Stream New Albums Out Now From Trampled By Turtles, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Lee Fields + 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 Trampled by Turtles, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Lee Fields, WOLF!, Jerry Garcia Band and The Beatles. Read on for more insight into the records we have all queued up to spin.

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Trampled By Turtles – Alpenglow

Trampled By Turtles enlisted Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy to produce their new album, Alpenglow, which was released today via Thirty Tigers. The follow-up to 2018’s Life Is Good On The Open Road is also the band from Minnesota’s 10th studio album overall. The album’s title is “named after the optical phenomenon that takes place when the sun casts a reddish glow across the mountains at dawn and dusk. Ten of the 11 songs on Alpenglow were written by TBT leader Dave Simonett, with Tweedy credited with writing “A Lifetime To Find.” Speaking with Minneapolis independent radio station The Current, Simmonett described the experience of working with Tweedy, stating:

[W]e recorded it with Jeff Tweedy at Wilco’s studio, The Loft, in Chicago, which was kind of a long road to get there. We had studio time booked in 2020, which we had to let go. And then kind of we regrouped for a while before deciding to go at it again. And when we were looking at recording this last year, kind of last minute thought we would maybe try to find an outside producer, which we don’t always use, but wanted to try to make something a little different than the last thing we did in some way. And we had some shows booked with Wilco. And so that was kind of a natural procession. Like, I thought, “Well, I love the stuff that Jeff’s done in the studio, let’s just ask if he wants to do it, and graciously said ‘yes.’” And we got to go down to that amazing studio. And it’s kind of right up our alley, to us. A very casual space, a big open room, the control room was right in the space with you. It’s a good spot to just sit down in a circle and play. And that’s kind of how we made the record with him. Jeff helped out a lot on arrangements and lyrics and all the things, I guess, you would think about a songwriter doing in the studio, he helped with, which was a great experience for me.

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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Changes

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released their third album this month, Changes, which is the Australian rock band’s fifth LP so far this year and 22nd overall. Earlier this year, King Gizz put out the double LP, Omnium Gatherum, and Made In Timeland. Here’s the band on Changes:

For half a decade, the sextet has been haunted by one elusive conceptual project that had bested their every attempt (of which there had been several). They first conceived the album back in 2017, a busy year for the group. Within a mere twelve months, they recorded and released five albums of new material, but the band had intended to see out the year with a different album. That album was called Changes, and it’s finally arriving now.

“I think of Changes as a song-cycle,” says band-member Stu Mackenzie. “Every song is built around this one chord progression – every track is like a variation on a theme. But I don’t know if we had the musical vocabulary yet to complete the idea at that time. We recorded some of it then, including the version of ‘Exploding Suns’ that’s on the finished album. But when the sessions were over, it just never felt done. It was like this idea that was in our heads, but we just couldn’t reach. We just didn’t know yet how to do what we wanted to do.”

The group abandoned Changes and instead prepared the beguiling Gumboot Soup (the last of five albums the band released in 2017), and were then quickly ensnared by about eight other outlandish ideas that sent them in infinite new directions. But the concept of Changes did not go gently into that good night.

“We really have been tinkering with it since then,” Mackenzie adds. “It’s not necessarily our most complex record, but every little piece and each sound you hear has been thought about a lot.”

Indeed, the album has gestated over a fitfully inventive five years. Originally imagined as the group’s fifth album of 2017, it has ended up the fifth album King Gizzard will release in 2022. Coincidences like this, Mackenzie says, wake up the latent numerologist within him. But the album has taught him that projects operate to their own schedules and are ready when they’re ready.

Good things come to those who wait, and the magnificent Changes is worth every one of the 2,628,000 minutes King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard invested in it. Soaked in the warm sonics of 70s R’n’B and guided by simple chord-changes that contain multitudes and rounding out another remarkable year for the group, Changes is a luminous, soft-pop marvel. Come lose yourself in its slow-cooked brilliance.

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Lee Fields – Sentimental Fool

Soul legend Lee Fields is back with his first album in three years, Sentimental Fool, produced by longtime collaborator and Datpone founder Bosco Mann (Gabriel Roth). While Fields released a string of singles for the famed soul label in the early 2000s, the new record marks his full-length Daptone debut and sees him reuniting with Roth 25 years after they first met working on different albums and labels. Some of Daptone’s renowned players appear on the album including guitarist Thomas Brenneck, bassist Benny Trokan, drummer Brian Wolfe, trumpeter Dave Guy, keyboardists Victor Axelrod and Jimmy Hill as well as saxophonists Neal Sugarman and Ian Hendrickson-Smith.

