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NEW RELEASE MUSIC | FRIDAY APRIL 7 2017

Posted by Tori Vallen on

Wanna keep up with what’s new, what’s hot, what’s freshly pressed? Here's what's out this week.


COLD WAR KIDS - LA DIVINE

DEEP PURPLE - INFINITE

ELLIOTT SMITH - FIGURE 8 + XO

FATHER JOHN MISTY - PURE COMEDY

GUIDED BY VOICES - AUGUST BY CAKE

→ STEVIE WONDER - HOTTER THAN JULY + FULFILLINGNESS’ FIRST FINALE

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS - WHITEOUT CONDITIONS


COLD WAR KIDS - LA DIVINE

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2017 release. 

LA Divine, Cold War Kids most expansive and ambitious effort so far, pays tribute to Los Angeles in all it's strange glory, embodying the Long Beach-bred band s endless fascination with their adopted hometown. 

In many ways, LA is the least divine city, the most hedonistic and irreverent and disconnected from history, says Nathan Willett. "LA's so massive, I feel like I'm always finding something new in it," adds bassist Matt Maust. "It's an incredibly weird place, and I'm happy to have made an album that totally honors that weirdness." 

Includes the single 'Love Is Mystical.' Forming in 2004 in Fullerton, the band's early releases came from independent record label Monarchy Music. In 2006, Cold War Kids signed with Downtown/V2 and released their major label debut Robbers & Cowards to cult appeal from fans and critics. 2008's Loyalty to Loyalty and 2011's Mine Is Yours saw the band develop different musical sounds and lyrical content throughout. 

In 2013, Cold War Kids released their fourth album Dear Miss Lonelyhearts. The band then released their fifth album Hold My Home in 2014.

DEEP PURPLE - INFINITE

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Deluxe CD/DVD edition includes bonus DVD featuring a 96 minute documentary on the making of the album. 

2017 album from the legendary rockers. 

Deep Purple are one of the most influential British rock bands of all time with 120 million albums sold worldwide. 

Recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they have inspired and shaped generations of hard rock musicians and fans. Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and Ian Paice are the three members from the current line-up who have been part of the band since it's Mark II version, the one that is considered the "absolute classic." 

The line-up is completed with Don Airey (his fouth album with the band), and Steve Morse (his sixth album). Produced by the legendary Bob Ezrin, who also produced the bands last release Now What?!, Ezrin and the band have created the most "'70s" project since Perfect Strangers. 

ELLIOTT SMITH - FIGURE 8

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Double vinyl LP pressing. 

Figure 8 is the fifth studio album by Elliott Smith, and the final album he completed before his death. It was recorded from 1998 to 2000 at numerous studios and released on April 18, 2000 through DreamWorks Records. Preceded by the singles "Happiness" and "Son of Sam", Figure 8 was Smith's second release on a major label. Initially titled Place Pigalle, Figure 8 was recorded at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, Sonora Studios in Los Angeles, Capitol Studios in Hollywood and Abbey Road Studios in London. 

Smith described the songs on the album as "more fragmented and dreamlike". With Figure 8, Smith attempted to create "a happy-sounding record".






ELLIOTT SMITH - XO

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Vinyl LP pressing. 

XO is the fourth studio album by singer/songwriter Elliott Smith. It was recorded from 1997 to 1998 and released on August 25, 1998 by record label DreamWorks; Smith's first solo album on a major record label. Two singles, "Waltz #2 (XO)" and "Baby Britain", were released. An early working title for the album was Grand Mal. 

The title of the first track, "Sweet Adeline", was inspired by Smith's recollections of his grandmother singing in her glee club, Sweet Adelines International. "Amity" is believed to be named after a friend who can be seen in photographs from Smith's 1997 tour. XO was well received by critics upon it's release. Mark Richardson of Pitchfork Media wrote, "Smith's songwriting continues to improve, as each of [the album's] fourteen tracks displays his inarguable mastery of the pop song structure more clearly than ever." In it's retrospective review, BBC Music wrote, "the budget might have gone up, but Smith's masterful way with an understated melody and melancholic lyric remained firmly intact", calling XO "perhaps the greatest long-player Smith released; if not, it's certainly the equal of the preceding Either/Or. 

Repeat listens don't dull it in the slightest, every barbed one-liner and exhalation of despair perfectly preserved".

FATHER JOHN MISTY - PURE COMEDY

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2017 release. Pure Comedy, Father John Misty's third album, is a complex, often-sardonic, and, equally often, touching meditation on the confounding folly of modern humanity. Father John Misty is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Josh Tillman. 

Tillman has released two widely acclaimed albums - Fear Fun (2012) and I Love You, Honeybear (2015) - and the recent "Real Love Baby" single as Father John Misty, and recently contributed to songs by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Kid Cudi. While we could say a lot about Pure Comedy - including that it is a bold, important album in the tradition of American songwriting greats like Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Leonard Cohen - we think it's best to let it's creator describe it himself. Take it away, Mr. Tillman: "Pure Comedy is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. 

The species' only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like "love," "culture," "family," etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. 

