VIA PRESS RELEASE | Gardener Recordings, Universal Television, and Mondo announce a limited vinyl edition of Russian Doll: Seasons 1 & 2 (Music From The Netflix Original Series). Comprised of ten choice cuts from the Emmy-nominated series, the album showcases the exquisite work of composer Joe Wong (To All the Boys, Master of None). Available now exclusively via Mondo, the limited-edition LP was pressed on 140-gram vinyl at GZ Media and features original illustrations by Canadian artist Sara Deck, a frequent Mondo contributor, who has also worked on projects for Marvel, Disney, Universal, and 20th Century Fox.

Russian Doll is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group. Since. Since premiering on Netflix in February 2019, Russian Doll—which was co-created, written, directed, executive produced by and stars Emmy nominee Natasha Lyonne—has captivated audiences and critics alike with its whip-smart writing, Emmy-nominated performances, and compelling use of music to drive its mind-bending plotlines. In its first season, the comedy-drama series follows Nadia (Lyonne), a sharp-witted New York City game developer who is stuck in a time loop, re-living (and dying on) her 36th birthday, day after day. Along the way, she meets Alan (Charlie Barnett), who shares her bizarre situation. Together, they must find a way out of their inexplicable predicament.

Season 2 (which premiered in April 2022) picks up four years later, days before Nadia’s 40th birthday. After a period of relative normalcy, she discovers a wormhole on the NYC subway, whisking her back to 1982—and into the body of her pregnant mother (Chloë Sevigny). Before long, Nadia is caught up in a multi-generational mystery, dating back to World War II-era Budapest. Alan, meanwhile, is shuttled back to 1960s East Berlin, where he experiences post-graduate life through the eyes of his grandmother. As Nadia and Alan each attempt to right the wrongs of the past, their journeys take them farther than they could have ever imagined.

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Musical genre can be a very limiting place; it can put fences around the aspirations and creations of musicians, but it can also cause the listener to stay in their own little world without branching out to explore things that they might also enjoy. It takes a strong group of musicians to move beyond those confines and a loyal and dedicated horde of fans and followers who are ready, willing and able to go wherever their favorite artist chooses to lead them.

For all intents and purposes, Nickel Creek is a bluegrass band and features Chris Thile (mandolin), and siblings Sara Watkins (fiddle) and Sean Watkins (guitar), but they stretch the barriers of the genre and bring their fans along for the ride. Believe it or not, even though the band members are all in their early to mid-40s they have been performing together since the late ’80s and so they can read each other’s thoughts musically—and probably otherwise. They have a brand new album on the shelves this year (their first release since 2014) called Celebrants and while it may be a bluegrass record, it is unbound by the confines of any genre: it’s an exciting musical exploration by three excellent musicians with a potent mixture of artistic symmetry and collegiality.

One of those three excellent musicians, Chris Thile, joins me on this episode to discuss the new Nickel Creek album, of course, but to also engage me in a free-flowing conversation about sound, music, composition, working with others, creation, and his own personal musical restlessness and a lifetime of discovery. This talk is a chance to look into the mind of a musician who is always looking out.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

What a fiasco. Humble Pie’s 1975 LP Street Rats was like the crash of the Hindenburg, sans the cool explosion. And what a way for a band, perhaps not a great band, but a band that produced quite a few excellent songs and were one of the more formidable live acts of their early seventies, to go out.

As for legendary Humble Pie and (former) Small Faces vocalist and guitarist Steve Marriott, the LP stands as a career nadir. And the amazing thing is, despite the fact that the band itself abhorred it—more about the reasons why to follow—it could have been much, much worse. There are songs on it worth hearing—the problem is they’re surrounded by songs that have been shown to induce clinical disgust, and a cautious person will want to think long and hard about putting the LP on their turntable. The damn thing could be contagious.

Plenty of bands get fucked by their record labels. It’s standard trade practice. And on 1975’s Street Rats, A&M Records gave it to Humble Pie and gave it to them good and hard. And kudos to the folks at A&M, because they managed to do it at a great distance and without the band even knowing about it until it was too late.

Not that Marriott—an incendiary guitarist and gritty, big-lunged vocalist whose combined talents made him one of the most jaw-dropping (if unfairly neglected nowadays) performers of his era—did himself no favors. His brilliance is largely conspicuous by its absence on Street Rats—only two of the songs are solo Marriott compositions, and neither song stands amongst his better efforts. And he doesn’t even lend his mighty pipes to four of the LP’s eleven songs.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | When it comes to jazz guitarists and songwriters, George Benson is one of the apex members of the genre. Deftly blending various modes of jazz sound, from smooth to swing to soulful, along with blues and pop sensibilities, his work made him a bonafide hitmaker, achieving commercial and critical success.

A frequent guest of the celebrated Montreux Jazz Festival, he performed a particularly special set in the summer of 1986. Benson himself selected this concert as the first of his Montreux performances to be released as a live set. On July 14, Mercury Studios will proudly present George Benson Live At Montreux 1986 on DVD+2CD. While the DVD was released in 2005, this marks the first time the 2CD portion has been available in the marketplace.

