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MusiC FROM AnOtHeR DiMensiOn MUSIC FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION presents AEROSMITH in ferociously fine form and at the peak of their powers. They’re the only band of their stature with all-original members and who are playing better than ever have before. AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 6
CHRistinA AguiLeRA LOtus
Aguilera has been in the studio for the past year working on her highly anticipated fifth studio album.Working with writers and producers such as Alex Da Kid, and Sia, the album also features collaboration with CeeLo Green, Aguilera’s co-star on The Voice. Features the hit single “Your Body” AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 13
tOny Bennett vivA Duets
AVAILABLE NOW
VIVA DUETS, is the singer’s third duets-themed project, following the platinum selling and critically praised DUETS and DUETS II CDs. Featuring many top names in the Latin recording industry, VIVA DUETS finds Bennett performing his greatest hits with a celebrated roster of artists including Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony, Miguel Bosé, Robert Carlos, Ana Carolina, Chayanne, Franco DeVita, Gloria Estefan, Vicente Fernández, Maria Gadú, Juan Luis Guerra and many others.
The new live recording includes seven songs not included on the 1992 Live package: ‘Rock N Roll Train,’ ‘Shot Down in Flames,’ ‘Black Ice’ and ‘Dog Eat Dog’ are four of the new tunes that accompany hits like ‘Back in Black’ and ‘Hells Bells.’ The release is available as a three disc vinyl package or a two CD set that features multiple covers and a 24-page booklet. AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 19
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Doubling Down Ty Segall goes out there on Twins, and he may not be coming back “I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO the Residents a lot.” At the end of our discussion—as things have wound down into a more jovial mood following a James Lipton-style grilling about his writing process—Ty Segall finally explains the whole deal. Needle has been on a mission to figure out exactly what wavelength this hyper-productive rock ‘n’ roll prodigy is surfing on, a mission to figure out what exactly separates this kid from the rest of the chum in the garage-rock ocean circa 2012. And if there’s one thing that we have learned over our years kicking around the subterranean depths of the rock world, it’s that Residents fans aren’t like normal people: There’s far more adventure and playfulness scurrying through the brains of Residents fans, a far greater capacity for surrealist minutiae than your Average Joe. Not that any of the three records Segall has released this year sound like the Residents per se, but there is the spirit, that certain je ne sais quoi that makes it as avant as it is pop. In fact, from April’s collaboration with White Fence, Hair (Drag City), to this summer’s Slaughterhouse (In The Red) with the Ty Segall Band to the freshly minted Twins (Drag City), Segall has established a balance between intensely far-out psychedelia and undeniable catchy hooks. They’re not the first albums to toe that line, but in terms of contemporary guitar rock, they are certainly some of the finest. Segall’s 2012 trilogy is the clarion call of a new generation, a gen-
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eration assuming the mantle of psychonaut rock, a generation dead-set on testing the limits of fuzz guitar and the endurance of the human brain. It’s the sound of a generation weaned on homemade cassettes and basement shows steeping into a wider world and testing every single possibility at its disposal, not dissimilar from the ages when folk and blues gave way to acid rock, and hardcore and punk ceded to indie and alternative rock. In the four years since Segall began releasing albums and touring incessantly—the kid has made more cross-continent treks than your average Amtrak train—he’s grown from lo-fi fetishist to arch-sonic sculptor, evolving beyond the simple and scrappy garage-rock sound he built his reputation on into this propulsive blend of surreal pop and heavy rock. While it’s easy to see this as a young artist hitting his creative peak—or making a rather sudden attack on the above-ground music industry—it’s no surprise to those of us who have been following his career since the basement days, a career that has been confoundingly prodigious. “All of this stuff that’s been coming out, I’ve been working on it over the course of a year,” says Segall. “So, yeah, it’s been at little accidental, all of them coming out so close to each other. So, the hardest thing has been managing how they are working with each other and how they are affecting each other.” When asked about how difficult it is to generate such a vast quantity of material while increasingly upping the quality, Segall is a
little less forthright. You can hear a hesitation in his voice when he’s prodded about process—he’s clearly not the kind of artist who spends a lot of time calculating the X’s and Y’s of what he does, opting for action rather than analysis. He’s quick to point out that the process changes with the project— Hair a team effort with the Strangeboys’ Timothy “White Fence” Presley, Slaughterhouse written and arranged with the entire Ty Segall Band, Twins being his first opportunity to record proper demos, experiment in a studio and rework them before going back to record the final versions—and then changes again when the band comes into play. “In the past, I didn’t even think how we were going to play them live—I was just recording it,” says Segall. “But now, with Twins, I’m definitely thinking about how it’s going to be played live, and with Slaughterhouse, we all wrote that and recorded that together, basically the whole band jamming and everything together. It’s a totally collaborative thing; it’s not like I wrote the songs and told the band what to play. They wrote all their parts, and we wrote the songs together, which was super fun and totally not what I usually do.”
photo BY Annabel Mehran
And this is all a portent of great things to come—Segall has had such a successful track record with his spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness approach that, given more time to breathe and think, the lad is likely to turn the entire art form on his head. Songs like the garage-doom of Slaughterhouse’s “Wave Goodbye” and the feedback-swirled descent of Twins’ “Thanks God For Sinners” (whose opening bass note might be the single most spine-tingling thing released on a record this year) point to a future where rock music actually makes progress. There’s a hint that the future is not just a steady descent into reciprocal retro-trends. It’s a hint that these historyobsessed children of the 21st century could in fact destroy the whole damn playbook, only to rewrite it for a day and age that could use a revitalized rock sound more than ever. They point to a future where the kids stop hiding behind their laptops, their quantization and their filter
patches, and make music and recordings that actually matter long after the publicists stop pitching. “The number-one thing with recording is that you can’t hide anything—it’s got to be there before you make it,” says Segall. “The take you do, whatever you record, it’s got to be good before you mix and put the effects on it.” It seems like a simple concept, not exactly revolutionary in its obviousness, but the plain truth is that not many people make albums this way anymore. This is the era of recording with infinite digital options, where layering enough effects on a song is enough to count as creativity, even if the actual song itself is as rote and bland as a used-car salesman’s Muzak collection. The snap and timbre of, say, the freak-beat drum fill that opens “Who Are You” on Twins, or the vocal harmonies that start the LP’s lead single, “The Hill,” don’t come in a kit, don’t get spit out by an algorithm. They come from a musical intuition honed in the real world, and hence are best suited for unleashing the surreal world. And this brings us back to the Residents, who, as bizarre and intense as they were from the get-go, one could argue didn’t start to really explore the outer-outer limits of art and sound until about eight albums in—which means Segall, wunderkind that he is, is right on schedule. What exact direction he’ll go, well, who knows, but after a year of crafting some of the finest mind-bending rock ‘n’ roll the modern world has to offer, you can expect it to be a wild one. —Sean L. Maloney
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Business As Usual Titus Andronicus keeps on kicking against the pricks “OUR AIM WAS TO MAKE a record that was more true to real life, a little more live-sounding, less bells and whistles, you know? More emphasis on the songs, trying to do less of a big production, a more stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll sound.” That’s Patrick Stickles, leader of Glen Rock, N.J.’s ragged romanticists Titus Andronicus, a band that possesses enough energy to power a small continent, that channels the heroic intensity of the Clash, the righteous fury of Black Flag and the bombast of the Boss (frequently within the same song)—and that’s easily one of the most high-octane live outfits in existence. He’s talking about the band’s new album, Local Business (XL), which is a move away from the glorious excess of its predecessor in particular, 2010’s epic The Monitor, an LP that took the U.S. Civil War as a metaphor for the struggle for individuality in 21st-century America, and featured a cast of thousands. Local Business is very much more a lean, streamlined affair, an album that sounds custom-built for the road. “That was precisely our aim,” says Stickles. “Trying to make it more like the live experience, ’cause that’s been our bread and butter and our real focus for the last few years, and we really wanted to reflect that. And this is going to be the first time we go out on tour with the same band (that) made the record.” At this point in the proceedings, it should be pointed out that Titus Andronicus appears to go through band members at a quite alarming rate, akin to the way grossly overfunded English soccer teams go through grossly overpaid continental managers. “The last two records were made by bands in flux, people leaving, people arriving, having special guests, ringers coming in to do a lot of the parts,” says Stickles. “This time, we just wanted to get a core group who could go out and reproduce the record with a degree of ac-
curacy. With us, the touring band has always been a distinct entity from the studio band. On the last record, we had something around 30 people, and this time round it was about nine, very stripped-down.” While Local Business does indeed sound a good deal more stripped-down than its predecessors, the themes contained within remain very much the same. And if there’s a common theme across 2008’s The Airing Of Grievances, The Monitor and Local Business, it’s that of kicking against the pricks of everyday life, fighting against conformity and striving to be a moral, decent human being in an increasingly fucked-up society. “If anything, we wanted to make those themes more explicit this time around, without trying to hide behind big metaphors and allusions,” says Stickles. “It’s about the individual and the way society will push and pull the individual into certain directions—conforming, consuming—and this is all about that: trying to be an individual in the void.” One of the more endearing aspects about Titus is that it’s a band very much unafraid of wearing its influences on its collective sleeve. That’s not to say it slavishly copies its heroes—indeed, the band frequently transcends them to make its own glorious noise—but Titus is certainly unabashed in its recognition. In the course of our conversation, Stickles name-checks, in no particular order, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, the book This Band Could Be Your Life, the Clash, Thin Lizzy, Double Dagger and the DIY aesthetics of punk. There are two particular influences, however, who have risen above the rest throughout the band’s career so far, and that’s Springsteen and the Replacements. These are influences that Stickles is quick to acknowledge. “Springsteen’s one of my favorites, for sure,” he says. “I can’t deny that. He knew how to inject some grandeur into rock ‘n’ roll, a very widescreen cinematic aspect that we’ve
tried to emulate a little bit. He was someone I imagined I could be in my own little Jersey life. I don’t like to look onstage and see some weird alien or golden godlike creature who’s totally unapproachable; I wanna recognize a human face.” And then there’s the Mats, whose shadow looms large, not just in the themes of youthful alienation, but in the band’s ragged, raucous attack and the feral howl of Stickles, which recalls a young and bratty Paul Westerberg. “There’s a guy who really seemed like your buddy talking to you,” he says, “another dude who wasn’t some puffed-up monster, someone you could imagine being your friend, passionate, not afraid to express their emotions.” Which touches on, finally, just one of many aspects that make Titus Andronicus so appealing and downright inspirational: its blatant lack of bullshit and absolute disregard for any notion of studied cool. This is a band that, on paper at least, sounds potentially absurd. There’s the name, for a start. Then there are the ridiculous song titles. (“Still Life With Hot Deuce And Silver Platter,” anyone?) There’s the car-wreck collision of influences, not to mention a hefty dose of pseudo-adolescent angst and suburban ennui, all wrapped up in a glut of literary references that suggest an emotionally stunted fuck-up who’s read way too much Salinger, Camus and Kerouac. And yet the band completely, totally and somehow improbably pulls it off. These are no po-faced miserablists or mewling, pouting emo clowns. They do, undoubtedly, rage and howl, but it’s a joyous explosion, the sound of complete catharsis, a glorious antidote to studied hipster cool and bullshit antipathy. “That’s precisely our aim,” says Stickles. “We want to energize and uplift. It’s much better to care about everything, I’d say. We don’t see much value in being too cool for school. I mean, how can you expect anyone to care if you don’t?” —Neil Ferguson
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Power Tools Bikini Kill takes control of its legacy “BIKINI KILL BELIEVED THAT if all girls started bands, the world would change. This didn’t happen. Did the world change? You tell me.” Drummer Tobi Vail’s question is rhetorical, but it’s worth pondering in a year that’s brought us “legitimate rape,” jail time for Pussy Riot and an all-male congressional hearing on contraception. Things looked bleak in 1990, when Vail started Bikini Kill with bassist Kathi Wilcox and singer Kathleen Hanna. They disbanded in 1997, leaving behind anthems like “Suck My Left One” and “Rebel Girl,” articulations of rage and gratitude that served as conversation starters and lifelines. Fifteen years after folding, they’ve started their own self-titled label to reissue their two full-lengths (1994’s Pussy Whipped and 1996’s Reject All American), two collections (The CD Version Of The First Two Records and The Singles) and selected side projects. (Hanna’s post-Bikini Kill outfits, Julie Ruin and Le Tigre, are outside the scope of the reissues.) Why launch a label now, when their records had been available through Kill Rock Stars? “We were always very hands-on and DIY,” says Vail. “We didn’t have a manager, didn’t work with booking agents, didn’t have a publicist. We were very involved in representing ourselves and in control of how our music was distributed. I worked at Kill Rock Stars for almost 20 years, so I was always involved in the process of putting out our records. As feminists, being in control of every aspect of our work has always been a big priority.” For a long time, it made sense for Bikini Kill’s back catalog to remain on Kill Rock Stars, where Vail and her sister Maggie could keep an eye on things. And the defunct band made sense on the roster alongside activeduty feminist rockers like Sleater-Kinney and Gossip before those bands moved on. But after label head Slim Moon left in 2006, Wilcox says, “it became more of an abstract thing for us to remain there.” Once Kill Rock Stars laid off the Vails last year, Bikini Kill opted to play a more active role in tending its own legacy. In certain circles—like the grassroots Girls Rock Camps and Ladyfests that continue to pop up from Philadelphia to Berlin—that legacy runs deep. But even far removed from their riot-grrrl milieu, Bikini Kill’s songs are caustic, empowering and alive. “I’m so sorry if I’m alienating some of you,” Hanna sings on “White Boy.” “Your whole fucking culture alienates me.” If that doesn’t ring true, you’re not paying attention to public affairs in 2012.
During its lifetime, Bikini Kill garnered mainstream media coverage that ranged from reductive to antagonistic, while receiving minimal airplay outside of college radio and a 1993 Peel Session. That attracted two kinds of people: those who felt validated by the band’s existence, and those put on the defensive. Girls would be inspired by Hanna’s lyrics about rape and incest, then expect the physically and emotionally taxed singer to listen to their stories. Guys would chafe at the band’s policy of having women stand up front, turning shows into confrontations. “They tended to be pretty intense, which was both good and bad,” says Wilcox. “It made performing pretty scary sometimes. I don’t miss the random explosions of hostility.” In an era when major record companies and indies alike are flailing, someone still needs to make decisions about where to license a band’s songs, which early recordings to share and the ethics of pressing and marketing physical copies of albums to fans who’ve already bought them, or curiosity seekers who feel entitled to download the songs for free. Might as well be the people who made the music in the first place. “We won’t make more records than we can sell because we don’t believe in creating physical waste, but as long as there is a demand for vinyl, we will print vinyl, because that is the optimal format for recorded music,” says Vail. Next in line for release is Bikini Kill’s first demo tape, issued in 1991 as Revolution Girl Style Now!, and then maybe the band will sort through earlier tracks, which date from before guitarist Billy Karren joined the band. “I hope that we can at least share that stuff online,” says Vail. “But it’s not studio-quality.” Wilcox, for one, is gratified that those who could most benefit from Bikini Kill’s work are still able to discover it. “It was so long ago and so much has changed in music, but it seems it’s still speaking to young people,” she says. Now that she’s working with Hanna again in Julie Ruin, Wilcox still seems awed by the power of their old band. “Listening back, I did feel struck a couple times, thinking, ‘Who did we think we were?’ I love the songs. It’s just I can hear the audacity a lot clearer now than I could then.” If anything, she wishes she’d made herself even clearer. Riot-grrrl bands got a lot of flak for putting on shows and making records before they were proficient at their instruments, but when you’ve had to psych yourself up to express the things that are scariest and most
important to you, it’s a waste of time to wait until you meet someone else’s standards. Maybe that was even truer back in the day, when you didn’t expect every magazine article, snapshot and non-album track to be easily accessible forever. “I would probably advise my younger self to take the recording process a little more seriously,” says Wilcox. “The permanence of that was for some reason not entirely clear to me at the time, and if I’d known we’d still be discussing those recordings 20 years later, I would have probably tried to play better.” How could she have known, though? Lo-fi wasn’t just an aesthetic choice for early-’90s punk rockers; in the days before blogs and smartphones, photocopied zines and dubbed cassettes were the primary tools available for sharing their music and philosophy. Bands like Bikini Kill had a sense of being part of a continuum of feminist artists (Yoko Ono and Pussy Riot would be at that dinner party, too), but they weren’t thinking about documenting their process for posterity; they were too busy trying to connect with kids one chaotic show at a time. When they proclaimed “revolution girl style now,” that last word was as crucial as the first. But “now” was a tricky concept back then. If you read about a band that sounded as exciting as Bikini Kill, it could take months until you actually had the chance to hear them, either when they came through your city or when your discreetly mailed cash would be rewarded with a CD shipped from Olympia, Wash. Today, you can watch a video shot earlier in the day in Russia, and you’ll grumble over the extra seconds it takes for YouTube to buffer it. Vail doesn’t romanticize the old ways. “I believe that if riot grrrl happened today, we would be using the same technology I see Pussy Riot using,” she says. “Social media, access to video production tools and studio-quality audio recording technology, cell phones and email to communicate our ideas and spread dissent. I still enjoy the cassette format and print zines, but I also blog and use social media. The question is how to best use the tools you have access to in the most effective way possible.” But getting back to Vail’s initial question, “Did the world change?” The short answer: not enough. But it’s just as honest, and more hopeful, to say that some things have changed for the better because a bunch of girls started a bunch of bands that inspired other girls to express their own truths. —M.J. Fine
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AVAILABLE
Regular Edition: The Perfect Christmas gift! Rod Stewart’s first ever Christmas album featuring 13 holiday classics. Includes special guests Michael Bublé, Mary J Blige, Cee Lo Green, Chris Botti, Trombone Shorty and produced by David Foster. Deluxe Edition also available with 3 extra tracks.
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HOLIDAYS RULE
HOLIDAYS RULE, a deliciously diverse collection of seasonal music. 17 all-new recordings by, fun.,Paul McCartney & Diana Krall, The Shins & Rufus Wainwright and many more. Spice up that egg-nog with something new this year!
CHRISTMAS WITH
SCOTTY McCREERY
CHRISTMAS WITH SCOTTY McCREERY is an 11-song collection that features many holiday classics, as well as two exciting new originals. The album embraces his traditional country sound, but also stretches into songs with a more rock feel, and even creates a musical atmosphere reminiscent of the Rat Pack on some recordings.
BARNEY BENTALL Flesh & Bone
BARONESS YelloW & GReen
DIANA PANTON ChRIsTMAs KIss
GLORYHOUND eleCTRIC DUsK
DIE MANNEQUIN DAnCelAnD
JASON BLAINE lIFe so FAR
KORN lIVe AT The hollYWooD PAllADIUM
PIG DESTROYER BooK BURneR
BERES HAMMOND one loVe, one lIFe
POINT BLANK X hIsToRY
DIO The VeRY BeAsT Vol. 2
KAMELOT sIlVeRThoRn
LOS LOBOS KIKo lIVe
DEATH sPIRITUAl heAlInG
PORCUPINE TREE oCTAne TWIsTeD
DJ DRAMA QUAlITY sTReeT MUsIC
KATATONIA DeAD enD KInGs
LUNCH AT ALLEN’S ZUZU’s PeTAls (ChRIsTMAs)
DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT ePICloUD
KILL DEVIL HILL KIll DeVIl hIll
MY DYING BRIDE A MAP oF All oUR FAIlURes
PUTUMAYO PRESENTS WoRlD YoGA
RIVAL SONS heAD DoWn
SEAN PRICE MIC TYson
SECRET BROADCAST hUnGRY GhosT
THE FACELESS AUToTheIsM
THE TREWS ThAnK YoU AnD I’M soRRY
BARBRA STREISAND MUsICARes (DVD)
MINISTRY FIX (DVD)
THE CHEVIN BoRDeRlAnD
THE MAHONES AnGels & DeVIls
TIM CHAISSON The oTheR sIDe
THE CULT ChoICe oF WeAPon
THE PINEAPPLE THIEF All The WARs
VARIOUS ARTISTS ReGGAe GolD 2012
THE ENGLISH BEAT The CoMPleTe BeAT
THE TEA PARTY lIVe In AUsTRAlIA 2012
VARIOUS ARTISTS ReGGAe JUBIlee
VEIL OF MAYA eClIPse
MUMFORD & SONS BIG eAsY eXPRess (DVD)
BIG SUGAR elIMInATe YA! lIVe! (DVD)
GRATEFUL DEAD All The YeARs CoMBIne (DVD)
ONE DIRECTION The onlY WAY Is UP (DVD)
STEVEN WILSON GeT All YoU DeseRVe (DVD)
THE TEA PARTY lIVe In AUsTRAlIA 2012 (DVD)
LINDI ORTEGA Cigarettes & Truckstops AVAILABLE NOW
JOEL PLASKETT Scrappy Happiness AVAILABLE NOW
KATHLEEN EDWARDS Voyageur AVAILABLE NOW
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Out Of The Game AVAILABLE NOW
TEMPER TRAP The Temper Trap AVAILABLE NOW
STARS The North AVAILABLE NOW
THE AVETT BROTHERS The Carpenter AVAILABLE NOW
THE LUMINEERS The Lumineers AVAILABLE NOW
ESTHERO Everything Is Expensive AVAILABLE NOW
MOTHER MOTHER The Sticks AVAILABLE NOW
GASLIGHT ANTHEM Handwritten AVAILABLE NOW
TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB Beacon AVAILABLE NOW
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Natural Selective Steven Ellison reveals his master plan for Flying Lotus—slowly MAY 22, 2011. Out at the ranch house owned by Steven Ellison, there’s not a hint that anybody is going to catch a glimpse of another LP from his Flying Lotus project any time soon. Not that he hasn’t been keeping busy—Erykah Badu was just here a few weeks ago in his poolside studio. Quite a bit of the music Ellison has been working on, he feels, is pretty good. But he’s got a story to tell, and not just a year ago, he released its most significant chapter, Cosmogramma. Recorded soon after the death of his mother, Cosmogramma set its controls for the heart of the sun with an impressive update of psychedelic space rock, jazz fusion and otherworldly electronica, earning him a Worldwide Music Award from the BBC’s Gilles Peterson in 2011, as well as a reputation as one of electronic music’s most visionary iconoclasts. And he’s in no mood to screw with his legacy. “I’ve got three records out, but I don’t feel they show my whole range,” he says at the time. “There’s a whole bunch of stuff that I can’t get out. The story isn’t there for it. Maybe I should just put it out there one day. But it’s a lot more fun for me if it’s something (special). I’d much rather have a very tight discography of things I believed in, as opposed to a bunch of tracks.” A year passes. Ellison produces the debut LP of his frequent collaborator Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner and watches Bruner’s career predictably ascend. And then, without warning, he announces the release of a new LP, Until The Quiet Comes (Warp), just like that. No doubt, Ellison is pragmatic enough not to let people forget he’s still in the game. But the man once railed against SoundCloud for exposing the waveforms of his tracks for a reason—his rhythms in work and life are designed to be unpredictable. “The album kind of revealed itself, but it didn’t reveal itself for a while this time around,” he says of Quiet’s lengthy gestation period. “I was really concerned that I would say the same things, that I would repeat myself, just worrying about making something that was as good as my last thing, all that shit. I got to think of it more like a movie than I ever have before.”
