Don’t Miss New Albums From Chromeo, Blackberry Smoke, High Hawks, Sean Ono Lennon & More
Steve Drizos and JamBase’s Nate Todd also have new albums out today, Friday, February 16.
By Team JamBase Feb 16, 2024 • 6:45 am PST

Each week Release Day Picks profiles new LPs and EPs Team JamBase will be checking out on release day Friday. This week we highlight new albums by Chromeo, Blackberry Smoke, The High Hawks, Sean Ono Lennon, Steve Drizos and Nate Todd. Read on for more insight into the records we have ready to spin.
Chromeo – Adult Contemporary
Canadian dance rock duo Chromeo — Montreal natives David “Dave 1” Macklovitch and Patrick “P-Thugg” Gemayel — released their sixth studio album, Adult Contemporary, through Chromeo Recordings/BMG. The new release which as the long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s Grammy-nominated, Head Over Heels. Calling back to their early days, the pair took a largely insular approach to creating the 14-track album, which showcases only one featured guest, longtime friend La Roux on the song “Replacements.” The duo did enlist New York house legend Morgan Geist for mixing, while French Touch icon Alex Gopher mastered the album. Promo materials described Adult Contemporary:
True to their trademark tone, [Adult Contemporary is] both unapologetically funny and disarmingly sincere, with nary a trace of irony. Musically, it’s safe to say the Funklordz have entered their sophisticated Steely Dan era, matching their signature synth-work with lush string arrangements, slick horn sections and live instrumentation throughout.
Blackberry Smoke – Be Right Here
Blackberry Smoke return with their latest studio album, Be Right Here, out now on Legged Records/Thirty Tigers. The Georgia-based Southern rockers — guitarist/frontman Charlie Starr, keyboardist Brandon Still, guitarist Paul Jackson, bassist Richard Turner and drummer Brit Turner — once again worked with acclaimed producer Dave Cobb for the follow-up to their 2021 LP, You Hear Georgia. Recording sessions for Be Right Here were held at Nashville’s storied RCA Studio A, as well as at Cobb’s Georgia Mae recording facility in Savannah, Georgia. While recording the album, Brit Turner was diagnosed with a type of brain tumor known as Glioblastoma. Among those with co-writing credits across the 10-song Be Right Here include Brent Cobb, Travis Meadows, Levi Lowrey and former Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson. Starr spoke about making Be Right Here, stating:
“In life, we all are faced with choices. Are we going to do good, or are we going to do bad? Are we going to love, or are we going to hate? We have a finite amount of time, each of us on this Earth. So probably want to make the best out of it instead of wasting time.
“We always track live together, but this time we had all our amps and drums and everything in the same room. It’s just as natural and as real as possible. The last album was very raw too, but with this one I remember different times I would say, ‘I think we should redo that,’ and Dave was like, ‘No, leave it that way. That way it’s magical.’
“[Georgia Mae is] down in the low country and beautiful. This album has a swagger to it, a deep in the pocket kind of feel. Those surroundings helped give the record that feel.”
The High Hawks – Mother Nature’s Show
Bluegrass supergroup The High Hawks released Mother Nature’s Show, their new studio album available today through LoHi Records. The band consists of Leftover Salmon guitarist Vince Herman, Railroad Earth fiddler/guitarist Tim Carbone, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades’ guitarist Adam Greuel, Hard Working Americans keyboardist Chad Staehly, and Great American Taxi drummer Will Trask and bassist Brian Adams. The High Hawks recorded the follow-up to their 2021 self-titled debut album at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, which is located near the west bank of the Mississippi River and the storied Highway 61. The band met at Pachyderm on New Year’s Day and tracked the 12 songs on Mother Nature’s Show during the first week of the year. Herman wrote and sang lead on four songs on Mother Nature’s Show. Carbone wrote and sang two songs, as did Staehly. Greuel also wrote and sang lead on four songs, including the lead single, “Diamond Sky.” Soon it became apparent that the tracklist was a “musical travelogue” heading south down Highway 61 and the Mississippi from Minnesota to St. Louis, to Memphis and New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta.
“It was total happenstance,” Herman revealed. “As albums often do, you find an unconscious thread in them.”
