Parquet Courts - Sympathy for Life (Rough Trade)

Sympathy finds the Brooklyn band at both their most instinctive and electronic, spinning their bewitching, psychedelic storytelling into fresh territory, yet maintaining their unique identity. Built largely from improvised jams, inspired by NYC clubs, Primal Scream and Pink Floyd, it was always destined to be dancey. 'Wide Awake! was a record you could put on at a party,' says co-frontman Austin Brown. 'Sympathy For Life is influenced by the party itself. Historically, some amazing rock records have been made from mingling in dance music culture' from Talking Heads to Screamadelica. Our goal was to bring that into our own music.' Special Edition DLX first pressing features Tipped on Gatefold Sleeve with glued in Booklet with artwork designed by Andrew Savage.

My Morning Jacket - s/t (ATO)

On their new full-length - the first new music since The Waterfall (2015) - My Morning Jacket reaffirm the rarefied magic that has made them so beloved, embedding each song with moments of discovery, revelation and ecstatic catharsis. It comes after a near permanent hiatus for the band - until performing four shows in the summer of 2019 left them with a new energy. Jim James engineered/produced at 64 Sound in LA where the band spent weeks in intentional seclusion emerging with their self-titled 9th album.

Sault - Nine (Forever Living Originals)

Nine is Sault's 3rd album in just a little over a year, and it builds on the penchant for mystery that they established with their first two albums, 5 and 7, both released in 2019 under a cloak of anonymity. Where earlier albums were rooted in neo-soul and funk, 2020's (Black Is) and (Rise) borrowed liberally from Afrobeat and the blues. With Nine, they add new layers of mystery but also flippant humor to their sound. Zoom out of London, and these narrators and their lives weave themselves into the fabrics of Black stories across the globe. In Sault's music, trauma takes on the repetitive cadence of a children's rhyme, and to know it is to laugh through it.

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle (Verve)

This newly discovered live recording of a performance of the Love Supreme suite is a revelation. Recorded at The Penthouse in Seattle, Washington on October 2, 1965, this recording transports the listener to a prime seat for piece of musical history. While not studio-quality audio, the power of the performance shines through. This version is also of the full suite and features an expanded band that includes the same Classic Quartet and Pharoah Sanders in his first official gig as part of Coltrane's group. Available as CD or LP.

La Luz - La Luz (Hardly Art)

On their self-titled 4th album, La Luz launch themselves into a new realm of emotional intimacy for a collection of songs steeped in the mysteries of the natural world and the magic of human chemistry that has found manifestation in the musical ESP between band members. To help shape La Luz, they found a kindred spirit in producer Adrian Younge. Though primarily known for his work with hip-hop, soul, and jazz acts, Younge saw in them a shared vision that transcended genre. "We both create music with the same attitude, and that's what I love about them," he says. "They are never afraid to be risky and their style is captivating. It was an honor to work with them."

Circuit des Yeux - io (Matador)

The sky over -io is Florida's strange, radiant orange. It's a built environment, unnatural, made from concrete and glass, with skyscrapers that stretch to the vanishing point as you gaze up at them. It's crumbling and suffocating, a city perpetually on the brink of collapse, where tension never topples over into catharsis, where the heat never breaks. Inside this world and its closed loop of time, Haley found herself able to begin moving again. 'I was haunted by memories in the pandemic,' she says. 'As someone with PTSD, memories are all twisted up inside of me in a way that doesn't help my higher self. Making this album was once again an exercise of trying to relieve myself of some of that darkness in a way that music has always done for me.' Featuring LL-expat Tyler Damon on drums on several tracks.

Lala Lala - I Want The Door To Open (Hardly Art)

Coming off of 2018's acclaimed The Lamb, an introspective indie rock album recorded live with a band, Lillie West knew she was ready to make something sonically bigger and thematically more outward-looking than anything she'd done before; a record that would be less a straight-forward documentation of her own personal struggles and more like a poem or a puzzle box, with sonic and lyrical clues that would allow the listener to, as the title says, open the door to the greater meaning of those struggles. The resulting album is a bold exploration of persona and presence from an artist questioning how to be herself fully in a world where the self is in constant negotiation.

Orquesta Akokan - 16 Rayos (Daptone)

Recorded in Havana's famed Egrem Studios, the group displays a cohesion forged by an intense performing and touring cycle. A musical conversation that began three years earlier blossomed into an easy, intimate dialogue between good friends - allowing full, fearless musical expression and risk-taking outside of their comfort zones. Building upon Perez Prado's dissonant, near avant-garde vision of the mambo, and highlighting the Lucumi subtext of Cuban rhythms and styles, the band continues to explore, develop and expand the island's rich rhythmic palette and repertoire - pushing the conventions of what is considered "mambo" - and drawing deeply from folkloric and religious traditions seldom heard in popular music.

Also New This Week

Atmosphere - LP reissues (Rhymesayers)
Black Marble - Fast Idol (Sacred Bones)
Dean Blunt - Black Metal 2 (Rough Trade)
Can't Swim - Change of Plans (Pure Noise)
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - B-Sides & Rarities Vol 2 (BMG)
Clinic - Fantasy Island (Domino)
Jarvis Cocker - Chansons d'Ennui Tip-Top (ABKCO)
The Convenience - Accelerator (Winspear)
Deerhoof - Actually, You Can (Joyful Noise)
Dinner - Dream Work (Captured Tracks)
Dummy - Mandatory Enjoyment (Trouble in Mind)
Duran Duran - Future Past (BMG)
Every Time I Die - Radical (Epitaph)
Hand Habits - Fun House (Saddle Creek)
Helado Negro - Far In (4AD)
Scott Hirsch - Windless Day (Echo Magic)
Hiss Golden Messenger - O Come All Ye Faithful (Merge)
Jackson+Sellers - Breaking Point (Anti)
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Paper Mache Dream Balloon DLX Lenticular (ATO)
Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia of the Air (Anti)
Pond - 9 (Spinning Top)
Rolling Stones - Tattoo You DLX (Abkco)
Sixx:A.M. - HITS (11-7)
Superchunk - Here's to Shutting Up [20th Anniversary Reissue] (Merge)
Xeno & Oaklander - Vi/deo (Dais)
Young Gun Silver Fox - Canyons (Karma Chief)