Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Barn - Reprise
Barn, the new Neil Young & Crazy Horse album was recorded in a remote, restored, 19th century log barn. This musical family has played together for a half century, yet they continue creating new music. Neil and the Horse fans have long shouted for “more barn” and here it is… 10 new songs that capture the wild, rock and roll spirit, the idiosyncratic raw sound and the lyrical beauty that epitomizes a classic NYCH collaboration. The last song appeared on the last morning and was recorded just an hour later during a pounding hailstorm and during the full moon. The album was recorded this summer over a handful of days. The ten new songs encompass all that Neil Young with Crazy Horse are known for, beautiful romantic acoustic ballads, powerhouse electric rockers and insightful rollicking tunes that stick with you. Niko Bolas was parked adjacent to the barn, in an exquisite analog mobile recording truck, Le Mobile ready to capture and mix the album on the spot. 

  

Green Day - BBC Sessions - Warner Records
Between 1994 to 2001, Green Day would visit the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios in London four times and record live sessions for Radio 1’s “Evening Show” and its popular DJ Steve Lamacq. This compilation documents those sessions, and includes many of the band’s hits including “When I Come Around”, “Basket Case”, “Brain Stew/Jaded” and “Minority”.

  

The Band - Cahoots: 50th Anniversary Edition - Capitol
The Band celebrates the 50th Anniversary of their fourth studio album Cahoots with an all-new remix and remaster by Bob Clearmountain. The Super Deluxe Box includes the new stereo mix, bonus tracks and a previously unreleased bootleg concert at Olympia Theatre, Paris 1971, on 2 CDs. Also included, is a surround-sound Blu-ray, a 180g half-speed master LP, a 7" single, booklet, all-new liner notes and collectable lithographs.

Brian Wilson - At My Piano - DECCA
Genius, icon, trailblazer - he revolutionized music as head of the Beach Boys. Now, legend Brian Wilson retraces his steps and reimagines the most iconic songs from his back catalogue into their purest form, him alone at the piano. Featuring God Only Knows, Wouldn't it Be Nice, California Girls, Good Vibrations and many more on solo piano.

  

U2 - Achtung Baby: 30th Anniversary Edition - Island
A limited-edition black vinyl release of the Grammy-award winning U2 album Achtung Baby, to celebrate its 30^th Anniversary. Produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and recorded between Berlin’s Hansa Studios and various locations in Dublin, Achtung Baby was released to critical acclaim in 1991 & is regarded as one of U2’s most seminal albums. The album featured five singles: ‘The Fly’, ‘Mysterious Ways’, ‘One’, ‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’ and ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’.

Kiss - Destroyer: 45th Anniversary Edition - UMe
In 1976, KISS dropped the bombshell on the world being DESTROYER, an album that originally received resistance from fans due to the band exploring a new sound and has long become the quintessential and all-time best selling KISS studio album. Exploding with concert staples and KISS Army favorites like “Detroit Rock City,” “Shout It OutLoud,” and “God Of Thunder” – the album’s new sounds came from the softer side of songs like “Do You Love Me?,”and songs heavy with orchestral arrangements including “Great Expectations” and their surprise hit single “Beth.” For the 45th anniversary, UMe is releasing the most comprehensive Super Deluxe Edition 4CD + Blu-ray Audio boxset that will melt the KISS Army’s minds. The original album on CD 1 is newly remastered by Abbey Road Mastering, CD 2 features 15 demos from Paul Stanley’s and Gene Simmons’s personal archives – 9 of which are unreleased. CD 3 loads up with studio outtakes, alternate versions / mixes and single edits – most notably a brand-new stripped-down mix for “Beth (Acoustic Mix)” where we found the acoustic guitar stems recorded for the entire song but originally only used in the last several closing notes of the song on the album. CD 4 features a ripping performance from the band’s visit to Paris France at the L’Olympia on May 22, 1976. Steven Wilson was brought in to create a first-ever Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround mix of the original studio album plus 2 bonus tracks “Beth (Acoustic Mix)” and “Sweet Pain (Original Guitar Solo)” the latter featuring Ace Frehley’s original recorded guitar solo that was not released on the studio album (this track is available on the 2012 Destroyer: Resurrected project.) Packaging features a lift top-style box loaded with so much ephemera even KISS fans may need to seek medical advice upon receiving this boxset. Also available Deluxe 2CD and Deluxe 2LP.

