What's New 3-31-23
The Love Still Held Me Near was born out of unimaginable loss and the subsequent journey through the grief and heartache that followed. Its about digging deep down into yourself and attempting to unearth hope and light in the things that can comfort you through those times. For me that has always been writing and recording music, so thats exactly what I did. - Dallas Green / City and Colour
The group's ninth album and first for Merge establishes them alongside modern luminaries like Yo La Tengo and Superchunk when it comes to their ability to evolve while still retaining what made them so special in the first place. A dazzling and intriguing collection of songs that are truly built to last, Continue as a Guest finds the band exploring fresh territory and shattering the barriers of their collective comfort zone.
Different Game is something of a misnomer. Rather, its the continuation of a fabled legacy and one that has not only stood the test of time but remains vibrant and invigorating all these decades on. Some 60 years after serving in the front lines of the so-called 60s British Invasion, they, like all good zombies, came back from the dead, making some of the best music of their career.
15th anniversary. You could say ObZen is some sort of a best of album of the bands early works combined with fresh, new songs at that moment in time but thats only half the truth. Some parts are still slo-mo groove infernos like the groundbreaking hit Bleed, but others, like the opener "Combustion", are high speed-massacres like the band never did before. Pure technical ass-kicking mayhem!
If you want to understand how French producer Alan Braxe ended up making some of the most important house music records of the late 1990s and early 2000s, you need to understand his modus operandi. Everything has to be simple; and everything has to be sincere. This newly reissued version of The Upper Cuts adds seven bonus tracks, including remixes and two completely new tracks.
Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus treat us to a full-length record and its everything a debut album should be: exploratory, explosive and full of heart. Each of the albums tracks comes as somewhat of a surprise, from the opening a capella composition to tender (anti)lovesongs, to heavy, nonchalant bangers. There's an uncontainable energy that seems inevitable when three wildly talented songwriters assemble.
Stowaway isnt just a matter of satisfying the expectations of patient fans who wouldve accepted pretty much anything passable from Samiam at this point; this is a genuinely brilliant record even with all context removed proof of one of the best and perhaps most underrated punk bands of their era and beyond. It should be more than enough to convince anyone new to the band to dig into their rich and ludicrously consistent discography.
The Hold Steadys 9th full-length comes as the band turns 20 years old. It is their third record with producer Josh Kaufman, and most expansive record yet, while also being unmistakably a THS record. Singer Craig Finn says These are some of the most cinematic songs in our catalog. I feel like we went somewhere we havent before, which is a very exciting thing for a band that is two decades in.
Consisting of members from R.E.M., The Minus 5, and The Baseball Project, the bi-continental collaborators share their third album, paying tribute to the artists that populate their turntables. Through their upbeat 60s-style indie sound infused with psychedelic flourishes, The No Ones honor Nick Lowe, Pamela Polland, George Harrison, Jenny Lewis, and Phil Ochs, among others.
