The first of this week’s goodies is The Greater Wings, the first album in over six years from American songwriter Julie Byrne. The album is a testament to patience and determination, the willingness to transform through the desolation of loss, the vitality of renewal, and the courage to rise, forever changed. For nearly a decade, Byrne has moved through the world as a characteristically private artist largely outside the public eye. A self-taught musician who has committed her life to her work, she now emerges from a deeply trying and generative period with the most powerful, lustrous and life-affirming music of her career. While they hold the plasticity of grief and trauma, the songs on The Greater Wings are universally resonant, unbridled in their devotion and joy, held up by the love and alliance of a chosen family.
All Around Man contains the recording of a previously unreleased concert from Rory Gallagher’s late 1990 UK tour, featuring a 23-song set of live career classics as well as material from his then-latest albums Fresh Evidence and Defender. This new album has been mixed from recently discovered multi-tracks and mastered at Abbey Road.
Gabriels return with the full release of their debut album, Angels & Queens, produced by fellow Compton local, the Grammy-winning Sounwave. Angels & Queens Part I was released back in September, picking up widespread acclaim across the globe. Its release was governed by the band’s desire to push through the release of new recordings, so they have released the album in two distinct chapters. The second chapter now completes the album’s full 13-track programme. The album incorporates a brand-new recording of the band’s seminal debut single, ‘Love and Hate in a Different Time’ plus songs that have already become staples of the band’s live set: ‘Offering’, ‘Glory’ and ‘Great Wind’.
With socially insightful lyrics and an adept ability to progress their sound and experiment between the diverse genres that shape them as a band, Nothing But Thieves are making a statement return, marking an innovative new chapter with their fourth album, Dead Club City. ‘Welcome to the DCC’, the first single from the album, not only signals the band’s more left-field sound but also advertises the world of ‘DCC’, otherwise known as ‘Dead Club City’, and the songs and ideas to come. A rock song, but with an experimental funk edge and ’80s influences, the track builds through the opening tension, breaking to upbeat synths and a huge soaring chorus. The band add: “Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City. All the Heaven, all the time.”
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is is a re-recording of American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift’s third studio album, 2010’s Speak Now, and follows the release in 2021 of re-recorded versions of her first two albums, Fearless and Red. The re-recording is a part of Swift’s counteraction to her 2019 masters dispute. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) features collaborations with American rock acts Fall Out Boy and Hayley Williams.
Our release of the week is P J Harvey’s tenth studio album, I Inside the Old Year Dying, her first new release in seven years. On this album, which was recorded with long-time creative collaborators John Parish and Flood, P J Harvey builds a sonic universe somehow located in a space between life’s opposites, and between recent history and the ancient past. Scattered with biblical imagery and references to Shakespeare, all of these distinctions ultimately dissolve into something profoundly uplifting and redemptive.
Click on an image to order your copy.