CIMS In The Groove

2-disc CD set. Remastered hi-res audio. Includes newly discovered material and never before released performances.

Esperanza Spalding has announced an audacious new project called ‘12 Little Spells’ that finds Spalding conjuring in the medium of musical creation, through an exploration of the body, human energy and healing.  Esperanza released one new spell per day on her website and social platforms as well as a “Liner Notes Live” hosted on Facebook all resulting in over 3.1 million views.   The spells come in the form of new music, which was crafted by Spalding at a castle in Italy last month, and then recorded in sessions completed just yesterday in Brooklyn. Each spell will be presented with song-specific imagery and video spells (short films that will accompany each release).

BAILEN’s musicality springs from a very deep well, in fact, it’s in their DNA. Raised in New York City by their classically trained parents, siblings Daniel, David and Julia Bailen (fraternal twins and younger sister, respectively) immersed themselves in a record collection that included Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Carole King and The Band. Produced by GRAMMY-Award winner John Congleton (St. Vincent, The War on Drugs) the transcendent harmonies, striking arrangements and meticulous songcraft of BAILEN’s debut album, Thrilled To Be Here, are rooted in the young group’s unusual self-assurance, preternatural insight and potent lyrical bite.

Widow's Weeds, produced by Butch Vig, is the fifth studio album from Silversun Pickups.

The Traveler, an album of experience and profound resonance by the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band. Recorded in Los Angeles, while the band was on a break from their uncompromising tour schedule that left them road-tested and ready to rock, The Traveler showcases some world-class musicians: vocalist Noah Hunt, drummer Chris “Whipper” Layton (formerly of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble), bassist Kevin McCormick, and keyboardists Jimmy McGorman and Joe Krown. The album features ten songs including eight new originals co-written by KWS and some of Nashville’s most in-demand songwriters, plus incendiary covers of Buffalo Springfield’s “Mr. Soul” and Joe Walsh’s “Turn to Stone.”

2019 release. Requiring less than two weeks of studio time to complete, it's accurate to say that Apex Manor's Heartbreak City was captured more than it was recorded due to the "everybody in the same room" live sessions featuring songwriter Ross Flournoy on guitar and vocals, Dan Allaire (The Brian Jonestown Massacre) on drums, and Rob Barbato on bass and production duties. The raucous result is a sonic spectacle that cleverly balances aggressive Dinosaur Jr.-esque guitars with dreamy synth work that's reminiscent of The Cure, all mixed together with spirited instrumental performances, nuanced melodicism, and lyrics that swing wildly between being cryptic and being profound. In short, it's everything there is to love about early '90s pre-commercialized alternative rock but with a refreshingly modern absence of pretense or nostalgia.

Following the acclaim of 2017's Out Of All This Blue (awarded four-stars in Q Magazine and The Independent), on 24th May, The Waterboys will release their new album, Where The Action Is, via Cooking Vinyl. Its title inspired by Robert Parker's 1960s mod / northern soul classic, Where The Action Is is a 10-song, genre-defying album, testament to the enduring talents of the band's founder and front man Mike Scott. One of the finest British songwriters of the past four decades, his songs have been covered and recorded by artists including Prince, Rod Stewart, Tom Jones, Steve Earle, and Ellie Goulding (who had a number three hit with a How Long Will I Love You).Where The Action Is will be available on CD, LP, digital download and streaming services.

The Saint Of Lost Causesis the 8th album from American roots troubadour, Justin Townes Earle.  Earle’s latest album finds a songwriter and artist who is unflinching and unequivocal in his truth. When writing this album, Earle focused on a different America—the disenfranchised and the downtrodden, the oppressed and the oppressors, the hopeful and the hopeless. There’s the drugstore-cowboy-turned-cop-killer praying for forgiveness (“Appalachian Nightmare”) and the common Michiganders persevering through economic and industrial devastation (“Flint City Shake It”); the stuck mother dreaming of a better life on the right side of the California tracks (“Over Alameda”) and the Cuban man in New York City weighed down by a world of regret (“Ahi Esta Mi Nina”); the “used up” soul desperate to get to New Orleans (“Ain’t Got No Money”) and the “sons of bitches” in West Virginia poisoning the land and sea (“Don’t Drink the Water”). These are individuals and communities in every corner of the country, struggling through the ordinary—and sometimes extraordinary—circumstances of everyday life.

