The first of this week’s bangers is Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams, the first solo record in over a decade from Patterson Hood. The album was born out of a friendship with producer Chris Funk (The Decemberists). The pair would often perform together for fun and, during Hood’s solo tours, made tentative plans to one day make a record together. They eventually went into Jackpot Studios in Portland. Many of the songs were composed on piano, marking a bigger departure from Hood’s work with Drive-By Truckers than his prior solo efforts. There are guest appearances from Waxahatchee, Wednesday and Lydia Loveless.
Killswitch Engage is celebrating an astonishing 25-year career as one of the most vital and genre-defining bands of the ’00s. The band continues its incredible legacy by unleashing This Consequence, a masterfully executed record that captures the band’s signature sound while levelling up on teeth-baring tracks like ‘Forever Aligned’, ‘I Believe’ and ‘Collusion’.
The Prince of Fried, Julian Cope, has brung forth 12 brand-new humdingers on Friar Tuck: all hummable and lyrically compelling and replete with wah-acoustic guitars and beautiful orchestrations of Mellotron 400 from Liverpool’s Blondest. So inhale the garage-fuzz dub of ‘R in the Hood’, the mantric powerdrive of ‘Four Jehovahs in a Volvo Estate’, the sentimental Pete Burns lamentations of ‘In Spungent Mansions’ … and who could resist the affectionate micro-trolling of ‘Will Sergeant’s Blues’?
The eponymous 11-song album Motorpsycho has exactly as much variety and diversity, accord and discord as you’d expect from a band that these days must be regarded as an institution in European rock. From concise 3-minute pop-rockers to 20-minute-plus progressive epics via acoustic intimacies and psychedelic wig-outs, this is concentrated Motorpsychosis: commenced Rebis, countdown initiated. Ever closer … ever sharper …
To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Oasis’s seminal single Whatever is being reissued as a limited-edition numbered 7″ pressed on pink-and-blue splatter vinyl and featuring remastered audio of the classic song paired with its original B-side, ‘(It’s Good) to Be Free’.
Our release of the week is People Watching, the third studio album from this year’s RSD ambassador, Sam Fender. The album was written over the last 3 years and recorded in London and LA, co-produced by Sam alongside Marcus Dravs and The War on Drugs’ Adam Grancuciel.
Click on an image to order your copy.