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Most Popular Featured Releases

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 July 2020

Capitol B003132902
Format: CD

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Radiohead creates such complex webs of sound assembled from so many disparate elements and instruments that it can be hard to figure out the division of labor on any given recording. Bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Philip Selway have their assigned duties, but Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood each play a barrage of keyboards, and even their guitars are heavily processed. Ed O’Brien is primarily a guitarist, but also relies on effects to transform his guitar into other sounds.

Read more: EOB: "Earth"

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 June 2020

ATO AT00520
Format: CD

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Like their labelmates My Morning Jacket, the Oklahoma band Other Lives defies easy categorization. They’re less guitar-driven than Jacket, though even that band doesn’t hesitate to use other instruments to expand their musical palette. Other Lives arranges many of their songs for strings, and shows an affection for a broad range of music that includes 1960s orchestral pop and Ennio Morricone’s film scores. The result is stylistically fluid and sounds, at its best, as unique as it does familiar.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 June 2020

Epic
Format: 16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC download (CD and LP editions to be released July 17, 2020)

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“I Want You to Love Me,” the first song on Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, begins with a stuttering Casio drum machine and firmly struck bass notes. Apple enters with piano arpeggios that shift between major and minor, and sings in a firm, almost angry voice. As the track gathers in force and intensity, her voice roughens and grows more defiant, occasionally even going off pitch. The song is about the ebb and flow of love and sex, the frustrations that grow out of them, and the strength needed to get past those frustrations. When Amy Aileen Wood’s drums enter halfway through, they sound like literal gunshots. Apple ends the song on a high note that becomes a strange howl sounding very much like Yoko Ono.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 May 2020

Jagjaguwar JAG361
Format: CD

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The rock quartet Nap Eyes, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, has been around since 2011 and released their first album, Whine of the Mystic, in 2014. Singer Nigel Chapman owes something to Lou Reed, both in his vocal phrasing and in the sophistication of his lyrics, and Nap Eyes has a knack for setting those words to surprising chord changes and ear-catching melodies, all with a garage-rock sensibility. In short, this band writes good songs.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 May 2020

Opal Music/Deutsche Grammophon 0289 483 7771 8
Format: 24-bit/44.1kHz FLAC download

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Roger Eno, the younger brother of the far-better-known Brian Eno, has built his own impressive reputation as a composer and instrumentalist. Roger’s first recording, Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks (1983), was a collaboration with Brian and Daniel Lanois. Since then Roger has recorded some 20 albums of his own and has worked with other musicians, including Bill Nelson, of Be Bop Deluxe, and Kate St. John, of Dream Academy. Brian has collaborated on some of these, including the album with St. John, The Familiar (1992); and on 18 Keyboard Studies by Hans Friedrich Micheelsen (2002), which he produced.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 April 2020

Fantasy FAN00619
Format: CD

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In his liner note for American Standard, James Taylor describes the album as “a collection of guitar pieces, with solos and support from my regular family of players.” Taylor has often covered tunes by songwriters -- including Chuck Berry, Holland-Dozier-Holland, and Otis Blackwell -- whose work is part of the great tradition of American songcraft. The 14 tunes on American Standard are all from the Great American Songbook, all but one of them pre-dating rock’n’roll -- as Taylor writes, “These are songs I’ve always known.”

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 April 2020

ECM 2680 (B0031718-02)
Format: CD

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When I received Avishai Cohen’s new album, Big Vicious, and saw that he plays on it trumpet, effects, and synthesizer, I was confused. I’ve written about the jazz double bassist Avishai Cohen, who, it turns out, has not switched to all those other instruments. This world contains at least two Avishai Cohens who are jazz musicians from Israel.

Read more: Avishai Cohen: "Big Vicious"

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 March 2020

Ground Up GUCD 57560 10
Format: CD

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I first heard the psychedelic power-pop quartet the Grip Weeds in 2007, when I reviewed a reissue of their 1994 album, House of Vibes. I instantly became a fan, and reviewed more of their albums, including Infinite Soul: The Best of the Grip Weeds, released on Steve Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. I’ve caught them live in their New Jersey stomping grounds, where they delivered powerfully searing shows. Their music captures the spirit of late-1960s AM radio, when psychedelia and garage rock were transforming pop music, while managing to sound fresh and innovative.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 March 2020

Trouble in Mind TIM151
Format: CD

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The French post-punk quintet En Attendant Ana (the name means While Awaiting Ana) debuted on record in 2016 with the 19-minute EP Songs from the Cave, an aggressive and somewhat noisy half-dozen songs, all sung in English, in which loud guitars and old-style keyboards are combined with Margaux Bouchaudon’s sensitive, witty vocals. The EP’s DIY sound gave way in 2018 to Lost and Found, the group’s first full-length album. More polished and tuneful, Lost and Found still had an edge, and continued to find places for Camille Fréchou’s trumpet to add unusual and welcome textures.