OXFORD AMERICAN - 17th Annual Southern Music Issue

"The Oxford American is proud to present its 17th annual Southern Music issue, which celebrates the immense musical legacy, both past and present, of the state of Georgia. 

Published in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development's Tourism Division, the issue comes with a 25-song CD compilation that features music by Georgia artists such as James Brown, Sandy Gaye, Gram Parsons, Otis Redding, OutKast, Indigo Girls, Drive-By Truckers, the Allman Brothers Band, and many more. This showcase of Georgia music also includes a cover of the song 'Midnight'—written by songwriting legends Boudleaux Bryant and Chet Atkins and recorded by Ray Charles—by the Athens-based band Futurebirds. This song was recorded exclusively for the Oxford American. The compilation ends with a recently discovered 1961 demo recording of Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer performing 'Moon River.' The CD was mastered by Grammy-winning producer Michael Graves of Osiris Studio in Atlanta.

In the magazine, more than 45 writers take on the task of chronicling numerous musical traditions and artists from Georgia—including legends, innovators, and the state's brightest visionaries. A few highlights: Peter Guralnick on his discovery of Blind Willie McTell and the electrifying experience of seeing the James Brown Show in 1965; Kiese Laymon on the influence of OutKast; Amanda Petrusich on the Allman Brothers Band and Capricorn Records; Elyssa East on Gram Parsons and his 'Nudie suits'; and Brit Bennett on Janelle Monáe and Wondaland Records. The issue also has a special section called 'Athens x Athens,' in which musicians from the city's famous scene share stories and anecdotes about what makes the town an unmatched hub for creativity." - The Oxford American

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - The Complete Matrix Tapes (4CD)

"The first song on the Matrix Tapes is a languid, 13-plus-minute-long version of 'Waiting for the Man,' complete with a whistling break and two previously unreleased verses, seemingly made up on the spot. But what makes this collection essential is the cohesion of the band and the setlists: the shows find the Velvets at their absolute peak as a live unit, with Reed and Sterling Morrison's guitars—the former raucous and unhinged, the latter pristine and precise—meshing with an almost subconscious cohesion. The 42-track set finds the band cruising through some 22 different songs sprawling across their entire career: 'Sweet Jane' is rendered in versions much calmer than the familiar recording on Loaded, forceful on the first round (and with yet another unreleased verse), gentle on the second. Doug Yule introduces a loping melodic bassline into 'Heroin' (first night, second set) before moving over to organ. But most of all, the clarity of the sound—which is drastically improved from the Live 1969 album, where several of these songs were first released, and The Quine Tapes collection, which is rough-quality audience recordings of songs from the same set of shows—makes it feel as if the band is performing right in front of you." - Billboard

SCOTT FAGAN - South Atlantic Blues

"Brill Building songwriter Scott Fagan was 20 or 21 when this 1968 debut album was released in the same week as Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, then disappearing without trace. At 48 years' distance, it's hard to fathom why—it's a marvellous record, full of slightly psychedelic folk, Donovan-ish pop and stripped-down, brass-powered, redemptive soul. There are songs about dying love, failure, the emptiness of hedonism and the lure of isolation and Fagan—the biological father of The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt—delivers them with humbling passion. The tremor in his voice recalls a young David Bowie, and the phrasing of Dusty Springfield, but he’' at his best when the tempo drops and he bares his emotions, such as in highlight 'The Carnival Is Over.' 'Crying' is another killer tune: when Fagan yells 'Lover, look at me,' the pain is audible. Fagan continued to record, and still occasionally performs, but his youthful opus is ripe for (re)discovery." - The Guardian

MAKI ASAKAWA - S/T

"A stunning survey of the 1970s heyday of this great Japanese singer and countercultural icon. Deep-indigo, dead-of-night enka, folk and blues, inhaling Billie Holiday and Nina Simone down to the bone.  A traditional waltz abuts Nico-style incantation; defamiliarised versions of Oscar Brown Jr and Bessie Smith collide with big-band experiments alongside Shuji Terayama; a sitar-led psychedelic wig-out runs into a killer excursion in modal, spiritual jazz. Existentialism and noir, mystery and allure, hurt and hauteur." - Honest Jon's

