1. Pure Heroine, Lorde
2. Mechanical Bull, Kings of Leon
3. From Here to Now to You, Jack Johnson
4. The Worse Things Get, Neko Case
5. Wise Up Ghost, Elvis Costello and the Roots
6. The B-Room, Dr. Dog
7. Event II, Deltron 3030
8. Made Up Mind, Tedeschi Trucks Band
9. Diving Board, Elton John
10. Fight for My Soul, Jonny Lang
11. AM, Arctic Monkeys
12. Days Are Gone, Haim
13. Dream Theater, Dream Theater
14. Brothers of the 4×4, Hank 3
15. Nothing Was the Same, Drake
16. Hesitation Marks, Nine Inch Nails
17. VII, Blitzen Trapper
18. Seasons of Your Day, Mazzy Star
19. Dream River, Bill Callahan
20. Country Music Dead, New Transit
SLEIGH BELLS LISTENING PARTY OCT. 8: WIN AN ULTRA-RARE TEST PRESSING LP!
The Record Exchange will host a Sleigh Bells listening party at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8. Hear their new album Bitter Rivals, pick it up on CD or vinyl and enter to win a rare vinyl test pressing of the album — one of only 15 in the country!
Initial praise for Bitter Rivals:
”Though ‘Bitter Rivals’ begins with a little acoustic strumming, it quickly morphs into the best kind of Sleigh Bells song: Raw, jittery, loud, and replete with the awesome chorus…” – EW’s Music Mix
“Enter ‘You Don’t Get Me Twice,’ a dangerously sweet song that infuses Alexis Krauss and Derek E. Miller’s trademark sonic assault with bolder melodies and honey-soaked vocals.” – SPIN
“With the group’s signature blend of thrashing guitars and pop vocals, as well as equal parts choreographed dance and headbanging, it’s not so much a change as a welcome return.” – Complex.com
“With ‘Bitter Rivals,’ Sleigh Bells continue their quest for ear-bleeding sonic glory, blending nuclear power chords with muscular synths and R&B croons to remain lovably singular.” – Billboard.com
“Sleigh Bells’ third album will almost certainly deliver plenty of bombastic riffs that you’ll be hearing in movie trailers for the rest of your life, but going on the first single “Bitter Rivals,” it’s also a bit more aggressively pop with less over-the-top noise, and more clean, foregrounded vocals from Alexis Krauss. (#11 on “26 Albums To Get Excited About This Fall”)” – Buzzfeed
“Get ready to head bang, because Sleigh Bells is back – and more generous than ever.” – V Magazine
“…’Bitter Rivals’ — its title, song, and video — rallies from the fiery football arenas of hell, crunching and hyping with the sort of pep that Sleigh Bells have trademarked in, oh, under three years.” – Consequence of Sound
THE VINYL WORD: 'VII' IS BLITZEN TRAPPER'S 'STRONGEST ALBUM'
The menacing, gloomy backwoods that open Blitzen Trapper’s seventh album arrive without warning, a backdrop with the startling, dark allure of a horror film, crooked roads and deep, wild forest framing a narrative that just can’t end well.
It’s the details of the setting that brings “Feel The Chill” to life for singer/songwriter Eric Earley. Striding along Earley’s quickly spat lyrics are a guitar riff that steals equally from funk and twang, harmonica blasts like cries for help and a disembodied organ, floating in on the wind.
With each record, Earley’s writing grows more vivid, closer to the short-story-in-a-song realm of the Drive-By Truckers, Vic Chesnutt and Jason Molina at his most direct. That’s not to say Earley typically writes with so much darkness as the late, troubled Chesnutt or Molina, but that he creates slice-of-life reality as well as anybody. Earley’s characters are the distinctly rural or small-town set, and whether they’re wounded or triumphant, these characters are honest, lifelike and endlessly captivating.
