1. Reflektor, Arcade Fire
2. Pure Heroine, Lorde
3. Let’s Be Still, The Head and the Heart
4. Lightning Bolt, Pearl Jam
5. Magpie and the Dandelion, The Avett Brothers
6. The Civil Wars, The Civil Wars
7. New, Paul McCartney
8. Get Happy, Pink Martini
9. Melophobia, Cage the Elephant
10. Smoke and Mirrors, Brett Dennen
11. Lindsey Stirling, Lindsey Stirling
12. Recharged, Linkin Park
13. Shulamith, Polica
14. The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must Be the Heart, Sepultura
15. I’m a Stranger Here, The Devil Makes Three
16. Molly Drake, Molly Drake
17. L-Event, Autechre
18. Memorial, Russian Circles
19. Antiphon, Midlake
20. Grand Blood, Doomriders
WIN A HOWE GELB VINYL TEST PRESSING LP/NEW WEST RECORDS PRIZE PACK!
The Record Exchange was one of a few select indie record stores in the country to get our hands on an ultra-rare vinyl test pressing of the new Howe Gelb album The Coincidentalist, and one lucky customer will win it along with a New West Records prize pack that includes a record tote bag, turntable slip mat, T-shirt and sticker).
To be entered into the drawing, we are requiring a CD or vinyl purchase of The Coincidentalist. Why? Because we want the vinyl to go to a Gelb fan and not up on eBay. Deadline to purchase the album and get entered to win is Sunday, Nov. 10. We will draw the winner at random on Monday, Nov. 11.
WIN AN OF MONTREAL/DEERHOOF PRIZE WITH CDs AND TICKETS TO THE SHOWS!
Our friends at Duck Club Presents and Polyvinyl Records have given us some goodies to give away to you in anticipation of Of Montreal‘s (Nov. 5 El Korah Shrine) and Deerhoof‘s (Nov. 8 Neurolux) Boise shows next week!
Send an email with the subject “Duck Club” HERE by noon Monday, Nov. 4, for a chance to win a pair of tickets to both shows along with CDs of Of Montreal’s Lousy with Sylvianbriar and Deerhoof’s Breakup Song. The winners will be drawn at random and notified on the afternoon of the 4th.
THE VINYL WORD: PELICAN RETURNS
PREVIEW/PURCHASE THE VINYL HERE
Following 2009’s threadbare What We All Come To Need, it was clear that Pelican needed a rest. The pioneering post-metal band didn’t just seem exhausted by its own intense schedule of writing, recording, and touring over the previous few years; metal itself had mutated wildly in the new millennium, and Pelican seemed upstaged by any number of hungrier, more focused outfits. It didn’t help that Pelican circa 2009 seemed just a little quaint. The cerebral, atmospheric sound of instrumental post-metal didn’t leave as much of a bruise as it once had, at least not compared to what so many metal upstarts had begun to peddle. To its credit, Pelican not only resisted the temptation to blacken, broaden, or otherwise overhaul its signature sound, it took that much-needed break between albums. A four-year break, to be precise. The Chicago quartet’s comeback is Forever Becoming, its fifth full-length. And a comeback it surely is.
There’s more metal on the album than any Pelican release to date—as if the group was intent on exploring both poles of its post-metal globe, a world whose equator used to be where Pelican mostly dwelled. More dynamics, more extremes, more shades of light and dark, of melody and atonality: Forever Becoming embraces all of it, as well as its own newfound, euphoric renewal. Metal, post- or otherwise, hasn’t gotten any simpler or less crowded over the past four years. But by stepping back and taking stock, Pelican has reconnected with what made it a pioneer in the first place: force, vision, and soul. — A.V. Club
NEW RELEASE OF THE WEEK: ARCADE FIRE'S 'REFLEKTOR' – THEIR 'KID A'?
PREVIEW/PURCHASE THE CD HERE
PREVIEW/PURCHASE THE VINYL HERE
“If this is heaven/I need something more,” Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, Arcade Fire‘s founding singers, declare in close, almost whispered harmony as the opening title song of their band’s extraordinary new album goes into high gear. Reflektor is seven and a half busy minutes of art and party. Over a strident-disco hybrid of the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” and Yoko Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice,” Arcade Fire and their new co-producer, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, throw brittle-fuzz guitar licks, grunting bass, mock-grand piano and ballooning synth chords across deep reverb like frantic instrumental argument. They also find room for David Bowie, one of Arcade Fire’s first and biggest fans, who sings with Butler near the end and repurposes the descending vocal flourish from his 1975 hit “Fame.”
The way Butler and Chassagne, who are married, sing those lines in “Reflektor” is a sublime moment in the commotion. It is also a perfect summary of their group’s still-fervent indie-born hunger after a decade of mainstream success, and specifically, the decisive, indulgent ambition on Reflektor: a two-record, 75-minute set of 13 songs and the best album Arcade Fire have ever made. Founded in 2003, the Montreal-based band has always thought and acted big, using serious echo and drum-circle-like percussion to amplify the emotional mysteries in Win’s U2-meets-elliptical-Springsteen writing. Arcade Fire’s third album, 2010’s The Suburbs, was urgent and clear, a record about dreams and escape, gassed with classic-rock punch. It was a Number One hit and rightly won a Grammy for Album of the Year.
It is tempting to call Reflektor Arcade Fire’s answer to the Rolling Stones’ 1972 double LP, Exile on Main Street. The similarities (length, churn, all that reverb) make it easy. But Reflektor is closer to turning-point classics such as U2’s Achtung Baby and Radiohead’s Kid A – a thrilling act of risk and renewal by a band with established commercial appeal and a greater fear of the average, of merely being liked. “If that’s what’s normal now, I don’t want to know,” Butler sings in “Normal Person,” sounding like a guy for whom even this heaven, next time, won’t be enough. — Rolling Stone