Austin Lucas‘ new album Stay Reckless is now available at The Record Exchange on CD and vinyl!
A gritty singer-songwriter with hardcore roots, Lucas wrote and recorded the album during the process of getting divorced. Of Stay Reckless, American Songwriter says “bluegrass, folk, and classic country meet bar-band rock & roll.”
PREVIEW/BUY THE CD HERE
PREVIEW/BUY THE DELUXE CD HERE
PREVIEW/BUY THE VINYL HERE
It gets a little nebulous when you try to explain why Mechanical Bull is the best Kings of Leon album since Aha Shake Heartbreak. It’s not that the Followill boys have drastically changed anything about either their sound or persona. Perhaps it’s that their Southern sensibilities have finally leveled out with their unexpected alt-rock fame. They’re not reacting to being “big” anymore. They aren’t giving interviews to British rock mags about how they beat the shit out of each other because they think that’s what made them “authentic.” The real answer is as simple as the foundation this band was built on. Mechanical Bull is just fucking fun.
Much like the album’s namesake, you can expect a good time, every time. From songs like the bluesy porch-tune “Rock City” to the country-tinged “Comeback Story,” Mechanical Bull is an album built to be performed live. And that’s exactly what we want from the Kings – a chance to gather up our friends and a few substances and just forget our lives while getting lost in Caleb Followill’s tales. It’s the sound of Kings of Leon realizing that sometimes where you were is better than where you ended up. — Absolute Punk
1. MGMT, MGMT
2. From Here to Now to You, Jack Johnson
3. Dream River, Bill Callahan
4. Can’t Talk Medicine, Pickwick
5. Perigaea Antahkarana, Wolvserpent
6. The Bones of What You Believe, Chvrches
7. AM, Arctic Monkeys
8. Country Music Dead, New Transit
9. Repave, Volcano Choir
10. Hail to the King, Avenged Sevenfold
11. Heavy Metal Music, Newsted
12. Fight for My Soul, Jonny Lang
13. Long Night Moon, Reckless Kelly
14. Battle Maximus, GWAR
15. The Worse Things Get, Neko Case
16. The Riverman’s Daughter, The Grahams
17. Hesitation Marks, Nine Inch Nails
18. Nepenthe, Julianna Barwick
19. Depend Yourself, Sebadoh
20. The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait, Bob Dylan
PREVIEW/BUY THE VINYL HERE
Pity the band stuck in the last-chance saloon. Once you’ve squandered your success and your corporate paymasters are worried about the running costs of their shareholders’ yachts, you’re going to get reined in. So pity MGMT. After 2010’s Congratulations – a bitter, courgette-flavoured lozenge compared to the candyfloss pop of debut album Oracular Spectacular in 2007 – their self-titled third album surely sees the band coerced into that purgatory, forced to whip up more ironic electro anthems under the threat of losing their deal…
The hell it does. Despite their decimated fanbase, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser have refused to back down from their ongoing musical odyssey. MGMT is something else entirely. It’s a dark, difficult album – perhaps the weirdest that a major label has released in years – that shares the electronic soundbed of Oracular, but little else. Throughout, the drums are distorted and glitchy, and synths drift woozily by, having more in common with Boards Of Canada’s acid mysticism than the glittering, glammy riffs of MGMT’s debut.
So the tie-dye T-shirts and proggy twists and turns may have gone, but this is undoubtedly the most mind-altering, psychedelic music MGMT have yet made. In a world where bands exist merely to bag the next phone ad soundtrack, the guts and wild abandon of the pair’s singular, foolhardy vision is rare indeed. In fact, as if it wasn’t clear enough already, MGMT aren’t here to please you, or their label – and if you think they owe you another ‘Kids’, you’re as misguided as the grannies who lost interest when The Beatles got into those jazz cigarettes and went a bit funny. — NME