It’s the first of the month, it’s a Thursday, and that means it’s time for, uh, another First Thursday at The Record Exchange.
All day long, The Record Exchange is offering customers $2 off any used CD or DVD $5.99 and above!
In the coffee shop, all 12-ounce espresso drinks are only $2, while sale gift items over $5.99 are $2 off!
BUY THE DVD HERE
Counting Crows‘ debut album “August and Everything After” was an instant success on its release in late 1993 and went on to sell over 7 million copies in America. In the UK it charted at No.16 and has sold over 400,000 copies. On September 18, 2007, the band performed the complete album live for the first time at Town Hall in New York City. The band has maintained a hugely successful career with global album sales now in excess of 20 million but they have always saved their finest moments for the live arena. Now for the first time a Counting Crows live concert film is available to own.
OTHER NEW DVD/BLU-RAY RELEASES:
Pentagram When The Screams Come
Orpheus
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Robert Earl Keen‘s writing on Ready for Confetti is, more often than not, incredibly sharp. “The Road Goes On and On” plays as an answer to his best-known song, “The Road Goes on Forever,” as Keen spits out a series of insults that become more and more self-directed (“[You’re] the original Liar’s Paradox/And you’ll have to Google that”); it’s every bit as vicious and cutting as it is hilarious. He revisits another of his songs on a re-recorded version of “Paint the Town Beige” from his 1993 album, Bigger Piece of Sky, giving the song a far simpler, less fussy arrangement that allows his extraordinary eye for detail to shine.
Though he’s never been known as a dynamic singer or interpreter, his cover of Todd Snider’s flat-out brilliant “Play a Train Song” is an inspired choice that fits perfectly alongside his own compositions. A bluesy reading of the traditional gospel song “Soul of Man,” which Keen has often performed a cappella in his live shows, closes the record on a note that is genuinely affecting and sincere. In dropping the irony for a moment, Keen yet again toys with expectations and shakes up his formula, and it’s that openness to change that makes Ready for Confetti one of Keen’s finest albums. – Slant Magazine
OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:
Beirut The Rip Tide
Nite Jewel It Goes Through Your Head
CSS LA Liberaction
John Mayall Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton
John Mayall Crusade
John Mayall Hard Road
Ministry Psalm 69
Peter Murphy Ninth
10 Ft. Ganja Plant Shake Up The Place
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It’s a cause for celebration, The Rip Tide – a commencement party for a band shedding its eccentricities and rounding down its cultural influences in favor of delightful, orchestral pop. Three cheers for Beirut, as they move out from under the cloudy, drunken Eastern Bloc influences of their former albums and into the sun of American indie. That is, if that’s what you want from this band. Seeing how all things must naturally progress, Beirut doesn’t sprint away from who they were toward something they’re not, but rather they gently refine the excitement of their first two albums into a product with a focused scope and broad appeal. Zach Condon, ringleader of the group and lead songwriter, leaves the impoverished waltzes behind in favor of a rich future with tighter arrangements, fuller sound, and generally better spirits.
It’s not as much like Citizen Kane as it may seem, but The Rip Tide definitely is the band aiming for something far more nationalistic than ever before, and thanks to the prodigious arranging and songwriting talents of Condon, songs hit their mark over and over again throughout the record. For a taste of nationalism, you needn’t look further than the song titles, many of which reference US cities, ports, and neighborhoods and use those locations as backdrops. The piano ballad of “Goshen” slowly adds layers of horns and snare over Condon’s forlorn voice as he sings t0 a woman frightened of one stage or another. When he croons, he recalls that pre-rock and roll, Italian-American voice with a shaken vibrato, so that no matter how relatively modern the instrumentation may be, there’s always a sense of the past in Beirut’s songs. – Consequence of Sound
OTHER NEW CD RECOMMENDATIONS:
Robert Earl Keen Ready For Confetti
Lil Wayne Tha Carter IV
Ry Cooder Pull Up Some Dust & Sit Down
Lenny Kravitz Black & White America
Counting Crows August & Everything After: Live at Town Hall
Mike Doughty Yes & Also Yes
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus Am I The Enemy
Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman World Wide Rebel Songs
Jill Scott Vol. 1 – Original Jill Scott From The Vault
Cobra Starship Night Shades
Glen Campbell Ghost on the Canvas
Tinariwen Tassili
BUY THE CD HERE
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The opening seconds of ”Monarchy of Roses,” the lead song on the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album in five years, are nearly panic-inducing: Random drum fills and squalls of guitar feedback elbow each other without any direction. Frontman Anthony Kiedis moans about promises and dreams in a distorted death rattle. It’s the sound of a rock & roll institution going to pieces, unable to find its footing after a long hiatus and the departure of yet another guitarist, John Frusciante.
Then, like a funky bolt of lightning from Valhalla, the snare kicks into gear, Flea’s fleet-fingered bass line finds a sharp groove, and suddenly everybody’s rocking like it’s 1989 again. The Chili Peppers have been knocked down so often by infighting, egos, exits, and even death (founding guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose in 1988), but I’m With You doesn’t bear any of those scars.
Like 1999’s Californication — another release that came after a hiatus and lineup reshuffle — I’m With You is greater than the sum of its many-cogged parts. The highs (the hyperactive ”Goodbye Hooray,” the festive requiem ”Brendan’s Death Song”) greatly eclipse occasional stumbles (the lifeless ”Meet Me at the Corner”). Five years ago, the L.A. denizens famously intoned, ”California, rest in peace.” And while they’re still the house band for watching the Golden State sink into the ocean, they’re making sure that the beach bums left behind have an excellently heavy soundtrack for the after-party. — Entertainment Weekly