Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 8 December (2023)

The Beautiful Dark Life is the ninth studio album from Atreyu, and their most ambitious project ever. Unfurled throughout the year as a series of three EPs, culminating in a surprise album release, Atreyu are taking their audience on a journey through "the seasons of life" and the rollercoaster of human existence. With songs that speak openly and honestly about anxiety, depression, self-belief, love and identity, The Beautiful Dark Life represents Atreyu's most universal and important songwriting to date. Through the expression of deeply personal feelings and emotions, Atreyu are giving a voice to a global audience dealing with the very same issues that the band are laying bare, and who are seeking solace, empathy, escapism and empowerment through music.

For the band's 50th anniversary, Blue Oyster Cult celebrated with 3 sold out shows in New York in September 2022 where the band played through their first 3 albums and performed even more classics. Founding member Albert Bouchard joined the band as a guest musician.

In March of 2022, Car Seat Headrest brought their "explosive" (Brooklyn Vegan) live show to Brooklyn Steel in New York in support of their 2020 LP 'Making a Door Less Open.' Across three back to back nights, the band played revved up versions of tracks spanning their extensive back catalog. On December 8th, CSH will release a collection of recordings from those performances which includes fan favorites "Beach Life-In-Death," "Crows", "Something Soon," and "Drunk Drivers / Killer Whales."

On his new album, BEFORE AND AFTER, Young has approached a totally eclectic collection of mostly obscure songs like a painter with a new palette. Picking from a vast array of his originals, Young chooses favorites from his playbook like a trip into his music history and performs them mostly alone, taking a solo acoustic journey to a new place. Each of the songs blend and create one continuous flow, clocking in at a 48-minute pure and intimate listening experience. Produced by Lou Adler and Neil Young and mixed by Young and Niko Bolas, aka The Volume Dealers, this is unlike any other album he has released to date. - Young describes BEFORE AND AFTER succinctly: "The feeling is captured, not in pieces, but as a whole piece - designed to be listened to that way. This music presentation defies shuffling, digital organization, separation. Only for listening. That says it all".

Me Neither is a 29 track double album of instrumental guitar music. While juggling a number of other projects James Elkington began writing "music for which there was no purpose." It became a new way of working for him - waking up each morning and improvising and recording the first thing that came into his head. "The only rules I gave myself were that I should make most of the sounds with a guitar, changing the speed or processing the recordings afterwards to get the effect I was looking for." Before long he had an albums worth of material. About mid-way through the second album Elkington had a liberating thought: he was making his own version of library music "if you're writing library music, you don't have to know what it's for - that can be someone else's job."

Michael Nau is set to release his fifth full length record under Karma Chief Records on 12/8/2023. Since the mid 2000's, he's crafted a catalog of thoughtful, reflective songs as the frontman of indie-rock mainstays Cotton Jones, Page France, and Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread.All 11 tracks come together to paint a beautiful picture. The lyrics invoke the listener's imagination throughout. They're introspective, but vague and open-ended. The indie rock backdrop shows signs of psych-soul influence with dry and punchy drums, lush synth lines, and tastefully verb-soaked vocal production. Sweeping string arrangements and French horn runs add cinematic motion to the waltz-y "Shiftshaping" (track 4). Slide guitar and a shuffling snare drum add some get-up-and-go to "Painting a Wall" (track 2). Nau's vocal delivery falls somewhere between crooning to a crowd, telling stories to a loved one, and musing to himself.The singer-songwriter's relaxed attitude toward making records is discernible in the sound. A while back, veteran producer and engineer Adrien Olsen (The Killers, Lucy Dacus, Fruit Bats), approached him about recording in his Richmond, Virginia-based studio. For the first time in a while, Michael had some sessions on the calendar. He called a few old friends and put together a band. "I didn't have much of a plan before Adrien reached out, so I wrote some songs specifically for the session," Michael explained. "I was thinking about what would be fun to play with this specific group of guys." The band consisted of several long-time collaborators and musicians who had participated in Nau's various recording and touring efforts over the years. "It had been a while since I'd made music in a room with other people," Michael shared. "We just sort of started playing and didn't really talk about what was happening." The combo's newfound chemistry was a primary source of inspiration and, with the help of Olsen, ultimately led to an album's-worth of music.Nau and the band spent five days at Montrose Recording and left with a plan to return and finish up a few months later. "After the first session, I took a copy of the recordings with me to overdub a few things at my spot," Michael shared. While he was working through it, he found a bunch of beautiful moments of jamming in between the takes. "I grabbed a bunch of the pieces and tried to work them in. Then, I dumped the whole thing onto a cassette as one long stream of songs." With the record mostly complete, the final session at Montrose would consist of some simple overdubs and finishing touches. But somehow, in the months between, he lost the overdubs. "Going into the second session, all I had was the cassette," Michael explained. The band got back together and performed another batch of songs. At the end of their second session, they had enough music to pick and choose from for the new full-length. "The songs, as they appear on the album, are basically how they were recorded as a live band." Grab a copy of Accompany on 12/08/2023 and keep an eye out for tour dates in the coming months.

The fifth full-length studio album and a sequel to her debut album Pink Friday (2010), Pink Friday 2 will mark Minaj's first studio album in over five years, following 2018’s Queen.

Fresh off a tour with The Armed, and on the heels of countless releases and collaborations, Patrick Shiroishi’s music is as vital and stirring as ever on I Was Too Young To Hear Silence. Where his breakout release, 2021’s Hidemi, used choruses of saxophones and vocals to memorialize his grandfather, I Was Too Young To Hear Silence expands the scope of his remembrance. Shiroishi’s chosen instruments are alto saxophone, glockenspiel, and a cavernous parking garage through which the former’s melodies reverberate. It’s an apt setting for Shiroishi’s continuing confrontation of the legacy of Japanese concentration camps.

Entitled Rebel Diamonds, the album of highlights features 20 tracks, including the modern-day classics "Mr. Brightside," "When You Were Young," "All These Things That I've Done," "Human," "Read My Mind" and at least one song from each of the band's seven studio albums. The album also carries through to the band's most recently released, critically lauded single, "Your Side of Town," and includes a brand-new anthem ready to be sung at festivals across the world called "Spirit." The album is a curated dive into an impressive catalog of songwriting and musicianship – one that has solidified the band as one of the most important voices in rock n' roll over the last two decades.

Multi-platinum musician, Grammy®-Nominated songwriter, and multi-faceted artist. V V Brown is back with her fourth studio album Am I Black British Yet? This is a groundbreaking exploration of black identity. This cutting edge project features influences from James Baldwin, Erykah Badu, Soul to Soul, Roots Manoeuvre, and Windrush generation poets. Showcasing her Jamaican and Black British heritage through genre blurring soundscapes, V V Brown has crafted an innovative musical experience that refuses the status quo.