Low - Double Negative (Sub Pop)

Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker have pioneered a subgenre, shrugged off its strictures, recorded a Christmas classic, become a magnetic onstage force, and emerged as one of music's most steadfast and vital vehicles for pulling light from our darkest emotional recesses. But Low will not commemorate its first quarter-century with mawkish nostalgia or safe runs through songbook favorites. Instead, in faithfully defiant fashion, Low will release its most brazen, abrasive (and, paradoxically, most empowering) album ever: an unflinching quest through snarling static and shattering beats that somehow culminates in the brightest pop song of Low's career.

Aphex Twin - Collapse EP (Warp)

The Collapse EP is a juicy bag of delights. Extending the flamboyant paths that Richard D James has consistently managed to forge through his dizzying career. From the utterly exhilarating T69 collapse to the complete and utterly bonkers, instantaneous and life affirming abundance10edit [2 R8's, FZ20m & a 909] featuring vertigo inducing high hats and sauntering arrangements with some brain scrambling noise thrown in for good measure! CD and LP available.

Knife Knights - 1 Time Mirage (Sub Pop)

From the start of Shabazz Palaces – the groundbreaking project launched in 2009 by former-Digable Planets leader Ishmael Butler - confidentiality seemed essential: Butler wanted Shabazz Palaces to stand on its own strength, not his outsized reputation, so he adopted a nom de plume for himself. As the project's network expanded, though, he needed new monikers for his partnerships. Knife Knights is the name he gave to his work with Seattle engineer, producer, songwriter, and film composer Erik Blood, a vital force in the Shabazz Palaces universe. Now, after more than a decade of collaboration and the development of a rich friendship, Butler and Blood have made a proper full-length record together as Knife Knights: 1 Time Mirage, an eleven-track odyssey that finds the pair and a cast of their friends weaving together a singular world of soul and shoegaze, hip-hop and lush noise, bass and bedlam.

Richard Thompson - 13 Rivers (New West)

Richard's new album is the artists first self-produced record in over a decade. A very stripped down, bare-bones recording and according to Thompson the album is a reflection of current events that have happened in his life. The album features regular accompanists, Michael Jerome and Taras Prodaniuk, as well as Bobby Eichorn on second guitar. Each track on the album was recorded in analog, with minimal overdubbing. It is an album as much about growth as it is about reflection.

Alejandro Escovedo - The Crossing (Yep Roc)

Alejandro's new album is perhaps his most varied and expansive album to date. It is his first album recorded outside of America, in northern Italy, with co-writer Don Antonio Gramentieri and a band of Italian musicians. It is also his first ever concept album drawing the story of two young immigrants to the US, who bond over a mutual love of punk rock as they struggle with the racism and discrimination as immigrants. Special guests on the album include Wayne Kramer (MC5), Joe Ely, and Peter Perrett and John Perry of The Only Ones.

Cedric Burnside - Benton County Relic (Single Lock)

Cedric is the grandson of North Mississippi blues legend R.L. Burnside. R.L.'s work can be described as wild blues, with manic drums and beautifully random guitar outbursts. Cedric, who played drums for his grandfather, has a similar sensibility. Burnside is not a carbon-copy of his grandfather, nor of his father, the blues drummer Calvin Jackson. He borrows liberally from both, but also weaves in contemporary influences, creating a sound that takes his family's Hill country roots and gives them an ever-so-gentle polish, keeping the wildness and freeness of the grooves, but also instituting more control.

Sandro Perri - In Another Life (Constellation)

The first solo album from Sandro Perri since 2011's acclaimed Impossible Spaces. Features Dan Bejar (Destroyer) and Andre Ethier (Deadly Snakes) as guest lead vocalists on the three-part opus "Everybody's Paris". In Another Life is a supremely listenable return to form for Sandro Perri, the music like a temporal analogue to a tender nature tableau registering slight changes under shifting light and a meditative gaze: at once appearing to signify only itself, while auguring the promise of harmonious life. RIYL: Van Morrison, Morton Feldman, Destroyer, Bill Callahan, Yo La Tengo, Arthur Russell.

Slothrust - The Pact (Dangerbird)

Slothrust is principal songwriter, guitar player and unrepentant aesthete Leah Wellbaum, with drummer Will Gorin and bassist Kyle Bann. On their fourth full-length album The Pact, Slothrust constructs a luscious, ethereal cosmos perforated with wormy portals and magic wardrobes, demonstrating more clearly than ever the band's deft shaping of contrasting sonic elements to forge a muscular sound that's uniquely their own.

Bettye LaVette - The 1972 Muscle Shoals Sessions (Run Out Groove)

Bettye— born Betty Jo Haskins, from Detroit, Michigan— is easily one of the most important yet sometimes overlooked soul singers of all time. She made her first record at the age of 16 in 1962 when she was signed by local Detroit record producer Johnnie Mae Matthews and recorded the single "My Man—He's A Lovin' Man," which became a Top Ten R&B hit after Atlantic Records bought distribution rights. Its success led to a tour with Clyde McPhatter, Ben E. King, Barbara Lynn and Otis Redding. In 1972, Bettye signed with Atlantic/Atco and was sent to the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama to record a full length album. Produced by Brad Shapiro and featuring the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, the album was supposed to originally be titled as Child of the Seventies but Atco chose to shelve the project at the time.

Also New This Week

Asleep at the Wheel - New Routes (Bismeaux)
Band of Heathens - A Message From The People Revisited (Boh)
Tony Bennett & Diana Krall - Love Is Here To Stay (Verve)
Capital Punishment - Roadkill (Captured Tracks)
The Chills - Snow Bound (Fire)
Clutch - Book of Bad Decisions (Weathermaker)
Conan - Existential Void Guardian (Napalm)
Dilly Dally - Heaven (Partisan)
Fit For A King - Dark Skies (Solid State)
Flaming Lips - LP reissues (WB)
The Goon Sax - We're Not Talking (Wichita)
Harmony Rockets w/ Peter Walker - Lachesis / Clotho / Atropos (Tompkins Square)
The Holydrug Couple - Hyper Super Mega (Sacred Bones)
Medeski Martin & Wood And Alarm Will Sound - Omnisphere LP (Indirecto)
Mogwai - reissues (Rock Action)
Willie Nelson - My Way (Legacy)
Pyrexia - Unholy Requiem (Unique Leader)
Marc Ribot - Songs Of Resistance 1942 - 2018 (Anti)
Jorge Santana - Love The Way: The Solo 70s Recordings (Omnivore)
Shim - s/t (BFD)
Wayne Shorter - Emanon (Blue Note)
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - reissues (Rise Above)
Carrie Underwood - Cry Pretty (Capitol)
Loudon Wainwright III - Years in the Making (StorySound)
VA - Basement Beehive: The Girl Group Underground (Numero)
VA - Remolino De Oro: Coastal Cumbias From Colombia 1961-73 LP (Domino Sound)
VA - Studio One: Freedom Sounds: Studio One in the 1960 (Soul Jazz)
VA - The Truth Is A Lie: American Soul Music 1955-72 LP (Cairo)