Lenny Kravitz is back, and The Record Exchange has his new CD single (“Stand”/”Black and White America”) for only $1.99!
And — AND — the single contains a coupon good for $2 off Lenny’s new album Black and White America when it hits the RX on Aug. 31. So basically, it’s like getting a free album preview. Dig it.
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Lou Reed‘s much You-Tubed 2009 Lollapalooza performance is now available for the first time on DVD. A classic performance with classic songs such as ”Sweet Jane” and ”Walk on the Wild Side”.
OTHER NEW DVD/BLU-RAY RELEASES:
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Chris Martin says Coldplay‘s upcoming album, ‘Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall‘ is influenced by old-school New York graffiti, and in a recent photo the bandmates are dressed in neon chillwear like they just walked off the set of Breakin’ 3: A Brit-Pop Odyssey. But the first single doesn’t go for the sound of early hip-hop so much as its sense of year-zero possibility. Over a rave-tinged keyboard melody, leavened by producer Brian Eno’s rainforest-of-the-soul ambience, Martin sings of kids dancing until morning and heaven inside his headphones. When the drums kick in fully, it moves like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by way of the Velvets’ “Sunday Morning,” a flag-waving ode to change-as-inspiration: “I’d rather be a comma than a full stop,” Martin sings. Coming from a guy whose critics take him for a human exclamation point, it’s a welcome sentiment. – Rollingstone
OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:
Wilco I Might/ I Love My Label
Woods Find Them Empty
Crystal Antlers Two-way Mirror
Doom Doomed From The Start
Early Graves Goner
Brian Eno Drums Between The Bells
Incubus If Not Now – When?
Kottonmouth Kings Sunrise Sessions
Madeleine Peyroux Standing On The Rooftop
Portugal. The Man In The Mountain, In The Cloud
Portugal. The Man Various Reissues
Ramones Various Reissues
Lou Reed Metal Machine Music
They Might Be Giants Join Us
Toxic Holocaust Conjure & Command
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311‘s forthcoming new album, “Universal Pulse,” went through “a lot of different phases,” according to frontman Nick Hexum. Among them? “A concept album about space travel” that he broached to his bandmates.
“Yeah, I don’t know if the rest of the guys really got into it,” Hexum tells Billboard.com with a laugh. Ultimately, he says, the litmus for the group’s 10th studio album — due out July 19 — was “to make songs that were going to be great for live performances.”
“Over the past few years we’ve realized we’re primarily a live band,” Hexum explains, “and we’re damn glad for that. So we felt the album should support the live setting. It’s nice to have a single (‘Sunset in July’) that goes on the radio, but that’s all kind of gravy. The core of what we do is touring and the live experience, so this album was created to support that. What’s going to be fun to play live, and what’s exciting? What you hear is a band in the studio, playing, and the album is mixed very naturally instead of going for more compression and everything.”
He also notes that “this is the [one] album we’ve done that doesn’t have any ballads. I don’t want to close the door on that side of us, but this time it’s a bit different.” – Billboard
OTHER NEW CD RECOMMENDATIONS:
3 Doors Down Time Of My Life
Antony & The Johnsons Swanlights Ep
John Butler Trio Live At Red Rocks
Cold Superfiction
Kottonmouth Kings Sunrise Sessions
Low-Fi After All This Time
Imelda May Mayhem
Tom Morello The Nightwatchman Union Town
Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band Peyton on Patton
Rodrigo Y Gabriela Live In France
They Might Be Giants Join Us
Toxic Holocaust Conjure & Command
BUY THE CD HERE
BUY THE VINYL HERE
Since their often-overlooked 2009 psychedelic pop hallmark The Satanic Satanist (and its even better half and all-acoustic counterpart The Majestic Majesty), Portland-via-Wasilla, Alaska, outfit Portugal. The Man have seemingly been caught in a bit of a whirl, unsure of whether to pursue their verse/chorus/verse tendencies in Satanic’s vein or go for a more extended, experimental take on their sound, while nearly completely ignoring the sprawling awesomeness of their stellar, jam-prone live sets on record.
In the Mountain, In the Cloud, their first full-length with Atlantic Records, sees Portugal. The Man reprise the sort of vaguely insurrectionist hippie jams they’ve cranked out over the years on such memorable tracks as “The Woods” and “60 Years”. Rather than retread the same ground, though, the band kick right into “Got It All”, which opens on a lick as tasty as any they’ve cut throughout their career, John Gourley howling about “the revolution” with brazen relish. While there are points here where tracks overstay their welcome, such as the plodding midsection of “Everything You See” or the spacey “You Carried Us”, the highlights here are slabs of psychedelic rock gold, capturing the band at their best. – Consequence of Sound