Yusuf / Cat Stevens - Teaser And The Firecat: 50th Anniversary - A&M
Yusuf / Cat Stevens celebrates 1971's landmark album with this 4CD, Blu-ray, 2LP, and 7" set in a rigid clamshell box. It includes the 50th Anniversary remaster of the album on CD/Blu-ray HD Audio completed at Abbey Road by the original producer, Paul Samwell-Smith. Featuring 41 previously unreleased demos, sessions, live tracks, and 21 unreleased TV performances. Plus, an illustrated 108-pg essay book, a 44-pg replica of the original "Teaser And The Firecat" book, and a 7" single of "Moonshadow." Also available Super Deluxe 4CD/Blu-ray Box Set, Deluxe 2CD and LP & CD.

Andy Shauf - Wilds - ANTI
Few artists are storytellers as deft and disarmingly observational as Andy Shauf. The Toronto-based, Saskatchewan-raised musician’s songs unfold like short fiction: they’re densely layered with colorful characters and a rich emotional depth. Like he’s done throughout his career, Shauf wrote, performed, arranged, and produced every song on his new album Wilds at his studio space in the west end of Toronto.  Over the course of a year-and-a-half, Shauf had written more than 50 songs, and pared down this massive body of work, into a single album’s worth of material, which became 2020’s highly acclaimed The Neon Skyline album. These songs focused on a theme by intertwining the individual characters stories of a group of friends who gathered for one night at the same local bar. Wilds includes songs from those same writing sessions, that did not fit into the Skyline storyline and had their own singular identity apart from that album, though he does revisit with his old friends Judy and Jeremy in this outing.

  

Damon Albarn - The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows - PIAS
The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows was originally intended as an orchestral piece inspired by the landscapes of Iceland. This last year has seen Damon Albarn return to the music in lockdown and develop the work to 11 tracks which further explore themes of fragility, loss, emergence and rebirth. The result is a panoramic collection of songs with Albarn as storyteller. The album title is taken from a John Clare poem Love and Memory. Albarn says "I have been on my own dark journey while making this record and it led me to believe that a pure source might still exist."In a career of perpetual musical shifts and exploration, the record uncovers yet more ground, finding expansive orchestral arrangements nestling with intimate melodies, discordance brushing up against infectious majesty, all set to some of Albarn's most arresting vocal performances to date. Much like the beauty and chaos of the natural world it soundtracks, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows vividly documents the emotional ebb and flow of the human condition, in all it's extremes, serving as a soul enriching document for our times.

ENTER TO WIN A DAMON ALBARN TEST PRESSING

  

They Might Be Giants - Book - Idlewild Recordings
Book is a new phase They Might Be Giants album presented on 180-gram audiophile vinyl LP, CD, Cassette and Limited Edition Deluxe CD/Book with package design by Paul Sahre. Featuring "I Broke My Own Rule," "I Lost Thursday," and "I Can't Remember the Dream," Book is billed as a beacon of light amid a pretty unanimously rough period of time with the band's John Linnell describing it's songs as "humorously germane to the catastrophe going on around us."

