Newsletter time! Okay okay, I know I say this a lot, but this is one of the best spreads of new records we've ever had! First of all, we've got arguably 3 of the most impactful (non Taylor Swift related) pop albums to come out in the last few years all back in stock this week. CHARLI XCX dominated the summer and might as well take on autumn as well with 'Brat', and its back in stock on black ice vinyl. This is not the 'Brat and it's the same but there's three more songs so it's not', which comes out on vinyl in November. Lately its felt like this is CHAPPELL ROAN's record store and we just happen to work here. Not that we're complaining! 'The Rise and Fall of A Midwest Princess' is a complete phenomenon; so powerful that it requires a one-year anniversary edition. This one is "My Kink Is Coral" colored, comes in a diecut gatefold sleeve and, my god, it's full of mylar stars. We will be having an anniversary event for this on Sunday afternoon with some limited giveaway Chappell items. It's been nearly six years since the release of SOPHIE's 'Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides', but it still feels like its influence is just starting to be understood. Would there be a "Pink Pony Club" without a "Ponyboy" first leading the charge? Something to ponder. For years, we've tried to stock the (very expensive) import pressing of this postmodern pop marvel whenever we can, and now it finally has a much more reasonably priced US edition. Not enough hotly-coveted pop classics for you yet? As promised, the back half of the SADE catalog is reissued this week, bringing a trio of her albums that have always been impossible to find on vinyl: 'Love Deluxe', 'Lovers Rock' and 'Soldier of Love'.

Ok, wipe the smile off your face. The new BRIGHT EYES album is here, and its a scorching bummer, just how you like it. 'Five Dice, All Threes' is a great Yahtzee roll, and a return to form by the power trio led by songwriter Conor Oberst. Chan Marshall and Matt Berninger turn up to provide guest vocals, and limited red & orange splatter vinyl is available. Minnesota pop heroes HIPPO CAMPUS spent several years working on their new album before scrapping it and cutting a whole new one with producer Brad Cook, and 'Flood' has a breezy, unfussed quality that will please longtime fans. Clear vinyl on this, and cool cover art that has some seriously believable looking fake water damage, enough to have me worried for a second. Denver musician MIDWIFE has honed her heavy gloom-pop to razor sharpness on her latest disc 'No Depression In Heaven', which features a Rowland S Howard cover and a song, "Killdozer", written about the infamous Martin Heemeyer. Detroit duo CLINIC STARS make their debut on the Kranky label with 'Only Hinting', an absolutely gorgeous collection of feather-light shoegaze tunes. TANUKICHAN amps up her melodic pop to something bigger and crunchier on 'Circles'. New York trio WEAK SIGNAL carry on the NYC literate rock underground tradition of bands like Eleventh Dream Day, Codeine, and Run On with their latest album 'Fine', which is a lot more than fine!

Some absolute locks hit the electronic section this week, starting with a new album from FLOATING POINTS. Mr. Shepherd has been straying from the club tunes that initially brought him fame for some time now, be it introducing a new generation of heads to Pharaoh Sanders with their landmark collab 'Promises', or scoring ballet music in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It's only a minute or so into his latest album 'Cascade' that you hear the kick drum and hi-hats that have been missing from his music for years, and its a thrilling return to form. Not to be outdone, JAMIE XX breaks several years of silence with an explosive new album of motivational dance pop on 'In Waves', which features plenty of his classic tropes. Melancholy piano passages leading to blissful climaxes of chords, hallucinogenic slivers of vocal samples, rowdy friends like Romy, Panda Bear, Honey Dijon, and the Avalanches turning up to keep things unpredictable. Our copies come on limited white vinyl, packaged in perhaps the most disorienting album sleeve I have ever seen in my life. After flipping through a dozen of these I had to sit down for a minute. Easier on the eyes and ears is the latest album from beatmaker PHOTAY; 'Windswept' is a lovely suite of chilled jazz-pop instrumentals that feel perfectly LA with their easy breakbeats mingling natural with organic ambient. Tokyo producer SOSHI TAKEDA's phenomenal 2021 release 'Floating Mountains' was tooo tooo good to remain a cassette only release: vintage 90s synths make this balearic dream house sound totally timeless. The Dark Entries label returns with a second volume of eighties 'Mexican Tecno Pop' on the BACK UP DOS compilation, while Danish wunderboy FREDERIK VALENTIN goes for maximal electro pop in a Junior Boys style on the misleadingly titled 'Rock N Roll Will Never Die'.

