VIA PRESS RELEASE | Vinyl of Phoebe Bridgers’ “Copycat Killer”, available now only on digital formats, is available for pre-order today and will be widely available from retailers on May 14th 2021 via Dead Oceans.

​The EP, which was originally released digitally last November and as a Rough Trade vinyl exclusive, features re-recordings of four tracks from her critically acclaimed and four time GRAMMY-nominated album, Punisher. The Copycat Killer versions of the songs were recorded with GRAMMY Award-winning arranger and string player, Rob Moose, who has also arranged and recorded strings for artists including Bon Iver, Paul Simon, Alabama Shakes, Taylor Swift, The Killers, Moses Sumney, FKA Twigs, Antony & The Johnsons, Regina Spektor and others.

Phoebe Bridgers released Stranger In The Alps, her 2017 debut album, as a relatively unknown singer-songwriter living in Los Angeles and has since become one of the most acclaimed young songwriters in the world. Punisher’s June 2020 release led to an avalanche of international attention with a multitude of 5* reviews (The Telegraph, The Evening Standard, The i Paper, NME) and saw Bridgers score her first Billboard #1 on the Emerging Artist Chart and her first UK top 10 album. She has graced the front covers of The Fader, Variety, Nylon, DIY, NME, The Forty-Five and GAY TIMES and has had singles playlisted both at BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music. The award winning actor, writer and producer Phoebe Waller-Bridge directed her music video for “Savior Complex.”

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Hawthorne, California, may be known as the hometown of the Beach Boys. But another ’60s band of renown originated from that small city south of L.A., as well. Garage rockers the Palace Guard only released six singles during their tenure, but their influence and legacy is undeniable.

Original members of the band included brothers Don, John and David Beaudoin, their roommate Mike Conley, drummer Emitt Rhodes, bass guitarist Rick Moser, and lead guitarist Chuck McClung. The band signed to Orange-Empire Records after months of gigging. Those recordings became some of the most sought-after singles in the pantheon of garage-rock.

Even after Rhodes’ exit (for an acclaimed career with the Merry Go Round, and later as a solo artist), “the Guard” (as their fans called them) carried on as the house band at the Hullaballoo Club in Los Angeles, and played on Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is. They even backed Don Grady (“Robbie” from My Three Sons, lead singer of Yellow Balloon) on a classic, and hard-to-find, release. Those tracks are included in the collection.

All Night Long: An Anthology, 1965-1966, out May 21, 2021 on Omnivore Recordings, collects all 12 sides of the Palace Guard’s output, remastered and restored by four-time Grammy® Award winner Michael Graves, presenting the band in the best sound available.

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Celebrating John Oates on his 73rd birthday. —Ed.

I love Hall & Oates. They’re such a great team. Daryl Hall does all of the writing, singing, and playing. John Oates has a mustache.

But don’t think for a moment that all of that heavy lifting has gone to Daryl’s head. He’s still the humble at heart guy who once told an interviewer, “I’m 90% and John’s 10%, and that’s the way it is.”

Me, I think Daryl is being unfair to poor John, and you know what’s even more unfair? Hall is never afforded the opportunity to defend himself. Well we live in America, goddamn it, and if there’s one thing I hate even more than live eels showing up in my mailbox it’s injustice. So I decided to sit Oates down and interview him. So without further ado:

Hi John. Ready to answer some very insightful and hard-hitting questions?

I just want to say from the outset that this isn’t really an interview and we’re not really speaking. This is all happening in your head.

Point taken. Your mustache is looking good.

Thanks. It was just added to the National Register of Historic Mustaches. If you look very closely you’ll see the plaque.

Wow. I thought it was a mole.

I get that a lot.

Do you resent people who think you don’t do much in Hall & Oates? That you’re just along for the proverbial mustache ride?

I do. I’ve helped shape many of our songs over the years. And if you look you’ll see I got solo songwriting credits and sang lead on a couple of songs on each of our classic albums, even if those songs weren’t hits because our record label is stupid and refused to release them as singles because Daryl told them he’d kill them if they did. And of course I played all of the electric mustache solos.

