Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 08 November (2024)

Come Ahead is Primal Scream’s 12th full length record. 11 new songs that find Bobby Gillespie preparing to release some of the most personal songwriting of the band’s career. The songwriting process for Come Ahead began in 2019. At which point Bobby Gillespie had no idea if he would make another Primal Scream album again. For the first time, the lyrics came before the music. The story came first. Bobby wrote alone, using an acoustic guitar. Ideas flowed fast, in long bursts of inspiration. This process, in tandem with encouragement from producer David Holmes, provided a new way in. Working with Holmes and Primal Scream guitarist Andrew Innes, the Come Ahead sessions were completed between Belfast, London and Los Angeles.

State Champs surges with the energy of The Finer Things (2013), Around the World and Back (2015), and Living Proof (2018). It expands on the Kings of the New Age (2022) blueprint. That beloved post-pandemic album proved the band will survive. State Champs now sees them thrive. Songs like “Silver Cloud,” “Clueless,” “Sobering,” “Tight Grip,” “I Still Want To,” and “Golden Years” explode with high-energy, passionate, and smartly constructed precision. While big, bold, and slick, the production nevertheless sounds like a band in a room together or decimating the stage. “We found our way, through the ups and downs within us, personally and as a band, and wanted to express that,” explains frontman Derek DiScanio. “This is the right time to showcase it.” Bassist Ryan Scott Graham agrees. “When we stepped back and looked at the songs, sonically and thematically, it’s a great vision of who we are. Every era of State Champs exists within this record.”

Talking Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a sound that seemed alternately threatening and goofy. An album full of staggered rhythms and sudden tempo changes, odd guitar tunings and rhythmic, single-note patterns, non-rhyming, non-linear lyrics that come across like odd remarks overheard from a psychiatrist's couch. A voice singing above its normal range, its falsetto leaps and strangled cries resembling a madman trying desperately to sound normal. The music was undeniably catchy, even at its most ominous, especially on "Psycho Killer", Byrne's supreme statement of demented purpose. This was the first of four consecutive masterpieces for sire. 77 is the work of a truly great American band. 3CD and Blu-Ray and 80 Page Hardcover Book (Super Deluxe edition) / 2LP and 2LP Limited Green Vinyl of the 1977 groundbreaking debut by Talking Heads, including the original album, outtakes, rarities and an 80 page hardcover book with new liner notes written by Tina Weymouth, David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison. The book includes photos and images from the band's archive and photographers from the era. 

Known for the monolithic force of their music and their inventive production techniques, The Body’s albums are benchmarks in the expansion and evolution of heavy music. Tightly packed with deceptively nuanced arrangements and exhilarating, challenging distortion, their compositions are possessed of an unmistakably singular sound. The Crying Out of Things is no exception; a culmination of all that The Body have done before, highlighting their mastery of dynamic and monumental music that pushes toward the unmistakable sound of oblivion. The Body have produced a wealth of groundbreaking collaborations with the likes of Full of Hell, Thou, Uniform, BIG|BRAVE, OAA, and Dis Fig. The duo’s benchmark albums have, over the past 2 decades, changed the perceptions and directions of heavy music. The Crying Out of Things’ embrace of noise is a comprehensive display of the multitude of expressions possible with abrasive sound, a skill that The Body have pioneered and refined. “I think for us the key to the way we use noise is, it’s not the only element,” says Buford. “You’ve gotta really listen if you’re into noise. But it also has to have dynamics. Where, say, BIG|BRAVE (who have a similar ethos) expresses it in this more intellectual, minimalist way, The Body comes from an instinctual, maximalist way. We’re trying to cover it ALL.” The Body stand alone in their ability to connect disparate influences and collaborators into a wholly original, potent and singular work. Alongside producer/engineer Seth Manchester, the duo’s voracious and omnivorous musical appetites have pushed the studio as an instrument into new avenues to conjure profound feelings from the music. The Crying Out of Things cements The Body’s place as a leader of heavy new music, their boundless creativity, their defining ability to convey anguish, created with a visceral clarity to devastating impact.