VIA PRESS RELEASE | Varèse Sarabande and Craft Recordings announce deluxe reissues for Blade and Blade II, from prolific composers Mark Isham and Marco Beltrami. Debuting on vinyl for the first time, both soundtracks—equally celebrated as unique contributions to the film canon—will be released in multiple unique color variants.

Releasing on May 16th and available for pre-order today, these classic scores will be pressed on “Bloodbath” red vinyl exclusively via Barnes & Noble, and “Blood Splatter” clear and black translucent vinyl in a limited-edition run of 500 on the Varèse Sarabande store. Both scores will be available as 2-LP gatefold packages with brand-new artwork by acclaimed illustrator Micha Huigen. Directed for the big screen by effects artist turned filmmaker Stephen Norrington (Death Machine) and written by Dark City’s David S. Goyer (with uncredited assistance from David Fincher, who originally intended to direct), 1998’s Blade tapped into the Goth Avenger vein of the adaptations of The Crow and Spawn.

Like those undead superheroes out to decimate their killers, Blade moved in the shadows of a big city built from eerily sleek visuals and Hong Kong—influenced action, as powered by the relentless beat of the era’s youth-appealing indie, grunge, and electronica bands.

At first offered to The Prodigy, Blade’s score eventually went to Mark Isham, whose origin as a jazz trumpeter didn’t suggest the most predictable fit. It was, though, Isham’s Southwestern gothic score for 1986’s The Hitcher that marked him as a musician worthy of this daunting task.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Following the Eagles’ groundbreaking residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Rhino will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Don Henley’s Inside Job with a newly remastered version on May 23. Henley’s fourth solo album will be reissued in multiple configurations, including a 180g 2-LP, 1CD, and digital versions. Pre-order/pre-save HERE. Giving audiences a preview of what to expect, the newly remastered version of “Taking You Home” is available today, digitally.

Inside Job initially arrived on May 23, 2000. Upon release, it bowed at #7 on the Billboard 200, notching Henley’s highest debut as a solo artist. The album went on to earn a Platinum certification from the RIAA. The lead single, “Taking You Home,” catapulted to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and remains one of the album’s signature songs. Henley co-produced Inside Job with longtime collaborator Stan Lynch, delivering standouts such as “Everything Is Different Now” and “For My Wedding.” The reissue of Inside Job follows 2024 reissues of I Can’t Stand Still (1982), Building The Perfect Beast (1984), and Cass County (2015).

Best known as co-founder of the legendary rock band, the Eagles, as well as an influential solo artist, Don Henley has maintained an extraordinary commitment to music and various philanthropic efforts throughout his career, including a dedication to environmental issues and artists’ rights. Raised in a small East Texas town, Henley was drawn to the sounds of exotic music broadcast from distant radio stations in New Orleans, Nashville, and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. These stations introduced him to the blues, bluegrass, gospel, jazz, and rock and roll, paving the way for his future as an artist.

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My Morning Jacket has been building a following for years and must now be considered one of the few great rock bands with any real visibility on the scene today. While rock seems to continue to wither and die, My Morning Jacket is only growing stronger.

Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky in the late ’90s, the group recorded two albums for the indie Darla label before moving to ATO with It Still Moves in 2003. After three more albums, ATO became part of Capitol, which released the group’s The Waterfall album in 2015. It would be five years before Waterfall II, which was quickly followed the next year by a self-titled album. The group’s main singer and songwriter Jim James also released other albums in that period, including four idiosyncratic and artsy solo albums between 2013 and 2018, with two of them released in 2018.

My Morning Jacket’s music is hard to describe. The group has a somewhat expansive psychedelic sound and an organic and improvisational live-in-the-studio approach that has appeal for lovers of jam bands. Like such old-school American cult faves as the Grateful Dead, R.E.M., and the Flaming Lips, which turned into popular legends by creating their own self-sustaining musical communities, the group is focused on making music on its own terms and slowly building a following. Unlike those groups, it has had a consistently changing lineup, that now includes only two original members, James and Tom Blankenship.

The band’s passionate, idiosyncratic, and heady sound makes for serious listening, but its newest album, its tenth and first in four years, seems like a bid for a larger audience with the production work of Brendan O’Brien. While the group has worked with the likes of John Leckie and Joe Chiccarelli in the past, this seems like their most focused studio effort. There were three singles that preceded the album, which is unusual for the group, and the final ten songs were whittled down from 100 demos. All the songs were written by James.

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On April 4, veteran UK post-punkers The Nightingales, led as ever by vocalist Robert Lloyd, return with The Awful Truth, an appropriately bent reaction to the sorry state of the world. It’s available on red vinyl and compact disc from Fire Records. Joining Lloyd in The Nightingales are Andreas Schmid on bass, Fliss Kitson on drums, and James Smith on guitar.

Formed in 1979, The Nightingales rose from the ashes of The Prefects, an exquisitely amateurish first wave punk outfit noted for their inclusion on the White Riot tour of The Clash and for playing with UK punk heavyweights Buzzcocks, The Damned, The Fall, and The Slits. The Prefects didn’t get a record out until after they’d broken up, but The Nightingales managed three full-lengths, three EPs, and seven singles during the first stretch of their existence, which lasted until 1987 amid a slew of personnel changes. Recommencing activity in 2004, the sole constant has been vocalist Robert Lloyd.

