VIA PRESS RELEASE | Groundbreaking slowcore pioneers Idaho are marking the recent arrival of their landmark anthology, The Devil You Know [1992-1996], with today’s release of “Star,” a rare gem from the band’s earliest days available now via Arts & Crafts.

An official music video featuring archival footage premieres today. The Devil You Know [1992-1996], a four-album five-disc Deluxe Limited Edition Box Set featuring vinyl reissues of Idaho’s long-out-of-print and highly sought-after first three records (originally released on Caroline/Capitol) with an exclusive bonus disc of hard-to-find material comprised of EPs and 7”s from this seminal era, is available now via Arts & Crafts.

Recorded in 1992, “Star” dates back to the “big bang that started it all,” says Idaho’s torchbearer Jeff Martin of his lifelong collaboration with John Berry, the band’s late co-founder who would leave one year later due to his struggles with drug addiction. The song’s combustion of guttural guitars, churning in distortion, laden with Martin’s plaintive vocals, captures what he calls the “beautifully sorrowful corner of this odd church” that he and Berry built—32 years later, the alien sounds of Idaho burn as bright as ever.

“Ah what to say about these early days,” says Jeff Martin. “Mid 92 perhaps it was? John was playing drums in a band I had formed called Drain with Wade Graham on guitar and yours truly on bass and vocals. We had sent the 4-song demo to some of our contacts in the music business only to be met with predictably lukewarm sentiments. John had stepped up the by then increasingly annoying salvos of elicitations to get me to record with him on our own, make some music like we used to…

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Twenty years ago, Martha Wainwright stepped out of her family’s illustrious shadow and announced herself to the world with her stunning debut album Martha Wainwright. Featuring “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole,” a song about her father, “Factory,” and “When The Day Is Short,” it immediately proved she was a major talent to be reckoned with.

This Spring, PIAS will release this album on vinyl for the very first time. The Sunday Times called her “a tour de force,” Uncut described the disc as “brilliant” while Q said she was “a thing of wonder.” She is all that and more and twenty years on continues to enthral both onstage and record. Wainwright also announces 12 new dates on her North American spring tour. Tickets go on sale this Friday, December 13 at 10am local time.

“20 years ago my life as an artist took shape when my first record was released,” Martha recalls. “In many ways that record defined me, as well as launched me into a now over 20 year long career that has made me who I am. It was after 10 years of playing in bars, making cassettes and EPs to sell at my shows, singing backup for my brother Rufus, falling in love and out of love, practising, writing, singing until I could barely sing anymore, partying, playing with musicians and listening to great artists, working with my ex-husband in the studio for 2 years, all that created this first record.”

“20 years later, with 6 other albums under my belt, 2 kids and a career that is chugging along, I can safely say my first record paved my way forward. On March 21st we will release the record on vinyl for the first time ever as well as digitally release unheard songs, outtakes and early material from that 10 year period of discovery that led to my first record. There will be a tour with a few great musicians, where I’ll play the record in its entirety as well as a few new songs—there’s no 48 year old me with the 28 year old me.”

Ever since the 1994 Live at the BBC and the 1995 Anthology release of the TV series and VHS box set, and three multiple CD/LP sets, reissues of the music of The Beatles finally seemed to hit their stride.

The ongoing Beatles reissue program hit a high-water mark with the release of the group’s UK albums on vinyl in mono in 2014. Since the 50th anniversary of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album in 2017, reissues of the music of The Beatles and as solo artists have been going through a particularly strong and consistent period. Substantial and well-produced reissue programs that offer various editions of a particular release and archival projects have offered fans a wealth of officially previously unreleased material and bespoke, gift-worthy packaging.

The main releases that have elicited the most interest are those that mark a milestone anniversary of an important album. This has been particularly the case with the 50th anniversary releases of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles (the White Album), Abbey Road, Let It Be, and the Disney series Get Back, but also some of the key solo albums from the members of the group that were released in the 1970s not long after the group broke up. The Live at the Hollywood Bowl was also a welcome release, as was the companion film Eight Days A Week in 2016.

Other more recent welcome releases include The Christmas Albums box in 2017 and The Singles Collection box in 2019. The reissue series for Revolver in 2022 seemed to pick up where Let It Be left off and appeared to set the stage for Rubber Soul to be given the deluxe box edition treatment. Instead, 2023 saw the reissue of the The Beatles: 1962–1966 (Red) and The Beatles: 1962–1966 (Blue) compilation releases, highlighted by the “new” track “Now and Then.”

