December 8 New Releases
For a complete list of new releases visit our on line store. For rock collectibles visit our web site. New releases are subject to change.
CDs
30 Seconds to Mars - This Is War
On This Is War, 30 Seconds to Mars shift their music with the shifting times, adopting a hybrid of the Killers’ retro new wave and My Chemical Romance’s gothic prog, winding up with a sound that suits their stance. Producers Steve Lillywhite and Flood, both veterans of U2, do give This Is War an appropriately epic scale, helping to bring into focus this mix of synth rock, metal, and prog flavors with Auto-Tuned vocals, gurgling synthesized loops, Kanye cameos, and a children’s choir on almost every other song. This move toward goth-glam requires 30 Seconds to emphasize hooks and gives them aural variety, which makes this their most appealing album. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Since Jimmy Buffett never leaves his comfort zone, it’s hard to call 2009’s Buffet Hotel a return to roots but, in a way, it is. Discounting the mock rap on “Turn Up the Heat and Chill the Rosé,” this album doesn’t even have the lingering country and reggae flavors that seasoned 2006’s Take the Weather with You, with all of the songs riding a cool, mellow country-rock wave, the kind that has been his stock-in-trade since the ‘70s. There’s a difference between being part of a tradition and being stuck in the past and Buffett is surely in the former, not shying away from the new millennial mess, admitting that we all have “A Lot to Drink About” and never flinching from his advancing years, most movingly on a cover of Bruce Cockburn’s “Life’s Short Call Now.” Cockburn’s song is paired with another expertly chosen cover, Jesse Winchester’s “Rhumba Man” (he covered Winchester’s “Nothin’ But a Breeze” the album before), but this has the highest percentage of original Buffett compositions since 1999’s Beach House on the Moon, which is a good indication that Jimmy is in good form. While a handful are collaborations with his longtime colleague Mac McAnally, many of these are co-written with Will Kimbrough, who helps liven up Buffett and sharpen his pen, resulting in one of Jimmy’s strongest albums in recent memory. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Puddle of Mudd - Volume 4: Songs in the Key of Love and Hate
ive Puddle of Mudd credit for the title of their fourth album Songs in the Key of Love and Hate, as it makes plain their obsessions while dropping an offhand allusion to Stevie Wonder and Leonard Cohen. Musically, Puddle of Mudd hasn’t changed, still playing Nirvana as if they were party music like Stone Temple Pilots. POM manages to crank out a brute-force riffs that hook deeper than it has any right to, and there’s amusement to hearing “Spaceship,” “Keep It Together” and “Out of My Way” play as the life cycle of a love affair with a stripper in its progression from sex to love to hate., All Music Guide
Soulhat - Live at the Black Cat Lounge
Neil Young - Dreamin’ Man Live ‘92
Unlike previous entries in Neil Young’s Archives series, Dreamin’ Man Live ‘92 does not capture a specific gig. Instead, it’s a compilation of highlights from the tour he took prior to recording Harvest Moon, as he aired the album’s ten songs alone with his guitar (or on one occasion each, his piano and banjo). Although every one of the album’s cuts is here, this isn’t a strict re-creation of the album, since the songs are sequenced in non-LP order, but that’s a minor detail: for most intents and purposes, this is an alternate version of Neil’s well-loved but not epochal return to country-rock. Some of the songs do gain a degree of poignancy in this bare-bones setting, which doesn’t make them better, just different, and certainly worth hearing for those fans dedicated enough to care. And while this is better than, say, Unplugged — that was pretty good, this is very good — these performances are at their core sturdy and appealing, the kinds that fans will love but never speak of breathlessly. Then again, it’s pretty hard to be breathless about music that sways as gently as this. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
LPs
Kraftwrek reissues