Big release day! Beach House, Courtney Barnett, LaMontange, Pink Floyd, Parquet Courts … MORE MORE MORE

It’s Friday and it’s a long weekend! Luckily there are some fantastic new album releases to add to your soundtrack for the weekend. The latest Beach House is here, Courtney Barnett‘s new album is out, Shakey Graves and Ray LaMontange have dropped new releases and there’s fresh spins from Venetian Snares w/Daniel Lanois, Parquets Courts, Quiet Slang (AKA Beach Slang) and U-Roy.
The highly anticipated re-issue of Pink Floyd‘s live album “Pulse” hits the shop today along with the 1971 compilation album Relics.
Still want more music for the weekend? Lenny Kravitz “Greatest Hits” and Jimmy Cliff “Harder They Come” have also been re-issued are are now in stock.

Of course there’s a list of re-stocks and additions way at the bottom of this post. Plus if you missed our latest “flippin’ video” of all the great used albums we put out you can check it out here: New Arrival Used and Vintage Records

Let’s check out the latest releases!

Beach House – 7
The title, 7, itself is simply a number that represents our seventh record. We hoped its simplicity would encourage people to look inside. No title using words that we could find felt like an appropriate summation of the album.

The number 7 does represent some interesting connections in numerology. 1 and 7 have always shared a common look, so 7 feels like the perfect step in the sequence to act as a restart or “semi-first.” Most early religions also had a fascination with 7 as being the highest level of spirituality, as in “Seventh Heaven.” At our best creative moments, we felt we were channeling some kind of heavy truth, and we sincerely hope the listeners will feel that.

Quiet Slang – Everything Matters But No One Is Listening

“Rock and roll is sort of my consolation prize for wanting to have been a writer,” says James Alex. It’s a humble admission from the frontman of Philadelphia’s Beach Slang, a fiery punk quartet whose raucous gigs often find the songwriter’s earnest lyrics bellowed back at him. Still, consider it a feat that fans are even able to hear those words from behind the trembling walls of distortion that serve as Beach Slang’s raison d’etre. “Play it loud, play it fast,” goes the mission statement that is the opening to “Future Mixtape For The Art Kids,” “Play me something that will always last.” Everything about Beach Slang is loud, from the guitars to its attitude to Alex’s weathered rasp.

Considering that, there’s something almost cheeky about the title of his new project: Quiet Slang. As the name implies, Alex is embracing minimalism, smothering the fuzz in favor of a cello, a piano, and his voice. In October, Quiet Slang released We Were Babies & We Were Dirtbags, an EP comprised of two Beach Slang songs and two covers from The Replacements and Big Star. Consider it an introduction to what Alex calls “chamber pop for outsiders,” because it simply serves as prelude to Everything Matters But No One Is Listening, a collection of 10 Beach Slang covers.

Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel
The Grammy and Brit nominated Courtney Barnett returns with her second album – ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel.’ It follows her critically acclaimed 2015 debut album ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit’, and a recent top 10 collaborative record, ‘Lotta Sea Lice’, with Kurt Vile. One of the most distinctive voices in music, Courtney is known for mixing witty observations with unflinching self-assessment – fast forward to now and although all of the cleaver turns of phrase and an eye for story telling are still there; this new collection of songs see a more serious and outwardly tone capturing the current social landscape yet still retaining moments of intimacy and warmth. As the world becomes more familiar with Courtney Barnett these songs feel comforting and emphatic yet that raw energy and the ability to make the listener think still remain.

Ray LaMontagne – Part Of The Light
Ray LaMontagne continues to release timeless guitar ballads with a psychedelic flair on his seventh studio album, Part of the Light. Skillfully blending the gentleness of Nick Drake with rootsyness closer to The Band, he lends his soft, raspy voice to new songs about romance, personal change and the like. “As Black As Blood Is Blue” stands out for its grittier guitar sound.

Shakey Graves – Can’t Wake Up
Back in December 2017, Shakey Graves proclaimed on his Twitter page, “Next album. New sound. Sell your suspenders.” The tweet was tongue-in-cheek, but Alejandro Rose-Garcia, the Austin native who’s been plying his trade as Shakey Graves since 2007, was making a dead-serious point about his latest album, Can’t Wake Up. This ambitious, audacious work heralds an artistic metamorphosis for the 30-year-old veteran, whose risk-taking in painting outside the lines has been rewarded tenfold. “This record is the most I’ve ever intentionally worked on a project, musically speaking, in terms of the scope of it and how much thought went into it,” he says. “It’s a dense album; there’s a lot of information going on.”
That is not a hyperbolic boast. From one moment to the next, Can’t Wake Up veers from the inevitable to the revelatory, its thirteen songs teeming with jarring musical and thematic collisions and thrillingly seamless intersections, gnarly psychological hornswoggles and ecstatic resolutions. Central to the prevailing sense of disorientation are the lead vocals, none of which is purely solo. Instead, each lead performance is shadowed by a queasy harmony or slightly out-of-sync unison part, giving the sense—especially on headphones—that these voices are emanating from inside the listener’s head.
In a sense, the album is a microcosm of Rose-Garcia obsessively artistic existence and its ever-expanding horizons.

Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois – Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois
No collaboration is unlikely when the end goals are the same. A meeting of two artists who illustrate different corners of the musical landscape, come together to create a new statement that takes their collective strengths to higher elevations and encompasses new terrains.

