Stream New Releases From St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Ivan Neville, The Infamous Stringdusters & 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 St. Paul and The Broken Bones, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Ivan Neville, The Infamous Stringdusters and Sound Cipher. Read on for more insight into the records we have queued up to spin.

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St. Paul & The Broken Bones – Angels In Science Fiction

Birmingham, Alabama-based St. Paul & The Broken Bones issued a new album, Angels In Science Fiction, today through ATO Records. The follow-up to the band’s 2022 album, Alien Coast, was produced by Matt Ross-Spang and recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis. Frontman Paul Janeway was inspired by the actions of Aristotle, William James and John Steinbeck, and wrote the songs on Angles as letters to his then-unborn daughter Marigold. Janeway wrote the album over the course of a few weeks after finding out his wife was pregnant.

“A few people told me it would be a good idea to write letters to my yet-to-be-born daughter before she arrived into the world,” Janeway said of the writing process. “That is what Angels in Science Fiction is. Themes throughout the album are faith, nature vs nurture, anxiety and beauty. This is a record I would have written whether I did this for a living or not. I don’t know if those records come along all the time.”

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Rodrigo y Gabriela – In Between Thoughts … A New World

Guitar virtuosos Rodrigo y Gabriela put out In Between Thoughts … A New World today. The 10-track collection marks the pairing of Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero’s sixth full-length studio album and first since 2019’s Grammy-winning Mettavolution. Self-produced by Rodrigo y Gabriela, In Between Thoughts … A New World was recorded at the duo’s studio in Ixtapa, Mexico. Their study of Advaita Vedanta (a Hindu philosophy rooted in the concept of nondualism) launched a period of creativity for the musicians that yielded the material featured on their new album.

“The music just started flowing out, without any real intention,” explained Rodrigo. “When we looked back, we realized we’d come up with nine songs that told the story of our coming to understand the Advaita path, in the exact perfect order. We didn’t change the foundation of the songs from that point, so what you hear on the album is the music as we were creating it.” Additionally, the pair collaborated remotely with Vienna-based composer Adam Ilyas Kuruc and The Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra to add strings and percussion to their signature acoustic guitar sound.

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Ivan Neville – Touch My Soul

Dumpstaphunk keyboardist Ivan Neville released Touch My Soul, the veteran musician’s first solo album in nearly 20 years following 2004’s Scrape. Neville — whose credits include working with The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, Bonnie Raitt and many others including members of his New Orleans-based musical family — recruited a host of special guests to contribute to his new solo album. Along with Bonnie Raitt, those who appear on Touch My Soul include Ivan’s father, Aaron Neville and Ivan’s uncle Cyril Neville, as well as Michael McDonald, Trombone Shorty, Doyle Bramhall II, David Shaw of The Revivalists and Ben Jaffe and Charlie Gabriel of Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

“I haven’t written any new material for myself in a long time,” Ivan noted, “so this project is very special to me. I made it up as I went along, a song here and there, in between my work with Dumpstaphunk and my work with good musical friends. Music is a way to make people feel better, it brings spiritual healing.”

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The Infamous Stringdusters – A Tribute to Flatt & Scruggs

The Infamous Stringdusters once again recorded an album in tribute to bluegrass royalty, this time championing the output of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. The band’s new release, A Tribute to Flatt & Scruggs, consists of their takes on six songs recorded by the pair of bluegrass icons. Covers include “Down the Road,” “Cabin on the Hill,” “Earl’s Breakdown,” “Blue Ridge Cabin Home,” “Will You Be Lonesome” and “I’d Rather Be Alone.” The Infamous Stringdusters previously released a covers album honoring bluegrass legend Bill Monroe. Stringdusters bassist Travis Book described the Flatt & Scruggs project, stating:

“The concept of paying tribute to the grandfathers or originators of bluegrass is one we bounced around for awhile and after Bill Monroe, the most logical, I think any bluegrass musician would agree, is Flatt & Scruggs. They’re legendary and without Earl’s banjo, bluegrass just doesn’t exist the way we know it today …

“For the album, each of us brought a song to the table that we wanted to sing and that had meaning to us. I reached out to my friend, Jon Weisberger, and asked him if he’d suggest a song that he thought hadn’t been overdone and would suit my voice. I was thrilled when he suggested ‘I’d Rather Be Alone’ because I was familiar with it but hadn’t really played it much or learned the lyrics and it was a perfect fit … It’s a lament and it’s a sad song but it’s so beautiful. The way the melody hangs the line out there — ‘You say you’re sorry that you went awaaaaay’ — it’s just classic Flatt & Scruggs!”

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Sound Cipher – All That Syncs Must Diverge

Sound Cipher — the trio consisting of Skerik (Critters Buggin, Garage A Trois, Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade) on tenor and baritone saxophones with electronic effects and synthesizers, Tim Alexander (Primus) on percussion and Timm Mason (Master Musicians Of Bukkake, Wolves In The Throne Room, Eyvind Kang & Jessica Kenney) on synthesizers and bass — issued their debut studio album, All That Syncs Must Diverge, today through Royal Potato Family. The six-track LP has been six years in the making as Skerik and Alexander initially came together with producer Randall Dunn for the first Sound Ciper session on January 2, 2017 at Seattle’s Studio Litho. Dunn enlisted Mason to help with modular synth processing and the pair quickly realized Timm was an essential part of the Sound Cipher equation. The trio played a series of concerts in 2018 and then recorded more material that same year at Seattle’s Avast Studios. All That Syncs Must Diverge compiles the “finest flowers” from the 2017 and 2018 sessions.

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Compiled by Scott Bernstein and Andy Kahn.