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New edition of this very rare deep spiritual jazz album first released as a private-press album in 1970 on flautist Lloyd McNeill's own Asha Record label in Washington, DC. McNeill is an African-American flautist, painter, poet, and photographer born in Washington, D.C., in 1935. His multi-disciplinary creative life led to encounters and friendships with Nina Simone, Picasso, Eric Dolphy, Nana Vasconceles and other legendary cultural figures. McNeill's hypnotic Washington Suite was originally commissioned as a piece of music for the Capital Ballet Company, in Washington, DC. 

1. Home Rule
2. Just 71% Moor
3. 2504 Cliffbourne Pl.
4. Fountain In The Circle
5. City Tryptych
6. Fountain In The Circle

Kelela's debut album, Take Me Apart emerges as an epic portrait of an artist spanning the past and future of R&B. In her hands, however, the genre knows no boundaries and so Take Me Apart exists as an absolutely singular and fearless addition to a canon of recent classics. From her very earliest work, honesty and vulnerability have been cornerstones of Kelela's art - even when clad in the armor of the avant-garde electronics she so deftly inhabits - and Take Me Apart sees her double down on both the emotional intensity and resonance of her message as well as the sonic seeking she is renowned for.

The timeless, zero-gravity ballad "Better" sees Kelela at her most unadorned - baring her soul to a nameless other over subtly transforming piano and synth textures while first single "LMK" is all staggering club swagger that manages to span the past 20 years of innovative R&B while still exploring another dimension of possibilities. These songs typify the melding of classic song-craft and inventive production approach at the album's core, but it's here where things take yet another exhilarating turn. "Truth or Dare" has the brittle snap and vocal twists of a Neptunes track while "Blue Light" sees Kelela weld her sweeping pleas to the warped sonic palette of grime, pointing the way forward to a possible future of cybernetic soul.

Now we are swept into the slipstream of a pair of breathtaking Arca collaborations in "On And On" and the otherworldly grandeur of "Turn To Dust," which conjures images of the powerful and iconic diva of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element; and it's a short trip to the unforgettable pneumatic gospel of album closer "Altadena," a perfect uroboros link back to "Frontline" to begin the saga all over again. At this point you're left with the feeling that this trip through Take Me Apart is one you'll be making many more times.

1. Frontline
2. Waitin
3. Take Me Apart
4. Enough
5. Jupiter
6. Better
7. LMK
8. Truth Or Dare
9. S.O.S.
10. Blue Light
11. On and On
12. Turn To Dust
13. Bluff
14. Altadena

This is Bill Evans' first trio date under his own name for Verve, and the deep communication he maintains throughout with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, two brilliant rhythm players, is sublime. All of the songs are standards of one for or another, but Evans and Co. find a depth to them that's astonishing. Bill uses the spaces between phrases in a way that broadens and deepens the emotional content. Two outstanding examples of Bill's interpretive magic here are the novelty numbers "Little Lulu" and "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," which both acquire a warmth, scope of imagery and sardonic touch that enlivens their musical essence like never before. This all-analog 180g vinyl LP reissue was mastered from the original analog tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, pressed at QRP, and comes housed in a Stoughton tip-on gatefold jacket.

Tracks

1. Little Lulu
2. A Sleeping Bee
3. Always
4. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
5. I'll See You Again
6. For Heaven's Sake
7. Dancing In The Dark
8. Everything Happens To Me

Vinyl LP pressing. Eliza Noble and Jennifer Skillman are Eli & Fur: the British live act, singer-songwriter and producer duo whose career together stretches back for nearly a decade. Having formed a close bond in their teens born out of their unwavering passion for music in all it's guises, their careers as DJs, songwriters, vocalists and producers has taken them around the globe as touring musicians and seen them grace the stages of the biggest festivals in the world including Coachella, Tomorrowland and Glastonbury.

Norwegian artist and writer Jenny Hval has developed her distinct take on intimate sound since the release of her debut album in 2006. For her last two solo albums, 2013's Innocence Is Kinky and 2015's Apocalypse, Girl, Hval's debut for Sacred Bones, she has received thoughtful and widespread international acclaim for her fascinating voice, singular delivery and markedly non-traditional arrangements which incorporate elements of poetry, prose writing, performance art, and film.

