Strictly Discs

Music Releases 09-15-23

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Haley Blais

Wisecrack [LP]

Vinyl: $35.98 UNAVAILABLE
Wisecrack is the sophomore album from Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Haley Blais. Conceived as a conceptual record about the formation of new families amidst the dissolution of her parents’ relationship, Wisecrack is textured and wryly poetic, oscillating somewhere between cherished childhood memories and the creation of a new self. The existential, everyday worries we all contain but rarely share are laid bare across eleven songs deftly performed with grace, profundity, and humor. Available on vinyl with download card included.
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Milk Cow Blues is the 48th studio album, released in 2000, by American country music singer Willie Nelson. It contains several duets and musical collaborations with artists such as B. B. King and Dr. John. Available for the first time on vinyl. 180-gram 2 LP.
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Coke Bottle Clear Color Vinyl. K. Flay returns with her latest studio album MONO. This album features 15 all new songs including "Raw Raw," "Shy" and "Punisher," as well as Irish Goodbye, her collaboration with Vic Fuentes from Pierce The Veil.

K.Flay - MONO [Coke Bottle Clear LP]
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Silence Between Songs is Madison Beer’s second major label full length release and a sonic departure from her previous efforts. In the artist’s own words “This album is more of a memoir. It's not really about one specific event, but more about specific things that have shaped me into the person that I am today.”  Featuring the singles “Home To Another One,” “Dangerous,” “Reckless,” and “Showed Me (How I Fell In Love With You),” a beautiful interpretation of the Turtles classic “You Showed Me”.

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Barenaked Ladies

In Flight [2LP]

Vinyl: $29.98 UNAVAILABLE
Double vinyl LP pressing. 2023 release. In Flight, BNL's eighteenth studio album, retains the dry wit and keen observation we expect from vocalist/guitarist Ed Robertson, bassist Jim Creeggan, keyboardist/guitarist Kevin Hearn and drummer Tyler Stewart, but adds a strong sense of maturing and lessons learned. There is also a sense of joy (which is exemplified in the first single, "Lovin' Life) and appreciation. On the single, "One Night", BNL honor "... The magical connection that happens between a whole audience and a band." Songwriter Robertson, says, "When it goes right - which it almost always does - for that 'One Night', it's a very intense connection." In addition to the eight songs written/co-written by Ed Robertson, the album features four songs from Kevin Hearn, (two of which are love letters to Toronto - "See the Tower" and "The Peace Lady") and two from Jim Creeggan (including "Wake Up", a co-write with the Arkells' Max Kerman). Produced by Grammy and Award-Winning producer Eric Ratz, In Flight is ready for takeoff.
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Alan Palomo

World of Hassle [2LP]

Vinyl: $42.98 UNAVAILABLE

"Alan Palomo (fka Neon Indian) is making his return this year with the brand new album World of Hassle. As Neon Indian, Alan most recently released VEGA INTL. Night School in 2015 and Era Extraña in 2013. His 2009 debut record Psychic Chasms not only earned the musician a spot on numerous year-end lists, but assisted the forming of a genre that, though known by a few names now (hypnagogic pop, glo-fi, chillwave), summoned a very unique and specific electro-mangled sound.

Palomo’s World of Hassle is a Pynchonesque place, packed with characters and situations rendered in dreamily absurdist strokes—guerilla freedom fighters camped out in a Rainforest Cafe in “The Wailing Mall,” a crumbling ex-pop star in “The Return of Mickey Milan,” the Leisure Suit Larry-does-Ibiza fantasy of “Nudista Mundial ’89” (featuring Mac DeMarco, who hosted some of the album’s sessions in his home studio). It’s parody, sure—of rock star ego trips, the mall-ification of America, and our own self-obsession, even on the brink of apocalypse—but it’s also dead serious, the sound of history repeating itself as the Doomsday Clock clicks past its Reagan-era maximum and nuclear anxiety comes back into style along with digital synthesizers and sax solos. The deeper it pulls you into its own uncanny reality, the clearer it becomes how thin the borders are between Alan Palomo’s World of Hassle and our own."

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On June 15, we will release the new song "Can I Talk My Shit?," by Vagabon, the moniker of Lætitia Tamko. We will also announces her new album,Sorry I Haven’t Called, which is out September 15th via Nonesuch Records, and a fall tour that includes a headline run in the US, and EU dates with Arlo Parks and Weyes Blood. The album, co-produced by Tamko and Rostam (Vampire Weekend, Haim, Clairo), finds Tamko reinventing herself once again and features the most playful and adventurous music of her career.

