NoiseTrade New Music Tip Sheet: David Bowie, Sara Bareilles, and Lissie

Published: April 04, 2019

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.


David Bowie
Spying Through a Keyhole

For some legendary artists, the staggering breadth of their back catalog seems to yield an impressive amount of unreleased rarities that highlight and shade new areas of their iconic output. Such is the case with the release of Spying Through a Keyhole, a new 9-track collection of demos and outtakes from David Bowie’s early folk-inspired period of the late-‘60s. Although Parlaphone actually released these tracks digitally late last year, this is the first physical release of Spying Through a Keyhole, interestingly spread across four 7” vinyl singles. While Bowie’s more bombastic musical endeavors usually characterize his creative arc, Spying Through a Keyhole is a cool peak into his earlier, more bucolic songwriting – which through these rough drafts versions of Bowie still working the songs out feels even more intimate and unpolished. This feels especially true when listening to the two evolving demos of “Space Oddity” as they show how Bowie’s creative work ethic is a true marker of his genius and humanizes him in a way that juxtaposes nicely against the magical mythologizing that often surrounds his songs.


Sara Bareilles
Amidst the Chaos

Since the release of her last proper solo album (2013’s The Blessed Unrest), singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles took a little bit of a creative detour that found her scoring the hit Broadway musical Waitress (during which she also starred as Jenna Hunterson in a 10-week run of the show), playing Ariel in a two-night live-action performance of The Little Mermaid, and appearing as Mary Magdalene in NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert. However, for her brand new (and aptly titled) album Amidst the Chaos, Bareilles is back to writing and singing in her own voice. While Bareilles has achieved great success with smart pop hits like “Love Song” and “Brave,” the T Bone Burnett produced Amidst the Chaos highlights her ability to masterfully write in weightier subjects as well. While there are sunnier moments dealing with newfound love and empowerment, she also delves into topics like her experience with depression, the heaviness of living in the era of Trump, and family separations at our southern border – the latter of which unfolds as a mesmerizing duet with John Legend.


Lissie
When I’m Alone: The Piano Retrospective

For her fifth studio album, country-tinged alt-pop artist Lissie gets under the hood of some of her songs from the last nine years of album releases and reworks them into uncluttered solo piano reinventions. All throughout When I’m Alone, Lissie uses the piano as an instrumental anchor to create around, allowing her honeyed rasp to shine in its brightest light yet, giving emotional weight to her delivery and soaring into some of her most impressive vocal runs to date. Alongside refreshingly refashioned originals like “Don’t Give Up On Me,” “In Sleep,” and “When I’m Alone,” Lissie also unveils two new covers: a twinkly piano take on Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and an inspired “Cowboy Take Me Away” from The Dixie Chicks. While some may feel that it may be too early in her career to offer up a self-referential album like this, Lissie does her best to use the opportunity to get inside her own songwriting to create something new and steers clear of just retreading old ground.

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