The New York Times defines her writing as "taking a scalpel to the subjects of gender politics and sexuality." Hval has eloquently brought to light issues of both male and female gaze, which for years had been swept under the rug and/or denied all together. Apocalypse, Girl landed on numerous year-end lists with leading compelling writers everywhere to grapple with the age-old, yet previously unspoken, question: What is Soft Dick Rock?

After touring for a year and earning her second Nordic Prize nomination, as any perfectionist would, Hval immediately went back into the studio to continue her work with acumen noise producer Lasse Marhaug, with whom she co-produces here on Blood Bitch. Her new effort is in many respects a complete 180° from her last in subject matter, execution and production. It is her most focused, but the lens is filtered through a gaze which the viewer least expects.

1. Ritual Awakening
2. Female Vampire
3. In the Red
4. Conceptual Romance
5. Untamed Region
6. The Great Undressing
7. Period Piece
8. The Plague
9. Secret Touch
10. Lorna

Vinyl LP pressing. 2010 release from the Punk Rock survivors. Bad Religion are celebrating three decades of influential, thought provoking and groundbreaking Punk Rock with the Dissent of Man, their 15th studio album overall. The result is one of the band's most forward thinking and musically varied albums ever.

• Tracks
• Credits

Completely up to task in following up their kitschy debut, the B-52's step everything up a notch on their ceaselessly fun 1980 sophomore album Wild Planet: songwriting, humor, melodies, hooks, and group interplay. Wild Planet also finds the band embracing stronger psychedelic accents that seamlessly mesh with its lava-lamp colors and textures.

Rollicking, rousing, and riotous, Wild Planet soars on vocal efforts put forth by the delightfully campy chanteuses Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, whose innocent girly tonalities wonderfully match up with Fred Schneider's effeminate deliveries and manic presentations. Add in Ricky Wilson's propulsive beach-bound guitar riffs, random squealing synthesizers, and a surfeit of danceable rhythms, and you have nothing less than a '80s masterpiece that, due to its optimistic vibes and buoyant grooves, only gets better with time.

As for clever humor and quirky character? Everywhere! Mentions of an icebox, fruit punch, and surprise greetings kick off the defining "Party Out of Bounds" while "Private Idaho" is an instant mix-tape essential, sent up with declamatory refrains and insouciant beats. 

1. Party out of Bounds
2. Dirty Back Road
3. Runnin' Around
4. Give Me Back My Man
5. Private Idaho
6. Devil in My Car
7. Quiche Lorraine
8. Strobe Light
9. 53 Miles West of Venus

Ska-punk pioneers The Mighty Mighty BossToneS deliver their eleventh studio record When God Was Great. Co-produced by longtime collaborator Ted Hutt (The Gaslight Anthem, Dropkick Murphys) and Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong (Transplants, Jimmy Cliff), When God Was Great is the culmination of their extensive and all-embracing career and sees the band bringing back friends, tourmates, and bandmates from the past for a sonic celebration that stresses the power of perseverance and human connection during tumultuous times. The album features 15-tracks that initially arose out of a collective sense of loss.

"We were lightly writing songs before the insanity without any sort of timeline in mind. All of a sudden, the world changed and benchmark events in a very long career that we were looking forward to, such as playing with the Madness at the Greek Theatre, were taken away from us," explains frontman Dicky Barrett. "With all of this time on our hands, we started writing at a quickened pace and we were really inspired. As grim as everything around us was in the outside world, this was the most fun we ever had making a record."

LP1

1. Decide
2. Move
3. I Don't Believe In Anything
4. Certain Things
5. Bruised
6. Lonely Boy
7. The Killing of Georgie (Part III)
8. You Had To Be There
9. When God Was Great

LP2

1. What It Takes
2. Long As I Can See the Light
3. The Truth Hurts
4. It Went Well
5. I Don't Want To Be You
6. The Final Parade

Mesmeric and kaleidoscopic, shimmering with electrified unease, Show Me How You Disappear is both an exercise in self-forgiveness and an eventual understanding of unresolved trauma. Jilian Medford's third record as Ian Sweet unfolds at an acute juncture in her life, charting from a mental health crisis to an intensive healing process and what comes after. How do you control the thoughts that control you? What does it mean to get better? What does it mean to have a relationship with yourself?

