BUY THE CD HERE

The Rapture are a pretty good art-rock band: ‘In the Grace of Your Love‘ is fleshier than its predecessors, with horns, needlework guitar, and Jenner’s brash voice filling the negative space the band used to gift to the dance floor. They deftly respond to choral background vocals, funky synth slabs, and tasteful guitar fills. A group that was once a combustible ball of energy is now a functioning nervous system with a keen sense of pace and texture.

‘In the Grace of Your Love‘ is the band’s mature album, by their own reckoning: Press for the record has almost unanimously focused on the members’ stroller-pushing benders, how frontman Luke Jenner spent time playing softball, attending church, and coping with the loss of his mother. Stability and love dominate its themes, the title cutting think-pieces off at the pass by invoking grace directly: This album is about sustained, earned love, as well as the forgiveness inherent in it.

When it clicks, it’s triumphant. – Pitchfork

OTHER NEW CD RECOMMENDATIONS:

Lindsey Buckingham Seeds We Sow
Horrible Crowes Elsie
Listen To Me: Buddy Holly
Tom Russell Mesabi
George Strait Here For A Good Time
Grace Jones Hurricane
Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer Re: ECM
Chemical Brothers Hanna Soundtrack
TV On The Radio World Cafe Live
Hugh Laurie Let Them Talk

Tags: cdnew releaseswhats playing

BUY ‘GHOST TO A GHOST/GUTTER TOWN‘ HERE
BUY ‘CATTLE CALLIN‘ HERE
BUY ‘ATTENTION DEFICIT DOMINATION‘ HERE

Hank Williams III releases three brand new albums – the double-country Ghost to a Ghost/Guttertown, the doom-rock Attention Deficient Domination, and the speed-metal Cattle Callin – all to be released on September 6 through his very own, just-launched label Hank3 Records

All three of Hank3’s new releases were recorded at The Haunted Ranch, Hank3’s home and studio just outside of Nashville.  He wrote the bulk of the songs that appear on the 41-track Ghost to a Ghost/Guttertown, a straight-shooting country collection, flavored with Hank3’s trademark Hellbilly sound, and heavily weighted with Cajun influence and an ambient, lonesome mood.  Ghost to a Ghose features guest appearances by Tom Waits, Alan King of Hellstomper, Les Claypool of Primus fame, Dave Sherman, Troy Medlin, and Hank3’s dog, Trooper.  Attention Deficit Domination allows the listener into Hank3’s crunching, metal world of the heavy and the slow, complete with his renowned, fundamental percussion.  The nine tracks hardly allow you to get up from the floor.  The 23-track Cattle Callin features Hank3’s driving, formidable guitar attack, with instrumentation built around the auctioneering (provided by legendary auctioneers Mitch Jordan and Tim Dowler) and, in some cases, his own higher-register vocal treatment laid over the top.  You’ve never heard anything like it.

Tags: cdnew releaseswhats playing