TUESDAY NEW RELEASES: Neil Young’s Psychedelic Pill vs. Toby Keith’s ‘Girls That Drink Beer’
Click to jump to your section of choice in today’s PJ Lifestyle Review of New Releases, Hot Products, and Holiday Gifts:
PJ Lifestyle: Ultimate Holiday Gifts
Current and Upcoming Releases: Video Games
Tuesday New Releases in Music
- – - – -
Taylor Swift’s Red proves that with enough hype a contradictory release plan can still produce insane sales results. No, you cannot stream the album via Spotify, yet the album features four teaser singles already racking up YouTube hits. None of that hurt sales in the least. The album should still exceed 1.15 million, without the stimulus of 99-cent downloads on Amazon, Lady Gaga’s weapon of choice while promoting her most recent album.
This week smaller names battle for their moments in the sun, with new albums from the ever-present Cee-Lo “I’ve had one hit and won’t go away” Green, an epic double album from Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and a new effort from country superstar Toby Keith which could quietly dominate them all. Enjoy the less-crowded week, folks … things will get decidedly more complicated as we push toward Black Friday!
- – - – -
Andrew Bird – Hands of Glory (Mom & Pop Music)
Indie folk’s most interesting songwriter, Bird’s music merges genres generally seen as incompatible. Hands of Glory, the Chicago songwriter’s latest EP, serves as a companion piece to last year’s Break It Yourself, prominently featuring his cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You.”
Black Country Communion – Afterglow (J&R Records)
Calvin Harris – 18 Months (Sony)
Cee-Lo Green – Cee-Lo’s Magic Moment (Elektra / Asylum)
Chad Valley – Young Hunger (Cascine)
Cody ChesnuTT – Landing on a Hundred (Redeye)
Ending People – Fill Your Lungs (Cash Cow Productions)
Flyleaf – New Horizons (Octone)
The last album by these Christian rockers featuring Lacey Sturm on lead vocals. Revolver magazine writes: “New Horizons is emblematic of a band embracing change. Hopefully for Flyleaf, fans do the same.”
Indian Handcrafts – Civil Disobedience for Losers (Sargent House)
Jonathan & Charlotte – Together (Columbia)
Kamelot – Silverthorn (Steamhammer / SPV)
Lulu Gainsbourg – From Gainsbourg to Lulu (MBM Records)
Meek Mill – Dreams & Nightmares (Warner Bros.)
Mixtapes – How to Throw a Successful Party (Animal Style Records)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Psychedelic Pill (Reprise)
Neil Young’s latest album featuring Crazy Horse experiments with psychedelia, and with that in mind, he’s opened things up to a lot of sprawl – “Driftin’ Back” comes in at just shy of 30 minutes. If you’ve got the patience, All Music writes, “[Psychedelic Pill] deliver[s] a state-of-the-union garage guitar blast that rivals past landmark albums from the group like Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Rust Never Sleeps and Ragged Glory.”
Parkway Drive – Atlas (Epitaph)
Raindance – New Blood (Animal Style Records)
Rod Stewart – Merry Christmas, Baby (Verve)
Sean Price – Mic Tyson (Duck Down Music)
T&N – Slave to the Empire (Rat Pak Records)
The Soft Moon – Zeros (Captured Tracks)
Thrice – Anthology (Workhorse Music Group)
Toby Keith – Hope on the Rocks (Show Dog / Universal)
Hope on the Rocks‘ release date shifted forward two weeks thanks to the rabid reception he’s received from fans while on tour this fall. That’s a smart move on the part of his handlers – Country Weekly calls the album “mature” among his other 15 albums, and for those who can’t stand Swift, Keith’s album serves as the ultimate veteran antidote.
Tracey Thorn – Tinsel and Lights (Merge Records)
- – - – -
Despite covering much ground in the last few weeks in this column, bands with solid albums still struggle to find wider acclaim. Presenting for your approval: Dr. Dre’s strongest find for Aftermath since Eminem, underground Americana from Iris DeMent and Tift Merritt, and a new album from Heart, which rocks as though the 35 years since “Barracuda” never happened.
Actually, the song is “I Like Girls That Drink Beer”.
And yes I do.
Neil Young, proving that though Father Time remains an unbeatable foe, he can sometimes be negotiated into a holiday truce.
Quit peddling the Rap and the Hip Hop. It’s crap and you know it. It doesn’t make you seem edgy, it makes you seem like a person with zero taste.
I keep trying your suggestions in music and keep encountering the same tired arrangements without ambition or innovation or originality.
Andrew Bird, no, Iris Dement, no, Gainsbourg no. Whatever imperatives that once fueled an alternative to Top 40 in America seem long since spent. I’ve heard this stuff over and over and over. It’s fine for a coffee house.
I don’t blame the new generation. They’re up against an older generation who used to customize their amps, build their own electric guitars, and basically make up their own guitar tunings. And that’s just for starters. That kind of brash and authoritative artistic eccentricity seems lost in favor of eccentricity of personality and dress.
You are right. Many of these new, hip singer-songwriters are to popular music what the young writers who used to publish their clever short stories–during the seventies and eighties–in the little magazines (before moving up to the New Yorker) were to fiction. Yes, there is often some very real talent on display, and sometimes brief flashes of lyrical or musical originality, but not enough to keep you interested for long. Like the earlier group–who often spawned imitators– they seem to be performing exclusively to other aspiring singer-songwriters.
Folks need to check out Chris Duarte- a phenomenal guitarist/songwriter with a range from blues through psychedelic rock. . and NO mainstream pop crap. Also for those of a surf bent- the Mermen.