Don’t Miss New Albums From Phish, Sturgill Simpson, Eminem, Billy Strings & 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 Phish, Sturgill Simpson, Eminem, Billy Strings, Common & Pete Rock, Deer Tick, Remi Wolf, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Rainy Eyes, Clairo and Steve Earle. Read on for more insight into the records we have ready to spin.

Phish – Evolve

Evolve, the 16th studio album released by Phish, is out now through ATO Records/JEMP Records. Regular collaborators Bryce Goggin and Vance Powell produced Evolve. Phish — guitarist trey-anastasio, bassist mike-gordon, drummer jon-fishman and bassist mike-gordon — reworked six of the 12 songs for Evolve that were previously released on Anastasio’s solo albums, including “Life Saving Gun” which initially appeared on his collaborative studio album with McConnell, January. The follow-up to 2020’s Sigma Oasis was recorded quickly over a few days at the band’s The Barn facility in Vermont last fall.

“The complaint over the years has been ‘Why don’t Phish albums sound like Phish? There’s one Phish I see live and one Phish I hear on albums,’” Anastasio said. “This is where Phish sounds best – when the takes are fast, when we’re not thinking. We came in, set up and played – minimal separation, maximum two or three takes of each song. We had already opened the doors on tour, finding the songs everyone in the band felt good about and, with the audiences’ help, identifying the ones that had the magic.”

“What you hear is what we did on the road,” McConnell said. “Whatever we learned from playing them live – the right key, where to put the jam – we got in the studio. It was probably four days,” he says of the live tracking. “But I knew as they were going down: ‘Man, this is so good. It’s so great and easy.”

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Johnny Blue Skies – Passage Du Desir

Sturgill Simpson has a new album out today entitled Passage Du Desir via Simpson’s High Top Mountain Records label. Credited to a new persona — Johnny Blue Skies — the album follows 2021’s The Dood & Juanita and 2020’s two volume Cuttin’ Grass excursion into bluegrass. Simpson previously promised he’d only release five albums under his own name. The Johnny Blue Skies chapter of his career beings with the eight songs making up Passage Du Desir, which was produced by Johnny Blue Skies and David Ferguson. Passage Du Desir was recorded during sessions held at Nashville’s Clement House Recording Studio and at the famed Abbey Road Studios in London.

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Eminem – The Death of Slim Shady

Rapper Eminem is back with his 12th album, The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce). Out today via Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records, little was revealed about the 19-track (with three skits) set prior to its release. Eminem shared the single “Houdini” which he co-produced with Luis Resto. The follow up to Eminem’s 2020 album, Music to Be Murdered By, also includes the track “Tobey” featuring fellow Michigan natives Big Sean and BabyTron and production by Eminem, Marvy Ayy, Cole Bennett, Car!ton, Daniyel and John Nocito.

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Billy Strings – Live Vol. 1

Billy Strings put out a new live album, Live Vol. 1, which is the guitarist’s first album on Reprise Records. Live Vol. 1 consists of eight tracks recorded between June of 2023 and March of 2024. The collection features a mix of old tunes (“Dust In A Baggie,” “Turmoil & Tinfoil”), more recent fare (“Heartbeat of America,” “Fire Line”) and one of Strings’ newest songs (“Richard Petty”). Strings originally announced a contest in which fans could win “tickets for life” and other goodies if they guessed the live album’s tracklist. However, a social media post detailing the tracklist confirmed a change in plans.

“The internet got a hold of the goods before the thing got started,” Strings’ wrote of the contest. “We pulled the plug. Bummed but we’ll get over it.”

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Common & Pete Rock – The Auditorium Vol. 1

Veteran hip-hop musicians, rapper Common and producer Pete Rock released their collaborative album, The Auditorium Vol. 1, today through Loma Vista Recordings. Common’s participation in August 2023 in the all-star Hip-Hop 50th Anniversary concert at Yankee Stadium help spawn the collaboration. The following month Common was hanging at Pete Rock’s studio north of New York City listening to music and the pair’s similar sensibilities became apparent. Common then took to writing what became the 15 track album, recording his parts at the familiar confines of Electric Lady Studios in NYC, which Pete Rock laid over his beats. Guests include Bilal, Jennifer Hudson, PJ and Posdnuos of De La Soul.

“We just became glued to each other,” Pete Rock said. “I was reaching for the euphoria of what we did in the ’90s, but updated. The feel of the album is ’90s, but it’s not ’90s at all. It’s new music.”

“We don’t have to reach to make it sound like a throwback,” Common said. “We don’t have to reach to try to make it sound like it’s new and young. We’ve just got to be who we are and do what we love.” Then came Common’s second, more urgent realization: “I can’t wait to leave here and go write.”

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Deer Tick – Contractual Obligations

Contractual Obligations is a new Deer Tick EP, out now through ATO Records. The collection was captured during the sessions for the rockers’ 2023 album, Emotional Contracts. The Providence-born Deer Tick — guitarists John McCauley and Ian O’Neil, drummer Dennis Ryan and bassist Christopher Ryan — took to a warehouse in their hometown for months to demo the material on Contractual Obligations and Emotional Contracts before convening in the studio with renowned producer Dave Fridmann. But not all the material made it on the 2023 record, as McCauley explained.