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Coultrain is the one-man project of Los Angeles-based poet, filmmaker and musician A.M. Frison. His work includes the “mythological cross-genre artist book” Wet Grass, its accompanying musical score The Bluest Blue (under the moniker Noble Metal), and a collaboration with Ben Lamar Gay and Tommaso Moretti as Bottle Tree. His latest as Coultrain is Phantasmagoria, a combination of Soulful stylistics and layered electronics that’s as smooth and warm as it is boundary-stretching and eclectic. It’s out April 9 with a vinyl-only bonus track via Positive Elevation, the newest sublabel from the indefatigable 577 Records of Brooklyn.

Tersely described by 577 as being dedicated to electronic experimentation and avant soul, the Positive Elevation imprint feels almost tailor made for Coultrain’s Phantasmagoria, a record that hits a sweet spot between a progressively lush mid-’70s Soulfulness and an electronic sensibility that places the contents firmly outside the mainstream but without undercutting the engaging, extroverted quality that’s inherent to soul music’s formal equation.

Much of Coultrain’s success as it pertains to the accessible is directly due to Frison’s singing, which might seem like a no-brainer, since a vocalist navigating varying degrees of the passionate is a crucial soul ingredient. But with that said, the enduring examples of the style’s greatness from its 1960s-’70s heyday combined rich vocalizing with an instrumental component of uncommon richness and verve, often honed by house bands (Stax, Motown, Hi).

Grit, either vocal or instrumental, was a variable element, welcome in the recipe but not integral and never dominant. When soul music declined in the hands of technology-wielding producers, grit all but evaporated, but that wasn’t the problem. Instead, it was a lack of imagination, as the new tools were too often used to merely contemporize old strategies, rather than to pursue fresh possibilities.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Dey Street Books, an imprint of the William Morrow Group at HarperCollins, announced today that they will publish The Storyteller by Grammy-winning musician, documentary filmmaker, and fledgling author Dave Grohl. The book will go on sale October 5, 2021 and will also be published in UK & Commonwealth (Simon & Schuster), Finland (Bazar), Germany (Ullstein), Holland (A.W. Bruna), and Italy (Rizzoli).

​Dave Grohl has been one of the most beloved and respected figures on the international music scene since his recorded debut with Nirvana on 1991’s generation-defining Nevermind. Grohl took center stage with Foo Fighters’ 1995 self-titled debut, the first of 10 albums in a massive 12-Grammy-winning streak, most recently including the #1 album sales charting Medicine at Midnight. Grohl has traveled the planet doing the thing he loves most—playing rock n roll marathons for tens of thousands of ecstatic Foo Fighter fans.

But when the pandemic necessitated going into lockdown, Grohl took stock of how he might use this moment of pause. Channeling his creativity into writing and using his remarkable skill for storytelling, in May 2020 he wrote a moving reflection for The Atlantic on missing the thrill of live music during the Covid era that went viral. Then, ending a longstanding self-imposed exile from social media, Grohl’s new Instagram account @davestruestories was born. This new platform became a way for Dave to share his extraordinary (and funny) stories with fans and fellow music nuts and now, Grohl is set to build upon that momentum with his first book.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The most popular album by one of the greatest power pop bands of all time, Fountains of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers gets a widespread vinyl release via Real Gone Music—in stores May 28.

​It’s the most popular album by one of the greatest power pop bands of all time…and it’s never seen a widespread vinyl reissue. Welcome Interstate Managers was hailed a classic from the day it came out in 2003, and featured Fountains of Wayne’s biggest hit with “Stacy’s Mom.” The song craft and lyrical wit of Chris Collingwood and the late, great Adam Schlesinger have never been sharper; there’s not a bad song on this record and lot of them (e.g. “Bright Future in Sales;” “Hackensack”) rise to the same lofty perch as “Stacy’s Mom.”