I didn't feel like being introspective,” says Laetitia Tamko of her new album Sorry I Haven’t Called. “I just wanted to have fun.” Following her intimate 2017 debut Infinite Worlds, the New York artist favored expansive and evocative electronic textures in her breakthrough 2019 self-titled follow-up. But her latest LP feels like a wholly new era for Tamko, one that’s transformational and uncompromising. Across 12 vibrant tracks she wrote and produced primarily in Germany, she channels dance music and effervescent pop through her own confident sensibilities. These conservational songs are alive and unselfconscious, a document of an artist fully embracing her vision and reclaiming her joy. 


Tamko’s lyrics on Sorry I Haven’t Called are uniformly playful and inviting. The first words she sings on the album are, “Can I talk my shit? / I got way too high for this.” It’s a statement of purpose for the rest of the album that this is an unapologetic artist. “This whole record is how I talk to my friends and how to talk to my lovers,” says Tamko. “I think honesty and conversational songwriting can become poetry. There’s beauty in plainly speaking without metaphors and without flowery imagery.

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Briscoe

West Of It All [White LP]

Vinyl: $23.98 UNAVAILABLE

West Of It All,’ the debut album from Americana folk-rock band Briscoe, is a coming-of-age soundtrack set against the backdrop of the Texas Hill Country. Written in the Lone Star State and recorded in North Carolina, it's an album that charts its own musical geography, with production from Grammy nominee Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Caamp, Nathaniel Rateliff) and adventurous songwriting that bridges the gap between classic American roots music and its modern-day incarnation.

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CAKE

Comfort Eagle [LP]

Vinyl: $26.98 Buy

MP3 Album: $9.99 Download

CAKE’s fourth studio album Comfort Eagle, which includes hit single “Short Skirt / Long Jacket” is being released on stand-alone vinyl for the first time. The platinum selling album, originally released in 2001 will be a 1LP, 180g, black vinyl.

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Ode To Joe is internationally-acclaimed drummer and percussionist David Whitman’s fourth album as leader. A hard swinging septet session dedicated to the memory of drummer Joe Morello, the six tunes were composed by Whitman and Grammy nominated arranger Andrew Neesley. It features a stellar group of musicians including saxophonist Bob Sheppard, guitarist Bruce Forman, and Grammy Award winning pianist Geoffrey Keezer. 

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Final Straw was Snow Patrol's third album and their major label debut. Written and recorded during a make-or-break period for the quartet, it set them on the path to becoming one of the biggest British guitar groups of the 21st century. 20th Anniversary Edition 2 CD set features 23 additional tracks, including demos, B-sides and the previously unreleased track, "Tired." Also included are extensive liner notes by Gary Lightbody, plus writings from Jo Whiley and Fiction Records MD, Jim Chancellor.
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Limited gold colored vinyl LP pressing. DISPOSE" is the fourth studio album by rock band, The Plot in You. Produced by lead singer Landon Tewers and Drew Fulk (Motionless In White, Ice Nine Kills, Wage War), the album features the RIAA certified gold single, "FEEL NOTHING."
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The post-bop opus Blackstone Legacy is the seminal debut album by trumpeter Woody Shaw. Originally released in 1971 on Contemporary Records, the groundbreaking album was inspired by the sociopolitical ills of the '60s. In their review, Allmusic called the album, "...a landmark recording, and a pivot point in the history of post-modern music". This 2-LP reissue was remastered from the original analog tapes by Kevin Gray, and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI, housed in a gatefold tip-on jacket.
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Brian Setzer

The Devil Always Collects [LP]

Vinyl: $27.98 UNAVAILABLE

BRIAN SETZER, the iconic guitarist, songwriter, vocalist and 3-time Grammy award-winner, returns with his 10th studio album is a red-hot album from start to finish, featuring 11 all-original songs that are full of dynamism and bravado. The album is classic rockabilly at its absolute finest and showcases SETZER at the top of his career. Produced by Julian Raymond, THE DEVIL ALWAYS COLLECTS contains songs all written or co-written by SETZER, and was recorded in Minneapolis (his adopted hometown) and Nashville. 

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The conquering king of outlaw country music, Wheeler Walker Jr. Has turned his sights to rock n' roll with the release of his new album Ram, produced by Dave Cobb, Featuring the future classic songs "Dumptruck", "Money 'N' Bitches" and more.
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The FAST X Official Motion Picture Soundtrack is the latest global, multi-genre soundtrack from The Fast Saga franchise. The compilation features the hottest emerging and international superstar recording artists in the world, spanning Phonk, Latin, Hip Hop, R&B, EDM, Country and Pop. Now on "Drift Smoke" splatter vinyl with printed inner sleeve.