Seen in this light, Until The Quiet Comes bears none of the urgency that defined much of Cosmogramma’s material. Rather, Flying Lotus’ new music gives the impression of a man at peace with his surroundings, as unusual as they appear to be at times. Opening track “All In” sets the tone for much of the album’s first third, with sparkly stabs on an electric piano shifting amiably through an upbeat sonic environment. Meandering further through the LP, Flying Lotus heads into less conventional terrain, such as the murky, low-end guitar tones of “Tiny Torture” and the groggy psychedelic soul of “See Thru 2 U,” which casts Badu as a spectral new-age fairy. In the meantime, Cosmogramma vet Thom Yorke makes a repeat engagement as a syrupy lounge singer, making the echo-laden fever dream of “Electric Candyman” even creepier. FlyLo and string arranger Miguel AtwoodFerguson also sampled a Jonny Greenwood composition on “Hunger.” Some of the tracks bear a slight resemblance to contemporary hip hop (“Sultan’s Request”) or latter-era funk (“The Nightcaller”), but Flying Lotus never plays it too straight. By the time the sun rises on album closer “Dream To Me,” you realize you’ve been taken on the sort of extended musical voyage that in an ADD-infected digital era has become all too rare. “I think my strength musically is the long form,” says Ellison. “Some guys are really, really good at pumping out those two songs that shape the dance floor for years. But I think my strength stems from taking people on a longer journey than that.” Nowadays, Flying Lotus is more than just Ellison. While most festies know Flying Lotus for his DJ performances, his studio output is developed alongside a trusted crew of performers that returned for this LP. Longtime studio musician-turned-soloist Bruner, of course, shows up again, most notably also co-writing/ singing a Soft Machine-inflected hymn to DMT. “It was all really Thundercat’s idea,” says Ellison. “It was actually after his own psychedelic experiences. It’s kind of a gag song.” Other players like Austin Peralta, Brandon
Coleman and Atwood-Ferguson operated as if on standby to Ellison’s creative process. “When I get musicians to play on things, they don’t really know what they’re working with,” he says. “I don’t email musicians pieces ... There’s a lot of shit that’s determined on the spot. The spontaneity comes from the mindset of where I’m at when I go into it. Obviously, there’s a tweaking part of it at the end of making something, but I feel like the process is very organic, and it’s not over-thought at all. I make my best stuff when it happens very fast.” Ellison continues to bide his time for a fullscale entry into hip hop, for aside from the occasional stray track, it’s still MIA for the most part on the flagship material. For sure, he finds continued inspiration from the newer generation of MCs. “They have no reason not to be open to everything,” he says. “They grew up with computers in front of them, you know what I mean?” One of these days, he swears he’ll make a rap album, but his vision for Flying Lotus is far more old-school. As anyone who’s ever listened to his yearly Lovers Melt podcast knows, Ellison has an enduring love for old-school funk, R&B and psych rock, and he’s reserved Flying Lotus by and large for these concerns. Consider it 21st-century fusion, something Ellison feels whose time has come. “I think a lot of the ’70s fusion makes more sense now than it ever had,” he says. “I listen to Weather Report a lot, and I don’t know if it would have moved me when I was a kid, but now that’s the shit I’m trying to do.” Attitudes like this suit a musician attempting to stand the test of time. Ellison worries little about the EDM hype that has overtaken the industry. “I don’t feel like after dubstep or whatever, we’re all gonna fade away,” he says. “We change, and we learn to love new things. Besides, I don’t really think about, ‘Oh, my god, I gotta make people dance all the time,’ when I put records out. When I’m DJing, it’s a different mindset. But when I’m making records, it’s like, ‘OK, I get to be George Lucas,’ when he was good, actually. I get to make my movie with sound. I wanna make something that you can hold onto.” —Justin Hampton needle
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A CONVERSATION WITH
JOHN CALE
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JOHN CALE HAS BEEN an innovator and arbiter of the American avant-garde, and a pre-punk god who cofounded the Velvet Underground and produced the Stooges, Patti Smith and the Modern Lovers. Each of his solo albums and collaborative efforts (often with Brian Eno) since 1970 are adventuresome, literate affairs. Leonard Cohen likes Cale’s version of “Hallelujah” more than any other cover of the song. He’s tall, still has all of his hair at 70 and wrote one of pop’s most fascinatingly
non-linear autobiographies in What’s Welsh For Zen. What’s left for Cale to do? From this conversation and the sound of his latest recordings—an EP titled Extra Playful and the Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood full-length (both on Double Six)—plenty. Cale says he’s only read one book by Ernest Hemingway (which he put to good use on the new album), thinks Danger Mouse is a sharp character and would rather listen to hip hop than any of the punk elders he’s worked with. —A.D. Amorosi
photo by shawn brackbill
You did a visual thing at the recent Venice Biennale, the first time that you’ve been behind the camera with an installation, Dyddiau Du/Dark Days, that brought you back to Wales. Do you think making movies had any effect on your music? I don’t think it has. It was such a personal work. The Biennale people invited me, and I wanted to do something that had impact on me, go as deep as I could go and work for their purposes. So, I went home and filmed at my old home. I found that somebody had bought the house, and I asked them if I could stay. I wanted to see what it was like getting up early there, seeing that dawn again. Then we added music that—together, I hope—portrayed what growing up there meant at its fullest, with the awkwardness and all the bad tastes in place, the confusion of it all. You know, my grandmother didn’t like that I was the son of an English coal miner. I know from your book, yes. She didn’t like that he was there, and she didn’t like that I was there. Being disliked fueled that Biennale piece. It was such a charming work—visually and sonically arresting. It felt like a chapter, an extended element of that autobiography, and played into a filmic sensibility that you certainly learned hanging with Warhol and his lot. Yes, that’s true, but film is such a different ballgame that it couldn’t really affect how I do music—though, I dare say that everything that I do and see affects my music. I still do spend the majority of my time writing songs than anything else. Why have you been revisiting Paris 1919 in a live setting, as opposed to other equally classic albums of yours such as Slow Dazzle or Fear? It’s a special event, that record, especially as we always bring in an orchestra for it. People have been asking me to do that for years. I didn’t see how you could do it affordably. So, it has to be an event or festival. The album itself is only 32 minutes long—that’s half a concert—so when we do those shows, we orchestrate additional songs of mine, tracks from Music For A New Society and such. There are a lot of my songs that would be benefited by an orchestra’s presence. Plus, I don’t like the idea of a hybrid concert: half rock ‘n’ roll, half strings. Does Paris 1919 resonate with you more than your other albums. Does it contain special meaning? No. From the sound of your most recent records to the people you collaborate with
at present, one can tell you’re attuned to what’s going on in new music. Do you keep track of your past collaborators, like Patti Smith or Iggy Pop or Lou Reed? No, I don’t. I mean, I know they’re working, but I don’t listen to their records. They’re interested in the same things I am. If I’m going to do any listening, it should be outside of that circle. I’d rather rummage around new records by Wale or Erykah Badu. Skrillex is exciting, and Mark Ronson does good work, but what Badu does is very funky. There’s a hip-hop artist named Cocaine whose work is very soulful. I like that. How is it that you connected with Danger Mouse for the new album? For some time, I was listening to J Dilla and trying to figure out this Motown-like simplicity he had, and how it was going to help me. Around the same time, there was this band that Brian (Burton, Danger Mouse) was producing, the Shortwave Set, that he asked me to help him with. So, we spent time together in a studio on that, and began messing around with other ideas. When I finished most of my own album, I was still grappling with that J Dilla Motown-swing idea when I remembered this one new track that was sticking out from the feel of Nookie Wood, so I asked Brian. He has a very soft, sweet touch to whatever he plays, wherein I have the tendency to hammer on things. When I got the files back, it put me in a different place. It was interesting to see how he worked. I really did throw a bunch of odd ideas at him, and he included them all. What didn’t work on a verse worked on a bridge. What didn’t work on the bridge worked on a chorus. He’s valuable. He understands you and uses every idea that you come up with, because that’s your sum total. There were times when you eschewed traditional song cycles. Before HoboSapiens, it was nearly seven years (Walking On Locusts). Before that, eight years (Words For The Dying). What was in your head during those times? It’s not quiet as firm as that. Sometimes regular formats and song cycles work. Sometimes they don’t. For me, if I’ve done that in the last nine months, I don’t want to do that again for awhile. I’m always finding a different starting point for the process. I think I’ve always been that way. Part of my makeup, really. Was there a process to starting Nookie Wood that was different than anything else you’ve ever done? It was about 18 months ago, working very conscientiously toward a sound. I kept going and wound up with 40 songs. But what seemed to happen was that the later ones were getting better and more focused. By the time the album was due, there was a huge
question about when what should come out. That’s when we broke apart an EP, because we needed to play in Paris in June, which was suicidal because there’s nobody in Paris in June. Also, I’ve really come to enjoy this little studio setup that I have in L.A. I know what everything is going to sound like outside of that studio, so I’m very confident there. I went there three times a week, pulled out a lot older bits I had worked on, including “Nookie Wood,” and found some genuine surprises. What used to be the process of writing on piano or guitar, where you could go out and play those songs out solo immediately, has changed to become one of laptops and mp3s, a new ground up, so to speak. You have a tendency to make albums that are either difficult listening or—not mainstream, but rather sonically conventional to the ear. Is there a decision before going to your studio as to what you’ll make? You said you had 40 songs this time out. How do you decide where to steer them? I don’t make those decisions. I don’t have that grasp. It just happens. Some people, though, have exactly that grasp. I remember when I was working at CBS, and Paul Simon would come in and say, “I’ve got this album coming, and it will have three singles on it.” Sure enough, we’d listen, and there were three singles on it in exactly the right spot on the album. That’s admirable, but I can’t do that. With me, you have to throw out objectivity. I’m so glad that you brought up your time at the labels in A&R and such. You were at Columbia and Warner Bros. What do you remember about those days? I had been working at CBS before I went to work for Warner’s, doing special projects for Clive (Davis). They were about to embark on a multi-million dollar project with a Japanese company when Quadraphonics was just developing. We attacked that and the issues that came with it. Four speakers, yes, but what will people do with all those stereo albums? Are they going to replace them? Those questions. I was doing that for a while. I had really wanted to produce, but Clive had other ideas for me. We talked, and he convinced me. That’s Clive. He thought that was a good role for me to fill. Then when I had enough of Manhattan for the time being, I got an offer from Warner’s in Burbank, and I went there and it repeated itself. One thing I’ve never heard or read is you bitching about the business or money in a business where people do nothing but complain about money. Why is that? There’s no point. Why would I complain to you? What would my problems mean to you? The proper thing, always, is to act privately in all matters.
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With The Resistance, Muse took over the world. On The 2nd Law, the bombastic British trio tries to figure out what to do with it.
Written by brian baker
The global success of Muse’s 2009 album, The Resistance, led to a relentless and almost supernaturally successful two-year tour, as the band attempted the improbable dual feat of growing their already sizable audience and taking their arena-scaled and brilliantly bombastic live show to every corner of the planet. With those two items checked on their short–form to-do list, the three principals of Muse—vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Matthew Bellamy, bassist/vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist Christopher Wolstenholme and drummer/percussionist/sampler/synth man Dominic Howard— enjoyed a brief respite from their post-Resistance grind, and then returned to begin shaping the material that would ultimately comprise their latest album, The 2nd Law. Although the transition from the din of touring to the isolation of the rehearsal room could have been daunting, Muse were itching to get back to the process.
io where their new album could somehow match or surpass the dizzying heights notched by The Resistance. That’s when Sir Elton John called looking for a Muse song to use during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. “That was a pretty good start,” says Howard with a laugh. “He called Matt over a year ago. The Olympics had asked him to do something, so he asked us to do something with him. At that point, we were like, ‘Yeah, maybe, we’ll talk about it.’ Initially, we started thinking about the track that ended up being ‘Survival.’ I’d heard Matt play the chords over and over in rehearsals or around his house—we might have jammed it a couple times—so I was familiar with what the song could be. I think we all thought, ‘This one,’ because it’s got piano and guitars, and Elton could play the piano. But then nothing happened and we carried on making the album. Elton stopped working with the Olympics in a musical capacity, so that all went away, but I suppose it sowed a tiny seed to
“We were ready,” says Howard from London prior to a rehearsal for the band’s first extensive tour of The 2nd Law. “Once you’ve been on the road that long, naturally you start becoming a little bit more creative and new ideas start to appear, and you get that need to make
new music and play new music.” After a year that saw them perform only 15-20 gigs—primarily festival slots like Lollapalooza and Reading—the trio began writing and demoing new songs. They were trying to remain as neutral as possible, not wanting to envision any scenar-
Photos by danny clinch & gavin bond
push the epicness and bombast of that song. So, in the process of recording the song, we wanted to throw a lot of things at it and push the heavy side of the band. So, we ended up getting the choir in and there were all these amazing choir parts [that] made it sound like bloody System of a Down at the end.” Once the song was finished, Olympic officials approached Muse about performing for the closing ceremonies, and the band offered them several song choices, but they were immediately drawn to “Survival.” The epic nature of the music and the last-person-standing lyrical theme made it a natural choice for the global competition; it was eventually selected to be the official song of the 2012 Olympics. “They heard it and they were like, ‘That’s amazing—that totally fits the vibe of the Olympics and what we’re trying to achieve here in London,’” says Howard. “So, they asked if they could use it, and we said yeah; coincidentally, it was also the song in the back of our minds. It was a bit of a coincidence, needle
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but it worked out. And hats off to the Olympic organizers, in my opinion, that they actually chose a song like that, because it’s pretty fucking out there.” Without question, Muse’s closing performance of “Survival” was one of the high points of an event that was even more grandiloquent and lavish than the band’s own live spectacle. Once the hoopla died down, Muse got back to the interrupted task of formulating the songs for The 2nd Law, and while “Survival” had been a tantalizing hint at the new album, it was far from indicative of its breadth, as well as its distance from its predecessor. “With The Resistance, we were trying to define the core sound of the band,” says Howard. “We locked ourselves away in a studio in Italy for a few months and forgot about everything we’d done in the past, and forgot about playing live, and just tried to find this core thing. With The 2nd Law, it was just a completely different approach. Again, we wanted to challenge
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ourselves and, of course, forget about everything we’ve done in the past and just be very experimental, which was part of the process. I think we ended up being very experimental with this album because it’s come out so radically diverse in its sound.” While Muse were creating the songs for The 2nd Law with their familiar toolbox of influences, leaning toward the band’s patented Led Zeppelinogre-battles-Queen-in-the-21stcentury pageantry, the trio was also listening to a fair amount of electronica and dubstep as well, in the form of Skrillex, Does It Offend You, Yeah? and Justice. That mingling of new and established influences had a significant impact on the way Muse approached their new material, from writing to execution. “Loads of musical influences have steered this album,” says Howard. “Lots of current electronic music has always been an influence to us, in some ways. Be it dubstep or current electronic music, there’s a certain heaviness that I really love, and it’s
been inspiring to listen to it. But there’s also Hans Zimmer and John Williams and orchestral music and Ennio Morricone and funk music, weirdly, and pop and rock; there’s a huge amount of genres, it seems, in the album. Mix it all up and see what happens, really.” One of the methods that Muse’s creative triumvirate utilized to shake things up in the studio involved crafting songs in ways that were familiar to the band, and then approaching them from a completely different angle in the production process. In this way, Muse maintained a foundational consistency on The 2nd Law while exploring new sonic textures and possibilities. “I suppose we produced songs in opposite ways in which they came to be,” says Howard. “A song like ‘Follow Me,’ for example, is very much a band rock song, but then we wanted to keep the structure and the core of that, but produce it in a completely different way and make it very electronic-sound-
ing, just to see what happened. ‘Madness’ was a similar thing. It’s kind of a bluesy, gospel song, but we wanted to produce it very minimal and intense and also electronic-sounding. Then on ‘Unsustainable,’ that was started off electronic and then we produced it with real instruments—drums, bass, guitar, orchestra and choir—and brought it into a more organic feeling. We flipped the approach of each song in regards to production from the initial idea just to find unexpected results, and it worked. It ended up keeping us on our toes.” Muse were not just working with a new creative spirit on The 2nd Law; they found themselves shifting into a new gear in the process. Within a month of entering the studio, the trio had over a dozen tracks written and ready to begin recording. “Within three or four weeks, we had 13 tracks demoed, so it was a surprisingly creative couple of months,” Howard recalls. “It really happened quite quickly. We were like, ‘Shit, it
all seems to be going well, we’re ready to go.’ You change all the time, but I think all three of us were on the case. The decisionmaking was happening quite quickly and the creative vibe was just happening, man.” Another unique facet of The 2nd Law is that the album represents the first time that bassist Wolstenholme has stepped up to sing lead since Muse formed back in 1994. Wolstenholme’s two vocal contributions—“Save Me” and “Liquid State”—are the songs for which he provided the lyrics. They’re also intensely personal because they address his long and ultimately successful
struggle with alcoholism. “Chris has had a few musical ideas before and tried to write, but he’s never been in a position to go to the next level and finish a song,” says Howard. “As a person, he’s been in a bit of a weird, dark place for well over a decade, so I don’t think he’s been in a fit state to communicate his ideas as well as he can now, seeing as how he’s clear-headed and sober. He quit drinking shortly after we started touring The Resistance, but it’s taken a number of years for him to really change as a person, and develop the simple confidence to be able to present ideas. We felt like Chris
With The Resistance , we were trying to define the core sound of the band. We locked ourselves away in a studio in Italy for a few months and forgot about everything we’d done in the past, and forgot about playing live, and just tried to find this core thing. —Dominic Howard
should sing them because it felt personal to him, and he had lyrical ideas floating around, and it just seemed right for Chris to sing them and not Matt. “I think it’s great that he’s opened up in that way; it’s certainly a different thing for the band, but it’s brought us all closer in so many ways. It’s made us open up to each other in ways that we haven’t done before. Chris being sober has definitely helped the creative process. It felt like we were… different, and in many ways, because we were all on the case; where The Resistance, it felt a little bit more like it was just me and Matt doing it and not much Chris. This time, he was right there.” Last June, the band posted a teaser trailer for the album on their website, drawing a decidedly mixed reaction from their fan base. Wolstenholme had already gone on record stating The 2nd Law would be “radically different,” and Bellamy had offered the tongue-in-cheek assessment of “christian gangsta rap jazz odyssey with some ambient rebellious dubstep and face melting metal flamenco cowboy psychedelia” via Twitter. The 2nd Law isn’t quite that oppositional, but it does represent a new sonic chapter for Muse, while keeping well within earshot of the fans that have elevated them to their current lofty position. And because they know those fans pretty well, they weren’t too concerned about the lukewarm reception to the taste of the new album. “The fans’ opinions are great to hear and, to be honest, it’s nothing new that we generally split our fans’ opinions when we release new things,” says Howard. “I feel like it’s always happened. Every time we re-
lease an album or a song first or whatever it may be, I don’t think it’s ever been unanimous. People are like, ‘Wow, this is amazing, I love it,’ and other people are like, ‘This is the shittiest thing I’ve ever heard.’ It’s always been so polarized. People were saying we were making a dubstep album, which we knew we weren’t, so we just found it funny.” As the generally positive reviews begin to roll in for The 2nd Law, Muse are busy with rehearsals for their massive new stage presentation, which Howard promises will be different in one very significant way. “We’re not going to be up on towers, spinning around, fortunately, because that was actually pretty scary,” he says, laughing. “It looked cool, and I loved that production, but Matt and Chris were like, ‘Oh Jesus, we’ve got to do that again for the first couple of songs.’ I don’t think they were ever particularly comfortable on those towers. “What I like about designing production and how we go about things is the simplicity in the scale. The last production seemed pretty out there and ambitious, but ultimately it was just three massive columns, and it was the scale of those columns that made it look impressive. This time ’round, it’s going to be a huge video show, lots of visuals and effects tied into the music, but we’re constructing this huge upside-down LED pyramid that can move up and down, and compress into itself, turn inside out, and come down and encapsulate me on the stage and morph around. It’s an upside-down all-seeing eye bit of symbolism; turning the power structure on its head, that’s what we’re doing.” needle
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Golden Gods The Rolling Stones celebrate their 50th anniversary with an onslaught of new product by Andrea Trace
“I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna be.” 1 Oh, yeah. That other big British band. The one that stayed together. From the swagger of their first big hits “Not Fade Away” and “It’s All Over Now,” the Rolling Stones established themselves as dirty blues practitioners with an authentic, jagged edge. Not bothered that the white hats were already taken, the Stones battered their way into the collective consciousness of the burgeoning, free-wheeling 60’s scene. And they were a perfect fit. “You have to put yourself back into that time,” as Mick Jagger says. “Popular music wasn’t talked about on any kind of intellectual level. There was no such term as ‘popular culture.’ None of those things existed. But suddenly popular music became bigger than it had ever been before. It became an important, perhaps the most important, art form of the period, after not at all being regarded as an art form before.” 32
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“I’m glad I opened your eyes.” 2 Scruffy and unkempt, zits on their faces and cigarettes hanging from sneering lips, the Stones imbibed American rhythm and blues and spat it back out for the London hipsters. The line-up at the very first gigs was Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Ian Stewart. Stewart would leave in May of the next year; Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts joined the band in early 1963. Far from poster boys, rock ‘n’ roll stardom did not look like it was part of the plan—not an idea percolating under anybody’s greasy hair. (OK—not Brian Jones. His hair was always shiny.) “It’s been surprisingly organic,” notes Richards. “I mean, there was no sort of master plan. We were flying by the seat of our pants. That is what amazes me, that the whole thing was improvised. We’ve been an amazingly resilient bunch of lads, that’s all I say. We’ve been part of everything that’s happened, and we’re an important part, I suppose. If you say I’m great, thank you very much, but I know what I am. I could be better, man, you know?” “…everything in the world you could possibly imagine!” 3 What the Stones did for music—British and North American— went way beyond the blues. They redefined the career-path requirements for mass acceptance and popular success. Taking
the music of the past and running it through their own roughcut filters, the Stones created the music of the future. One of the reasons they bridge the generations and wear so well is their ability to distill and restamp everything they come across. No other band has approached music with such catholic receptivity. They embrace every popular genre. “It’s 3am, there’s too much noise, don’t those people ever wanna to go to bed?” 4 “Something was happening in the late winter of 1962 and afterwards,” Keith Richards says, “because suddenly hundreds and then thousands of people were queuing up to see us. And it doesn’t take a nail driven through your head to realize that something’s going on and that you’re part of it. It was an amazing experience and it happened so fast, starting in London and then moving out from there. It was like hanging onto a tornado.” “Drums beatin’ cold English blood runs hot.” 5 The Stones earned their stripes in the clubs and in the arenas. The band is an unstoppable force live—a tidal wave of energy, inexorable sexuality and roller coaster fun. They redeem every promise. “As soon as we got in front of audiences, they went crazy,” Jagger remembers. “It started in clubs, and then it just continued to grow.” A live Stones show is a thing of beauty. Time after time, in cities around the world, audiences forget the hype, the drug busts, the divorces, the battling egos—this is a working rock band, a stage full of gifted musicians and performers. And it’s a gas.
