I love this album. I love that it’s a sprawling mess, I love it for its good songs and bad songs, and I love it for the demo-like quality of said songs, but I love 2013’s Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter most because everybody’s Prince Charming couldn’t have made a weirder and more contrarian comeback album. Adam Ant is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter, is Ant’s Exile on Main Street, but unlike the Stones, Ant was a real exile, a forgotten man, a has-been.

Some eighteen years had passed since Ant (aka Stuart Leslie Goddard) released 1995’s Wonderful. During the long hiatus, Ant wrote his autobiography and dabbled. And struggled with mental illness. “The Blueblack Hussar is me coming back to life,” he told one interviewer. “I’m like The Terminator—I was a dead man walking.” Which doesn’t make a lick of sense, but you get what he’s saying. Ant was back amongst the living, and for all its very human flaws, Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter is the proof. The album has more red blood coursing through its veins than just about any album I can think of.

On Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter Ant did exactly what he wanted, fashion and chart success be damned. I don’t hear a big number one hit single amongst its seventeen tracks, and I doubt Ant did either, but apparently he didn’t care. Its one single, “Cool Zombie,” died an awful death, gasping its last at Number 154 on the UK charts before being unceremoniously buried in the Potter’s Field of British pop flops. England’s Prince Charming had apparently decided he’d sooner be the Mad King of Bavaria.

This is not Antmusic. Gone are the Goody Two Shoes persona, the Burundi drums, and catchy pop proclivities. AA began the project with long-time collaborator Marco Pirroni, but they decided to go their separate ways. He then recorded the album on a laptop computer with long-time Morrissey collaborator Boz Boorer. He also co-wrote several songs with 3 Colours Red guitarist Chris McCormack.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “As if!!!!” UMe marks the 30th anniversary of Paramount Pictures’ 1995 comedy classic Clueless by releasing the movie’s soundtrack on both standard weight vinyl and a limited-edition standard weight pink colored vinyl—available now HERE.

Loosely based on Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, Clueless was hilariously updated to Beverly Hills High School in the 1990s by writer/director Amy Heckerling. The iconic film stars Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz, Stacey Dash as her best friend Dionne, Brittany Murphy as Tai, the ugly duckling transformed into a beautiful swan, and Paul Rudd as Cher’s disapproving ex-stepbrother.

The platinum-selling soundtrack features The Muffs’ cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America,” along with Radiohead’s acoustic version of “Fake Plastic Trees” as well as tracks from a who’s-who of the decade’s alternative music stars, such as Cracker (with a cover of Flamin’ Groovies’ “Shake Some Action”), Counting Crows (cover of Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost in You”), Luscious Jackson, World Party (with a rousing cover of Mott the Hoople/David Bowie’s “All the Young Dudes”), Lightning Seeds, Smoking Popes, Beastie Boys, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (who appeared in the film), Coolio, Supergrass, Velocity Girl, and Jill Sobule.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | A pivotal figure in American music history finally gets the comprehensive biography he deserves with the release of Chet Atkins: Mr. Guitar (through University of Georgia Press), the latest work from acclaimed country music historian and scholar Dr. Don Cusic. It is the first definitive biography on the acclaimed musician. Written with scholarly rigor and deep musical insight, this definitive portrait of Chet Atkins is essential reading for music, history, and guitar lovers alike.

Atkins’s role in shaping 20th-century music is unparalleled. A virtuosic guitarist, producer, and music executive, he was instrumental in crafting the “Nashville Sound”—a smoother, more commercially viable blend of country and pop that bridged musical divides and revolutionized the recording industry. As a producer at RCA Victor, Atkins influenced generations of artists and played on landmark recordings from Elvis Presley to the Everly Brothers.

Atkins was highly revered by artists and musicians from multiple genres of music. Guitarist John Knowles, one of the few guitarists that Atkins honored with the title of CGP (Certified Guitar Player) once said about Atkins, “You know, there’s a handful of artists out there…Fred Astaire dances that way and Chet Atkins plays the guitar that way. Where you do all your work and then, you step beyond the work you’ve done to an area of grace and elegance. Chet absolutely had that,” Knowles remembered admiringly.

