PlayARt - Bring Albums to Life

On Slothrust’s latest album, bandleader Leah Wellbaum pushed herself to try and understand her own spirituality on a deeper level, putting a lens on the core wound of the human experience, the idea that we’re alone. With Parallel Timeline , Wellbaum explores the feeling of being trapped inside her own consciousness while simultaneously searching for a meaningful connection to the universe, and all the mysteries it contains.

Hailed upon its release last year as "vital and comfortable taking new chances” (Rolling Stone) and “cheery, resilient, forever looking forward” (The New Yorker), Paul McCartney’s McCartney III, which topped album charts across the world, is now literally moving into the future in the form of McCartney III Imagined.  Personally curated by Paul, McCartney III Imagined features an A-List assortment of friends, fans and brand new acquaintances, each covering and/or reimagining their favorite McCartney III moments in their own signature styles. The result is a kaleidoscopic reinterpretation of an album Rolling Stone accurately tagged “an inspiration to us all”—one that serves as an extension of the instantly beloved McCartney III while standing on its own as brilliant and adventurous milestone in the McCartney discography.

Formed in L.A.’s South Bay in 1978, DESCENDENTS began as a power trio featuring bassist Tony Lombardo, drummer Bill Stevenson, and guitarist Frank Navetta (d. 2008). The band re- cruited vocalist Milo Aukerman in 1980 and began establishing themselves as major players in the Southern California Punk movement. Over the years, the band has sustained a potent chemistry and shared vision, further cementing them as punk legends.

In 2002, the original four-piece lineup — Frank Navetta, Tony Lombardo, Bill Stevenson, and Milo Aukerman — got back into the studio to finally record their first-ever songs. The songs were written by the band from 1977 through 1980, before recording the Fat EP (1981) and the Milo Goes to College LP (1982). Put simply, this is the DESCENDENTS’ earliest material, represent- ing a “lost” pre-MGTC album. Most of these songs have not been heard—until now.

Every element of DESCENDENTS’ genre-creating sound is here: Stevenson’s hyper-caffeinated surf-beats, Lombardo’s intrep- id bass, Navetta’s crunching attack, Aukerman’s impassioned, infinitely relatable singing—and all those great melodies and harmonies.

Merlot Wave Vinyl. Guccihighwaters is the artistic persona of 21 year -old, artist/producer, Morgan Murphy. Since his debut single in 2017, Murphy has exploded in the cloud rap community and his music has been streamed over 200 Million times. His new album, joke's on you, is his debut for Epitaph Records and will be his first available on vinyl. Guccihighwaters is the keystone to the label's dedication to this sound that we feel is the future of Alternative music. Spending his formative years growing up in rural Ireland, Murphy was shy and when his family returned to their native New York, that shy 15 year-old turned to home recording/bedroom production and starting making his own beats. He began to indulge his musical vision by exploring community on the internet, finding a place to belong that he had not found prior. As a singer, Murphy was a bit of an outsider to the SoundCloud rap world he'd begun to orbit. "I was grouped in because of the time and place and platform," he says. His use of original piano with a classic touch and his angelic singing gave him an original voice within the scene's crowded world. Even if he wanted to blend in, he didn't know how. With Jokes On You, he says, "basically my goal was to make it sound like me. " Some members of that community, like Powfu and nothing, nowhere, feature on the album, adding their voices to Murphy's signature sound. Guccihighwaters is a top digital artist in the Indie Pop/Cloud Rapspace, releasing his music on vinyl for the first time. Album features include lo-fi sensation powfu , top emo rapper Convolk and popular alt/hip hop artist, nothing, nowhere. For Fans of powfu, Lil Peep, nothing, nowhere and Lund

