CURSIVE IN-STORE WEDNESDAY, FEB. 15; BUY NEW ALBUM BEFORE STREET DATE!

Cursive will perform live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St., Downtown Boise) at 6:30 p.m. (new time) Wednesday, Feb. 15. As always, this Record Exchange in-store performance is free and all ages. Cursive is playing Neurolux later that night and we have tickets for sale at the store!

Cursive’s new album I Am Gemini comes out on Tuesday, Feb. 21, but as a special treat for our customers, the album will be available for purchase at the in-store six days before street date! (If you don’t come to the in-store, you won’t get to buy it at the RX until the 21st like everyone else.)

ABOUT CURSIVE

Cursive (cursivearmy.com) is the longtime trio of Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar), Matt Maginn (bass) and Ted Stevens (guitar, vocals), with Patrick Newbery (keys) and Cully Symington (drums). I Am Gemini, the band’s seventh LP, is the follow-up to 2009’s critically praised Mama, I’m Swollen, which caught the attention of publications including Alternative Press, Billboard, Playboy, Rolling Stone and Time Out New York, among others, and earned the band their network television debut on The Late Show with David Letterman. Cursive has released six full-length albums — including the heralded Cursive’s Domestica (2000), The Ugly Organ (2003) and Happy Hollow (2006) — two EPs, a disc of rarities and numerous singles since the band’s 1995 inception.

The band is also known for their vital, magnetic live show, earning rave reviews from outlets including the Cleveland Scene’s C-Note music blog (“[Tim Kasher’s] effect on the crowd was chilling last night… Cursive was focused and on-spot, composed and gripping”), Nuvo Weekly (“…the five-piece slashed through a near-perfect set of songs from their last nine years of albums”) and the Orlando Sentinel’s Soundboard blog (“…the band still knows how to rock on stage… [Cursive] thrashed away with an abandon that heightened the passion of Kasher’s dense, emotionally charged wordplay”).

I Am Gemini is the surreal and powerful musical tale of Cassius and Pollock, twin brothers separated at birth. One good and one evil, their unexpected reunion in a house that is not a home ignites a classic struggle for the soul, played out with a cast of supporting characters that includes a chorus of angels and devils and twin sisters conjoined at the head.

Recorded in the summer/fall of 2011 at Omaha’s ARC Studios and mixed at Red Room in Seattle with producer Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Minus The Bear, Isis), I Am Gemini marks the first time front man Tim Kasher, holding the completed story already in mind, wrote album lyrics in a linear fashion, in order, from song 1 to song 13. The result is thirteen singularly cohesive song chapters that blend effortlessly into one unique narrative. The moody and playfully sinister I Am Gemini is Cursive’s musically heaviest in years, with alternately muscular and angular guitars, pounding drums and driving bass. From the eerie introductory sounds of epic barnstormer “This House Alive” and the irresistibly catchy, insistent “The Sun and Moon,” to the searing “Double Dead” and the split personality prog-pop of “Twin Dragon/Hello Skeleton,” to the roaring, mournful closing track “Eulogy for No Name,” the album is a dynamic, mind-bending and imaginative ride.

RX GRAMMY/VALENTINE'S DAY CD SALE!

February is here, and it’s time for two annual events — the Grammy awards and Valentine’s Day!

To celebrate both, The Record Exchange — named one of the Top 10 record stores in the country by Grammy.com — is holding a Grammy/Valentine’s Day CD sale!

Take a look at the lovely sale prices on the following CDs, which include several Grammy nominees and 2011 top sellers.

Adele – 21 $12.99
Wilco – The Whole Love $9.99
The Head and the Heart – The Head and the Heart $9.99
Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues $9.99
Tony Bennett – Duets II $13.99
Foo Fighters – Wasting Light $12.99
Owl City – Live From Los Angeles DVD $12.99
Cut Copy – Zonoscope $9.99
Roberta Flack – Let It Be Roberta $13.99
Richard Marx – Stories to Tell $13.99
Nada Surf – The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy $12.99
Laura Gibson – La Grande $12.99
Bela Fleck – Rocket Science $13.99
Thompson Square – Thompson Square $12.99
Asteroids Galaxy Tour – Out of Frequency $10.99
Awolnation – Megalithic Symphony $9.99
Angels & Airwaves – Love Part One & Part Two $13.99
Animals as Leaders – Weightless $12.99
Radiohead – King of Limbs $10.99
Jason Aldean – My Kinda Party $14.99
Yellowjackets – Timeline $14.99
Christian McBride Big Band – The Good Feeling $14.99
Gerald Wilson Orchestra – Legacy $14.99
Rebelution  – Peace of Mind $9.99
Mike Doughty – The Question Jar Show $13.99
Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More $11.99
311 – Universal Pulse $10.99
My Morning Jacket – Circuital $12.99
Other Lives – Tamer Animals $10.99
SOJA – Strength to Survive $10.99

TENNIS AND OTHER NEW RECORD EXCHANGE CD RECOMMENDATIONS

BUY THE CD/DIGITAL ALBUM HERE
TREEFORT MUSIC FEST MARCH 25!

After their first album and the story behind it, Tennis weren’t going to have an easy time with the follow-up. How do you compete with a record that came out of nowhere and knocked people out with its lovely, lo-fi-sounding ’50s pop and the romantic back-story of how all the songs were written on a months-long boat excursion at sea?

