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.
Iron & Wine
Our Endless Numbered Days (Deluxe Edition)
“Each note is warm and close—the way you can hear his fingernails scraping the guitar strings, his breath on the microphone. Revisiting the record now, fifteen years later, it’s no less exquisite a meditation.” That’s how author Amanda Petrusich describes the intimacy and impact of Sam Beam’s hushed performances in her engaging liner note essay for the new 15th anniversary reissue of Iron & Wine’s 2004 sophomore album Our Endless Numbered Days. While this was Beam’s first album to be professionally recorded in a studio and fleshed out with a band, his distinctly relaxed vocal delivery and literary songwriting remain firmly at the helm, especially on tracks like “Sunset Soon Forgotten,” “Free Until They Cut Me Down,” and “Naked As We Came” (which has been featured in a wide variety of film and TV placements). This reissue features eight previously unreleased demos, new artwork, the Petrusich essay, and it will be released on CD and opaque pea green vinyl (US) or opaque dark green vinyl (UK).
Kate Bush
The Other Sides (4-CD Box Set)
With widely celebrated releases like 1978’s The Kick Inside, 1985’s Hounds of Love, and 2005’s Aeriel, Kate Bush’s song catalog is rich with Top 10 hits and fan favorites. However, Bush has also amassed an incredible collection of b-sides, holiday tracks, soundtrack songs, covers, remixes, and other rarities over the years as well. Her new box set The Other Sides collects these non-album gems into one incredible collection that is spread over four discs: 12” Mixes, The Other Side 1, The Other Side 2, and In Others Words. Some of the more notable tracks on this collection include the propulsive “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” 12” remix, “Home for Christmas” from the 1992 BBC film Wild Turkey, her duo of Elton John covers – “Rocket Man” and “Candle In The Wind,” and “Lyra” from The Golden Compass soundtrack. The 4-album collection is sequenced beautifully, with the two thematic albums (remixes and covers) bookending the box set and the two mixtape-style collections offering a dramatic and entertaining listening experience throughout.
Danny Elfman
Eleven Eleven
To call Danny Elfman’s compositions cinematic is to call water wet, but there might not be a more accurate descriptor to affix to his wildly imaginative and emotionally stirring instrumental works. His uniquely peerless film score work has dazzled audiences since the ‘80s and his original symphonic compositions capture the same dark whimsy, brooding atmospherics, and narrative musicality he has become famous for with countless iconic scores like Batman, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Big Fish, and the forthcoming live-action Dumbo. Inspired by violinist Sandy Cameron and the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No.1, Elfman wrote the symphonic piece called Concerto for Violin and Orchestra – Eleven Eleven. The live performances have been hailed as “dramatic, lyrical, highly rhythmic, percussive (especially given its unusual cadenza-like back and forth between the violin and percussion), thoughtful, and playful” and now audiences can experience the orchestral thrill-ride for themselves with this CD release from Sony Classical.
