Vinylradar has selected this week new releases for you. Enjoy!
– Death Cab for Cutie: Thank You for Today
Thank You for Today is the sound of Death Cab for Cutie both expanding and refining; a band twenty years into its evolution, still uncovering new curves in its signatures, new sonic corners to explore. The Seattle band’s ninth studio album, recorded in Los Angeles with producer Rich Costey in late 2017 and early 2018, stands alongside classic Death Cab for Cutie albums including their 1998 debut Something About Airplanes and 2003’s masterful Transatlanticism as a definitive collection — ten tracks that are by turns beautiful and dynamic and darkly anthemic and bittersweet.
TRACKLISTING:
1. I Dreamt We Spoke Again
2. Summer Years
3. Gold Rush
4. Your Hurricane
5. When We Drive
6. Autumn Love
7. Northern Lights
8. You Moved Away
9. Near/Far
10. 60 & Punk
– Roy Montgomery: Suffuse
Despite praise and acclaim throughout his career, Roy Montgomery hates his singing. From his point of view, it’s done out of necessity, when he doesn’t have anyone else around to substitute. Roughly one quarter of Montgomery’s epic multi-album 2016 release R M H Q had his singing, and those are his least favorite tracks.
Grapefruit has done the best they can to argue that his basso undertones are the center of his appeal throughout his entire body of work, from the first The Pin Group single on Flying Nun in 1981, through his work in Dadamah, Dissolve and on to his legendary ’90s solo releases. However, is it a surprise he jumped at the idea of composing an album for other vocalists? This began as a series of alternate takes of the material on Tropic Of Anodyne, the tracks with vocals off his last release. That concept morphed into assembling vocalists to sing on new songs, and he conceived instrumental material that would fit each singer. Half of the songs came together, resulting in Suffuse.
The album charts a slow progression from those who share similarities with Montgomery’s rumbling vocal technique to those who come at singing differently, with minute contrasts throughout. Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) and Jessica Larrabee (She Keeps Bees) bring the first two tracks, with Katie Von Schleicher following with a raw expression of emotional loss, and the sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon (Purple Pilgrims) expressing emptiness by stripping away words, weaving their voices together through Montgomery’s elastic webbing. Julianna Barwick adds drive and nuance to the foamy sonic waves of “Sigma Octantis,” as “Landfall” crashes in slow motion chaos over Liz Harris’s (Grouper) multitracked layers. These compositions generously embrace their guest leaders, and for the first time in his career, Roy Montgomery has made a cogent artistic argument as to why he shouldn’t be singing these songs himself.
TRACKLISTING:
1. Apparition (with Haley Fohr)
2. Rainbird (with She Keeps Bees)
3. Outsider Love Ballad No 1 (with Katie Von Schleicher)
4. Mirage (with Purple Pilgrims)
5. Sigma Octantis (with Julianna Barwick)
6. Landfall (with Liz Harris)
– The Myrrors: Borderlands
You can see what you want to see when you stare in to the world of The Myrrors, and to some degree, you can also hear what you want to hear on their expansive, extraordinary new album, Borderlands – an album that nominally references the collective boundaries we draw, all the while offering a soundtrack for setting forth strategies that either ignore or erase our self-made barriers.
TRACKLISTING:
1. Awakening
2. The Blood That Runs the Border
3. Formaciones Rojas
4. Biznagas
5. Call For Unity
6. Note From the Underground
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