Today’s New Albums: Lindsey Buckingham, Adia Victoria, Felice Brothers, Bob Dylan & More
Nate Smith, Charley Crockett, Perpetual Groove and José González also have new records out today.
By Team JamBase Sep 17, 2021 • 6:56 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 Lindsey Buckingham, Adia Victoria, The Felice Brothers, Bob Dylan, Nate Smith, Charley Crockett, Perpetual Groove and Jose Gonzalez. Read on for more insight into the records we have all queued up to spin.
Lindsey Buckingham – Lindsey Buckingham
The Scoop: Former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham released his self-titled album today via Reprise. Buckingham produced the record at his home studio in Los Angeles. Lindsey Buckingham marks the renowned guitarist and singer-songwriter’s first solo LP in a decade since the release of 2011’s Seeds We Sow and his first since his departure from Fleetwood Mac in 2018. The second single, “On The Wrong Side,” sees Lindsey reflecting on his former band and the song is described by press materials as “about the peaks and valleys of life on the road with Fleetwood Mac.” Buckingham likened the song to the Fleetwood Mac classic “Go Your Own Way,” with Lindsey describing “On The Wrong Side” as “not a happy song, subject-matter wise, but it was an ebullient song musically. This was sort of the same idea,” he said.
“I wanted to make a pop album, but I also wanted to make stops along the way with songs that resemble art more than pop,” Buckingham noted about the album as a whole. “As you age, hopefully you keep getting a little more grounded in the craft of what you’re doing. For me, getting older has probably helped to reinforce the innocence and the idealism that hopefully was always there.”
Buckingham previewed the album with the lead single “I Don’t Mind” and the LP also contains a cover of the Pozo-Seco Singers’ hit single “Time.”
Adia Victoria – A Southern Gothic
The Scoop: Singer-songwriter Adia Victoria returns with her new album, A Southern Gothic, through Canvasback Records. While the famed T Bone Burnett executive produced the album, Victoria co-produced the record with creative partner Mason Hickman. The collaborators began sessions in Paris in 2019 and early 2020 before returning to Nashville to resume work as the pandemic took hold. Press materials for the album described Victoria and Hickman as “a two-man band of sorts” with Adia laying down drum and piano parts and Hickman learning mandolin and banjo.
“With A Southern Gothic Adia continues her journey through the conflicts of the American South and the troubling resonance of its past,” press materials noted. “Sonically, the album is full of frequent juxtaposition. It is equal parts historical montage and modern prophesy, dark and light, love and loathing. The 14 tracks are the musical embodiment of the relationship that so many people, especially Black women, have with the South.”
Victoria heralded A Southern Gothic with lead single and opening track “Magnolia Blues” and also brought in a number of guests including vocalists Margo Price and Kyshona Armstrong along with guitarist Jason Isbell on a cover of Ernest B. McTell’s “You Was Born To Die.” A Southern Gothic’s closing cut, “South For The Winter,” features The National frontman Matt Berninger.
The Felice Brothers – From Dreams To Dust
The Scoop: Upstate New York-based The Felice Brothers released their latest studio album entitled From Dreams To Dust on Yep Roc Records. The album features the same lineup that appeared on their previous LP, 2019’s Undress. The band produced and wrote all 12 tracks on From Dreams To Dust, which they recorded at a church in New York that was built in 1873 and renovated for the sessions by the band’s Ian Felice. Joining him in the atmospheric studio were his brother, multi-instrumentalist James Felice, along with bassist Jesske Hume and drummer Will Lawrence. Bright Eyes‘ Nathaniel Walcott added trumpet and his bandmate, Mike Mogis both mixed From Dreams To Dust and played pedal steel guitar.
“I want for my music to do what the best music in my life has done for me,” Ian Felice stated. “I want to do that for other people—to help them think through hard times or think through how to communicate something they didn’t know how to; to just make them happy. This may sound ironic, because my music is kind of dark sometimes, but the music I love best is just the most hopeful music like Pete Seeger singing about humanity getting along or Michael Hurley music that connects to some childlike simplicity that makes you feel light and happy. Music is a medicine. It can make our time on the planet a little more enjoyable.”
Bob Dylan – Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980 – 1985)
The Scoop: Bob Dylan’s Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980 – 1985) arrived today via Columbia/Legacy Recordings. The latest installment in the legendary singer-songwriter’s acclaimed Bootleg Series features 54 previously unheard outtakes, alternate takes, rehearsal recordings, live performances and more taken from the early 1980s and sessions from the albums of the era: Shot Of Love, Infidels and Empire Burlesque. The collection also boasts collaborations with such notable artists as Ringo Starr, Mark Knopfler, Mick Taylor and Little Feat’s Fred Tackett among others. Damien Love described the compilation in the liner notes for the album.
