Release Day Picks: October 13th New Album Highlights
By Team JamBase Oct 13, 2017 • 5:50 am PDT
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 Beck, Robert Plant, St. Vincent, Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile, Jackie Greene and The Barr Brothers. Read on for more insight into the records we have all queued up to spin.
Beck – Colors
The Scoop: Before today, the last time Beck released an album was in 2014. Morning Phase was a critically-acclaimed LP that won Beck a number of Grammys in 2015 including Album Of The Year. Beck has been hard to work since on his 10th studio album, Colors, which finally came out today. While Morning Phase was a mostly somber affair in line with 2002’s Sea Change, Colors is a more upbeat collection of songs. Beck enlisted Greg Kurstin to co-produce the majority of the LP’s ten tracks, as before Kurstin was an in-demand producer he was Beck’s keyboardist on the Sea Change tour. The result is an album that starts and finishes with pop-heavy songs and finds Beck exploring various soundscapes in between. Check out the video for “Up All Night”:
Label: Capitol Records
Producer: Beck & Greg Kurstin
Number Of Tracks: 10
Running Time: 44:56
Tracklist:
- Colors
- 7th Heaven
- I’m So Free
- Dear Life
- No Distraction
- Dreams
- Wow
- Up All Night
- Square One
- Fix Me
Robert Plant – Carry Fire
The Scoop: Much like Bob Dylan, Robert Plant has entered into his late-career period by exploring genres that he loves, rather than trying to retread the past. While Dylan has been on a Frank Sinatra kick, Plant has been exploring American roots music, the folk traditions of the U.K. and world music influences from India and the Middle East. Backed once again by The Sensational Space Shifters, Carry Fire is awash in dusty, psychedelic-noir sounds that move from blues to ragas to murder ballads, all punctuated by Plant’s unmistakable vocals. Watch the animated video for “Bluebirds Over The Mountain,” which features Chrissie Hynde:
Label: Nonesuch Records
Producer: Robert Plant
Number Of Tracks: 11
Running Time: 49:01
Guest Musicians: Chrissie Hynde, Redi Hasa, Seth Lakeman
Tracklist:
- The May Queen
- New World…
- Season’s Song
- Dance With You Tonight
- Carving Up The World Again…A Wall And Not A Fence
- A Way With Words
- Carry Fire
- Bones Of Saints
- Keep It Hid
- Bluebirds Over The Mountain
- Heaven Sent
St. Vincent – MASSEDUCTION
The Scoop: Annie Clark returns to follow-up to her 2014 self-titled album St. Vincent with a 13-track featuring production from Jack Antonoff. Clark described MASSEDUCTION as the, “culmination of years of writing, with songs crafted from voice memos, text messages, and snippets of melodies that came to [her] while traveling the globe.” It was tracked during sessions held at Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, with additional sessions in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Watch the video for the single “New York” below:
Label: Loma Vista Recordings
Producer: Annie Clark, Jack Antonoff
Number Of Tracks: 13
Running Time: 41:43
Guest Musicians: Thomas Bartlett, Kamasi Washington, Jenny Lewis, Sounwave
Tracklist:
- Hang On Me
- Pills
- Masseduction
- Sugarboy
- Los Ageless
- Happy Birthday, Johnny
- Savior
- New York
- Fear The Future
- Young Lover
- Dancing with a Ghost
- Slow Disco
- Smoking Section
Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile – Lotta Sea Lice
The Scoop: Lotta Sea Lice, the collaborative effort from Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, may go down as the ultimate slacker-rock album ever. Vile, who is known for his winding lo-fi rock anthems, and Barnett, who is best known for her clever lyrics and grunge rock sound, originally met when the latter opened for the former in Australia and professed her love for Vile’s album Smoke Ring For My Halo. The duo’s debut effort was recorded over the course of eights days that were spread across a 15 month period when their schedules allowed for them to be in the same place at the same time. The pair wrote songs separately, with Barnett contributing two, and Vile penning three, with the rest of the record fleshed out by new takes on their own tunes and a couple of covers. The results combine what they each do best resulting in the ultimate Sunday morning album for the hipster set. Watch the video for “Continental Breakfast”:
Label: Matador Records
Number Of Tracks: 9
Running Time:45:33
Guest Musicians: Mick Turner, Jim White, Mick Harvey, Rob Laakso
Tracklist:
- Over Everything
- Let It Go
- Fear Is Like A Forest
- Outta The Woodwork
- Continental Breakfast
- On Script
- Blue Cheese
- Peepin’ Tom
- Untogether
Jackie Greene – The Modern Lives – Vol 1.
The Scoop: Multi-instrumentalist Jackie Greene is making his debut on the Blue Rose Music label with a six-song EP he self-produced and self-recorded in his Brooklyn studio. The title The Modern Lives – Vol. 1 implies this is the first installment in what will be a series of releases by the singer-songwriter. Greene last released full-length studio album, Back To Birth, in 2015. Check out the Bill Plympton-animated video for “Modern Lives” here:
Label: Blue Rose Music
Producer: Jackie Greene
Number Of Tracks: 6
Running Time: 25:31
Tracklist:
- Modern Lives
- Back Of My Mind
- Tupelo
- Good Advice
- The Captain’s Daughter
- Alabama Queen
The Barr Brothers – Queens Of The Breakers
The Scoop: While Brad Barr and Andrew Barr might be best known to our readers for their long run as run as 2/3rds of The Slip, The Barr Brothers has been the pair’s main focus for the last six years. Today, The Barr Brothers show off their latest musical evolution in the form of the 11-track LP Queens Of The Breakers. Brad, Andrew and harpist Sarah Pagé came into the sessions for the album with absolutely nothing: no song ideas, no notebooks, no families or sketches. The trio came out of the sessions, held at a small cabin a couple of hours north of the band’s current home of Montreal, with an impressive collection of songs that are a little more potent than the folk-pop efforts which were the focus of their previous LPs. Queens Of The Breakers also features contributions from Lucius on “Defibrillation,” one of the highlights on an album filled with them. Stream the title track from Queens Of The Breakers:
Label: Secret City
Engineers: Ryan Freeland & Marcus Paquin
Number Of Tracks: 11
Running Time: 50:52
Guest Musicians: Lucius
Tracklist:
- Defibrillation (feat. Lucius)
- Look Before It Changes
- Song That I Heard
- Maybe Someday
- Kompromat
- You Would Have To Lose Your Mind
- Queens Of The Breakers
- It Came To Me
- Hideous Glorious
- Hideous Glorious Pt. 2
- Ready For War
Compiled by Jeffrey Greenblatt, Andy Kahn and Scott Bernstein.
