A smorgasbord of releases online and on vinyl
The problem these days isn’t that there’s too much music. It’s that there are way too many places to look for it.
With apps, MP3s, SoundCloud previews, blogs, the return of records, artists selling live recordings and exclusives through every outlet from NPR to the Wall Street Journal, it’s no wonder we’re inclined to hole up on YouTube or Spotify and just stay there.
If you feel like wandering around outside, however, here are a few places to visit. 1. Streaming: While the summer’s big “surprise” album, Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, has demonstrated all the staying power of a Popsicle on a downtown sidewalk, the latest guinea pig of that increasingly tiresome strategy deserves a much better fate.
Abruptly dropped on an unsuspecting world two weeks ago, the self-titled Thunderbitch is the fulllength debut by the other band fronted by Alabama Shakes’ mighty Brittany Howard.
Streaming freely at thundabetch.com/listen, the 10-song, 32-minute release encapsulates the band’s oft-quoted bio: “Thunderbitch. Rock ’n’ Roll. The end.”
Unlike Cyrus’s shambolic opus, it places a premium on concision. Songs such as “Leather Jacket” and “I Just Wanna Rock n Roll” sound exactly like you think they would, only shorter.
While the stream is free, you’ll have to cough up to own either a digital copy ($8 on iTunes) or a physical one ($15 U.S. on vinyl only) through the AlabamaShakes.com store.
Meanwhile, Howard brings her main band to the ACC, Sept. 23.
British singer-songwriter Richard Hawley has cultivated a loyal cult audience while releasing music that feels less like a body of work than a geocache that only you and a couple thousand like-minded fans have a map to. Out next week (Sept. 18), his 10th studio release, Hollow Meadows, is tailor made for autumn: intimate, quiet and with a lot to brood about. It’s streaming now through the Album Streams section of theguardian.com.
Out this week is the similarly chilled Ones and Sixes by Minnesota’s (please don’t call us) slowcore band Low. Three tracks are streaming at lowtheband.bandcamp.com, including the relatively uptempo “What Part of Me.” 2. Download: The imminent return of the Queen catalogue to the format on which it first flourished (more on that below) is likely to overshadow the release of an intriguing new piece of music by the band’s late frontman, Freddie Mercury.
Released this week as a digital download (99 cents on iTunes), “Little Freddie Goes to School” constructs an imaginary tale about Mercury as a child and his journey to boarding school in India.
The chorus is build around snip- pets culled from two Mercury recordings: a 1987 jam called “When This Old Tired Body Wants to Sing” and “The Golden Boy,” a track that ended up on Barcelona, the album Mercury recorded with opera singer Montserrat Caballe.
The rest of the music was written by Irish composer Stuart Leathem, who came to the project via Queen/ Mercury producer David Richards, and sung by Esther Trousdale, of Ulster’s renowned Youth Choir.
Proceeds go to the HIV/AIDS charity the Mercury Phoenix Trust. 3. Vinyl: As mentioned above, Queen’s entire studio output has been remastered and will be rereleased on vinyl on Sept. 25. On that date, a massive 18-record box set, The Studio Collection, will arrive, containing the 15 albums from Queen to Made in Heaven, each pressed on a coloured disc keyed to the respective album’s cover. ( A Night at the Opera, for example, is on white vinyl, News of the World is on green.)
Two of the late-period albums, Innuendo and Made in Heaven, which were both edited for their original vinyl release, have now been restored to their full length on two discs each. The same date will also see all 15 records released individually, though on plain black vinyl. The albums were remastered by Bob Ludwig, who used the best available sources to create new digital masters for each disc.
The dependably controversial Lana del Rey returns next week with the followup to last year’s divisive Ultraviolence. Out Sept. 18, Honeymoon will be released digitally, on CD and on either red or black vinyl. Two characteristically moody singles, “High by the Beach” and “Terrence Loves You,” have racked up more than 20 million plays/views on YouTube between them in less than a month. 4. Multi-tracks: Finally, if you’re feeling nostalgic for the ’80s, here’s a whole other way to revisit them. Multitrackmaster.com specializes in unearthing vocal-only versions of well-known songs. That includes hits by rock staples such as Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, newer acts such as Ariana Grande, and the band that gave us the era’s most memorable video, A-ha.
Yes, one of the latest entries on multitrackmaster.com strips all the instrumental backing from “Take on Me.” If nothing else, it’ll give you new appreciation for Morten Harket’s two-and-a-half-octave range, especially when he hits that ridiculous high note at the end of each chorus.