BEAT HAPPENING - Look Around

"Domino is proud to announce Look Around, a compiled retrospective from the legendary Beat Happening. Formed in the early '80s at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington by Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis and Bret Lunsford, Beat Happening combined a modern primitive pop sound with the D.I.Y. ethos of 'anyone can do it', inspiring countless bands and labels along the way. The music community that arose around the band and their label, K, was in many ways, the sonic antithesis of their Seattle neighbors (and friends) but was no less influential. Look Around is a remastered, career-spanning double album anthology, handpicked by the band and a great starting point for the uninitiated as well as a refreshing reminder to those who caught the wave the first time around." - Domino Recording Company

FRANCOISE HARDY - L'Amitié

"By 1965, Françoise Hardy was truly international. She'd hung out with The Beatles and The Stones, played high-profile shows in London, established a working relationship with British producer Charles Blackwell, and appeared in the film What's New Pussycat? She was also a fashion icon seen in the pages of Marie Claire and Vogue and on the cover of Elle, and her first US album was issued that year.

In France, Hardy was to release album number four, the second album to be recorded in London, where her celebrity was rapidly growing at odds with her natural shyness. 'In London, it was the first time I'd been made to think I had a certain charm or charisma,' she says now. 'Thanks to the time in England, I became aware I could be seductive.' L’Amitié, with its evocative, close-up album cover and late-night sound, is the result." - Light In The Attic

VA - Georgie Fame Heard Them Here First

"Ace's popular Heard Them Here First series continues to grow with each new volume eagerly anticipated by those with an interest in the inspirations of their musical heroes.

In their pomp, Georgie Fame and his group the Blue Flames regularly played four or five sets a night at London's Flamingo and Roaring 20s clubs, so were always on the lookout for new songs to play. Material came to Georgie from all directions: the GIs and West Indians who frequented the clubs and brought him new soul imports, friends such as clued-up Mick O'Neill (Nero of early-'60s instrumental specialists Nero and the Gladiators), the record collections of members of the Blue Flames, specialist soul/jazz/R&B record shop Transat Imports, and the copious record box of sound system operator Count Suckle. Musical sponge that he was, Georgie absorbed it all in order for the group to put their own spin on things.

This is an altogether terrific 25-track cross-section of material Georgie covered or revived across his early singles, his four Columbia albums and first CBS EP. Many of these originals will be familiar to lovers of vintage soul and jazz but we have included several major obscurities, a few of which, including Shorty Billups' original of Georgie’s rare single ‘Bend A Little,' are receiving their first ever reissue here." - Ace Records

STEVEN LAMBKE - Days Of Heaven

"Steven Lambke has always been the calm, introspective presence within the uninhibited Constantines. On his first solo release not under the Baby Eagle moniker, he forges deeper down that pensive path into places at once strange and comforting. Past Baby Eagle records employed heavy doses of twang, but Lambke now sounds more comfortable alone and quiet. On the harrowing 'Sunflower Mind,' he explores romantic, Latin-influenced acoustic guitar. Even more harrowing is the Dylanesque 'A Good Light And Tired Feeling.' Lambke slowly extracts every inch of love and other grit-laced emotions out of his short songs, just two and three minutes long." - NOW

FUZZ - II

"Fuzz, the aptly named 'side project' Segall formed in 2011 with high school friends Charlie Moothart and Chad Ubovich, is not the product of a short attention span. The band's self-titled 2013 debut found them playing the role of music historians as much as musicians, calling forth the ghosts of metal past and trying their flowing robes on for size. Sabbath is the most glaring reference point, but the boys also did their homework on Hendrix, King Crimson, and deeper cuts like The Groundhogs. Basically, if it was British and heavy as hell, it found its way into Fuzz's collective conscious.