Dr. Cusic traces Atkins’s journey from a self-taught teenager in rural Tennessee to one of the most celebrated musicians in American history. With over 100 solo albums, 14 Grammy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), and inductions into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Musicians Hall of Fame, Atkins not only left an extraordinary catalog of music but also reshaped the sound and business of country music itself. Singer and musician Steve Wariner knew Atkins’ expertise well. Also lauded as a CGP by Atkins, he was in amazement at Atkins’ talent. “His breadth of knowledge was unbelievable,” he recalls.

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Remembering Tom Evans, born on this day in 1947. —Ed.

Talk about your bad mojo. It would be hard to find a band with as tragic a backstory as Badfinger, not one of whom, but two, of its original members hanged themselves. And this despite a string of at least five timeless tunes, and plenty of other good songs to boot.

The problem is that corrupt management—in the form of the New York mob-connected Stan Polley—made off with the bulk of the band’s profits, leaving Badfinger’s members practically penniless. It proved to be too much for the band’s songwriting team, Pete Ham and Tom Evans, leaving Badfinger to be remembered as much for its morbid history as its status as a great power pop band, England’s answer to The Raspberries.

The quartet formed in Swansea, Wales in 1961 as The Iveys. After much struggling they found themselves part of Apple Records’ stable of artists and hit pay dirt with “Come and Get It,” a Paul McCartney written and produced record, at which juncture they changed their name to Badfinger, supposedly after an early iteration of “With a Little Help From My Friends” entitled “Bad Finger Boogie,” so named because an injured McCartney was reduced to using one finger. They then proceeded to produce a number of hits, but saw no money, and their subsequent career saw them become pop stars without a dime to call their own.

But what a legacy they left behind! It’s not all here on Timeless… The Musical Legacy (you owe it to yourself to also check out 1990’s The Best of Badfinger, Vol. 2, which includes such great tunes as “Just a Chance” and “Shine On”) but it’s a powerhouse record nonetheless, and convincing proof that Badfinger was more, and much more, than the band that brought us the delectable “Day After Day.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Lord of the Rings trilogy remains one of the most successful films in cinematic history. Based on the popular J.R.R. Tolkien novel of the same name, Peter Jackson directed the trilogy, which features a score composed by Howard Shore. The trilogy earned 17 Academy Awards®, including three for music. Beyond critical acclaim, the music from the films also enjoyed wide commercial success, collectively selling over 7 million albums.

Today, The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy Soundtrack is available exclusively at Rhino.com as a 6-LP boxed set on 180-gram Black vinyl limited to 2,000 units worldwide. The music for all three films was composed, orchestrated, and conducted by Howard Shore. His music was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, with contributions from two choirs: London Voices and London Oratory School Schola.

The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack was certified platinum in the US alone and sold exceptionally well worldwide. It won the Academy Award® for Best Original Score, as well as the GRAMMY® Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album. It includes two original songs written and performed by Enya: “May It Be” and “Aníron (Theme for Aragorn and Arwen).”

The Two Towers soundtrack was certified gold in the US, the UK, and Canada and won the GRAMMY® Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album. The Return of the King soundtrack was certified Gold in the US and the UK and won two Academy Awards® for Best Original Score and Best Original Song with “Into the West” performed by Annie Lennox; two Golden Globe Awards® for Best Original Score and Song; and two GRAMMY® Awards for Best Score Soundtrack Album and Song Written for a Motion Picture.

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Celebrating Freddie Stone, born on this day in 1947. —Ed.

The late-1960s was loaded with musical groundbreakers, and one of the most enduring is Sly & the Family Stone. Formed by brothers Sly and Freddie Stone, the group grew by leaps and bounds through the combination of rock, R&B/soul, psychedelia, and pop, and by ’69 they had effectively conquered the scene. Theirs is a reign dotted with masterworks, and Sony collected the bulk of the discography into the vinyl box set Original Album Classics. It includes five 180gm LPs remastered from the source tapes.

