New Releases for October 22nd (10/22/21)
|
|
|---|---|
“Things were going so well for the Rolling Stones in 1981 that even an album of leftover tracks dating back to their occasionally underwhelming mid-'70s records was heralded as a big event. That album of outtakes, Tattoo You, even surpassed expectations, hitting No. 1, yielding their last chart-topping single and becoming arguably the last great record of their still-thriving career.
But it's not just the reworked Goats Head Soup, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll and Black and Blue cast-offs that made Tattoo You a keeper; it was also the Stones' renewed energy and creative rebirth following that so-so trio of albums (which really had no chance of stacking up to the exalted run started with 1968's Beggars Banquet and continued through 1972's career-peaking Exile on Main St.). Some Girls, the 1978 LP that got them out of the rut, went as far as to borrow inspiration and sounds from the music that was making the Rolling Stones obsolete as the decade neared its end, including punk and disco.
All of those mixed '70s emotions about the group – from "The Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World" to lazy caricatures of themselves – were filtered into Tattoo You, which carried the Stones into the '80s with their crown still somewhat in place. A four-CD box set celebrating the album's 40th anniversary confirms fans weren't just riding a post-Some Girls high: Today, the record sounds just as committed and airtight, and maybe just a tad scraped together.
Read the full review over at Ultimate Classic Rock |
|
|
|
|---|---|
| "Whether out of a dogged determination to evolve or a fear of diminishing returns, My Morning Jacket’s albums since 2005’s cosmic Americana landmark Z have suggested a band on the run from their core strengths. The Waterfall (2015) (sessions for which also produced last year’s surprise release The Waterfall II) offered a potent technicolour twist on the band’s expansive sound. Even that didn’t quite match the muscular blend of jam-friendly southern rock crunch, spaced-out atmospherics and singer-songwriter sensitivity cultivated on 2001’s At Dawn and It Still Moves (2003).
Recorded with almost no outside assistance after a handful of shows to mark the 20th anniversary of debut The Tennessee Fire in 2019 rekindled the band's energies, My Morning Jacket – their first album in six years - finds a supremely engaging, often blissfully beautiful halfway point between the glossy eccentricities of more recent MMJ albums and those old slow-burn yet highly combustible 'jam band' dynamics.
Although the feather-light, dreamy lilt of gorgeous closer "I Never Could Get Enough" is clearly a love song, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine the yearning sentiments being applied to the irresistible need to conjure this remarkable band's sound again after an extended break. The listener is likely to concur - and start the record over from beginning once the extended track's very cosmic keyboard ripples finally (but all too soon) fade away."
Get the full scoop at Line of Best Fit |
|
|
|
|
|---|---|
| "Despite their mainstream breakthrough three years ago, and the more widespread critical acclaim that came with it, Parquet Courts remain vocal critics of their industry. Their faces aren’t on Amazon Prime boxes and they aren’t in TikTok advertisements. They sell out tours, but they haven’t sold out, and while other acts have spent lockdown making more introspective records, Parquet Courts emerge from their quarantine with Sympathy for Life — still keen on unleashing their trademark woozy, brash and fearless desecrations of star quarterback legacies and capitalist moguls.
For every moment of self-interrogation and lament, though, there’s an equally vulnerable turn towards critiquing bigger picture issues, like consumerism’s mass commodities and citywide gentrification. Recorded in March 2020, mixed and mastered last fall, and shelved because of COVID-19 and the group’s inability to tour, Sympathy for Life still skyrockets as a natural follow-up to the left turn of its tonally ambitious and technically masterful predecessor—but on this project, the band ramp up their polished sound with an assembly of synth-rock and soft palettes of speculative and, sometimes, refreshingly vulnerable lyricism.
Hardcore Parquet Courts followers might find this record divisive in its melodramatic scores and patient vocal performances. Let’s be fair: Savage himself cut his teeth years ago on singing faster than an ambulance rushes. But on Sympathy for Life, he and the group have no interest in getting to the finish line first, nor are they interested in who’s there to greet them. It’s funny, but Parquet Courts have always been this trenchant—and this time, they’re hellbent on making sure those who’ve stuck around are ready to listen."
Read the full Paste Magazine review HERE |
|
|
|
|---|---|
|
"Duran Duran were a burst of colour amid the cavalcade of negative headlines in the early 80s. The unemployment soaring and inner city riots, their care-free songwriting provided an outlet for escapism, and playful adventure. Future Past – their first album in six years – follows in this tradition, reflecting some of the intensity of its surroundings while also offering some of the band’s most direct, and downright catchy songwriting in decades.
Perhaps it helps that Future Past is such an outward-looking, communal experience. The production is beefed out by Mark Ronson and Erol Alkan, while hugely experienced disco icon Giorgio Moroder was also brought on board. The guests, too, present a remarkably varied palette – Blur’s Graham Coxon assists on guitar, while vocalists range from pop queen Tove Lo to incendiary rapper Ivorian Doll via Japanese garage-pop outfit CHAI.
The band’s first album since Future Gods in 2015, Future Past is the work of a group resurgent. While many of their peers have opted for merch-stalling fillers as they grind out another Greatest Hits tour, Duran Duran have opted to challenge themselves. Frothy, neon-soaked entertainment, Future Past – when it works – is a blast of ridiculous 80s themed fun."
Scope the full write-up at Clash Magazine |
|
|
|
|
|---|---|
"By the time White Blood Cells dropped 20 years ago, everything was coming together for [The White Stripes] in general. With 1999’s self-titled debut, they’d made themselves stars within an insular garage-punk universe, “a nation of twenty-something kids with Dead Moon tattoos and too many black bracelets.” The following year, their prodigious sophomore LP De Stijl spread their gospel further across the underground. By 2001, no scene could hope to contain them.
In the beginning the White Stripes had consciously entered themselves into Detroit’s lineage of noise-bombed rock ‘n’ roll, a continuum of feral howlers stretching from the Stooges and MC5 to the Gories and Detroit Cobras. They might have been happy to remain in that world forever, but their twist on the ragged Motor City tradition was too compelling for the rest of the world to ignore. Jack and Meg built up a mythos — adhering to a strict red-and-white dress code, pretending to be brother and sister — and a small but potent catalog, culled from the rough ‘n’ tumble corners of British and American music history.
In just four days of harried recording, before this batch of songs could calcify into rote muscle memory, Jack and Meg wrangled their inspiration and nervous energy into a tour de force. Clearly they had some inkling that they’d captured something intoxicating because both the cover art and the album title hinted at an influx of unwelcome attention. Still, some part of them relished the prospect of expanding their empire beyond the confines of the dingy rock ‘n’ roll subculture that raised them, or else they would have ended the band for good before it had a chance to make them famous. This stuff was really good; they were gonna need a bigger room."
Check out the full retrospective at Stereogum |
|