the Stones didn’t just embrace punk, disco, country, funk, rhythm and roots: they owned them all. Ron Wood, now a full-fledged Rolling Stone, flavoured the album with his unconventional slide. Of the album’s influences, Jagger has said: “The inspiration for the record was really based in New York and the ways of the town. I think that gave it an extra spur and hardness. And then, of course, there was the punk thing that had started in 1976.” It’s typical of the Stones that a critical masterpiece was created while the threat of a jail term hung over Richards for a 1977 drug bust in Toronto. “Making love and breaking hearts, It is a game for youth.” 8 The Stones took it all in stride and continued to craft elastic rock’n’roll albums approaching the new millennium. 1981 saw the release of the boisterous Tattoo You, a cherry-picking journey into past Stones’ studio sessions. There are more years in between albums now but their crunch of blues-driven rock is still slap-your-face fresh on late–career opuses Dirty Work, Voodoo Lounge, and 2005’s A Bigger Bang.
“We looked so fine, baby, you in white and me in green.” 9 So here we are, 50 years later. (What a drag it is getting old.) In the rarefied company of Bands Who Changed The World, no one else has been standing as a group this long. Hence, a party of special magnificence is already rolling out. The 50th Anniversary of the Rolling Stones is being commemorated in a one-of-everything kind of way: a new single (“Doom And Gloom”), a new album (GRRR!), a new tour (50 Grrr! is available “There’s been some others in this room & Counting… The Rolling Stones Live), a new book November 13 from Universal (The Rolling Stones: 50) and a new career-spanning with me, well, really quite a crowd.” 6 Actually, the line-up has changed remarkably little in documentary (Crossfire Hurricane). Stones fans can five decades. As Jagger says “Of course, members have come and dig deep and still have more to celebrate. gone over the years, but it is still the Rolling Stones.” Each new guitarist has brought something fresh to the ever-evolving jug“Well and what can a poor boy do?” 10 gernaut that is the Rolling Stones. Brian Jones was there for Beg- “I didn’t expect to last until fifty myself, let alone with the Stones,” gars Banquet, the band’s pivotal first outing with producer Jimmy Keith Richards says with a laugh. “It’s incredible, really. In that Miller. In 1969, following Brian Jones’ departure and death, Mick sense we’re still living on borrowed time.” Taylor joined the band, his lissome, fluid style in brilliant counterpoint to Richards’ signature drive. Taylor contributed a tasty “Baby, cha-cha-cha, oh my.” 11 new layer to the seminal sets Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. notes : Song Title, Album “Never wanted to be like papa, 1 “Not Fade Away” England’s Newest Hit Makers working for the boss every night and day.” 7 2 “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadows” Goats Head Soup (1973) was the last Jimmy Miller-produced alBig Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) bum of the Stones so-called golden age. Critics were split in their 3 “Some Girls” Some Girls opinions, but “Angie” went #1 in the US and was a worldwide hit, 4 “Get Off Of My Cloud” December’s Children despite the fact that record execs wanted another barn burner à 5 “Brown Sugar” Sticky Fingers la “Brown Sugar” as the first single. Goats Head was followed in 6 “Following The River” Exile On Main Street 1974 by It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll and in 1976 with Black and Blue, 7 “Happy” Exile On Main Street the first album featuring Ronnie Wood. 8 “Waiting On A Friend” Tattoo You Critics presaging the Stones demise, or worse, their purported 9 “Black Limousine” Tattoo You lack of relevance, were left with egg on their faces when Some 10 “Street Fighting Man” Beggars Banquet Girls came out in 1978. On this RIAA-certified 6x platinum album, 11 “Let’s Spend The Night Together” Between The Buttons needle
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All Upside
Soundgarden reemerge from the superunknown to preserve— and extend— their legacy by m at t
s u l l i va n
For some reason,
I always pegged Soundgarden guitar-
ist Kim Thayil as the quiet one. Granted, I hadn’t given it much thought in recent years, what with the band being defunct for more than a decade and all. But Soundgarden rose from the grave in 2010, playing a number of one-off gigs, appearing on TV and eventually touring. Now they’re poised to release King Animal, their first album of new material since 1996’s Down on the Upside, and during an hour-long phone conversation full of tangents, anecdotes and grunge-era lore, Thayil proves a lot chattier than expected, explaining what led to Soundgarden reuniting after 13 years of inactivity,
“I really hate the word ‘entertainer,’” he says. “Well, I also hate the word ‘artist.’ ‘Artist’ is pretty damn pretentious when you’re involved in pop culture or folk culture. It’s not jazz; it’s not classical. You’re not really a fine artist—you’re a folk artist. You are doing something that is of its time and of its place and of its language, with
people who share those elements.” And in the mid-to-late ’80s, Soundgarden were communicating the folkways of their gray and damp corner of the Pacific Northwest. When you thought of the band’s hometown of Seattle in those days, you didn’t think of Starbucks or Amazon.com, or much of anything. Nir-
vana barely existed, and the Year Punk Broke was still a few trips around the sun away. But at the center of this petri dish was Soundgarden, a band you would have called metal at the time because you didn’t have a better word to describe them. Thayil sees his crew as one of the trailblazers that paved the path
to Nevermind. “Bands that were maybe a little bit more arty and prog started becoming heavier and stripped-down. Bands that were a little bit more punky started slowing down and incorporating more heavy riffs and arpeggiated chords, which are things that we used to do. So, yeah, very clearly we were trailblazers, at least needle
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We were always the kind of band that guys that start bands listened to. That’s the kind of guys we were, though. — Kim Thayil locally. I’ve heard that specifically from Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool.” Grunge music was a household term by the early ’90s, and along with Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Alice in Chains, Soundgarden rounded out its Big Four. But of that group, Soundgarden were the most complex musically, shifting between alternative tunings and odd time signatures (what other band has landed as many 7/4 riffs on mainstream radio since?). On top of all that was Chris Cornell’s wide-ranging wail. “We always kind of were the musician’s band,” Thayil says of 38
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Soundgarden’s early audience. “We were always the kind of band that guys that start bands listened to. That’s the kind of guys we were, though.” Starting with 1988’s Ultramega OK, they also became the kind of guys who got nominated for Grammys, receiving a nod with each album released until their breakup, and even taking home a few statuettes for a couple Superunknown tracks. But in ’97, after fifth album Down on the Upside, Soundgarden called it a day. Thayil reasons that it was mostly due to “a lot of time on the road,” but has heard what others think led to the band’s demise. “I know there’s been a lot of rumors here and there suggesting that there was substance abuse, which there was none of—at all. Years after Soundgarden broke up, I think Chris might have developed a substance abuse issue that none of us had ever experienced, because it was after the band broke up and before we started talking again,” he offers, unprompted. “I don’t pry too deeply into that, but I think at some point in some other band he developed some kind of indulgences that he overdid. But those were not the case prior to the band breaking up.” Either Thayil doesn’t want me to ask about Audioslave when he says “some other band,” or
he really lost touch with Cornell after Soundgarden. So, I don’t ask him about the supergroup Cornell formed with then ex-members of Rage Against the Machine that sold upwards of a gajillion records. Besides, he says the old band stayed in pretty close contact for the most part. And while substance abuse might not have been an issue, Thayil allows that there was maybe a bit of an over-exuberance for alcohol. “Ben and I and sometimes Chris would drink too much, but that would just mean something gets smashed against a wall. It was not a substance abuse problem as much as it was a drunk-and-disorderly problem,” he says with a laugh.
KNIGHTS OF THE SOUNDTABLE RIDE AGAIN “The record industry had changed so much from the late ’90s,” muses Thayil. “It’s ridiculous how much things changed as we broke up. If we had just waited for another three or four years, we might have been able to establish most of these things, like an official website and a relationship with iTunes. Probably would have had a MySpace page.” Reuniting and record-
ing a new album wasn’t part of the original plan; they wanted to manage their legacy. “It pretty much started with the band getting together, trying to go over some business issues—some financial, legal issues that were outstanding from a partnerships standpoint,” Thayil explains. Again, many of those issues stemmed from a new record industry model. “We had an official and unofficial website back in the ’90s, and the unofficial one was superior. But the guy who maintained that let it go a while after the band had broken up,” Thayil says. In the meantime, A&M Records—the label that put out sophomore effort Louder Than Love and each subsequent Soundgarden release through Down on the Upside—was sold to Universal Group. “Most of the people we knew who worked at the record company were let go or left early or whatever. A&M Records became basically a catalog label; they didn’t have any field staff. They weren’t signing and promoting artists, and our management kind of took its activities down a few notches.” With no one minding the band’s legacy, things like e-commerce strategies went neglected for the better part of 10 years. Much of the band’s merchandising contracts had expired, too, and the guitarist
said that their early albums were getting hard to find. “We had a number of friends who had kids who were becoming musicians themselves, who were huge fans of us or Nirvana or Alice in Chains,” recounts Thayil. “And we’d get these comments from friends: ‘Yeah, I took my kid to the store. We were trying to find some Soundgarden T-shirts and there weren’t any.’” With Cornell playing in Audioslave and forging a solo career while Cameron stayed busy playing drums in Pearl Jam, the issue wasn’t addressed for a long time. That bothered Thayil: “Just like as we were growing up, we’d find records, posters and Tshirts that belonged to the bands we liked, like Hendrix and the Beatles. Hendrix material and merchandise and records are all over the place, and successfully so for somebody who’s been gone for, what, 42 years?” The guitarist starts running through list of artists that influenced him. “Bands like the Stooges, the MC5—which are two of my favorite bands—they were broken up before I heard about them. The Sex Pistols. Beatles. So, we thought, ‘A bunch of our musical knowledge came dealing with acts posthumously and collecting records from defunct bands,’ so I think we always thought it was important that we maintained that presence.”
If that bothered the band’s other former members, it didn’t exactly move them into action. Nearly a decade after the fact, the four ex- Soundgardeners ’ business meetings finally resulted in a couple baby-steps into the world of e-commerce: There was going to be a new website and they would relaunch their old fan club, Knights of the Soundtable. Cornell made the announcement on something called “Twitter”: “The 12 year break is over & school is back in session. Sign up now. Knights of the Soundtable ride again!” Thayil says readers got the wrong impression. “People interpreted that to mean that Soundgarden was back together, and we didn’t want to say, ‘No no no, we’re not back,’” he explains. But with the rumors of a reunion came offers to play festivals. Plans to release the Telephantasm retrospective were already in the works, so why not take up the offers to promote the new disc? “We just kind of jammed together and rehearsed and tried to see how far off we were,” Thayil explains. “That was a lot of fun; that was amusing. Everybody had different memories of different parts of songs, and not what you’d expect. You’d think that I’d remember all the guitar parts, but I started remembering Chris’s parts as opposed to my part.
I’d recognized maybe an arrangement part vocally. Matt would remember a guitar part: ‘Kim, didn’t you do this here?’ ‘Oh, that’s right.’ So we started piecing the songs back together.” They did a test run in Seattle. Next they were playing Lollapalooza. Soon they’d play Conan. “So now, after playing these shows and putting out the retrospective and going through a lot of old tapes and just kind of reminiscing, it’s Matt Cameron who suggests we go into the studio, because he had a couple songs that he had demoed,” says Thayil. After getting reacquainted as “entertainers,” the band was ready to jump back into being “artists”—or folk artists or whatever.
ANIMAL INSTINCT Last month, Soundgarden released their sixth album, King Animal, their first collection of new material since Justin Bieber was in his terrible twos. Cornell told NME that the album would pick up where the band left off, which was sometime during the eighth season of Seinfeld. The album opens with a track called “Been Away Too Long,” but King Animal doesn’t necessarily sound like a continuation of Down on the Upside’s psychedelic sprawl. Nor is it a return to Ultramega OK’s velocity.
“It definitely has its own sound and its own style,” Thayil says. “Some of the early songs on the album, maybe the first three or four songs, are a bit more visceral. That’s an element that might be a little more present on Badmotorfinger, but we’ve always had that dark psychedelic, internal quality to our songs and our records.” But Superunknown is when those elements were cranked to 11, whether it was foreboding dirges like “Fourth of July” or the deep-space travails of its title track. “Superunknown, there’s an element to that which makes a strong headphone album. Something about it is very personal and introspective that I think works well with headphones,” admits Thayil. “Badmotorfinger really works well in the car, for some reason—because it’s visceral, I think. Down on the Upside kind of has a little mix of both.” And that’s probably where the continuation comes in: “This record I think has that visceral element of Badmotorfinger, but there’s something else. Down on the Upside has a sadness to it, but it’s not as dark. King Animal is rocking and visceral. There’s a few songs that are darker, certainly, like ‘Rowing’ and ‘Down on the Valley Floor,’ but it doesn’t really have that overt sadness that you could find in Down on the Upside and Super-
unknown, coupled with the darkness that’s on Superunknown.” As for Cameron’s demos—the ones that ultimately led to the band re-emerging as a creative entity—a couple of those songs ended up becoming King Animal tracks: the swirling “Eyelid’s Mouth” and the hard-driving “By Crooked Steps.” A couple other songs were also being kicked around before the band hit the wall in ’97. Thayil says the band probably had “A Thousand Days Before” 80 percent finished before they broke up. They dusted it off, Cornell remembered some lyrical ideas, and 16 years after they abandoned it, now it’s the fourth track on their new album. So, with a new album, tours and a few stabs at making something unlike anything they’ve done before, Soundgarden are no longer one of those defunct bands that kids get into posthumously. “These last few tours, it’s been a bunch of young kids, guys who probably had their own bands and are musicians, and then guys who are in their 40s who are probably with some degree of nostalgia,” says Thayil. “It’s a similar cross-section. I think the only difference between now and then is there’s more older people. And there’s more really young people. There’s more couples coming with their kids.” needle
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Soul on Fire story by
Eric Wagonner
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photos by
Joshua Black Wilkins
Wanda Jackson changed rock history with a string of raw rockabilly cuts. At age 75, she’s still working on unfinished business. She could have gone all-in and moved to Europe. Not for
a little while, but for good. Plenty of struggling American musicians had gone that route, and Wanda Jackson had done just fine in Europe, recording and touring and playing songs that American audiences hadn’t heard her perform in years, unless they could get their hands on some of those old sides: “Let’s Have A Party,” “Fujiyama Mama,” “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad.” ¶ Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy, having flummoxed American jazz audiences by taking their music in new directions, found respect and admiration among European listeners who heard the deep—and deeply American—spirit at the heart of their strange music. There was a long precedent here: When American audiences had a hard time hearing the fiery soul you were trying to put into your art, you hopped a plane and took the show across the pond. ¶ That’s what Jackson did, but that hadn’t been the plan. She’d just sort of fallen into it in 1980, when promoters and producers began inviting her to play in Germany, in England, in Scandinavia. When those invitations started coming in, Jackson hadn’t recorded much else besides gospel music in her home country for about half as long as she’d recorded nasty rockabilly her first time around. In the early 1970s, Jackson, once touted as the “Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice,” had found God, and God had taken root inside her. She wanted to take the soul-filling sweetness her new faith had given her and use that raw, ragged voice to share it, the way she’d once done with rockabilly’s raunchy stylings throughout the ’50s and ’60s. Jackson began her singing career as a country chanteuse in 1954, when she was only 17; it was Elvis Presley, no less, who encouraged her to take up rockabilly. She had a voice utterly suited to it—a voice like no one else’s, and like no one else had ever heard. It was a voice like smoke and sandpaper and honey, a voice that sounded like it knew every awful broken heart you’d ever suffered, every mean thought you’d ever had. It was the kind of voice you wanted to hear on the other end of the phone, saying, v“I know how you feel, honey. Go on and cry, but remember you’re a tough gal, and you’re gonna get through this.” Wanda Jackson had a voice perfectly calibrated to both country’s mournful wailing and rockabilly’s go-to-hell partying and juke-joint jump.
