FEATURED NEW RELEASES


WEEK OF JUNE 24, 2008

Amos Lee
Last Days at the Lodge (CD & L...

Third studio album by singer-songwriter Amos Lee

Alejandro Escovedo
Real Animal (CD & LP)

It's rather remarkable that Real Animal, Alejandro Escovedo's wonderful new record on Back Porch/Manhattan, exists at all. Escovedo nearly lost a battle with Hepatitis C in 2002. Happily, he's lived to tell the tale. And Real Animal does just that, chronicling the life and times of one of American music's great songwriters—and a musician that seems to transcend genre with albums that effortlessly bridge the gaps between rock, country, folk, and Tejano.

Ry Cooder
I Flathead (CD & LP)

Ry Cooder’s I, Flathead, is the culmination of his ambitious and fascinating "California Trilogy," the last of three albums in which the singer and guitarist journeys through the real and imagined history of mid-20th century, multi-ethnic California, sampling the sounds of its barrios and byways, its nightclubs and honkytonks. He encounters the disenfranchised, the hopeful, the cheerfully strange and seriously nefarious, along with the occasional alien who races around in a souped-up flying saucer on the desert salt flats.

Sigur Ros
Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum End...

After years of trying to decipher what Jón Thor Birgisson has been singing in all those Sigur Rós songs all those years, we finally have a reprieve. While most of the band's forthcoming fifth album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, is sung in Icelandic, there is one song with English lyrics. We imagine it's the one called "All Alright", because...just look at all those other titles [after the jump]. But what delicate truths might Birgisson bestow upon our vulgar ears? Considering that the album's title translates into English as "With a buzz in our ears we play endlessly," it could be something as simple as, "This is a song/ we are playing it for you/ enjoy a nap or a good cry if you'd like."

Watson Twins
Fire Songs (CD & LP)

The debut album from sisters and folk singers The Watson Twins, who have previously collaborated with artists such as Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley.

Stereolab
Chemical Chords

Ninth album from one of the first bands to be called "post-rock", Stereolab.

Rza As Bobby Digital
Digi Snacks

Fourth solo album by the alias of the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, Bobby Digital. RZA described the album to Billboard.com as "simply fun hip-hop... a perfect blend of reality, fiction, sci-fi and martial arts".

Townes Van Zandt
Live at the Old Quarter Housto...

Since the singer's death in 1997, live recordings have become an important part of his catalog, and Live at the Old Quarter has become the meter against which similar recordings are compared.