A new generation of jazz fans have been giving harpist DOROTHY ASHBY her propers, making a deluxe and expanded edition of her 1968 gem 'Afro-Harping' a real necessity. Eight bonus tracks fill out the experience of this spiritual and funky gem, which has been remastered from the original tapes. Bandleader NUBYA GARCIA has lately established herself as the most expressive saxophonist in London if not the world over, and she cements that with a towering new album called 'Odyssey', which draws discreetly on classical and dub traditions as well as R&B. SARAH VAUGHAN's smoking fifties vocal session 'Sassy' gets the audiophile treatment; JOE McPHEE's 'Black Magic Man' is reissued, composed of tracks from the same session as his legendary effort 'Nation Time'; Portland unit THE COSMIC TONES RESEARCH TRIO pay tribute to the Almighty Sun Ra on 'All Is Sound', and the spiritual free jazz of JUJU's 'Chapter Two: Nia' is reissued by Strut.

One of the most satisfying aspects of running this record store and writing this newsletter is being able to tell you about artists like KEANU NELSON, if you haven't heard them yet. I hadn't, until a friendly regular asked if I would be getting copies of his album 'Wilurarrakutu' if it ever came out on vinyl. Nelson comes from a somewhat remote indigenous village in Northern Australia called Papunya, but his music feels like it could come from everywhere and anywhere. DIY-recorded and drum machine aided, Nelson's music is a kind of ethereal electronic soul touched by reggae and gospel, rooted to his community by his native Luritja language, and there is simply no way you have ever heard anything else like it. Mississippi Records has licensed this for the wider world, as well as an unheard album by Australian Aboriginal blues legend KANKAWA NAGARRA called 'Wirlmarni'. Steven O'Malley's Ideologic Organ label spotlights the Canadian Algonquin flutist TIMOTHY ARCHAMBAULT with the stirring album 'Onimikìg'.  West African beatmaker HONOUR debuts on the PAN label with the darkly sonorous 'Àlááfíà'. Houston rapper DON TOLIVER returns with the earth-shaking 'Hardstone Psycho', while Atlanta's BOLDY JAMES stays true with another underground banger on 'Across the Tracks'.

Politically fiery afro-funk abounds once you start digging into the genre, but there is no finer introduction to this world than the LIJADU SISTERS 1984 album 'Horizon Unlimited', restored to wax by the Numero Group this week. New Balance has been running ads with "Hey You" by EXPERIENCE UNLIMITED for so many years now, you probably want to dunk a basketball the second you hear it, just as a reflexive response. That little sample comes from an even more unmissable song by the DC ensemble that would go on to later fame as the go-go band E.U. of 'Da Butt' fame. The full album, 'Free Yourself', is one of the funkiest slabs on earth. Soul Jazz Records returns with another volume of STUDIO ONE SOUL 2, featuring the greatest voices in roots reggae doing their take on mainstream US soul hits. Some deluxe box sets capture some great live bands of past, present and future. OASIS's 'Definitely Maybe' gets expanded, THE GRATEFUL DEAD 'Duke '78' is here in full, and the WAR ON DRUGS' second volume of live material is called 'Live Drugs Again'. Luckily they save the creativity for the songwriting!

80s experimental guitarist MICHAEL BIERYLO recorded two very lovely albums that have remained unjustly obscure: 'Life Line' is solo guitar, while 'Cloud Chorus' finds him backed with an ensemble, and both of them are lush and spectral sonic experiences recommended to fans of the ECM label or the most ambient guitar corners of the William Tyler catalog. West Coast composer EZRA FEINBERG turns in another elegant instrumental affair on 'Soft Power', while from the east comes DIALECT with a rich and verdant set of ambient pop on 'Atlas of Green'. Experimental legends SEVERED HEADS see some of their earliest material rescued on 'Ear Bitten'. Composer LIA KOHL melds field recordings of everyday objects with synth and cello on the engrossing album 'Normal Sounds'; if you can hear that album cover just by looking at it, this is the record for you.

Ryan, Evan, Ed, Eric, Matt B., Steve, Mark, Marty, Brad, Adam, Andrew, Rick, Dru, Ashley, Zeb & Cypress.