Backing up that voice was a world of attitude. In a way—and this was what really set her apart from the edgier female singers like the Patsy Clines, Loretta Lynns and Lesley Gores of the day—Jackson was a hardcore diva long before American culture began to celebrate that kind of woman. Check her 1969 single “My Big Iron Skillet”; ignore the boilerplate countrypolitan band arrangement, and hear the hard promise at the center of that song’s lyric: “You’ve screwed up once too often, man/And when you walk through that door tonight/I’m going to go right upside your head/And when you wake up/If you wake up/I’ll be gone.” That, more than anything, was Wanda Jackson—a voice that came straight up out of the record groove like the very sound of heartache, and the hard fight back from it, all at one pass. By the ’70s, Jackson had rung up a lifetime of experience and solid credits in the business. She’d been laboring in the professional music fields for almost 20 years by then, recording mixes of rock and country music across nearly as many albums. When she turned to God, however, Jackson found her new row a harder one to hoe. Soon after the first gospel release following her profession of faith, 1972’s Praise The Lord, she was dropped from Capitol, her longtime label. The woman once billed as the Queen of Rockabilly moved to smaller gospel labels like Myrrh and Word Distribution. The bright light
of public fame she’d once enjoyed faded just a bit, as she moved into touring on the revival and church circuits. Though she never stopped performing, Jackson had more and more trouble finding outlets to record the music she really wanted to—a mix of country and gospel that acknowledged her roots, but with a softer, mellower edge; major labels were suspicious of releasing religious music, while religious labels often saw any nod to mainstream music as selling out their message of faith. Jackson was caught in between. The early ’80s brought a resurgence of interest in rockabilly music, both at home and overseas. And when Jackson was courted by concert promoters who wanted to package American music for European audiences, she went. And not only did she play live, she re-entered the studio, reconnecting for the first time since finding God with the rock ‘n’ roll styles she’d once helped to build. This time, European listeners—particularly younger ones—rediscovered the wonders of Wanda before those of us back in the U.S. But once heard, or re-heard, that voice can’t be forgotten. Jackson, who just turned 75, has released Unfinished Business on the venerable Sugar Hill label, with Justin Townes Earle at the helm. And the first thing she wants to make sure we know is that she’s never been away. “It isn’t like I’ve been in retirement,” Jackson says firmly. “I haven’t ever stopped working. We’ve invested our life into Wanda Jackson, and she’s made us a pretty darn good living. But for so many years, Europe is where I went, for a month or two at a time. So, I think people in America, they just thought I’d retired. Or died.” She laughs. “But from 1995 until today, I’ve been able to work so much more in America. I’m only going to Europe here and there now, for festivals.” F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously wrote that there were no second acts in American lives. By that harsh standard, Jackson is now in the midst of her third act, a revivified recording career that began with 2003’s Heart Trouble, released on CMH. The longtime bluegrass label had initially approached Jackson about recording an album of new material. But somewhere along the line, when word got out that Jackson was recording in the States again, the phone began to ring. And ring. Among the musicians who expressed the desire to work on the record (“If I wanted ’em,” Jackson inserts demurely) were the Blasters’ Dave Alvin, Elvis Costello, the Cramps, the Stray Cats’ Lee Rocker and the Cadillac Angels. If it was an understandable reaction, it was still a surprising one, considering Heart Trouble was Jackson’s first new album of non-gospel mate-
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rial in nearly 20 years. Jack White produced 2011’s The Party Ain’t Over, a technically accomplished record, but one on which White’s helmsmanship finally comes to command more listening attention than Jackson’s performance—which is formidable, but rather more straightforward and less filigreed than White’s production. More an interesting experiment in reimagining Jackson’s talents than a true record of them, The Party Ain’t Over nonetheless stamped her reemerging brand with a hipster imprimatur. None of this history is lost on singer and producer Earle, who selected the music and sat at the boards for Unfinished Business, which sounds like the album Jackson has been preparing for since 2003. In its blend of old and new music, its statements on faith and heartache distributed over a series of expertly chosen songs, Jackson’s Sugar Hill bow plays more like a more modern expansion of the unselfconscious Heart Trouble. Most impressively, in Earle, Jackson finally finds a producer who handles her beloved gospel music not as a sidebar to her country and rockabilly history, but as one strand in her heart’s complicated braid. “His approach really sums up my career,” says Jackson, for whom the idea of separating those threads—the gospel, the blues, the rock— “doesn’t hold true anymore. I do a gospel song every night I perform now, right in there in with the rockabilly. It’s the same person (singing all those songs), it’s the same unity. I give a testimony every night about my coming to Christ, and the place gets deathly quiet. But they’re listening, you see. And then I break into ‘I Saw The Light,’ and they sing right along with me, just like it was rockabilly. The respect I get from my crowds these days is ... it’s awesome.” Approached by his management about producing a Wanda Jackson record, Earle jumped on it with both feet. “I think her people were looking for a young producer who had respect for the classics, from Charlie Poole up to George Jones,” he says. “I think they got into the fact that I can get ornamental without getting kitschy.” It took a while for the project to move, but once it did, says Earle, “We were walking into the studio within a month.” The studio was Nashville’s House Of David, which Earle had used as his recording base for his own albums. Quickly, Earle began tapping musicians and assembling a list of possible songs, everything from Freddie King’s blues rocker “I’m Tore Down” to Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now” to Townes Van Zandt’s “Two Hands” to “California Stars,” from Billy Bragg & Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue Woody Guthrie sessions. “He sent me so many good songs,” says Jackson. “With the exception of one or two I brought to the table, I had to agree with him.” Earle remembers a bit more conversation
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I haven’t ever stopped working. We’ve invested our life into Wanda Jackson, and she’s made us a pretty darn good living. I think people in America just thought I’d retired. Or died.”
—Wanda Jackson during the selection process “I was very picky about what went on, because I feel like Wanda’s been misrepresented, in a way,” he says. “She told me early on, she often has to remind people that she’s the ‘sweet girl with the dirty voice,’ not the dirty girl with the sweet voice. Wanda takes her faith very seriously. I respect that. But I also know that it alienates a lot of people, too. That was one thing we talked about in the course of it; I was trying to make sure that we gave the ironic hipsters a chance.” A funny line, sure; but there’s nothing terribly ironic about a song like “Two Hands” (“I got one heart/I’m gonna fill it up with Jesus/And I ain’t gonna think about trouble anymore”), which contains one of the more blistering vocals on Unfinished Business, right? “Not at all,” agrees Earle, “except that that song’s written by Townes Van Zandt.” Ah, touché. The devil, like God, is always in the details. “So, drawing from this family of musicians I work with for the sessions, I was basically looking for a bunch of guys who had absolutely no ego whatsoever,” says Earle. “The ones who would listen when I told them that I needed them to be respectful around Wanda, to not cuss or swear ... but who could also smoke in the studio, who weren’t just going to fall into that rockabilly box. Basically, my job was to make Wanda feel comfortable, to make her feel confident, and the rest would fall into place. I told everybody, ‘OK, guys, I want all of you to think about this like Wanda’s your grandma. And I want you to be sweet to your grandma.’” To capture the raw energy, Earle initially brought all the performers into the studio to lay down parts while Jackson ran “scratch” vocals,
“to make sure everyone was on Wanda’s timing.” But as it turned out, only a couple of songs on the record would see her vocals re-recorded. Most of the album is Jackson live and swinging in the studio, surrounded by the musicians. “I think (those vocals worked) because it took me back to those days when the whole band was in the studio together,” says Jackson. “It helps when you’re able to wear the headphones, turn around and see all the guys.” The final product sounds like all the threads of Jackson’s career strung together at last. The closing cut, “California Stars,” is perhaps her gentlest and most earned vocal—rested and thankful, after all the roar and the thunder, finding Jackson looking up for the lights in the darkness. “That song’s the one that hit me the most,” says Earle. “It’s a more vulnerable Wanda than I think most people have heard. She’s just got one of those voices. Like Willie Nelson’s. You can pick it out of a crowd like that.” When we talk about how the best American music explores just that search for light even in the toughest moments, it’s hard not to hear all her work as a variation on that theme when Jackson says, “Oh, country music’s always done that. You know, I never intended to quit recording country; I just wanted to add gospel to it. As it turned out, country dropped me, so I stayed with gospel. But you know, it’s like Joe Allison, one of my producers, once said to me. He said, ‘Wanda, let’s face it: When you take the cheatin’, lyin’, drinkin’ and cussin’ out of country music, you haven’t got much left.’” But Wanda Jackson sure does. “Well, bless you,” she says sweetly. Indeed: Bless us all. M
THE ROLLING STONES – GRRR! Celebrating 50 years, the greatest hits from 1962 to 2012. 80 Tracks on 4 CDs Including 2 Brand New Tracks! Also includes: - 36 page booklet - Tour poster postcard set - Bonus CD of previously unreleased first ever studio recordings - Previously unreleased 7” vinyl of BBC - - Radio session EP - Rare early poster - 96 page hardback book
THE ROLLING STONES - Charlie is my Darling Includes: Blu-ray & DVD - with full frame-by-frame restoration, Soundtrack CD (22 tracks), Bonus CD (13 live tracks), 10” vinyl, 40 page book, replica poster & numbered limited edition enlarged film cell.
PETER GABRIEL - SO (25th Anniversary) Includes: Newly-remastered So CD, So DNA CD, Studio quality 24 Bit digital download, Live in Athens 1987, double CD+DVD, Classic Albums: So DVD, 12” AA Vinyl Collectible & 60 page case-bound book.
WINNER 2012
Critic Choice Awards
GEORGE HARRISON - Living in the Material World Includes: 2 DVDs, Bluray (with exclusive content), Early Takes Vol. 1 CD, Photos & 96 page book.
THE WHO - Quadrophenia (The Directors Cut) Includes: 4 CDs, DVD, Vinyl seven inch single, Photos, Poster & 100 page hardback book. CURRENTLY ON TOUR
AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 6
HIM
XX - TWO DECADES OF LOVE METAL
This year HIM, the most successful Finnish band in the USA, celebrate 20 years by releasing a compilation album XX – Two Decades of Love Metal. This is the first compilation by the band that covers their whole career. The celebratory compilation includes one new track, Strange World – the first new material from HIM since 2010. Kevin Grivois known by the artist name Ké released the track in the 90s, and it’s one of the personal favorites of Ville Valo.
AXEWOUND VULTURES It takes just one listen to AxeWound’s lead single Post Apocalyptic Party to make their intentions abundantly clear: they are a metal band… proudly, defiantly and unbendingly so. Their pedigree is inarguably first class – they feature guitarist/vocalist Matt Tuck from Bullet For My Valentine and singer Liam Cormier of Cancer Bats, prime movers in two of the most exciting bands to have emerged onto the metal scene in recent years. The line-up for their debut album “Vultures” is completed by drummer extraordinaire Jason Bowld (Pitchshifter), guitarist Mike Kingswood (Glamour Of The Kill) and ex-Rise To Remain bassist Joe Copcutt. Not surprisingly, they have already been branded a ‘supergroup’ in the press. Matt Tuck says, “AxeWound is about us taking the same opportunity to do exactly what we want. Musically, lyrically, it is what it is – no boundaries or limits.” AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 19
RHYTHMS DEL MUNDO AFRICA
ON TOUR IN NOVEMBER
Rhythms Del Mundo is a project created by Artists Project Earth to raise awareness of climate change and protect it’s victims through the power of music. Sales from Rhythms Del Mundo have funded over 300 vital environmental projects. Artists Project Earth in collaboration with international musicians has produced three fundraising albums to date: Rhythms Del Mundo Cuba, Rhythms Del Mundo Classics and Rhythms Del Mundo Revival , which have sold over one million albums so far. Rhythms Del Mundo Africa will be the fourth release featuring music from artists such as Coldplay, Beyonce, Eminem, Mumford & Sons and R.E.M. to name a few. AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 6
FEAR THE FEAR RECORD FEAR is an American Punk Rock Band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1977, credited for influencing the American punk rock movement. The band has continued to be active since 1978, most recently with the release of ”The Fear Record”. Fear’s November 6, 2012 worldwide release of “The Fear Record” will be supported by performances worldwide. Since Fear began recording in 1979, bands such as A Perfect Circle, Soundgarden, Megadeth, Sacred Reich and Guns N’ Roses have covered their songs, a new collaboration with Lee Ving and the Foo Fighters called The Sound City Players is also slated for fall release.
www.theendrecords.com
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You thought you had a bead on Band Of Horses. Now that you’ve heard the unrelentingly retro Mirage Rock, you’re not so sure. Our warts-and-all oral history should set you straight.
story by hobart rowland • photos by gene smirnov
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Making his way from the tour bus to a pre-soundcheck interview, Ben Bridwell has just spied a murky pond that would be the perfect staging ground for one of Ernie “Turtleman” Brown’s shirtless critter extractions on Animal Planet’s cult hit Call Of The Wildman. ¶ “I just got into the show on this tour—it’s fuckin’ hilarious,” says Bridwell, quite pleased with his Turtleman impression as he fires up an American Spirit and has a seat near the load-in area at Maryland’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Bridwell and the rest of Band Of Horses are in the thick of a summer tour with My Morning Jacket, where they’ve been road-testing music from their new album, Mirage Rock (Brown/Columbia)—tracks like the yee-haw chaotic first single, “Knock Knock,” and Earth Day anti-anthem “Dumpster World,” a weird shotgun marriage of CSNY-like harmonizing and Grandaddy’s “A.M. 180.” By any standard, Mirage Rock’s in-yer-face aesthetic is a thorough dismantling of the methodically assembled, heavily reverbed sound of 2006’s Everything All The Time, 2007’s Cease To Begin and 2009’s Infinite Arms. The constants remain Bridwell’s looming presence and the band’s acknowledged classic-rock influences, which are more exposed than ever under the sway of septuagenarian producer Glyn Johns, who supplanted longtime go-to guy Phil Ek in the studio. “Glyn chose some songs that maybe we weren’t that comfortable doing, that are a bit more Stones-y,” says Bridwell. “But who gives a shit? We got to be with this 70-year-old dude who’s having a blast, stepping into this time machine where he’s recording just as he did on Who’s Next.” Johns coached Bridwell through some of his best vocal performances to date, mostly stripping away the overdubs that once made his potent upper register come across like Perry Farrell fronting a trailer-park approximation of Built To Spill. He did the same for the group as
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a whole, essentially giving the band members permission to sound derivative in all the right ways. “Electric Music” is a hokey BTO rip-off, its celebration of life on the road a nice nod to the Who’s “Going Mobile.” (Recorded by Johns back in 1971.) “Slow Cruel Hands Of Time” and “Long Vows” bear an almost ridiculous resemblance to early-’70s Eagles. (Turns out Johns produced that band’s 1972 debut. Go figure.) “Hopefully, people get the joke,” says Bridwell. “But if I’m the only one laughing, I don’t mind.” Less funny is “Heartbreak On The 101,” a devastating ballad about a disenfranchised lover who takes up residence beneath an underpass on the Ventura Freeway. Bridwell digs deep on this one, heaving out the first verse as the tune pieces itself together around his dismembered
horses
growl. Soon enough, the singer returns to a more comfortable range as the music swells with a despairing, string-laden urgency: “Heartbreak on the 101/Everybody’s watching, come take look/ Heartbreak on the 101/Everybody watch, everybody look.” Mirage Rock’s live-to-tape energy has drawn some comparisons to Neil Young & Crazy Horse. It’s a bit of a stretch, sure. Bridwell, guitarist Tyler Ramsey, multi-instrumentalist Ryan Monroe, bassist Bill Reynolds and drummer Creighton Barrett never muster the same fury. But they have come convincingly into their own—to the extent that the album feels like a reintroduction to a group that, intentionally or not, has kept itself somewhat at arm’s length from the rest of us. “I actually named our genre ‘mirage rock’ before the new album came out,” says Bridwell. “It’s the kind of music you hear from a distance and think might sound really good. But then you move a little closer and you’re like, ‘Ah, shit. There’s no substance.’” If you believe Bridwell, Band Of Horses may be one of rock’s most misunderstood bands. Here, we give them a shot at clearing everything up.
I actually named our genre “mirage rock” before the new album came out. It’s the kind of music you hear from a distance and think might sound really good. But then you move a little closer and you’re like, “Ah, shit. There’s no substance.”
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band
Ben Bridwell: I’m the youngest of three. I grew
up outside of Columbia, S.C., but we’ve always been huge Georgia Bulldogs fans. I even force my kids to wear the little cheerleading outfits. It’s the church of college football down there. Ryan Monroe: We were in the same elementary school. Ben’s older brother had a really kick-ass room in the basement of this really nice suburban house. Bridwell: Ryan’s the funniest fuckin’ guy I’ve ever met. I’ve known him since we were nubbers, man. We played baseball together … birthday parties, fingerin’ people, fingerin’ each other. I still have a Little League team photo with us in it. Ryan’s trying to look all mean. I just look like a pussy. Monroe: We played a bunch of sports, but we couldn’t wait to get away and steal a can of dip or somethin’. We weren’t really jocks. Bridwell: I quit playing sports and started smoking cigarettes and stenciling Black Flag
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logos on my backpack. Then it all kind of went downhill from there. Or maybe uphill—it’s hard to tell. I dropped out of high school and started moving around. Monroe: Ben was always getting into trouble. You’d always hear stories about him cuttin’ up. Bridwell: My mom lived in Tucson, so I quit school and moved out there. I became a random gutter punk—just sleeping wherever. I was hellbent on living the cliché of a drugged-out, blissfully ignorant life with no aim and no target. The only problem was, in my gut, I knew it wasn’t really me. I got into some bad shit in Tucson and followed some friends out to Olympia, Wash. I couldn’t live in a small town when the city was so close, so I took a bus to Seattle and kicked it homeless there for a month or two. I found a job at the Crocodile Cafe, Peter Buck’s club. They hired me with my sleeping bag on my back, and I worked the dish pit. It was a dream come true, because all I wanted to do was see bands. I saved
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enough for a security deposit on an apartment, and my friends came out from Olympia and joined me. We got food stamps and shoplifted a lot to survive. Monroe: It’s a testament to Ben wanting to do this music thing for such a long time, because you can’t really survive with people you don’t mesh with personally. Bridwell: I never imagined being in a band at all; I never played any instruments or any of that shit. Out West, I was in Carissa’s Wierd playing drums basically because they needed someone to tour with, and we all got along. I forced them to get a real drummer, and I played bass and a little slide guitar. As the band was petering out, they let me sing some harmonies. I figured I could help out the group by printing 1,000 CDs for them to sell at shows. I stuffed all my tips from my Croc gig into a hole in a speaker at home. After a few months passed, I broke the speaker casing open to check my funds. I’d saved
Band Of Horses has had, like, 10 former members. If anything, maybe there were some ambitions that were off–pompous ideas of being in a band that didn’t match ours. I want to hear “please” and “thank you.” That’s the way I was brought up.
up around $600. I needed around $1,000, so I explained my plan to my dad. Luckily, he loaned me the rest of the cash. Everything with Brown Records kind of snowballed from there. Patrick Hallahan (My Morning Jacket): Do Jim (James) and Ben sing in the same register? Yes. Do their earlier vocal recordings sound similar? Yes. When Jim and Ben sing together, does it sound like something that was meant to be? Absolutely. Bridwell: I listened to the fuckin’ crap out of Jane’s Addiction in middle school. I got lucky in that I could double-track my vocals in a way that gives a strange effect—sort of that same kind of vibe. There’s always been this twang in my voice that I can’t really kick. Shit, I sounded like that before I heard MMJ—even though I get compared to Jim a lot, which is a great compliment. I remember hearing that first recording of myself and thinking, “Jesus, why can’t I sing like a normal person?” I suppose what I’m
trying to do is get back home. At first, though, maybe I was bit cagey about all the “My Morning Jr.” comments. Hallahan: Do our bands sound anything alike? No. Bridwell: It sounds crazy, but Band Of Horses has had, like, 10 former members. If anything, maybe there were some ambitions that were off—pompous ideas of being in a band that didn’t match ours. I want to hear “please” and “thank you.” That’s the way I was brought up. And if I’m going to be the dude in charge, I want to have that vibe wherever we go. Monroe: We had a guitar player in the band who was a fuckin’ phenom, Blake Mills, but we just didn’t need him. It was kind of weird letting someone go who was that good. Bridwell: It just took having some people who weren’t the right fit to get to the people who were. And God bless every one of them, because I feel like I’ve found the band that I’ve always dreamed of. Tyler was the last missing piece of the puzzle. Tyler Ramsey: I’ve lived all over, but I settled in Asheville, N.C. I’ve known Bill (Reynolds) forever; we’ve been buddies for 20 years. At some point in 2008, he called me to drive him to a BOH rehearsal in Charleston. I bailed on a gig and ended up hanging out with those guys at a surf bar on Folly Beach. Long story short, it all came together over some tequila. Creighton Barrett: I’ve lived in coastal towns up and down the East Coast, but I grew up mostly in Ocean City, Md.—kind of a crazy place. Now, I’m in Charleston. Monroe: He’s got gills … He surfs. Hallahan: Be sure to put the words “Creighton” and “baby powder” in the same sentence. Monroe: Right now, we’re about as far away from each other as band members can possibly
be. But we all grew up in the South. Bill Reynolds: The South is always there. My
family is from North Carolina and Alabama, so I was a ping-pong ball, going back and forth. Right now, what works for me is where I’m at in California, about an hour-and-half north of L.A. in Ojai. I have place that’s quiet, where I’m able to write and record. Monroe: Bill has a serious setup; he’s kickin’ out the jams. In my place in Boston, I basically have a Rhodes and a laptop. I made two rooms out of one with a bookcase, and I record on the back side of it. And half the space is taken up by a fuckin’ radiator. Bridwell: We were doing demos for Cease To Begin, and I called Ryan up. He came over, and he had this Big Gulp with vodka in it. He’d driven from Irmo, which is a good 30-minute drive. And he’s like, “Well, I didn’t start drinking until about halfway.” That’s just the South Carolina thing: drinkin’ and drivin’ as a hobby. Barrett: When Ryan first joined the band, I didn’t even know he played guitar. Then I walked into the studio, and he was just shredding on a Les Paul. Bridwell: Ryan was integral from the very beginning. He busted out organ licks in this bed I could sing over. Monroe: I like the fact that I’m able to serve the song in different ways. I like to stay busy. Bridwell: The paranoia aspect has really fueled the Band Of Horses machine from the beginning. Some of my favorite songs were motivated by fear. I’ll just get so into my head and get so nervous that someone else can hear me that I’ll start to sense that someone’s close to me, listening to me sing loudly. And back then, I was bit more out of my skull, using stimulants and things that would fuel it even more. Cease To Begin was like trying to turn six songs into nine to hopefully get
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band to 10. A lot of kids gravitate toward “Is There A Ghost.” Maybe it’s the simplicity of it. It should be a bit scary, but there’s something a bit calming about it, as well. It goes to show that I have no idea what a single should be. It was just this shitty demo with two chords. Phil said, “Man, we’ve got to do something with this. Let’s turn it into a rock song.” Ramsey: With Infinite Arms, we had kind of a false start, and we were touring in the process. It took awhile to get the whole record done. Monroe: Initially, we were going to knock it out in three our four weeks, but … Bridwell: We went bonkers with Infinite Arms, because we could. It was a challenge to see what we could do, but we also overcooked some shit. Reynolds: It was a guilty-pleasure record for us. We wanted to use chambers, use tympani, use strings—just have a blast. Bridwell: We had a bunch of folks from different labels come by and listen to Infinite Arms, and then another round of meetings in New York with other labels. It seems like we talked to most of the labels in existence. In the end, Columbia showed the most enthusiasm and put together the most alluring configuration by any other label in the running— and we hit it off with label head Ashley Newton. If we had to do it all over again, I’m certain we wouldn’t find a better deal. Monroe: We worked hard on Infinite Arms. It was like a jigsaw puzzle on a table that you keep coming back to. Bridwell: The Grammy nomination was a great justification to the parents. And our fuckin’ guest lists suddenly got bigger, too. Hallahan: I initially met a couple of the Band Of Horses guys at the 2009 Bonnaroo, but it wasn’t until their next Louisville performance that we ended up closing down a rooftop bar. As I went to leave, Ben yells across the table, “Hey man, let me get your number!” I looked at him, deadpan, and said, “I’m cool, man.” I laughed all the way to the car. The next year, I was touring with Dan Auerbach, and we played right before Band Of Horses at Lollapalooza. I
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walked over to Ben and said, “I hope you know I was kidding about the number. Let me give it to you.” Ben responded with an even more deadpan, “I’m cool, man.” Masterful. Bridwell: It’s a little strange when fans walk up to me in a restaurant, and I’ve got the kids (young daughters Annabelle and Ivy) and they’re acting like little monsters. They must think I’m the worst dad ever. My wife (Elizabeth) and I own a Pilates studio near Charleston—it’s like the house of estrogen there. We met at a show in Minneapolis in 2006, and we’ve been together ever since. I’m the luckiest dude in the world. Not only do I have a hard-working, incredible wife who’s a great mom, but she also teaches Pilates and has an awesome butt. Having
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a family and all, I guess I’ve become the responsible elder statesman of the band. Creighton has a seven-month-old, and it’s only a matter of time for Ryan and his girlfriend. I think they’re starting to have sex now, which is fuckin’ disgusting—they’re not even married. But God will judge him. Monroe: If Infinite Arms was like Brad Pitt, then Mirage Rock is more like Philip Seymour Hoffman. Bridwell: I’d done this unreleasable solo record. It had a lot of funny stuff—at least what I thought was funny—and a lot of dark stuff people weren’t that comfortable with. They wanted me to release it as an EP, if anything, then save some songs for Band Of Horses. I understand it now, but at the time I was pretty hurt. Once
the Kings Of Leon tour tanked, we were left in a lurch. So, we decided to go to Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Texas. We just messed around for two weeks or so. Reynolds: Cannibal Corpse was coming in as we were leaving. Nicest dudes ever. Ramsey: We have some cool stuff from El Paso. Bill’s really good in the studio, and he brought along a buddy of his, Jason Kingsland, to help engineer it. Jason Kingsland: What was captured on tape was the sound of a band realizing, in real time, that the songs were great and they were performing great—and being inspired by that. It
recordings. He wanted to see us live. He got a real hard-on when it came to seeing us live. Ramsey: We had dinner with him one night, and it stretched into four-and-a-half hours. He was definitely enjoying the company. Bridwell: After Glyn agreed to do the album, I finally got a chance to go woodshed up around Pigeon Forge, Tenn. The whole ride up, I was listening to Who’s Next, Let It Bleed, White Mansions—all my favorite records that he’d done. I barely got to the rental cabin before sundown, and I opened the door and the alarm goes off. There’s a cleaning company that comes up there—apparently someone with a fuckin’
If Infinite Arms was like Brad Pitt, then Mirage Rock is more like Philip Seymour Hoffman.
