Featured New Release Vinyl

With all the excitement of the Official Record Store Day release list coming out this week it would be easy to overlook some new releases that are arriving before that big day in April. Well, we’ve got several to feature this week, including the new Depeche Mode album, the latest Spoons and Real Estate, plus a couple Dead Can Dance reissues. We also received the usual load of restocks and new additions to the selection here at Backbeat, that list is at the bottom of the post. Let’s get to the new stuff!

Depeche Mode – Spirit

Iconic, multi-platinum selling musical pioneers Depeche Mode have released their 14th studio album, Spirit, globally today via Columbia Records. The album, available both digitally and physically, has delighted fans and critics alike, with USA Today proclaiming, “Depeche Mode is back with its timeliest work yet” and Entertainment Weekly naming Spirit an official music pick. The vinyl version of Spirit will be released on two 180 gram LPs, featuring the standard album and a special Spirit etching on the 4th side.

Real Estate – In Mind

In Mind, the fourth full-length record from Real Estate, is a portrait of a mature band at the height of its power. Long respected for their deft lyrical hand and gorgeous melodies, In Mind builds upon the band’s reputation for crafting perfect songs and carries Real Estate even deeper into the pantheon of great songwriters.
On the new record, the band fine-tunes the winsome songwriting and profound earnestness that made previous albums—2009’s Real Estate, 2011’s Days, and 2014’s Atlas—so beloved, and pushes their songs in a variety of compelling new directions. Written primarily by guitarist and vocalist Martin Courtney at his home in Beacon—a quiet town in upstate New York—In Mind offers a shifting of the gears, positing a band engaged in the push/pull of burgeoning adulthood. Reflecting a change in lineup, changes in geography, and a general desire to move forward without looking back, the record casts the band in a new light—one that replaces the wistful ennui of teenage suburbia with an equally complicated adult version. The record not only showcases some of the band’s most sublime arrangements to date, it also presents a leap forward in terms of production, with the band utilizing the studio as a tool to broaden the sonic landscape of their music to stunning effect.

Spoon – Hot Thoughts – Indie Store Exclusive on Red Vinyl

“Hot Thoughts” is the bravest, most sonically inventive work of Spoon’s career. With all due respect to earlier efforts that have made the quintet both critically acclaimed and a commercial contender, preconceptions about this band are about to be obliterated. Co-produced by Spoon and Dave Fridmann and reunited with Matador (third time’s the charm), with the crackling, incandescent, multi-dimensional backdrop conjured on ‘Hot Thoughts’, the lines between accessible and experimental become non-factors for once and all. It’s pop as high art, delivered with total confidence and focus.

Here is this week’s list of restocks and additions to our new vinyl selection.

Ryan Adams – Prisoner
Adele – 25
Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Beastie Boys – Hello Nasty
Beastie Boys – Solid Gold Hits
Beatles – Abbey Road
Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker
The Cult – Pure Cult: The Singles
Cure – Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
Willie Dixon – Willie’s Blues
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Elbow – Little Fictions
Gnarls Barkley – St. Elsewhere
Gorillaz – Gorillaz
Vince Guaraldi – Vince Guaraldi Trio
Hand Habits – Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void)
Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Flying Microtonal Banana
Lumineers – Cleopatra
Lumineers – Lumineers
Bob Marley – Legend (30TH Ann. Ed)
Metallica – Metallica
N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton
National – Boxer
Oasis – What’s The Story Morning Glory?
Outkast – Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Outkast – Stankonia
Pink Floyd – Dark Side Of The Moon
Proper Ornaments – Foxhole
Rancid – And Out Come the Wolves
Rancid – Life Won’t Wait
Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed
Snoop Doggy Dogg – Doggy Style
Tragically Hip – Fully Completely
Twenty One Pilots – Blurryface
Various Artists – Reservoir Dogs
Various Artists – Straight Outta Compton
Velvet Underground – Loaded
Weezer – Pinkerton (120G)
Weezer – Weezer (Blue Album)
White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan
Amy Winehouse – Back To Black