The fact that Segall plays drums instead of a beat-up Fender is already enough to distinguish Fuzz from his other work, but zeroing in on proto-metal has led to some of the most thoughtful (though still undeniably visceral) music of his prolific career. The second album from the California-bred group is meatier than its predecessor in every conceivable way, starting with the guitars, which have been pushed forward to the front of the mix in such a way that nearly relegates Segall's shrieking vocals to the role of wallpaper. Riffs are ultimately the fuel that powers the record's engine, a six-cylinder relic from the 1960s, and guitarist Moothart reigns as the MVP in spite of his drummer's more considerable star power." - Consequence of Sound

CARRIE BROWNSTEIN: Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl

"Sleater-Kinney's intensity—derived from both its own talents and in part from the airing of repressed anger that was one of the triumphs of the Riot Grrrl scene—took its listeners to certain uncomfortable places, then asked them to stay there. Though Corin Tucker's voice has a purity of sound to it, ringing like a bell at midnight over the sound of raucous guitars, listening to the music can be complicated business. Not everyone is looking for that in a song.

Carrie Brownstein's new book has a similarly fierce approach, though her methods are complicated. While there are certainly places where an editor could and should have chiseled her prose down to make her points sharper and more affecting, this book is the clear product of a very intelligent person, and filled with flashes of insight and wit. Describing her younger self watching Tucker's previous band, Heavens to Betsy, for example, Brownstein writes,

Heavens to Betsy came across as the most serious of their peers. You stood up, you listened, and you were quiet. They were like really loud librarians.

But this is one of the few tiny moments of humour in the book. Instead, it delivers its goods in what I can only describe as a compellingly depressive register, which sounds like an insult but isn't. By keeping her affect flat, Brownstein is able to avoid melodrama, a good thing because there are elements of her life story she could have frothed up into soap." - The Guardian

ELYSE WEINBERG - Greasepaint Smile

"The unreleased second album by an original lady from the canyon. Recorded and recanted in 1969, Greasepaint Smile is more assured than its self-titled, Tetragrammaton-issued predecessor. Weinberg's finger-picked acoustic is layered over distant drumming, while her gravel-pit voice evokes life, love, and mortality. Fellow Torontonian Neil Young sears 'Houses' with his signature fuzz-tone, casting chaos over the beautiful ballad, while J.D. Souther, Kenny Edwards, and Nils Lofgren, pick up the slack." - Numero Group

DILLY DALLY - Sore

"The most immediately disarming thing about Dilly Dally isn't the hellfire guitar tone or the booming drum work. It’s Katie Monks' voice, a scuffed-up howl descended most directly from Courtney Love but also from Layne Staley, Frank Black, Kurt Cobain—all those singers who heard the harshest grain of their voice not as a flaw but as a weapon. Monks has one hell of a snarl, and hearing her rattle it like so many rusty chains draws Dilly Dally’s debut out of the endless background noise of '90s revivalists and into a space where it can thrash around and feel alive.

The Toronto band's '90s roots are deep, though—Hole's DNA shines through in gutter-pop stunner 'Desire,' and 'Purple Rage' shows an affinity with Helium with its white-hot lead guitars and sunken snare pattern. Pixies show up for their due diligence in Dilly Dally's bibliography, especially in the wobbling bass line of 'Ballin Chain,' but Monks doesn’t seem interested in sharing too much of their wordy snark. If the hallmark of most '90s alt-rock was its tossed-off boredom, its slacker cool, Dilly Dally splits from its forebears in ethos if not sound. This isn't a band out to prove how little they care while still making a lot of noise; those partitions come down, and all the hurt and want and anger behind them come gushing to the forefront." - Consequence of Sound

