Don’t Miss New Albums Out Today From Maggie Rogers, Mark Knopfler, Shabaka & More

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 Maggie Rogers, Mark Knopfler, Shabaka, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Jakobs Castle, Bridget Kearney, James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg and tributes to Alice Randall and Stanley Mouse. Read on for more insight into the records we have ready to spin.

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Maggie Rogers – Don’t Forget Me

Don’t Forget Me is singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers’ third album. Co-produced by Rogers and Ian Fitchuk and recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, the album was mixed by Shawn Everett and, like Rogers’ prior two albums, mastered by Emily Lazar. A lengthy essay composed by Rogers explains her new album:

“I have had so much fun at every stage of making this album. I think you can hear it in the songs. And I’m finding it’s sort of the key ingredient to making all of this really fly.

“This album was written over five days, two songs a day — three days in December 2022, two in January 2023. It was written in chronological order.

“Some of the stories on this album are mine. And for the first time really, some of them are not. The moments that are mine feel like memories — glimpses from college, details from when I was 18, 22, 28 (I’m 29 now). In writing the album sequentially, at some point a character emerged. I started to picture a girl on a roadtrip through the American south and west. A sort of younger Thelma & Louise character who was leaving home and leaving a relationship, processing out loud, finding solace in her friends and in the promise of a new city and new landscape. I tried to capture her life with the intimacy of Linda McCartney’s photographs, spontaneous and open and free. She’s starting over, turning the page on a new chapter in her life. Some of the stories and details in the songs are from friends or from the news. Some I just completely made up, or rather, sort of flew out of me. Pen to paper. Fully formed. There they were. I think in this way, some of the deepest truths about my present were able to come forward. I wasn’t looking for them or digging them up, harvesting their stories before they had the chance to become fully grown. The truths about my life came from my deepest intuition. Things I wasn’t ready to say out loud to myself, but they found a place in the music.

“Eight of the 10 songs were written with my sole collaborator and teammate on this album, Ian Fitchuk. The other two songs I uncovered on my own and were the product of my long friendship with Lee Foster, the Electric Lady manager who, in the days before Christmas, realized I was on a roll and gifted me an extra day of studio time to keep working and catching the songs coming through my hands.

“Ian and I co-produced the album together, and he plays most of the instruments on the album. He’s such an amazingly gifted player and feeler, and has become an even better friend. We had never worked together before this record, but in late November of 2022, I had a whispering feeling that we could make something interesting together and I DM’d him out of the blue wondering if he’d be open to give it a shot. I’m so grateful he said yes. These songs and session days are a record of our first time meeting in person, and it’s so exciting to feel that we’ve only just scratched the surface.

“Most of the performances you’ll hear are first takes. The recordings were initially a collection of demos to be re-recorded with a band. I think this is how and why it all came into being in the way that it did. I just thought we were playing, musically shaking hands for the first time. We met again in March to try to beef up the arrangements, but every time we tried to change them, we kept feeling like we lost something. When we listened back, we realized that taking the pressure off allowed us to drop our guards and pretenses in the studio, the result being a whole lot of character and heart. That week of throwing shit at the wall and testing our ideas turned the casualness of our original process into a deliberate creative choice that we could stand behind as an album. We decided to leave all the pieces that make the recordings feel real and feel human. Like performances, instead of manufactured or gridded perfection. In the end, the album was made because we weren’t trying to make an album.

“There’s a warmth to Don’t Forget Me. In many ways, it feels like coming home, returning to the music and songwriting that grounded me when I first started making art in my bedroom when I was 16. My friends keep saying it sounds like the version of me that they know. Something looser, or sassier, or sillier than I’ve shown in public before. I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon. Worn in denim. A drive in your favorite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room. An old corvette. Vintage, but not overly Americana. I wanted to make an album to belt at full volume alone in your car, a trusted friend who could ride shotgun and be there when you needed her.

“After an entire summer of playing the album’s title track live, it feels GOOD to finally be feeling the levity of release. The song is a rough journal entry about going to a bunch of friends’ weddings and feeling so happy for them, but also realizing that I’m very simply in a different place in my life. I’ve joked with my friends that it’s a song about having low expectations, but really I think it’s about craving simple baselines – a good lover or someone that’s nice to me. When it comes down to it, our memories and relationships are all we have. I don’t have a lot of asks, but I want my time spent on this earth to add up to something. For it all to be worth it in the end. I think remembering someone can be the greatest form of loving because when we remember, the love lives on. When I’m standing at the end of my life, I hope a lifetime of accumulated love is what I’m left with.

“I think its inherent that we give and take from each other. And that even with all the best intentions there can be some destruction too – take my money, wreck my Sundays. There are simple things I think we’d all give up for love. I think it’s just about wanting our sacrifices or suffering to be meaningful. To have it all not be forgotten. Don’t forget me.

“This has been such a transformational and special time in my life. I’m so grateful for many years of support and care I’ve been offered to let me come to all of this in my way and in my time. I can honestly say I’m more ready than I’ve ever been…and most importantly, I’m having a blast. I hope you love this record as much as I do.”

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Mark Knopfler – One Deep River

Legendary Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler returned with his solo first album in over five years, One Deep River, which is out now on his British Grove label via Blue Note/EMI. Knopfler co-produced One Deep River at his state-of-the-art British Grove Studios in London with longtime collaborator Guy Fletcher. One Deep River is Knopfler’s first album since 2018’s Down the Road Wherever. Along with Knopfler and Fletcher (keyboards), players on the album include keyboardist Jim Cox, bassist Glenn Worf, drummer Ian Thomas, percussionist Danny Cummings, guitarist Richard Bennett, pedal steel/lap steel guitarist Greg Leisz, whistle/uilleann pipes player Mike McGoldrick and fiddler John McCusker. Emma Topolski and Tamsin Topolski provide backing vocals. The LP’s title and final track, “One Deep River,” sees Knopfler reflecting on his childhood home of Newcastle and the river that runs through it.

“Crossing the Tyne is always on your mind,” he said. “It’s what you were doing when you were leaving as a youngster and that feeling is always the same every time you do it. You’re heading out or you’re coming back, and it just connects with your childhood. The power of it doesn’t go away.”

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Shabaka – Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace

Multi-instrumentalist Shabaka released his debut solo album entitled Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace, through venerable jazz label Impulse! Records. The highly collaborative album features contributions from Laraaji, Floating Points, André 3000, Esperanza Spalding, Moses Sumney, Brandee Younger, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Saul Williams, Elucid and others. While renowned for his saxophone work with British bands Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, Shabaka recently put down the saxophone to explore softer woodwinds including Mayan Teotihuacan drone flutes, Brazilian Pifanos, Native American flutes and South American Quenas. Sessions took place at the historic New Jersey studio founded by legendary late jazz engineer Rudy Van Gelder where some of the genre’s greatest musicians recorded including Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock and many more. John Coltrane captured his landmark 1965 album, A Love Supreme, at Van Gelder Studio. The British-born, Barbados-raised musician commented on how the instrumental shift has broadened the breadth of his musical journey. Regarding the culmination of the album, Shabaka stated:

“It has slowly changed the scope of my musical inner landscape and drawn me towards a multitude of other instruments in the flute family. I’ve started to appreciate the underlying principles that cause these instruments to resonate most fully and use this understanding to form a concept allowing me to freely move between instruments.

“I invited a bunch of musicians I’ve met and admired over the past few years of touring throughout the United States to collaborate and everyone said yes, which I constantly find breathtaking. [Van Gelder Studio] informed the sound of so many seminal jazz albums that have shaped my musical aptitude. We played with no headphones or separation in the room so we could capture the atmosphere of simply playing together in the space without a technological intermediary.”

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Aaron Lee Tasjan – Stellar Evolution

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan put out a new album, Stellar Evolution, via Blue Élan. Stellar Evolution follows Tasjan’s 2021 album Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! The singer-songwriter co-produced the new LP with Gregory Lattimer. Stellar Evolution is described as a “celestial collection of sonically expansive anthems, connecting the far away universes of slacker indie rock, hyper-pop and new wave.” The album also sees Tasjan, who identifies as bi-sexual, addressing the injustices the LGBTQI+ community has experienced in Aaron’s home of Nashville and the South as a whole such as bathroom and drag bans as well as hateful rhetoric.

“The record became a sort of rallying cry for being who you are in a time when people literally wanna try to make it illegal to do that,” Tasjan stated. “I felt like it was really important to let people know that they’re not alone, that we’re all in this fight together and that we see each other, and that we’re gonna do what this community always does, which is come together and have each other’s backs.”

