Sleeping Bag - Wet LP (Warm Ratio)

Dave Segedy's project has evolved from various recording and touring members, but throughout the years Sleeping Bag has remained succinctly Segedy's unique voice. From his early days with Muncie's Arrah and the Ferns to his solo efforts and beyond, we've seen Segedy get his toes moist, wade around, make a big splash, and now Sleeping Bag is certainly wet. Not soaked. Not oversaturated. A scene staple. Something great. Something relatable. Wet evokes us, and it'll soon become a part of you and your everyday life.

David Rawlings - Poor David's Almanack (Acony)

Live at the Bluebird on 8/26! A wry mixture of acoustic and electric performances rich in ageless American vernacular. Gloriously captured on analog tape, the ten new songs took shape in a rollicking weeklong session at Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, TN where Rawlings and longtime compatriot Gillian Welch joined together with Willie Watson, Paul Kowert, Brittany Haas, Ketch Secor, and Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith to produce an album for all seasons. LP version in a couple weeks. Buy ANY Rawlings or Welch CD or LP before 8/20 for a chance to win a pair of tickets to the show at the Bluebird on 8/26!

Downtown Boys - Cost Of Living (Sub Pop)

The position of Providence, RI's Downtown Boys has been clear since they started storming through basements and DIY spaces with their radically-minded rock music: they are here to topple the white-cis-het hegemony and draft a new history. They began by combining revolutionary ideals with boundless energy and contagious, inclusive fun, and their resolve has only strengthened as their sound and audience have grown. Recorded with Guy Picciotto (Fugazi), he fostered the band's improvisational urges while pulling the root of their music to the forefront: unflinching choruses, fearlessly confrontational vocals, and the sense that each song will incite the room into action, sending bodies into motion that were previously thought to have atrophied. Downtown Boys are using their Sub Pop platform as a megaphone for their protest music, amplifying and centering Chicana, queer, and Latino voices in the far-too-whitewashed world of rock.

Jason Wilber - Reaction Time (self)

Bloomington's own guitar wizard. Jason's new record plays like a solitary tour bus rolling steadfastly through the countryside under mysterious skies. It's the sound of long, hushed hours spent scribbling in notebooks, dreaming up gorgeously mournful melodies and cascading harmonies set against jangling guitars, the searching songs underpinned by a persistent longing. Wilber has spent the better part of the last 20 years gazing out at the world through the windows of planes, buses, cars and trains while on tour with country icon John Prine. Unabashed honesty is a key ingredient - bleeding through an aching, sad-eyed and lonesome vulnerability, while blankets of wistful pedal steel belie a bittersweet and yearning vision of Americana.

Cereal Glyphs - The Second Hand (Guestroom)

Second album from the Louisville band and the first as a fully fleshed out 5-piece. At times sounding like a blown out and blistered B-52's, a southern fried Oh Sees and a power-pop psych raising of Jim Morrison's Doors. Call it whatever genre you want, they manage to channel garage, psychedelic and punk rock influences into 10 cohesive tracks in 35 minutes for a thrilling ride. The Second Hand's psych-punk sizzle calls to mind a bunch of jaded ex-mall rats in the new prime of their lives. Recommended for fans of the Intelligence, Ty Segall, Oh Sees, Useless Eaters, UV Race and Wand.

Guided by Voices - How Do You Spell Heaven (GBV)

Guided by Voices are on a roll. One could also argue that GBV is never not on a roll, that Robert Pollard's output plows past the word "prolific" like prolific is standing still in a snowbank; and that's true, but this new version of the band (Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr, Mark Shue, Kevin March) has given Pollard new tools to complement his song-hammer. Hot on the heels of the smothered-in-plaudits double album August By Cake comes this hot and heavy 15-tune long player, a melody-dense thwack to the earholes that will both energize and deplete your body of it's remaining music-appreciation enzymes.

Dwight Yoakam - Live From Austin, TX (New West)

Twenty-something Dwight Yoakam was literally the new kid in country music when he stepped onto the Austin City Limits stage in October 1988. But even then, as he has ever since, he was doing things his own way. Dwight was born in a small Kentucky town and grew up listening to mountain and bluegrass music, and unlike most of the mainstream country crooners of the 80s, he almost single-handedly revived the rockabilly / honky tonk / hillbilly sound that was one of the cornerstones of country music's formative years. Early on he discovered the fabled "Bakersfield" sound of the 60s and adopted it as his own, in the tradition of country legends Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.

The Districts - Popular Manipulations (Fat Possum)

The third album from the Philadelphia based indie band The Districts. For fans of Arcade Fire, The National, Wolf Parade amongst others. Popular Manipulations is a powerful and punchy set of songs by a group of men whose talent has finally caught up to its ambition. It demands and commands your attention.

Incantation - Profane Nexus (Relapse)

Legendary death metal pioneers triumphantly return to their original label to vomit forth another unholy offering of godless abominations. Embodying 11 blasphemous tracks of sacrilegious conquests, crushing dirges, and vile riffing, it is an obliteratingly heavy execution of disgusting death metal that further solidifies Incantation as one of extreme music's most influential and consistently hailed artists of the past 30 years. Profane Nexus is perhaps the finest template of their masterful synthesis of pummeling death metal and disemboweling funeral doom ever to be unleashed during their 28-year reign.

Also Released This Week

Jeremy Barnes - Winter '16 [tape] (L.M. Dupli-cation)
Benni - I & II (Goner)
Leroi Conroy - Tiger Trot 7" (Colemine)
Dead Rock West - More Love (Omnivore)
The Dip - Sure Don't Miss You 7" (Colemine)
Epic Soundtracks - Film Soundtracks LP (Troubadour)
Dave Hamilton - Ain't It A Groove 7" (Remined)
Hamell On Trial - Tackle Box (New West)
Hinder - The Reign (The End)
Kesha - Rainbow (RCA)
Mike Krol - Is Never Dead: The First Two Records (Merge)
Lambchop - The Hustle Unlimited 12" (Merge)
Oneohtrix Point Never - Good Time OST (Warp)
Buck Owens - Live From Austin, TX (New West)
Jeff Parker - Relatives (Thrill Jockey)
Plateau Below - Sun Don't Shine So Bright [tape] (self)
Frankie Rose - Cage Tropical (Slumberland)
So Much Light - Oh Yuck (Anti)
Katie Von Schleicher - Shitty Hits (Ba Da Bing)
Noah Sterba - The 13-Bar Blues LP (Grapefruit)
The Woggles - Tally Ho! (Wicked Cool)
Wolf Eyes - Strange Days II LP (Lower Floor)
VA - Love Oakland: A Benefit For Those Affected By The Ghost Shop Fire LP (Loose Grip)