  

Diana Ross - Thank You - Verve
Diana Ross sings “Thank You” to the world.  “This collection of songs is my gift to you with appreciation and love. I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to record this glorious music at this time,” said Ms. Ross. Recorded in her home studio, “Thank You" offers a powerful, inclusive musical message of love and togetherness.  With its songs of happiness, appreciation and joy, it wholeheartedly acknowledges that we are in this all together. Her family, friends and loyal and loving audiences all around the globe have been an integral part of her wonderful life’s story. In this special moment, it is time to step into the light. Ms. Ross co-wrote and collaborated on the 13 songs along with award-winning songwriters and producers including: Jack Antonoff, Troy Miller,Triangle Park, Spike Stent, Prince Charlez, Amy Wadge, Neff-U, Freddie Wexler, Jimmy Napes, Tayla Parx, Fred White, and Nathanial Ledgewick. Let us come together in harmony and gratitude with Diana Ross now and for the future. “I dedicate this songbook of love to all of you, the listeners. As you hear my voice you hear my heart.  "Let Love Lead the Way”

  

Bullet For My Valentine - Bullet For My Valentine - Spinefarm
Metal vets Bullet For My Valentine announces their self-titled, seventh album which will be released via Spinefarm Records. It sees the band open a bold new chapter and is easily their heaviest, fiercest album so far.

 

Garbage - beautifulgarbage: 20th Anniversary - Geffen
beautifulgarbage is the third studio album from Garbage, initially released on October 1, 2001. The album expanded on the band's musical variety, with stronger melodies, more direct lyrics, and sounds mixing rock with electronica, new wave, hip hop, and girl groups. Featuring newly remastered audio by Billy Bush & Butch Vig, this deluxe edition includes Beautiful Garbage on 2 x 180g Black Vinyl, as well as a 12" 180g of B-Sides and memorabilia.

Curtis Harding - If Words Were Flowers - Anti
Simply calling Curtis Harding a soul man feels reductive. Harding's voice conveys pain, pleasure, longing, tenderness, sadness and strength-a full gamut of emotions. Today his voice takes on an optimistic lilt with his his new album, If Words Were Flowers. If Words Were Flowers is Harding's first new music since 2018, a follow up to his critically acclaimed 'Face Your Fears" album. It features songs like " Hopeful", where Harding croons with devotion over a classic soul groove, textured with infectious horn playing, background singers and modern psychedelic flourishes. Harding fuels his psychedelic sound with the essence of Soul but isn't bound by it. Instead, his songs convey an eclectic blend of genres leaping from the many musical lives he has lived from following his evangelical Gospel-singing mother on tour around the country as a child to rapping in Atlanta, forming a garage band with The Black Lips' Cole Alexander to singing back-up for Cee Lo Green. Through these experiences he fully embraces life's darkest intricacies and conjures dynamic, addictive melodies

  

Tori Amos - Ocean To Ocean - Decca
In spite of the various crises that have occurred since 2017's Native Invader, Tori Amos has emerged with Ocean To Ocean, her most personal work in years - an album bursting with warmth and connection, with deep roots in her earliest song writing. Written during the third lockdown in Cornwall this year, Ocean to Ocean is a universal story of going to rock bottom and renewing yourself all over again.

  

Mastodon - Hushed And Grim - Reprise
Mastodon release their anxiously awaited ninth full-length album, Hushed And Grim, via Reprise Records. Over the past year, the group recorded the album in their hometown, collaborating with producer David Bottrill [Tool, Rush, Muse, Peter Gabriel] behind the board. As their most ambitious body of work to date, it consists of 15 tracks, surveying sonic landscapes of rock, psychedelia, punk, metal, alternative, and prog threaded together by the innately expressive musical interplay of these four musicians. At the same time, an atmosphere of loss, loneliness, and longing permeates through the trio of cathartic vocals as they musically say goodbye to old friend, confidant, and longtime manager the late Nick John by architecting a magnum opus that bears the influence of his eternal memory.

  

Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color: Deluxe Edition - ATO Records
Deluxe edition of the groundbreaking, genre-defying second album by Alabama Shakes. Certified gold and the winner of four Grammys, Rolling Stone called "Sound & Color” a "weirder, woozier, fiercer and sexier record than their debut in nearly every way.” This repackaged set features revised artwork, new photos, and seven bonus tracks pulled from unreleased studio material, b-sides and live songs cut at the world renowned Capitol Records Studio A.