VII is Blitzen Trapper’s strongest album to date, with years of musical experimentation having come together in the band’s own mad-scientist brand of cosmic Americana. At the front is Earley, writing from the heart and from sharply recalled memories, stories that are colorful, bizarre and built to thrill, like those murky woods of “Feel The Chill.” — Paste
1ST THURSDAY AT THE RX OCT. 3: BUY 2 GET 1 FREE SAVINGS ALL OVER STORE!
It’s First Thursday, and we have all kinds of sexy savings throughout the store, including:
• Buy 2 get 1 free used CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and vinyl!!
• Buy 2 get 1 free coffee and espresso drinks!
HEY MARSEILLES IN-STORE OCTOBER 1!
Hey Marseilles will perform live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St., Downtown Boise) at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 1. The band is playing Radio Boise Tuesday at Neurolux later that evening and we have tickets for sale here at the store! As always, this Record Exchange in-store event is free and all ages!
ABOUT HEY MARSEILLES
Five miles south of downtown Seattle is the neighborhood of Columbia City—a leafy stretch of old brownstones and new condos which, according to local legend and loosely interpreted census data, boasts the most diverse zip code in America. Not far from Columbia City’s main drag, amidst a swirl of languages and colors and food and accents, sits a 100-year-old, two-story house that’s home to the world-weary, seven-piece orchestral-pop ensemble known as Hey Marseilles.
World-weary in spirit if not in practice: Hey Marseilles first won hearts across the U.S. with its 2010 debut, To Travels and Trunks, an album that reveled in the education and inspiration only globe-trotting exploration can provide. With Matt Bishop’s lyrical wayfaring abutting an instrumental palette that embraced folk tradition—accordion, strings, and horns; gypsy, Gallic, and classical—To Travels and Trunks gave musical voice to the universal longing for unfettered freedom. NPR called the record “sublime and heartfelt.”
A lot has changed in the world since 2010—that house in Columbia City, for instance. The vacillations of the economy allowed Hey Marseilles violist Jacob Anderson to acquire it in 2011; he and his younger brother, cellist and producer Sam Anderson, helped renovate it. Since then, most of the band has lived in it, and the entirety of their new album was written and recorded in it. Not surprisingly, Lines We Trace is not about going out and searching. It’s about finding you’re already where you need to be.
Make your way back home again, Bishop sings on the dusky ballad “Café Lights.” I am here still.
The 12 songs on Lines We Trace represent a band steady enough in its sound—poignant, panoramic, unreservedly gorgeous—that it can expand beyond it. The string section that hums throughout “Elegy”—quintessentially sweeping, Hey Marseilles style—shifts into finely composed abstraction for the song’s final minute. Colin Richey’s skittering rhythm on “Bright Stars Burning” is a gentle breakbeat, a sly nod to atmospheric drum ‘n’ bass. “Madrona” and the album-closing “Demian” are Hey Marseilles’ first fully instrumental songs, a pair of echo-laden piano-and-cello dirges that are simultaneously solemn and sumptuous. “Dead of Night” trots along on an almost-funky, waltzy swing and gives the album its titular lyric, trumpet triumphant as Bishop sings, The lines we trace have a thousand ends/We’ll count the ways we can’t begin/And stay in our homes, remain on our own…
Throughout, Philip Kobernik’s accordion is less pronounced than previously, Nick Ward’s guitar more so. The result is less old-world, more new school. An update. A progression. A musical analog to a line Bishop sings in “Looking Back”: If you’re looking back that’s all you’ll ever see.
Six years after Bishop first got together with Kobernik and Ward to jam at Seattle’s Gasworks Park, Hey Marseilles is an experienced band with a slew of major festivals (Bumbershoot, Sasquatch!) and a national tour under its belt. They’ve come a long way—only to find themselves back home.
Put another way, as Lines We Trace suggests, sometimes you don’t have to go far to find a meaningful experience. Sometimes the comfort of the familiar is all you need to grow.