Liz Phair brashly but effortlessly drops lyrical nuggets into her melody-driven, lo-fi songs. It makes for a devastating back catalogue; from the peerless Exile In Guyville to Whip-Smart, Whitechocolatespaceegg to the self-titled Liz Phair, each of her records acts as another timely klaxon call for a generation not prepared to sit back nor shut up. It's a career that's heralded her Grammy Award nominations, a spot on Rolling Stone's albums of all-time list, and decades of critical acclaim that has inspired and influenced some of the brightest new faces of yesterday and today, veering from cult icon to mainstream concern. Over a decade since her last record was released, Liz Phair now returns with another bagful of fireworks already fizzing to be let off in the shape of new album Soberish. Liz maintains the sass that propelled her to become such a critical darling, and that innate ear for melody and razor sharp way with words." Hey Lou" is the record's opening gambit, a mischievous ode to Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, and Liz's jaunty lament back into our ears. Welcome back Miss Phair, we've missed you.

5CD + 2 7" Singles Super Deluxe Remastered Edition featuring the album in both Mono and Stereo, bonus tracks featuring 14 previously unheard Pete Townshend Demos, studio sessions, outtakes, unheard jingles and more. The package also features 9 posters, replica ephemera, and an 80 page hard bound book with rare photos and new liner notes by Pete Townshend. 112 tracks, 46 unreleased.


Initially released in December 1967 and described latterly by Rolling Stone as “The Who’s finest album,” The Who Sell Out reflected a remarkable year in popular culture. As well as being forever immortalized as the moment when the counterculture and the “Love Generation” became a global phenomenon and “pop” began metamorphosing into “rock.”

The new Super Deluxe Edition of The Who Sell Out features 112 tracks, 46 of which are unreleased, an 80-page, hard-back, full-color book, including rare period photos, memorabilia, track-by-track annotation and new sleeve notes by Pete Townshend with comments from the likes of Pete Drummond (Radio London DJ), Richard Evans (designer) & Roy Flynn (the Speakeasy Club manager).

The Super Deluxe package also includes nine posters & inserts, including replicas of 20” x 30” original Adrian George album poster, a gig poster from The City Hall, Newcastle, a Saville Theatre show 8-page program, a business card for the Bag o’ Nails club, Kingly Street, a Who fan club photo of group, a flyer for Bath Pavilion concerts including The Who, a crack-back bumper sticker for Wonderful Radio London, Keith Moon’s Speakeasy Club membership card and a Who Fan Club newsletter.

The Who Sell Out was originally planned by Pete Townshend and the band’s managers Kit Lambert & Chris Stamp, as a loose concept album including jingles and commercials linking the songs stylised as a pirate radio broadcast. This concept was born out of necessity as their label and management wanted a new album and Townshend felt that he didn’t have enough songs.

The ground-breaking original plan for Sell Out was to sell advertising space on the album but instead the band opted for writing their own jingles paying tribute to pirate radio stations and to parody an increasingly consumerist society.

The homage to pop-art is evident in both the advertising jingles and the iconic sleeve design created by David King who was the art director at the Sunday Times, and Roger Law who invented the Spitting Image TV show. The sleeve features four advertising images, taken by the renowned photographer David Montgomery, of each band member Odorono deodorant (Pete Townshend), Medac spot cream (Keith Moon), Charles Atlas (John Entwistle) and Roger Daltrey & Heinz baked beans. The story goes that Roger Daltrey caught pneumonia from sitting in the cold beans for too long.

The Who Sell Out is a bold depiction of the period in which it was made, the tail-end of the “swinging-60s” meets pop-art mixed with psychedelia and straight-ahead pop. It’s a glorious blend of classic powerful Who instrumentation, melodic harmonies, satirical lyrical imagery crystallized for what was only the group’s third album. The album’s ambition and scope is unrivalled by the Who, or any other act from that period.

Within the bold concept, were a batch of fabulous and diverse songs. “I Can See for Miles,” a top ten hit at the time, is a Who classic. “Rael,” a Townshend “mini-opera” with musical motifs that reappeared in Tommy and the psychedelic blast of “Armenia City In The Sky” and “Relax” are among the very best material anyone wrote during the 1960s.

One of the most extraordinary albums of any era, The Who Sell Out is The Who’s last “pop” album. Two years later came Tommy – a double concept album about a deaf, dumb and blind kid.

SUPER DELUXE EDITION OF THE CLASSIC GROUNDBREAKING ALBUM
112 TRACKS ACROSS FIVE CDS & 2 7” SINGLES
FEATURING 46 UNRELEASED TRACKS INCLUDING 14 UNHEARD PETE TOWNSHEND DEMOS
80-PAGE HARD BACK BOOK WITH NEW LINER NOTES BY PETE TOWNSHEND AS WELL AS RARE POSTERS, INSERTS & MEMORABILIA
★★“WE WERE HOPING TO GET FREE JAGUARS. WE GOT FIFTY FREE TINS OF BAKED BEANS”★★

 

Reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year Eric Church confirmed that new music is on the horizon: "I have [new] albums coming out in April. They came out of my 28 days in the mountains of North Carolina, where the songs were recorded and written. The collection is entitled Heart & Soul."

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Eric Church  - Heart

On the heels of his recently released New York Times Best Selling memoir, the rock n' roll legend and Grammy winning artist Peter Frampton turns his focus back to music with his new studio album Frampton Forgets The Words. With his 1954 Les Paul Phenix, Frampton brings virtuosic guitar playing to 10 instrumental interpretations of his favorite songs including "Isn't It A Pity" by George Harrison, "Reckoner" by Radiohead, and more. Now available on 180g 2LP black vinyl, with an etching on side D.

