Don’t Miss New Albums From Umphrey’s McGee, Guerilla Toss, Fruit Bats, Josh Ritter & More

Umphrey’s McGee released an innovative new album entitled Blueprints. The six-song/24-track effort was recorded last December at a hidden theater atop Chicago’s famed Metro club. Blueprints was developed from fan-chosen live improvisations that the band transformed into fully realized compositions, complete with fresh lyrics and additional instrumentation. Umphrey’s McGee debuted the songs during “Raw Stewage” sets at their football-themed UMBowl concerts.

Umphrey’s performed the material in front of intimate nightly audiences as part of three Top Note Sessions played on the fourth floor of the Metro December 10 – 12, 2024 and livestreamed each set.

New York City-based band Guerilla Toss shared You’re Weird Now today through Sub Pop Records. Pavement guitarist Stephen Malkmus produced the album. Guerilla Toss — frontwoman Kassie Carlson, guitarist Arian Shafiee, drummer Peter Negroponte, keyboardist Jake Lichter and bassist Zach Lewellyn — captured You’re Weird Now at Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio’s The Barn recording facility in Westford, Vermont with longtime Phish and Pavement engineer Bryce Goggin. Malkmus and Anastasio contributed to the single, “Red Flag to Angry Bull.”

“His incredibly relatable down to earth approach to music and trusting yourself as an artist had a massive effect on this album and myself as a musician,” Carlson said. “Working with Malkmus, Bryce Goggin, Trey Anastasio, touring with Primus—all of that made me realize that what I’m doing is not wrong. The work is clear, important, and necessary. It’s not always easy or clear in direction or purpose, but creating, making, performing music is vital to my life, and a healthy earth.”

“These people have been doing this forever, and they’ve internalized that they are musicians and their artistic choices are right for them and they believe in them,” she continued. “It’s really just realness and being true to yourself — whatever that means for you.”

Fruit Bats (Eric D. Johnson) released a new album, Baby Man, via Merge Records. For Baby Man, Johnson reunited with producer/engineer Thom Monahan. Monahan also worked on Fruit Bats’ 2011 LP Tripper and 2016’s Absolute Loser. For Baby Man’s 10 tracks, Johnson and Monahan worked in a minimalist style with just guitar, piano and a touch of synthesizer here and there.

“Right now this world is big and weird and horrible and yeah, sometimes even beautiful in short bursts. A loud place,” Johnson stated. “But if you wanna take a quick moment and get eye-level with me, hear me whisper a dream in your ear, I got a new album that will do that. Here’s the first song from it. It’s a dream all right, but really a fever dream of sorts. The narrator is hazy, and in a haze, and sometimes I’m not even sure who they are. And yeah, it’s like how when you’re stuck in your own head you can get a song stuck in your head over and over. Hopefully this one gets in there (in a good way). Love you all.”

Josh Ritter released his new album, I Believe In You, My Honeydew through Thirty Tigers. The 10-track effort was recorded with producer Sam Kassirer and Ritter’s Royal City Band composed of Kassirer on keyboards/accordion, Zachariah Hickman on bass/thumb piano/mandolin, Rich Hinman on guitar/pedal steel guitar/mandolin and Ray Rizzo on drums/percussion. Ritter provided the statement below regarding I Believe in You, My Honeydew:

“I lived in the woods when I was a kid. I used to believe (and maybe I was right) that I could walk out of our front door, across the gravel road and, pointing myself north, I could walk to Canada, never once leaving the tree line. Wonder was a temple with no walls, and the Muse was still just a ripple in the ponderosas. I felt no fear.

“I’m 48 now. Decades have passed. There have been times I felt my inspiration, my Muse, had passed along with them. And then, not too long ago, I decided that instead of waiting for the Muse to write me a song, I would write the Muse a song instead. I started referring to my Muse as my Honeydew. And this album was born.

“The songs on Honeydew are songs for my Muse, my invisible and blinding companion of long-standing. I hope it enjoys them. I hope that it experiences a bit of what it’s like to be human, a bit of what it’s like to be lonely, scared, uncertain, joyful, righteous. I believe in you, my honeydew.”

King Princess issued Girl Violence, their third album and first for the section1 label. Multi-hyphenate Mikaela Straus recorded the new King Princess album after returning to her native Brooklyn after seven years living in Los Angeles. The 13-track Girl Violence was recorded in New York City. Collaborators included Aire Atlantica and Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait.

“Girl violence is very sneaky,” Straus explained. “It’s not physical, it’s deeply emotional, spiritual, and spooky. Women are both amazing and sinister — including myself — and it’s my curiosity to understand all the love, loss, and changes that come out of my love for women. Why are we so inclined to cause and receive chaos? If you’ve experienced even an iota of it, then you’ll have a story to tell. And these are mine.”

Tokyo-based musician mei ehara released her new album, All About McGuffin, through the KAKUBARHYTHM label. The 10-song follow-up to ehara’s 2020 album, Ampersands, was recorded with her longtime bandmates, guitarist Masamichi Torii, keyboardist Naruki Numazawa, bassist Sota “Coff” Kimoto and drummer Koki Hama.

Fictitious metal band Spinal Tap return with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, the soundtrack to the long-awaited sequel to their 1984 mockumentary feature also arriving in theaters today. The new film and movie features David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer).