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Since emerging in 2015, Sextile have been a party-provoking force on the LA underground, capable of kicking up a riot with the raw-edged squall of a synth or the sharp-elbowed jerk of a guitar. 

Sextile are now ready to rage with a serotonin-boosting new album, a new group dynamic, faster BPMs, and an even wilder new direction. Recorded in Yucca Valley, Push bounces and bops at the fringes of hardcore dance music, with the hallmarks of drum & bass, gabber and trance illuminating the record like glowsticks at a ‘90s Fantazia rave.

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Seattle-based producer Jeff McIlwain, aka Lusine, returns with his 9th full-length record, Long Light, marking twenty years since he first joined the Ghostly International roster. A cited influence for myriad electronic artists including London's Loraine James and others, Lusine is known for visceral, kinetically-curious music that fuses techno, pop, and experimental composition. In recent years, McIlwain has pushed his craft skyward with more collaborative, song-forward work. Long Light shines the throughline; his signature looping patterns and textures are dynamic yet minimalist as ever. Structurally straightforward, tight, and bright, the material radiates as the most direct in his catalog, featuring vocal contributions from Asy Saavedra, Sarah Jaffe, and Sensorimotor collaborators Vilja Larjosto and Benoît Pioulard. Lusine found his sound early on, but he's never stopped pushing and pulling at it's potential, patiently deconstructing the distractions and solving the puzzles. With Long Light, a laser-focused, process-driven artist reaches an exceptionally satisfying level of clarity and immediacy. McIlwain sees the title, taken from the lyrical phrase "long light signaling the fall again," written by Benoît Pioulard for what became the title track, as a guiding device that reflects several meanings. "There's this sort of paranoia where you don't know what is real, it's an age of high anxiety and there are all these distractions," McIlwain explains. "It's like a fun house mirror situation." Following the long light is the only true way through, and he holds that metaphor to the album's recording, which also carried a cyclical nature akin to seasons. Like the start of fall, the album completes a period of cultivation; "Music making is a struggle and you have to have a ton of patience." Long Light is proof that what lies beyond the noise, at the end of the figurative tunnel, is worth all the work it's taken to get there. Across the collection, McIlwain identifies the core sonic element, a vocal cut or a simple beat sequence, from which to build everything else off. On the opener "Come And Go," he multiplies a vocal take from longtime collaborator Vilja Larjosto into a celestial choir, evoking their Sensorimotor standout "Just A Cloud." It's the bass hook on the single "Zero to Sixty," curving around the voice of Sarah Jaffe, whose pliable range and cool delivery provide the source for Lusine's unmistakable mapping. The chorus is Jaffe's ("cold-blooded") line repeated in step with melodic synth pulses and the buzzing deep bass. For the verse, McIlwain unlocks the loop and she completes the thought, giving the track a sense of tension and relief."I feel like I am dreaming / You make me feel like I am walking on a cloud / I don't ever want to feel the ground," sings Asy Saavedra (of Chaos Chaos) on "Dreaming." This time McIlwain keeps the phrase intact, making subtle tweaks to the timbre and texture as chimes, clinks, and snaps oscillate.The album balances vocal pop motifs with some of Lusine's strongest instrumental expressions, from ambient-minded foreshadowing ("Faceless," "Plateau," "Rafters") to hypnotic head-nodders like "Cut and Cover" and "Transonic." The latter jumps out as the rhythmic centerpiece; first McIlwain outlines the track's silhouette before filling in it's details one layer at a time. Stuttering synth hums join the kick, then proliferate a step higher, harmonizing at the peak with sparkled bell sounds and a burst of feedback. "Long Light" has it all: Lusine's percussive mood-building, rendered with samples from drummer Trent Moorman, and a contortion of tender poetry, courtesy of friend Thomas Meluch, aka Benoît Pioulard (Morr Music, Kranky). "This track has a sort of melody that I haven't really messed with before," says McIlwain. "It's this very droney, mysterious thing, that I really liked, and focused on, and kind of counter balanced with a nasty wavetable patch. Tom just absolutely nailed the feel of the song."It is rare to arrive at a landmark work two decades into one's craft, but through repetition, refinement, and patience, Lusine extends a defining moment, an essential piece to his discography.
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Debut LP from The McCharmlys, five-piece combo from Santa Ana, Calif., currently taking the scene by storm with their stylish blend of doo-wop, surf, beat & 60s style rock ‘n’ roll.