sounds really hokey, but it’s a rather incredible thing to watch happen right in front of you. Reynolds: We were really fastidious. We had one room to rehearse in and one room to track in. We tried to work as fast as we could. Monroe: We actually had enough material for an album. We were kind of hoping that if it kicked ass, then that would be the record. Reynolds: It was about 17 songs. The plan was to send what we did to a bunch of producers to see who wanted to do it. We were really proud of it at the time, but no one really gave us any feedback, probably because they wanted to see if we could do better. [Five songs from the sessions can be found on a limited-edition version of Mirage Rock.] Reynolds: We actually did another demo session at Queens Of The Stone Age’s studio in the Mojave Desert. We played music probably 10 percent of the time, and road motorcycles 90 percent. Bridwell: Because we had such a heavy hand in the production of Infinite Arms, we wanted to let go. Once Glyn Johns’ name came up, we knew it was going to be a completely different mode of recording—strictly analog and live. But if Glyn Johns says he wants do your record, you’re gonna fuckin’ do it. I had a feeling it was going to be a great storyline for the label. But once I got to know Glyn, that shit didn’t matter to me at all. Reynolds: Glyn didn’t give two shits about the
Sherpa—and they forgot to leave the thing off. The alarm company was calling and the police were calling, but I couldn’t hear anything because it was so fuckin’ loud. This went on for like two hours. There was a motion sensor, so I had to sit there on this couch. The cops show up, and I’m worried they might think I’m a bad dude and pull their guns. “Finally up, all the peace is disrupted,” “The sheriff ’s department got the wrong guy”—it’s all there on “Slow Cruel Hands Of Time.” But I couldn’t finish the song because I knew I wasn’t supposed to be writing new stuff—I was supposed to be correcting older tunes. I did nothing else the whole time except for that shitty demo. I waved the white flag. Barrett: We wanted go up in the mountains and record in a house. Glyn was like, “Fuck you. We’re not doing that.” Reynolds: He wouldn’t even turn the goddamn fluorescent lights off. Monroe: I would yawn, and he’d be like, “Are we keeping you awake?” Reynolds: Glyn wanted us in the studio with the initial idea for a song at 10 in the morning with a cup of coffee. By 8 p.m., we’d be finished. It keeps you on your toes. Bridwell: I knew Glyn would want me to play guitar while singing, and that was pretty terrifying. A lot of that stuff stayed, and listening back, there are some imperfections there. Phil taught
me that if you can do better, do it. Glyn was more about the energy of the performance. He didn’t care about perfect, because you’re never gonna find perfect. It doesn’t exist. Barrett: Glyn did see the Eagles side to it, and it was also exciting for him to know that we’d be able to do the stuff well in a live setting. So, that kind of got all his boners in a row. Bridwell: You have to wonder if there’s a lack of consistency or a lack of cohesion to Mirage Rock, because songs are pulled from different points in time. But, in the end, Glyn was happy, so we just kept moving. It took a lot of the guesswork out of it. Monroe: Glyn had this saying that 10 songs is a rip-off, 12 songs is too much, and 11 is perfect. I didn’t really get it at the time, but now I do. Reynolds: I don’t even own a double album. I’m with Glyn: short and sweet. Barrett: On an unspoken level, it’s always been, “What kind of a band are we?” To me, it’s great to be able to do anything and still make it your own. But I always wondered if that was realistic. With Glyn, we were confronted with the fact that we are that band. We can do edgy, indie-rock stuff, and we can throw down ballads. Bridwell: “Electric Music” is a pretty good representation of what we can do now that we have personnel who actually know where to put their hands on fretboards and keyboards and shit. That song isn’t funny to anybody else in the band but me. Monroe: It sounds like the type of song we would cover. So why not write one like it? Bridwell: “Knock Knock” was supposed to be a montage piss-take. I hope people realize that I’m playing the cliché card on purpose. It’s supposed to be funny; it’s an arena-baiter. I sent “Dumpster World” to Jason Lytle, and I got the nod from him: “Two cool songs put together? Nice job.” The song is supposed to explain two sides of the psyche. Monroe: The whole recording process was about five weeks. There’s really not that much shit going on, which may be why it’s so easy to take in. Most of it’s live. Bridwell: Bill sent me the demo of “How To Live,” and I just started singing words over the music, forming a story around it. Some of it is dead serious and autobiographical, and some of it’s total phonetic fuckin’ garbage. My biggest concern is that people won’t get the joke. Barrett: Everybody in this band is so fucking hilarious in his own way, and that’s what will keep us going—the way we interact and the love we have for being around each other. In the back of our minds, we’re always laughing. Hallahan: Are Band Of Horses huge dorks? You can bet your life on it. M
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reviews Trail Of Dead p. 62
| PAUL BANKS p. 64 | BAT FOR LASHES p. 66 | ANDREW BIRD p. 68 | SOUNDGARDEN p. 69
Tree Of Lifer A
New Pornographers frontman gets existential on his third solo effort
profundities of life—at its dawn, at its by the things we say/ close—and the legacies we leave. It is, Or is it just the noise we make?” sings baroque in a way, a dad-rock opus, the songs power-pop revivalist A.C. Newman to open imbued with the residue of a man pondering not just the intricacies of family, “Encyclopedia Of Classic Takedowns.” It’s the most bona but the greater implications of existence fide hip-shaker on the third solo album from the New Porthat come with it. Album opener “I’m Not Talking” starts nographers’ frontman, and exactly the kind of rattle-theA.C. Newman with a bleating lullaby of a synth intro walls-over-your-broken-heart shout-along that’s made before launching into an orchestral Shut Down flourish, over which Newman extols the Newman’s oeuvre required listening for nerdy hipsters The Streets virtues of simply shutting up and appreof a certain vintage. (“I didn’t need to live that many lives/ ciating what you’ve got. He goes on to M ATA DOR To compile an encyclopedia of classic takedowns” goes the refer to himself as “an author of small work,” a subtly self-deprecating jab for soaring, rhythmically acrobatic, boy/girl-sung chorus.) But Newman, a guy who’s written some big, it’s that epitaph of a first line—you can imagine it engraved ornate pop songs in his day, but here on his tombstone—that hints at something deeper going on. ¶ Not to seems humbled by the larger movements of the cosmos. The opening salvo of “Do Your Own Time” (“You suggest that Newman’s prior work—inventively related, ingeniously showed up dressing down, wearing absolutely nothing”) orchestrated treatises on affairs of the heart—has been without sub- could just as easily be a romantic barb as a sly nod to havoc-wreaking newborn. “Money In New Wave” is a stance, but there are bigger themes at work here. Inspired by the birth of atender, tentative offering of fatherly advice to said newhis son and the death of his mother, Shut Down The Streets confronts the born (“And I’ll want to tell you,” sings Newman coyly, “that
re we judged here
photo by NOAH KALINA
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reviews there’s money in new wave/And I will deserve the blank stare”). “You Had To Be There” likens new parenthood to being a tourist, wondering poignantly, “Is it too much to lose or too little left to live for?” And the effusive “Hostages,” a song with a goddamn flute solo, posits perhaps the most deliciously subversive metaphor for parenthood yet. (“Watch us fly, now we’ve got hostages.”) There’s a lot of marveling at the wonder of newness. But the album-closing title track, a requiem for Newman’s mother, reveals the flip side of all that magic and wonder, imagining a city shut down for a funeral procession. “All the bouquets piled on the doorstep,” he sings, plaintively, in one of his most heartrending lines, “and pages filled with crayon hearts/That a second-grade class had made in their school that day/Because the teacher had to give in some small way.” It’s as if he’s reminding us— or maybe himself—that while a new life can feel like a universe exploding into existence, death can feel like the same collapsing. And that it’s best to appreciate these things in the present. —Brian Howard
Oren Ambarchi & Robin Fox
Connected
Morning Stoners Glory
Long live the (theoretical and vicarious) destruction of Trail Of Dead
Kranky
Concentric spirals Oren Ambarchi’s recent music has found a myriad of ways to sprawl. He’s played endless monster jams with Keiji Haino and a 78-minute exploration of pulse patterns with Thomas Brinkmann, and his two recent solo albums for Mego each have a track that lasts more than half an hour. By contrast, this collection of music that the multi-instrumentalist made with electronic musician and fellow Australian Robin Fox for the Chunky Move dance troupe seems quite circumscribed; none of its five tracks cracks the 10-minute mark. But endlessness is still embedded within each performance, from the time-stretched bell strikes and bowel-voiding bass notes of the title track to the melting organ tones of “Invigilation.” Even the most rock-oriented piece, Dead Man-like guitar workout “Game Of Two,” seems to push the horizon back with its epic peals. If you’re looking to get good and lost, this record’s your ticket. —Bill Meyer
Tori Amos
Gold Dust
Deutsche Grammophon/ Mercury Classics
break down?
Did she make you
Tori Amos is sadly sullen, bluely revelatory and smartly dramatic about it. Always has been.
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ull disclosure: It’s been a long time since
much attention from this direction was paid to these Austin-based word-count devourers. There’s been no real reason for this lapse—the-Lord-I-don’t-believein knows there’s enough music to fill anyone’s listening ledLost Songs ger—but when rumors trundled down the grapevine that Conrad Keely and the boys had ceased with the instrument Richter Scale/SuperbalL trashing at shows, admittedly, even less attention was paid. More disclosure: This particular hack hasn’t seen them live since the Source Codes & Tags days, when a friend had Jason Reece’s bass drum collide with her nipple piercing. Sure, we all grow up, but when you consciously take steps to act your age, art and wardrobe are usually the first to suffer. So, it’s been a while, and if it is in fact true that the members of Trail Of Dead have stopped putting frowns on instrument endorsers, their eighth album surely doesn’t sound that way, as it’s as raucous and vital as their first three. Leadoff track “Open Doors” could’ve come straight off of Source Codes or Madonna’s cult of musicality. It bristles with noisy guitars, spirited punk-rock energy and infectious riffs out the wazoo. Same goes for “Pinhole Cameras,” “Catatonic” and “A Place To Rest,” the latter featuring about as angry a vocal performance that indie rock’s sensitive tableau will ever produce. And when they ease up on the chaos-o-meter for “Flower Card Games,” the psychedelic dynamics and melodies make it worth the while. Even if you have to picture the band destroying a stage these days, Lost Songs makes it easy. —Kevin Stewart-Panko …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
photo by PATRICK MCHUGH
Before Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor and Poe pulled out the handkerchiefs, the bruises and their thesauri, Amos was hammering her piano and making little earthquakes bigger than they were. All that was left was to erect a darkly languid orchestra behind her and let the bullets fly. While strings did the thing on her previous album of originals, 2011’s Night Of Hunters, Amos allows that same classically induced orchestration to swap spit with the best of her old material on the studio-tracked Gold Dust. As the Metropole Orchestra whispers and blows, the frankly familial material in Amos’ songbook is fuller and theatrical: the mom-song “Jackie’s Strength,” the male-generational “Winter,” the husband-haunted “Snow Cherries From France.” Even better with sickly sinister strings at their base are Amos’ emo-plus paeans to love and loss, “Precious Things” and “Silent All These Years.” The tunes sound lustrous but Amos, the singer and writer, sounds richer. —A.D. Amorosi
The Coup
Sorry To Bother You
title, to focus on only the final, most fertile incarnation of the long-running band—one that shared members with both Einstürzende Neubauten and Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds. A History Of Crime includes the lion’s share of material from the group’s last three albums, and it’s an abundance of riches, especially for such a short period, from the gothic, funereal drone of “The Bride Ship” to the surprisingly bouncy, driving, quasi-country of “On Every Train” and “I Have The Gun”; from 1988’s brooding, incantatory “All Must Be Love” to the slightly warmer, wider-ranging material from 1990’s Paradise Discotheque. This was clearly a fiercely adventurous and unusually inspired outfit, weaving together musical and conceptual strands that would later be picked up by acts as disparate as Pulp, Morphine, Afghan Whigs, Tindersticks and compatriots Dirty Three, with the expressive, slyly theatrical vocals of frontman/songwriter Simon Bonney serving as a magnetic, incandescent focal point. —K. Ross Hoffman
Cuff The Duke
Union
Anti-
Still flipping the system
It’s all about selling it, really. You can make revolution sound like a dreary, bothersome chore, à la Rage Against The Machine and any number of anarcho-punk bands. Or you can make it sound like the greatest party ever. Almost 20 years in, Boots Riley and his Oakland hip-hop collective are still taking the latter route, with an astonishing degree of success. The Coup’s latest record mixes funk and punk, schoolyard chants and soul hooks. Except for two dragging slow jams (“Violet” and “We’ve Got A Lot To Teach You, Cassius Green”), it’s a powerhouse collection. “Strange Arithmetic” is a fierce groover that challenges conventional education: “Teachers, stand up, please don’t make me a victim/Teach us, stand up, tell us how to flip this system.” Sure, a pithy hook can sound deceptively deep, but dig into “My Murder My Love,” a screed on idolatry in a peppy three-and-a-half minute dance-floor rager. —John Vettese
Crime & The City Solution
An Introduction To… Crime & The City Solution / A History Of Crime – Berlin 1987 - 1991 Mute
Arresting developments
This Australian post-punk group’s entry in Mute’s idiosyncratic, artist-selected An Introduction To… series (timed to coincide with an unexpected revival/resurgence) opts, per its
Paper Bag
Pretty and nonthreatening—not that there’s anything wrong with that
Roughly a year ago, Canadian country-ish alt-rockers Cuff The Duke released Morning Comes, the first volume in a promised twoparter about loneliness and loss. But where that album focused on pain in a stark, low-key affair, Union gives the series a happy ending and a lush, more fleshed-out sound. Utilizing the pedal steel, Cuff The Duke is often branded as an alt-country act, and while it might not be an entirely accurate description, that’s not to say the influence isn’t there. On “Stay” and the album’s poppy high-point “Side By Side,” there’s a gilded twang to frontman Wayne Petti’s voice. And while Union concerns itself with the healing process, it’s not all upbeat; the long-grooving “Open Your Mind” is the record’s most pensive moment, featuring some hypnotic work by bassist Paul Lowman, who’s solid throughout. It’s pretty, non-threatening, and your mom might enjoy it, though don’t let that be a criticism. —Bryan Bierman
Diamond Rings
Free Dimensional Astralwerks
New breed of little monster
Diamond Rings was initially a side solo project for John O’Regan of Toronto punk band D’Urbervilles, but 2010 debut Special Affections was its coming-out party. Underneath the rainbow eye makeup and ’80s affectations were
sweet, catchy love songs about identity and alienation. Follow-up Free Dimensional is more expansive, thanks to co-producer Damian Taylor (Björk, Killers), but its New Romantic soul and catchy hooks remain intact, with just a little more confidence; “(I Know) What I’m Made Of” even boasts a rap break. Diamond Rings’ electro-pop fits in right beside forward thinkers like tourmates La Roux and Robyn, but you’ll also hear some great songwriting akin to droll-yet-sensitive, eyelinered ’80s forebears like New Order, Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode. Diamond Rings seems to answer the age-old question, “Why can’t dance music have a heart and brain?” It makes you wonder when he’s going to blow up, Lady Gaga-style. Is the modern world ready for a male androgynous superstar? Diamond Rings isn’t waiting. He sparkles on his own. —Sara Sherr
Bob Dylan
Tempest
COLUMBIA
The sea rages on
Bob Dylan is still romantic, insightful, cryptic and confounding—the master storyteller disguised as a geriatric songand-dance man, churning out vintage Americana enriched by the momentum of his last few albums and relying on his band to flesh out a truly fatal vision. Surprisingly, Dylan has never been more deliberate or so overtly savage. Shuffling train song “Duquesne Whistle” boasts a sterling guitar refrain and deceptive optimism. He appropriates the quintessential riff from “I’m A Man” and supplants it with reframed imagery on “Early Roman Kings.” “Narrow Way” rocks the joint, with hard-edged guitars providing insistent counterpoint to riddle-me-this verbal challenges. “Pay In Blood” employs a tumbling Stones-style sound while evoking a series of regrets and lost promises. “Scarlet Town” is an ominous dirge permeated with speculative gloom, where everyday observations trace dire implications. And the final trilogy couldn’t be more ambitious. “Tin Angel” is a grisly, epic tragedy with casualties of a love triangle all dead on the ground. The title track retells the Titanic as a sprawling seafaring ballad of cinematic proportions unfolding in weary, inevitable intonation. Closing with “Roll On John,” a paean to John Lennon, Dylan shows he still has a heart while bringing it all back home, again. —Mitch Myers
Earlimart
System Preferences The Ship/Burnside
All software is up to date
Aaron Espinoza and Ariana
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reviews Murray of Earlimart might call L.A. home, but they’re hardly beach bums. Not unlike their Modesto contemporaries Grandaddy (whose leader, Jason Lytle, shared their stage in the Cali-centric group Admiral Radley), Earlimart prefers a hazy, churning sound to one made for surfing safaris. On the home-recorded System Preferences, Espinoza and Murray return from a four-year hiatus in fine form. The LP offers a dark invitation with “U&Me,” the sparse instrumentation gradually building beneath Espinoza’s cool vocal. Murray ups the coolness a few songs later with “10 Years,” with the disarmingly tender lyric, “I’ve got nothing without you.” That dependence shines when Espinoza and Murray share the spotlight, making the snappy “97 Heart Attack” and the jaunty “Sweater Weather” charming standouts. Earlimart’s records, including this one, require (and reward) close and repeated listening; they unwind and exhale, staying just out of reach until you can be trusted to be welcomed in. —Eric Schuman
Ben Folds Five
The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind Sony/BMG
Strip malls are the Xanax of the masses
Whether or not he ever got his black T-shirt back we’ll never know, but it’s pretty clear that Ben Folds is still undeniably Ben Folds. And we’re still pretty much nonplussed by the piano-pop maestro. Yay for continuity! Maybe it’s the excess of falsetto or the fact that it’s, well, piano pop—a genre we’ve always associated with dentist’s offices and the rather mundane end adulthood we’ve been avoiding all our adult lives—but we still find this trio a little yawn-worthy. Songs like “Sky High” are clearly for the kind of people who mix Xanax and wine spritzers, “On Being Frank” is definitely for people who live in cul-de-sacs and cry themselves to sleep watching episodes of Downton Abbey, and “Hold That Thought” is obviously a theme song for people who have those stupid stick figures on their SUV windows, except the last two are cats instead of kids. We’ll stick to our perpetual adolescence, thank you very much. —Sean L. Maloney
Matthew Friedberger
Matricidal Sons Of Bitches Thrill Jockey
Stuck in Interlude Gulch
While Matricidal Sons Of Bitches does not exist as an actual movie you
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Brighter Days
Paul Banks’ second non-Interpol full-length makes fun a priority
P
aul Banks is sort of the fallout from when
your fans prize you most for what they project onto you. Maybe Bon Iver will suffer from this affliction someday, but Interpol’s Turn On The Bright Lights has nearly Paul Banks reached ludicrous status à la Nas’ Illmatic or Weezer’s first Banks two records, where it signifies a place and time so specific that even diehard fans are unable to part with that context to Matador evolve with the artist. Drier follow-up Antics lacked the comfy lushness that made lines like “The subway/She is a porno” so dreamlike, and the dreadful Our Love To Admire killed the rest. Unable to repeat his debut like so many before, Banks can only attempt to land on another attractive idea. The riffs of Antics weren’t really his forte, nor was the cartoonish goth-tech of his first album as Julian Plenti. But on Banks, he takes a decent pass at pop. Still quavering between moan and mewl, it’s most crucial that nothing on his second solo record is a dirge. The dancey flavors of “Arise Awake” aren’t perturbed by his voice, while “Paid For That” nods at “White Rabbit” at one point. “Summertime Is Coming” is a glistening hoot beneath Banks’ Vincent Price-like declamations. The crown jewel of his new demurely funny approach is “I’ll Sue You,” which deploys the title hook among other bon mots (“I’ll impugn you, too/ What can I say”) and actually find the boor who penned “No I In Threesome” capable of satire. —Dan Weiss
photo by HELENA CHRISTENSEN
