New National album out today.

The latest album from The National has arrived and we’ve got the exclusive clear vinyl version in stock waiting for you. Also, Mac DeMarco dropped a new album recently and it has just hit the shelves here at Backbeat. Our list of restocks and additions is just down past the new release info.

Let’s get right to it!

The National – I Am Easy To Find (Indie Exclusive Clear Vinyl)
As the album’s opening track, ‘You Had Your Soul With You,’ unfurls, it’s so far, so National: a digitally manipulated guitar line, skittering drums, Berninger’s familiar baritone, mounting tension. Then around the 2:15 mark, the true nature of I Am Easy To Find announces itself: the racket subsides, strings swell, and the voice of long-time David Bowie bandmate Gail Ann Dorsey booms out—not as background vocals, not as a hook, but to take over the song. Elsewhere it’s Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan, or Sharon Van Etten, or Mina Tindle or Kate Stables of This Is the Kit, or varying combinations of them. The Brooklyn Youth Choir, whom Bryce Dessner had worked with before. There are choral arrangements and strings on nearly every track, largely put together by Bryce in Paris—not a negation of the band’s dramatic tendencies, but a redistribution of them.

“Yes, there are a lot of women singing on this, but it wasn’t because, ‘Oh, let’s have more women’s voices,’ says Berninger. “It was more, ‘Let’s have more of a fabric of people’s identities.’ It would have been better to have had other male singers, but my ego wouldn’t let that happen.”

Mac DeMarco – Here Comes The Cowboy
As described by DeMarco, “This one is my cowboy record. Cowboy is a term of endearment to me, I use it often when referring to people in my life. Where I grew up there are many people that sincerely wear cowboy hats and do cowboy activities. These aren’t the people I’m referring to.”

Here Comes The Cowboy was written, tracked and mixed at DeMarco’s Jizz Jazz Studios in Los Angeles during the first two weeks of an exceptionally rainy January, 2019. Nearly every instrument on the album was played by DeMarco, aside from keyboards on select tracks by touring member and close friend Alec Meen. Traveling sound engineer, Joe Santarpia, helped shape the record, sharing engineering and mixing duties with DeMarco.

The rusty old grinning pin on the front and back covers of the record was purchased from a man in the mountains somewhere in the Nantahala National Forest between Chattanooga, TN and Asheville, NC.

New vinyl restocks and additions for this week.