Every Friday our NoiseTrade New Music Tip Sheet highlights three recommended picks from that week’s batch of new releases that we think are worth checking out at your local record shop or via your preferred online music distributor of choice.
Ben Folds
Live at MySpace
Back in 2006, MySpace decided to try their hand at their first real-time concert webcast and tapped Ben Folds as their inaugural performance. Folds had just released his third solo album, Supersunnyspeedgraphic, and performed before a small, in-studio audience with bassist Jared Reynolds and drummer Lindsay Jamieson. While Folds played a handful of new tracks from his most recent releases, he also played a few fan favorites from across his career, including some of his older ‘90s hits like “Kate” and “Army.” Folds and his band also deliver their energetic reinterpretation of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” that they played throughout their 2006 tour. This is the first time the concert has been released in a physical format and Real Gone Music has done a stellar job on the CD and double LP white vinyl offerings, which include a handful of interesting pictures from the gig and Folds retrospective insights on the gig via Bill Kopp’s liner notes.
Marvin Gaye
You’re The Man
Originally intended to follow-up his legendary 1971 album What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye recorded an album called You’re The Man and eventually shelved it due to his political differences with Motown CEO Berry Gordy. While some of the songs have appeared on various releases over the last few decades, this is the first time that You’re The Man will be released in full and the first time that 15 of the 17 tracks will appear on vinyl. There is also in incredible liner note essay from Gaye biographer David Ritz included in the CD/2LP versions. While the album is notable for Gaye’s politically-charged topical songs like “You’re The Man,” “The World is Rated X,” and “Where Are We Going,” it also includes some of Gaye’s stirring love songs (“You Are That Special One,” “We Can Make It Baby”) and even two holiday offerings (“Christmas In The City,” “I Want To Come Home For Christmas”). Truly one of the most famous “lost albums” of the 1970s, it’s incredibly cool to finally have this mythical gem as a proper physical release.
Mekons
Deserted
When a band is described as “The long-running, genre-hopping, impossible-to-kill British folk-punk collective” in their press releases, how can you not be chomping at the bit to hear their newest collection of songs? Mekons have been making some of the rowdiest roots-punk around since the late-‘70s and their newest album Deserted feels as lively and dangerous as their debut LP from 1979. Dropping the needle on any Mekons album is the equivalent of walking into a boisterous pub full of friends and foes and sizing up who wants to dance and who wants to fight. Mekons co-founder Jon Langford and the band traveled to Joshua Tree National Park to record the album and the surrounding desert provided more than just a playful pun for the title. Langford has said that the dry, isolated atmosphere proved quite fruitful: “The desert is not unlike the ocean (just drier) and equally inspirational to old pirate punk rockers.” Providing barn-burning rockers and starry night moments of respite, Deserted creates a wonderfully cinematic sonic journey for all who are brave enough to enter the Mekons fray.