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PHOTO: DANNY CLINCH | The gravelly drawl was familiar. Lucinda Williams was calling from Minneapolis, where she just appeared as a special guest on Cyndi Lauper’s farewell tour, joining her on a poignant “Time After Time.” Days earlier, Williams dueted with Elvis Costello on “Wild Horses” at the Jesse Malin comeback concert in New York City.

It all followed a fall tour that alternated the autobiographical Don’t Tell Anyone the Secrets I Told You, based on last year’s memoir of the same name, with a tour that emphasized her 15th studio album Stories from a Rock and Roll Heart, also released in 2023.

Now, she’s got a new album on Thirty Tigers, Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles from Abbey Road featuring her takes on “I Got a Feeling,” “Yer Blues,” “Rain” and others. It represents the seventh edition in a series of Lu’s Jukebox series of cover songs saluting specific artists. All of this despite suffering a stroke in 2020 that sidelined some of her activities, including guitar playing.

We talked about the new album, the difficulty of choosing Beatles songs, writing her book, and the vinyl that set her on her course.

How did the Lu’s Jukebox series begin, anyway?

I always enjoyed taking other people’s songs and playing them to see what we could do with them. We had some studio time at Room and Board studios in Nashville with Ray Kennedy, who had been Steve Earle’s guy, and we worked with him so we were excited to set up some time, and we picked a couple of artists to do and picked the songs. Tom Petty was the first.

We knew a couple of guys who were good at videos and photographing and brought them in, to film those live sessions which we would then livestream. It just kind of took off, people seemed to really like it, and we decided to put them out as albums and as CDs. We were on a roller coaster

You went on to do soul and country classics, a Christmas album, and tributes to Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones—all in addition to making a new album of your own material. Did you have all that time because the pandemic kept you from touring?

That’s the whole thing. We wanted to be productive. Since we couldn’t go out and things were limited, we just decided to spend our time in the studio.

It had been a couple of years since your last Jukebox collection. What made this one different, recording at Abbey Road?

That’s the biggest difference. After the last one we were talking about what artists we were going to do next. We’d done a Rolling Stones one, and once you do a Stones one, who’s next? The Beatles. We were going to do a show in London anyway, so we had this idea of going into Abbey Road to cut Beatles songs, so it all fell together.

But first I had to pick the songs, and that was the hardest part of it. Then we rehearsed in Nashville before we left. When we got to Abbey Road we had three days.

Did you gravitate towards the Beatles songs you liked the best, or to those that best suited your sound?

A little of both. First, the ones I liked the best, I made that list, the initial list. There were ones I remembered from a long time ago, but for others I had to go through and look at albums and remember some songs.

What made the final list, once I made the list of the ones I liked, I had to sit down and sing through them and decide which one fit me the best. That’s what made the final decision. We had to pick out the ones in the right key. Once I sat and actually tried to sing them, It was obvious which ones would work.

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Although her roots are in indie rock, Toronto-based singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle has more recently ventured into contemporary folk territory, and to considerable success. With her latest record, she continues to expand her sound and strengthen her songs; one track from the album in particular has given her a substantial boost in profile. Camelot is out now on 140 gram vinyl with a poster insert and on compact disc in a gatefold LP replica sleeve from Paradise of Bachelors.

Jennifer Castle’s last record, Monarch Season, was released four years ago. Featuring her alone on vocals, guitar, piano, and harmonica, it was Castle’s first release to be accurately described as a truly solo effort (and a fitting pandemic recording, although it was cut just prior to the outbreak). Contrasting, Camelot opens with vivid intimacy, Castle singing sweetly in the title track, her piano augmented by Evan Cartwright’s drums and the grand sweep of Owen Pallet’s string arrangements (performed by FAMES Skopje Studio Orchestra).

As noted above, Castle is a singer-songwriter, but “Camelot” is decidedly Singer-Songwriter in approach (reminiscent of those records of yore when an undersung performer landed a sharp producer and a budget). But for the album’s next song, Castle scales it back to just voice and guitar, and yet the sturdy coffeehouse strumming of “Some Friends” registers distinctly from the more fragile indie folk aura heard on Monarch Season.

