This week’s smashers start with Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, a sprawling double LP exploring the deepest elements and possibilities of Big Thief. To truly dig into all that the music of Adrianne Lenker, Max Oleartchik, Buck Meek and James Krivchenia desired in 2020, the band decided to write and record a rambling account of their growth as individuals, musicians, and chosen family over four distinct recording sessions.
It’s been a decade since Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators released their debut album together, and since then they have been on one of the more impressive and unrelenting tears in rock’n’roll, issuing two more hard-hitting, hugely acclaimed records, and rocking stages all over the world. True to the band’s expanding legacy, the highly anticipated Dave Cobb-produced 4 is everything you’ve come to expect from Slash, Myles Kennedy, Todd Kerns (bass), Brent Fitz (drums) and Frank Sidoris (rhythm guitar), but also unlike anything you’ve heard from them before.
The Dream is an album of intrigue, beauty and humanity – a coalescence of everything that has made alt-J a global band with true staying power. Stories inspired by true crime and tales of Hollywood and the Chateau Marmont rub shoulders with some of the band’s most personal moments to date. The album was created after a period of rest for the band following their seismic world tour in support of their previous hit album, Relaxer.
Eve Adams offers solace within life’s shadows. Un-numbing senses with anthems of surrender and tender-hearted tales that tingle with Californian folk-noir, Metal Bird takes flight with the turbulence and romance of Hollywood’s golden age, and meditates on the mysteries of love, death, insecurity and loneliness. “Delicious desolation … earning Adams a place in the pantheon of woozy contemporary torch singers alongside Mazzy Star, Lana Del Rey and Angel Olsen” 8/10 Uncut.
Spoon’s tenth album, Lucifer On The Sofa, is the band’s purest rock’n’roll record to date. Texas-made, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years – both in and out of lockdown – these songs mark a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more full-colour, bottling the physical thrill of a band tearing up a packed room.
Our release of the week is The Sea Drift, the third album proper for country’s-got-soul’s finest, The Delines, on which they explore the US Gulf Coast, not far from where Amy Boone grew up. The songs in this cinematic opus all focus around this area and are inspired by when Amy asked Willy Vlautin to write her a song like Tony Joe White’s ‘Rainy Night In Georgia’ after her 3-year recovery from being hit by a car in 2016.
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