Real Gone Music presents this landmark album in a 2-LP set pressed in red vinyl at Gotta Groove Records, and housed inside a gatefold jacket with two printed inner sleeves featuring lyrics. Also included as a bonus track: the non-LP b-side to the “Stacy’s Mom” single, “Elevator Up!” One of the 21st century’s greatest rock albums.

When you combine pianist Christopher Parker, alto saxophonist Chad Fowler, trumpeter Marc Franklin, vocalist Kelley Hurt, drummer Brian Blade, and bassist William Parker, the result is the Dopolarians, whose new CD is The Bond, out now through Mahakala Music. Now, those familiar with the group’s prior effort will notice a couple shifts in personnel, but we’ll tackle those below. Of foremost importance is the high standard of quality maintained across a disc that takes many chances as it covers a wide spectrum of textures and emotions. In short, it’s a recording of distinction.

Released in 2016, the Dopolarians’ debut Garden Party was also the final recording to feature the great (and somewhat undersung) drummer Alvin Fielder, a charter member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) who can be heard on Sound, the essential 1968 LP by Art Ensemble of Chicago saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell.

But more germane to the record under review here, Fielder played extensively with Edward “Kidd” Jordan, whose tenor saxophone is crucial to Garden Party’s sustained worthiness. For The Bond, Marc Franklin and Brian Blade complete the new lineup of Dopolarians. That duo, along with Chad Fowler, are fresh from the septet heard on Christopher Parker and Kelley Hurt’s No Tears Suite, its music composed in honor of the segregation-defying Little Rock Nine, released on CD last September by Mahakala and presented by the long running literary magazine Oxford American.

Given No Tears Suite’s subject matter, the relationship with the Little Rock, AR-based Southern-themed Oxford American makes total sense. It’s a connection, a bond of you will, that extends to Dopolarians, as every member in both lineups save for NYC free jazz cornerstone William Parker hails from the Southeastern USA, Jordan from New Orleans, Fielder from Meridian, MS, and Blade from Shreveport, LA with extensive time spent in New Orleans. Fowler, Christopher Parker, Hurt and Franklin are from Little Rock with all four having studied music in Memphis.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | As Violent Femmes celebrate their 40th year together, Craft Recordings is pleased to honor the band’s enduring catalog of cult classics with the long out-of-print vinyl reissue of Add It Up (1981–1993). In stores May 21st and available for pre-order, the popular 1993 collection will also make its return to digital and streaming platforms, while fans can listen to the instant grat track “Add It Up (Live)” now.

​The 23-track compilation features Violent Femmes’ biggest hits, including “Blister in the Sun,” “American Music,” and “Gone Daddy Gone,” plus live recordings of favorites like “Add It Up,” and “Kiss Off,” alongside a trove of demos, B-sides, interstitial voice recordings, and rarities. Housed in a gatefold jacket, the 2-LP set was pressed at Memphis Records Pressing, with lacquers cut by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. In addition to the standard black 2-LP, a special “Blister Red Marble” edition will be available exclusively via the Violent Femmes and Craft Recordings webstores (limited 500 worldwide). Meanwhile, Indie Retailers will offer an “Aqua” pressing, and Urban Outfitters will offer a “Violet” variant.

Formed in 1981 by Gordon Gano (vocals, guitar), Brian Ritchie (bass), and Victor DeLorenzo (percussion), Violent Femmes caught the ears of America’s underground with their special blend of teenage angst, jittery folk-rock, and punk sensibilities. The Milwaukee group had their first big break later that year while busking outside of the city’s Oriental Theatre, where new wave stars The Pretenders were set to play that evening.

The latter band’s guitarist, James Honeyman-Scott, took a liking to the young group and invited them on stage. A year later, New York Times music critic Robert Palmer wrote a glowing review of the band’s live show, comparing Gano to Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and Jonathan Richman. Amid the growing buzz, Violent Femmes signed to legendary punk label Slash Records (home to The Germs, X, and The Blasters) and, in 1983, released their self-titled debut.

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A year ago we were delighted to introduce you to Anastasia Minster via our First Date series along with her stunning full length release Father. Today we’re doubly delighted to inform you of its upcoming arrival on vinyl which you can assist in supporting here. —Ed.