The drums swing back in alongside Mike Smith’s bass in “Trust,” setting in motion a warm pulse that culminates in a subtly pretty crescendo. “Lucky #8” follows with a full-band melodic rock thrust that’s topped off with sharp jangle-chime guitars; when the solo lets loose, it brings to mind Lucinda Williams from back in her Rough Trade days.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Joe Pernice of the Pernice Brothers & Scud Mountain Boys will release Chappaquiddick Skyline on vinyl for the first time on January 24, 2025 via New West Records. The original mixes were remastered by Bob Weston and will be released nearly 25 years to the day of its original issue by Sub Pop on January 18, 2000. Chappaquiddick Skyline will be available on limited edition clear vinyl as well as standard black vinyl. It can be pre-ordered now via New West Records.

Produced and engineered by Thom Monahan (Devendra Banhart, Fruit Bats) and recorded at home on 8-Track, Chappaquiddick Skyline was Joe Pernice’s follow up to the Pernice Brothers’ 1998 debut Overcome by Happiness. On the album, he is joined by Monahan (Pernice Brothers, Monsterland, Lilys), Peyton Pinkerton (Pernice Brothers, New Radiant Storm King), his wife Laura Stein (Jale, Pernice Brothers), Mike Belitsky (The Sadies, Neko Case), as well as countless friends who stopped by to assist.

Met with critical acclaim at the time of its release, No Depression said “Pernice has topped himself with a marvelous diamond in whose facets shine many such defining moments, in all their stark terror and nervous beauty” while AllMusic said “…marrying rapturous melodies with a poetic grace virtually unmatched among his contemporaries, Pernice’s confessionals cut almost unbearably deep, giving voice to the yearning and isolation most of us struggle to suppress.”

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Celebrating J Mascis on his 59th birthday. —Ed.

Over the course of his long shambolic career, J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. has made an ethos of endearing sloppiness and a virtue of emotional confusion while producing an unending slurry of unhinged guitar noise, best summed up by the title of the song “Sludgefest.” With his inimitable stoner slur and drawl and chaotic guitar solos (best heard on 2021’s Live at the Middle East, where he really lets rip), Mascis took the anarchic sound of Neil Young and Crazy Horse to its logical extreme, and the results are a ferocious molten metal divorced from the realm of heavy metal itself by Mascis’ twisted indie-folk impulses.

Dinosaur Jr. blew minds and speakers with the triumvirate of 1987’s You’re Living All Over Me, 1988’s Bug, and 1991’s Green Mind, all of which are bong-fracturing, pot haze classics guaranteed to stone your ears into blazed and confused beatitude. They should be sold at dispensaries, not record stores, and the same goes for 1991 curio as compilation Fossils.

What you’re basically getting are the first three 7″ SST singles the band released after adding the Jr. to their name, highlights of which include a cover of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” band high-water mark “Freak Scene,” and a very happy-making cover of Peter Frampton’s “Show Me the Way.” In short Fossils is as indispensable as bliss unless you’re some kind of Peter Frampton hater, in which case I can only assume you’re a joyless snob whose fondest wish in life is to become besties with Nick Cave. How utterly horrid.

“Little Fury Things” comes out of the gate in an explosion of guitar noise accompanied by some screaming (gratis, I think, Sonic Youth’s Lee Renaldo, not that I care) before telling itself to calm down and proceeding to play nice. Mascis sings about being smashed by a rabbit, goes emo for a moment because someone’s lying about him and people are believing it and it makes him mad, then in comes a civil by J. standards guitar solo accompanied by one very groovy tambourine. But the solo that follows shortly thereafter is anything but polite, all nasty fuzz and feedback–let it out J., let it out, you’ll feel better.

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The latest arrivals in Elemental Music’s Motown Sound Collection hit stores just in time for holiday buying. The three selections, all dating from the early 1970s, are The Temptations’ Solid Rock, the self-titled debut album by The Undisputed Truth, and Gladys Knight & the Pips’ Neither One of Us. Taken together, they offer a solid hunk of soul, 140 grams each, all available December 13.

By 1972, The Temptations were on lineup number four, with Eddie Kendricks freshly out the door for a solo career and Paul Williams’ role greatly reduced; he sings on only one track, “It’s Summer,” on Solid Rock, the group’s sixteenth LP. Unlike Kendricks, Williams did stay with The Temptations in a choreographical capacity until his passing in 1973.

