Isles' is, in part, a meditation on these contradictions, the struggle between the expansive and the introspective, isolation and euphoria. Lead single 'Apricots' has a similar feel, steeped in a shimmering bath of warm synths, its spare percussion and arresting vocals bring the big room chills of 90s rave, while still evoking something lost or forlorn.

Featuring the new hit single Tell Me, the new album from Vancouver 5-piece Spectres also includes tracks recorded for Part-Time Punks.

Vinyl LP pressing. The Dap-Kings' electro-sax space warrior returns with Vol. II: Baca Sewa, a groove-heavy sequel to All My Relations, an expressive, transcendental voyage through the archive of his indigenous roots and beyond. Drawing on ancestral memories and family histories to wrap new flesh around the bones of history, this album is a bold, semi-autobiographical work that leads us deeper into the annals of family history, mythology and the cultural imaginary. 'Baca Sewa' is Cochemea's original family name prior to Spanish colonization and the fracturing or erasure of ancient knowledge and ways. The melody for the title track was composed by Anthony Gastelum and features vocals and drumming by the Baca Sewa Singers- family members with whom he has reunited. The album runs thick with sonic tributes and remembrances. 'Chito's Song' is a contemplative, ethereal tribute to a beloved uncle. 'Curandera' conjures the memory of the irrepressible healing power of medicine women. 'Black Pearl' recalls his great grandfather, heir to a legacy of indigenous peoples enslaved as pearl divers in the Sea of Cortez. Leading a nine-piece ensemble composed of New York's top percussionists and members of Daptone's rhythm section, Cochemea recombined ancient elements of drums, winds, and voice, creating his own world of emotional textures and rhythmic possibilities. His musical and spiritual synthesis is made possible through his deep reverence of the horn and of the music and traditions preceding him. Vol. II: Baca Sewa, is an offering, born from the fruits of this journeyman's storied quest for knowledge and musical oneness.

Limited double red and black colored vinyl LP pressing. Includes digital download. "They were one of those bands that were a prequel to what the future was becoming. Feminism, human rights, animal rights, environmental protection, gender issues... Spitboy was singing about these issues 30 fucking years ago. I'm so grateful to have witnessed it." -Billie Joe Armstrong "Spitboy are one of the most important punk bands to have ever existed. To me, an angry 20-year-old in London, discovering them felt like the first time I truly identified with a band's politics and agenda. One of my all-time favourite albums (then and now) was Penis Envy by Crass. No lyrics had ever touched me the way this album had-until Spitboy entered my life. My people. My radical feminists. My punk scene. Where I have lived and belonged for over 30 years." -Vique Simba.

Focusing on their craft, staying out of the fray, and holding fast their faith to find new ways to express the discord and delight of being alive, to turn the duality of existence into hymns we can share, Low present HEY WHAT. These ten pieces—each built around their own instantaneous, undeniable hook—are turbocharged by the vivid textures that surround them. The ineable, familiar harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker break through the chaos like a life raft. Layers of distorted sound accrete with each new verse - building, breaking, colossal then restrained, a solemn vow only whispered. There will be time to unravel and attribute meaning to the music and art of these times, but the creative moment looks FORWARD, with teeth. HEY WHAT is Low's thirteenth full-length release in twenty-seven years, and their third with producer BJ Burton.

Endless Boogie emerge from fugue state with a new double LP. Admonitions was conceived a recorded via timewarp between NYC, TX & the Stockholm archipelago. Major growls, Eklow riffs, Sweeney flavors. Mystery players appear as specters in the mirror. 100% guaranteed to drown out paranoid inner dialogue. Onward and inward. This one goes down swinging.

Colorado songwriter Emily Scott Robinson beckons to those who are lost, lonely, or learning the hard way with American Siren, her first album for Oh Boy Records. With hints of bluegrass, country, and folk, the eloquent collection shares her gift for storytelling through her pristine soprano and the perspective of her unconventional path into music.

“I think that the thread running through the album is those things that call to us, and how we can't resist that call,” she says. “It’s about the siren songs that come up through our lives.”

Though not fully autobiographical, American Siren gracefully blends imagined characters with meaningful people she’s encountered on her journey. Showcasing her ability as a storyteller, “If Trouble Comes a Lookin’” invents a scene where a vulnerable priest and an unhappy wife meet in an Arkansas hotel bar. “Hometown Hero” is an emotional tribute to her cousin, a veteran lost to suicide. “Lost Woman’s Prayer” stems from the words of a sage friend she met while traveling abroad, while “Every Day in Faith” is a personal testament to seeing things through.

Robinson received significant acclaim for her 2019 album, Traveling Mercies. And her long-held dream came true later that year when she sang on the Telluride Bluegrass Festival stage as the winner of the Telluride Troubadour Contest. A poignant standalone single in 2020, titled “The Time for Flowers,” prompted a private Instagram message from Oh Boy Records’ Jody Whelan, letting her know how meaningful the song was to his family. They struck up a fast friendship, then decided to partner for a release of American Siren.

“It is bigger and riskier and more expansive than my last collection,” Robinson says. “It feels like I wrote some songs that I'm going to grow into as I continue to perform them. I actually cried after I finished every one of them. I was so relieved that I was able to write them. I carved out a little more of my own experiences into these songs. They're excavating some deeper stuff than I've touched on before. I think they will have a healing quality for people who listen.”

For her fans and for herself, this revealing collection proves that heeding the call to make music was the right decision. "Ever since this dream was born, I don't think it's ever left my mind," Robinson says. "I've worked toward it every day, even when I felt like I was stumbling in the dark. Now I can look back and see how beautifully it all knits together."

Vinyl LP pressing.

Blood Lemon is:
Lisa Simpson - guitar, vocals, acoustic guitar, synth, piano
Melanie Radford - bass, vocals, upright bass, synth, piano
Lindsey Lloyd - drums, extra percussion, extra vocals

Morning Trip & Yoga Records are proud to finally reveal one of the ultimate lost masterworks of new age music: Alice Damon's Windsong. Gently propelled by Damon's haunting breath-of-life vocal winds reminiscent of Joan La Barbara underscored by field recordings and Damon's fretless bass sound calling to mind mid-70 Joni Mitchell, Windsong is traveling music, for the roads or for the skies. Instantly moving, it conjures vistas both romantically familiar and cosmically mysterious - waterfalls and wind, the voice of the earth, as heard through heavenly prisms.Damon attended college in Massachusetts, where she formed and fronted the all-female garage band called The Moppets in the late 60s. The band began to garner national attention, but Damon moved instead to the wilds of northern Vermont to homestead and raise a family. In 1981 or thereabouts she was able to gain use of an early Sony digital home recorder, and created her masterwork, Windsong. But Damon waited until 1990 to release a packaged version of this album, now titled 'Windsong II', and sent samples to regional distributors like Vermont's fabled Silo-Alcazar, where a copy of the album was first discovered, but little evidence exists of a proper commercial release. Alice Damon passed on in 2011 and remained essentially unknown until the landmark I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America 1950-1990 first revealed her genius to a wider audience two years later. Now, just in time for the recording's 40th anniversary, Alice Damon's Windsong may at last be heard as one of the most singular, moving and profound examples of new age music's psychedelic essence. Morning Trip & Yoga Records proudly present Windsong.