Square Shells depicts some aspects of Kurt Vile‘s music not immediately accessible on his last album, from dreamgazey jams to plaintive, folky melodies. Recorded in a brighter, less homemade sound, Kurt’s extraordinarily evocative songwriting explores themes of friendship, loss and desolation.

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OTHER  NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Widespread Panic Dirty Side Down
Deftones Diamond Eyes
Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band The Wages
Heartless Bastards All This Time
Hank Williams III The Rebel Within
AC/DC Iron Man 2
Damien Jurado Saint Bartlett
Goatsnake Flower of Disease
Truth and Salvage Co. Truth and Salvage Co.
Solvent Subject to Shift
Many more HERE

Strut continues its essential three-part excursion into the archives of South African music with the second volume of the Next Stop … Soweto series.

With international forms of music discouraged by the South African authorities during the 1960s, township jive or mbaqanga arose as innovative artists combined close harmony singing and traditional African styles with a bouncy township beat. Imported U.S. music became strictly the domain of house parties, private record collections and underground shebeens.

Despite this, a small but healthy soul scene flourished with bands like The Movers adding marabi elements into their funk and early disco sound, The Klooks and the Anchors all directly inspired by U.S. soul and R&B and the Hammond organ of Booker T. and Jimmy Smith.

Vol. 2 also touches on mbaqanga and jazz artists who dabbled with soul and funk fusions during the early ’70s and a rare psychedelic track from one of the only recordings made of playwright Gibson Kente’s acclaimed theatre pieces, Too Late.

BUY THE VINYL HERE.

OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:

Everest On Approach
The National High Violet
Dead Weather Sea of Cowards
Sage Francis Li(f)e
CocoRosie Grey Oceans
Phosphorescent Here’s to Taking It Easy
Thee Oh Sees Warm Slime
Japandroids No Singles
Peter Wolf Midnight Souvenirs
Johnny Winter Progressive Blues Experiment