Sucker Supreme is the third album from Rosie Tucker, and first for Epitaph Records. It is a coming of age album that aches with self-discovery, self-definition, and self-redefinition. Sucker Supreme is also just the right follow-up to where their last album, 2019’s Never Not Never Not Never Not, left off: still playfully observed, still sneakily political, still indebted to folk singers of the past – but also much, much bigger, brighter, louder and noisier than anything Tucker has dared before. It delivers mightily on an ambitious M.O.: to be relentlessly catchy and muscular and noisy but also beautiful; be achingly sad and searching, but never too far away from funny, either; and to spotlight Tucker’s empathetic, yearning vocals on top of it all. It takes a unique group of people to make an album that leaps out of the speakers at you like this one. Sucker Supreme is the first record made by Tucker’s current touring band: drummer Jessy Reed, guitarist Jess Kallen, and bassist Wolfy, who also occupied the producer’s chair. It’s a group of people as eager to share their long-dead folk music heroes as they are to pay homage to their still-kicking pop-punk heartthrobs.

Mammoth WVH is the debut, self-titled album of Mammoth WVH – the band created by Wolfgang Van Halen. This collection includes the chart topping new single, "Distance” plus “Don’t Back Down,” “Epiphany,” “Mammoth” and more.

At the beginning of 2015, Wolf broke ground on what would become Mammoth WVH with producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette [Alter Bridge, Slash] behind the board. Wolf began to embrace his voice, inspired by everyone from his father, to bands like AC/DC, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, TOOL, and Jimmy Eat World. In addition to writing and singing every song on the self-title debut album, remarkably Wolfgang plays every instrument.

“The name Mammoth is really special to me.” says Wolf. “Not only was it the name of Van Halen before it became Van Halen, but my father was also the lead singer. Ever since my dad told me this, I always thought that when I grew up, I’d call my own band Mammoth, because I loved the name so much.”

Big Mess marks Elfman’s first solo collection in more than thirty years, but it’s no return to form. Clocking in at 18 tracks, the sprawling, ambitious double album finds the Grammy and Emmy Award-winning composer breaking bold new ground as both a writer and a performer, drawing on a dystopian palette of distorted electric guitars, industrial synthesizers and orchestra in an effort to exorcise the demons brought about by four years of creeping fascism and civil rot.
The songs here call to mind everything from Nine Inch Nails, to David Bowie to XTC at times, balancing dense, harmonically complex arrangements with biting, acerbic wit as they reckon with the chaos and confusion of the modern world. Elfman wrote almost all of the record during quarantine, and while the anger, frustration, and isolation of it all is palpable in his delivery, Big Mess is about more than simply blowing off steam. In making the space to truly sit with his emotions and write without limitations, Elfman achieved a kind of artistic liberation on the record that had been eluding him for decades, rediscovering his voice and reinventing himself all at once in the process.
Born and raised in southern California, Elfman began his career as part of a surrealist, avant-garde musical theater troupe known as The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo. The group would eventually morph into the critically acclaimed rock band Oingo Boingo, whose high-energy performances and genre-bending sound garnered them a fanatically devoted cult following in the 1980s and ’90s. Among the group’s early fans was fledgling director Tim Burton and Paul Reubens (aka Pee-wee Herman), who enlisted Elfman to score their first feature film, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The collaboration would prove to be the start of a long and fruitful partnership for Elfman and Burton, with Elfman going on to score a string of iconic Burton features like Batman, Beetlejuice, Big Fish, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. To date, Elfman has scored more than 100 films.

"Listening to the story of Canadian duo cleopatrick is a bit like hearing the plot of the best, most righteously validating coming-of-age film never made. Two friends meet aged four in Hicksville, Nowheretown (real name: Cobourg, Ontario, population 19,000), grow up completely inseparable, form a band and, against numerous obstacles, blossom into a genuine, global underground sensation. There are heroes and villains, highs and lows and, crucially, some of the most poetic plot twists that could seem almost too perfect, were they not completely true.

Take the story of 2017 breakthrough track ‘hometown’ for example. “It’s one of the craziest, most ironic things that’s ever happened,” begins vocalist and guitarist Luke Gruntz. “I was going to college because I was too scared to put all my chips in the band pile, and that’s what ‘hometown’ is about: it’s a song about feeling like we’re doing all this stuff and we’re working so hard and we’re just never going to be heard. It’s literally a song about people probably never hearing our songs. And then by some act of the universe, that song ended up unlocking all the doors for us.”

