Fab Distribution

Fab Distribution

BLACK LIPS “Sing In A World That’s Falling Apart” FIRE

Out now. It’s country music but not as we know it which begs the question: have these Bad Kids of 21st Century rock ‘n’ roll finally grown up on their ninth studio album? ‘Sing In A World That’s Falling Apart’ continues to flick the middle finger to one and all. Here Black Lips are at their grimiest, most dangerous and equipped with the best collection of songs since the aughts. They roll on with an unapologetic southernfried twang, pacing the beast, every now and then dropping a psycho howl into the rubber room madness lurking underneath the truckstop fireworks. This ain’t your granny’s country album. And conversely this ain’t your mama’s Black Lips!

CARIBOU “Suddenly” MERGE

February 28. In 2014, Dan Snaith aka Caribou released Our Love to overwhelming critical acclaim. Caribou returns now with his new studio album Suddenly, a warm, untamable, and constantly surprising record about family and the changes we go through as those relationships evolve. This is the most surprising and unpredictable Caribou album to date. Though it retains the trademark Caribou warmth and technicolor, this album is littered with swerves and left turns. As his passion and joy in music-making remains as fresh as ever, Suddenly is the purest example of this yet.

CINDY LEE “What’s Tonight To Eternity” W.25TH

February 14. For Patrick Flegel, Cindy Lee is more than just a recording music project. It is the culmination of a lifelong exploration of art, the electric guitar, queer identity and gender expression. What’s Tonight To Eternity, Cindy Lee’s 5th long-form offering, showcases the project’s most entrancing strengths: ethereal snowdrift pop and sly nods toward classic girl-group motifs. Recorded at Flegel’s Realistik Studios in Toronto and featuring younger brother Andrew Flegel on drums, the album travels hand in hand with a spectral guide. What’s Tonight To Eternity remains a mix of pop culture indoctrination, pain and suffering, hopes and dreams, fierce confrontations and wide-open confessional blurs.

DESTROYER “Have We Met” MERGE

Out now. Destroyer conceived of Have We Met as a Y2K album. Dan Bejar assigned producer and bandmate John Collins the role of layering synth and rhythm sections over demos with the period-specific Björk, Air, and Massive Attack in mind, but he soon realized the sonic template was too removed from Destroyer’s own, and the idea of a concept was silly anyway. So he abandoned it and gave Collins the most timeless instruction of all: ‘Make it sound cool.’ The result is not a startling departure from 2017 s ken, but unlike that more bandoriented approach, the only actual instruments that appear are bass and electric guitar. MIDI instrumentation will of course invite Your Blues and Kaputt nostalgia, but Have We Met is buoyed by precise, plasticky guitar shredding three dimensionally across massive percussion the loudest and dirtiest drums on a Destroyer record to date.

DRAMA “Dance Without Me” GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL

February 14. The simple power of DRAMA’s musical expression is matched only by their work ethic. Since 2014, the Chicago-based duo have bootstrapped a subtle rise on their own terms, self-releasing several EPs and mapping multiple tours with Midwestern grit. A multicultural collaboration between producer Na’el Shehade and vocalist Via Rosa, the project plays to the complementary dynamics of their pairing, blurring the lines between R&B and dance-pop, heartbreak and bliss. Following their signing to Ghostly International in 2019, they realize their years-in-the-making full-length debut, aptly titled “Dance Without Me”, a refined collection that recasts romantic tragedy as moonlit self-acceptance.

ENVY “The Fallen Crimson” TEMPORARY RESIDENCE

February 7. After reuniting with briefly estranged singer Tetsuya Fukagawa, and shaking up their lineup for the first time in 25 years, Envy return refreshed with their most dynamic and progressive work, “The Fallen Crimson” - their first new studio album in five years. Japan’s most iconic and influential posthardcore band suffered seemingly insurmountable personal and creative struggles that challenged the very existence of the band like nothing they had experienced in their nearly three decades together. Opening with the kind of thunderous thrash that made them so renowned in the first place, and closing with the kind of triumphant ascent that has made them an inimitable force, “The Fallen Crimson” finds Envy perfecting their past, exploring their present, and pondering their future.