Live At Montreux 1986 beautifully captures George Benson onstage and in his element. The tracklist boasts classics from across his career up until that point, including “On Broadway,” “Lady Love Me (One More Time),” “In Your Eyes,” “Love X Love,” and “20/20″ to name a few. He also sprinkles in a few covers, like Roberta Flack’s 1974 #1 hit “Feel Like Making Love” and L.T.D.’s 1976 hit “Love Ballad,” which Benson would bring to #3 on the US Billboard R&B chart in 1979.

With a style that would influence generations to come, the music of George Benson continues to maintain a quality of timelessness. This is expertly captured on Live at Montreux 1986.

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Celebrating Mark Mothersbaugh, born on this day in 1950. —Ed.

Thank God for the great state of Ohio. It produces rockers the way Utah creates cretinous little polygamist kids. Just look at Cleveland, where I once pissed into the front seat of a car that parked us in after a drunken night on The Flats. (And people ask me why I quit drinking.) Cleveland Rocks! has given us The Isley Brothers, The Raspberries, The Dead Boys, Pere Ubu, Rocket From the Tombs, and Nine Inch Nails. To say nothing of that great cowboy punk, Roy Rogers.

Then there’s Kent State—which I visited once, and after careful calculations concluded it wasn’t the Ohio National Guard that murdered those four students back in 1970 but Neil Young, desperate for the subject of a protest song—which has bequeathed us perhaps the weirdest Ohio band of them all.

I’m talking, of course, about Devo, which I was lucky enough to see on their first national tour: on Thorazine. It was in a seated auditorium, and during the show lead guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh stepped from chair arm to chair arm until he was straddled directly above me, playing a very berserk solo. I repaid him by drooling on his right foot. (And people ask me why I quit doing drugs.)

Call Devo Art-Punk, New Wave, or Synthpop, just don’t call them late for De-evolution, their joke philosophy which isn’t when one considers the likes of Dick Cheney and Rascal Flatts. Some people favor the “Whip It”-era Devo, but upon listening to their music again I’m forced to concede the only Devo LP I really love (or even much like) is their 1978 debut, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! Produced by Brian Eno (David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Robert Fripp also expressed interest), the LP featured their “classic” line-up of Mark Mothersbaugh on keyboards, guitar, and lead vocals; Bob Mothersbaugh on lead guitar and backing vocals; Alan Myers on drums; Bob Casale on rhythm guitar, keyboards, and backing vocals; and Gerald V. Casale on bass, keyboards, and lead vocals.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Folk music has a contradictory mission—to preserve tradition and to screw with it. In his incisive collection of interviews with key folk stars from the ‘60s through the ‘80s, Bruce Pollock captures both functions perfectly. His flowing conversations with the stars show the traditions they honored as well as the many ways they pushed them forward.”
—Jim Farber, music critic, editor, and writer

Trouser Press Books is proud to announce The Bleecker Street Tapes: Echoes Of Greenwich Village, a new collection of profiles and essays by veteran music journalist Bruce Pollock to be published in paperback and e-book on June 6. Pre-orders are available now.

From the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village to the stage at Woodstock, folksingers became a powerful cultural force in the 1960s. Mixing music and politics, tradition and innovation, romance and righteousness, these men and women were outspoken voices for their generation, each with a story to tell.

Now, more than a half-century later, The Bleecker Street Tapes sees Bruce Pollock, a Village resident and clubgoer during folk’s heyday, expertly capturing the extraordinary life and times of these legendary artists through insightful interviews and contemporary appraisals of such icons as Leonard Cohen, Loudon Wainwright III, Roger McGuinn, The Roches, Dave Van Ronk, Suzanne Vega, John Sebastian, Phil Ochs, Peter Tork, Maria Muldaur, Richie Havens, Janis Ian, Harry Chapin, Melanie, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Don McLean, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tuli Kupferberg, Eric Andersen, and more.

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Jim Jarmusch stands amongst contemporary cinema’s finest and most distinctive film directors. But he’s also a musician, and for a while now, SQÜRL, his partnership with Carter Logan, has provided the scores for a handful of the filmmaker’s more recent films. Silver Haze is the endeavor’s first full-length album (excluding soundtracks) and the contents are as expansive yet cohesive and reflective of Jarmusch’s thematic concerns. It’s out now on compact disc and digital through Sacred Bones; the silver vinyl ships in August. There is also a 300-copy mail order exclusive edition pressed on “black and white haze” vinyl.

When the musical activities of Jim Jarmusch are the topic of discussion, it’s always worth noting that he was a member of The Del-Byzantines, an outfit often categorized as part of New York City’s No Wave scene, that cut the “Girl’s Imagination” 12-inch EP, the Lies to Live By LP, and the “Draft Riot” 7-inch in 1981-’82, all on the Beggars Banquet subsidiary Don’t Fall Off The Mountain.

The Del-Byzantines are worth bringing up mainly so that folks do go assuming that Jarmusch is some undisciplined and arrogant musical dabbler rather than a legit multihyphenate. And including artist-filmmaker James Nares and writer Lucy Sante (then Luc Sante), The Del-Byzantines was a band of multihyphenates; they also had two songs land on the soundtrack to director Wim Wenders’ 1982 film The State of Things.

