Singer / Songwriter

Jeff Tweedy appears to be entering the songbook albums market. The Wilco lead singer has just announced a brand new solo album, Together at Last, which features new stripped-down recordings of pre-existing songs Tweedy wrote for Wilco and h Record Label: Anti Style: Singer / Songwriter

For music lovers and the Rock n 'Roll Underground, Pascal Briggs is not an untitled sheet. With his bands Public Toys and District, he has decisively contributed to the 77 Punk Revival since the 90s. But his musical understanding is very mu Record Label: Tonetoaster Style: Singer/Singwriter

Paradise Blue Vinyl! Austin-based musician Abram Shook is a remarkable wellspring of ideas when it comes to songwriting. When he sat down to write his third album, he produced two distinct batches of songs, one very personal collection titled Love at Low Speed, and a darker, more detached collection titled Love in the Age of Excess. Due to time and money constraints, he opted to only record the more personal album, which explores themes of love, loss, and connecting with others, all themes he's been careful to avoid on previous albums. As he explains, "I avoided the subject of love in the past because I thought it was a cliched, overwrought topic. What else could I really add to the cannon? Writing the album directly coincided with some pretty big changes in my life, mainly the ending of an 11 year relationship." Love at Low Speed proves that Shook has plenty to offer on these topics, and that he's at his best when he digs deep, mining his years of experience for confessional tales peppe red with hard-wrought wisdom. The production on the new album is fittingly more intimate and organic than what we heard on his previous albums Sun Marque (2014) and Landscape Dream (2015). Inspired by the unique worlds of sound David Bowie created throughout his career, Shook and close collaborators Christopher Cox and Grant Johnson kept the album's production focussed from beginning to end. "With Love At Low Speed I wanted to use a more consistent pallet of sound to tie things together better than I had on my previous records. A touchstone album for me has always been Club Da Esquinha (Milton Nascimento/Lo Borges). It explores multiple genres but filters everything through the same beautiful production arrangements which lends to its cohesion. I think in the back of my mind I'm always striving to achieve something close to that album's rare blend of unique songwriting and challenging production choices without sacrificing a certain pop sensibility that invites new listen ers." Their efforts paid off, and throughout Love at Low Speed the world of sound they created balances Shook's tender tenor with sensual bass grooves, and strings provided by Austin's Tosca String Quartet. Mixed by Noah Georgeson (known for his work with Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Andy Shauf, et al) the album has a clarity and warmth that focuses your ear on Shook's emotional delivery. Shook grew up in California where he spent his days surfing, studying jazz, and absorbing the rich radiant music of Brazil and West Africa, before moving to Portland, and then Boston, before finally settling in Austin, TX over 10 years ago. "Settling down in Austin for a longer period of time has allowed me to establish a rich community of peers to draw from for influence and support. With time comes trust, and I've learned to give over some control to others in hopes to gain a perspective on songwriting that I might normally overlook." In addition to becoming an important part of Au stin's creative community, being landlocked for a decade, has helped Shook develop an affirming perspective on his past, which helps him quell his anxiety, and focus on his creative pursuits. "I write about a California that no longer exists in the nostalgic form that I hold in my memory, just as the people that have journeyed in and out of my life are no longer the same either, nor am I the same to them. If everything is malleable at all times that means I am too, and that's a notion I can take comfort in. Record Label: Western Vinyl Style: Singer/Songwriter

Record Label: Trouble In Mind Style: Singer/Songwriter

Pictures of Saint Paul Street is the sixth solo album from the former Mirrors/Gris-Gris mastermind Greg Ashley, an amalgam of tortured, Cohen-esque folk tinged with the beer soaked recklessness of a West Texas honky-tonk. The songs on "Pictures of Saint Paul Street" are lush & beautiful autopsies of society's underbelly, with stark and brutally honest ruminations on humanity. Ashley's songs move from ballads of hopeless misery to rallying anthems for the dispossessed. The people & artists who move further to the fringe as power and greed overtake our planet. RIYL: Kurt Vile, Lee Hazlewood, Leonard Cohen, Circuit des Yeux, Nick Cave, Bill Fay, Scott Walker Record Label: Trouble In Mind Style: Singer/Songwriter

Artist: Catherine Maclellan Label: True North

Artist: Greg Ashley Label: Trouble In Mind Records

180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL GATEFOLD SLEEVE INCLUDING 4 PAGE LYRICS INSERT Judee Sill is one of rock's more interesting and lesser-known stories. Because of her troubled family history she was looking for an escape of reality. After surviving a heroin addiction and a brief stint as a bank robber, Sill turned her rather intense passions to music. She released two albums and partially completed a third album before her death in 1979. Sill's music was complex, elegantly crafted and yet completely devoid of pretension or overwrought melodrama. Unfairly lumped in with other female, proto-adult contemporary songwriters like Joni Mitchell or Carole King, Sill was much closer in spirit to Brian Wilson, Nick Drake, or one her idols, J.S. Bach. She had a gift for making very complicated things sound simple, beautiful. The second album Judee Sill made, proved to be her last. Instead of using an outside arranger for the strings for her album Heart Food (as she did on her previous album), Sill did all of the work herself. Record Label: Music On Vinyl Style: Singer/Songwriter