​VIA PRESS RELEASE | The upcoming second album release from Moscow-born singer and composer Anastasia Minster, Father, is dark and existential, with intricate multi-layered instrumental arrangements and hauntingly expressive vocals.

After releasing her debut noir chamber pop album Hour of the Wolf in 2017, Anastasia Minster went on to work on a more ambitious and comprehensive project: her second record Father. Three tracks were created in collaboration with English musician, composer and record producer Steve Jansen, and feature his signature atmospheric synth and string arrangements.

Other tracks boast multi-layered cello arrangements by Canadian virtuoso cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne and trumpet parts by JUNO nominated Tara Kannangara. The album was recorded at Sonology studio in Toronto using a variety of vintage analogue sound equipment. The lyrics are inspired by the works of Carl Jung, Hermann Hesse, and Andrei Tarkovsky.

The first single, “Solaris” takes inspiration from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film of the same name. Solaris is a mysterious oceanic planet that has the ability to communicate with people by perceiving their brainwaves and bringing their deepest desires to life. The track is built on the traditional jazz trio setup with grand piano, upright bass and soft percussion, and features a stunning climactic instrumental outro section with 6 layered cello parts.

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“One of my first musical memories was listening to my Dad’s copy of Led Zeppelin II on vinyl.”

“As a little kid, that album was fascinating to me. The weird picture on the front cover where they look like old time fighter pilots. The inside of the gatefold with the giant blimp with spotlights shining on it. I would sit and stare at those mysterious images while I listened to the album. I distinctly remember hearing that psychedelic breakdown in “Whole Lotta Love” and being mesmerized and even a little frightened by it.

Listening to that record at such an impressionable age probably shaped my concept of what music could do. It showed me that these sounds on a piece of plastic can actually create a different world for people to spend time in.

When I was about 8 years old, our next door neighbors had a garage sale. There was a cardboard box full of L’s for sale. As I rummaged through it, one of the album covers grabbed my attention. It was a crazy cartoon picture of some kind of futuristic robot head hovering over a TV screen showing 4 action hero type guys running away from a large explosion.

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Rod Stewart’s sad slide from brilliance to banality is enough to make a fella weep. From “Maggie May” and “You Wear It Well” to “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” and “Hot Legs” isn’t just sad, it’s a Greek tragedy. Defenders will say he was merely making concessions to update his sound in a bid to conquer the American pop charts. But “Hot Legs” was no concession–it was a crass sellout as shameless as Elvis Presley’s Stay Away, Joe.

Stewart’s downfall coincides with his departure from Mercury Records to Warner Bros. Records. But he didn’t just change record labels–he walked away from his muse as well. During the five-year run starting with 1969’s An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down and ending with 1974’s Smiler, Stewart produced a body of work that stands with the very best of the era’s singer/songwriters. And the 1975 compilation of Stewart’s tenure with Mercury Records, The Best of Rod Stewart, is the label’s attempt to provide an overview of those years.

Serious Stewart fans will have no use for The Best of Rod Stewart–they own and cherish Rod the Mod’s five Mercury Records’ LPs, and they’re as likely to play this one as they are his American Songbook stuff. And the comp has serious shortcomings, most having to do with song selection. But it’s a great way to raise the awareness of casual listeners inclined to judge Stewart by the likes of “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” (quick answer: no) and the skin-crawling anthem of lecherous old cradle-robbers that is “Tonight’s the Night.”

The compilation’s biggest weakness (and it’s a significant one) stems from Mercury Records’ understandable but questionable decision to give, with one exception, each of Stewart’s five studio LPs equal representation. You get three songs apiece from 1969’s An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down, 1970’s Gasoline Alley, 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story, and 1974’s Smiler, but only two songs from 1972’s Never a Dull Moment (don’t ask me why). This decision makes The Best of Rod Stewart less a best-of than a promotional ploy to send listeners back to Stewart’s previous LPs, and serious fans are sure to go apoplectic over Mercury’s choices.

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