The easy answer is that you don’t. The duo of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley decided to keep the core sound intact on Young & Old but expand it a bit, adding drummer James Barone to the band full-time and hitting the studio with Black Key Patrick Carney behind the board. The result is a record that sounds a whole bunch like Cape Dory but with a crisper, less bedroom sound that strips away most the gauzy reverb and lets the instruments breathe a little more, especially the piano and drums. It’s enough of a shift in perspective and approach to stave of any accusations of sticking too closely to their formula, but it’s not enough of one to scare off anyone but the hardest of the hardcore reverb fanatics.

Now you can really absorb how good and unique Moore’s vocals are; she sounds less affected this time out and invests the songs with more insistent emotional content. The whole album takes that tack as well, feeling much more immediate and powerful. Young & Old won’t make you forget Cape Dory, but it’s an impressive flip side to Tennis and shows they aren’t a one-trick pony. If next time out they figure out how to blend the dreamy romance of the first record and the uptempo pop charm of this one, you might be looking at something pretty amazing.

As it is, though, Tennis are making some of the best pop music around in 2012, and that’s plenty good enough. — AllMusic

OTHER NEW CD RECOMMENDATIONS:

Earth Angels of Darkness Demons of Light II
Punch Brothers Who’s Feeling Young Now?
Amos Lee As the Crow Flies
Band of Skulls Sweet Sour
Howlin’ Rain The Russian Wilds
Islands Sleep and a Forgetting
Eisley Deep Space
Beneath the Massacre Incongruous
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer Little Blue Egg
Curren$y Muscle Car Chronicles

NEW RELEASE OF THE WEEK: THE HEARTLESS BASTARDS' 'ARROW' IS 'BAND'S BEST RECORD SO FAR'

BUY THE CD/DIGITAL ALBUM HERE
BUY THE VINYL HERE

On their fourth album, the Ohio minimalist rockers haven’t made any drastic changes to their aesthetic or approach to songwriting, but there is a discernible increase in the quality and strength of the tunes that makes it the band’s best record so far.

The Bastards have always been a vehicle to showcase Erika Wennerstrom’s wonderfully androgynous and powerful voice that sounds like it would be just as at home belting tunes about black magic and dark spirits as it is personal tales of love, loss and general weariness, the latter which she tends to opt for.

On “Marathon,” the six-minute opener to Arrow, Wennerstrom uses the race as a metaphor for being on the road, being alone and trying to find her way back home. As the song ascends from a quiet and simple chord progression to chaotic dynamics with Wennerstrom declaring that “I’m on my way home,” it represents the band at their best—honest, emotionally charged and easy to connect with. On the record’s first single “Parted Ways,” she continues with the same theme. Mourning a lost love, she sings about the hum of the wheels and being a long way from home, but this time over a bouncy progression with a proper guitar solo. When she sings “I need a little bit of whiskey and a little bit of time, to ease my troubled mind,” she pretty much sums up what its like to listen to a Heartless Bastards record, particularly this one. Put it on, pour yourself a drink, and things will probably start to make a little more sense.

Wennerstrom has said that this is the most cohesive that they have been as a band when recording an album, and the evidence couldn’t be more abundant. — Paste

IT'S NEW RELEASE TUESDAY AT THE RX!

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

CD

Heartless Bastards – Arrow

Tennis – Young and Old

Amos Lee – As the Crow Flies

Band of Skulls – Sweet Sour

Earth – Angels of Darkness Demons of Light II

The Punch Brothers – Who’s Feeling Young Now?

Howlin’ Rain – Russian Wilds

Islands – Sleep and a Forgetting

Eisley – Deep Space

Beneath the Massacre – Incongrous

Anvil – Various Reissues

Bad Company – Live at Wembley Arena

Joan Baez – Trilogy

Mary Black – Stories from the Steeples

The Blasters – American Music/Trouble Bound

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer – Little Blue Egg

Currensy – Muscle Car Chronicles

Dio – Holy Diver (24KT Gold CD)

Israel Vibration – Reggae Knights

Bettye Lavette – Nearer to You

Orange Goblin – Eulogy for the Damned

Phenomenal Handclap Band – Form and Control

Shearwater – Animal Joy

Tonight Alive – What Are You So Scared Of?

Uriah Heep – Official Bootleg

Gene Watson – Best of the Best: 25 Greatest Hits

Winterpills – All My Lovely Goners

Young Magic – Melt

VINYL

The Flaming Lips – Various Reissues

Heartless Bastards – Arrow

The Shins – Simple Song/September

Neurosis – Enemy of the Sun

Neurosis – Souls at Zero

Amos Lee – As the Crow Flies

Ingrid Michaelson – Human Again

Burning Witch – Box

Ceremony – Hysteria

Andrew Bird – Crown Salesman/So Much Wine

Kylesa/Victims – Split EP

Goatwhore – Blood for the Master

Gotan Project – La Revancha del Tango

Justice – On’ N’ On

Islands – Sleep and a Forgetting

Queensryche – Warning

Joe Walsh – But Seriously Folks

DVD/BLU-RAY

The Byrds – Lost Broadcasts DVD

The Rum Diary DVD

Teahupoo Uncut DVD