Artist: Chris Bathgate Label: Quite Scientific

With Best Troubador, Bonnie 'Prince Billy pays homage to a long-time and forever hero, the late Merle Haggard. A singer who, some 25 years previously, first performed in public by playing a Merle Haggard song, Bonny has often cited Merle's work in performance, on records and in conversation with anyone who was around, even talking to Merle himself for Filter magazine in 2009. Merle's body of work was considered by Bonny for a record such as this for some time, but his passing in April of 2016 almost put a stop to it. The goal was to participate in the handing forward of the songs of a living legend, as Merle had done so many times in his own career. With Merle gone, some of the impetus of the project was in peril. A plan to make the album in Nashville studios was abandoned. The songs still called to be played again, however - and so sessions were endeavored at home, capturing feeling, memory and new expression in familiar confines with the full-hearted playing and singing of the Bonafide United Musicians: Van Campbell, Nuala Kennedy, Danny Kiley, Drew Miller, Cheyenne Mize and Chris Rodahoffer, with special guests Mary Feiock, Emmett Kelly, A.J. Roach and Matt Sweeney. The songs sung on Best Troubador are pulled from all over - from Haggard's 3rd album in 1967 though to his 47th in 2011 - but this is no simple hits compilation. Capable only of occupying a shared space between himself and Merle Haggard, Bonny chose personal favorites, singing the songs he wanted to sing, to find Merle and himself together in the music. Only two of Hag's thirty-eight (!) country number ones are included, and only two others that charted at all. Seven of the sixteen songs are from his later period, after his long run at the top of the country charts had ended, but before encroaching mortality could finally cease the singular and indefatigable creativity of Merle Haggard. Best Troubador flips through his song book, landing on pages unmoored from their time and located anew. Moving from 1978 to 1969 to 2003 to 1981 allows the album to circle Haggard's music in a simulation of thought and memory, slipping around from spot to spot as if they were discrete impressions, unknown but knowable yet. Dedicated to new life and old, Best Troubadour is wistful and bittersweet and no lament at all but a tribute instead, for the triumph of a life spent in unending pursuit of the goal: new and expressive music, as our inspirations and heroes once sang it. Record Label: Domino Records Style: Singer / Songwriter

Dick 1 is the original «Eurokrjem» – Beglomegs debut album from 2015 that was awarded three (3) national awards: Norwegian grammy (Spellemann) for best rock album, newspaper Natt & Dags prize for best music release and newspaper Morgenbladets diploma for best liner notes. «Any music lovers wildest dream. This is so good that we are talking about a shift in paradigm. Dares all and wins all!» -Gylve Fenris Nagell (Darkthrone). Dick 2 is a brand new compilation album from Beglomeg and it bears the title «Very Bæd!». Dick 3 is «Very Bæd!»´s second dick and it´s a collection of remixes, remakes and oddballs (!!). Hehe! Record Label: Fysisk Format Style: Rock

Artist: Justin Townes Earle Label: New West Records

Artist: Janiva Magness Label: Blue Elan Records

Artist: LLOYD QUARTET MCNEILL Label: Soul Jazz

Artist: Justin Townes Earle Label: New West Records

Artist: LLOYD QUARTET MCNEILL Label: Soul Jazz

Vic Chesnutt may well be the greatest popular music lyricist of his time. Awash with brilliant wordplay and allusion, his sad, funny songs reveal the complexities of individual consciousness to an extent that no other writer has done. After hours of listening to this album, you'll finally begin to realize his grasp of self, how fully he realizes the absurdity of life. "West of Rome" is his first masterpiece,a kind of folk tour through Athens, Georgia, that bohemian enclave in the heart of the rural South. Vic fights through the social gnats of "Soggy Tongues" while attempting to understand himself ("Stupid Preoccupations"), and the culture which he was raised in ("Bug"). Along the way, he notes in exquisite detail characters and situations that would "make a whale of a movie", a poignant, realistic one. Endlessy clever and inventive in rhyme, always sincere in emotion, "West of Rome" functions as the musical successor of Faulkner and O'Connor, and is a work of genius. Get a free New West / RT exclusive cd sampler while stocks last. Record Label: Pias UK/New West Records Style: Singer / Songwriter

Artist: John Moreland Label: 4AD

Artist: John Moreland Label: 4AD

Artist: the Slackers Label: Pirates Press