ONLINE ANGELS
You’ll have to wait to buy a hard copy of Grimes’ new album, but that hasn’t stopped the ecstatic reviews,
In the past few days, two of the year’s more notable albums have arrived with precious little notice and, for now at least, in digital form only.
A third will utilize a scheme that qualifies as atypical even in this age of continuous upheaval: being made available first to certain fans who use the ride-booking service run by Uber competitor Lyft. Download and streaming: Already drawing the kind of ecstatic reviews that have become both increasingly prized and progressively more common in the instant-judgment world of the web, Art Angels, the fourth album by Claire Boucher, a.k.a. Grimes, landed Friday on iTunes, Spotify and Tidal.
As for the unfashionably old-fashioned CD and the newly fashionable old-fashioned vinyl, those will have to wait: the album won’t appear on either of those formats until Dec. 11.
Pushing the cheery-music/sinister-lyric conceit to the limit, Art Angels has inspired the kind of vigorous dissection — much of it unfolding on the lyrics site genius. com — typically reserved for the likes of Joanna Newsom.
That emotional investment alone should extend its run beyond the brutally truncated shelf life of recent digital-first albums by Wilco and Miley Cyrus.
It doesn’t hurt that Grimes is also weighing in on the discussion. As she tweeted last week, “There is so much beauty in music. I wish perceived commercial ambition was not the topic sometimes.” Download, no streaming: Taking advantage of a featured slot on last week’s Country Music Association Awards, Eric Church decided to spring Mr. Misunderstood, his surprise fifth studio album, first on fan-club members, who received hand-delivered CDs last Tuesday, and to iTunes the following day.
In between, the release was made available to some stores that were subject to a notable bit of misdirection: They were told they were ordering a secret Christmas compilation rather than the new Eric Church album. For anyone interested in the intermittently bizarre business side of music, the elaborate and entertaining subterfuge is laid out in detail on Billboard.com.
Meanwhile, notable for not getting immediate access to Mr. Misunderstood: all streaming services. They had to wait for seven days for that to happen.
None of this seems to have dampened the demand for the album. In its first two days, it moved a remarkable 76,000 units. Download and taxi: While Justin Bieber’s widely bruited comeback album, Purpose, comes out on digital and physical formats this Friday, the insistently divisive performer has struck a curious deal with Lyft, a.k.a. the other ride-booking service.
It only affects fans on the U.S. West coast, but here’s how it works: You download the Lyft app, slide it to “Bieber mode” and, beginning at 9 p.m. PST Thursday, the day before the album is released, “after you finish at least a $5 ride, we’ll send you a unique download link and credit your account $5 for your next ride,” a Lyft blog entry helpfully explains.
If that’s still not clear, you can watch Bieber himself attempt to explain the odd strategy while sharing a Lyft vehicle with some duly flummoxed fans at bit.ly/justinlyft. Vinyl: The first four Black Crowes albums will return to vinyl next month.
Coming Dec. 11: 1990’s Shake Your Money Maker, featuring their cover of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle”; the 1992 followup The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion; Amorica (the one with the infamous bikini/pubic-hair cover); and 1996’s Three Snakes and One Charm, their last on American Recordings before jumping to Columbia.
Also due out in Canada on Dec. 11 is a trio of albums sure to appeal to those nostalgic for ’90s alt-rock: Sonic Youth’s Goo, the Butch Vigproduced followup, Dirty; and 1995’s Washing Machine.
The seventh, and possibly final, Coldplay album, A Head Full of Dreams, is scheduled to be released on vinyl at the same time as its CD counterpart. Both are set for Dec. 4. The former will be a two-record affair, pressed on heavyweight coloured vinyl. One disc is blue, the other neon-pink. More at bit.ly/ coldadventures.