New Vinyl Releases From The War on Drugs, Death From Above, Iron & Wine, The National and Neil Young available now.

Hey Backbeaters, we’ve got 5 new, well… 4 new and 1 never released album to feature this week. The latest from The National, The War on Drugs (finally), Death From Above 1979, Iron & Wine and the never before released Neil Young album “The Hitchhiker” from 1976 are all here. It’s been a pretty great year for new music so far and the good stuff just keeps on coming. Since we’re heading into the final stretch of 2017 what album are you most looking forward to that hasn’t come out yet this year?

As usual we have received a bunch of restocks and additions to our selection here at Backbeat. You can find that list just after the new album details.

Let’s get to the new releases!

New Albums Releases Sept 8 2017


The National - Sleep Well BeastThe National – Sleep Well Beast

Formed in 1999, The National an Ohio-raised, Brooklyn-based band consists of vocalist Matt Berninger plus two pairs of brothers: Aaron Dessner (guitar, bass, piano) and Bryce Dessner (guitar), and Scott Devendorf (bass, guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums).
Sleep Well Beast was produced by member Aaron Dessner with co-production by Bryce Dessner and Matt Berninger. The album was mixed by Peter Katis and recorded at Aaron Dessner’s Hudson Valley, New York studio, Long Pond, with additional sessions having taken place in Berlin, Paris and Los Angeles.

We’ve got one copy left of the limited Indie exclusive blue vinyl and several of the white vinyl version.


The War On Drugs - A Deeper UnderstandingThe War On Drugs – A Deeper Understanding

The War On Drugs fourth full-length album, A Deeper Understanding, is out now. A Deeper Understanding is the band’s first album since 2014’s universally acclaimed Lost In The Dream, and their debut album with Atlantic. Following the Record Store Day release of the 11-minute “Thinking of a Place,” The War On Drugs present the album’s lead single, “Holding On.”

For much of the three and a half year period since the release of Lost In The Dream, The War On Drugs’ frontman, Adam Granduciel, led the charge for his Philadelphia-based sextet as he holed up in studios in New York and Los Angeles to write, record, edit, and tinker—but, above all, to busy himself in work. Teaming up with engineer Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Weezer), Granduciel challenged the notion of what it means to create a fully realized piece of music in today’s modern landscape. Calling on his bandmates – bassist Dave Hartley, keyboarding Robbie Bennett, drummer Charlie Hall and multi-instrumentalists Anthony LaMarca and Jon Natchez — continuously throughout the process, the result is a “band record” in the noblest sense, featuring collaboration, coordination, and confidence at every turn. Through those years of relocation, the revisiting and re-examining of endless hours of recordings, unbridled exploration and exuberance, Granduciel’s gritty love of his craft succeeded in pushing the band to great heights.


Death From Above - Outrage! Is NowDeath From Above – Outrage! Is Now

While gleefully maintaining the car-wreck intensity of their punkified disco rock, the hooks got hookier, the weirdness got weirder, and the wildness got, well, wilder. The mustached merchants of death dance discord—Sebastien Grainger (vocals, drums) and Jesse F. Keeler (bass, keys, synths)—made a collective decision to embrace their own penchant for perpetual motion and cooked up the perfect soundtrack to Armageddon’s dancefloor.

“By your third album, I feel like you should be trying different things, whether subconsciously or consciously,” exclaims Jesse. “You’ve got to stretch out the pizza dough of your idea and see how big you can make it creatively. After 17 years, things change. We both wanted to see how far we could take it as Death From Above. Once we started working on music, it seemed like this was going to be a record where the very idea of what our band is evolved.”


Neil Young – HitchhikerNeil Young – Hitchhiker

Neil Young has opened his archive and released Hitchhiker, an unreleased new studio album. The 10-track acoustic solo album was recorded in Malibu, CA at Indigo Studio in 1976. The original session was produced by Young’s long-time studio collaborator David Briggs.

Recorded between Zuma and American Stars and Bars as a solo album in a single session, the resultant performances are truly breathtaking and passionate. The simplicity of a single voice and guitar captured here is as pure and powerful as it gets, with only Young, Briggs and actor Dean Stockwell in the room at the time of recording. A few of the songs would not appear on vinyl until years later. Some have never been heard, included in the original sessions for Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s Dume, another unreleased record of original sessions that yielded the classic album, Zuma. When the Hitchhiker album was recorded, none of the included songs had ever been released and many of the performances of the songs were the first ever. This is truly an album of original performances.


Iron & Wine - Beast EpicIron & Wine – Beast Epic

“The sound of Beast Epic harks back to previous work, in a way, as well. By employing the old discipline of recording everything live and doing minimal overdubbing, I feel like it wears both its achievements and its imperfections on its sleeve. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed experimenting with different genres, sonics and songwriting styles and all that traveled distance is evident in the feel and the arrangements here, but the muscles seemed to have relaxed and been allowed to effortlessly do what they do best (read full artist statement over here).” – Sam Beam

Beast Epic was written and produced by Sam Beam. It was recorded and engineered by Tom Schick at the Loft in Chicago in July 2016 and January 2017, and mastered by Richard Dodd in Nashville, Tennessee. The musicians who played on the album include longtime Iron & Wine collaborators Rob Burger (keys), Joe Adamik (percussion, drums), and Jim Becker (guitar, banjo, violin, mandolin), along with bassist Sebastian Steinberg (Soul Coughing and Fiona Apple), and Chicagoan Teddy Rankin Parker (cello)


Restocks and additions to our new vinyl selection this week:

Cannonball Adderley – Somethin’ Else
Alice In Chains – Dirt
Arcade Fire – Funeral
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Arctic Monkeys – AM
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
Asexuals – Brave New Waves Session
Audioslave – Audioslave
Bauhaus – In the Flat Field
Beastie Boys – Pauls Boutique
David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust (45TH Anniversary)
Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial
Johnny Cash – American Iv: Man Comes Around
Cure – Greatest Hits
Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
Electric Wizard – Dopethrone
Brian Eno – Before And After Science (45RPM)
Feist – Pleasure
Fleet Foxes – Crack-Up
Funkadelic – Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow
Gorillaz – Gorillaz
Grizzly Bear – Painted Ruins
Herbie Hancock – Headhunters
Iggy Pop – Lust For Life
Jesus & Mary Chain – Psychocandy
Jr. Gone Wild – Brave New Waves Session
July Talk – July Talk
Killers – Hot Fuss
Bob Marley – Legend
Mazzy Star – So Tonight That I Might See
Metallica – And Justice For All
Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Van Morrison – Astral Weeks
Mr. Bungle – California
N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton
Nirvana – Nevermind
Offspring – Smash
Pink Floyd – Animals
Portishead – Dummy (import)
Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine
Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats – Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats
Replacements – Let It Be
Jeff Rosenstock – Worry
Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels
Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 2
Snoop Doggy Dogg – Doggy Style
Sonic Youth – Goo
Soundtrack – V2 Guardians Of The Galaxy
Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
Sufjan Stevens – Michigan
Tame Impala – Currents
A Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders
Twenty One Pilots – Vessel
Verve – Urban Hymns
White Zombie – La Sexorcisto
Amy Winehouse – Back To Black

 

 

 

 

 

long live gonzoid amphetamine filth