Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 2 August (2024)

The origin of Chrystabell and David Lynch's album Cellophane Memories comes from a vision that David experienced during a nighttime walk through a forest of tall trees, over the tops of which he saw a bright light. As he recalls it, the light became the lilt of Chrystabell's voice and revealed a secret to him. For Cellophane Memories, the two have traveled through different portals. Elisions in time reappear over and over within Chrystabell's vocals, which emerge and dissolve and loop back in layers of harmony and history. They are mantled by David's, and late composer Angelo Badalamenti's, orchestra of waldeinsamkeit-inspired strings, oneiric guitar glissandi and clouds of reverb, whose melodies are like the sensation of time pausing for a first kiss.

Twenty-three albums and several million miles after he first hit the road, Joe Ely presents his first road album Driven to Drive. The collection of songs about and inspired by motorized travel was curated by Ely, who in the mid-1970s swept off the flat plains of the Llano Estacado of West Texas like a whirling tornado, fronting a legendary band that was too rock for country, and too country for rock. The wild, wide-open honky-tonk roadhouse sound of the Joe Ely Band gave their hometown of Lubbock its first music hero since Buddy Holly. The project stitches together recordings made at Spur Studios, his home recording facility outside of Austin, over several decades, assisted by musician/neighbors Joel Guzman on accordion, keyboardist Bill Guinn, singer Eddie Beethoven, and fiddler Richard Bowden. Last year at The Zone in Dripping Springs, Texas, Jeff Plankenhorn added his guitar to three tracks and engineer Pat Manske, who mastered Driven to Drive, added percussion. Movement in these songs is measured in many ways: cars, sixteen-wheelers, motorcycle, Greyhound bus. There are pedal-to-the-metal anthems ginning down a straight strip of two-lane blacktop; a lazy meander on the Gulf blues highway; a tale of going on the lam on the Interstate; stories of getting from Here to There, and songs about going nowhere at all The Lord of the Highway is calling. Joe Ely wants to take you for a ride.

.Meshell Ndegeocello follows her GRAMMY-winning Blue Note debut, The Omnichord Real Book, with No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin. This visionary album pays homage to the eminent writer and activist James Baldwin and will be released on his centennial, August 2, 2024. Meshell's transformative music and collaborative spirit ignite this genre-bending work, which is at once a musical experience, a church service, a celebration, a testimonial, and a call to action, creating a shared space for reflection, conversation, and social change. Co-produced by Meshell and guitarist Chris Bruce, No More Water also features frequent collaborators Justin Hicks, Kenita Miller, Abe Rounds, Jake Sherman, Jebin Bruni, and Julius Rodriguez, as well as powerful spoken word performances by Jamaican poet and activist Staceyann Chin.

Critically acclaimed, Orville Peck has long dreamed of making Stampede, a duets album with singers, songwriters, and fellow musicians he’s long admired. And now, music icons, rebels and newcomers join hand-in-hand with Orville on his third full-length body of work to help create a two-part record that tips its hat to music’s past, present, and future. Orville just released the first part to this project Stampede: Vol.1 on 5/10 with duets such as Willie Nelson, Midland, Elton John, Allison Russell, Noah Cyrus, Bu Cuaron and Nathaniel Rateliff. Slant Magazine describes Volume 1 as "a reflection of both the singer’s dedication to the genre and his desire not to be confined by it."

This 30th Anniversary Deluxe 3LP Edition finds the original album recut from the original master tapes by Bernie Grundman, alongside a special bonus disc curated by Dean and Gene Ween that includes fifteen previously unreleased demos of classic and soon-to-be classic tracks from their personal archives. A brilliant fusion of gonzo pop, 1994's Chocolate and Cheese is arguably Ween's finest moment. The album proved once and for all that along with their twisted sense of humour and wide musical vocabulary, Dean and Gene Ween are impressive songwriters. Over the course of Chocolate and Cheese, Ween explore virtually every permutation of pop, rock, soul, and funk in their own unique (and very "brown") way.

For nearly three decades, WHY? have thrived in subverting expectations. Across seven unpredictable and adventurous studio albums, the band led by Cincinnati songwriter Yoni Wolf has stretched the fringes of psychedelic pop, hip-hop, and electronic music. No matter the genre experiments and thematic departures, their discography is remarkably consistent, anchored by Wolf's disarming lyrical transparency. His writing is provocative, self-lacerating, and always considered, coming from a place of blunt emotional openness. The Well I Fell Into, the eighth full-length from WHY?, is Wolf at his most cohesive and poignant. An autopsy of heartbreak, the album charts the ups and downs of a devastating breakup while trading bitterness for healing. Self-released on Waterlines, Wolf's new label that follows in the footsteps of Anticon, the trailblazing artist-run collective he co-founded, it's 14 tracks stand as the band's prettiest and most immediate work yet.

Being great is one thing, but staying great for a long time is another. X has been great for forty-seven years, building their legend as one of America’s most original punk bands with seven albums between 1980 and 1993. This summer, their final album, Smoke and Fiction, will be released alongside multiple national tours Like Alphabetland (2020), Smoke and Fiction has the fury and fun expected from X. It’s a valedictory lap with tracks like “Big Black X” reflecting back on their journey.