Today, cleopatrick has logged 77 million streams and counting - all from an increasingly dedicated fanbase who’ve found the duo, completed by drummer Ian Fraser, their own way: no major label, no big budget, just two best pals knuckling down, cementing a unique sonic alchemy and filling a space of honest, empathetic yet undeniably heavy-hitting rock music that they’d been searching for themselves for years. Between multiple sold out tours in Canada, the US and the UK/EU and appearances at Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Reading/Leeds, the pair have been crafting BUMMER: a debut album that sees cleopatrick harness all the magic they’ve been brewing over their two-decade friendship and funnel it into a record that aims to reinvigorate the rock landscape from the ground up. Taking the ethos of their New Rock Mafia collective - a group of friends and fellow bands, united in making a more inclusive, equality-driven space in rock music - and imbuing it with the sonic ambition and ferocity of a record designed to be played hard and loud, it’s an album about two friends, who’ve been with each other since the formative first steps that adorn ‘BUMMER’’s heartwarming cover image and made something that’s a testament to the power of sticking to your guns."

Moby’s eclectic career has cast him in the roles of electronic dance music pioneer, singer and songwriter, producer, activist, and restaurateur, but for his latest venture he presents his music in a whole new light.

Together with Deutsche Grammophon, he is releasing an album of his best known tracks in stunning new arrangements for classical instruments – featuring Moby himself and a stellar lineup of collaborators from across the musical spectrum.

Always a daring and imaginative thinker, Moby’s first classical collaboration happened in October 2018, when he performed a selection of his songs alongside the LA Phil and conductor and friend Gustavo Dudamel. This was the inspiration for the current project, which features not only full orchestral versions but new electronic arrangements, as well as sophisticated smaller-scale acoustic interpretations.

The 14-track album includes classic Moby songs like “Porcelain”, “Why Does My Heart”, and “Extreme Ways” in innovative new versions, featuring eye-catching collaborations including both Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Víkingur Ólafsson on “Porcelain”; Gregory Porter and Amythyst Kiah on “Natural Blues”; and Kris Kristofferson as well as original vocalist Mark Lanegan on “The Lonely Night”. The album concludes with a cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes”.

Throughout their career, Blackberry Smoke has embodied Georgia’s rich musical legacy, honoring the people, places and sounds of their home state. As the band celebrates their 20th anniversary this year, their reverence for Georgia has only deepened.

On their latest album, You Hear Georgia, the follow-up to 2018’s critically acclaimed Find a Light, Blackberry Smoke is further celebrating these roots with 10 new songs that feel like Georgia, accented by the addition of Grammy-winning producer and fellow Georgia-native, Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile). “Dave and I had spoken for the last few years about making a record,” Starr says. “Finally, it worked out, our schedule and his schedule, and we said, yes—let’s make a record.”

Blackberry Smoke worked quickly, spending just 10 days at Nashville’s famed RCA Studio A, Cobb’s home base since 2016. The band recorded live on the floor, giving You Hear Georgia a crisp, outgoing feel. Like other Blackberry Smoke efforts, this album leans into well-crafted Southern rock driven by jagged guitar riffs and rich instrumentation, as the band layers on rollicking piano (“Live It Down”), funky grooves (“Hey Delilah”), and introspective acoustic sounds (the stripped-down, folk-leaning “Old Enough to Know”).

The title song, “You Hear Georgia” features a narrator who’s underestimated because of outward appearances and misguided stereotypes, which is a theme of Starr’s lyrics this time around, particularly as it relates to the band’s Southern roots. “Lyrically, the song is about the South being misunderstood. It’s obviously a rough and tumble world, and there’s a lot of bad people. But there’s a lot of good people too. It started with the idea of how people might have a preconceived opinion of you because of a thick Southern accent, then expanded into the reality of how some people just seem to have such a hard time getting along, thanks to political or religious views, or simply what part of the country you come from.”