Sacred Paws have a natural inclination not to take things too seriously. You can hear it all the way through a conversation with it's two members, guitarist Rachel Aggs and drummer Eilidh Rodgers, punctuated by rolls of giggles and thoughtful pauses, and you can hear it in the light touch they bring to their music, a jangly blend of indie pop full of fizzing world rhythms and bright horns. Run Around the Sun brims with upbeat reflections on growing up and looking back. Shimmering guitar riffs dance between snappy beats and swooning melodies that will have crowds committing to far more than a simple head-bob. "I think we'd get bored if it was too slow," Eilidh says. "We'd never want to play something live that people couldn't dance to. It would feel really strange to us. It's kind of the whole point."

Enter Flamagra - a work that sweeps up every quantum advance and creative leap of the last dozen years of Lotus career and takes them even further; the Warp release encompasses hip-hop, funk, soul, jazz, global dance music, tribal poly-rhythms, IDM, the L.A. Beat scene, but it soars above a specific vortex whose coordinates can t be accurately charted. Other than to say that it is a Flying Lotus record, perhaps the definitive one. An astral afro-futurist masterpiece of deep soul, cosmic dust, and startling originality. He s aided by a dream cast of collaborators: Anderson Paak, George Clinton, Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon, Tierra Whack, Denzel Curry, Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces, Toro y Moi, and his telepathic kinsman, Thundercat. David Lynch even pops up for an eerie narration wherein he somberly warns that, 'Fire is coming.' But they all naturally bend to the magnetic warp of Lotus spells -- a transfixing hex unto themselves.

When Jeremy Pinnell released OH/KY in the summer of 2015 to stunned acclaim, it felt like an entire career compressed into one knock-out album.  This unassuming northern Kentucky singer-songwriter sauntered and ripped through ten instant country classics that tracked as so confident and comfortable that it could have been mistaken for a seasoned musician’s creative peak.  The songs themselves, reverent of Americana’s most enduring traditions, presented the man’s scope - his misadventures, loves, failures, and contradictions.  Hailed as a “ming-blowingly good” (Greg Vandy, KEXP) “tutorial on classic country music” (Popmatters), Pinnell’s debut immediately differentiated as authentic and unflinching. Dogged touring through Europe and the states and celebrated radio sessions followed, cementing Pinnell’s position as a no-fuss master of his craft, an expansive storyteller with a steady gaze and calloused fingers - and that one impossible-to-top album. If OH/KY was the self-assured introduction of an unconventional new talent, his 2017 album Ties of Blood and Affection presents a canny lateral move.  Instead of doubling down on the stark themes and values of his debut, this sophomore album finds Pinnell finding comfort in his own skin and achieving the redemption only hinted at in his previous batch of haunted songs.  Here Pinnell joyfully embraces the working life, family obligations, and faith.  His new stories delve into acceptance and survival, all the while investigating his most challenging chapter yet: adulthood.  While “If life don’t get any better / I’m alright with this” isn’t an out-right triumph, it’s an honest revelation. Musically, Ties of Blood and Affection also maintains a comfortable and confident stride.  Pinnell’s songs are shot through with honest and classic elements; rooted in his steady acoustic guitar, the tunes chug along in a spring-reverb dream from somewhere between, say, 1955 and 1975 - unearthing a sweet secret cache of songs that “Waylon Jennings might have written if he had cut a record with Alex Chilton” (Portland Tribune). The rhythm section, all snap and shuffle, finds purpose in well-worn paths.  The pedal steel and Telecaster stingers arrive perfectly on cue, winking at JP’s world-wise couplets .  Here slippery organ insinuates gospel into the conversation.  You can feel the room breathe and get a sense of these musicians eyeballing each other as their performances are committed directly to thick analog tape.  And through it all comes this oaken identity, the devastating centerpiece of his work.  Honest and careworn, Jeremy’s voice can touch on wry, jubilant, and debauched - all in a single line.  Ties of Blood and Affection offers a fair dose resolution to Jeremy’s story; near the end of album, the singer concedes, “And I know my days will get better / Even if the sky is dark or blue / And when I stand before my maker / I’ll know I did the best I could do.”  At his best, Jeremy Pinnell chronicles the joy and sorrow of being human, which is the best that anyone could do.

