Another exciting spread of new releases kicks off with one we have been waiting for a very long time. The re-emergence of CAROLINE POLACHEK has spent close to an extra year in chrysalis; production delays? industry drama? vibe shifts? We're not sure what's kept this one off the shelf so long, but it feels like Caroline has been crawling out of that subway car and into desert sand for awhile now. 'Desire I Want to Turn Into You' is 100% worth the wait, of course; majestic, earth-rippling synthpop mastery infused with pathos, catharsis, and renewal. Grimes and Dido turn up on a few tracks, forming quite the apocalyptic pop hydra. Amazing sound and visual design on this one, in stock on limited tiger's eye colored vinyl. It's been a big year for London trio BAR ITALIA, who turned the calendar with their Matador debut 'Tracey Denim' and now follow it up with 'The Twits', another nugget of diamond-strength lofi indie. Like their shambolic forebears Pavement, Royal Trux, Young Marble Giants and Blonde Redhead, Bar Italia summon an immense amount of energy and ideas, then distribute it evenly across songs that feel slowed-up, slurred, and anguished; an exquisite economy of rock scale that feels alluringly on the edge of falling apart. Here's hoping they hold it together on a ridiculous string of tours all over the globe that will eventually bring them to the High Noon in December. DIY bedroom pop, soft-rock, and the emotional hiphop styles of Lils Peep and Yachty converge in the charming hooks of CURRENT JOYS new one 'LOVE + POP', in on neon green vinyl. There are few artists out there we root for harder than the phenomenally real SNAIL MAIL. Her recent albums 'Lush' and 'Valentine' remain in regular rotation, and if you found the enriched synth production of 'Valentine' to be a bridge too far, perhaps you will enjoy her new EP 'Valentine Demos' which reveals the heart-rending acoustic germs that provided that album its original swoon.

Chicago musician/producer Will Miller's RESAVOIR project has been a gleaming jewel of the International Anthem stable since their 2019 debut, and its back in even fuller form on a new album that is once again simply titled 'Resavoir'. Nocturnal and near-dawn soul oozes along as an elegant foreground, or a backdrop for laidback raps, on dusk cloud colored wax. One of the coolest people ever to set foot in our shop is the Norwegian post-pop song dowser Jenny Hval, who resurrects her duo with multi-instrumentalist Håvard Volden, LOST GIRLS, on the new album 'Selvutsletter', a brilliant collection of restlessly artful songs that float within reach as if on a cool breeze. Can't think of a better name for a new MARNIE STERN album than 'The Comeback Kid'; its her first record in over a decade! Where has she been, you ask? Oh, raising children, playing guitar in Seth Meyers' late night band, typical stuff. Few players out there treat the guitar with such careful abandon like Stern, and its great to have her back at the helm of her righteous rig. LAURA VEIRS whiled away those wasteland days of pandemic quarantine by writing and playing songs straight into her phone (presumably a smartphone, but its nice to imagine an old rotary), and those unheard tunes are now collected on an LP called 'Phone Orphans'.

We check in and check out all kinds of great records here every week, but its rare that one comes along that represents a paradigm-shifting historical discovery. This is the case with 'The NID Tapes: Electronic Music from India 1969-1972', a carefully compiled double LP of tracks from an only recently uncovered trove of old reels, packed away in a cupboard at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. The composers featured here are virtually unknown until now, students and colleagues of the avant-garde composer David Tudor, who brought the first Moog to India and helped launch a heretofore unheralded branch of minimalism. This lovely and deep compilation includes a gorgeously etched 4th side, and is already making a lot of "compilation of the year" lists. Check it out while you can. We wander further along the spectrum of minimalism this week with some other incredible pieces back in print: EARTH's majestic riff seance 'Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version' is back in print on glacial blue; this is the record in particular that Stephen O'Malley had in mind when he started Sunn O))) as an "Earth tribute band". KRONOS QUARTET's landmark 1995 album 'Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass' is perhaps the definitive recording of Glass' oeuvre, and it has never been available on vinyl until now. Composer ELLEN ARKBRO's debut LP 'For Organ & Brass' is a modern masterpiece of deep listening, and is back in print for the first time in years.

An artist with as many classics deep in his catalog as the Ethiopian keyboardist HAILU MERGIA has would easily be forgiven for resting on his laurels, but a new live album from his trio called 'Pioneer Works Swing' proves he's still pushing his one of a kind sound outbound. The uncannily expressive trumpeter AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE has a great new entirely solo album called 'Beauty Is Enough'. English composer ANDREW WASYLYK delivers yet another instant classic of gently pastoral jazz-classical on 'Hearing the Water Before Seeing the Falls'. Chicago drummer MIKE REED turns in a fantastic new record of Don Cherry-esque organic music on 'The Separatist Party' recorded as a sextet with Ben Lamar Gay on cornet, explosive poet Marvin Tate on vocals, and all three members of Bitchin Bajas continuing their trajectory towards the Sun Ra summit.