“Sometimes when you make a record you have to make a few cuts,” McCauley said. “With 2023’s Emotional Contracts, we were quite happy with all the material that ended up on the cutting room floor. So we swept it all up and compiled it into this EP titled Contractual Obligations.”

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Remi Wolf – Big Ideas

Big Ideas is the highly anticipated second album by singer-songwriter Remi Wolf. Released today on Island Records, the 13-track LP serves as the follow-up to Remi Wolf’s well-received 2021 debut, Juno. The California-native and USC Thornton School of Music graduate recorded her first album in her bedroom during the COVID pandemic but made the jump to professional facilities to track the album at Electric Lady in New York City and at Conway in Los Angeles. Among those who contributed to Big Ideas were Kenny Beats, Leon Michels and The Dap-Kings.

“I’m more confident in myself now,” Remi Wolf told Vogue. “Before, I was so anxious and I felt like such a fish out of water in the industry. I didn’t know how to navigate it and felt it collapsing onto me. Now I’m able to float above it a little bit more. Now I’m really getting to this point where I’m doing a lot of this shit for myself, to make myself happy.”

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Jake Xerxes Fussell – When I’m Called

Guitarist Jake Xerxes Fussell released a new album, When I’m Called, which marks his debut on the Fat Possum label. The follow-up to 2022’s Good And Green Again was produced by James Elkington who also played an assortment of instruments. Recorded by Jason Richmond at Fidelitorium Recordings in Kernersville, North Carolina, When I’m Called sees contributions from guitarist Blake Mills, vocalists Joan Shelley and Robin Holcomb, bassist Ben Whiteley and drummer Joe Westerlund. Additionally, horns were played by Anna Jacobson, strings by Jean Cook and woodwinds by Hunter Diamond.

Fussell, a Georgia native residing in North Carolina, once again places his stamp on traditional folk music across the nine tracks on When I’m Called. The album opener, “Andy,” was written in the mid-1980s by multimedia artist Maestro Gaxiola as a tribute to Andy Warhol. Following it is “Cuckoo!,” a song attributed to English composer Benjamin Britten and Jane Taylor, who wrote “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.” The remainder of the album consists of songs with rich traditional histories.

“When I was getting really deep into traditional music as a teenager, I tended to see it more in a continuum, like, ‘This is all tied into an ongoing world,’” Fussell stated.

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Rainy Eyes – Lonesome Highway

Rainy Eyes (Irena Eide) returns with her sophomore studio album, Lonesome Highway, arriving today via Royal Potato Family. The Louisiana-based and Norway-bred singer-songwriter worked with producer Dirk Powell on Lonesome Highway, which features contributions from Sam Grisman, Ric Robertson, Chris Stafford and Eric Adcock along with Powell’s daughters Amelia Powell and Sophie Powell. Rainy Eyes decamped to a cabin in Bolinas, California to lay down the roots of what became the album. After enduring a tough period that included the breakup of her marriage, Eide made her way to South Louisiana. Rainy Eyes played the recordings from Bolinas for Powell, who brought her into his studio to complete work on the album.

“Songwriting became my therapy,” Rainy Eyes stated. “It was basically how I dealt with the pain and the trauma. The music helped me heal. This album is about how I had to help myself. To take that pain and use it. For it not to destroy me, but to make me who I am.”

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Clairo – Charm

The third full length release by Clairo (singer-songwriter Claire Cottrill), Charm, was issued today by Virgin. The follow-up to her 2021 album Sling was co-produced by Clairo and Leon Michels. The pair recorded the 11-song album live directly to tape, taking an all-analog approach at Diamond Mine Recording in New York City and at Allaire Studios in the scenic mountainous region near Woodstock, New York. Inspired by classic records by Harry Nilsson and Blossom Dearie, a description of the new album stated, “Evoking balmy summer evenings and tête-à-têtes in plush conversation pits, Charm is a collection of warm, ’70s-inspired grooves that move lithely between jazz, psychedelic folk and soul, an extroverted bounce back from her beloved 2021 album Sling.”

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Steve Earle – Alone Again (Live)

Steve Earle released a new live album entitled Alone Again (Live) today through Howe Sound Records/Missing Piece Records. The 15 songs featured on Alone Again (Live) were recorded while Earle was on tour last year. The album contains many of Earle’s best-known songs, such as “Copperhead Road,” “The Galway Girl,” and “Guitar Town.”

“So, October before last I woke up without a band,” Earle revealed. “I had toured with one version of the ‘Dukes’ or another since 1982, but the real continuous bloodline of the outfit died with my longtime bass player, Kelly Looney, in 2019. So, it seemed I’d come to a crossroads. Left? Right? I chose BACK. Back to performing solo like I did in coffeehouses when I first started.”

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