So it is on the first collaborative journey of Canadian musicians Venetian Snares and Daniel Lanois. What started as mutual respect for one another’s work, led to several years of a creative germination resulting in an eight-track full-length exploration.

The path began in 2014, after Lanois reached out to Venetian Snares (Aaron Funk) as a fan of his work. The project started to take root in Summer of 2016, after Funk hung around Toronto between shows. Taking his gear to Lanois’ studio, the two began to play for the first time together in what would prove to be a formative moment in their creative journey together.

Parquet Courts – Wide Awake
Parquets Courts’ fifth album Wide Awake! – produced by Danger Mouse – is a groundbreaking work, an album about independence and individuality but also about collectivity and communitarianism. The songs, written by Andrew Savage and Austin Brown but elevated to even greater heights by the dynamic rhythmic propulsion of Max Savage (drums) and Sean Yeaton (bass), are filled with their traditional punk rock passion, as well as a lyrical tenderness. The record reflects a burgeoning confidence in the band’s exploration of new ideas in a hi-fi context.

U-Roy – Talking Roots
Talking Roots is the new broadcast from one of the Kings of D.J Reggae. U-Roy broadcasts social commentary affairs on subjects featured on tracks like Repatriation with Donald Trump’s immigration policy the subject of said track. U-Roy is like a BBC reporter, cleverly telling the news without agreeing or disagreeing. Bitter Nut explores the powers of the bitter cola nut, the original sexual health weapon from Africa! and Teacher Morris reflects on school boy romantic fantasy touching on some of the mid- 1970s glorious moments.

Pink Floyd Reissues – no blinking light

Pink Floyd – Pulse
PULSE, originally released in 1995, was compiled by James Guthrie, using various performances from the band’s 1994 Division Bell tour across the UK and Europe featuring David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. The album includes ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ performed in full live, as well as a whole side dedicated to the show’s encore.

The 4-LP set includes four different inner sleeves, each inside individual outer sleeves, plus a 52-page hardback photo book, all encased in a thick card slipcase.

This 2018 release was remastered from the original tapes by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Bernie Grundman. Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis and Peter Curzon, who worked on the original art with the late Hipgnosis co-founder, Storm Thorgerson, recreated the art package.

Pink Floyd – Relics
Pink Floyd’s first ‘compilation’ album, includes singles, B-sides, tracks from their first three albums ‘The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’, ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ and ‘More’. Also, the then-previously unreleased Roger Waters song, Biding My Time, recorded in July 1969 and first released on ‘Relics’ in May 1971. ‘Relics’ was the first album to include Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, which previously had only been released as singles, and the original studio recording of Careful with That Axe, Eugene, the B-side of Point Me At The Sky in 1968.

Fresh compilation reissues for a holiday weekend.

Lenny Kravitz – Greatest Hits
Track Listing:
Are You Gonna Go My Way / Fly Away / Rock And Roll Is Dead / Again / It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over / Can’t Get You Off My Mind / Mr. Cab Driver / American Woman / Stand By My Woman / Always On The Run / Heaven Help / I Belong To You / Believe / Let Love Rule / Black Velveteen

Soundtrack – The Harder They Come
Track Listing:
Jimmy Cliff – You Can Get It If You Really Want / Scotty – Draw Your Brakes / The Melodians – Rivers Of Babylon / Jimmy Cliff – Many Rivers To Cross / The Maytals – Sweet And Dandy / Jimmy Cliff – The Harder They Come / The Slickers – Johnny Too Bad / Desmond Dekker – Shanty Town / The Maytals – Pressure Drop / Jimmy Cliff – Sitting In Limbo / Jimmy Cliff – You Can Get It If You Really Want / Jimmy Cliff – The Harder They Come

Restocks and additions to our new vinyl selection here at Backbeat.

Arrested Development – 3 Years 5 Months
Bowie, David – Aladdin Sane (45th Anniversary Limited Edition Silver Vinyl)
Breeders – Last Splash
Brubeck, Dave Quartet – Time Out
Cooke, Sam – Ain’t That Good News
D’ Angelo – Voodoo
Davis, Miles – Bitches Brew
Davis, Miles – Kind Of Blue
Drake, Nick – Pink Moon
Evans, Bill Trio – Waltz For Debby
Gaye, Marvin – Let’s Get It On
Iron Maiden – Killers
Jesus & Mary Chain – Psychocandy
Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures
King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King
Lamar, Kendrick – Damn (Collector’s Edition)
Madvillain – Madvillainy
Marley, Bob – Uprising
Mazzy Star – So Tonight That I Might See
Metallica – Ride The Lightning
Meters – Meters
Motorhead – Ace Of Spades
Motorhead – Overkill
Mr. Bungle – California
Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Pablo, Augustus – Live At The Greek
Pantera – History Of Hostility
Pantera – Vulgar Display Of Power
Pink Floyd – Dark Side Of The Moon
Rammstein – Sehnsucht
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik
Redding, Otis – Otis Blue/Sings Soul
Sly & The Family Stone – Greatest Hits
Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger
Soundtrack – Juno
Television – Marquee Moon
Tool – Lateralus
Tragically Hip – Up To Here
Tyler, The Creator – Flower Boy
W.A.S.P. – Best Of The Best
Weezer – Weezer (Blue Album)
White Zombie – La Sexorcisto
Withers, Bill – Best Of Bill Withers
Wonder, Stevie – Innervisions
Young, Neil – Harvest Moon