1105 West Idaho Street Boise, Idaho (208)-344-8010

GIVE THE GIFT OF MUSIC AT THE RX: HUNDREDS OF TITLES $9.99 OR LESS THROUGH JAN. 31; GREAT V-DAY GIFTS!

January 12, 2011 - On Sale , Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

Yes, Christmas is over. But it’s not too late to Give the Gift of Music at The Record Exchange — if you act fast, in fact, you could get your Valentine’s Day shopping done early and save mad bank.

Now through Jan. 31, The Record Exchange has hundreds of new CDs, including dozens of 2010 best sellers, sale-priced at $9.99 or less. See, 10 bucks still does go a long way.

Here’s a partial list of Record Exchange Give the Gift of Music titles:

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Avi Buffalo – Avi Buffalo
Bobby Bare Jr. – A Storm, A Tree, My Mother’s Head
Barenaked Ladies – Barenaked for the Holidays
Beach House – Teen Dream
Best Coast – Crazy For You
The Black Angels – Phosphene Dream
The Black Keys – Brothers
Black Mountain – Wilderness Heart
Blitzen Trapper – Destroyer of the Void
Blonde Redhead – Penny Sparkle
Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
The Books – The Way Out
Bright Eyes and Neva Dinova – One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – Swim
Caribou – Swim
Charlatans UK – Who We Touch
!!! (Chk Chk Chk) – Strange Weather, Isn’t It?
Colour Revolt – Cradle
The Dead Weather – Sea of Cowards
Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
Devo – Something for Everybody
Dum Dum Girls – I Will Be
Dungen – Skit I Allt
Everest – On Approach
Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Merle Haggard – I Am What I Am
Hey Marseilles – To Travels and Trunks
Ingram Hill – Look Your Best
Sarah Jaffe – Suburban Nature
Jenny and Johnny – I’m Having Fun Now
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts – Greatest Hits
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – I Learned the Hard Way
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – Naturally
Jonsi – Go
Les Savy Fav – Root for Ruin
The Living Sisters – Love to Live
Local Natives – Gorilla Manor
Maps & Atlas – Perch Patchwork
Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid
The National – High Violet
Of Montreal – False Priest
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phosphorescent – Here’s To Taking It Easy
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals – Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Josh Ritter – So Runs the World Away
She & Him – Volume 2
Spoon – Transference
Superchunk – Majesty Shredding
The Sword – Warp Riders
The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt
Trampled By Turtles – Palomino
Underworld – Barking
Vampire Weekend – Contra
Various Artists – Daptone Gold
Versus – On the Ones and Threes
Paul Weller – Wake Up the Nation
Wolf Parade – Expo 86
The xx – XX

Tags:

Recent Posts

THE VINYL WORD: DIO-ERA SABBATH HAMMERSMITH CONCERT NOW ON WAX; GORGEOUS LIMITED-EDITION 3LP SET!

January 12, 2011 - Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog , The Vinyl Word - by - No Comments

BUY VINYL HERE

Black Sabbath‘s Live at Hammersmith Odeon is a special 3LP vinyl release that was originally released by Rhino Handmade as a CD and sold out in one day. It’s never been sold in stores on vinyl before, and now it’s available as a limited-edition, numbered set (only 3,000 available worldwide).

This album features Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward live at Hammersmith Odeon in January 1982 during Sabbath’s tour for The Mob Rules.

The concert spotlights Sabbath as they storm through 14 of the Dio-era’s best, including “Neon Knights,” “Heaven and Hell,” “Children of the Sea” and “Country Girl.” The band also performs several pre-Dio classics, including “Paranoid,” “Children of the Grave” and a white-hot version of “War Pigs.”

MORE NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Cage the Elephant Thank You Happy Birthday
Cake Showroom of Compassion
Tapes ‘n Tapes Outside
British Sea Power Valhalla Dancehall
Jimi Hendrix Blues
The Soft Boys Underwater Moonlight
The Soft Boys Can of Bees
Robert Plant Band of Joy
Deep Purple Burn
Ted Nugent Cat Scratch Fever
Poison Look What the Cat Dragged In
ZZ Top Rio Grande
ZZ Top Deguello
Jack’s Mannequin Everything in Transit

Tags:

CAKE AND OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE RECORD EXCHANGE!

January 11, 2011 - On Sale , Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

BUY THE CD HERE
BUY THE VINYL HERE

Only Cake’s John McCrea could coax a song with the fuddy-duddy title “Federal Funding” into such witty existence. The opening track to their sixth studio album starts with some crud-covered guitar and the deadpan lyric, “You’ll receive the federal funding; you can add another wing.” It’s a cocky strut made for those thankless academics lobbying for grant money. University proles, congrats! Cake has elevated your career to the same status as the swaggering pimp in gangsta rap.

Its first album since 2004, Showroom of Compassion finds the Northern Californian outfit in toned condition, turning out polished compositions that could fit in with its classic catalog (strong with hits like “Short Skirt Long Jacket”) but updated with a few new twists. Also, the same notion of edginess that blessed and cursed other ‘90s bands like Soul Coughing (ahem: the semi-spoken vocals thing) has been nicely mellowed out. As ever before, Cake romps with whatever genre — pickled ska, roughshod country, even a rare snippet of Chopin-like classical piano — in its indie folk mash.

