Don’t Miss New Albums From Peter Gabriel, Khruangbin, Futurebirds & Carl Broemel + 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 Peter Gabriel, Khruangbin, Futurebirds & Carl Broemel, Jonathan Rado and Minor Threat. Read on for more insight into the records we have ready to spin.

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Peter Gabriel – i/o

Legendary artist Peter Gabriel released his album i/o today. The highly anticipated LP is his first since 2011’s New Blood. Ever the innovator, Gabriel rolled out i/o with a single each month coinciding with the full moon beginning in January 2023 with “Panopticom,” which featured longtime Gabriel collaborators Brian Eno (electronics), Tony Levin (bass), David Rhodes (guitar) and Manu Katché (drums). The Breath’s Ríoghnach Connolly added additional backing vocals. Gabriel further detailed the album including it’s lunar connection.

“Some of what I’m writing about this time is the idea that we seem incredibly capable of destroying the planet that gave us birth and that unless we find ways to reconnect ourselves to nature and to the natural world we are going to lose a lot. A simple way of thinking about where we fit in to all of this is looking up at the sky… and the moon has always drawn me to it.”

As much a champion of the visual as the sonic, Peter also enlisted a number of different artists to create the artwork for each single which also arrived in alternate mixes. Upon the release of “i/o (Bright-Side Mix)” — featuring South Africa’s Soweto Gospel Choir — Gabriel also shared the inspiration behind the album’s title:

“This month the song is ‘i/o’ and i/o means input / output. You see it on the back of a lot of electrical equipment and it just triggered some ideas about the stuff we put in and pull out of ourselves, in physical and non-physical ways. That was the starting point of this idea and then trying to talk about the interconnectedness of everything. The older I get, I probably don’t get any smarter, but I have learned a few things and it makes a lot of sense to me that we are not these independent islands that we like to think we are, that we are part of a whole. If we can see ourselves as better connected, still messed up individuals, but as part of a whole, then maybe there’s something to learn?”

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Khruangbin – Live At Sydney Opera House

Out today from Houston-based trio Khruangbin is Live At Sydney Opera House, the final installment of the band’s year long collection of live albums. The 17-song collection was recorded during Khruangbin’s three-night sold-out run at the famed venue, which took place in November of 2022. Live At Sydney Opera House comes on the heels of four additional live albums the three-piece also released via Dead Oceans in partnership with Night Time Stories Ltd. earlier this year. While the previous LPs went heavy on special guests, the last live album is straight Khruangbin. Included within are such career-spanning originals as “The Number 3,” “White Gloves,” “Evan Finds The Third Room” and “Maria Tambien.”

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Futurebirds & Carl Broemel – …Thanks Y’all

Athens, Georgia-born rockers Futurebirds and My Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel released a new live album, …Thanks Y’all, through No Coincidence Records. The frequent collaborators captured the 22-track live compilation over the course of nine concerts. Produced by Carl Broemel, …Thanks Y’all is the third live “Carlbirds” collaboration following the 2021 EP Bloomin’ and 2022’s Bloomin’ Too.

“Futurebirds have this unique vibe with three singer-songwriters in the band, where everyone is constantly shifting their function depending on the song,” Broemel said of his collaborators. “Everyone just kind of falls into place and finds something to contribute. Someone will lead the charge on one song, then fall back and let another take charge on the next — it’s something rare to see and behold in rock music, where normally there’s just one songwriter and one leader.”

“We’re long overdue for a live release and feel super lucky to have one of our mentors quarterbacking the project,” Futurebirds guitarist Daniel Womack added “Carl takes us to another level and I think the stoke translates well in these versions.”

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Jonathan Rado – For Who The Bell Tolls For

Foxygen‘s Jonathan Rado’s new album, For Who The Bell Tolls For, was informed by the tragic deaths of two integral figures in his life, producer Richard Swift and illustrator/animator Danny Lacy. Rado recorded, produced, and mixed the seven-song album between 2018 and 2020 at Sonora Recorders in Los Angeles, at Electric Lady Studio A in New York City, and at his Dreamstar II home recording studio. The album sees Rado joined by The Lemon Twigs (Brian D’Addario and Michael D’Addario), Drew Erickson, Kane Richotte, Jackie Cohen, Brad Oberhofer, Dan Hindman, Sarah Versprille, Jonathan Swift Behr, Jackie Cohen, Taylor Plenn and Cary Singer. With Richard Swift and Danny Lacy in mind, Rado’s non-tribute-tribute album (“Eww, no, not a tribute album,” Rado would say to himself. “Not that dreck”) developed organically and was inspired by Brian Eno’s 1970s rock albums and his Oblique Strategies, as well as Kanye West’s albums, Yeezus and Life of Pablo.

“I didn’t know I was even making an album,” Rado said. “And I guess I couldn’t even express anything into words then. Just expressing whatever with production and a musical language. Mostly, the songs started to be meditations on both Swift and Danny.”

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Minor Threat – Out of Step Outtakes

Seminal hardcore band Minor Threat held recording sessions in January 1983 with producer Don Zientara at his Inner Ear Studio in Arlington, Virginia. The sessions were the first featuring the five-piece lineup that saw Steve Hansgen on bass and Brian Baker moving from bass to second guitar. The band, which also included lead singer Ian MacKaye, drummer Jeff Nelson and guitarist Lyle Preslar, tracked six new songs that anchored their Out of Step 12″ EP that came out later that year. The Out Of Step EP also included a re-record version of the song “Out of Step” and as a hidden track on the vinyl release, “Cashing In.” After tracking those songs, according to Dischord Records’ description of the Out Of Step Outtakes EP:

There was still blank tape on the reel, so they decided to record an instrumental with the working title, “Addams Family” and then recorded new versions of “In My Eyes” and “Filler” to hear what they sounded like with two guitars. “Addams Family” ended up being used as a coda to “Cashing In,” but the other two songs were never mixed and largely forgotten for over 35 years until the multitrack tapes were taken into the studio to be digitized in 2021. Surprised by the discovery, Ian and Don Zientara mixed the two songs along with the complete take of “Addams Family.”

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Compiled by Scott Bernstein, Nate Todd and Andy Kahn.