The first of our six stormers for the next two weeks to blow in is Substance (out 10 Nov), which compiled the 12″ versions of all of New Order’s singles from 1981 to 1987 with many of their respective B-sides (on the CD and cassette versions), including specially recorded new versions of ‘Temptation’ and ‘Confusion’. Originally released on the legendary Factory Records, the album also included the biggest-selling 12″ single of all time, ‘Blue Monday’, alongside other classic singles such as ‘The Perfect Kiss’, ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ and the band’s debut single, ‘Ceremony’. This expanded 4-CD collection includes the original 2-CD set newly remastered plus two additional CDs: one is packed with alternative versions and extra B-sides while the other features an unreleased live concert from Irvine Meadows, California, on 12 September 1987, where the band uniquely played the entire album in sequence.
20 albums and 25 years into her recording career, only now does Thea Gilmore feel enough of herself to make the self-titled album that renews her vows to music – her first love. Thea Gilmore (out 17 Nov) was written, played and produced entirely by Thea, and is absolutely the record she wanted to make – in many ways the record she had to make. Sustained by the very public dissection of her personal life laid bare on her last full-length release, the stunningly intimate Afterlight, Thea’s hard-earned reputation as one of the most distinctive, strident and bold singer-songwriters of her generation propels her to reach for new ground, and this new release feels like a great leap forward into tomorrow. “That’s why this is my first self-titled album,” she explains. “On my last album I changed my name to Afterlight and drew a line under everything I’d done up to that point. Not to invalidate it, but to put an end to the ‘before’. It was a very inward-looking record that was rooted in the darkness of everything that happened to me up to 2019.”
Bob Dylan’s 1978 world tour marked his first international concert dates since 1966 and his first live shows since the Rolling Thunder Revue blasted through North America in 1975–6. A major international musical event, the year-long tour found Dylan performing 114 shows in Asia, Oceania, North America and Europe to a combined audience of two million fans. Another Budokan 1978 (out 17 Nov) features 16 specially selected unreleased tracks from two shows originally recorded on 24-channel multitrack analogue tapes at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan Hall on 28 February and 1 March 1978. For die-hard fans, The Complete Budokan 1978 set presents the two complete shows – 58 tracks – in a luxurious deluxe box with stacks of extras.
Live at the Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967 (out 17 Nov) documents The Jimi Hendrix Experience on the cusp of stardom with a collection of 10 never-before-heard performances, including a blistering cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Killing Floor’.
Hadsel (out 10 Nov) is the first new album from Beirut since 2019’s Gallipoli and the first on Zach Condon’s own label, Pompeii Records. After a physical and mental breakdown forced Condon to cancel his 2019 tour, he was looking for a place to recover after being left in a state of shock and self-doubt. Working in isolation on the Norwegian island of Hadsel, Condon explains, “I was lost in a trance, stumbling blindly through my own mental collapse that I had been pushing aside since I was a teenager. It came and rang me like a bell. I was left agonising many things past and present while the beauty of the nature, the northern lights and fearsome storms played an awesome show around me. The few hours of light would expose the unfathomable beauty of the mountains and the fjords, and the hours-long twilights would fill me with subdued excitement. I’d like to believe that scenery is somehow present in the music.”
Our release of the week is Higher (out 10 Nov), the fifth studio album from multi-platinum country hero Chris Stapleton, which was co-produced by Chris with his wife Morgane and their long-time collaborator Dave Cobb at Nashville’s famed RCA Studio A. Cobb also plays acoustic and electric guitar on the record with Morgane providing backing vocals, tambourine, and synthesizer, and there are further contributions from J.T. Cure, Paul Franklin, Derek Mixon and Lee Pardini.
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