can stream via Netflix, it was real enough in Matthew Friedberger’s imagination that the Fiery Furnaces leader willed a soundtrack into being. Keyboards sigh through endless variations on a winded theme or, infrequently, ratchet into a hyperactive Pac-Man pique. Piano routs pout misty-eyed melancholy or ape Scott Joplin-era swing. Synthesizersetting tomfoolery stands in for operatic experimentation; the odd, sublime nod to the blues is a pleasant shock in what registers as a 45-track, hour-long lark—the latest in a long, winding series of digressions from the auteur’s core competency. “I have hated many people in my life, but some stand out,” an unidentified woman haltingly confides on the opening song in a monologue reminiscent of the choicest declamations from the Furnaces’ Rehearsing My Choir. Bitches needed more of her; much more. Was Friedberger’s goal here to enable the audience to invent its own version of a horror story he intentionally withheld, to play fill-in-the-blank? The answer is that no one expects Tom Bodett and Garrison Keillor to author Stephen King-esque spine-tinglers for a reason. —Raymond Cummings
Frightened Rabbit
State Hospital
Canvasback/Atlantic
Checking out
“And as the Earth eats itself/Swallows us whole,” sings Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison on the five-song State Hospital stopgap. Even when he was a miniaturist, Hutchison was a sucker for high drama, rendering his grandeur surprisingly (and insightfully) sexual on the five-piece’s big 2008 breakthrough, The Midnight Organ Fight, singing about how he’s learning to walk backward out the mean old ex’s door, or requesting “human heat” from a girl who may not actually know his name. Now his mildly obsolescent band competes with the National and Arcade Fire for meaning in largesse. This time, he conjures females with concrete blood and soldiers in coffins over the priciest anthemic ballast his new major label can buy. “Covered in dust and dirt and full of hope” on a post-punk raver, Hutchison veers from spooked falsetto to spoken-word dance punk on Aidan Moffat-assisted closer “Wedding Gloves,” which doesn’t lack for human heat. —Dan Weiss
Lulu Gainsbourg
From Gainsbourg To Lulu MBM
Serge protector
Lucien Gainsbourg is the son of legendary louche Serge Gainsbourg
and Bambou, a model/actress famed in France. You’d have to go some way to hear the smoke and sooty sexuality of his late father, whether it’s dad’s cinematic pop compositions or his heatedly gruff vocals. To prove that you can’t shake the bittersweetest of fruits far from the tree, Lulu produced and directed this fulllength to act as a tribute to Serge’s grimily salacious and stately best, enlisting a wide selection of celebrity duet partners. Through sounds ranging from scorchedearth ambience and a moody Mark Isham-like toot to a series of tinny guitar/soft-spaghettiWestern motifs, sonny boy Gainsbourg lays the melodrama on thick. Grafted onto that carnival of soul and steel are grumblers Iggy Pop and Marianne Faithfull (on “Initials BB” and “Manon,” respectively), cougher Shane MacGowan (“Sous Le Soleil Exactement”), whisperers Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp (“Ballade De Melody Nelson”) and coy crooner Rufus Wainwright (“Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M’en Vais”), placing their stamp on the slippery Gainsbourg’s music. Magnifique. —A.D. Amorosi
Indian Handcrafts
Civil Disobedience For Losers Sargent House
Animals and pricks The first track on Civil Disobedience For Losers is called “Bruce Lee,” and it opens with a gong hit. A little too on the nose? Perhaps, but the stripped-down Canadian duo doesn’t pay much mind to subtlety or nuance on most of its sophomore effort. And armed with just a guitar, drums and a duffel bag of riffs, the pair rips through a hard-rockin’ 11-song set without messing much beyond the four-minute mark on any track. A sizable chunk of those riffs bear the mark of the Melvins (“Coming Home” could almost pass for a Houdini outtake), and that band’s drumming pair of Dale Crover and Coady Willis contribute to the military march on the second half of “Bruce Lee.” Indian Handcrafts don’t borrow any of that influence’s sludgy dirges, though; the tempos here are mostly upbeat, with equal parts Grand Funk and flannel. —Matt Sullivan
The Killers
Battle Born Island
The self-importance of being earnest
Unabashedly overblown—that’s the Killers for you. The Las Vegas quartet fronted by Brandon Flowers has become a stadium-sized, festival-headliner draw, and, aptly, every song on its fourth studio album (and first since 2008’s Day & Age) is an anthem. A handful work superbly, especially the short story-
like vignettes: “Runaways” and “Miss Atomic Bomb” are fun because their narratives of youthful angst get inflated with the grandeur of galloping drums, orchestral keyboards and power-chord crescendos. The Killers’ fidelity to Springsteen is well known (see 2006’s Sam’s Town), but they too often edge into Meat Loaf/Jim Steinman territory, where every detail becomes a cause for operatic exaggeration and any clunky line or cliché sounds ridiculous. “Don’t want your picture on my cellphone/I want you here with me” rings hollow as an emphatic chorus. The Killers do have a sense of humor—witness their ofthilarious Christmas singles—and a little more of that would help deflate Battle Born’s bloat. —Steve Klinge
Maserati
Maserati VII Temporary Residence
Drive on, crazy albatross
“Knight Rider, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist ... ” If this sentence means anything to you, you’re as big an ’80s-television nerd as we were. Excuse me, are. Assuming you’re as devoted to the Golden Age of Action TV, the haunting, electronic kitsch of Knight Rider’s theme music is probably also happily burned into your memory banks. If so, chances are you’ll have an aortic soft spot for the seventh—what gave it away?—album by these instrumentalists. Having A.E. Paterra from Zombi and Majeure drum with them over the 2010/2011 season— and mix the record—really helps. The postrock feel has been smudged and blurred, as a more space-age, ’80s synth rock and Goblinesque feel has been pushed to the fore. It’s like 90215-era Yes meeting up with Air and fellow auto enthusiasts Trans Am for a jammola in the trunk of, yes, an indestructible talking car. —Kevin Stewart-Panko
Tift Merritt
Traveling Alone Yep Roc
Hey, it’s that whistling guy
Tift Merritt is a female country-music star in the making. She’s cute and sexy in her photos, she’s sweet and charming with audiences, and her talent won’t be fully recognized for years to come. In truth, she’s just beginning to realize her talent—at least that’s the impression from Traveling Alone, her fifth album since 2002 debut Bramble Rose. Merritt gathered an all-star cast of collaborators, from Andrew Bird on “Drifting Apart” to Tucker Martine (Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, Spoon) behind the mixing board, say-
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reviews ing, “I wanted to put together my dream cast and see if I could hold my own with them.” And she does keep up, but the album succeeds about as well as any dream team, which is to say that it’s fine, but kind of a disappointment. Merritt is skilled; she just needs to accept that and then actually travel alone into the music. —Matthew Irwin
Pinback
Information Retrieved Temporary Residence Ltd.
This is another Pinback CD
As much soulmates as bandmates, Rob Crow and Zach Smith complete one another. This fifth full-length union as Pinback, their first in five years, shows no signs of separation. It is, from start to finish, as grand as Autumn Of The Seraphs, as japanned as Summer In Abaddon, as unflinchingly intimate as Blue Screen Life and as uniformly gorgeous as their eponymous debut. Is it their best LP? Take your pick. Opening bang “Proceed To Memory” is a refresher course in the San Diego band’s subtle subterfuge (dovetailed needlepoint guitar and velveteen bass, knee-weakening round-robin hooks, background shouts like mortar shells), while closing whimper “Sediment” is a prototypical Pinback clincher, its piano plank-walk tapping the displeasure centers that early Death Cab For Cutie regularly tickled. Elsewhere, “Drawstring” forebodes, “Diminished” lulls, and “Sherman” prickles. Familiar moves all, by two musicians with whom familiarity breeds contentment. —Noah Bonaparte Pais
Robert Pollard
Jack Sells The Cow GBV Inc
Grounded beef
Still a slave to the incorrigible habits he formed in the early ’90s, Robert Pollard has by now released so many records that critics’ attempts to coin clever quips in kind have become just as hackneyed and predictable as the faded rock godhead’s average album. Unfortunately, Jack Sells The Cow, his fourth of 2012 (including two by the reformed Guided By Voices), offers no occasion to buck the trend. Opening slog “Heaven Is A Gated Community” plods hopelessly beneath its titular destination, setting the pace for a record-long limp that recalls the heavy burden of 2001 divorce album Isolation Drills, less the cathartic payoff. “Will you go with me?” Pollard pleads during the song’s refrain, his weary tone betraying any implication that we may be headed somewhere new. Not that we mind—pleasantly familiar, with Pollard, would have been enough. —Jakob Dorof
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The Ghost With The Most Natasha Khan gracefully sidesteps third-album clichés on Bat For Lashes’ latest
N
atasha Khan’s audacious first two records
as Bat For Lashes—2006’s brilliant, Mercury Prizenominated Fur And Gold and 2009’s stunning Two Suns—were both packed full to the brim with more than enough The Haunted Man brooding sensuality, dramatic synthesizer flourishes and glitCapitol tered-out melodrama to establish her as heiress-apparent to Kate Bush’s long-abdicated art-goth throne. As far back as the Two Suns world tour, though, Khan often looked rather bored with all the grandeur and pomp that her music had become synonymous with, even as she filled arenas with Radiohead and Coldplay. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise then that Khan has moved on to sparer, more sublime fare in the three and a half years since Two Suns; indeed, the sweeping balladry to be found on The Haunted Man will surely win her a number of favorable nods to mid’70s Stevie Nicks and chanteuse-of-the-hour Jessie Ware, though the epic flourishes of “Lilies” and “Oh Yeah” won’t quite play down the Bush comparisons. What keeps The Haunted Man from devolving into the sort of mature, introspective third album that’s become a bit of a cliché for the rare indie singer/songwriter who actually makes it this far is Khan’s vastly improved songwriting. At its best, the record finds her swapping the heavy-handed concepts that’ve largely driven her work to date for the irrefutable impact of raw lyricism, as on abstracted six-minute closer “Deep Sea Diver” and the heart-rending “Laura,” easily one of the year’s finest songs and the truly magical sort of pop tune that has you fall in love with its fatally flawed subject over the course of a mere four and a half minutes. —Möhammad Choudhery Bat For Lashes
photo by ELIOT LEE HAZEL
Rites Of Spring
Six Song Demo Dischord
First rites
You know how emo bands hate to be called emo? Think of how bad it must be for a group often cited as the first emo band ever. That’s probably not fair to Rites Of Spring, but after it helped push hardcore past pissed-off politics and into personal catharsis, the band’s influence reverberated far and wide. That spread even further when vocalist/guitarist Guy Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty formed Fugazi. Rechristened Six Song Demo, Rites Of Spring’s 1984 cassette-only demo has gotten the reissue treatment. Originally released before the band played its first show, it features a group that had its ideas pretty well figured out right off the bat. But these six songs are also on the band’s self-titled classic full-length in beefier, more fully fleshed-out form. And after a few legendary gigs before reentering the studio, the band got better at playing them. (Not that Rites Of Spring is slouching here.) So, if this disc is a seven, it’s only because these songs are already on a 10. —Matt Sullivan
Shiny Toy Guns
III
Five Seven Music
Well-intentioned misfire
Say this much for Shiny Toy Guns: The six years after their first LP, We Are Pilots, and its electro-rock crossover hit, “Le Disko,” have done little to dim their musical ambition. Too bad that for all of their hard work, they only seem capable of cranking out the same trend-following synth rock they started their careers making. By all means, STG goes out of its way to exhibit a wide range of moods and interests here, alternating quiet balladry (“Wait For Me,” “Take Me Back To Where I Was”) with straightforward rock (“Mercy”) and swaggering electro (“Speaking Japanese”). Problem is, after all these years, the band still possesses no originality or musical inventiveness that could distinguish it from the pack. After all, bands like Styx and Journey also aspired to greatness in their heyday as well, and only have a bargainbasement boatload of cheesy LPs to show for it. Apparently, so does STG. —Justin Hampton
that might be misinterpreted, too easy to find somebody who plays trumpet, harp—any instrument less likely to give vigilant trolls an opportunity to accuse you of trying to be the next Springsteen or Charlie Parker Quintet or !!! or whoever. Yet the Soft Pack boldly put guest multiinstrumentalist Tony Bevilacqua’s reedwork (and keyboards) all over its second album, and the gambit yields ample dividends. Don’t worry: The Los Angeles quartet hasn’t abandoned the garage-rock and post-punk tropes that informed its self-titled 2009 debut; the band has simply folded its past into a bigger, richer whole, highlighted by extended space-rock closer “Captain Ace.” When the group does go short (which is usually), as with the irresistibly badass “Head On Ice,” it’s only because it knows how long it takes to service any given target. —Rod Smith
Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
The Hellcat Years Hellcat
Punk legend and his compadres ride again
The Clash was always going to be a tough, if not impossible, act to follow, and for much of the decade following its implosion, Joe Strummer kept an extra-low profile. He then emerged at the end of the ’90s, to enjoy, career-wise, an Indian summer of sorts, with the Mescaleros. And it’s those all too brief years that Hellcat is commemorating with this meaty 60-track tribute, a full decade after his untimely death. For the most part, the studio material is solid, if never reaching the lofty heights of Strummer’s glory days. That said, Joe and the Mescaleros were one of the most gloriously uplifting live outfits on the planet, and this is where this set excels. There’s a whole album’s worth of pure live dynamite, including a euphoric “Rudy Can’t Fail,” a version of “Police On My Back” that comes off like the charge of the Light Brigade and a truly heroic “Bank Robber” (featuring Mick Jones) that just about cuts the original. All in all, a glorious reminder of a group that, in its day, was a near religious experience, and a fitting tribute to the sorely missed, selfstyled “Punk Rock Warlord.” —Neil Ferguson
Trash Talk
119
Odd Future
The Soft Pack
Strapped
Mexican Summer
Behind the façade, an inevitable tumescence
No rock band in the ’00s chooses to use saxophone lightly. It’s too easy to send signals
Hardcore ’12
Trash Talk is easily the most visible hardcore band to count neither a former Black Flag frontman among its ranks, nor a concept album in its catalog. 119, then, bears the burden of expectation that accompanies the group’s rising profile. Its title comes from the address of the warehouse where Trash
Talk’s four members live and work in L.A. And the neighborhood’s seedy activities inspired the album. Hardcore always needs a villain to accuse, and in 119’s world, crime and poverty play the antagonist. The political bent serves Trash Talk well, even if the focal point remains the band’s heavy, vicious sound. As Tyler, The Creator raps in his cameo, “When you hear that fucking bass, try to sit still in the fucking mosh pit.” Trash Talk is a tested and proven mosh-starter. The band has ripped elements from early L.A. hardcore, ’90s powerviolence and screamo (à la Orchid, not Thursday), and it wields this arsenal of influences to deliver big, sharp hooks. —Bryan C. Reed
Ultraísta
Ultraísta
Temporary Residence
Vapid heartbeats
Ultraísta is a techno/electro-pop trio consisting of superstar producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Pavement, Beck, etc.), vocalist Laura Bettison and drummer Joey Waronker (Beck, many others), who is the son of famed producer Lenny. At its best (“Smalltalk,” “Static Light” and “Wash It Over”), this debut recalls the electronic detours of Pram and Stereolab. At its worst (most of it), it’s layered synth sounds with beats and vocals smacking of a manufactured sexiness, all designed to hide the gaping void where memorable songwriting should be. As such, Ultraista’s bow feels tailor-made for vacant festival slots, MTV/Hive’s Weird Vibes program or to give Brooklyn Vegan something to write about each time a member uses the restroom or buys groceries. In other words, it effortlessly carries the intensely useless “indie” card in 2012, but will be a part of whatever constitutes the cutout bin in 2022. —Andrew Earles
U.S. Girls
GEM
FatCat
Beam them up
Crackling with static, sounding like a transmission from a world where future and past collide, U.S. Girls’ latest release unites the aesthetics of Gary Numan and Peggy Lee, providing both atmosphere and torch songs galore. Meghan Remy, the force behind U.S. Girls, knows how to create tension out of limitations—keyboards sound like they’re dripping with molasses, drumming noises shuffle through the background. All the while, Remy’s voice crowds the front, stretching out each word like time has no meaning. GEM goes by in 30 short punk-rock minutes, but the songs easily feel like beautiful, spacey epics. The DIY take on recording and produc-
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reviews tion serves GEM well. Knowing when a record shouldn’t be glossed up is a skill in which many a talent falls short. Remy, with a keen ear for how much or how little instrumentation will serve the song, and a detached siren’s voice, provides the world with another artist to closely watch. —Jill LaBrack
Various Artists
Rework_Philip Glass Remixed
Orange Mountain/Ernest Jennings/The Kora
Of minimal import
Every so often, the handlers of certain highbrow music composers, in an effort to introduce the music of said composer to an unfamiliar audience, will invite a group of electronic artists to contribute to a remix project. Steve Reich did it in the ’90s, and on the eve of his 75th birthday, minimalist pioneer Philip Glass has been convinced by Beck to do it as well. J-pop savant Cornelius fares best here by delivering a moving and spare piano interpretation of “Opening From Glassworks,” while only the most intrepid Beck fan will sit through all 20 minutes of his somewhat boring mash-up of Glass’s works from 1973-’78. The rest of the bunch—Amon Tobin, Dan Deacon, Pantha du Prince and Johann Johannsson among them— subtly tweak the originals as befitting their own sonic signatures. Fans of either Glass or the remixers won’t be too disappointed, but they won’t be blown away, either. —Justin Hampton
Martha Wainwright
Come Home To Mama Co-Op/V2
Over and down and out
This is only Martha Wainwright’s third full-length, but it’s another creative leap for an artist who explores difficult human emotions with a bravery and intensity few singers ever approach. She’s a powerful vocalist capable of bending notes until they almost break, belting out a lyric like a torch singer or dropping into a whisper to convey the pain of unbearable feeling. Yuka Honda’s eclectic production adds color and depth to songs dealing mostly with failing relationships. “Can You Believe It” is a purring ode to anger and make-up sex with a solid rock backbeat, “Everything Wrong” is a lullaby to a young child that references the father’s infidelities, and “Radio Star” expresses the confused emotions one feels at the end of a relationship with a meandering arrangement that mirrors the singer’s jumbled emotional state. Things get funky on “I Wanna Make An Arrest,” a playful ode to a former lover with Wainwright delivering a suitably seductive vocal. —j. poet
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The Unbroken Man Andrew Bird bends, shapes and molds a better version of himself
L
ike Shel Silverstein, Andrew Bird is so
good that he doesn’t have to brag. Just as Bird’s low-strung eccentricity breathed life into Silverstein’s “Twistable Turnable Man” on 2010’s all-star tribute to Andrew Bird the immortal singer/songwriter/childhood bard, with Break It Hands Of Glory Yourself, his marvelous, mysterious March production, Bird once again hatched anew: both lighter and darker, more beautiMom + Pop ful and bizarre than ever. “Have I simply been ill this year,” he muses in the rockumentary Fever Year, “or am I just turning into another type of animal?” Comprising more covers than originals (and, in one instance, covering an original), this sidecar is neither evolution nor revolution, though its eight tracks contain a fair share of intrigue and insight into Bird’s feverish 2011, as well as a contemporary rearrangement so sweet it should come rimmed with sugar. Roughly a third of it is devoted to the new “Three White Horses,” which opens dance-dance-dancing à la Lykke Li, quickly picks up Bird’s whinnying pluck-and-hover and reprises to nine-minute infinity. A single-mic stomp through “Railroad Bill” nails the communal bonds forged on recent tours, and “Orpheo” similarly old-fashions its canonical, Pachelbelian origins, Break It Yourself’s “Orpheo Looks Back.” But the most Bird-like cut isn’t his: Alpha Consumer’s “Spirograph,” a bitter obituary softened and surrounded by a Silverstein-tongued prologue/epilogue. (“Echoes down water wells, picked up in sacred spirographs/Weekend in winters unendable bendable baby.”) There is a light in the attic that never goes out. —Noah Bonaparte Pais
photo by cameron Wittig
Wax Fang
Mirror Mirror Karate Body
Atom heart mother lode
Rebirth Ritual
Soundgarden’s curious return is better than it has any right to be
H
as it really been 16 years? Soundgarden