These lineup changes (Damon Harris and Richard Street entering as replacements) would spell irrelevancy under most circumstances if not utter disaster, but in the case of Solid Rock, there is Norman Whitfield to consider. Although this is far from the strongest joint Temps-Whitfield effort, it does hold another of the producer’s fascinating and frankly sprawling psychedelic soul efforts. Breaking 12 minutes, “Stop the War Now” is amongst the wildest of Motown’s psych-soul forays.

In holding nothing back (Whitfield surely knew that psych-soul’s time was nearly up), the track avoids mere excess, in part through the skills of the Funk Brothers, who build up a heavy, heady experience. If “Stop the War Now” doesn’t fully justify its length, it’s not a space filler masking a lack of material, as Whitfield had no issues with interpreting recent hits by other artists; a version of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” is one of Solid Rock’s standouts. There was also no hesitation over returning to Whitfield’s own songs, as album closer “The End of Our Road” had already hit for Gladys Knight & the Pips in 1968.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | England’s On-U Sound label is announcing the new release of re-issues of early ’90s Avant-dub classics by one of their flagship artists, the much-missed Dub Syndicate on February 28, 2025 on separate 12″ LP vinyl, CD box, digital download, and streaming under the name Out Here On The Perimeter. Part of the series is a brand new set of “versions” utilizing vintage rhythms in the ON-U archives. 

A follow-up to the Ambience In Dub boxset that anthologised the early Dub Syndicate albums, Out Here On The Perimeter 1989–1996 picks up the story in the late 1980s with Style Scott coming to the forefront of the project as bandleader and co-producer, and the group emerging as a live entity. This was also the period of their greatest popularity, with a much-loved series of albums that combined the best of Jamaican musicianship with the wild studio experimentation of UK production maverick Adrian Sherwood, resulting in music that appealed to ravers and dreads alike.

Four albums are being repressed on vinyl, with faithful reproductions of the beautiful original sleeve artwork, and new inner sleeves containing detailed liner notes and archival photos. Sherwood has also concocted a special bonus album, of brand new version excursions on rhythms from the period. A CD boxset anthologises all five albums.

Dub Syndicate was initially one of the many studio-based projects masterminded by Adrian Sherwood in the early days of his genre-blurring independent label On-U Sound. Built around deep and heavy reggae rhythms, and marshalling the talents of a revolving cast of Jamaican and British musicians. It evolved over time to become the main musical vehicle of Lincoln Valentine Scott aka Style Scott (also notable for his work with the Roots Radics and Creation Rebel), mirroring the trajectory of Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah of labelmates African Head Charge.

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Celebrating Dennis Dunaway on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Alice Cooper had the music world’s head in a guillotine in the year of our dark lord 1973; his cartoonishly ghoulish song matter and macabre on-stage shock rock shtick were thrilling to outrage-hungry teengenerates like my older brother, who went to a show on Alice’s Billion Dollar Babies tour in a suit covered with a billion dollars’ worth of stapled-on Monopoly money.

While your more sophisticated tastemakers were deriding poor Alice as so much P.T. Barnum hokum–a low-brow sensationalist who lacked the talent, subtlety and immediacy of such glam era creatures as David and Lou and Iggy–Alice was winning the big youth vote (“Elected” indeed!) and laughing all the way to the bank.

Who cares if his oh so chic contemporaries dismissed him with a smug wave of the hand? Sneered an offended David Bowie: “I think he’s trying to be outrageous. You can see him, poor dear, with his red eyes sticking out and his temples straining… I find him very demeaning.” Which didn’t stop Lou Reed, for one, from stooping to his own brand of low-rent on-stage theatrics; if shaving Iron Crosses onto your skull and mimicking shooting up on stage isn’t “straining” to be outrageous, what is?

Fact is Billion Dollar Babies isn’t really that different from Diamond Dogs or Berlin (whose producer, Bob Ezrin, also produced this baby). It’s not a concept album, per se, but it has the feel of one–on it Alice grapples with having money tossed at him, threatens to parlay the success of “School’s Out” into an apocalyptic run for higher office which he’s sure to win in a “generation landslide” cuz he’s got the toxic kiddie vote wrapped up, and in general flexes his skinny biceps while singing “God, I feel so strong, I am so strong.”

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