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Jakobs Castle – Enter: The Castle

Jakob Nowell, son of late legendary Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell, released his debut album under his Jakobs Castle moniker via Epitaph Records. Nowell worked on Enter: The Castle with producer and collaborator Jon Joseph (Børns, Caroline Rose). Nowell credits Joseph with helping him find the sound on the record he describes as “affected cyber ska weirdness.” Nowell’s music certainly contains shades of his father — who helped bring the heady brew of punk rock, ska and reggae into the 1990s by blending it with hip-hop and pop-ready melodies. Nowell is attempting the same with what he sees as the contemporary extrapolation of the punk ethos.

“I see the spirit of punk to be alive in what people today call hyper pop or bedroom pop, even if it’s not always aggressive,” Nowell said. “I find that spirit of DIY ingenuity and trying to challenge social norms to be present in those types of artists today.”

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Bridget Kearney – Comeback Kid

co-founder Bridget Kearney released a new solo album she titled Comeback Kid. The 10-song effort was produced by Dan Molad. The Iowa-born and Brooklyn-based Kearney recorded the album during downtime from her duties playing bass with Lake Street Dive and teaching at the prestigious Princeton University. Kearney’s students and cohorts helped inform the album through song-a-day workshops. The album is described as “soaked in vintage synths,” with “nods that run the gamut from Samuel Barber’s mid-20th century masterpiece Adagio for Strings to Jerry Seinfeld’s late-20th century masterpiece Seinfeld.”

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James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg – All Gist

All Gist is the third instrumental album by James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg. The pair of guitarist were joined on the album by Jean Cook (strings), Anna Jacobson (brass), Wednesday Knudsen (woodwinds), Nick Macri (bass) and Wanees Zarour (violin on “Death Wishes To Kill”). A summary of All Gist states:

The duo’s third album of instrumental guitar recordings pushes their sinuous compositions into labyrinthine new shapes, interlocking and interlocutory, supported by a cast of stellar collaborators. Interwoven among the dazzling original pieces is a fascinating array of covers, ranging from traditional Breton dance tunes to a deconstruction of Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance.”

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Various Artists – My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall

Acclaimed author, professor and songwriter Alice Randall compiled the album, My Black Country, as a companion to her new book, My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future. Released today through Oh Boy Records, the album features Randall’s song reinterpreted by Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, Valerie June, Adia Victoria, Sunny War, Leyla McCalla, SistaStrings, Miko Marks, Saaneah Jamison, Rissi Palmer and Caroline Randall Williams. A decorated Nashville songwriter, Randall became the first Black woman to co-write a number one country hit with 1994’s “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl),” recorded by Trisha Yearwood. She has also written songs performed by Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, Marie Osmond and more.

“I had songs recorded in the 80s, in the 90s, in the 2000s, and 2010s, but I never once had the joy of hearing one of the songs that I wrote from the perspective of a Black woman recorded by a Black woman,” Randall stated. “With this project…I hope to change that.”

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Various Artists – The Mouse That Rocked: A Tribute To Stanley Mouse

Legendary artist Stanley Mouse is celebrated on the new compilation, The Mouse That Rocked: A Tribute To Stanley Mouse, with all proceeds benefiting the Blue Rose Foundation. The album sees Nicole Atkins, Leftover Salmon, Chuck Leavell, Charlie Musselwhite, Shawn Sahm & The Tex Mex Experience, Junior Brown, Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers, Poor Man’s Whiskey, The Mother Hips, Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz, Jason Crosby, Pimps of Joytime and others covering some of Mouse’s famous subjects such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and more. Along with the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, The Mouse That Rocked features the music of Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Beatles, Howlin’ Wolf, Journey, Cream, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Bo Diddley, Sir Douglas Quintet, Moby Grape and Stanley Mouse himself.

The Blue Rose Foundation “is dedicated to providing preschool scholarships to underprivileged children,” The Mouse That Rocked producer David Gross stated. “Now, Mouse’s fans can contribute to a meaningful cause while enjoying a musical celebration of one of rock music’s most influential artists.”

“Mouse has been a close friend for years and our team wanted to honor his legacy,” Blue Rose Music founder Joe Poletto said. “By inviting contemporary artists to reimagine songs by bands featured in Mouse’s artwork, we can pay homage to his enduring influence on music and art.”

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Compiled by Team JamBase