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Sean Ono Lennon – Asterisms
Asterisms is a new instrumental project helmed by multi-instrumentalist , which was released today on Tzadik, the record label founded by New York City Downtown jazz scene figurehead John Zorn. Ono Lennon recruited a team of A-list members of the Downtown scene, bassist Devin Hoff, keyboardists Yuka C. Honda and João Nogueira, drummers Ches Smith and Johnny Mathar, trumpeter Michael Leonhart and percussionist Mauro Refosco. The record consists of five expansive tracks. A description of the album provided by the label states:
Tzadik is proud to present Asterisms, a beautiful and exploratory instrumental project by Sean Ono Lennon, one of the most creative and versatile musician/composer/ producer/songwriters working today. Sean has written countless songs, composed film scores, produced, and performed on dozens of albums—and here he steps out as the leader of an all-star band of Downtown luminaries.
Years in the making, the music is powerful, trippy, and intensely imaginative, blending rock, electronics, jazz, and more into an exciting new musical soundscape. With driving rhythms, a stunning lyricism, and a brilliant sense of orchestration, this album is sure to surprise and delight music fans the world ’round. Beautifully recorded, this is modern instrumental music at its very best — essential!
Steve Drizos – i love you now leave me alone
Portland, Oregon-based musician/engineer/producer Steve Drizos issued his sophomore solo album, i love you now leave me alone, today through Cavity Search Records. Like its predecessor, Drizos’ 2020 debut album Axiom, the follow-up i love you now leave me alone was recorded at his recording facility The Panther in SE Portland. Drizos, the current drummer for Jerry Joseph and The Jackmormons, was joined on i love you now leave me alone by his wife, The Decemberists’ keyboardist Jenny Conlee, Eels drummer Joe Mengis and RoughCuts bassist Tim Murphy, along with Todd Wright on electric guitar. Drizos contributed guitars, vocals, synthesizers and percussion across the album’s eight songs. Drizos detailed i love you now leave me alone:
“Most of the songs on this album are about my relationships with those closest to me. Some songs are pretty direct, like ‘troubled heart’ is a song directly for my wife, while others are more of an amalgamation of people in my life. My first album was much more introspective, so I wanted this one to be looking out and talk about some of those relationships.
“I think [the album title] relates to the album in that the sentiment of ‘I love you, now leave me alone’ is relatable to most introverts like myself. Deeply loving those closest to us, but at the same time being pretty happy to be left alone. I had the title before I had any of the songs finished or even started. It kind of gave me a compass direction as to what the record was going to be about. Overall, I think the energy of a band playing in a room together was captured very well on this record. Even though there was a decent amount of overdubs, the foundation of the songs were all tracked live and I think you can really feel that. Songs like ‘boomerang’ and ‘beautiful nothing’ especially capture the energy.
“All I’m doing is making music that I enjoy making and listening to, and hope that others will get something out of it. I try my best to ride the line of believing this record is really good, wanting people to hear it and enjoy it, and at the same time not take any of it too seriously and remember it’s another record in a long line of records that have come before and will come after. I hope it gets to people’s ears and they find something that they can relate to in it. I’m in a unique position where I’m not making a record for a particular fan base or planning a big tour around the release of the album. So the stakes are relatively low in those regards, which takes some of the pressure off. I love making records, I love collaborating with people I trust and respect, and I will keep doing that regardless. But at the same time I’m an insecure artist who wants people to like what I create.”
Nate Todd – Empty City
JamBase’s own Nate Todd, who is also a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, released his sophomore solo album Empty City today. Nate played all the instruments on the record save for an outstanding performance from his Flash Mountain Flood bandmate and Squeaky Feet drummer Kevin D’Angelo. Nate worte, produced, mixed and mastered the LP’s nine tracks along with additional production and mixing from his dad, Rick Todd. Drawing inspiration from classic film noir movies of the 1940s and ‘50s, Empty City uses tropes from the genre to comment on issues facing society today.
“I started thinking about my next album shortly after releasing Revolutionary Loser in October 2020,” Nate said. “Some very scary things were going on around that time. I was flipping through my old textbook, Film Noir by Andrew Spicer, and one passage hit me like a lightning bolt as an all too apt metaphor for the alarming things going on in this country and around the world right now.”
“…the city is corrupt, disorientating and threatening, often depicted as a dark, confusing labyrinth, a nightmare city that is the seamy but enticing underside to respectable American life. This city is an emphatically masculine world, concentrating on male ambitions and lusts; and, it must be emphasized, their fears and paranoias.”
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Compiled by Team JamBase.