Yup.
Long time coming, eh? We couldn’t be more excited to welcome the legendary SubPop label to eMusic. With a label like this, it’s hard to know where to start: do you dive back to the pre-grunge ’80s for classics by Green River? The post-grunge ’90s for groundbreaking work by Sebadoh and Seaweed? Or do you [...]

In the 1980s, the Kronos Quartet seemed dangerous: they were funky, black-clothed gate-crashers at classical music’s gate, letting the unruly clamor of bohemia into the concert hall. Twenty years later, they have aged into a certain “cool older uncle” status, and it suits them. As they sauntered onstage at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall on Friday night, [...]

Wear your wack slacks. No cob nobblers allowed.

Last night at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists celebrated the release of their Matador debut, The Brutalist Bricks, with a record release party that can only be described as epic, complete with vegan pizzas, bee-shaped pinatas, and blood.

The night was two-fold: First the band played through the new record in [...]

Via Lisa Kereszi
Because there are way too many new records this week! As I write, Sean is over in a corner rolling in a pile of them, laughing maniacally and hurling copies of Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor high into the air. Note: This is mostly a UK-only NA post, so apologies when/where not available elsewhere.

(image by ikewilson)
A HUGE day for new arrivals, so let’s get right to it. BTW: if you’re not following 17Dots on Twitter, we’d invite you to jump on. Every Tuesday morning is #realtimenewarrivals, with call-outs of the day’s hottest titles as we come across them. It’s also the spot to check in with eMusic’s editors [...]

Tomorrow sees the release of The Monitor, the eagerly-anticipated concept record from Titus Andronicus. Using the overarching metaphor of the Civil War to discuss feelings of emotional isolation, conflict of identity and personal heartbreak, Patrick Stickles has created a fascinating, flummoxing record that invites deconstruction by refusing easy answers. We had Matthew Fritch talk to [...]

So, as per a recent item on Pitchfork News, someone out there has opened a Wilco-themed sandwich shop.
We’ll give you a moment to let the implications of that settle in.
Honestly? Our immediate reaction, upon viewing the menu options at Toronto’s brand-new Sky Blue Sky Sandwich Company Ltd, was disappointment. Not because the “Outta Mind (Outta [...]

Unbelievable amount of New Arrivals today, many of them from the WMG family. Rather than doing an album-by-album play-by-play — which would take an epic amount of time — I’m gonna to do this mostly by genre and top-level artist, and let you guys fill in the blanks in the comments!
The Rock Picks:
Joy Division and [...]

Pavement. Range Life. Auckland, New Zealand. First show on the reunion tour.

Twin Sister: Fuzzy, like the music
Twin Sister are on the cusp of something. Hard to tell what that’s going to be–predicting the future on the sliding scale of indie success is a fool’s game we don’t play. They’re playing a gang of shows in and around New York in the next few weeks, then on [...]

By Jayson Greene
The esteemed Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg has traveled a long, itinerant path to his current post as composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic. After finishing his classical studies in the early 1980s, he found his attentions snagged by Japanese drumming and punk rock. He dabbled in musique concréte, added scrap-metal percussion and spoken-word [...]

(image by laurent p_ap)
A smattering of interesting titles today that I’ll call out quickly here. Above that, tho, I wanted to announce that we’ve officially resuscitated the too-long-dormant 17 Dots Twitter account. Though it’s been sporadically operational for the last few months (thanks mostly to Alex), we’re going to try to be a little more [...]

We got this a month ago, but I am somehow just getting around to listening to it now and, oh my god, the new Sigh record is throwing me into all kinds of ridiculous, excited spasms.
I mean, good god, where the hell do I even start with this thing? By saying it just knocked Beach [...]

Later today than usual, but the new stuff is here in force….let’s go through some of it together!
Shearwater, The Golden Archipelago – Newest from art-pop’s premiere ornithologists. We already gave you a sample Melissa Maerz’s review last week, so I’ll leave you with Maris’s succinct summation: “It’s like Rook, except better.”
Field Music, Field Music (Measure) [...]

The Jersey boys from Real Estate make a dawdling kind of rock, all loping chords and stray melodies that weave in and out of consciousness (that’s right, these melodies possess sentience.) Beneath the band’s burbling but bright sound lies Alex Bleeker’s sturdy basslines. They are the stiff back, low in the mix but necessary. They [...]

This coming Tuesday sees the release of the new Shearwater record, The Golden Archipelago. Here’s eMusic’s Melissa Maerz with an idea of what to expect.
Shearwater
The Golden Archipelago
[Matador]
Release Date: 16 February 2010
An explorer, ecologist, and folk hero, Jonathan Meiburg is the Jacques Cousteau of indie-rock. A former graduate student with a specialty in geography and ornithology, [...]

Relatively light day on the new release front – just a few things I want to shout out, so please feel free to call out some other titles in the comments!

NOTE: Because of tech restrictions his post is credited to me, but was written by Rob Wetstone, our in-house jazz expert and head of content
Maynard Ferguson.
He was the iconic screamer; the bravado band leader who specialized in soaring high notes, shrieks and shakes; the guy, who, according to snickering high school legend, blew so hard [...]

Though I am, at heart, an album guy, I don’t think I’ll ever lose my affection for the 7″ format. When I was cutting my teeth on ’90s indie rock, this was the perfect way to get introduced to a band, to get a feel for what they were and to decide if you wanted [...]