A moment of silence for JIMMY BUFFETT please. He never really lived on the same Earth as us, but he's moved on to another realm now. His final album is here, called 'Equal Strain On All Parts', and its full of - what else? - reflective ballads on a life well lived. FATBOY SLIM's era-defining, genre-confounding party album 'You've Come A Long Way, Baby' turns 30 with a new edition, while we've also got a deluxe 20th anniversary version of DIZZEE RASCAL's club-shaking 'Boy In Da Corner'. BELLE AND SEBASTIAN have released a lot of great records, but none quite compare to the simple majesty of 'The Boy With The Arab Strap', which turns 25 this year with a new clear blue vinyl edition with a bluer tinted cover. All these years later I'm still no closer to knowing what an arab strap is and, at this point, I don't think I want to know!

Its a big week for turn of the century post-rock glory boys. EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY's mighty early albums 'Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever' and 'The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place' took a Kubrickian approach not just to album titles but to instrumental rock itself, launching a whole new genre of cinematic drama in song. It's hard to believe in this crazy world, but neither of these albums have ever been released in a color vinyl variant before, so now is your chance to scratch that itch. Scottish baddies MOGWAI likely made a habit of mashing a pint glass in the face of anyone using the term "post-rock", and began honing their dynamic sonic C4 a little bit before the Sky-guys, but they really hit their stride on albums like 'Rock Action', 'Happy Songs For Happy People', 'Mr Beast', and 'The Hawk Is Howling', all of which get reprinted on LP this week.

Time was, you could build a small fort out of the number of DAVE MATTHEWS BAND's 1998 CD 'Before These Crowded Streets' residing in any given city, but good luck finding it on vinyl dude! Kronos Quartet plays on a couple tracks on this jazz-folk classic, which really brings this newsletter full circle. We've got some other essential vinyl reissues this week including CHRISTINE McVIE's 1984 solo jawn 'Christine McVie', NEIL YOUNG's 'Time Fades Away' turns 50 with a new edition, and we welcome a crisp new copy of BILLY JOEL's timeless 'Piano Man'.

Veteran London post-everything producer ACTRESS has always been playing chess while the rest of yall are playing checkers, but it's been awhile since he delivered a record of (relatively) straight-forward bangers like he does on 'LXXXVIII', in the shop on "deep blue" vinyl, which is surely a reference to the move-making supercomputer. In duos like Tomaga or bands like Vanishing Twin, we're always getting great looks at the ambidextrous musician Valentina Magaletti, and she's back again with BETTER CORNERS, a trio with Matthew Simms from Wire and Sarah Register from Kim Gordon's live band, on a new ripper called 'Continuous Miracles, Vol. 2'. The long-running, deeply underrated project of British musician Mark Tranmer called GNAC (think cognac without the co-) has never sounded as gorgeous as 'The Echoes On Departure', his latest album of gently moving classical ambient that's suitable for "last record of the night" status for all eternity. Idiosyncratic photographer, artist and sometime-musician WILLIAM EGGLESTON returns with another surprising tiptoe through the standards on '512', in on clear vinyl.

'Vigilante' was the last and some say best album HECTOR LAVOE and WILLIE COLON made together, intended as a soundtrack for a film that never actually came out. The Madlib Invazion beat tape series continues with a hot one from DAN HASTIE and TERIN ECTOR, better known as longtime members of the band Orgone. We close it up with a couple of hauntological hitters from the Ghost Box label, ERIC ZANN's 'Ouroborindra' and BELBURY POLY's 'The Path', which sadly arrive just a touch too late for spooky season. But lets get real, if you like this stuff, you listen to it all year round!

Jams and gems aplenty in the Used Vinyl alert this week. We've got a slew of Beatles collectibles including some more unusual bootlegs, plus big ones from the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Creedence, Deep Purple, the Band, Bob Dylan, ELO, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Cream, The Doors, Delaney and Bonnie, the Ventures, Blue Öyster Cult, Scorpions, Rush, Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, Dire Straits, Dion, Tim Buckley, Bo Diddley, Fanny, Country Joe and the Fish, Ram Jam, Alice Cooper, Atomic Rooster, Trapeze, Fever Tree, AC/DC, Glass Harp, and Black Sabbath.

Some crucial jazz bits are in from Donald Byrd, Pharaoh Sanders, Archie Shepp, and Dave Brubeck. Essential folk and blues comes from Robert Johnson, Charlie Musselwhite John Lee Hooker, Robben Ford, Lightning Hopkins, Big Mama Thornton, BB King, and Peter Walker. Rare and must-own soul pressings in from Donny Hathaway, Otis Redding, Delegation, Tyrone Davis, Isaac Hayes, Al Wilson, Etta James, Gladys Knight, The O’Jays, Bill Withers, and MFSB. Electronic stuff is in from Tangerine Dream, Felicia Atkinson, Pauline Oliveros, and Ricardo Sinigaglia. 80s wave and pop includes a lot of deep and obscure names, as well as classics from Cyndi Lauper, Fine Young Cannibals, Devo, the Del Fuegos, B-52’s, Drivin' N Cryin, Classix nouveaux, the Clash, Tears for Fears, and Paula Abdul, because opposites truly attract.

Yes, we are still buying! Call Ron to schedule (608.213.3610).