Recorded with Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Empress Of) and Andy Seltzer (Maggie Rogers), among others, Medford approached this album as a curator. She handpicked the producers that fit each song, which explains the range and experimentation showcased. Medford then recruited Chris Coady to mix and tie everything together into one cohesive piece. Dizzying and enthralling, Show Me How You Disappear is the sound of someone coming apart and putting themselves back together – the moment an old mantra, repeated into the mirror time and time again, finally clicks. To look at your reflection, and finally feel seen.

1. My Favorite Cloud
2. Drink The Lake
3. Sword
4. Dirt
5. Sing Till I Cry
6. Dumb Driver
7. Get Better
8. Power
9. Show Me How You Disappear
10. I See Everything

Hot Buttered Soul sounds exactly as Isaac Hayes named it. The lush arrangements featuring strings and horns were recorded at United Sound Studios in Detroit, home of Motown Records, and had been arranged by Johnny Allen, who had arranged music for The Temptations, Stevie Wonder and The Supremes, and who would later do the arrangements on the soundtrack to Shaft, for which he won a Grammy. The album's opening track, a cover of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic "Walk on By," was like nothing that had ever been heard before in popular music. Hayes' vocals take more than two minutes to appear. Craft Recordings’ 180g vinyl LP makes the wait even more worthwhile and sounds and looks incredible. Remastered from the original analog tapes by engineer Dave Cooley, it also features a replica old-school style tip-on jacket for exquisite packaging. 

Hayes, along with keyboardist Marvell Thomas and The Bar-Keys (Willie Hall, drums; James Alexander, bass; Michael Toles, guitar), recorded the basic tracks for the 1969 set at Ardent Studios in Memphis. Together, they produced the ultimate funk and soul stew to mix with the Detroit strings and horns. "Walk On By" alone runs for 12-minutes, and when it's over there's a sense of having been overwhelmed, but in the nicest way possible. It is so different from Dionne Warwick's original that it stands alone as a definitive reading of this classic number. 

The chart-topping album's other standout track is the 18-minute, LP-side-filling "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," a song that had originally been a hit for Glen Campbell. Hayes speaks the intro, which runs for nearly nine minutes, and when he starts to sing, the song develops into an amazing musical experience. He at once strips it bare and rebuilds it into something that defies definition. The coda on "Phoenix" is just awesome as its intro and the album is worth the price of admission for this track alone. The other two numbers on the record are slightly more traditional, with "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" being a funkyfied track that owes something to the kind of step-change music that was beginning to come from Blue Note Records while "One Woman" is the kind of Southern soul ballad that could only have come from Memphis.

1. Walk On By
2. Hyberbolicsyllabicsequedalymistic
3. One Woman
4. By The Time I Get To Phoenix

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. Originally released in 1981, now remastered and cut at revelatory Half-Speed at Abbey Road Studios from vinyl specific original tape transfers designed to get the very best possible sound from the format. This album features the singles 'Start Me Up', 'Waiting On A Friend' and 'Hang Fire'.

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Start Me Up
• 2 Hang Fire
• 3 Slave
• 4 Little T&A
• 5 Black Limousine
• 6 Neighbours
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Worried About You
• 2 Tops
• 3 Heaven
• 4 No Use in Crying
• 5 Waiting on a Friend

Double vinyl LP pressing including digital download. 2019 release from the alt-rock band. Widow's Weeds, produced by Butch Vig, is the fifth studio album from Silversun Pickups. For their first studio album since 2015, these L.A. alt-rockers teamed with Vig to create a lean, driving sound that's still steeped in sweeping drama and stark dynamic shifts. The lead single "It Doesn't Matter Why" joins "Neon Wound," "Don't Know Yet," "Bag of Bones," "Straw Man," the title track and more.

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Neon Wound
• 2 It Doesn't Matter Why
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Freakazoid
• 2 Don't Know Yet
• 3 Straw Man
• - Disc 3 -
• 1 Bag of Bones
• 2 Widow's Weeds
• 3 Songbirds
• - Disc 4 -
• 1 Simpatico
• 2 We Are Chameleons

Visceral, musically cinematic, otherworldly but strangely familiar and a bit unsettling, welcome to Pixies' brand new studio album, Beneath the Eyrie, where tales of witches, Daniel Boone, misfits and other characters fit utterly into the band's inherent weirdness. Boasting twelve new boundary pushing songs, the album was produced by Grammy-nominated Tom Dalgety (Ghost, Royal Blood) and recorded in December 2018 at Dreamland Recordings near Woodstock, NY. Drummer David Lovering spotted an eagles nest (or eyrie) right above the studio hence the title.

