New Release Round-Up 02-28-20
Caribou - Suddenly - Merge Records
In 2014, Dan Snaith aka Caribou released Our Love to overwhelming critical acclaim. Caribou returns now with his new studio album Suddenly, a warm, untamable, and constantly surprising record about family and the changes we go through as those relationships evolve. Most prominently, Suddenly refers to the moments of dramatic and unexpected change that occur at points in any life and within any family-universal themes that can catch you off guard and change your life in a heartbeat. Those dramatic moments are part of a slower process. These moments rear their heads, for good or bad, during the everyday flow of life. "There's a tension between those sudden things which blindside you and the more glacial, gradual day-to-day changes," he observes. "We are so caught up in the immediate-the details that require our attention every day-that we can be blind to the bigger forces shaping us. That's why so often when something drastic happens suddenly, it catalyzes all sorts of changes in our lives. Our perspective shifts." Suddenly is in the music, too. This is the most surprising and unpredictable Caribou album to date. Though it retains the trademark Caribou warmth and technicolor, this album is littered with swerves and left turns. "I wanted to balance the familiar-the sound that people associate with my music-against these moments of surprise," Snaith says. As his passion and joy in music-making remains as fresh as ever, Suddenly is the purest example of this yet.
The eighth album from hard-hitting rockers Five Finger Death Punch. The album was produced by Kevin Churko, the Canadian record producer/engineer and songwriter who currently lives in Las Vegas, where he works out of his private studio, The Hideout Recording Studio. Includes "Inside Out".
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Soccer Mommy - color theory - Loma Vista
For Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, color theory confronts the ongoing mental health and familial trials that have long-plagued her, presenting listeners with an uncompromisingly honest self-portrait. The new album’s sonic landscape is vast and dexterous, with melodies that shimmer on the surface, but reveal an unsettling darkness with each listen.
As we age, we face obstacles that are beyond our control. Some forces are internal: insecurity, anxiety, fear. Some are external: the loss of loved ones, an unjust system and the fragility of time. Yet the mark of maturity is how you respond when you realize you’re not in control. Where do you find your resilience? This album is a reflection of us coming to terms with how to find our power in the face of an unfair world. These songs lead listeners past “where happy man searches, to a place only mad women know.” We question our purpose, our relationships, our faith. Trading the fears of our youth for the dread that rages within us as mature women. With Saturn Return, our hope is that women can feel less alone in their journey through the modern world. We need each other more than we ever have; the less competition and the more inclusiveness and understanding, the better. We are southern women in the 21st century, convicted by our beliefs.
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Real Estate - The Main Thing - Domino
Over the last decade, Real Estate have crafted warm yet meticulous pop-minded music, specializing in soaring melodies that are sentimentally evocative and unmistakably their own. The Main Thing dives further into the musical dichotomies they're known for'lilting, bright guitar lines set against emotionally nuanced lyrics, complex arrangements conveyed breezily. What emerges is a superlative collection of interrogative songs as full of depth, strangeness and contradictions as they are lifting hooks.
Third Man Records had the pleasure of hosting the inimitable Broken Social Scene, carefully absorbing and recording their magnetic and unforgettable live set on the Blue Room stage. Epic, panoramic, and intimate all at the same time, the legendary Toronto collective Broken Social Scene began as an ebbing and flowing collective of artists in the late 90s, collaborating to create a distinct strand of indie rock that is both perplexingly maximal and straight-up catchy. The band kicked off the set with emotive fan favorite “Cause = Time”, then transitioning into “Stay Happy,” the lead track from 2017’s Hug of Thunder, in all it’s hypnotic, horn-driven grandeur. Then, on the flip side, the album’s 2-song B-side wraps with the slow-build anthem “It’s All Gonna Break,” a song once described as “Bob Seger on acid.” Really, how else would you want a show to close? Their live set was captured, mixed and mastered in real time via the world’s only live venue and direct-to-acetate lathe cutting studio. With the release of this Live At Third Man Records album, Third Man is very excited to invite all to be a part of this special experience, Broken Social Scene’s first commercially available live album, in the only venue in the world where performance, art and tactile transcription methodologies converge.
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For more information on these and other releases out this week, check out our New Releases charts by week section.