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Music Releases 06-02-23

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Music Releases 06-09-23

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A Jason Isbell record always lands like a decoder ring in the ears and hearts of his audience, a soundtrack to his world and magically to theirs, too. Weathervanes carries the same revelatory power. This is a storyteller at the peak of his craft, observing his fellow wanderers, looking inside and trying to understand, reducing a universe to four minutes. He shrinks life small enough to name the fear and then strip it away, helping his listeners make sense of how two plus two stops equaling four once you reach a certain age -- and carry a certain amount of scars.

“There is something about boundaries on this record,” Isbell says. “As you mature, you still attempt to keep the ability to love somebody fully and completely while you’re growing into an adult and learning how to love yourself.”

Weathervanes is a collection of grown-up songs: Songs about adult love, about change, about the danger of nostalgia and the interrogation of myths, about cruelty and regret and redemption. Life and death songs played for and by grown ass people. Some will make you cry alone in your car and others will make you sing along with thousands of strangers in a big summer pavilion, united in the great miracle of being alive. The record features the rolling thunder of Isbell’s fearsome 400 Unit, who’ve earned a place in the rock ‘n’ roll cosmos alongside the greatest backing ensembles, as powerful and essential to the storytelling as The E Street Band or the Wailers.

They make a big noise, as Isbell puts it, and he feels so comfortable letting them be a main prism through which much of the world hears his art. He can be private but with them behind him he transforms, and there is a version of himself that can only exist in their presence. When he plays a solo show, he is in charge of the entire complicated juggle. On stage with the 400 Unit, he can be a guitar hero when he wants, and a conductor when he wants, and a smiling fan of the majesty of his bandmates when he wants to hang back and listen to the sound.

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Niall Horan

The Show [LP]

Vinyl: $29.98 Buy

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Niall Horan's `The Show' - his third solo album and first since 2020's chart-topping `Heartbreak Weather' - will be released on June 9, 2023. Preceded by its lead single "Heaven," the album matches the pure emotion of his globally beloved past work with a powerful new element of soul-searching reflection. Each vinyl copy of `The Show' includes a randomly selected print of a letter handwritten by Niall about a song from the album.

New Vinyl: $29.98 Video
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Jenny Lewis’ fifth solo album, Joy’All arrives June 9th. Joy’All finds the singer-songwriter embarking on a new era, in a new town – and on a new label, as she joins the iconic roster of Blue Note/Capitol Records. While Joy’All pulls from a bounty of sonic inspiration – from classic soul to ‘90s R&B, as well as country and classic singer-songwriter records – the album’s rich, intimate and warm live sound is the hallmark of eight-time GRAMMY-winning producer Dave Cobb. Recorded at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, Joy’All includes new single “Psychos” and the previously released single “Puppy and a Truck.”

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3 LP Packaging: 3 LP 180-gram heavy vinyl edition, 20 new songs.

Christine and the Queens presents his new album PARANOĎA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE. Includes “To be honest” and guest appearances from Madonna and 070 Shake.

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A lot of people don’t realize that Freddie has actually been in the game for over a decade and came in on the same Freshman XXL cover as Meek Mill, Nipsey Hussle etc…
Yet he was the only one with no major Label Backing or Artist Affiliation and his partnership with Warner is his very first solo Major Label deal.
With that being said, he feels as if he has made it thus far in his career without compromising his morals, Creative Integrity and Principals as a Man all while resisting temptations ….Hence the title “$oul $old $eparately."

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There are no strangers at a Drew Holcomb show. For the better part of two decades, the award-winning songwriter has brought his audience together night after night, turning his shows into celebrations of community, collaboration, and contemporary American roots music. Strangers No More, the eighth album from Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, celebrates that sense of togetherness. Produced by Cason Cooley, it expands the band's mix of timeless songwriting, modern-day Laurel Canyon folk, amplified Americana, and heartland rock & roll.
New Vinyl: $22.98 Digital Tracks Video
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Jakob Armstrong (youngest son of Green Day frontman Billie Joe) began playing guitar at 7 years old and honed his craft privately until he met friends with like-minded tastes in music and Ultraman action figures. Produced by Chris Coady (TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House), Ultra Q’s My Guardian Angel offers a deep sonic palette that varies between pop-punk and synth-pop, displaying Armstrong’s songwriting talents with the musicianship of Kevin Judd and brothers Chris and Enzo Malaspina.