  

SUSTO - Time In The Sun - New West Records
Time In The Sun is the 4th full length album from Charleston, SC band SUSTO. The album was written and recorded in the midst of a lot of life changing events for lead writer/singer Justin Osborne. Like everyone around the world, Osborne was navigating the global issues felt from the pandemic while normal life continued with its own blessings and challenges.. "We were navigating the global and national issues that everyone else was dealing with, but also I became a father and also lost my father. There was a lot of contemplation going on in my brain, a lot of personal evolution going on in my life, and songwriting was my way of working through it all. The title Time in the Sun is meant to be a monument to my own human existence and also a tribute to the human experience in general. I wouldn’t claim to understand what it means to be a human, from the countless different perspectives of the world, but I do have my own experience to reflect on and I want to be able to express and explain that in some way. I guess this album is an attempt at that. At the core though, it’s just a collection of songs about my life and my feelings."

  

Bad Wolves - Dear Monsters - Better Noise Music
Expectations never mattered to Bad Wolves. Instead, the Los Angeles band fused unpredictable metallic intensity and impressive instrumental proficiency to arena-ready hooks, transforming from underdogs into elite platinum-certified hard rock contenders without compromise or apology. Since 2017, the core group-John Boecklin [drums], Doc Coyle [lead guitar, backing vocals], Chris Cain [rhythm guitar], and Kyle Konkiel [bass, backing vocals]-have consistently subverted expectations and accomplished the seemingly impossible. In 2018, the band earned a platinum plaque, topped iTunes, and ruled Active Rock at #1 for three weeks straight. This momentum also propelled their debut album, Disobey, to a Top 25 debut on the Billboard Top 200. In between performing to sold out audiences on multiple continents with heavyweights such as Five Finger Death Punch and Megadeth, 2019's N.A.T.I.O.N. yielded their fifth straight #1 at Active Rock, "Sober," and brought their total stream tally past the half-billionmark-unprecedented for a modern rock band. Not to mention, LoudWire hailed it among the "50 Best Rock Albums of 2019" as Billboard and Consequence of Sound chronicled their rise. In the midst of 2021, Bad Wolves welcomed Daniel "DL" Laskiewicz-previously of The Acacia Strain-as lead vocalist, ushering in a new chapter with their third full-length offering, Dear Monsters,[Better Noise Music], led by the single "Lifeline."

  

Save Face - Another Kill For The Highlight Reel - Epitaph
Save Face are a band who have always prided themselves on taking risks and the New Jersey band have doubled down on that sentiment with their sophomore album, Another Kill For The Highlight Reel. Another Kill For The Highlight Reel, which features indelibly human performances, including a guest appearance from Thursday’s Geoff Rickly on “A.M. Gothic”. “There’s something about the New Jersey kinship [between Geoff and I] that really resonates with me,” Tyler Povanda explains. “New Jersey’s music scene is really something special.” Musically, the album—which was produced by the Movielife’s Brett Romnes—sees Povanda taking influence from his Jersey brethren like Thursday but adds a theatrical twist. “‘GLITTER’ was the first song I wrote that ended up being on this album and it bridges the gap between Merci and Another Kill For The Highlight Reel, ” Povanda says. “I think that song serves as a cool sonic metaphor for the transformation of the band. I would say this album isn’t narrative in the same way as the last one, but it does feel much more immersive.”

  

Spice Girls - Spice: 25th Anniversary - Virgin Records US
Originally released on November 4, 1996, The Spice Girls' debut album Spice celebrates its 25th anniversary this year! The album features the smash singles "Wannabe," "2 Become 1," and "Say You'll Be There" and is the best-selling album in music history by a girl group and one of the best-selling albums of all time. The 2CD set includes the original album along with bonus tracks, B-sides from the hit singles, remixes commissioned for the singles, and previously unreleased demos.

