Now Hear This
Finding Wildflowers (Alternate Versions)—the latest offering of Tom Petty music, curated with help from his loving family, bandmates and collaborators—will be released on April 16 via Warner Records. The tracks, which were previously released on the limited-edition Super Deluxe 9-LP version of 2020’s Wildflowers & All The Rest, will now be available on limited edition gold vinyl for indie retail, and CD. A black vinyl release will follow on May 7.
Finding Wildflowers (Alternate Versions) features 16 studio recordings of alternate takes, long cuts and jam versions of Wildflowers songs as Tom, band members and co-producer Rick Rubin worked to finalize the album in 1994. The release offers fans further deep access into the writing and recording of Wildflowers, as well as realizing the full vision of the project as Tom had always intended.
The collection was produced by Tom’s longtime engineer and co-producer Ryan Ulyate who listened to 245 reels of 24-track tape, revealing Tom and his collaborators’ evolutionary process, and finding the group willing to do whatever it took to discover the essence and magic in the material.
if i could make it go quiet, the debut album from girl in red, is the musical distillation of Marie Ulven’s solitary conversations on the road: it’s an album brimming with the things we wish we could say to others, but tell ourselves instead. The album is girl in red in its purest, elevated form. She has never been braver, and the music follows suit, whether it’s collaborating with pop mastermind and Billie Eilish collaborator FINNEAS on “Serotonin,” a huge pop anthem that speaks to Ulven’s struggles with mental health, or flexing her instrumental chops with album closer “it would feel like this.” Betrayal, lust, longing, pulling herself out of a depressive spell -- nothing is off-limits on if i could make it go quiet.
“I really poured my heart into a lot of these lyrics, fully,” she says. “I just feel like I emptied myself in this album.”
Recorded sporadically over five years from 2015 to 2019, Sixty Summers was shaped profoundly by Stone's key collaborators on the album: Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, and Annie Clark, the Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and producer known as St. Vincent. The scope of Sixty Summers is dizzyingly vast; miles away from Stone's past work, it is a world unto itself, a surreal and breathtaking new landscape. Where Stone's previous solo records, 2010's The Memory Machine and 2014's By The Horns, found her grappling with the natural darkness that comes with loving too much, Sixty Summers finds Stone claiming every part of herself: fire, fury, love, lust, longing. Touching on reference points as disparate as the avant-funk of Talking Heads (on 'Break') the romantic 2am musings of Serge Gainsbourg ('Free', 'Dance') and the sleek, ecstatic synth work of Lorde's Melodrama ('Substance'), Sixty Summers is an album you can dance to and one you can lose yourself in completely.
Rhiannon Giddens’ new album They’re Calling Me Home, recorded with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, will be released April 9 on Nonesuch Records. Giddens and Turrisi, who both live in Ireland when they aren’t on tour, have been there since March 2020 due to the pandemic. The two expats found themselves drawn to the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy, and Ireland during lockdown. Exploring the emotions brought up by the moment, Giddens and Turrisi decamped to Hellfire, a small studio on a working farm outside of Dublin, to record these songs over six days. The result is They’re Calling Me Home, a twelve-track album that speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, which has been a tragic reality for so many during the COVID-19 crisis.
Sons of Kemet returns in 2021 with their new album Black To The Future, the follow up to 2018’s Mercury Prize nominated breakout release Your Queen Is A Reptile. This release finds the UK-based quartet at their most dynamic – showcasing harmonically elegant arrangements and compositions, coupled with fierce, driving material that will be familiar to initiated fans. This is their 4th record, and 2nd on impulse! This album features prominent UK vocalists and a strong emphasis on lush compositions and arrangements. Guest artists include Kojey Radical, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, Joshua Idehen, D Double E and is part of the impulse! records “impulse 60!” 2021 campaign
Pianist & producer James Francies follows-up his acclaimed 2018 debut Flight with the expansive opus Purest Form, an eclectic new album that taps into the essence of his artistry across 14 tracks that conjure a world of sounds & textures, interpreting love, grief, frailty, & fortitude. In addition to Burniss Travis on bass & Jeremy Dutton on drums, the album features alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, vibraphonist Joel Ross, guitarist Mike Moreno, & vocalists Peyton, Elliott Skinner, & Bilal.
Nancy Wilson has recorded 16 albums and sold over 35 million albums worldwide with her band, Heart. Within that history-making career, You and Me represents something special, as it is Nancy Wilson’s very first solo studio album.
You and Me was primarily recorded in Wilson’s California home studio, working with band members and special guests remotely. Most of the tracks are originals, but Wilson decided to include a handful of covers by a few of her favorites, including her moving version of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising,” a female perspective of Pearl Jam’s “Daughter,” a stirring turn of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” featuring Sammy Hagar, and an ethereal cover of the Cranberries “Dreams,” featuring Liv Warfield from Nancy’s previous band Roadcase Royale. The album also includes Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, and Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins on a new track, “Party at the Angel Ballroom.”
The title track and first single “You and Me” highlights the intimate feel of the album. Like all the legendary music she’s created with Heart, “You and Me” is an emotional, intimate conversation between a musician and an audience.
A unique new album of poetry and music featuring Marianne Faithfull, set to the music of Warren Ellis, and featuring Nick Cave, Brian Eno and Vincent Ségal.
Marianne Faithfull releases one of the most distinctive albums of her extraordinary life and career with composer and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis. It was recorded just before and during the first Covid-19 lockdown – during which the singer herself became infected and almost died. Together with musical friends and family, She Walks in Beauty fulfils Faithfull’s long-held ambition to record an album of poetry with music.
Delving deep into her past, it’s a record that draws on her passion for the English Romantic poets, a passion she fostered at St Joseph's Convent School before leaving for London at the age of 16. There she entered the world of As Tears Go By, of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, setting her on a left-hand path to pop stardom. Sixties iconography and outrage followed, as did her subsequent battles with addiction before her 1979 return to powerful female and artistic autonomy with Broken English.