Tracks

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 In the Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain
• 2 Graveyard Hill
• 3 Catfish Kate
• 4 This Is My Fate
• 5 Ready for Love
• 6 Silver Bullet
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Long Rider
• 2 Los Surfers Muertos
• 3 St. Nazaire
• 4 Bird of Prey
• 5 Daniel Boone
• 6 Death Horizon

The 1975 follow-up 2016's I Like it When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It, with their third album, A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships, which is introduced by the previously released singles "Give Yourself A Try," "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME" and "It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)." Singer Matty Healy on the new 15-track record to NME: "Our first three albums are the story of a person; it's always kind of been my story. It spanned adolescence to maturity, success and trying to mediate the two, and the third one is where we are now." He ambitiously adds to Uproxx: "If you look at third albums, [Radiohead's] OK Computer or [The Smiths'] The Queen Is Dead, that's what we need to do. I want a legacy. I want people to look back and think our records were the most important pop records that a band put out in this decade." A companion LP tentatively titled Notes on a Conditional Form will follow in 2019.

Tracks

LP1

1. The 1975
2. Give Yourself A Try
3. TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME
4. How To Draw / Petrichor
5. Love It If We Made It
6. Be My Mistake
7. Sincerity Is Scary
8. I Like America & America Likes Me

LP2

1. The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme
2. Inside Your Mind
3. It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)
4. Surrounded By Heads And Bodies
5. Mine
6. I Couldn't Be More In Love
7. I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)

1981's October saw U2 rising not only to the usual challenges of proving that you're more than a one-album wonder, but to the specific pressure of creating new work as the clock ticked ever louder. Where Boy had only brushed against a mainstream audience in the UK, peaking at No. 52, October reached No. 11. "Fire" was the opening shot, and it made some noise. The song was their first hit single at home, reaching the Top 5 in Ireland, and gave U2 their first UK Top 40 entry. Next came "Gloria," the second single and the opening track. The song's Latin chorus foretold an LP with strong religious themes, but also with a developing sense of the band's songwriting maturity and instrumental dexterity. The innate percussive tension of "I Threw A Brick Through A Window" and urgency of "Rejoice" were offset by the measured, near-instrumental "Scarlet" and the affecting piano balladry of "October" itself.

1. Gloria
2. I Fall Down
3. I Threw A Brick Through A Window
4. Rejoice
5. Fire
6. Tomorrow
7. October
8. With A Shout
9. Stranger In A Strange Land
10. Scarlet
11. Is That All?

Track Listings

No Doubt built their reputation the old-fashioned way: gigging relentlessly in and around LA where they frequently turned in high-octane sets at venues such as The Whisky A-Go-Go, Fender's Grand Ballroom and The Roxy, where they could often be found propping up bills for luminaries such as Fishbone and fellow SoCal ska-popsters The Untouchables. Thanks to Gwen Stefani's increasingly alluring stage presence and the band's energetic set of hooky, ska-flavored punk-pop songs, record companies began to take note and, in 1990, No Doubt landed a multi-album deal with the newly created Interscope imprint.

Though they'd pulled off a coup signing with the upwardly mobile and highly respected label, mainstream success initially eluded No Doubt. Their self-titled debut LP was released in 1992, but while it sold a decent number of copies, it appeared at a time when grunge was still in vogue and the industry was reeling from the shockwaves emanating from Seattle. No Doubt's bright, horn-laden ska-pop was anathema at a time when bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam were shifting serious units; they doggedly toured the US in support of their self-titled debut, No Doubt struggled to attract a sizeable audience outside of their Southern Californian stomping ground.

Ostensibly their first official single, "Trapped In A Box" was admittedly too out there for the radio of the time. It wasn't aggressively promoted and largely fell upon deaf ears in a world enthralled with an "alternative revolution" mainly centered on male aggression. That changed soon enough though. The horn section and quasi-ska rhythms remain inspired by early Madness/Fishbone influences, while the emerging sense of flow and pop bounce makes the track a benchmark for the time and a notable milestone today.

1. BND
2. Let's Get Back
3. Ache
4. Get On The Ball
5. Move On
6. Sad For Me
7. Doormat
8. Big City Train
9. Trapped In A Box
10. Sometimes
11. Sinking
12. A Little Something Refreshing
13. Paulina
14. Brand New Day