Nat King Cole - A Sentimental Christmas With Nat King Cole And Friends: Cole Classics Reimagined - Capitol
The new album 'A Sentimental Christmas With Nat King Cole And Friends: Cole Classics Reimagined' weaves Nat King Cole's unparalleled, beautifully restored vocals with new arrangements and contemporary artists creating beautiful sentimental duets of holiday classics. Taking its lead from the GRAMMY award-winning virtual duet of “Unforgettable,” by Natalie Cole with her father, this holiday album features brand new duets with John Legend, Kristen Chenoweth, Calum Scott, Gloria Estefan & Johnny Mathis.

  

My Morning Jacket - My Morning Jacket - ATO Records
On their new full-length - the first new music since The Waterfall (2015) - My Morning Jacket reaffirm the rarefied magic that has made them so beloved, embedding each song with moments of discovery, revelation and ecstatic catharsis. It comes after a near permanent hiatus for the band until performing four shows in summer '19 left them with a new energy. Jim James engineered/produced at 64 Sound in LA where the band spent weeks in intentional seclusion emerging with their self-titled 9th album.

  

The Rolling Stones - Tattoo You: 40th Anniversary Edition - Interscope
Tattoo You celebrates 40 years with the release of a brand new Super Deluxe 5 LP Boxset which includes the newly remastered version of Tattoo You, Lost & Found: Rarities, and Still Life: Wembley Stadium 1982. Also included is a 124-page book featuring over 200 rare photos from recording sessions and their world tour, plus interviews with producer Chris Kimsey and photographer Hubert Kretzscmar. The package includes a special lenticular sleeve. Also available: CD, 2CD, 4CD/Picture Disc Box Set, LP and 2LP

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle - Impulse!
This newly discovered live-recording of a performance of the Love Supreme suite is a revelation. Recorded at The Penthouse in Seattle on October 2, 1965, this recording transports the listener to a prime seat for piece of musical history. While not studio-quality audio, the power of the performance shines through. This version is also of the full suite and features an expanded band that includes the same Classic Quartet and Pharoah Sanders in his first official gig as part of Coltrane’s group.

  

Every Time I Die - Radical - Epitaph
Every Time I Die is a loud rock institution committed to leaving an outpouring of chaotic passion and blissful malcontent all over their records and on the stage. With boiling charisma and unrelenting energy to spare, the Buffalo, NY band manages not one but two near-impossible tasks. They’ve survived two decades as an underground entity cherished for coloring outside the lines, and contrary to most career arcs, continually improving with each successive album as they charge ahead. ETID makes a glorious hardcore-punk noise. Alchemized by a swampy summoning of Southern rock and coarse poetry, the music swirls beneath sardonic and clever wordplay, cementing them as leaders, not followers. The band’s ninth studio album, Radical, is 16 tracks of peak-ETID, including raucous new anthems. They deliver what you have come to know and love and then diverge into new paths. To say that “All This And War” featuring guest vocals by Josh Scogins from The ‘68 is absolute brutal heaviness is an understatement. It’s an addictive punch in the face, you’ll want on repeat. The boys then run off to explore the dark haunted woods of a more somber and melodic side in the track “Thing With Feathers” featuring Andy Hull from Manchester Orchestra. Radical proves with every track that it is a distillation of the strengths of their past, injected with their unyielding revelry and signature sarcasm while cognizant – and fiercely combative – of the present state of world affairs.

  

Jackson + Sellers - Breaking Point - Anti
Introducing Jackson + Sellers and their debut album Breaking Point, on ANTI records. Jade Jackson and Aubrie Sellers, two rising stars who aligned during the pandemic to write one of the most compelling duo albums of the last decade. Drawn together by instant chemistry, cosmic forces and their ability to write intuitive romantic breakup songs for each other, their album is a window into the dissolution of two different relationships and the formation of another: a perfect, platonic, creative union. United in their desire to write a record that reflected their expansive musical interest from 70s rock to raucous roots to indie pop, their LA written, Nashville recorded album is a masterclass in unexpected vocal harmonic convergence. With Breaking Point, Jackson + Sellers will establish themselves as two individual artists who together, share a deep friendship, musical kinship and the ability to craft tight singular pop rock songs that will embed themselves in your ears for the rest of time.

