Previously unreleased concert album by Miles Davis tops this week’s new releases
Welcome to Seven in Seven, where each week we would typically take a look at concerts coming to the region. With most shows on hold due to the pandemic, here’s a look at seven of the best albums being released June 25:
1 . Miles Davis – “Merci! Miles Live at Vienne” Come 1991, the world’s most celebrated trumpeter could look back on five decades of musical evolution — his own and that of the world around him. Miles Davis had found ways to marry jazz with classical ideas, then later R&B, rock and funk, to produce hybrid offspring that shaped the course of popular music and had come to define his legend. He performed with the Miles Davis Group on July 1, 1991, at the Jazz à Vienne festival in France. Sadly, it was one of his last concerts before he passed away on Sept. 28 of that year. This previously unreleased concert includes two songs — “Penetration” and “Jailbait” — that were written by Prince, with whom he had a mutual admiration and friendship.
2 . Motörhead — “No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith” Back in the summer of 1981, Motörhead got louder, dirtier and more universal, and it all culminated in their undisputed definitive live record, “No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith.” To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the album, it is being presented in new deluxe editions with hardback book-packs in two-CD and triple-LP formats, featuring a demolishing remaster of the original album, bonus tracks and the previously unreleased, in its entirety, concert from Newcastle City Hall, March 30, 1981, the story of the album and many previously unseen photos. Also, the album will be released as a four-CD box set of all three concerts recorded for the album, released here in their entirety for the very first time and primed to gleefully shatter what’s left of your grateful eardrums.
3 . Ida Maria — “Dirty Money EP” Norwegian punk rocker Ida Maria returned in a big way earlier this year with “Sick of You,” a definitive kiss-off to her recent past and to 2020 in general. The song appears on her new EP “Dirty Money,” which also includes the raucous tracks “California,” “Celebration” and the introspective title track. Taken all together, the EP showcases a remarkable growth in Maria’s songwriting skills over the past few years.
4 . Lucy Dacus — “Home Video” Back in August 2019, after relentless touring then a month of silence, Lucy Dacus returned to Trace Horse Studio in Nashville, Tenn., with her loyal friends and collaborators to record her new LP “Home Video.” Dacus’s bandmates from the project Boygenius, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, contribute vocals on two songs. The resulting album is full of arrhythmic heartbeat percussion and backgrounds of waterwarped pipe organ. Listeners may notice that the melodies here are lower and more contained than on her previous works, at times feeling as intimate as a whisper. The vulnerability of the songs, so often about the intense places where different sorts of love meet and warp, required that approach and make for a stunning record.
5 . William Fitzsimmons — “Ready the Astronaut” Over the course of his career, William Fitzsimmons has made his living writing a specific brand of honest and inward-looking folk songs that fearlessly and candidly examine the evolving self while dexterously communicating his talent for robust melodies and catchy instrumentation. That the subject matter tends to dwell on the darker parts of human existence and relationships is no coincidence. Now, he releases “Ready the Astronaut” as a powerful testament to his own past, and by weaving his story through the familiar tale of Icarus, he illustrates his willingness to accept his life’s highs and lows by paying tribute to the influence they have on the future.
6 . Beartooth — “Below” The fearlessly determined and boundlessly creative Midwest powerhouse Beartooth perfects a sound sought by a generation of bands. Their marriage of colossally catchy choruses and post-hardcore, soaked
in sweaty metal, is without rival. Their latest release, “Below,” is a pure distillation of rage, weaponizing its deceptively radio-ready bombast to deliver stonecold truth missives, each packed like a bomb with noisy rock chaos. The record revels in the darker underbelly of traditional metal, soaked in stoner rock tones and doomy dirge.
7 . Nina Junes — “Side A — Our Garden EP” Nina Junes leans into acute sensitivity as a lyricist and embraces expansive scope as a sonic auteur on her new EP “Side A – Our Garden EP.” The Amsterdam-based singer/songwriter layers plainspoken emotion over multi-dimensional soundscapes steeped in strings, keys, guitar and natural sound effects. Junes has been quietly making waves since her 2018 independent debut “Bon Voyage” and her 2019 EP “Shadows & Riddles.” Filtering restless wanderlust into lithe anthems of awakening, she captivated listeners with a string of successful singles, sold-out shows and Amsterdam’s prestigious Zilveren Notekraker, an honor in celebration of “Promising New Talent.”