The time is now for Caroline Rose. Their last record, Superstar, was released on March 6, 2020. The record was critically acclaimed and positioned Rose as the next big breakthrough in music. Needless to say, the resulting pandemic grinded all momentum to a halt while at the same time throwing Rose’s personal life into turmoil. The result of that turmoil is the fuel that fired the creation of their latest album, The Art of Forgetting. With The Art of Forgetting, Rose took on the dual role of writer and producer. The album encapsulates the feeling of experiencing recent memories, having them turn into old ones and then ultimately forgetting those memories altogether. There is a romantic nature within the sonic landscape of this record. Tape effects and loops emulate the feeling of aging while the juxtaposition of modern acoustic-electronic textures, like lo-fi tape next to hi-fi granular synths result in some of their most mature and honest work to date.

If credibility were currency, FAKE NAMES’ wealth would be off the charts. Composed of Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Dag Nasty), Michael Hampton (S.O.A., Embrace), Dennis Lyxzén (Refused, INVSN, The [International] Noise Conspiracy), Johnny Temple (Girls Against Boys, Soulside) and the newest member Brendan Canty (Fugazi, Rites of Spring), the band is a veritable post-hardcore dream team.

However instead of rehashing the past, Expendables is a reinvention that sees the band dialing back the distortion and leaning into the melodies. The result pairs their unparalleled pedigree with a pop sensibility that’s slightly unexpected and wholly satisfying. “For our
last record [2019’s FAKE NAMES]the general influences were 70’s U.K. punk and power-pop; but it wound up with a little classic rock vibe as well, like the Vibrators meets Aerosmith. We never saw that coming!” , Baker explains.

For Expendables the band enlisted producer Adam “Atom” Greenspan (IDLES, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Baker explains, “The pop influences are a little more out front on this one and the production really helps it shine. It sounds more direct, more urgent.” Expendables is the latest exchange in a musical conversation that spans four decades. Baker aptly refers to the lineup of FAKE NAMES as a “mutual admiration society” and says that once the five members got in the same room together, it felt as if they had already been in the band together for years.

Dear Reader, About a year or two ago, Naomi Yang (of Galaxie 500) reached out to me after she rediscovered a video that we had made together in 2011, during the making of Tramp, just before the album’s release. It was for the song Serpents. The timing was uncanny, approaching the anniversary of Tramp. Thinking about my time in New York while in the bubble of Los Angeles and my home. Thinking about how restless I was, and now settled down and stable. Thinking about how Aaron Dessner took a chance on me after I messaged him with a fury of demos. He could see through the hiss and crappy vocals on my GarageBand demos, and that I had something to say. He gave me the confidence to be loud and to scream my rage and feel founded and justified in my own pain. He gave me more tools to find catharsis in my work. I have carried that with me ever since. 

Being on the west coast the last two years, I look back on my community in New York and am forever grateful. I had so many friends and peers step up and help me unfold these demos. The album that it became. Doug Keith and Ben Lord from my original touring band, Logan Cole, Peter Silberman from The Antlers, Jessica Larrabee from She Keeps Bees, Thomas Bartlett of Doveman, Rob Moose of yMusic, Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, Julianna Barwick, Zach Condon of Beirut, Matt Barrick (of the Walkmen), Clarice Jensen, Ben Lanz, Bryce Dessner, and Bryan Devendorf (of The National). 

I had almost forgotten about a song titled "This Is Too Right" that didn’t make it onto the record. It was one of the first guitar “riffs” I had ever written and Jenn Wasner sang on it with me. A song about not believing how good I had it, like the other shoe was about to drop. I hope everyone that helped make this record and supported it, feel the love and admiration that I continue to hold for all of you. I hope that in sharing this record again, with a new video and this forgotten track, that new listeners are brought into this album and find meaning and relevance in it today. All of the musicians on this album helped me come to life and perform in ways I never had before. 

May these songs find you well. Sending all my love, Sharon.

LP in gatefold sleeve, with two posters featuring design by Ian Emes and Gerald Scarfe. Cover design by Aubrey Powell/Hipgnosis and Peter Curzon/Storm Studios. Featuring original 1973 line drawn cover artwork by George Hardie.