  

Sixx: A.M. - Hits - Better Noise Music
Sixx: A.M. Hits is the Ultimate Sixx: A.M. Collection featuring the first new song in six years and song that compliments his new book - 'The First 21', 2 more unreleased tracks "Penetrate' + "Waiting All My Life" and new mixes of "Talk to Me", " Skin" and the iconic "Life is Beautiful". Sixx: A.M. formed in 2007 by Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx, renowned guitarist DJ Ashba, and producer /songwriter James Michael, and has had #3 US top 20 albums with #9 US Top 20 singles and is best known for their debut album The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack and the #1 hits "Life Is Beautiful" and "Lies of the Beautiful People". Available via limited edition CD digi pack and color vinyl.

  

Pokey LaFarge - In The Blossom Of Their Shade - New West Records
Pokey LaFarge's 7th studio solo album, In The Blossom Of Their Shade, showcases the positivity of coming out of the darkness and into the light. When the 2020 global pandemic hit, LaFarge’s rigorous work ethic powered him through the potentially challenging creative period. As days became a couple months, songs blossomed from embryonic ideas into full-formed ones and he was ready to move on, which typified his mindset as a working artist. With this record LaFarge captures the thematic notion of being the perfect summer afternoon soundtrack...the type of music you want to listen to while having a cocktail with your significant other. It makes sense musically as well — LaFarge intentionally crafted songs that created space and have melodies that can glide throughout a composition that’s a far cry from the swing and blues-infused songs of his earlier work. LaFarge is an artist who refuses to rest on his laurels and compromise. He’s always motivated and ready to create. With In the Blossom of Their Shade the album is one of LaFarge’s strongest and most mature efforts to date.  

  

North Americans - Going Steady - Third Man Records
Official reissue of North Americans' 2018 breakthrough album, Going Steady. Originally limited to 100 vinyl LPs. "For a piece that feels as if it could float away into nothing, GOING STEADY becomes the night." - NPR. 

  

Toby Keith - Peso In My Pocket - Show Dog, LLC
Singer, songwriter and entertainer Toby Keith releases his first all-new Show Dog Nashville album in more than five years. Peso In My Pocket was co-produced by Kenny Greenberg and Keith, and features the highest Billboard Country Airplay chart debut of his career with the lead single "Old School." Though Keith has accomplished much since the 2015 release of 35 MPH Town - perhaps most notably in writing the Clint Eastwood inspired "Don't Let The Old Man In" - a new studio album was long overdue. And Peso In My Pocket has more than a little to do with the worldwide pandemic. "My whole musical career, I haven't been off the road this long," Keith says, calling 2020 "a reset button I never would have hit." Also deserving of credit for the collection is Mexico, where Keith has a house he stayed at for the first several months of the crisis. "It was like being on the moon," he says. "A lot of my friends down there were afraid they wouldn't be let back in the U.S., so they all went home. I wasn't on the road and nobody could go anywhere, so I thought, 'You've written a long list of songs by yourself, dumbass. Get up and get busy!' I went through the ideas I keep on my phone and thought, 'Shit, I need to write these.'"

  

Xenia Rubinos - Una Rosa - Anti
Xenia Rubinos is a New York City based artist who's been revered for her innovative voice and maze-like knack for melody. Una Rosa is Rubinos' third album, her second on Anti- Records, following up her critically acclaimed Black Terry Cat (2016).Xenia Rubinos dips in and out of genre and structure to create movingly powerful songs. Her powerhouse vocals stem from a combination of R&B, Hip-Hop and Jazz influences, all delivered with a soulful punk aura. Pitchfork has lauded the radiant singer as "a unique new pop personality" while The New Yorker described her work as "rhythmically fierce, vocally generous music that slips through the net of any known genre."Having previously collaborated and toured with acts as diverse as Battles, Deerhoof, Man Man and Tune-Yards, Rubinos' energetic live show echoes some of the larger than life icons she admired as a child like Nina Simone and Erykah Badu, while wielding a space in music that is utterly her own. "I think my sound is a collage of different music coming together on a visceral level, connecting the dots with my voice and imagination," she said.Una Rosa is produced by Rubinos along with her longtime collaborator and drummer Marco Buccelli, and is full of color- drawing much of it's multichromatic sound from the bright colors of pop art, which Xenia was immersed in during the writing process.