Recorded in the band’s own solar-powered studio in Sacramento over a period of some two years, each song on Showroom of Compassion sounds nurtured into its ideal state. The positive-minded “What’s Now Is Now,” with its chirping birds, strings and synth burbles, has almost a utopian, ‘70s AM rock glisten to it. Could a song developed off the city’s energy grid, literally soaked in sunshine, sound any other way?— Los Angeles Times

OTHER NEW CD RECOMMENDATIONS:

Tapes ‘N Tapes Outside
British Sea Power Valhalla Dancehall
Lynyrd Skynyrd Skynyrd Nation
Abigail Washburn City of Refuge
N.E.R.D. The Best of N.E.R.D.
Louis C.K. Hilarious
Alter Bridge Live from Amsterdam
Lee Dorsey Absolutely the Best
Shackleton Fabric 55
Zyklon Storm Manifesto

Tags:

NEW DVD/BLU-RAY: SOCIAL NETWORK NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD AT THE RX!

January 11, 2011 - DVD and Blu Ray , On Sale , Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

BUY THE DVD HERE

They all laughed at college nerd Mark Zuckerberg, whose idea for a social-networking site made him a billionaire. And they all laughed at the idea of a Facebook movie — except writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher, merely two of the more extravagantly talented filmmakers around.

Sorkin and Fincher’s breathless picture, The Social Network, is a fast and witty creation myth about how Facebook grew from Zuckerberg’s insecure geek-at-Harvard days into a phenomenon with 500 million users. Sorkin frames the movie around two lawsuits aimed at the lofty but brilliant Zuckerberg (deftly played by Adventureland‘s Jesse Eisenberg): a claim that he stole the idea from Ivy League classmates, and a suit by his original, now slighted, business partner (Andrew Garfield).

The movie follows a familiar rise-and-fall pattern, with temptation in the form of a sunny California Beelzebub (an expert Justin Timberlake as former Napster founder Sean Parker) and an increasingly tangled legal mess. Emphasizing the legal morass gives Sorkin and Fincher a chance to explore how unsocial this social-networking business can be, although the irony seems a little facile.

More damagingly, the film steers away from the prickly figure of Zuckerberg in the latter stages — and yet Zuckerberg presents the most intriguing personality in the movie, even if the movie takes pains to make us understand his shortcomings. Fincher’s command of pacing and his eye for the clean spaces of Aughts-era America are bracing, and he can’t resist the technical trickery involved in turning actor Armie Hammer into privileged Harvard twins (Hammer is letter-perfect). Even with its flaws, The Social Network is a galloping piece of entertainment, a smart ride with smart people … who sometimes do dumb things.

MORE NEW DVD/BLU-RAY RELEASES:

Black Metal: The Music of Satan DVD
Goth Vampire Nation DVD
Louis C.K.: Hilarious DVD
Powwow Highway DVD
48 Hours/Another 48 Hours DVD
Greg Osby and John Abercrombie Solos: The Jazz Sessions DVD
Punk Attitude DVD
Army of Shadows Blu-ray

Tags:

NEW RELEASE OF THE WEEK: CAGE THE ELEPHANT’S ‘SOLID SECOND STEP’

January 11, 2011 - On Sale , Recommended , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

BUY THE CD HERE
BUY THE VINYL HERE
FREE LIMITED-EDITION COLOR LITHOGRAPH WITH PURCHASE!

It’s not that Cage the Elephant has “grown up” since their first album and followed it with a sophomore effort that’s just a stronger extension of the first, because in some ways, Thank You Happy Birthday is the lyrical antithesis of their debut. The self-titled first recording, rife with hit singles, harbored some very general frustrations with the ways of the world, while Thank You scrubs off a lot of youthful angst, turns the pointing finger around, and examines problems more personal to the songwriter. Matt Shultz sings about music industry tricks, TV ad poison and stereotypical hipster self-aware B.S. in a punk-funk mash-up that, on this album, leans more towards punk with occasional glimpses of their southern roots, and an obvious appreciation for the Pixies.

Shultz alternates a scratchy, expressive yowl, much like The Whigs’ Parker Gispert, with aggressive Frank Black vocals, and the instrumentation similarly juggles abrasive with soft. While the fuzzy, foreboding opener “Always Something” is intense and has a vague dance vibe, “Aberdeen” loosens up with a hooky melody and chipper bass line. Unsteady highs and lows are found in the grungy Beatles-like single “Shake Me Down,” in which the guitars create a sorrowful tick tock amidst a rolling drum cascade (drummer Jared Champion implemented a toy drum for this one).

Even traces of post-hardcore sneak in like on the bruising, adrenaline-pumped “Sell Yourself,” which is countered by the reeling 3/4 time strumming of “Rubber Ball.” More Pixies influence is found in “Sabertooth Tiger,” though its angry, buzzing riffs could also belong to The White Stripes. It’s “Paper Cut (Walk Around My Head)” that sounds as if it could have slipped right off of Doolittle, and it’s also one of the best on the album, along with the wiry plucking and layered percussion of “Flow.” It all seems more diverse than it actually sounds, and true, the band borrows plenty, including some room to play around with the sound, but Thank You Happy Birthday transcends its genres, and would be better simply labeled as a solid second step. — American Songwriter

Tags: