NEW RELEASE OF THE WEEK: PASSION PIT'S DANCE-POP PITY PARTY ANTHEMS

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July 24, 2012 - The Record Exchange Blog - by The Record Exchange - No Comments

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Given the subject matter – alcoholism, mental illness, a relationship in turmoil – Passion Pit’s Gossamer (Columbia) could have easily shaped up as the year’s biggest pity party.

That it’s not owes to the inventiveness of do-everything songwriter-producer-keyboardist-singer Michael Angelakos. Instead, it’s a soul record disguised as buoyant, uptempo dance-pop. It shares characteristics with The Weeknd’s introspective take on R&B, the twisted nostalgia of a Kanye West jam (especially in the way the munchkin voices evoke West’s sped-up dusties-soul samples) and the stomping relentlessness of a Katy Perry single.

That sort of multi-layered something-for-everyone approach can be misleading. Listen to this music from a distance and it sounds like an aerobics soundtrack led by an androgynous cheerleader. Angelakos’ tenor frequently breaks into a Barry Gibb-worthy falsetto, surrounded by a cast of sweet-voiced angels, including the Swedish a cappella trio Erato. Listen more closely, however, and Gossamer turns into something else: the diary of a breakdown.

Keyboards and more keyboards, strings, voices and walloping drums saturate the senses and turn songs into mini-symphonies with shout-along choruses. The onetime bedroom artist now makes first-rate pop anthems, gleaming rocketships of sound that wouldn’t sound out of place on the radio next to Rihanna or Nicki Minaj. — Chicago Tribune

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NEW RELEASE TUESDAY 7/24: LISTENING PARTY WITH PASSION PIT, FREE PIE HOLE PIZZA, KRBX CARD DEALS, RAFFLE!

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July 23, 2012 - The Record Exchange Blog - by The Record Exchange - 1 Comment

The Record Exchange’s New Release Tuesday series continues on July 24 with Passion Pit‘s new album Gossamer! The album will be featured during our weekly listening party at 6 p.m. Enjoy free Pie Hole pizza while you listen to Gossamer and enter to win our New Release Tuesday raffle prize!

We also have a limited number of 7-inches to give away with purchase of Gossamer!

Are you a proud owner of a Radio Boise KRBX Card? Bring it in every Tuesday from 6 to 9 p.m. and receive 20% off gift shop items and used CDs, vinyl, DVD/Blu-ray and cassettes (excluding collectibles – individual items $100 and over).

Speaking of our beloved community radio station, their new Radio Boise Tuesdays series at Neurolux is quickly becoming a new favorite on the music scene. The weekly series features local and touring bands as well as a Radio Boise DJ after each show. Radio Boise receives 20% of drink sales from every Radio Boise Tuesday show. You receive the benefit of DRINK SPECIALS at each one. The music kicks off at 7 p.m. — right after you’ve filled your belly with pizza and heard some new music at the RX!

Check out the Radio Boise Tuesdays performance schedule HERE.

Here’s a quick look at the bright and shiny new releases this week at The Record Exchange:

CD

The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten (deluxe edition also available)

Passion Pit – Gossamer

Rodriguez – Searching for Sugar Man soundtrack

Purity Ring – Shrines

Slipknot – Antennas to Hell (deluxe edition also available)

Sugar – Copper Blue/Beaster

Sugar – File Under: Easy Listening

The Alchemist – Russian Roulette

Love & Theft – Love & Theft

Of Mice and Men – Flood: Delux Reissue

Om – Advaitic Songs

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Now Here’s My Plan

Fang Island – Major

Blood Red Shoes – In Time to Voices

Jennifer Lopez – Dance Again: The Hits (deluxe edition also available)

Etta James – Live at Montreaux 1975-93

Booker T. and the MG’s – Green Onions

Foals – Tapes

Various Artists – Keb Darge and Little Edith’s Legendary Wild Rockers, Vol. 2

Shawn Lee – Synthesizers in Space

Laetitia Sadier – Silencio

Three Mile Pilot – Maps

Dark Time Sunshine – Anx

VINYL

The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten

Passion Pit – Gossamer

Purity Ring – Shrines

Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Americana

John Lee Hooker – That’s My Story

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Now Here’s My Plan

Pantera – Various Reissues

Sugar – Copper Blue/Beaster

Sugar – File Under: Easy Listening

Blood Diamonds – Phone Sex

Om – Advaitic Songs

Sara Watkins – Sun Midnight Sun

Laetitia Sadier – Silencio

Micachu and the Shapes – Never

Wax Tailor – Heart Stop

Black Twig Pickers – Whompyjawed

Tnght – Tnght

DVD/BLU-RAY

Big Easy Express Blu-ray

Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Americana Blu-ray

Peter Gabriel – Secret World Live DVD and Blu-ray

The Beatles – Their Golden Age DVD

Marilyn Manson – Fear of a Satanic Planet Special Edition DVD

Keith Richards, Jack Bruce, Phil Manzanera – One Night in Spain DVD

Alice Donut – Freaks in Love DVD

Charlie Hunter – Solos: The Jazz Sessions DVD

The Mask Blu-ray

The Shining Blu-ray

Cool Hand Luke Blu-ray

Johnny Winter – Live from Japan DVD

Appaloosa Blu-ray

Children’s Hospital Season 3 DVD

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RECORD EXCHANGE TOP 20 SELLERS (WEEK ENDING JULY 22)

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July 23, 2012 - The Record Exchange Blog - by The Record Exchange - No Comments

1. Yellow & Green, Baroness
2. Carry Me Back, Old Crow Medicine Show
3. Spark Seeker, Matisyahu
4. Let’s Go Out Tonight, Curtis Stigers
5. Channel Orange, Frank Ocean
6. Skelethon, Aesop Rock
7. Bear Creek, Brandi Carlile
8. Uncaged, Zac Brown Band
9. Band of Brothers, Hellyeah
10. One Lovely Day, Citizen Cope
11. Abbey Road, The Beatles
12. Pisces Iscariot, Smashing Pumpkins
13. 21, Adele
14. Rebirth, Jimmy Cliff
15. Life is Good, Nas
16. The Lion The Beast The Beat, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
17. Little Broken Hearts, Norah Jones
18. My Head is an Animal, Of Monsters and Men
19. Ashes and Roses, Mary Chapin Carpenter
20. The Idler Wheel, Fiona Apple

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NAS' BEST ALBUM IN OVER 10 YEARS AND OTHER CD RECOMMENDATIONS

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July 19, 2012 - The Record Exchange Blog - by The Record Exchange - No Comments

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PREVIEW/BUY THE DELUXE EDITION CD HERE

The last line of Nas’ Illmatic still rings true 18 years later. The Queensbridge lyricist never fell. He never ceased to be celebrated as one of the most revered wordsmiths in the game, but—though he’s continued to cement his legendary status with solid efforts album after album—he hasn’t come close to matching his best works in quite some time. The tide, though, has changed with Nas’ 10th LP, Life Is Good.

As has historically been the case, Nas is at his best when facing adversity. His last two superior releases—2001’s Stillmatic and 2002’s God’s Son—were inspired by his heated rivalry with Jay-Z and the death of his mother, respectively.

Creatively, Nas continues to reinvent the wheel. He takes reckless shooters to task on “Accident Murderers” featuring Rick Ross—the LP’s only rap guest appearance—and retraces his fatherly missteps on “Daughters.” On the Amy Winehouse-assisted “Cherry Wine”—a song that sounds like a lost cut from the British singer’s Frank sessions—Nas fantasizes about his dream girl, before coming to terms with his failed marriage on “Bye Baby.” Over Salaam Remi’s sampling of Guy’s “Goodbye Love,” Nas finds closure with a heartfelt letter to Kelis. “Wanted you as my shorty since before I saw you screamin’, ‘Hate you so much right now’/Should’ve saw the man in angry Black women/Actions of a demon—I’m leaving,” he spits.