  

Jon Batiste - WE ARE: Deluxe - Verve
WE ARE is a career-changing, chart-topping album from musician & activist Jon Batiste. WE ARE celebrates Black American culture & music while exploring themes of lineage, authenticity, excellence & evolution. This album is about honoring roots & traditions, while looking forward to the future & constantly evolving. Featuring Mavis Staples, Zadie Smith, Kizzo, & many more. This expanded deluxe edition includes new features from Tori Kelly, BJ The Chicago Kid, & a new remix from Big Freedia.

  

Norah Jones - I Dream Of Christmas - Blue Note
Norah Jones has been a warm voice of comfort and reassurance for nearly 20 years since her cozy 2002 debut, Come Away With Me. Now, the 9x GRAMMY-winning artist has made her first holiday album with I Dream Of Christmas, a collection of timeless seasonal favorites (“White Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Christmas Time Is Here”) and profound new originals that explore the complicated emotions of the past year and our hopes that this holiday season will be full of joy and togetherness.

  

cleopatrick - BUMMER - Nowhere Special Recordings
"Listening to the story of Canadian duo cleopatrick is a bit like hearing the plot of the best, most righteously validating coming-of-age film never made. Two friends meet aged four in Hicksville, Nowheretown (real name: Cobourg, Ontario, population 19,000), grow up completely inseparable, form a band and, against numerous obstacles, blossom into a genuine, global underground sensation. There are heroes and villains, highs and lows and, crucially, some of the most poetic plot twists that could seem almost too perfect, were they not completely true.

Take the story of 2017 breakthrough track ‘hometown’ for example. “It’s one of the craziest, most ironic things that’s ever happened,” begins vocalist and guitarist Luke Gruntz. “I was going to college because I was too scared to put all my chips in the band pile, and that’s what ‘hometown’ is about: it’s a song about feeling like we’re doing all this stuff and we’re working so hard and we’re just never going to be heard. It’s literally a song about people probably never hearing our songs. And then by some act of the universe, that song ended up unlocking all the doors for us.”

Today, cleopatrick has logged 77 million streams and counting - all from an increasingly dedicated fanbase who’ve found the duo, completed by drummer Ian Fraser, their own way: no major label, no big budget, just two best pals knuckling down, cementing a unique sonic alchemy and filling a space of honest, empathetic yet undeniably heavy-hitting rock music that they’d been searching for themselves for years. Between multiple sold out tours in Canada, the US and the UK/EU and appearances at Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Reading/Leeds, the pair have been crafting BUMMER: a debut album that sees cleopatrick harness all the magic they’ve been brewing over their two-decade friendship and funnel it into a record that aims to reinvigorate the rock landscape from the ground up. Taking the ethos of their New Rock Mafia collective - a group of friends and fellow bands, united in making a more inclusive, equality-driven space in rock music - and imbuing it with the sonic ambition and ferocity of a record designed to be played hard and loud, it’s an album about two friends, who’ve been with each other since the formative first steps that adorn ‘BUMMER’’s heartwarming cover image and made something that’s a testament to the power of sticking to your guns."

   

Various Artists - The Velvet Underground: A Documentary Film By Todd Haynes - Polydor
Curated by director Todd Haynes, the official soundtrack to his feature documentary (out Oct 15 on Apple TV+) about the highly influential, iconic New York band, The Velvet Underground.

Also Available: I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground & Nico, which is a contemporary tribute to the Velvets debut album.