returned to the stage in 2010, and that reunion has now produced the inevitable comeback record, the grunge titans’ first since bowing out with Down Soundgarden On The Upside in 1996. But on King Animal, no one’s striking King Animal any Jesus Christ poses, rattling any rusty cages or traversing A&M the superunknown. Things open in self-aware fashion with “Been Away Too Long,” which has Louder Than Love’s drive, but sounds too bright to carry the urgency that accompanied it the first time around. That’s a recurring thing, but King Animal has to be considered a success when the best you can usually hope for with these sorts of reunion discs is that one of your favorite bands doesn’t embarrass itself. A backhanded compliment, sure, but really—things could have been so much worse. You’ve heard Audioslave, right? Chris Cornell’s culpability in that brainsuck underscored how Kim Thayil’s serpentine guitar work defined Soundgarden as much as Cornell’s wail. And when those two things combine for a good old-fashioned post-apocalyptic dirge like “Blood On The Valley Floor,” or when the group puts together something truly unique like album closer “Rowing,” in lieu of coasting on the reunion thing, it’s easy to remember why you rooted for these guys. It’s still hard not to put Badmotorfinger on instead, though. —Matt Sullivan
photo by michael lavine
A couple of years back, we were sitting down with the guys from My Morning Jacket when the topic turned to the current crop of Louisville, Ky., bands. It was quickly agreed upon that Wax Fang was among the best of the new generation, and possibly one of the greatest rock bands that had ever come out of that venerable indie-rock scene. And then we were all in agreement that the group wasn’t going to hit the top of the pops releasing 17-minute singles like “The Astronaut (Part 1),” which is, frankly, the world’s loss. Mirror Mirror finds Wax Fang straddling the line between progressive and obtuse with ease, creating one of most soaring and accessible collections yet, one big on ideas and hooks. “White Kane,” propelled by a sinewy bass groove and woozy guitar bends, manages to evoke the minimalist anthems of the Wipers, while the title track (and lead single) is an arch-prog tune, taking epic turns at the least suspecting moments. And if this is any indication of where the band’s next full-length is going to take us, maybe the world isn’t going to lose out after all. —Sean L. Maloney
Patrick Wolf
Sundark And Riverlight Bloody Chamber/ Essential
Freedom: You gotta give for what you take
To celebrate 10 years in the biz, Patrick Wolf is calling for a do-over. He’s culled 16 songs from his five albums, borrowed Peter Gabriel’s Bösendorfer grand and headed back to the studio for an all-acoustic double CD with lots of strings and none of those damned drum machines, cheetah shirts or flying doves. It’s the kind of thing musicians do to tell the world, “Hey! I’m a serious composer! I’ve stopped dyeing my hair vermillion!” And it works—well, most of the time. When the melodies are strong enough, like on “House,” “Paris” and “The Magic Position,” the songs stand tall as stately, passionate, sharp-witted Art with a capital “A.” But when the melodies are too thin to support their own emotional weight, all the string quartets in the world can’t rescue them, and I find myself missing that old pulsing bass, those swirling drums and the sheer fabulousness that made the original versions so liberating. —Kenny Berkowitz
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When Human Nature Assaults Mother Nature We live, as various scholars white 18th century explorers as a vast desert and commentators lament, unsuitable for agriculture. Home to nomadic in an ahistorical age. Mind native tribes sustained by horizon-blotting you, they never reveal when herds of bison, the soil in the treeless, windthe last historical age ended—but no matter: swept, drought-stricken plains was bound they presume correctly, if decorously. by buffalo grasses retaining their moisture In fact, we live in an age ruthlessly and wil- in roots up to five feet deep. Rainfall was and fully ahistorical, where minutes-old smart is cyclical, 10 to 12-year periods of moderate phone texts are deemed “history,” stored in rain followed by decades of drought. and retrieved from ethereal clouds. Where When Congress expanded the Homememory is synonymous with attention span. stead Act and granted Oklahoma statehood Where events preceding your birth aren’t in 1907, the Great Land Rush began. Banks, worth knowing . . . until they crawl out of railroads, speculators and government agents the maw of oblivion and threaten to destroy fuelled the frenzy for free farmland. It was you. Sooner or later history, like the time of the Great Plow-Up, when thousands of farmers tore Jason Voorhees, returns with a vengeance. into the buffalo grasses that kept If Friday The 13th seems illthe terra so fragilely firma. It also suited to mash up with genteel PBS happened to coincide with a rain and writer/director/fund-raising cycle, and the bounty of their toil god and all-round go-to guy, Ken appeared limitless. The Dust Bowl sets its focus Burns, in this instance—his new on the Oklahoma panhandle, documentary, The Dust Bowl— the fit is tailor made. ground zero, if you will, tracking Filmmaker though he is, Burns’s the looming ecological apocatrue vocation is that of American lypse step by ominous step: 15 historian, cultural anthropologist million acres of grassland torn The Dust Bowl will be available on and unabashed political progresup; speculative land bubble; colDVD and Blu-ray sive. With the decade-long Dust lapse of wheat prices; Great DeNovember 20 from pression; drought, windstorms Bowl—described as “the worst Entertainment One. sustained environmental disaster and the day in 1932 a 10,000-foot in American history”—Burns has found a high, 200-mile wide dust cloud travelling at subject for which his talents and professional 65 miles-per-hour struck Amarillo, Texas, temperament are custom-built. and turned day into night. The soil was blowTo track the trajectory of his storied ca- ing away. And that was just the beginning. Burns and writer Dayton Duncan have a reer—from Brooklyn Bridge through his magisterial Civil War, through Unforgiv- gift for conveying the sweep of history while able Blackness and even Baseball—is to judiciously interjecting heartbreaking remidetect that there has always been something niscences of Dust Bowl eyewitnesses. Most melancholy, a subtext of a communal sense impressive, though, is their marshalling and of loss, in Burns’s work. In The Dust Bowl, painless presentation of mountains of inforhowever, the sense of communal loss is no mation. While Walker Evans, Dorothea Lang longer a subtext, and yet more than a cau- and Woody Guthrie all figure in this account, tionary chronicle: it’s a dire warning. And it is Franklin Roosevelt who towers over it all, because 2012 is a presidential election year, using all the levers of government power to Burns lets loose with a devastating fusillade intervene to conserve the land and save its against a potential future hurtling toward the people—a point Burns enforces in a cautiondisastrous past. ary coda. At the rate agribusiness is siphoning off the And it’s magnificent. Between the Missouri River and Rocky Ogallala Aquifer—and through which a gas Mountains, stretching from Texas to Alber- pipeline is proposed—another Dust Bowl is ta, lie the High Plains, already recognized by a mere 20 years away. essay by
Stan Michna
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NEGLECTED
CRITERION
Magnificent Obsession 1954 / Director
Douglas Sirk Why It’s Neglected: No one is certain whether it’s a frou-frou, hanky-soaking girlie picture; or a sly satire on stultifying consumerist bourgeois convention. To weep or not to weep: that’s the question. The Theme: It’s still the question. Ostensibly, the theme is that great tragedy and great love can spur even the most callous person to a sustained life of dedication, altruism and even spirituality. (At least that was the point of the Lloyd Douglas 1929 novel.) On the other hand, foxy old Douglas Sirk was way too experienced (he fled Nazi Germany) to buy into that one. Sirk, for all the lush artificiality of his films, was never really concerned about the what? of the story so much as its characters’ why? Part of the fun of this movie is speculating what Sirk really thought of this film. The Story: Reckless, self-centered playboy Rock Hudson crashes his speedboat and gets advanced medical attention resulting in the death of a god-like doctor/hero. Rock wants to apologize to widow Jane Wyman, falls hard for her, then causes an accident that leaves her blind! A chastised Rock goes to medical school, dedicates himself to emulating the late god-like hero doctor, and operates to restore Jane’s eyesight!! (I’m crying already.) What You Get: Beautifully restored print; an informative essay in booklet form; a fun commentary track; a copy of the 1935 original starring Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor; and best of all, a 90-minute German documentary/interview with wily old Sirk himself. A bonanza.
/movies/new_releases NOVEMBER 6
[REC] 3: Genesis 3 Day Test 360 Abba: Music Milestones – Gold – The Singles Adventures of Bailey: Christmas Hero Aim High: The Complete First Season Alvin and the Chipmunks: Christmas With the Chipmunks Amazing Race: Season 8 Amazing Race: Season 9 Amazing Spider-Man American Nightmare American Restoration Vol. 2 Andre Rieu: The Ultimate Holiday Collection Angelina Ballerina: Superstar Sisters Arthur Christmas Australia: Great Southern Land Baby Sister Bad Bush Barney: Let’s Go to the Doctor Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 Beary Scary Movie Berenstain Bears DVD Collection Best of the British Bettina May: Bombshell Basics Big Business Blue Eyed Butcher Booker’s Place British Gangster Collection Call the Midwife: Season 1 Cannon: Season 3 Captain Beefheart: Lost Broadcasts Carol Burnett Christmas Casanova’s Love Letters Catch My Disease: Ben Lee Celebrity Trials in the Media Changing Hearts Chilly Christmas Christmas Around the World With Perry Como Christmas Spirit Christmas Wish Christmas With Danny Kaye Civil War Diaries Classic U.S. Combat Aircraft of WWII Come to the Stable Contemporary Cult Classics Cook’s Country: Season 5 Cornwall With Caroline Quentin Corpo Celeste Cut to the Chase: The Charley Chase Comedy Collection Day He Arrives Dean Martin Christmas Show Death Ship Dic Tracy: 15 Action Episodes Dick Tracy: Complete Serial Collection
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Die Nibelungen Dogman Earth From Above: Preservation of Water and Forests Eleven Samurai Elvira’s Movie Macabre: Mega Movie Marathon Entourage: The Complete Series ESPN Films 30 for 30 Season 2 Even the Rain Expecting Mary Exploring Alcatraz Faith Marion Robinson: A Celtic Awakening Fire With Fire Franklin and the Green Knight: The Movie Fritz Lang: The Early Works Georgia Georgia Golden Boy: The Complete Collection
Golden Girl Gummibar:: The Yummy Gummy Search for Santa H2O: Just Add Water Heifetz in Performance High Ground Hirokin: The Last Samurai Holiday Family Film Collection Holiday TV Classics Holiday TV Classics Vol. 2 Holy Matrimony Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere: Complete First Season I Love Lucy: Complete Seasons 5,6,7,8 & 9 I Wish Immortal Kiss: Queen of the Night Inuyasha: Season 1 Irish Rovers: Christmas Javier Bardem: 3-Film Collection John Wayne: Western Legend Jonsi: Go Quiet Kentucky Moonshine Khodorkovsky King Stays King: Sold Out at Madison Square Garden Kiss Me Kung Fu Panda Holiday Law & Order: The Eleventh Year Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times – The Ultimate Collection Leeches Life and Times of Grizzly Adams: Season 1 Life Ascending Lifetime Gold Collection Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland Locke: The Superpower Looney Tunes Super Stars: Porky & Friends – Hilarious Ham
NOV 6
Fire With Fire
Bruce Willis, who even at 57 rarely frequents the directto-DVD ghetto, teams up with Josh Duhamel (who should) in this witness protection program yawner produced by 50 Cent. [Lionsgate]
Lord of the Brush Lords of Dogtown Louie Anderson: Big Baby Boomer Love You Save Man Who Saved Christmas Man’s Story Masters of Terror Maximum Conviction Meltdown Microbes Rule the World Mind Over Matter: Mystery of Consciousness Miramax From Dusk Till Dawn Series
Miramax Psycho Killer Series Miramax Wes Craven Series Modern War Heroes: Sniper and Outside the Wire Moms to the Rescue Collection Mother Is a Freshman Narrow Escapes of World War II National Geographic: Inside the Afghanistan War National Geographic: Sharks in the City Night People Nirvana Maestros Obama Effect Outpost: Black Sun Pact Paradise Lost Trilogy Collector’s Edition
Pastorela Patient Zero Perfect Gift Pig/1334 Pray for Japan Psychic Squad: Collection 4 Queen Live in Budapest Rags & Riches: Mary Pickford Collection Railways of Scandinavia Rashoman Red Dog
Red Vs. Blue: Season 10 Regeneration Regular Show: The Best DVD in the World at This Moment in Time Rescue Rocket Man Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling – Ireland 1965 Run Broken Yet Brave Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed
Second Time Around Secret Kingdom Sesame Street: A Special Sesame Street Christmas Sesame Street: Old School Vol. 3 – 1979-1984 Shamus/Physical Evidence/The Anderson Tapes/Breakout Shark Divers Sherlock Holmes: The Great Investigator SM Town: I Am SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! Stray Cats: Live at Montreux 1981 Striking Truth Sunday Morning in the Valley Supernatural Activity Swanee River Take Her She’s Mine Tampico This Is My Life Thomas & Friends: Let’s Explore With Thomas Thrills in High Heels With Lady Morrighan Thunder Island Top Shot: Season 4 Trishna UFC: Ultimate Fight Collection – 2012 Collection Ultimate Fighter Live: Team Cruz vs. Team Faber Ultimate Holiday Collection Unequally Yoked Universal 100th Anniversary Collection Vera: Set 2 Visit Volviendo Vow War Documentaries: America’s Wars – Historical Conflicts War Movie Collection Whale Wars: Season 4 What Happened to Kerouac What She Wants for Christmas Wolf Lake: The Complete Series Worth: The Testimony of John WWE: NWO – The Revolution Your Sister’s Sister
NOV 13 The Watch
This was called Neighborhood Watch before the Trayvon Martin shooting, which is the only reason anyone will remember it. A hard R Men in Black rip-off should’ve been way funnier. [20th Century Fox]
NOVEMBER 13
2 Days in New York 2 Vicentes 2001: A Space Odyssey/A Clockwork Orange 2005 World Series 2006 World Series 3 Times a Charm 300/Troy 5 Dark Souls Aaron Copland: Music in the ‘20s Algerian War 1954-1962 Astonishing X-Men: Unstoppable Asylum Barbra Streisand: Musicares Tribute to Barbra Streisand Battle for the Skies: The Definitive History of the Royal Air Force 1918-2008 Battle History of the USMC: Devil Dogs of Nam Battle History of the USMC: Marines in the Pacific Battle History of the USMC: The Gulf Wars & Afghanistan 1991-2001
Battle History of the USMC: The Korean War Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes Body of Lies/Blood Diamond Book of Eli/A Am Legend Brave Breaking Glass: Uncut Collector’s British Edition British Steam Engines: City of Truro, 672 Fenchurch & 60163 Tornado British Steam Engines: GWR93 British Steam Engines: GWR9351 Burning Hot Summer Burning in the Sun Casanova’s Love Letters Chameleons: Live From London
Chase the Stars: The Cast of the Hunger Games Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below Company Confessions of a Single Black Mother Count It All Joy Dance Moms Vol. 2 Dark Horse Darnell Dawkins: Mouth Guitar Deceptz Definitive Document of the Dead Dinotasia Disasters: Land & Sea Doctor Who: Series 7, Part 1 Doctor Who: The Claws of Axos Don Cherry Hockey 24 Duck Dynasty: Season 1 Dust Up Elliot Loves ESPN Ben Johnson ESPN Films 30 for 30: Collector’s Set – Films 01-30 FCA 35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton Fist Full of Westerns Collection Five Takes Flintstones: The Complete Series Full Metal Jacket/The Shining Genesis 7: Episode 4 Ghostmaker Great American Western Collection Great American Westerns: Cowboys and Bandits Half the Sky Happy Feet/March of the Penguins Heathens and Thieves Hellsing: The Complete Collection Highway Hollywood to Dollywood Ichi the Killer Pack I’m Not Jesus Mommy Incredible Mel Brooks: Irresistible Collection of Unhinged Comedy IQ: Llive From the Camden Palace Island President Killers on the Loose Kunoichi: Lady Ninja La Que No Podia Amar Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones/Stones in Exile/Some Girls
Last Call at the Oasis Linebarrels of Iron: The Complete Series & 2 OVAs Los Cascanueces Lost Girl: Season Two Lukewarm Magnum: Live From the Camden Palace
Make Believe
Maria Watches Over Us: Season 2
Meat Loaf: Guilty Pleasures Tour – Live From Sydney National Geographic: America’s Money Vault
Nature: Siberian Tiger Quest Nut Crackers Of Two Minds Olympia: Festival of Nations One Direction: All for One P.S. I Love You/Lake House Painted Skin: The Resurrection Patti Smith: Live at Montreux 2005
Pearl Jam Twenty Pixar Short Films Collection Vol. 2 Point of Regret Porn Shoot Massacre Predator Collection Queen of Versailles Queen’s Blade: Complete Collection
Rainbow Serpent Rascal Flatts: All Access & Uncovered Raw and the Cooked Real McCoys: The Complete Season Two Rhythm of the Game Ristorante Paradiso: Complete Series Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed
Savages Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete Series Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated: Season 2 Part 1, Danger in the Deep Screwed Selznick Collection Sesame Street: A Special Sesame Street Christmas Sgt. Frog Season Three Shipping Wars: Season 1 Silmido Slave Ship Snowmageddon SpongeBob SquarePants: Seasons 4, 5 & 6 Steve Miller: Live at Austin City Limits
Storage Wars: Texas – Season 1 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Complete Classic Series Ten Years After: Live From the Marquee Club Tenchi in Tokyo: Complete Collection They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain Trilogy of Life Twilight’s Last Gleaming Upon a Midnight Clear V for Vendetta/Watchmen Vampires: Brighter in Darkness
Vamps Variable Geo Neo: Complete Collection Watch We Can’t Go Home Again Weekend Where the Wild Things Are/Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
Wimbledon: 2012 Men’s & Women’s Finals With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story X Game NOVEMBER 20
2012 World Series Champion Season in Review 3 Blind Saints Adventures of Pookie Lu Little… and More Advocate for Fagdom Aerosmith: Behind the Rock Dimension – The Story Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Movie Collection Alter Egos Ancient Aliens: Season Four Another Kind Archers of Loaf: What Did You Expect? Live at Cat’s Cradle Audrey Hepburn: In the Movies Backroad Backslasher Battle B-Boy Beach Boys Live in Concert: 50th Anniversary Behind the Scenes of the Silent Screen Beijing Punk Best of British Memorabilia Set Bette Davis Collection Vol. 3 Black Magic Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo: The Complete Series Part 2 Booster Bright Day Broke Captain’s Table Caretaker Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! Wings & Things Cecilia Bartoli: Mission Christmas Clips Cinderella Cinderella II: Dreams Come True/ Cinderella III: A Twist in Time Classic Sports Cars Memorabilia Set
Close Up Cluster Edge: Collection 2 Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements
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Cookalong Live Craft in America: Crossroads – Season 4 Cuckoo Clocks of Hell Dark Horse & Underdogs: The Greatest Sports Upsets Darklands David Susskind Show: Television’s First Star – An Interview With Milton Berle Dead Inside Detective Sagas Diff’rent Strokes: The Complete Fourth Season Dino Dan: Dino Trackers Doctor Who: Limited Edition Gift Set
Documentary Series: V1 Provocative Doc Dragons: Riders of Berk Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton Film Collection Elvis Presley: In the Movies Expendables 2 Extreme Horror Collection Vol. 1 Fantasist Fireball Fun-for-All Flying Scotsman Memorabilia Set Foreign Intrigue Forks Over Knives Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years Galaxy Express 999: The Complete Series 1 Gingerdead Man Trilogy Box Set Granada: Let’s Party Great Cars: Ferrari Great Cars; Lamborghini Grove Grudges Guts & Glory Hard Core Logo 2 Heaven’s Gate Helpless Hideout in the Sun History Film Collection Hollywood Classics Hot Curves I Heart Monster Movies Ike & Tina Turner: On the Road 1971-1972 Inside John Lennon Inu Yasha: Season 2 Inu Yasha: Season 3 Inu Yasha: Season 5 Inu Yasha: Season 6 Inu Yasha: The Final Act Set 1 Israel My Home James Stewart: Signature Collection
John Wayne: In the Movies John Wayne: John Ford Film Collection Justin Bieber DVD Collector’s Box
Katharine Hepburn Collection
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Kid Creole & The Coconuts: Live at Rockpalast Killjoy Goes to Hell Leading Ladies Collection Vol. 2 Libby, Montana Lightning the White Stalliion Little Bit of Faith Lord Byron Lost Realities of Hog Caller Lost Silent Classics Collection: Thrills of the Silent Screen Lost Silent Classics Collection: World War I Comedies Lou Reed With Nico and John Cale: Paris 1972 Lucille Ball Film Collection Man Who Will Come Marc & The Mambas: Three Black Nights of Little Black Bites Marilyn Monroe: In the Movies Mark of the Devil: Yack Pack Marx Brothers Collection Measure of a Man Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Complete Series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; Season 1, Vol. 2 Miraculous Journey My Heart Beats Myrna Loy & William Powell Collection Mysterious Museum Naked Trip: On the Run From the Mafia Nature: Magic of the Snowy Owl Naughty Gold Diggers Nitro Circus: The Movie Official 2012 World Series Film Omnibus: James Agee’s Mr. Lincoln and the Civil War Pato Banton: Live & Seen Point Pokemon: Black & White – Set 1 Popovich: Comedy Pet Theater Vol. 1 Porcelain Man Psycho Horror Double Feature: Psycho Kickboxer/Canvas of Blood Puppet Master 2: His Unholy Creatures Puppet Master 3: Toulon’s Revenge Puppet Master: 3 Movie Collection Ramrod Rank Collection: Eyewitness Rap Life Featuring TQ Ricky Nelson: Poor Little Fool Rolling Stones: Under Review 1975-1983 – The Ronnie Wood Years Part 1
NOVEMBER 27
NOV 27
The Dark Knight Rises
The inevitably disappointing conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Batman reboot has too many villains, not enough hero—just like any other weak third installment of a comic adaptation. [Warner Bros.]