“I wanted to cut a different kind of record and really give Lee room to sing,” Roth noted. “We took our time and got painfully deep into every one of these tunes, stripping them down to pure feeling – no effort spared, no empty gestures remaining. Lee might be the greatest singer alive and I don’t think he’s ever sung better than on these sessions.”

“With Gabe’s efforts I feel like this album depicts me as the full character that I am,” Fields said. “I’m all about emotions. This album allowed me to show what I’m capable of doing. Not to say that my vocal ability goes beyond others, but I’m able to figure out the math to get the feeling you’re looking for. I’m not trying to outdo any singer, but I can interpret the feeling. I can make someone cry if I want to. It’s always the challenge of trying to make something deeper. On this record, I go deeper than I’ve ever gone.”

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WOLF! – Adult Entertainment

Scott Metzger reunited his instrumental guitar outfit WOLF! for Adult Entertainment, a six-song EP issued today via Royal Potato Family. Metzger’s “Telecaster rock trio” features a rhythm section of drummer Taylor Floreth and bassist John Shaw. WOLF!’s first new music since 2016’s 1-800-WOLF! was recorded in Brooklyn at Restoration Sound. Keyboardist Marco Benevento plays Farfisa organ on the cut “Hawaiian Shirt.” Scott Metzger shared the following about the band and new EP:

“We had WOLF! up and running pretty hard back in 2016. There were two really great albums, a bunch of sold out shows, a few songs licensed to film and television and then for a laundry list of reasons, some still even unclear to us as a band, our attention got pulled towards other endeavors. In 2018, we ducked back into the studio and put down some tracks, but again life pointed us in other directions and the recordings wound up on the back burner. As things started to open up following the pandemic, it quickly became apparent that it was time to finish up the EP and get the band back out playing shows again.”

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Jerry Garcia Band – GarciaLive Volume 19

On October 31, 1992 Jerry Garcia returned to the stage following a series of health issues for a Jerry Garcia Band concert at Oakland Coliseum Arena in Oakland, California. Complete audio of the Jerry Garcia Band’s Halloween 1992 show is out today for the first time as GarciaLive Volume 19. The performance was mastered from the original soundboard recordings captured by Garcia/Grateful Dead sound engineer John Cutler. Guitarist Jerry Garcia was backed in Oakland by drummer David Kemper, bassist John Kahn and keyboardist Melvin Seals as well as vocalists Gloria Jones and Jacklyn LaBranch — aka the classic Jerry Garcia Band lineup. Read notes detailing GarciaLive Volume 19 explaining the importance of the concert that accompanied the announcement of the release:

In the summer of ’92, Garcia once again found himself in a perilous position as his health deteriorated so significantly he ultimately collapsed. His reemergence here on Halloween three months later, slimmed down and in great spirits, was a real sight for sore eyes for the 17,000 in attendance at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. The setlist for the evening suggests the significance wasn’t lost on Garcia. Though hardly an uncommon opener, “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” hints at Garcia’s gratitude for the outpouring of affection he received; while a poignant take on “The Maker” spins a tale of a “body bent and broken.” Thankfully this evening has more to it than just sentimentality – there are some exceptionally fine performances here too including a second set that’s among the decade’s best.

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The Beatles – Revolver Deluxe

The Beatle’s 1966 album Revolver is the latest groundbreaking record from the legendary quartet to receive the deluxe edition treatment. The sprawling collection contains the original 14-track album remixed by Giles Martin, son of longtime Beatles producer Geroge Martin, and Sam Okell in stereo and Dolby Atmos. The compilation also contains the album’s original mono mix sourced from the 1966 master tape. Giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the Revolver sessions are 28 early takes and three home demos. Additionally, Revolver Deluxe contains a four-track EP with new mixes of non-album tracks from the period “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.” The Beatles camp shared a new mix of album opener “Taxman” to preview the collection along with a revealing early demo of “Yellow Submarine” sung by John Lennon and an outtake of Paul McCartney’s “Got To Get You Into My Life” san horns, which brings the song’s stellar guitar work to the forefront.

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Compiled by Scott Bernstein, Nate Todd and Andy Kahn.