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Acclaimed saxophonist Joshua Redman’s stunning Blue Note debut where are we is one of his most compelling albums to date. It’s a musical journey across the United States of America that also marks Redman’s first-ever vocal album with the dynamic young singer Gabrielle Cavassa featured throughout along with a brilliant band comprised of pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Joe Sanders, and drummer Brian Blade.

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Dengue Fever

Ting Mong [LP]

Vinyl: $25.98 UNAVAILABLE
Vinyl LP pressing. 2023 release. Dengue Fever's sixth full length studio album. In Khmer folklore, a Ting Mong is a decoy or mannequin, similar to a scarecrow, used to fight away evil spirits and plagues.
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3x GRAMMY-winning duo Dan + Shay continue to etch a permanent mark on country music – and beyond – with the release of their brand-new single, “Save Me The Trouble.” It’s the first offering from their highly anticipated fifth studio album, Bigger Houses, co-produced by the band’s DanSmyersand set to release worldwideon September 15thvia Warner Music Nashville. Featuring an ascending melody that builds into an explosive chorus, “Save Me The Trouble” showcases a sound indicative of the new record’s direction that emphasizes a more live, organic feel. The long-awaited new music follows the duo’s record shattering, critically acclaimed and multi-award-winning album,Good Things. Also co-produced bySmyers, the highly imaginative LP featured their most recent country radio No. 1’s – the Platinum-certified hits “I Should Probably Go To Bed” and 2x Platinum “Glad You Exist,” which marked the duo’s sixth consecutive No.1 and ninth career No.1, as well as the 5x Multi-Platinum global smash “10,000 Hours” with Justin Bieber. In addition,Good Thingswas the first country album in the streaming era to achieve RIAA Gold certification at release and is one of the only 12 albums all-genre to be released and go Gold in 2021.Recently announced as coaches for season 25 of NBC’s Emmy-winning programThe Voice, Dan + Shay will join Reba McEntire, John Legend and Chance the Rapper in Spring 2024 as the first-ever coaching duo in the show’s history. The pair will bring a wealth of experience to their team, with a long list of impressive accolades that include becoming the first and only artistto win the GRAMMY Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance 3x consecutively since the category’s inception (2021 – “10,000 Hours,” 2020 – “Speechless,” 2019 – “Tequila”). The reigning Favorite Country Duo or Group winners also recently claimed their 3rd consecutive win for the category at the American Music Awards, where they had swept their categories in 2020, becoming the first country artist ever to win Collaboration of the Year. In addition, the 2x CMA Awards Duo of the Year and 3x ACM Awards Duo of the Year were named Top Country Duo/Group at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards.In the ten years since they formed, Dan + Shay have become global superstars, amassing morethan 11 billion streams globally, multiple international No. 1 singles and 49 total RIAA Platinum and Gold certifications in the U.S. alone.
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Over five albums fronting Gum, not to mention the nine he's made as co-leader of psych cosmonauts Pond, Watson's restless imagination has treated us to some of the most sonically diverse explorations of the past decade. On Saturnia, however, these visions have coalesced into the richest, but also the most coherent work of Watson's career to date.When you've got the ability to merge any combination of sounds and moods that pop into your head, there's a temptation to cram everything you can into each second of tape. The lesson for Watson this time was to realise that sometimes you have to strip away a great idea for the benefit of the song.Opener "Race To The Air" provides the perfect curtain-raiser. Soaring into view like a gigantic interplanetary craft, it takes in a sparkling vista of cosmic disco - all robo grooves and quivering strings, while "Would It Pain You To See", perhaps one of the most surprising songs on the album, is a glistening slink of sensual R&B.Indeed, one of the most rewarding things about Saturnia is how the songs pivot and change unexpectedly throughout, beginning as one thing before launching off into a completely different stratosphere.
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Will Johnson’s ninth solo album, No Ordinary Crown, hums with palpable motion. Travelers, runners and conductors fill its lyrics, and gesticulating storms and emotional highs and lows seep through the instinctual quality of its rock ’n roll performances. It’s also cabled by ephemeral momentum.

The songs were conceived in stolen moments and brief windows of time between the responsibilities of family and a multi-hyphenate career. The singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, painter and novelist describes the demo process as “fairly jagged,” a gathering and stitching of audio snippets recorded via cell phone and dictaphone over a year and half. “I finalized the songson short tours where I could hear my thoughts a bitmore clearly,” he says.


        
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