He was born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, TX in 1943. Two decades later, the man was wielding the handle Sly Stone, and when his Sly & the Family Stoners joined forces with his brother’s Freddie & the Stone Souls in ’67 San Francisco, he was already well-ensconced in the music biz both as a performer and producer at Autumn Records. In due time, Sly excelled at his leadership role, though the Family Stone, credited as the first major American rock act to incorporate integrated multi-gender personnel, was always something more.

They initially consisted of Sly (vocals, organ, and assorted other instruments), Freddie (guitar, vocals), Larry Graham (bass, vocals), Cynthia Robinson (trumpet, vocal interjections), Jerry Martini (saxophone), and Greg Errico (drums), with assistance from Vet Stone, Mary McCreary, and Elva Mouton, collectively known as Little Sister (backing vocals). Signed to CBS Records’ subsidiary Epic, they worked fast, maybe too fast; the first long-player was in the can before June was done.

Indeed, if they’d broken up after A Whole New Thing’s cashbox failure, Sly & the Family Stone would likely be forgotten. Over the years, the debut has taken its share of heat, some of it undeserved. Things begin fairly well; “Underdog” is bookended by horns riffing on the melody to “Frère Jacques,” but the meat of the matter is upbeat soul. The opener establishes one of the album’s distinctive attributes, specifically a heavier drum sound than was then the norm for the R&B genre.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | As otherworldly as Failure may often sound, the Los Angeles band is anchored by the distinctly terrestrial union of a long friendship between three musical allies—Ken Andrews (vocals, guitar, bass, programming), Greg Edwards (vocals, guitar, bass, keys), and Kellii Scott (drums, percussion).

Today, Failure announce the release of Every Time You Lose Your Mind, the feature length documentary directed by Andrews that has been a decade in the making. The documentary follows the band from inception to present, and features interviews with David Dastmalchian, Margaret Cho, Hayley Williams, Jason Schwartzman, Tommy Lee, Maynard James Keenan, Butch Vig, Rick Beato and more. Every Time You Lose Your Mind will be available to stream via Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ on June 27.

Like a falling satellite blazing across the musical landscape, Failure flamed out in the late ‘90s—their promising rise derailed by drug addiction and record company inertia. But the pioneering trio left a profound imprint that transcended their affiliation with the LA alt-rock scene. Every Time You Lose Your Mind documents the origins, downfall, and rebirth of a band beloved by their peers and multiple generations of fans.

“Our fans have connected with the themes of depression and addiction in our music,” notes Andrews. “The film crystallizes those connections and, ultimately, communicates hope. We’re a band that faced a specific set of challenges and somehow managed to survive and thrive. It’s a story about resilience, finding ways to cope, and not giving up.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | This 2002 album was the last of LA band Fear Factory’s amazing run of albums for the Roadrunner Records, but it was actually the first. Huh?

Let us explain—or better yet, you can read the two sets of liner notes that accompany the package. Briefly, prior to signing with Roadrunner, Fear Factory recorded an entire album in 1990 with producer Ross Robinson. The band and Robinson had a falling out, but ironically, a cassette recording of that album got them signed to Roadrunner.

Once Fear Factory exploded with the release of 1995’s Demanufacture, Roadrunner acquired the rights to the album from Robinson but waited to release it until 2002, when the band went on hiatus and left the label. But more interesting than the story behind the music is the music itself.

For Fear Factory fans, Concrete is an absolute treasure trove—half of the songs are new, while the other half showed up in rerecorded form on their debut album Soul of a New Machine (and especially sharp-eared Fear Factory fans will notice bits and pieces of the new songs that showed up on subsequent albums).

Above all, though, Concrete sets it in stone that very early on, Fear Factory had perfected the heavy verse-melodic chorus formula followed by so many nu-metal bands to come. For its first-ever LP release, Real Gone Music has remastered Concrete for its pressing in gunmetal grey vinyl—an essential piece of the Fear Factory legacy.

Rock memoirs can be hit or miss. Many are ghostwritten, and some lack the musicians’ voices. Others can be glib recountings of oft-told tales of life on the road, drug and alcohol abuse, rehab and recovery, or the price of fame. Thankfully, three recent books offer different approaches to the standard rock memoir and make for great summer reading.

