I must say that this week's releases have very much intrigued me. I am excited for the uniqueness and well rounded amount of genres this week and hoping to get an early spin of Linkin Park and Sinead O'Connor. Both artists have been in the news headlines for a bit with regards to the respected releases, so it'll be nice to hear the finished product(s); especially since LP had an entire album's worth of material to releases a second part of "The Hunting Party" (the second time they have released an instrumental and acapella album). Giving the others credit where credit is due, fans will be happy to hear a new album from The Gaslight Anthem, Heartist, Upon A Burning Body, and even a live album from Lucero thrown in there. All of the albums combined and you got yourself a weekend recipe!
So be sure to show the love and support these artists (regardless of how much money you feel they make) and purchase their material. Grab it from a local record store, an online retailer, or an authorized digital source. Cheers and have a great week discovering new music!
(Linkin Park - The Hunting Party: Acapellas & Instrumentals)
*no reviews as of yet
(Sinead O'Connor - I'm Not Bossy, I'm The Boss)
What a relief to listen to “I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss,” out today, and hear occasional glimpses of the unflinching brilliance from her earlier work that made her so compelling.
Musically, O’Connor still enjoys a good loop and she has unerring good taste to never go overboard on the electronics so that a tune loses its humanity. As she has for much of her career, she manages to artfully incorporate organic and electronic instrumentation artfully, especially on “James Brown,” a fetching, toe-tapping track featuring legendary Nigerian artist Fela Kuti’s son, Seun Kuti, on saxophone. -HitFix
(Lucero - Live From Atlanta)
Live from Atlanta, recorded over three nights last November at the titular city's Terminal West, is Lucero's first live album, and it comes as close as possible to capturing the live Lucero experience without getting beer spilled in your hair or getting kicked in the forehead by a drunken stage diver. At 32 songs and 125 minutes long, the album clocks in right about where the band's nightly marathons do, in the process eschewing the boring convention of cherry-picking and bastardizing a live set just to fit it all on a single disc. In that spirit, Live from Atlanta goes beyond the songs, capturing every detail possible of Lucero's shows, including frontman Ben Nichols's drinking-buddy banter, which grows increasingly slurred by the end of the set, and an announcement by the band's convivial bear of a bass player, John C. Stubblefield, who politely asks the crowd to cool it with "the baptismal adulations of the throwing beers and what not." As anyone who's ever been to a Lucero show can attest, some form of the latter is a nightly occurrence. -Slant Magazine
(The Gaslight Anthem - Get Hurt)
Who says the Gaslight Anthem doesn’t have a sense of humor? You know, besides everyone who’s heard a single note of their music. But Brian Fallon has to be fucking with us when he says that Get Hurt is “completely different than anything we had ever done before” and that it was inspired by “a lot of poetry books and a lot of Bob Dylan.” He should know this is inherently funny, because the Gaslight Anthem is a band almost exclusively defined by their relationship with Bruce Springsteen, and now here they are, announcing a total artistic rebrand by namedropping the two main influences of the Boss’ earliest days. Here’s the thing, though—Get Hurt is completely different than anything the Gaslight Anthem has ever done, in large part because it is inherently funny. They just seem to be the only ones not in on the joke. -Pitchfork
(Heartist - Feeding Friction)
Feeding Fiction is essentially comprised of clean vocal that sound as though they belong in the garage of a grunge band back in the nineties doused in a vat of high-adrenaline electric guitar breakdowns and heavy drum beats- musical synonyms for the heavy metal genre. Anthemic, emotion-laden choruses infuse each track with a sense of raw monumentality – capable of provoking even an elevator full of professional businessmen to burst into a spontaneous mosh pit.
The bands unique take on such a clichéd genre stems from their ability to find a middle ground between iconic heavy metal bands such as Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine and nineties grunge outfits like Nirvana. While each track harbors a similar sound that causes song to blend into one another, Feeding Fiction makes a brilliant soundtrack to have on one of those days where 98% of things that happen manage to annoy you. -Renowned For Sound
(Upon A Burning Body - The World Is My Enemy Now)
Growth in some areas and lack of it in others gives a transitional feel to The World is My Enemy Now, and the impression of a band who are striving towards yet haven’t quite reached the peak of their powers. Caught between the deathcore of old and a promising potential future as a groove metal powerhouse, Upon a Burning Body wear their influences on their sleeve proudly and show a knack for balancing accessibility and aggression. With more standout moments than their first record and an overall higher standard of quality than their second, third time proves the charm for a group with much to give (even if real greatness remains, for the mean time, missing). -Richard Thinks
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