It’s been reported more than once the film stock leftover from The State of Things was used the shoot the opening portion of Jarmusch’s 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise. Wenders and Jarmusch have deeper connections, including frequently tapping the services of Robby Müller; amongst other films for both, he shot Wenders’ first feature Summer in the City (1970) and Jarmusch’s third Down by Law (1986). There’s also SQÜRL’s 2020 release Some Music for Robby Müller, which featured soundtrack recordings for Living the Light, Claire Pijman’s documentary on the late great cinematographer.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings celebrates the enduring legacy of R.E.M. with vinyl reissues for two long out-of-print titles from the second half of the band’s celebrated career: 2004’s Around the Sun and 2011’s Collapse Into Now.

The chart-topping Around the Sun includes such highlights as “Leaving New York,” “Aftermath,” “Electron Blue,” and “Wanderlust,” plus “The Outsiders.” Collapse Into Now, which marks the band’s 15th and final studio album, includes the singles “Überlin,” “Oh My Heart,” and “It Happened Today.” Arriving July 14 and available for pre-order, both albums were cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Memphis Record Pressing.

Additionally, fans can find limited editions exclusively at REMHQ.com: the 2-LP Around the Sun will be available on an Opaque White color variant, while the 1-LP Collapse Into Now can be found in Milky Clear vinyl, along with exclusive official merchandise.

One of the most revered acts to emerge from the American underground, Athens, GA’s R.E.M. was formed in 1980 by Michael Stipe (vocals), Peter Buck (guitar), Mike Mills (bass), and Bill Berry (drums). An influential force in the post-punk college scene, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and multi-GRAMMY® Award winners rose to become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed bands in the world, thanks to their idiosyncratic blend of brash tunefulness and poetic lyrics on such best-selling albums as Out of Time (1991), Automatic for the People (1992), and Monster (1994).

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Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, both released in 1972, represent an interesting and pivotal period in the life and career of Frank Zappa. The albums were recorded while Zappa was in a wheelchair, after having survived an attack onstage in London in December of 1971 at the Rainbow Theatre.

After several groundbreaking albums with the Mothers of Invention, since 1966, that established Zappa as a trailblazing musical innovator, unflinching provocateur, and unwilling counterculture hero, and one other album, a collaboration with the Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra, Waka/Jawaka, released in 1972, was the fourth solo album from Frank Zappa.

Although chronologically in his solo catalog it comes after his third solo album Chunga’s Revenge, it is actually a follow-up to his second solo album Hot Rats from 1969 (and, to a similar but lesser degree, to Burnt Weenie Sandwich from 1970, credited to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention). Also making the connection clear graphically is the cover art that depicts a sink with hot and rats instead of hot and cold.

The album’s daring first side is an electronic jazz fusion opus, that is very much a sequel to Hot Rats. By this time, jazz fusion music was beginning to make inroads with rock and jazz fans. Still, the album’s similarities to the innovative electric jazz fusion of Miles Davis turned off some rock critics, bemoaning the increasing pomposity and musical overreaching in pop and rock. However, others applauded the album and Hot Rats, as they both bolstered the view that Zappa was not just a satirist and cultural flamethrower, but instead a musician of vast gifts, who had the musical sophistication to make music from a wide range of genres and was a guitarist of virtuoso technical ability.

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Based in Athens, GA, Immaterial Possession’s locale is manifested across the ten tracks of their second full-length in subtly interesting ways. Frequently and accurately described as psychedelic in comportment, the four-piece has a familial connection to the Elephant 6 Collective, but their roots have wound down considerably deeper into the soil of the place they call home. Mercy of the Crane Folk is out now on green vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Fire Records.

The members of Immaterial Possession are guitarist-vocalist Madeline Polites, bassist-vocalist Cooper Holmes, drummer John Spiegel, and keyboardist-clarinetist-flautist Kiran Fernandes, with a little help on two of Mercy of the Crane Folk’s tracks from drummer Jon Vogt. The band was formed by Polites and Holmes, both natives of Atlanta, while they were living in an artist’s commune in their home city. After a move to Athens, they hooked up with Spiegel and Fernandes and got down to business, releasing their self-titled debut in 2020 via Cloud Recordings.

Befitting artists commune origins, Immaterial Possession are definitely psychedelic in orientation, but they are also consistently about songs. There are a few folky aspects lingering from their debut, but more often there is a pop foundation on this follow-up, though dark; Fire describes the band’s thing as “ethereal eerie dream pop,” and that gets no quibble from me. The relationship to Elephant 6 comes through Fernandes’ father, who is John Kiran Fernandes of Olivia Tremor Control.

If psych is part of the equation, the keyboard strains in the new record’s opener “Chain Breaker” are of a New Wave/College Rock vintage, conjuring an aura that suggests the cut could’ve been released as a single on DB Records. Except that Immaterial Possession, while undeniably a historically inspired endeavor, aren’t easily encapsulated as a throwback.

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