Over the span of two decades, M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez has firmly established himself as an artist whose work transcends mere escapism in favor of full-on worldbuilding. Whether it be via his celebrated studio albums, film soundtracks, or compositions for stage productions, Gonzalez has proven that nothing surpasses his ability to perfectly encapsulate a specific time, emotion, or sense of place.

Now with Fantasy, the Platinum selling, GRAMMY nominated artist returns with his most personal album to date. Featuring long-time collaborator Justin Meldal-Johnsen and Joe Berry, M83’s touring keyboardist and sax player, the album was born out of extended jam sessions that lasted nearly a year. The result is an exuberant, live-sounding record where trademark M83 goosebump moments abound.

Kacey Musgraves will be releasing a limited edition Zoetrope Picture Disc Vinyl in celebrating the 10th Anniversary of her debut Platinum and Grammy winning album- Same Trailer Different Park. The album went to #1 on the Country Album Charts when it was released in 2013. Kacey co-wrote all 12 tracks and co-produced the album with Luke Laird and Shane McAnally. Album won the Grammy award for the Best Country Album at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. The album featured the break-out singles- “Merry Go Round”, “Blowin’ Smoke”, and “Follow Your Arrow”.

Created between Palm Springs, California and Hilo, Hawai'i, V is the first double album from the Hawaiian-New Zealand singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ruban Nielson's Unknown Mortal Orchestra band. Designed to play as one continuous movement and road-tested on dry California freeways, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra car record. It's also the fifth full-length album Ruban has released in twelve years. Across fourteen sunbleached songs - written solo or with his brother Kody - Ruban draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, yacht rock, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. Over a laidback blend of singalong anthems and cinematic instrumentals, he evokes blue skies, afternoons spent lounging by hotel swimming pools and the alluring darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces. It's a duality expressed in the dilapidated sunset blues and the saltcorroded soul Ruban explores through tracks like 'Layla' and 'Nadja. ' During the pandemic's early days, Ruban reunited with Kody at a cousin's wedding in Hawai'i. With assistance from their father, Chris Nielson (saxophone/flute) and longstanding Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Jake Portrait, they brought everything Ruban had been thinking about together. The result was V, due for release on March 3, 2023, through Jagjaguwar. When they talked about records that moved them in that spine-shivering manner, Ruban started thinking about the 70s AM radio rock and 80s pop songs that had lurked on the edge of his subconscious mind for most of his life. He wanted to write his version of records like that, leading to the two glorious uptempo singles Unknown Mortal Orchestra released in 2021, 'Weekend Run' and 'That Life'. However, the golden good times never last forever. Not long after, health issues began to plague his extended family. Putting his recordings aside, he helped his mother and his uncle move home from New Zealand and Portland to Hawai'i, and began dividing his time between Hawai'i and Palm Springs. During this period he reconnected with his relatives, reassessed his past, and started to look at things with fresh eyes. Hawai'i brought back memories of the darker side of his parents' lifestyle as entertainers. On those trips, he heard those classic AM radio rock records everywhere. They were inextricably intertwined with the palm trees, swimming pools, and glamorized hedonism he'd internalized from his childhood. There's a type of music in Hawai'i called Hapa-haole (Half white). You can hear it expressed in signature Unknown Mortal Orchestra style through the humid guitar-led atmosphere of V's penultimate song, 'I Killed Captain Cook'. Although the songs are presented in a traditional Hawaiian manner, they're mostly sung in English. Having been influenced by Hawaiian music since Unknown Mortal Orchestra's first album, Ruban saw a space for himself within the tradition. When he reflected on his success, he realised he had the responsibility and platform to represent Hapa-haole music on the global stage.

Her Loss is a collaborative studio album by Drake and 21 Savage. It was released on November 4, 2022 through OVO Sound/Republic Records and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart.

After spending the past 20 years in the studio, on concert stages all over the world and at the literal top of the charts, All-American Rejects co-founder Tyson Ritter didn’t start Now More Than Ever in 2018 with the expectation it would turn into a real band – but a real band is very much what it has become. In tandem with veteran musicians/songwriters/producers Scott Chesak and Izzy Fontaine, Ritter has begun a meaningful and exciting new chapter in his music career with Now More Than Ever’s debut album Creatrix, which will be released March 17, 2023, by Thirty Tigers.