Robyn Hitchcock is a one-of-a-kind musician. Born in England, he grew up during the key hippie years there, but made his name as a founding member of the seminal pop-punk band the Soft Boys. He has since gone on to have a long and successful solo career that has, over the years, come to rely more on his formative teen ‘60s years, with a quirky and decidedly English eccentricity.

Rather than provide a life-long memoir, he recounts his days from being a small child to being away at school, culminating in a vivid chronicle of his life during that magical year of 1967. This affectionate and witty tale has a winsome naivety that places 1967 not so much in a haze of psychedelia, but rather within a warm remembrance of simpler times that suggested possibilities rather than limitations, unlike the world in which we live today.

Making this slim volume even more revelatory is the companion album, 1967 – Vacations in the Past (Glowing Green Frog), on limited-edition blue vinyl, which includes Hitchcock covering a wide variety of songs from that year. Some obvious groups—The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and The Kinks—are covered, as well as classics from that year from Procol Harum, the Small Faces, and Scott McKenzie.

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Although she has a pair of EPs to her credit, the York, UK-based crafter of ethereal electronics Lucy Gooch is releasing her debut album Desert Window on June 6 through Fire Records. Lush but deeply layered, Gooch’s work combines complexity and warmth that is enhanced by her rich, soaring vocals. Unusually robust for a debut, the set is available on marble vinyl with a signed lyrics art print and white vinyl without the print, along with the barebones digital option.

Lucy Gooch is often compared to Kate Bush, and that’s understandable, but the flat fact is nobody is going to confuse either artist for the other. For one thing, Gooch is less pop-centered than Bush, though Desert Window does reinforce that its maker has her way with a tune. This melodic strength comes through strongest in “Keep Pulling Me In” alongside the record’s sturdiest groove, and in the title track, which closes the record.

More frequently, Gooch utilizes folk structures as a foundation, and straight away at the beginning of Desert Window’s opener “Like Clay” and most prominently later in the album during “Jack Hare.” It’s in “Like Clay” where Gooch’s use of skilled (and overlapping) vocal loops is set in motion, a technique that recurs throughout the album but in a fairly restrained manner, the strategy serving the broader landscape of her work rather than pinning her down and defining her inside a particular genre.

That is, electronic elements expand the possibilities available to Gooch instead of restricting her stylistically. Dreamlike atmospheres are prevalent across Desert Window as Gooch exceeds the realms of dream pop. “Night Window (Part One)” exudes retrofuturistic textures transforming into spacy ambience that bleeds right into part two and a series of vibrant crescendos.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings and Jazz Dispensary are gearing up for summer with the first-ever vinyl reissue of Amazonas—the 1976 fusion album from influential vibraphonist Cal Tjader.

Bridging the gap between California and Rio de Janeiro, this innovative LP pairs the jazz star with top talent from Brazil (including producer Airto Moreira, flutist Hermeto Pascoal, and trombonist Raul de Souza) and features arrangements by legendary musician, singer-songwriter, and producer George Duke. The result is a spectacular blend of joyful melodies, funky basslines, and space-age synths, as heard in tracks like “Mindoro,” “Amazonas,” and “Corine.”

Returning to vinyl for the first time in five decades as part of Jazz Dispensary’s Top Shelf reissue series on July 25, Amazonas was cut (AAA) from its original tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI. Rounding out the package is a stylish tip-on jacket replicating the album’s classic cover art. Click here to pre-order/stream today.

Perhaps the most influential Latin bandleader of non-Latin descent, vibraphonist Cal Tjader (1925–1982) integrated Afro-Caribbean rhythms, bop, and a variety of other influences to create a sound that was fresh, modern, and utterly unique. Raised in the Bay Area, Tjader began his career as a drummer, playing alongside the likes of Dave Brubeck before breaking out on his own as a leader. By the mid-’50s, Tjader was primarily focused on the vibraphone and, with his own quintet, had established himself in the hugely popular mambo scene.

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