REBECCA FOON “Waxing Moon” CONSTELLATION

February 21. Rebecca Foon, the composer and musician behind Saltland and Esmerine (and former longstanding member of Silver

Mt. Zion) presents a new album entitled “Waxing Moon”. While best known as an incomparable cellist crafting textural soundscapes and instrumental chamber-rock in the aforementioned projects (and more recently recognized for her creative and organisational work as co-founder of Pathway To Paris), this new collection of songs finds Foon emphasizing piano and voice with striking intimacy and elegance, showcasing a captivating evolution in her always resplendent songwriting. The climate crisis has profoundly framed Foon’s political and artistic life for many years now, and “Waxing Moon” finds her writing and singing her most arrestingly direct yet poetic words, tapping universal and personal heartbreak in both despair and hope.

JUNG JAE II “Parasite O.S.T. (2LP-green vinyl)” SACRED BONES

February 14. “Parasite”, the seventh feature film by Korean director Bong Joon Ho, premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it took the coveted Palme d’Or for best film in competition. Since then, it has become the most critically acclaimed film of the year. For the film’s bracingly original score, Bong turned to Jung Jae Il, who brings the world of “Parasite” to life with plaintive piano and stirring strings. fab.ca

KHRUANGBIN & LEON BRIDGES “Texas Sun EP” DEAD OCEANS

February 7. On “Texas Sun”, these two members of the state’s musical vanguard meet up somewhere in the middle of that scene, in the mythical nexus of Texas’ past, present, and future - a dreamy badlands where genres blur as seamlessly as the terrain. A journey through homesick reminiscences, backseat romances, and late-night contemplations, the kind of record made for listening with the windows down and the road humming softly beneath you.

HAVIAH MIGHTY “13th Floor ” HAVIAH MIGHTY

Out Now. Raised in a musical household in Brampton, Ontario, Mighty started singing at the age of 4, rapping at 11, and producing at 15. Well-known for being one of the three MCs who make up The Sorority - a hip-hop group born during an all-female cypher on International Women’s Day in 2016 - Mighty is making equally large waves as a solo artist. This past September, “13th Floor” made history as the first hip hop artist and the first black woman to ever receive the Polaris Prize. Garnering overwhelming praise from the likes of Pitchfork, Billboard, Hot New Hip Hop, and Lyrical Lemonade to name a few, Haviah continues to carve out spaces that boldly defy gendered expectations for women in hip hop.

SHOPPING “All Or Nothing” FATCAT

February 7. With their new album “All or Nothing”, Shopping take a big leap into a vibrant and punchy production style that is closer to pop than anything they’ve ever done. Their previous album “The Official

Body” was named by Pitchfork as one of the “Best Rock Albums of 2018,” with an 8.1 rating. “All or Nothing,” produced and mixed by Nick Sylvester (Deerhoof), is a true expansion of the band’s sound, adding synths and odd rhythms to their most accessible melodies and lyrics yet. While a few songs on the album nod to their angular late 70s punk beginnings, this is much more of a radio-ready pop record than you might expect.

THE MEN “Mercy” SACRED BONES

February 14. New York band The Men have always been genremorphic and unpredictable, but on their eighth album “Mercy” they have truly done something new as a band. For the first time since forming, they have now created three straight records with the same lineup, and the result is a sound that feels developed and continuous despite running the gamut of mood, in true Men fashion. Having this lineup stability has allowed the band to deepen and finesse the sounds they were exploring on 2017’s “Drift” and produce tracks that have a unique and distinct voice. The album is simply the sound of a band that has a deep and unjaded passion for songwriting and creation, working at the peak of their collaborative connection.

TORRES “Silver Tongue” MERGE

Out now. Recorded at O’Deer in Brooklyn, New York, Silver Tongue is a full-scale realization of the world Mackenzie Scott has created over TORRES’ last few albums. Even when singing in more subdued tones, Scott’s voice is fervent, her lyrics stirring and unyielding as she draws from both the divine and the everyday. It’s also the first TORRES record produced solely by Scott. Silver Tongue fastidiously chronicles the impulses that make up desire— from the dreamy first blushes of infatuation through the slightly terrifying wonder that accompanies connection with another. In between, Scott wrestles with the highs and lows of what “being in love” might mean over heady guitars and swirling synths.