Previous RECORD EXCHANGE TOP 20 SELLERS (WEEK ENDING DECEMBER 4)
Do you like it hard and heavy? Then come to The Record Exchange and visit The Headbanger’s Wall, a listening station devoted to some of today’s best bands pummeling you with raw power and raw emotion.
The Headbanger’s Wall currently features Rammstein, Cradle of Filth, Iced Earth, Korn, Tesseract, Vallenfyre, Vildhjarta, August Burns Red, Insomnium and Disturbed. Come melt your face with us.
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So the joke goes like this: Actor/comedian Donald Glover (you know, Troy Barnes from Community) got it in his head one day that he wanted to be a rapper. Cue a boatload of EPs, mixtapes, and random song drops, and now Glover (going by the nom de rhyme Childish Gambino) has dropped his debut album, Camp, on Glassnote Records, the home to big-name acts Mumford & Sons, Phoenix, and The Temper Trap. Here’s the punchline, though: The joke’s actually on us. Gambino can really rap. Scratch that; he can really, reallyrap, plus sing and emote and put on a show better than 90% of his hip-hop counterparts. What’s funny isn’t that some dude who used to work with Tina Fey has big-time rap dreams; it’s that they’re about to come true.
While fellow rapper Drake might work the hardest to fill his songs with earnest emotional displays, Gambino’s heartfelt declarations flow the easiest. And while they may not always be the most complicated or compelling, there’s no denying how readily Gambino lets people in. One of the more well-constructed confessions is the album opener “Outside”, where Gambino muses on the loss of his cousin to the streets (“She don’t want me in a lifestyle like my cousin/And he mad cause his father ain’t around/He lookin’ at me now, like ‘Why you so fuckin lucky?/I had a father too/But he ain’t around so I’mma take it out on you’/We used to say ‘I love you’/Now we only think that shit/It feels weird that you’re the person I took sink baths with/Street took you over/I want my cousin back”). And it’s in that low-key moment that Gambino sums up his whole aesthetic: young, angry, and full of regrets in the face of this unending wealth of swagger and a blazingly bright future. – Consequence Of Sound
OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:
Black Keys El Camino
Awolnation Megalithic Symphony
Imelda May Mayhem
Tallest Man On Earth Shallow Grave
Arctic Monkeys Suck It & See
Brian Eno Small Craft On A Milk Sea
Guided By Voices Doughnut For A Snowman
Lake Gravel
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This is a sad record. A grab bag of outtakes, unreleased tracks, demos, covers and song sketches, these recordings feel like a gut punch. They remind you, first and foremost, of that voice – one of pop music’s most instantly recognizable vocal imprints, a sound that leapt out of your speakers and seized you by the ears. Here, as always, Amy Winehouse‘s singing is both raggedy and dramatic, winking and insouciant, full of high drama and a breezy sense of play – sometimes all those things at the same time.
Sadder still, what’s not here. Winehouse was a talent in formation. Her debut album, the jazzy retro-soul Frank (2003), was promising but flawed: her appealing mix of London homegirl brassiness and classic-pop chops was undermined by her overly mannered singing and an unsure songwriting touch. On Back to Black (2006), she turned from sass to melodrama – with help from producer Mark Ronson and a pile of old Shangri-Las 45s – and recorded wrenchingly beautiful (and funny, and potty-mouthed) songs about love and addiction. But she was still finding her feet as a singer and a songwriter when she died. On Lioness: Hidden Treasures, there are charming reminders of what was: the stirringly stately “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” cover, an alternate version of “Tears Dry.” But it’s hard not to believe that Winehouse died with her best work in front of her. We’ll never hear those records, and the silence is deafening. – Rolling Stone
OTHER NEW CD RECOMMENDATIONS:
Roots Undun
Warren Haynes Warren Haynes Presents: The Benefit Concert
Korn Path Of Totality
Chevelle Hats Off To The Bull
Bassnectar Divergent Spectrum
Robin Thicke Love After War
Allman Brothers Band Suny At Stonybrook
Allman Brothers Band One Way Out
Dead Milkman King In Yellow
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