These ironies are designed to help cope with the species' loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence. Something like that". Pure Comedy was recorded in 2016 at the legendary United Studios (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Beck) in Hollywood, CA. It was produced by Father John Misty and Jonathan Wilson, with engineering by Misty's longtime sound-person Trevor Spencer and orchestral arrangements by renowned composer/double-bassist Gavin Bryars (known for extensive solo work, and work with Brian Eno, Tom Waits, Derek Bailey).

GUIDED BY VOICES - AUGUST BY CAKE

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2017 release. 

Guided by Voices' August By Cake is the one hundredth studio album that Robert Pollard has released since 1986's Forever Since Breakfast. To put that in perspective, Bob Dylan has released roughly thirty nine studio albums since 1959. And that includes the Traveling Wilburys. 

This is a highly anticipated record, which includes the new line-up (returning GBV veterans Doug Gillard and Kevin March, virgins Bobby Bare Jr and Mark Shue) that has been wowing audience in clubs and festivals throughout 2016. It's the most musically adept and versatile line-up Pollard has ever assembled. With thirty two songs, this album is also GBV's first ever double album, and song contributions from all five band members is additional icing on the cake, setting album #100 apart from the previous 99. 

The double album is an important format in Pollard's own musical iconography, and he doesn't take the form lightly - one reason he's planned and abandoned several would-be GBV double albums in the past is his high regard for foundational works like Quadrophenia, the White Album, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Daydream Nation, Zen Arcade, Double Nickels On the Dime - "defining records for these bands," says Pollard. 

It's important to him that August By Cake not just be a double album but that it be a great one.

STEVIE WONDER - HOTTER THAN JULY

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Vinyl LP pressing. 

Following the nearly all-instrumental 'detour album, ' Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants, Hotter Than July was a return to classic form. Released in fall 1980 It was a top 3 pop album and # 1 R&B for more than three months, led by the hit singles 'Master Blaster (Jammin'), ' 'Lately' and 'I Ain't Gonna Stand For It, ' and the now-classic album cut, 'Happy Birthday, ' a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. Hotter than July was originally released on Motown's Tamla label on September 29, 1980. It was certified platinum and reached #3 on the US Billboard chart. 

This was his most successful album in the UK, peaking at #2 and producing four top ten singles. Hotter than July was nominated for Favorite Soul/R&B Album at the American Music Awards in 1982.





STEVIE WONDER - FULFILLINGNESS’ FIRST FINALE

GET IT ON VINYL

Vinyl LP pressing. 

Directly from Stevie Wonder's string of classic albums, FFF, originally released in 1974, was the follow-up to Innvervisions. It was a #1 hit for several weeks, led by the #1 single 'You Haven't Done Nothin' and 'Boogie On Reggae Woman.' This vinyl re-release features a reproduction of the original collage artwork depicting Stevie's life on original gatefold cover, with full (and, in some cases, corrected) lyrics inside. 

Winner of three Grammy Awards including Album of the Year. FFF is Wonder's nineteenth album overall, and seventeenth studio album. According to Billboard magazine, it was Wonder's first studio album to top the Pop Albums chart where it remained for two weeks, while it was his third album to top the R&B/Black Albums chart where it spent nine non-consecutive weeks. Subsequent to the epic sweep and social consciousness of Innervisions, this set projected a reflective, decidedly somber tone.] 

The musical arrangements used in several songs while masterly could be considered sparse in comparison to others among his 1970s masterworks, evident especially in the bleak "They Won't Go When I Go" and understated "Creepin'". While largely a stripped down, more personal sounding record, Wonder had not completely foregone social commentary on the world around him.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS - WHITEOUT CONDITIONS

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2017 release. Whiteout Conditions is the follow-up to 2014's Brill Bruisers. 'Cohesive.' It's a word New Pornographers founder A.C. Newman still sounds a little bit surprised to say as he describing the band's seventh album, Whiteout Conditions. It's a quality that you wouldn't necessarily intuitively associate with a so-called supergroup that, by it's very collective nature, seems bound to have a good deal of stylistic variance built into the formula (or lack of it). 

Can an outfit built on the appeal of multiple frontmen and frontwomen develop a signature sound after all? Maybe, and maybe better late than never. The focus on Whiteout Conditions (The New Pornographers' first album on their own imprint, Collected Works Records, in partnership with Concord Records) comes down to a couple of notable shifts: increased tempos, for one, and increasingly blended vocals, for another. 

There are fewer extended solo lead vocal turns by any of the band members and more choral effects or interplay between the men and women in the group. If you're of a certain age, you might start thinking of them as an indie-rock Mamas and the Papas, or... 'I'll take that,' Newman says, 'but the Fifth Dimension is always the one we're going for, way more than the Mamas and the Papas! I hesitate to throw out catchphrases that might be repeated back to me a thousand times, but at the beginning of this record, there was some thinking that we wanted it to be like a Krautrock Fifth Dimension. 

Of course, our mutated idea of what Krautrock is probably doesn't sound like Krautrock at all. But we were thinking: Let s try and rock in a different way.'


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