New Vinyl: $24.98
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Following the menacing but heartfelt return single "Leech", Dream Wife return in 2023 with their long awaited third album Social Lubrication. It's a rock-heavy, call-to-arms for empathy, in a world still propped up by patriarchal systems and underhand codes of silence. "Social Lubrication is built from foundations of trust, honesty & friendship developed over years of making music, experiencing life, love & rocking out together; wall to wall with hot n heavy dirty rockers, sultry, dangerous, vulnerable, untamed, feral, political statements with a healthy dose of silliness. Exploring the alchemy of attraction; lust for life; importance of community; calling out patriarchal structures in society & having a party while we're at it! Horny at the end of the world..."

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From the tender-hearted “Jinzou Maria” to the rumbling and raucous “Yurei Zanmai”, the songs of Hagata bear an eerie yet somehow familiar sensation. Japanese pop tones, Serge Gainsbourg grandeur, folk whisper, and Brazilian surf rock all mix into the psychedelic stew. Blending past and present, from Canada to Japan, multiple lives lived at once, each track carries a sense of change, impact, of having been marked in an intimate way. And yet the force behind that marking is always just out of grasp, a wisp, a ghost, an energy, a spirit that compels you to keep reaching.

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My Morning Jacket, touring behind It Still Moves, took the stage at Bonnaroo on a scorching hot day in the summer of '04. Ominous dark clouds rolled in early in the performance. "I'll never forget it," reflected Jim James "We're playing & the sky just rips open & rain starts pouring down. People are losing their minds... Everybody is petrified that we're going to get electrocuted, but it was such a transcendent moment that we just didn't care." It would become one of the festivals most iconic sets.

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Recorded at Blueprint Studios in Manchester in celebration of their 40th Anniversary, Be Opened By The Wonderful is a celebration of James’ most loved and rare tracks, reimagined with a 22-piece orchestra and 8-piece choir and including one brand-new track, “Love Make A Fool.” Tim Booth says “Life begins at 40. For our midlife euphoria we recorded a double orchestral album of some of our deepest cuts.” Indie Exclusive White 180-gram 2 LP.

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The Gold Experience, released in 1995, was the first full-length Prince album to be credited to his unpronounceable symbol and was released at the most public, heated stage of his battle with the major label industrial complex. With the word “SLAVE” written on one cheek, Prince shined on the opulent ballads “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” and “Gold” and the defiant single “[eye] Hate U,” and the album earned widespread critical acclaim. Available as black vinyl double LP.

New Vinyl: $32.98
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Prince

The Truth [LP]

Vinyl: $25.98 Buy

MP3 Album: $9.99 Download

The Truth is widely regarded as one of Prince’s most underappreciated hidden gems. The album was originally released as an accompaniment to the 1998 triple album Crystal Ball, which marked the first time that Prince released an album totally independently. The Truth was also the first Prince album to be labeled “acoustic,” though it does contain electronic instruments and elements, and it gave listeners an unprecedented chance to hear his songwriting and voice in a stripped-down presentation. Available on black vinyl as a single LP.

New Vinyl: $25.98 Digital:$9.99
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Aja Monet's poems are a work of gravity. They are a fundamental for which all things are attracted, considered upon and enacted towards. Her work moves, constantly, between origin and outcome, allowing them to exist in converse. In her debut album when the poems do what they do, we glimpse her indefatigable commitment to speak. Those thematic origins of this album at times center around Black resistance, love and the inexhaustible quest for joy. In when the poems do what they do Aja Monet appears as a woman of letters and storm, her poems do not roar in pentameter - but rather in storm surge because, "Who's got time for poems when the world is on fire?!." And this work isn't one to pull apart into one liners, these are poems of things felt. There is a fullness here that can't be encapsulated in even the boundaries that language offers. Aja Monet is a griot, a storyteller, a chronicler, and your grandmother telling you about her first love all at once. These are baby making poems - literally the spring enacting upon the cherry trees. These are poems of urgency and want and the rallying cry to demolish the insidious systems from which our futures seem to be wrought, in other words,"If we had a sense of humor we'd be more radical. More migrant than citizen we'd breathe the air clean and ration our resources... we would melt ALL the guns." You will find yourself readying arms because of these poems, and simultaneously mourning the unstoppable loss of names already destined to be immortalized. Aja Monet crafts a work as she always does, that can be entered from many doors. These aren't poems for poets, but poems for everyone.
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The acclaimed, award-winning Prime Video series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, returns for its final season with a brand-new soundtrack. In the fifth and final season, Midge finds herself closer than ever to the success she's dreamed of, only to discover that closer than ever is still so far away. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Season Five (Music from the Amazon Original Series) features timeless classics as well as eight new original cast recordings and covers. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel season five will premiere its first three episodes on Prime Video on April 14, with a new episode dropping every Friday until the series finale on May 26.