The sequel’s soundtrack is made up of eight new songs and four others reimagined from the original film. The End Continues features guest contributions from Paul McCartney, Elton John, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

Jens Lekman is back with his first solo album in eight years, Songs For Other People’s Weddings, out now via Secretly Canadian. Songs For Other People’s Weddings is the companion album to a novel of the same name Lekman penned with bestselling author David Levithan, which was inspired by Jens’ time as a wedding singer. Songs For Other People’s Weddings marks Lekman’s fifth proper solo album and first since 2017’s Life Will See You Now. In 2019, Jens paired up with Annika Norlin on the collaborative record Correspondence.

In 2004, Lekman released the song “If You Ever Need A Stranger (To Sing At Your Wedding)” and started to receive invitations from fans who took the title literally. “I wrote the album while the book was still being written and, at some points, I started imagining what happened between the book’s chapters. The book and the album eventually became intertwined but also found their own paths. The book provided the structure of the story, but the album sometimes snuck behind the scenes. Stories from the songs made their way into the book and vice versa,” Lekman explained.

Polyrhythmics released their eighth studio album, Life From Below. The new LP follows the band’s 2023 LP, Filter System. Life From Below marks the first time the Seattle-based funk-fusion outfit — guitarist Ben Bloom, drummer Grant Schroff, keyboardist Nathan Spicer, bassist Jason Gray, trumpeter Scott Morning, trombonist Elijah Clark and saxophonist Art Brown — were able to track together live in the studio following remote sessions due to the pandemic.

“On Filter System, we had primarily written that music during COVID lockdown and recorded apart and largely remotely throughout,” Bloom said. “On Life From Below, we were back to playing shows and tracking all together in the studio, and this music reflects that shift.”

“Life From Below is our attempt to dive deeper into the familiar territory that has helped to define the Polyrhythmics sound over the past 15 years,” Bloom added, “and also explore some new directions in the funk music landscape that we to date hadn’t really touched.”

Iron & Wine (Sam Beam) and Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses shared a new covers EP, Making Good Time. The five-song collection a decade after the childhood friends released their first covers collection, 2015’s Sing Into My Mouth. The follow-up EP was recorded in North Carolina with producer Brad Cook and his studio house band. The tracklist is composed of covers by Kendrick Lamar and SZA (“Luther”), Roxy Music (“More Than This”), U2 (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”), Foreigner (“I Want To Know What Love Is”) and boygenius (“Ketchum, ID”).

Tedeschi Trucks Band released Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited (LIVE AT LOCKN’) via Fantasy Records, documenting TTB’s landmark collaboration with Leon Russell and members of Joe Cocker’s original 1970 Mad Dogs & Englishmen band. Along with Russell, Mad Dogs members who joined TTB at LOCKN’ included Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear and Chris Stainton. TTB, Russell and the Mad Dogs were also joined by special guests such as The Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson, Warren Haynes, Anders Osborne and Traffic’s Dave Mason, the latter the writer of one of Joe Cocker’s best interpretations, “Feelin’ Alright.” Additional tunes that appear on Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited include “The Weight,” “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,” “Delta Lady,” “Cry Me a River” and “With a Little Help From My Friends.”

“These were very special days that we were able to spend with Leon and the Mad Dogs,” Derek Trucks said. “There was a real sense of joy, magic and gratitude in the air from the moment everyone showed up at the first rehearsal and it just kept getting stronger, culminating in this incredible set. You could feel that this was one of those shows that you will be thinking about for the rest of your life. I feel very lucky to have been a part of this. What an honor to share the stage and music with Leon and all of those incredible musicians and people.”

An archival album of Neal Casal’s unreleased early demo recordings and a photo memoir were posthumously released today in honor of the late musician. The album, No One Above You (The Early Years 1991-1998), produced by the Neal Casal Music Foundation and RPF Records, was compiled by Casal’s longtime manager Gary Waldman, his Cardinals’ bandmate Jon Graboff and engineer Jim Scott. They remixed Casal’s original recordings and inserted small additions performed by Graboff, John Ginty, Dan Fadel, Angie McKenna, Jeff Hill and others.

The 13-song tracklist consists of previously unreleased demos and studio recordings Casal made in the years before he put out his debut solo album, 1995’s Fade Away Diamond Time. Alongside original compositions are covers of songs by Tom T. Hall, The Incredible String Band, and Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman.

Blues For Allah, the Grateful Dead’s 1975 studio album, is the latest of the legendary band’s records to get a 50th anniversary deluxe reissue, presenting a newly remastered version of the original album, sourced from the original analog tapes by David Glasser, with additional work provided by Plangent Processes. Over two hours of previously unreleased recordings are included in the expanded edition.

Among the previously unreleased tracks are Blues For Allah songs “Sage & Spirit,” “Help On The Way,” “Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower” recorded during the August 12, 1975 soundcheck at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, ahead of the concert the next night that became One From The Vault. One of only three known live recordings of the Blues For Allah composition “Kings Solomon’s Marbles” (previously exclusively available via the 2004 Beyond Description box set bonus disc) is part of the collection.

There are also selections from the Grateful Dead’s June 21 and June 22, 1976, shows at the Tower Theatre in Pennsylvania, including five songs from Blues For Allah, with others such as “Eyes Of The World.” Recordings from Bill Graham’s SNACK (Students Need Athletics, Culture, and Kicks) Benefit at Kezar Stadium on March 23, 1975 are also included.