Many of You Hear Georgia’s songs describe characters that are restless and prone to seeking out a change of scenery, in hopes of finding a place where they belong. Against cinematic backdrops with vivid details, it’s easy to empathize with these protagonists as they share pearls of wisdom (“Don’t ever trust a grown man with a nickname”) and exhibit deep self-awareness (“Anywhere’s better than staying here, with the ghosts running thru his mind”) along the way.

You Hear Georgia reinforces that the band members have come so far together because they also can rely on one another for support and creative direction, no matter what the circumstances.

Lord Huron presents their fourth studio album, Long Lost. The band has often tried to uncover the past of their studio, Whispering Pines, without much success. Instead, they decided to imagine what has gone on in the studio, who has passed through, and that is how Long Lost was created. Featuring the singles “Not Dead Yet,” “Mine Forever,” “I Lied” and “Love Me Like You Used To.”

LP Packaging:  Opaque Custard/Blue mixed color vinyl; gatefold jacket

In the midst of a global pandemic, John Hiatt walked into Historic RCA Studio B and opened up a lifetime full of leftover feelings. A half-century ago, Hiatt lived in a ratty, $15-a-week room on Nashville’s 16th Avenue, less than a mile away from the RCA and Columbia studios that were the heartbeat of what had come to be known as “Music Row.” In the ensuing 50 years, he went from a scuffling young buck to a celebrated grand master of song.

With Leftover Feelings, Hiatt teamed up with multi-grammy winning artist and producer, Jerry Douglas and his band, The Jerry Douglas Band. There’s no drummer, yet these grooves are deep and true. And while the up-tempo songs are, as ever, filled with delightful internal rhyme and sly aggression, the Jerry Douglas Band’s empathetic musicianship nudges Hiatt to performances that are startlingly vulnerable. 

In life, leftover feelings can remain unresolved, no matter how often explored. Explicated in a place of history, a place of comfort. A sacred place, if you believe the documentation of human expression to be a holy thing. Here then, with this album,  there is a meeting of bruised and triumphant American giants. Here are Hiatt and Douglas, creating the meant-to-be: Love songs and road songs, sly songs and hurt songs. Their songs, and now our songs.  Leftover feelings that edify and sustain.

On May 14, The Black Keys release their tenth studio album, Delta Kream, via Nonesuch Records. The record celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards that they have loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover. 

Sons of Kemet returns in 2021 with their new album Black To The Future, the follow up to 2018’s Mercury Prize nominated breakout release Your Queen Is A Reptile. This release finds the UK-based quartet at their most dynamic – showcasing harmonically elegant arrangements and compositions, coupled with fierce, driving material that will be familiar to initiated fans. This is their 4^th record, and 2^nd on impulse! This album features prominent UK vocalists and a strong emphasis on lush compositions and arrangements. Guest artists include Kojey Radical, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, Joshua Idehen, D Double E and is part of the impulse! records “impulse 60!” 2021 campaign

Alan Jackson's brand new studio album, Where Have You Gone, is his first country release in over 5 years. He's one of the best-selling music artists of all time with over 75M records sold worldwide. Alan is a member of the Grand Ole Opry & has topped the Billboard Country charts with 35 #1 Singles & 15 #1 Albums. He's received multiple awards including 2 Grammys, 16 CMAs, 17 ACMs. CD includes blow-in card for a FREE Download of the Bonus Track "That's The Way Love Goes (A Tribute Merle Haggard)"

While many know Bergman as one half of brother-sister duo Wild Belle, her forthcoming record is a cathartic collection rooted in the hopeful values and traditions of gospel that have helped her through the recent, tragic loss of her father. On the signing of Natalie Bergman, Third Man Records co-founder Ben Swank adds, “Natalie has a unique vision and has approached this album with a reverence for the sacred and healing nature of the history of this music, but has managed to update it in a way that is distinctly her own. We're very excited to welcome her to the Third Man label and family.” Alongside her brother Elliot, the island-influenced music Natalie Bergman made in Wild Belle has led to collaborations ranging from Major Lazer to Tom Tom Club, performances at Coachella and Lollapalooza, tours with Beck, Cage The Elephant, Toro y Moi and more. Helmed by her heavenly voice, Bergman’s solo album is steeped in mystic melodies and time-bending tones of psychedelic rock and soul. Showcasing her multi-instrumental and creative versatility, songs will be accompanied by visuals that blend her own abstract artwork, self-designed wardrobe and beyond. Stay tuned.