Drone Butch Blues is a queer concept album based on the writings of historic and contemporary GLBTQI authors. With a focus on stories surrounding queer community, Drone Butch Blues touches on topics of secret and forbidden love, sex with strangers, the lives of hustlers, the impact of AIDS on homosexuals, historic events and rebellion all interwoven with the personal narrative of Clyde Petersen. Striving to examine the contemporary gap between generations of queers and their elders, Petersen turns to written materials to find buried remnants of gay culture and creative vibrant humans, lost to the plague of AIDS. What emerges from this exploration is Drone Butch Blues, the 9th full-length album from a twenty-year career as Your Heart Breaks. Produced by Karl Blau and engineered by Nicholas Wilbur at The Unknown in Anacortes, Washington, the base of the album is drone. Each track containing its own unique drone element, and is then layered with folk instruments. You won't find any drum sets on Drone Butch Blues. Instead you will discover rhythm in the textures of the strings and pianos. Drone Butch Blues lives somewhere between a memorial service and a queer anthem, trying to encapsulate or understand such a historic loss of a vibrant generation of artists, while celebrating intimate moments shared in queer communities.

Josh Ritter is returning this year with a new full-length, his tenth studio LP and follow-up to 2017’s Gathering. The Americana songwriter’s latest album, Fever Breaks, spans 10 tracks recorded at Nashville’s RCA Studio A over the second half of the past year. Jason Isbell produced the effort, which features his band The 400 Unit playing backup. It’s an exciting confluence of talents, and the promised chemistry bears out on the album’s gritty lead single “Old Black Magic”.

New Songs For Old Problems comes hot on the heels of what was a massive 2018 for Middle Kids, including the May release of their critically acclaimed album Lost Friends - an impressive debut which saw the band tour worldwide, earned them a slew of US late night TV appearances, and back home in Australia snagged an ARIA nomination, and the Triple J Album of the Year prize. The EP, recorded at Middle Kids‘ own studio in Sydney and produced by guitarist Tim Fitz, is about the colorful clash of pressures you experience when you are growing up, coming of age. An acknowledgement that life can be hard, but solace that we’re all in this together. “You look around and realize everyone is fighting the same internal battle, everyone is just acting out their story and praying it won’t end up a tragedy”, adds Fitz. Lead single “Real Thing”, a soaring rock song mixed by the legendary Mike “Spike” Stent (Madonna, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Coldplay, Muse) ruminates on the lifelong quest for meaning. The quiet, persistent voice constantly checking to see if you have truly found the thing you’re looking for. The band will tour North America alongside Local Natives in support of the release, with plans for further headline touring in the fall.

Eclectic Canadian artist Lucette sophomore album  Produced by Sturgill Simpson,    Deluxe Hotel Room takes the traditional roots sound showcased on her 2014 debut (produced by Dave Cobb) with which she captured the attention of critics and fans alike with her breakout track “Bobby Reid”, a sauntering murder ballad that was featured on the Netflix special Nanette and has since garnered over 4-million Spotify streams to date.  Taking the first album sound for Deluxe Hotel she amplifies it by adding ethereal ambiance and emotive resonance to a foundation of R&B, pop and soul.  Lucette’s cutting, honest lyrics are informed by life experiences in love, loss and battling inner demons as she comes into her own both personally and artistically.

Eagles Of Death Metal's Jesse Boots Electric Hughes is tipping his hat to 13 of his favorite songs with his first covers album, titled Eagles Of Death Metal Presents Boots Electric Performing The Best Songs We Never Wrote. Hughes recorded and produced electrifying renditions of 13 songs he loves, including covers of KISS, Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, Love & Rockets, Ramones, Steve Miller Band, George Michael/Wham, Mary J. Blige, Queens of the Stone Age, The Distillers, David Bowie & more!