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Tears For Fears debut album The Hurting was released on March 7, 1983 and peaked at #1 on the U.K. albums chart in its second week of release. It reached platinum status in January 1985 and contains three Top 5 U.K. singles – “Mad World,” “Change,” and “Pale Shelter.” This LP has been mastered at Abbey Road Studios and cut at half-speed for superior quality.

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Hailed as “one of the best recordings Telarc has ever done” by Stereophile, the 1980 recording of Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, performed by The Cleveland Orchestra and conducted by the legendary Lorin Maazel, cemented Telarc’s status as the preeminent classical audiophile recording label. This reissue was mastered from the original Soundstream tapes by Paul Blakemore, cut by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound, and pressed on 180-gram LP pressed at Optimal.
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Marking the debut orchestral recording of legendary Lang Lang’s illustrious career, this Telarc classic includes the pianist’s performance of Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra from Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 2001, as well as his solo performance of a variety of Scriabin’s Etudes. Mastered from the original Soundstream tapes by Paul Blakemore, cut by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound, and pressed on 180-gram LP pressed at Optimal.

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Vinyl LP pressing. 2023 release, the sixth solo album from Norwegian singer/songwriter. The album finds Sundfřr strengthening her roots as she digs deeper into familial connections from her past, present, and future.
New Vinyl: $31.98
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Rob Grant will release his debut album, Lost At Sea, on June 9, 2023. An accidental recording artist, Grant has never had a lesson on any instrument in his life, but when he sits down at a piano, something magical happens. Father of international icon Lana Del Rey, he enlisted an array of talent to contribute to the making of the album. Features and writing credits include Lana Del Rey, while production credits include Jack Antonoff, Luke Howard, Laura Sisk and Zach Dawes.

New Vinyl: $32.99
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This is the 3rd Pressing of “Mr. Misunderstood” on 180 Gram- Blue Vinyl.  Mr. Misunderstood was originally released in November 2015.  It was produced with long time music producer Jay Joyce.   It reached #1 on Billboard Country Album charts and it included the hit singles- “Kill A Word”, “Record Year”, and “Round Here Buzz”

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Just Like A Rose: The Anniversary Sessions (TRANSPARENT GREEN VINYL) by Laura Cantrell - After a nine-year hiatus, Laura Cantrell, a familiar presence in the international Americana & Roots music scene, is back with her latest studio album. Over the years, she has won over loyal audiences both in her home country and the UK through her constant touring and numerous media appearances. Although the album was originally intended to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her debut album, the recording was delayed due to covid restrictions. This new collection was expertly crafted in studios located in both New York City and Nashville, with the help of renowned luminaries like Steve Earle, Buddy Miller, and Rosie Flores.
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Limited purple colored vinyl LP pressing. 2023 release. On Exorcist, Birchwood delivers the most far-reaching, musically adventurous album of his career. Exorcist was recorded in Florida and produced by Grammy Award-winner Tom Hambridge, with each of the 13 vividly detailed songs written and arranged by Birchwood. The soul-baring tracks all hit with lasting rhymes and unexpected rhythms. Each twists it's own tale, ranging from the love-gone-wrong Horns Below Her Halo to the love-gone-terrifying Exorcist to the ripped-from-the-headlines escapades of FLorida Man and Swim At Your Own Risk to the autobiographical Underdog. According to Blues Music Magazine, "Selwyn Birchwood heralds a fresh, exciting new direction in the blues. Toe-tapping, hip-shaking, joyful and inviting... expansive and focused, exploratory and time-honored, but always original."

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Music Releases 06-16-23

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Movie Releases 06-20-23

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