After two UK #1 albums, 2 million album sales and an array of international acclaim, you might’ve thought you knew what to expect from Royal Blood. Those preconceptions were shattered when they released ‘Trouble’s Coming’ last summer. Hitting a melting pot of fiery rock riffs and danceable beats, they delivered something fresh, unexpected and yet entirely in tune with what they’d forged their reputation with.

When Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher sat down to talk about making a new album, they knew what they wanted to achieve. It involved a conscious return to their roots, back when they had made music that was influenced by Daft Punk, Justice, and Philippe Zdar of Cassius. It also called for a similar back-to-basics approach to what had made their self-titled debut album so thrilling, visceral and original. 

“We sort of stumbled on this sound, and it was immediately fun to play,” recalls Kerr. “That’s what sparked the creativity on the new album, the chasing of that feeling. It’s weird, though - if you think back to ‘Figure it Out’, it kind of contains the embryo of this album. We realised that we didn’t have to completely destroy what we’d created so far; we just had to shift it, change it. On paper, it’s a small reinvention. But when you hear it, it sounds so fresh.”

Those traits pulsate throughout the new single and title track. Kerr’s spiralling bass riff casts an hypnotic allure as it grows in intensity, while his vocals switch at will between a raw rock roar and a soulful falsetto. It’s underpinned by Thatcher’s thundering beats, his taut rhythms infused with groove-laden hi-hats.

After setting the tone with ‘Trouble’s Coming’, the album opens in breathless, take-no-prisoners style with the fierce metallic grooves of ‘Who Needs Friends’ hitting an early visceral peak. Royal Blood further reference their fresh array of influences by deploying vocodered vocals on ‘Million & One’ before dynamically switching between the biggest contrasts of their sound with ‘Limbo’. Already a fan favourite having been a regular during the duo’s 2019 shows, ‘Boilermaker’ lives up to its reputation and is more than matched by ‘Mad Visions’, which evokes a hyper-aggressive Prince. It ends with a final surprise in the shape of the stark piano ballad ‘All We Have Is Now’, a vulnerable and revealing reminder to live in the moment.

This new approach manifested itself in the duo’s decision to produce the majority of ‘Typhoons’ themselves. ‘Boilermaker’ was produced by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, the two bands having first connected when Royal Blood supported them on a huge North American tour. Meanwhile, the multiple Grammy Award winner Paul Epworth produced ‘Who Needs Friends’ and contributed additional production to ‘Trouble’s Coming’.

Reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year Eric Church confirmed that new music is on the horizon: "I have [new] albums coming out in April. They came out of my 28 days in the mountains of North Carolina, where the songs were recorded and written. The collection is entitled Heart & Soul."

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Eric Church  - Heart

Finding Wildflowers (Alternate Versions)—the latest offering of Tom Petty music, curated with help from his loving family, bandmates and collaborators—will be released on April 16 via Warner Records. The tracks, which were previously released on the limited-edition Super Deluxe 9-LP version of 2020’s Wildflowers & All The Rest, will now be available on limited edition gold vinyl for indie retail, and CD.  A black vinyl release will follow on May 7.

Finding Wildflowers (Alternate Versions) features 16 studio recordings of alternate takes, long cuts and jam versions of Wildflowers songs as Tom, band members and co-producer Rick Rubin worked to finalize the album in 1994. The release offers fans further deep access into the writing and recording of Wildflowers, as well as realizing the full vision of the project as Tom had always intended.

The collection was produced by Tom’s longtime engineer and co-producer Ryan Ulyate who listened to 245 reels of 24-track tape, revealing Tom and his collaborators’ evolutionary process, and finding the group willing to do whatever it took to discover the essence and magic in the material.