Salome Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups Sid the Science Kid: Sid in Motion Slaugher Tales Slaughter Creek Slave Girls on Auction Block 1313 Soul Eater Story of Film: An Odyssey Stricken Super Pack Zombies Survival Games Tales From the Cannibal Side Tales of Masked Men: A Journey Through Lucha Libre Terror Island They’re Out of the Business Thin Man: Complete Collection Tol’able David Tracy & Hepburn Signature Film Collection Transformers Prime: Season Two Trap Travis Porter: Red Rock Wanted: Chasing Dreams Western Classics Collection When Horror Came to Shochiku Wiggles: Here Comes the Big Red Car Willie Nelson: Live in Concert Wilson Phillips: Live From Infinity Hall
Wimbledon: The 2012 Official Film WordWorld: Shark’s Loose Tooth WWE: The Attitude Era Yankee Doodle in Berlin Yankee Stadium: The Golden Age You Know What Sailors Are Zorro
12 Christmas Wishes for My Dog 40 Days and Nights 6 Degrees of Hell All Ashore Apparition Arizona Assignment K Behold the Lamb Berserk: The Golden Age Arc – The Egg of the King Boogieman Will Get You Bringing Up Bobby Burning Man Camp on Blood Island Cartel War Caught Christmas in Compton Companeros De Lucha Day Doggie Boogie: Get Your Grrr On Don’t Panic Chaps Endurance Experiment: Who’s Watching You?
Feed Flood Streets GaoGaiGar: King of the Braves: Complete Collection Greatest Miracle Hecho Con Sabor a Puerto Rico Hell in a Cell 2012 Hook Line & Sinker Hot in Cleveland: Season 3 Houston Story Intrigue in the Bakumatsu: Irohanihoheto Collection 2 Ireland’s Secret Sights Just Henry Last Soul on a Summer Night Lawless Lego Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu – Rise of the Green Ninja Luck: The Complete First Season Mama Sweetie Men in Black 3 Men Without Law Metal Evolution National Geographic: Winged Seduction – Birds of Paradise Perry Mason Season 8 Vol. 1 Pitbull: Live at Rock in Rio Rites of Spring Royal Kingdoms Sparkle Speechless Step Up Revolution Tall T Tokyo Vengeance: Machine Girl/ Tokyo Gore Police/Death Kappa Vertical Ray of the Sun
/music/new_releases
NOVEMBER 6
Flatliner Music From Another Dimension All That Remains A War You Cannot Win Anaal Nathrakh Vanitas Angrepp Warfare Louis Armstrong The Okeh, Columbia & RCA Victor Recordings Ashra Correlations Bane Chaos, Darkness & Emptiness Beheaded Never to Dawn Nigel Bennett Truth or Consequences Eric Bib & Habi Koite Brothers in Bamako Black Sabbath The Lowdown Blue Oyster Cult The Columbia Albums Collection Cindy-Leigh Boske My Genesis Brewers Droop The Booze Brothers Jim Brickman More Greatest Hits Bulletwolf Double Shots of Rock & Roll Candy Hearts The Best ways to Disappear The Casket Lottery Real Fear Chaossworn Chalice of Black Christ Beheaded Open the Gate Cirque du Soleil Le Bst of 2 Trish Clowes And in the Night Time There She Is Aaimon Aerosmith
Corrosion of Conformity Eye for an Eye
Creedence Clearwater Revival Ultimate CCRF Cytotoxin Radiophobia Der Blutharsch And the Infinite Church of the Leading Hand Der Blutharsch The Track of the Hunted Desultor Magister Mundi Xum/The Noble Savage Desultor Masters of Hate Diabolical Ars Vitae Die Hard Conjure the Legions Die Hard Evil Aways Returns Diseim Holy Wrath Doro Raise Your Fist Mike Doughty The Flip Is Another Honey Dragged Into Sunlight Widowmaker E-40 & Too Short History: Function Music E-50 & Too Short History: Mob Music Duke Ellington The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Entrench Inevitable Decay The Epilogues Cinematics Errors New Relics Eternal Helcaraxe Against Allodds F.U.C.T. Retain to the Aggro Fall on Your Sword 28 Hotel Rooms Faust From Glory to Infinity Fear The Fea Record Peter Fessler Fly Fester A Celebration of Death Fester Silence Fester Winter of Sin Fetus Stench Stillbirth Fischer-Dieskkau/ Demu Weihnachtslieder Forgotten Tomb And Do Not Deliver Us From Evil Friendly Fires Late Night Tales
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Isis Nov 6
Temporal The influential metalgazers go out with a posthumous bang of demos, live tracks and covers (most notably Godflesh’s “Streetcleaner” and Sabbath’s “Hand of Doom”). [Ipecac Recordings]
Garbarek/ Gismonti/ Magico-Carta De Amor Gardnerz System of Nature Glee Cast Glee: The Music Presents Glease Golden Age of Steam Welcome Graveyard Lights Out Tim Halperin Under That Christmas Tree Hat The Demise of Mankind Hat The Vortex of Death Woody Herman The Third Herd Him XX – Two Decades of Love Metal Hordes of Nebulah And Blasphemous Night Must Fall Horseback/Locrin New Dominions Hot 8 Brass Band The Life and Times Of Humangles Fractal Humangles Odd Ethics Hyperborean The Spirit of Warfare Iamamiwhoami Kin The Irish Rovers Merry Merry Time of Year Isis Temporal (CD/DVD) Issa Can’t Stop Jimi Jamison Never Too Late Bert Jansc Heartbreak Jastreb Jastreb Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick 40th Anniversary Karthago Karthago Paul Kelly Spring and Fall Junior Kimbrogh First Recordings Andrezej Korzynski Secret Enigma Laibach An Introduction To Barbara Lewis The Complete Atlantic Singles Maax Dawnbringer Maax Six Pack Witchcraft Maax Unholy Rock & Roll Manetheren Time Manilla Road Invasion Johnny Mathis The Sweetheart Tree/The Shadow of Your Smile Johnny Mathis This Is Love/Ole Maus Haus Light Noise Megadeth Countdown to Extinction Mhz Legacy Mhz Legacy Kylie Minogue The Abbey Road Sessions Mongolito Acedia Naevus The Division of Labor Thomas Newman Skyfall Soundtrack Ne-Yo R.E.D. Nine Stones Close One Eye on the Sunrise Noctis Imperium Hihil Non Back to Mono
Novalis Bumerange The O.C. Supertones For the Glory Otep Sounds Like Armageddon Paragon Force of Destruction Pasadena Napalm Division P.N.D. Charley Pride Did You Think to Pray Prince Rama Top Ten Hits of the End of the World Psychic for Radio Standing Wave Public Enemy Most of My Heroes Still Don’t Appear on No Stamp Public Enemy The Evil Empire Queen Live in Budapest (DVD/CD) Radiation Sickness Reflections Rage Nucleaire Unrelenting… Ragnarok Malediction Johnny Reinhold Hall Cloud Atlas Soundrack Residents Demonic Faith Marion Robinson ACeltic Awakening Rocking Corpses Rock ‘N’ Rot The Rolling Stones Charlie Is My Darling Rumer Boys Don’t Cry Doug Sahm Last Real Texas Blues Band Saigon The Greatest Story Never Told Chapter 2 Klaus Schulze La Vie Electronique 1 Am Schumer Cutting Sclerata The Sniper The Seeking Yours Forever Septekh The Seth Avalanche Duncan Sheik Covers ‘80s Remixed Sincera Cursed and Proud Skalmold Born Loka Slingshot Dakota Dark Hearts Bessie Smith The Complete Albums Colelction Soleil Moo On the Way to Everything Son of a Bitch Victim You Songtime Kids 100 Favorite Sing-A-Longs The Sorrow Misery Escape Southwicked Death’s Crown Britney Spears Playlist: The Very Best of Britney Spears Doug Stanhope Before Turning the Gun on Himself Steel Vengeance Call Off the Dogs Steel Vengeance Prisoners Steel Vengeance Second Offering Bobo Stenson Trio Indicum Christoph Stiefel Live Geoff Tate Kings & Thieves Temple of Baal Llightslaying Rituals Thousand Year War Tyrants and Men Tiamat The Scarred People Torture Division Evighetens Torture Division With Endless Wrath We Bring UponThee Simon Townsend Looking Out Looking in Toy Toy Underoath Anthology 1999-2013 Various Artists Dixieland & Swing Various Artists Jazz From London 1957 Various Artists New York City Blues & R&B Various Artists Now 44
Deftones Nov 13
Koi No Yokan A predictably inspired follow-up to Diamond Eyes, Koi No Yokan spotlights the Sacramento band’s welcome interest in sustaining heavy moods, not commercial singles. [Reprise Records] Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Various Artists Vesen Void Moon Wan War From a Harlot’s Mouth Warnot While She Sleeps The Who John Williams Bill Withers Frankie Yankovic Your Youth
Now Disney Punk Goes Pop Vol. 1 Rare London Musicals of the ‘50s Reggae Golden Jubilee Reggae Mix USA Top 40 Country Vol. 1 UK Record Label Debut Hits Work Hard, Play Hard This Time It’s Personal On the Blackest of Nights Wolves of the North Voyeur His Blood Is Yours This Is theSix Live at Hull ‘70 Lincoln Original Motion Picture Soundtrack The Complete Sussex & Columbia Album Masters Plays the Hits Battery
Brian Eno Estasy Eternal Tapestry
Last Concert in Japan Koi No Yokan Paradise Adventus O God Save Us All Dar De Duh Wetterkreuz 25th Anniversary Waltz Album Lux Wild Songs A World Out of Time
Percy Faith
Complete Music of Christmas
Deep Purple Deftones Lana Del Rey The Departed Disciple Doredeuh E?s The Emeralds
Fanga/Maalem Abdallah Guinea Freddy Fender Roberta Flack The Floacist Josephine Foster Josephine Foster Peter Frampton Gifts From Enola Golden Void Green Day Beres Hammond Harmonia Harmonia & Eno Harmonia & Eno
Hercules & Love Affair Hercules & Love Affair: DJ Kicks
Holly Herndon
The 69 Eyes 77
Framed in Blood 21st Century Rock
9th Wonder & Buckshot The Solution
DreamLogic Get Lost V Lotus Mustt Mustt Die for the Government Darker Than Light Last Train From Poor Valley Flesh & None 11-11-11 Soundtrack Funeral Beach Standing Ovation Godfather of Soul Happy The Best of Eva Cassidy Clarence Park On the Air: Her Bst Free Reign Live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Crystal Castles III Chris Cummings Give Me Tonight Cypress Hill & Rusko Cypress Hill X Rusko D.R.I. Dirty Rotten Hitz Anthony David Love Out Loud John Debney & Tony Morales Hatfields & McCoys Eivind Aarset Acid Pauli Christina Aguilera Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Anti-Flag Bobby Are Richard Bennett Barney Bentall Joseph Bishara Blood Command Susan Boyle James Brown Bush Tetras Eva Cassidy Clark Patsy Cline Clinic Judy Collins
Mr. Criminal Presents Gang Bang Symphonies Par 2 Ms. Lady Pinks Presents Frontliners
Mudhoney Myka 9 & Factor Nadina Neu Neu Neu Neu Newban Mickey Newbury Mickey Newbury Mickey Newbury Carrie Newcomer Nite Jewel Nutty Oceans Ate Alaska Okkultokrati Old Man Ledecke One Direction Orden Ogan Orleans Stephen Pearcy Lee Perry & The Sufferers Placebo Portico Quartet Elvis Presley Elvs Presley
Movement
Hipower Entertainment Presents Notorious Life Boxset
I Will Always Love You: The Best of Whitney Houston Benedikt Jahnel Trio Equilibrium Jano Ertale Lalgudi G Jayaraman Singing Violins Alejandro Jodorowsky El Topo: Soundtrack Album Cledus T. Judd Parodyziac Bap Kennedy The Sailor’s Revenge Jack Kerouac Blues and Haikus Jack Kerouac Poetry for the Beat Generation John Kilzer Seven Mark Kozelek Mark Kozelek on Tour: The Soundtrack Pop Levi Medicine Aaron Lewis The Road Lord Infamous & Land of the Lost Black Rain Love. Might. Kill 2 Big 2 Fail Lucky Luciano Texas Playa Made Lust for Youth Growing Seeds Machine Head Machine F**king Head Live Madness Oui, Oui, Si, Si, Ja, Ja, Da, Da He Mahones Angels & Devils Major League Hard Feelings Manfred Mann Five Faces of Manfred Mann Roc Marciano Reloaded Vaughn Meader First Family Complete 50th Anniversary Mob Rules Cannibal Nation Jose-Luis Monton Solo Guitarra Whitney Houston
NOVEMBER 13
Fangnawa Experience Before the Next Tear Drop Falls Christmas Songs Presents: Floetry Rebirth Graphic as a Star This Coming Gladness The Best of PCA A Healthy Fear Golden Void Dos One Love, Onelife Live 1974 Tracks & Traces Tracks & Traces Remixed
Motionless in White Infamous
Punch Brothers Putumayo Kids Presents Joan Riers Robbie Rivera Rolling Stones Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Scott & Charlene’s Wedding Shenkar Silvana Kane The Singing Loins Robert Soko Soul Jazz Records Presents Soundgarden Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Soundtrack Jeff Sparks Sufjan Stevens Sticky Boys Tampa Red Tangerine Dream Tangerine Dream Tender Trap
Live in Berlin, 1988 Sovereign Soul In the Now Neu Neu 2 Neu 75 Neu 86 Newban & Newban 2 Blue to This Day Lulled by the Moonlight Stories Form the Silver Moon Café Kindred Spirits Good Evening Jet Setters Jazz Into the Deep Snakereigns Tender Is the Night Take Me Home To the End Dancin’ in the Moonlight Fueler The Sound Doctor B3 Portico Quartet Prince From Another Planet As Recorded at Madison Square Garden Ahoy World Sing Along Presents Mr. Phyliss and Other Funny Stories Juicy Ibiza 2012 Grrr! Plays the Music of Rush Para Vista Social Club In the Box La Jardinera Here on Earth Balkan Beats Sound Lab Delta Swamp Rock 2 King Animal Butter Focus Features 10th Anniversary Killing Them Softly Person of Interest Rise of the Guardian Save the Date The Sessions Jazzy Christmas With Silver & Gold This Is Rock ‘N’ Roll Chicago 1929-1935 Booster IV Edgar Allen Poe’s The Island of the Fay Ten Songs About Girls
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Texas-Cali Connection Volume 1
Thug Twinz Layzie Bone & Big Sloan John Travolta & Olivia Newton John This Christmas U.D.O. Live in Sofia Jozef Van Wisem & Jim Jarmusch The Mystery of Heaven Various Artists 30: Real World at Womad Various Artists Fifty Shades of Emotions Various Artists Imaginational Ant V5 Various Artists Stillness: A Collection Various Artists Surf Age Nuggets Various Artists Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2 Vexillum The Bivouac The Weekend Trilogy Amy Winehouse Amy Winehouse at the BBC Wires Under Tension Replicant NOVEMBER 20
The Avett Brothers Keyshia Cole Elvis Costello John Denver & The Muppets Elbow Marvin Gaye Il Volo Jet Life Motorhead Orianthi Philip Phillips Placebo Placebo Placebo Placebo Porcupine Tree Rihanna Style P T.A.T.U. Tech N9ne Three Doors Down Various Artists Venom Frank Zappa Frank Zappa Frank Zappa Frank Zappa Frank Zappa Frank Zappa Frank Zappa
I and Love and You Woman to Woman In Motion Pictures Christmas Together Dead in the Boot Trouble Man: 40th Anniversary We are Love Jet World Order 2 The Complete Early Years Heaven in This Hell The World From the Side of the Moon Black Market Music Meds Sleeping With Ghosts Without You I’m Nothing Octane Twisted Unapologetic The World’s Most Hardest MC Project 200KM/H in the Wrong Lane E.B.A.H & Boiling Point The Greatest Hits Zombies: A Record of the Year
Fallen Angels Ahead of Their Te Have I Offended Someone Mothermania Mystery Disc Playground Psychotic The Lost Episodes You Can’t Do That Vol. 3-6
NOVEMBER 27
All About Maggie
Now Hear Me Out
The Rance Allen Group Amazing Grace
Journey Flyin’ High Burning on the Wings of Desire Blood, Sweat & Tears New Blood/No Sweat/More Tan Ever Mario Basanov Blackfoot Blood of the Sun
78
needle
Rihanna Nov 20
Mammoth Mammoth Vol. III Hell’s Likely Lisa McClowery
Unapologetic We’re officially done caring about her gross on-again/ off-again thing with shithead Chris Brown. Just write more singles like “You Da One” and “We Found Love” (that are not about him). [Def Jam]
Bloodbound Breathless Joe Budden Carter Burwell Miguel Campbell Canis Dirus Charlie Christian Jerry Cole Jessi Colter Curved Air Darkthrone Elton Dean Dexy’s Midnight Runners Danny Elfman Finsterforst Fogalord Forbidden Broadway Fort Shame Freak Kitchen Freak Kitchen Freeway Fullforce Eric Gale Gentle Giant
In the Name of Metal Green to Blue No Love Lost The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Back in Flight School Anden Om Norr The Complete Columbia Collection Surf Age Mirriam/That’s the Way a Cowboy Rocks and Rolls AirWaves: Live at the BBC Hate Them Into the Nierka
At the Royal Court (CD/DVD) Hitchcock Rastlos A Legend to Believe In Alive and Kicking Double Wide Move Organic Diamond in the Ruff Next Level Part of You/Touch of Silk Gentle Giant/Acquiring the Taste Great Big Sea XX Kim & Reggie Harris Resurrection Day Hasidic New Wave The Complete Recordings Anne Hills The Things I Notice Now Hipbone Slim Hipbone Slim Vs. Sir Bald Diddley Hipower Entertainent Thugs and Choloz Incantation Vanquish in Vengeance Jefferson Starship Tales From the Mothership Stanley Jordan Magic Touch/Standards Vol. 1 Junkie XL Synthesized Alicia Keys Girl on Fire Kraut Live at CBGB’s L.A. Guns Cocked & Loaded L.A. Guns L.A. Guns Lady of Rage Necessary Roughness Sonny Landreth Grant Street Sonny Landreth The Road We’re On Lil C Throweder Than Throwed 2K12 Lone Wolf The Lovers Taj Mahal Complete Columbia Albums
Before the Tree Comes Down
Meriimack The Acausal Mass Merveille & Crosson DRM Adrien Moignard Between Clouds Annie Moses Band
Ultimate Christmas Collection
My Radio
Erik Norlander Offshore Peter Ostroushko Outasight
Starts in the East, Falls in the West Tell These Are the Times A Spoonful of Time Reims Cathedral: December 13, 1974 The Galactic Collective Bake Haus Mando Chronicles Nights Like These
Peter & Gordon
Peter & Gordon/In Touch With
Myriad 3 Neako Nectar Nico
Phantom Orchard Orchestra The Platters Putumayo Presents The Radiators Rage Against the Machine
Trouble in Paradise A Classic Christmas A Jewish Celebration The Last Watusi
Rage Against the Machine XX (20th Anniversary) Stan Rogers From Fresh Water Sadiki – I Book of Sadiki – I: The Prologue Delta Joe Sanders Working Without a Net Secret Sphere Portrait of a Dying Heart Sinister The Carnage Ending Small Faces Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake Dick Heckstall Smith Woza Nasu TV Smith March of the Giants TV Smith’s Explorers The Last Words of the Great Explorer Solisia UniverSeasons String Driven Thing Songs From Another Country The Sweetback Sisters The Sweetback Sisters’
Country Christmas Talla 2XLC Tranceology 2 The Tea Party Live From Australia 2 Texas-Cali Connection Lil Flip & Mr. Capone-E Vol. 2 Therion Les Fleurs Du Mal Toh Kay The Hand That Thieves Matt Tolfrey Word of Mouth Trae Tha Truth Blackprint Edition Slabbed Trashman Teen Trot Varg Guten Tag Varg Wolfskult Various Artists 50 Shades of Classical Various Artists Alive at the Deep Blues Fest Various Artists All-Star Salute to Christmas Various Artists Nuggets Various Artists Smooth Jazz Tribute to the Isley Brothers The Very End Turn Off the World Vicious Rumors Live You to Death Westbrook Trio Three Into Wonderful Wu-Block Wu-Block Yabby You and Breathren Deeper Roots John Zorn The Concealed
AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 6
MOTIONLESS
IN WHITE
MOTIONLESS IN WHITE
PUNK GOES POP 5 VARIOUS ARTISTS
AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 13
PIERCE THE VEIL
COLLIDE WITH THE SKY
TONIGHT ALIVE
WHAT ARE YOU SO SCARED OF ON TOUR NOVEMBER 4TH TORONTO
GEOFF TATE KINGS & THIEVES
TEXAS IN JULY TEXAS IN JULY
AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 6
THE CLASSIC ALBUMS 180g HEAVYWEIGHT VINYL Available November 13
www.thebeatles.com