In their initial run, The Nightingales pulled off an impressive feat, increasing in competence without softening their sound for the mainstream, instead leaning into a bold strain of post-punk, often with a raw, wild edge, and with nods to indie pop and the UK DIY scene. This made them John Peel favorites. All three of the ’80s full lengths, Pigs on Purpose (1982), Hysterics (1983), and In the Good Old Country Way (1986) have been reissued by Fire subsidiary Call of the Void.

The Nightingales haven’t floundered in their return to action (Lloyd seems to have gotten the misstep out of his system with a 1990 major label solo album Me and My Mouth). And this second stretch of Nightingales action has reinforced similarities to fellow punk-era survivors with an edge The Membranes and The Mekons. Deepening a connection to The Mekons, The Awful Truth’s opener “The New Emperor’s New Clothes” is a spirited stomper with viola in the mix.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “A triumph of creativity, imagination, and spirit.” —Classic Rock Magazine

Few albums in Gong’s discography capture the band’s whimsical, irreverent take on life’s complexities and the enigma of death as vividly as 2014’s I See You. Now, the legendary psychedelic collective mark a decade since the release with a brand-new 10th Anniversary Edition on Kscope. Set for release on Kscope on May 9th, the new edition has been remixed from the original multi-track recordings by Frank Byng, producer and sound engineer of the last four Gong albums.

This milestone reissue celebrates not only the existential beauty of Gong’s music, but also the enduring legacy of frontman and visionary Daevid Allen, whose boundless creativity continues to resonate with fans worldwide. I See You was the final studio album featuring Daevid Allen before his passing in 2015 and stands as a testament to his vibrant spirit and revolutionary ethos. Infused with the anarchic energy that defined Gong’s origins in the 1968 Paris counterculture movement, I See You takes its place as one of the finest gems in the band’s heroic catalogue.

“Daevid Allen’s final album, I See You is such a transitional Gong record in so many ways, not that any of us realised it at the time. Work on the album had just commenced around the time I was asked to join and Daevid was in fine health but by the time we were at the mixing stage he was undergoing intense treatment for his cancer which would ultimately prove unsuccessful.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Underground” is a relative term. One could argue that all the ‘60s San Francisco psychedelic bands were underground, because the music they made was so far removed from the pop and rock sounds that came before them.

But of all the bands in the scene, Lamb was perhaps the most underground of them all. It wasn’t just that their blend of rock, folk, classical, country, blues, and gospel was as hard to classify as any of the era. It was also their vibe. Along with classically trained guitarist and songwriting partner Bob Swanson, Barbara Mauritz’s versatile vocals paced material often imbued with a haunting, mystical aura. Yet they could also be earthy and rootsy, occasionally drifting into spacey psychedelia with hints of raga-rock.

Released in the early ‘70s, Lamb’s first two albums, A Sign of Change and Cross Between, did indeed offer some of the most intriguing and eclectic music of any San Francisco rock band on the psychedelic scene. But Lamb’s history predated the release of those records by a good couple of years or so.

So prolific were Mauritz and Swanson that quite a few of their original compositions didn’t make it onto their albums, though these were often on par with the songs that did find official release. Unlike many bands of the time who had a bounty of surplus quality tunes, Lamb often taped these in studios and studio-like rehearsal conditions, as well as making some professional tapes of their live performances.

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Remembering Ronnie Lane, born on this date in 1946. —Ed.

In 1972 French-Canadian actor Alexis Kanner approached Faces’ bassist and vocalist Ronnie Lane about composing the soundtrack for the film Mahoney’s Last Stand, which I’ve never seen but from what I’ve read about it sounds like a non-comedic Green Acres. Lane accepted and enlisted Faces guitarist Ron Wood to join the project, then recruited a lot of whizz-bang rock and roll talent as farm hands. The result is this 1972 LP, which oozes a rustic charm that more than makes up for its lack of lofty ambition. This is the sound of musicians hanging out and having fun, and producing some very likable off-the-cuff music while they’re at it.

Lane—who succumbed in 1997 to multiple sclerosis at the tragically young age of 51—was the heart (he had a huge one) and soul (he oozed the stuff) of the Faces. Rod Stewart got the attention—too much of it towards the end—but Ronnie embodied the band’s rambunctious approach to rock and roll and wrote (or co-wrote) some of the band’s most endearing and poignant songs, including “Ooh La La,” “Glad and Sorry,” and “Debris.”

And that doesn’t include the great songs he produced for the Small Faces and his wonderful 1977 collaboration with Pete Townshend, Rough Mix. As for Ron Wood, he exemplified the shambolic and always joyous spirit of the Faces as well, and I’ll argue to my dying day that he did (by far) his best work with them. He may be better remembered for his years with the Rolling Stones, but I would gladly trade it all for the jet engine guitar he plays on “Stay with Me” and his down-to-earth vocal turn on “Ooh La La.”