DEERHUNTER - Fading Frontier

"[Deerhunter's] next move retreats from Monomania's confrontational sound, but not back to the middle. Fading Frontier skips past the group's signature alien dreampop into a pleasingly paradoxical new aesthetic, simultaneously containing the band's most complex grooves and the most placid music of their career. Halcyon Digest producer Ben H. Allen, the man who helped Merriweather Post Pavilion achieve stadium status, is back in the fold, but he and the band scale down their scope this time around, often favoring mood and texture over visceral impact. Our earliest information about the album was Cox's claim that it sounds like INXS, a reference that surfaced again in the 'Concept Map' Cox created to unpack his current influences. And though he might have been joking, there's a cleanness and clarity to the production that resembles the less bombastic side of '80s pop—cue the Tom Petty/R.E.M./Tears For Fears namedrops on the Concept Map. Plus it contains some of Deerhunter's most fascinating rhythmic work; lead single 'Snakeskin' is every bit as funky as 'Need You Tonight,' and doubly demented." - Stereogum

HERE WE GO MAGIC - Be Small

"The world is filled with empty information. Without the process of discovery, facts are just facts. If you ask the guys in Here We Go Magic, a trip to the library is far more important than the book you check out. For life, learning, and creating, the enriching period is the process, not the outcome. The nine-month period it took to write and record the band’s forthcoming record, Be Small, was unpredictable and reactionary.

This experience wove a tapestry, an album layered with nuances of twiddly guitar and soft vocals, bluesy grooves fit for both dancing and relaxing, depending on the mood. These songs absorb and reinterpret life in a much broader context than the confines in which they were written—between the four walls of their respective New York apartments. In hindsight, the record is an observance of greed and complacency; a look at our nation’s unsettling lack of collective will, particularly in relation to our increasing dependence on technology.

The new record was written by the band’s latest, streamlined incarnation of Luke Temple and Michael Bloch, but the group will include Brian Betancourt (bass) and Austin Vaughn (drums) on the road." - Noisey

DOUG HREAM BLUNT - My Name Is Doug Hream Blunt: Featuring The Hit "Gentle Persuasion"

"Doug Hream Blunt is now in his 60s. In the past few years he has recovered from a stroke and, judging by the promo materials made available by Luaka Bop, which has compiled his slim works for re-release, seems pleased to be appreciated. In the late '80s he self-released (and self-distributed to local San Francisco record stores) one album and a subsequent EP of nagging, synthetic jams, inflected with '60s rhythms, wheezing vibes, a little funk and the kind of frazzled, insalubrious charm that now plays very well. [...] Genre was never a concern of the idiosyncratic funkateer. On this earwormy compilation you can hear that he has a voice naturally suited to soul, but his rhythms are insistent and regular, while his solos are free and wild. He's a Fly Guy; he wants to 'fall into a groove/And then move,' an accurate description of the modus operandi of these catchy, bleary tunes." - The Guardian

U.S. GIRLS - Half Free

"[Meg Remy's songs] take us into the spaces that are supposed to provide us with solace—home, family, relationships—and make them feel awkward and uncomfortable. (As the dejected narrator of 'Sororal Feelings' declares through a deceptively sunny harmony: 'Now I'm going to hang myself/Hang myself from my family tree.')  

Likewise, Remy's music has always thrived on the conflict between the familiar and foreign. On previous U.S. Girls releases, her pop and experimental sensibilities—part Shangri-Las, part Sun Ra—were often at war with one another. [...] But, by building upon the grotto-bound R&B introduced on 2013's Free Advice Column EP (whose hip-hop-schooled producer, Onakabazien, returns here), Half Free further fortifies the common ground between Remy's diamond-cut melodies and avant-garde urges. The album sounds like your favourite golden-oldies station beamed through a pirate-radio frequency, seamlessly fusing '60s-vintage girl-group serenades and smooth '70s disco into dubby panoramas and horror-movie atmospherics." - Stuart Berman, Pitchfork

BORN RUFFIANS - Ruff

"Born Ruffians' members leach electricity from a long line of wily, wiry art-rock weirdoes, from historical markers like Talking Heads and Violent Femmes to present paragons Animal Collective and Vampire Weekend. So many seeming allusions fly by in a typical Born Ruffians song that a sense of orientation can be hard to come by—until frontman Luke LaLonde swoops down and makes sure the spotlight is set in his own unswerving direction.