Nas’s beat selection has long been called into question, but not this time. Salaam Remi and No I.D. split the bulk of the production for a cohesive sound bed filled with soul and jazz overtones. Though the Swizz Beatz-produced “Summer on Smash” has potential to garner radio play, it feels out of place and is the disc’s only substandard moment.

Still, Life Is Good is arguably Nas’s best album since Stillmatic. In a climate where substance is scarce, Life Is Good is necessary. It’s potent from the excellent cover art to Nas’s sharp bars. It’s balanced. The Queens MC is open, but not emo. Hard, but thought-provoking. — XXL

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THE VINYL WORD: NEW BARONESS LP SCORES PITCHFORK 'BEST NEW MUSIC'

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July 18, 2012 - The Record Exchange Blog - by The Record Exchange - No Comments

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When they started making burly, progressive sludge almost 10 years ago, Baroness weren’t teenagers: They were grown men with a refined, nuanced approach to heavy metal. Even in 2003, it wasn’t your typical Southern sludge swamp. That said, I doubt anyone listening then could’ve predicted Yellow & Green. The quartet’s new 18-song, 75-minute double album offers a broad, rich expanse of pretty, psychedelic, occasionally heavy, mostly straight-up rock that veers easily into pop, post-rock, and lulling ambient washes.

Frontman John Baizley stressed that, although it’s a double LP, Yellow & Green is not a concept record. That said, one theme certainly leaps out: that of aging, and the ways it changes our ideas surrounding music from one stage of adulthood to the next. Albums that force artists to go deep into themselves as people and as musicians tend to end up as accidental concept records, collections that document the time they pushed themselves to create, and the life they were otherwise living at that time. But this one feels very closely aligned to getting closer to 40, to feeling your bones creak a little more, your eyes getting a little weaker.

It’s in the lyrics with words that fixate on disappearances, fractures, sleep, bruises, bracing for death, failing hearts, and saying goodnight to your father. Or there’s the nostalgia of a line like, “when we were kids we never felt so young, take me to a hazy Sunday morning.” Then again, we also get plenty of blood (“this apple makes me sick, says this pig upon the stick, it’s my own blood”) and water, as both baptism and drowning, or beginning and end. (A track like “March to the Sea” has water in its title, but there’s something about its musicality that brings to mind early-1990s post-rock, too, and that post-Slint, June of 44-style obsession with anchors and sails.)

Baizley said the cover art, and the songs themselves, reflect the feeling of the moment before or after a disaster; of course, these are very different feelings, but I know what he means. It’s not all waiting around and recovering. There’s pure climactic catharsis, as you’d expect from Baroness, but these tracks work in a way Baroness songs haven’t previously. Instead of explosions, billows, and howls, we get a more meditative air, even on some of the bigger rockers like “Take My Bones Away” or the rollicking “Board Up the House”. Each mountain is chased with something a littler gentler. It’s thrilling hearing people this technically adept holding back a little, showing restraint, and cramming what they know into a pop nugget. — Pitchfork

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NEW RELEASE OF THE WEEK: PASSION PIT'S DANCE-POP PITY PARTY ANTHEMS

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NEW RELEASE TUESDAY 7/24: LISTENING PARTY WITH PASSION PIT, FREE PIE HOLE PIZZA, KRBX CARD DEALS, RAFFLE!

RECORD EXCHANGE TOP 20 SELLERS (WEEK ENDING JULY 22)

NAS' BEST ALBUM IN OVER 10 YEARS AND OTHER CD RECOMMENDATIONS

THE VINYL WORD: NEW BARONESS LP SCORES PITCHFORK 'BEST NEW MUSIC'