July 2020

INCLUDES FULL BOARD GAME WITH GAME PIECES!!!

Pop on Floor It!!!, the new and second full-length effort from the Texas Gentlemen, and prepare your eardrums to be hit with everything from woozy, brass-fueled Dixieland-style jazz (“Veal Cutlass”), to slinky, chicken-scratch country funk (“Bare Maximum”) to lushly orchestrated pop-soul balladry (“Ain’t Nothin’ New”)—and that’s all in just the first 10 minutes of play time.

While the Gentlemen’s sound is clearly steeped in the classic roots, rock and pop music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, there’s a dreamy (the lilting “Sing Me to Sleep”), spacey (“Skyway Streetcar”) and occasionally progressive (“Dark at the End of the Tunnel”) element to what they do that seems to detach the music from belonging to any particular place and time. Add in elements of funk, soul, country, r&b, southern rock, gospel and essentially any other style that catches their musically omnivorous ears; an expansive and detailed approach to arrangement that sees the songs adorned with all manner of horns, strings and heavenly background vocals (“Hard Road”) and you have a collection of tunes that is more than just a mere album. Rather, Floor It!!! is a rich and righteous ride.

S.G. Goodman was raised in Western Kentucky on the Mississippi River Delta in a strict church going family of row crop farmers. Her debut solo album, co-produced with fellow Kentuckian Jim James, showcases S.G.'s otherworldly voice, which soars above a sonic blend of gritty guitars, bottomland grooves and plaintive balladry."

Chicago bred trio The Lawrence Arms will release Skeleton Coast, their first album in six years, on July 17.

Skeleton Coast was recorded 30 miles east of El Paso, TX at Sonic Ranch Studios with longtime producer Matt Allison. It was kind of like album camp in the sense that we were in this very remote setting for two weeks and really focusing on making the record. That was a very different experience for us because we’ve always made our records in Chicago which is home and all the things about home are in the way,” says vocalist and guitarist Chris McCaughan.

The album contains the elements of the band’s sound that fans have come to love for the past two decades but recontextualizes them in a way that somehow sounds perfectly aligned with this strange time in our collective history. Although it was written and recorded before the Coronavirus upended the world, the band’s seventh studio album sounds eerily prescient as it imagines an apocalyptic future where coyotes croon and wolf packs roam free. “For a band who has been around as long as us, this is about as urgent of a record as we could make,” vocalist and bassist Brendan Kelly explains. “It may be kind of dark but it’s really about searching for light in the darkness and finding it, as small as those moments may seem. That’s sort of where we’re at: Collecting the scraps of things that could make for a bearable existence in dark times.”

Paul Weller’s 15th solo album, On Sunset, is a soul album. At the same time it’s an electronic album, an orchestral album, an album packed with classic pop songs and heart-tugging ballads, and an album filled with touches of experimentalism. It’s also an album that sees Weller taking a rare glance into the rear-view mirror as he speeds into the 2020s.

Stu Larsen has no fixed residence...all he owns is a suitcase. You can find him in his native Australia, in Spain, Japan or South America before he picks up and leaves for his next destination. The Queensland, Australia-born singer-songwriter, and narrator packed up his life in a suitcase and has circled the globe on a near twelve-year and five-continent international trip. He has chronicled this journey through his music, including his newest full-length album Marigold.