That takes all of one second in 'Don't Live Up,' when he gets going on vocals in a burst and starts panting through a series of blurted words ('dry eyes, blue skies—overrated') that steer through spare guitar, drums and horns like a skier on a slalom course. Everything is staccato and tightly wound, with a sense of David Bowie-like élan lending LaLonde an air of voguish preening while he seethes. 'You're living a dream,' he sings, 'but it don't live up, don't live up!'

Falling apart with style is a big part of the Born Ruffians manner, which on the Canadian band's fourth album Ruff cruises through spells of twitchiness and hyperventilation with total composure and control." - NPR

ALEX G - Beach Music

"This time last year, Alex Giannascoli was on the cusp of something big. The singer-songwriter, who records as Alex G, had recently finished his junior year at Philadelphia's Temple University and released his breakthrough album, a fire-bright indie-pop gem called DSU, on the tiny Brooklyn label Orchid Tapes. His house shows were getting more crowded, and journalists from national publications were making the trip to Philly to meet the artist at the center of a growing cult of diehard fans. This fall, Giannascoli is making good on that promise: Beach Music, due out October 9th, is his first album for the indie powerhouse Domino Records, where his new labelmates include bands like Animal Collective and Arctic Monkeys. 

Some of the best songs on Beach Music, like the warm, flowing 'Bug' and the urgent 'Kicker,' refine the sound heard on DSU and earlier fan-favorite LPs Trick and Rules. Others bring in newer twists. The spacey synth-pop dreamer 'Salt' began life as a fairly straightforward guitar song, says Giannascoli, 'but I knew that a real drum kit would seal the deal too much, and I didn't want it to be a neatly wrapped thing like that.' So he tinkered with his girlfriend's vintage Yamaha keyboard until he found a drum-machine patch with the right feel—soft as a pillow, and ever so slightly disorienting. 'The riff just came from me sitting in my room, fucking around for a while until I came up with something,' he says. Another standout, 'Brite Boy,' evolved from a pop-punk demo to a lilting lullaby with one of the most immediately appealing melodies Giannascoli's ever written." - Rolling Stone

BATTLES - La Di Da Di

"La Di Da Di, Battles' first album in four years, follows an extended period of silence after the end of their two-year Gloss Drop tour. Battles can't write on the road, so guitarist/keyboardist Ian Williams and guitarist/bassist Dave Konopka holed up in a New York City rehearsal space to jot down sketches while drummer John Stanier, who had relocated to Berlin, tapped out beats virtually. Once they reunited at Pawtucket, RI studio Machines with Magnets in late 2013 and early 2014, the sounds began to flow.

La Di Da Di is less fragmented than Battles' last album, suggesting the type of natural undercurrent that's only achievable after you've spent more than a decade pushing your bandmates' creative limits." - Consequence Of Sound

OUGHT - Sun Coming Down

"Montreal quartet Ought had one of 2014's underground sleeper successes with their strikingly idiosyncratic debut album More Than Any Other Day. While the music was frenetic, wired post-punk indie rock there was always a spark of accessible melody present to suggest that they could prosper in the lineage of other dynamic North American indie rock bands like R.E.M. and Sonic Youth. Their second album Sun Coming Down succeeds in developing their intriguing sound and approach while allowing a welcome splash of light and colour to creep in.

Ought are a band who have a perfect grasp on who they are and where they're going. Everything they do is thoughtful and impactful. Consider the striking cover image of dollops of bright colour, a stark contrast to the monochrome grey of the debut record. Also, a sign of their supreme confidence is their steadfast adherence to only having eight songs on their record, an old indie rock trick from the '70s and '80s that signifies there is not an inch of fat, wasted breath or thrown-away guitar line on the record. Everything happens for a reason." - musicOMH