“And that’s the real story of this gloriously untrammeled collection. The songs. The songs stripped free of trappings, tampering, passing tastes, and judgments,” Love wrote. “The songs broken down to the sound of people really doing this, right now, acting on instinct. The songs rough and rowdy, bruised and tender, joking and crying, nagging and striving and yearning. The songs were always there, and here they are still, keeping pace with us.”
Nate Smith – Kinfolk 2: See The Birds
The Scoop: Drummer extraordinaire Nate Smith returns with Kinfolk 2: See The Birds, the follow-up to his 2017 album, Kinfolk: Postcards From Everywhere. The new LP features Smith alongside an all-star cast of fellow musicians, includng vocalists Brittany Howard, Amma Whatt, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, violinist Regina Carter, vibraphonist Joel Ross, rapper Kokayi, and Michael Mayo and Stokley Williams (of the pioneering R&B band Mint Condition). Smith’s core group for the sequel LP consised of saxophonist Jaleel Shaw and bassist Fima Ephron, who contributed to the previous record, and newcomers guitarist Brad Allen Williams and keyboardist Jon Cowherd. Smith recorded Kinfolk 2 during two main sessions, first in June 2019 at Sear Sound in New York City and again in February 2020 at the Bunker Studio in Brooklyn.
Charley Crockett – Music City USA
The Scoop: Prolific singer-songwriter Charley Crockett released Music City USA today through Son of Davy/Thirty Tigers. Crockett once again enlisted producer Mark Neill, who also prouced Crockett’s 2020 album Welcome To Hard Times. Between those records, Crockett earlier this year issued an album featuring covers of songs by James “Slim” Hand. The 16-track Music City USA, Crockett’s 10th full-length release in the last six years, was recorded at Neill’s Soil of the South Productions in Valdosta, Georgia. Crockett drew inspiration from fellow Texas-born singer-songwriters, George Jones and Willie Nelson.
“I’m following a model like George Jones or Willie,” Crockett told Billboard. “Where with each album I release, I’m learning as I’m living — and making records throughout that process. Eventually, my level of creativity and my productivity will match my talent. Of course, by then I’ll be 60, but I know I would’ve told every story I know by then.”
Perpetual Groove – C’mon. Covers?
The Scoop: Georgia-based jam quartet Perpetual Groove released C’mon. Covers?, an EP containing four covers. C’mon. Covers? features the PGroove lineup of guitarist/vocalist Brock Butler, bassist Adam Perry and keyboardist Matthew McDonald as well as drummer Darren Stanley who will soon prermantely replace longtime drummer Albert Suttle who recently announced his departure from the band. The quartet recorded the EP with producer Jason Kingsland at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, Georgia. The collection includes Perpetual Groove’s takes on songs by Peter Gabriel, The Cars, The Go-Go’s and Johnny Cash.
José González – Local Valley
The Scoop: Swedish singer-songwriter José González issued his latest album, Local Valley, today via City Slang/Mute Records. González’s fourth studio album, Local Valley is his first since 2015’s Vestiges & Claws. The 13-song effort was produced by González and recorded in his native Sweden at Studio Koltrast in Hakefjorden and Studio Koltrast in Linné. González included a new version of “Line of Fire,” which was originally recorded in 2013 by González’s band Junip. The song “Swing” features additional vocals provided by González’s partner, illustrator and designer Hannele Fernström, who also designed the album cover.
“[Local Valley] is similar to my other solo albums in sound and spirit, a natural continuation of the styles I’ve been adding through the years both solo and with Junip,” González stated. “I set out to write songs in the same vein as my old ones: short, melodic and rhythmical, a mixture of classic folk singer-songwriting and songs with influences from Latin America and Africa. It’s more outward looking than my earlier works, but no less personal. On the contrary, I feel more comfortable than ever saying that this album reflects me and my thoughts right now …
“Many songs have a crystal-clear, secular humanist agenda: anti-dogma, pro-reason,” González added. “There’s no political agenda, though, at least not in a classical left-right spectrum. Maybe in a globalist-secular vs theocratic-nationalist way: the focus is on underlying worldviews, and on our existential questions as smart apes on a quest to understand ourselves and our place in the cosmos.”
Compiled by Nate Todd and Andy Kahn.