To hear Ritter tell it, All-American Rejects’ relationship with the traditional music industry was in many ways the reason he was eager to try something different: simply making music with friends for fun, without any preconceived notions about what would, could or should happen next. In other words, no constraints, no A&Rs, no deadlines and no mandate to sound like anyone or anything other than themselves.

The fact that Ritter and Chesak have known each other for so long certainly helped jumpstart things, as the latter has been a multi-instrumentalist touring member of All-American Rejects since 2011. Chesak later segued into writing and producing for artists such as Weezer and Panic! At The Disco, a skill Ritter has long admired but had difficulty incorporating into his own creative process. As he began thinking about new music, he “definitely knew” he “didn’t want to write in the traditional sense with and for another artist in a studio. Scotty and I just got to talking and decided to write some tunes. It started that innocently.”

“We didn’t have a name, or an idea of being a band, until probably a year after that,” Chesak adds. “We were kind of just writing for the purity of writing and trying to make something cool. There’s a huge folder of songs we made during that time that aren’t part of this project, but three or four of them showed us there was something cohesive there.”

Having spent decades in the same musical scene, Ritter and Chesak were committed to a fresh approach when it came to the sound of their new work. “We were kind of sick of guitar music, because we both come from the rock world,” says Chesak, who handled bass, drums and keyboard duties during the sessions. “So at first we made a rule: Fuck guitars. No guitars!” Quickly they realized their beef wasn’t with guitars per se, but rather the same old sound of the instrument. Enter Izzy Fontaine, who has worked closely behind the scenes with everyone from Taking Back Sunday and Glassjaw to Seal and Banks, and came up in the industry alongside many of the same bands as Ritter and Chesak.

Now More Than Ever shimmers with that spirit of freedom, its nine tracks gracefully surfing the peaks of the past four decades of pop and rock. These are the kinds of songs that used to be on the radio and certainly still should be today – the ones that make you dance, shake your ass and forget about everything else for a while. The breathless electro-rock of “D-E-A-D Together” and the sultry power ballad “Heart To Heart” best embody that vibe, while horn players from Ozomatli add an instant dance party to “Candle.” The ‘80s synth-driven closer “Never You” started life as a Ritter acoustic song but was quickly transformed by Chesak and Fontaine into what’s now the perfect soundtrack for a vintage slow dance prom scene.

To that end, “Heels Up Head Over” explores those themes with a tale about a werewolf and vampire getting married, while lyrical references to the ageless cool of Joan Jett and drunk, young romance make you feel right at home in Now More Than Ever’s company. “This is a record where there was freedom in lyric,” Ritter says. “When you’re on a major label for 15 years, you can succumb to trying to follow your last thing. That can seep into the music in a way that’s so unconscious. The joy of this band is that it’s completely free of any oppressive overlords, ivory towers, approval processes or co-writes that have been manufactured, licked, stamped and thrown onto the assembly line.”

Now More Than Ever is here to help make sure the pillars of pop and rock will never fall, and they’re prepared to go down believing. “This is our little monolith,” Ritter says. “It might be six feet tall amongst giants, but it’s pure. And it’s truth for us. It’s saccharine as fuck, and I love it.”

Endless Summer Vacation is the eagerly anticipated new album from recording artist, songwriter, and trailblazer Miley Cyrus. This collection is Miley’s eighth studio album, and the follow up to 2020’s album, Plastic Hearts. 2023 finds Miley the strongest and most confident she’s ever been, with the music and imagery of Endless Summer Vacation serving as a reflection of that. The album was recorded in Los Angeles and produced with Kid Harpoon, Greg Kurstin, Mike WiLL Made-It and Tyler Johnson.

The War And Treaty will release their major label debut, The Lover’s Game, via Mercury Nashville on March 10, 2023. The husband-and-wife team of Michael Trotter, Jr. and Tanya Trotter were recently nominated for Duo/Group of the Year at the 2022 Americana Honors & Awards ceremony. They have amassed a following as eclectic as their sound – a bluesy yet joyful fusion of Southern soul, gospel, country and rock n’ roll. Indie Exclusive Clear LP.