The debut feature written, produced and directed by Marnie Ellen Hertzler. Set in the desert of Crestone, Colorado over the course of eight days and set to an original score composed by Animal Collective's Geologist & Deakin. Crestone follows a group of SoundCloud rappers who live in solitude, growing weed and making music for the internet. When an old friend arrives to make a movie, reality and fiction begin to blur.

After two UK #1 albums, 2 million album sales and an array of international acclaim, you might’ve thought you knew what to expect from Royal Blood. Those preconceptions were shattered when they released ‘Trouble’s Coming’ last summer. Hitting a melting pot of fiery rock riffs and danceable beats, they delivered something fresh, unexpected and yet entirely in tune with what they’d forged their reputation with.

When Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher sat down to talk about making a new album, they knew what they wanted to achieve. It involved a conscious return to their roots, back when they had made music that was influenced by Daft Punk, Justice, and Philippe Zdar of Cassius. It also called for a similar back-to-basics approach to what had made their self-titled debut album so thrilling, visceral and original. 

“We sort of stumbled on this sound, and it was immediately fun to play,” recalls Kerr. “That’s what sparked the creativity on the new album, the chasing of that feeling. It’s weird, though - if you think back to ‘Figure it Out’, it kind of contains the embryo of this album. We realised that we didn’t have to completely destroy what we’d created so far; we just had to shift it, change it. On paper, it’s a small reinvention. But when you hear it, it sounds so fresh.”

Those traits pulsate throughout the new single and title track. Kerr’s spiralling bass riff casts an hypnotic allure as it grows in intensity, while his vocals switch at will between a raw rock roar and a soulful falsetto. It’s underpinned by Thatcher’s thundering beats, his taut rhythms infused with groove-laden hi-hats.

After setting the tone with ‘Trouble’s Coming’, the album opens in breathless, take-no-prisoners style with the fierce metallic grooves of ‘Who Needs Friends’ hitting an early visceral peak. Royal Blood further reference their fresh array of influences by deploying vocodered vocals on ‘Million & One’ before dynamically switching between the biggest contrasts of their sound with ‘Limbo’. Already a fan favourite having been a regular during the duo’s 2019 shows, ‘Boilermaker’ lives up to its reputation and is more than matched by ‘Mad Visions’, which evokes a hyper-aggressive Prince. It ends with a final surprise in the shape of the stark piano ballad ‘All We Have Is Now’, a vulnerable and revealing reminder to live in the moment.

This new approach manifested itself in the duo’s decision to produce the majority of ‘Typhoons’ themselves. ‘Boilermaker’ was produced by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, the two bands having first connected when Royal Blood supported them on a huge North American tour. Meanwhile, the multiple Grammy Award winner Paul Epworth produced ‘Who Needs Friends’ and contributed additional production to ‘Trouble’s Coming’.

The Million Masks of God showcases the strength and boundary-pushing invention of Manchester Orchestra’s catalog, and is a testament to the kinship of its songwriting duo—the bond that enables them to take something so tragically personal and turn it into limitless, compassionate, communal, revelatory art.

Leon Vynehall returns with new album ‘Rare, Forever’ — the follow up to his critically acclaimed debut album ‘Nothing Is Still’, which garnered widespread praise including appearing in ‘Album of the Year’ lists from Rough Trade, Mixmag, Esquire, Resident Advisor and received an 8.2 review from Pitchfork (also included in their Albums of the week roundup).

Vynehall has collaborated with Eric Timothy Carlson and Aaron Anderson (both Grammy nominated for their work with Bon Iver) on the 'Rare, Forever' artwork and imagery .

A unique new album of poetry and music featuring Marianne Faithfull, set to the music of Warren Ellis, and featuring Nick Cave, Brian Eno and Vincent Ségal.

Marianne Faithfull releases one of the most distinctive albums of her extraordinary life and career with composer and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis. It was recorded just before and during the first Covid-19 lockdown – during which the singer herself became infected and almost died. Together with musical friends and family, She Walks in Beauty fulfils Faithfull’s long-held ambition to record an album of poetry with music.

Delving deep into her past, it’s a record that draws on her passion for the English Romantic poets, a passion she fostered at St Joseph's Convent School before leaving for London at the age of 16. There she entered the world of As Tears Go By, of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, setting her on a left-hand path to pop stardom. Sixties iconography and outrage followed, as did her subsequent battles with addiction before her 1979 return to powerful female and artistic autonomy with Broken English.

Van Morrison will release ‘Latest Record Project: Volume 1’ on May 7th on Exile/BMG. His 42nd record and his most dynamic and contemporary album in years, ‘Latest Record Project: Volume 1’ is a 28-track delve into his ongoing love of blues, R&B, jazz and soul. However much you may love his classic albums, this new project proves that he’s living in the present, and remains an artist of integrity and distinction. 

“I’m getting away from the perceived same songs, same albums all the time,” says Morrison. “This guy’s done 500 songs, maybe more, so hello? Why do you keep promoting the same ten? I’m trying to get out of the box.”

‘Latest Record Project: Volume 1’ is the result of our enforced period of isolation. Unable to tour, Morrison remained busy with constant songwriting, starting ideas on piano, guitar or saxophone. What emerged is a wealth of new material, which shimmers with a directness and vibrancy that comes from working with a rhythm section with whom he shares an immediate, spontaneous connection.