The motley crew who played on the sessions for the film score included the likes of Townshend, Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan, R&R saxophone legend Bobby Keys, Blind Faith and Traffic bassist Ric Grech, Rolling Stones’ road manager and pianist Ian Stewart, Faces (and later Who) drummer Kenney Jones, trumpet player Jim Price, Grease Band/Fairport Convention drummer Bruce Rowland and various other odds and sods. Conspicuous by his absence was Rod Stewart—Lane was justifiably angry at the time with Stewart’s rapidly fading interest in the Faces due to his solo success, and he was particularly galled by the fact that the Faces were increasingly being looked upon as Stewart’s backing band.

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It’s still early, but Guerssen Records’ lovingly assembled collection documenting the obscure Los Gatos, CA-based late 1960s outfit Weird Herald is poised to be one of the major archival discoveries of 2025. Just Yesterday is offered as an 11-song LP accompanied with a download card rounding up 11 more selections; the CD corrals 18 of the tracks. Both sets situate Weird Herald as far more than just another hunk of unearthed gristle thrown to salivating obsessives of ’60s psych rock. Kudos to Guerssen for spotlighting this major lost band and expanding the historical landscape once again.

Of course there’s a booklet loaded with info detailing Weird Heard’s unluckiness as a band and detailing relationships to Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, and the Doobie Brothers. Rather than regurgitate the tale in this review, it suffices to simply relate the band’s formation by guitarists Paul Ziegler and Billy Dean Andrus, the latter a high school friend and playing partner of Alexander “Skip” Spence, noted as a founding member of both Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape. For these recordings, bassist Cecil Bollinger and drummer Pat McIntire round out the band.

Weird Herald’s only official release during their existence was a promo single issued by the Onyx label in 1968. The B-side of that 45, a very appealing slice of gentle folk-rock, provides the Guerssen collection with its title. “Just Yesterday” is of a piece with the record’s other track, “Saratoga James,” as both selections thrive on exceptional fingerpicking, although the plug side inches nearer to the then nascent singer-songwriter side of the folk equation.

The single was essentially a managerial decision, with the choice of songs intended to emphasize Weird Herald’s less disruptive side (shortly thereafter they did play a handful of shows opening for the great Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete and his trio), but the band had considerable range, and as Just Yesterday’s highlights “Canyon Women” and “In the Country” make clear, they could lay it down raw and heavy while maintaining a commitment to song form.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Daptone proudly announces a 20th anniversary reissue of Naturally, the famed album by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. The reissue arrives May 2nd, in time for the late Jones’ own birthday on May 4th. A new vinyl pressing will consist of a remastered 2xLP version that includes instrumentals for all tracks. In addition to the standard black LP, the Indie retail exclusive variant includes opaque orange color vinyl and the Daptone shop exclusive variant includes clear vinyl with orange splatter.

2005’s Naturally was a pivotal moment in the history of soul music. The album has sold over 200,000 copies, with hit singles “How Long Do I Have to Wait” and “This Land is Your Land” streaming in the hundreds of millions—staggering figures for a wholly independent release. It was also the genesis for the Dap-Kings’ collaboration with Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse, the fruits of which having a lasting, indelible influence on soul, R&B and pop music in general.

Up to this point, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings had yet to reach an audience outside of dingy, hole-in-the-wall clubs, dive bars, and underground DJ parties, attended by only the most in-the-know. This was the scene where the band began to flourish, developing the sound that would forever alter the musical landscape and set a lofty new bar for what could be considered real-deal soul music.

Recording for Naturally began in 2004 and holds the distinction of being the first Daptone session at the renowned “House of Soul”—a recording studio handbuilt by Sharon and the rest of the Daptone family in a two story rental in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (Sharon famously tackled much of the electrical wiring herself.)

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Boz Scaggs has always been a musical artist of complexity. He founded his connection to music through the blues, but his lasting legacy is one of glamorous and romantic pop songwriting.

He possessed a somewhat shy and sensitive demeanor never totally at home in the public eye, yet his claim to several chart-topping singles and albums, particularly the millions-selling and critically acclaimed Silk Degrees (1976), demanded constant exposure. The persona he expressed through his music was laid back, effortlessly cool, sophisticated, stylish, romantically charming, and suave. But the immense success he achieved in his career pointed in part to the driven and determined artist within.

Lowdown: The Music of Boz Scaggs examines the uniqueness of these contradictions and Boz Scaggs’s sixty-plus-year career and his rich and diverse musical catalogue. Over the decades, Scaggs collaborated with an array of talented heavies, from the Steve Miller Band to the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (which included a young Duane Allman) on Boz Scaggs (1969), from the session players on Silk Degrees (1976) who would form the hit band Toto to Donald Fagen and Michael McDonald on the Dukes of September’s 2010 Rhythm Revue tour.

This first-ever book on Boz, written by The Vinyl District writer Jude Warne (author of America, the Band: An Authorized Biography) is constructed around intensely thorough analysis of his complete discography, and new and exclusive in-depth interviews with a selection of Scaggs’s associated colleagues from his vast career.

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