Bright Eyes – Rosenstock – Stooges

It’s Friday and we’ve got a few new releases to kick off the weekend. The latest from Bright Eyes, Jeff Rosenstock and a live Stooges album are all in stock and ready to take for a spin.

Also, there’s the big list of restocks and additions to the new vinyl selection here at Backbeat. Just scroll on past the new release details to find it.

Let’s dig right in!

Bright Eyes – Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was

Sometimes it feels like you hear a Bright Eyes song with your whole body. From Conor Oberst’s early recordings in an Omaha basement in 1995 all the way up to 2020, Bright Eyes’ music tries to unravel the impossible tangles of dissent: personal and political, external and internal. It’s a study of the beauty in unsteadiness in all its forms – in a voice, beliefs, love, identity, and what fills up the spaces in-between. And in so many ways, it’s just about searching for a way through. 2020 is full of significant anniversaries for Bright Eyes. “Fevers And Mirrors” was released 20 years ago this May, while “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn” and “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning” both turned 15 in January. And while 2020 is a year of milestones for the band, it’s also the year Bright Eyes returns, newly signed to Dead Oceans. Amidst the current overwhelming uncertainty and upheaval of global and personal worlds, Bright Eyes reunited under the moniker as both an escape from, and a confrontation of, trying times. Getting the band back together felt right, and necessary, and the friendship at the core of the band has been a longtime pillar of Bright Eyes’ output. For Bright Eyes, this long-awaited re-emergence feels like coming home.

Jeff Rosenstock – NO DREAM
Seafoam Green Vinyl

“NO DREAM” is the fourth full-length from Jeff Rosenstock. It comes at a time of unparalleled chaos and confusion, division and despair, the depths of which would have been impossible to predict when much of it was being written over the course of the last few years. And yet the record feels prescient, unexpectedly and uniquely suited for this moment. After building a devoted cult following with the acerbic ska-punk of the Arrogant Sons of Bitches, the DIY heroics of Bomb The Music Industry!, and three increasingly celebrated solo albums, “NO DREAM” arrives with an entirely new set of expectations in an entirely new era. Jeff’s previous album, “POST-” debuted at #54 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart.

The Stooges – Live at Goose Lake: August 8, 1970

The apocryphal tale of the Stooges performance at the Goose Lake festival has been told countless times over the past five decades. Bassist Dave Alexander, due to nerves or overindulgence or whatever you choose to fill in the blank, absolutely spaces in front of 200,000 attendees. He does not play a single note on stage. He is summarily fired by Iggy Pop immediately following the gig. Here starts the beginning of the end of the Stooges.
But what if that simply…wasn’t the case? What if you could prove otherwise? Well, it’d be the proto-punk equivalent of having an immediate, on-the-scene, man on the street report of all those folkies booing Dylan’s electric set at Newport in ‘65. Irrefutable evidence of what ACTUALLY went down.
Found buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse amongst other tasty analog artifacts of the same era, the 1/4” stereo two-track tape of the Stooges complete performance at Goose Lake on August 8th, 1970 is the Rosetta Stone for fans of this seminal band.
Not only is this the last ever performance of the original godhead Stooges line-up, but it is the ONLY known soundboard recording of said line-up. Playing the entirety of their canonical 1970 masterpiece Fun House, the sound, the performance, everything about this record is revelatory.
Would you believe that…Alexander actually DID play bass on this occasion? Or that, despite grievous failures on some songs, Alexander is damn solid on others? Especially on the bass-led songs “Dirt” and “Fun House”? Does Iggy provoke the crowd to tear down festival barriers? Did the powers that be pull the plug on the Stooges? So many questions are answered only to have more arise.
Released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the performance, Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970, is the rare release that literally rewrites the history of these Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

Here’s the big list of restocks and additions to the new vinyl selection here at Backbeat.

AC\DC – Highway To Hell
Adele – 25
Against Me – Reinventing Axl Rose
Bad Religion – No Control
Beatles – Rubber Soul
Brubeck, Dave – Time Out
Buckley, Jeff – Grace
Cage The Elephant – Melophobia
Cramps – Bad Music For Bad People (import)
Davis , Miles – In A Silent Way
Dead Can Dance – Aion
Eilish, Billie – Don’t Smile at Me
Funkadelic – Maggot Brain
Gibbs, Freddie & Madlib – Bandana
Glorious Sons – The Union
Hooker, John Lee – Very Best Of
Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell
Nas – Illmatic XX
National – Boxer
Nirvana – Nevermind
Oasis – Definitely Maybe
Price, Margo – That’s How Rumors Get Started
Queen – A Day At the Races
Queen – A Night at the Opera
Radiohead – Kid A
Rancid – And Out Come the Wolves
Scott, Travis – Astroworld
Simon, Paul – Graceland
Soundtrack – Black Panther Original Score
Soundtrack – Blade Runner
Soundtrack – Lion King (picture disc)
Soundtrack – Reservoir Dogs
Stone Roses – Stone Roses
Tool – Lateralus
Townes Van Zandt – The Best Of Townes Van Zandt
Tragically Hip – Fully Completely
Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders
Tribe Called Quest – The Low End Theory
Velvet Underground & Nico – Velvet Underground & Nico
Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes
Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud
Weezer – Weezer (Blue Album)
Winehouse, Amy – Back To Black
Zombies – Odessey & Oracle

See you soon!