Weekend Music Roundup

The weekend is here and so is the Roundup. Last week I did a 70's theme, so this week I decided to mix it up as much as possible. We got some new albums, so recent re-releases, and a cult classic. There's a couple of country inspired albums and some lo-fi gems. I'm about to start my first swing into 2020 albums and should have some of those for next week. Hopefully there's something here for you to check out. Enjoy.

Bear Hands - Fake Tunes: The forth album from the Brooklyn indie band, released last spring, is kind of the album I've been waiting for from them. I've heard all their previous records and thought they were getting better with each one. This album sees them further develop the style they've been working on and it all comes together to produce songs that are catchy, interesting, and thoroughly enjoyable. 

Elvis Presley - The Hillbilly Cat!: While initially released '82, this album was reissued last year. The original album was a bit of rip-off with very little music. The newly remastered album cuts all of the talking and replaces it with 18 tracks, some of Elvis best rock-a-billy tunes. I've always found Elvis best when he embraces his country side.

Guided by Voices - Warp and Woof: As is typical of Robert Pollard, his relatively new incarnation of the legendary lo-fi band released three albums last year. Having already hear "Zeppelin Over China," I delayed listening to this one and "Sweating the Plague" for a few months. I like to space my listening to the band more than they space their releases. Part of the reason for that is because their albums are all very similar, and all consist of basically song fragments that can take a little longer to sink in. Due to the high output, there have a few albums that have suffered from being too long, but this was not one of them. This is actually a great example of the band's blueprint and the first in some time that I would like to add to my permanent collection on vinyl.

Nirvana - "The Red Album": Released n 2017, this limited edition bootleg features mostly old radio broadcasts of pretty frequently bootlegged unreleased tracks. But it opens with a Courtney Love demo of "Live Through This" with Kurt on vocals, a track I hadn't heard before and was the deciding factor in my decision to purchase it...not to mention that I'm a sucker for Nirvana bootlegs and have tons of them. This is great stuff, and a beautiful package with, you guessed, red vinyl.

Lee Hazlewood - 400 Miles From L.A.: This archival release features recordings from '55-'56 from the country pop crooner, recordings made a full 7 years before his debut, "Trouble is a Lonesome Town." Many of the recordings here are demos of songs that would later be on that spectacular debut. This is country in the old style, think Johnny Cash if you don't know Lee. This is a wonderful collection of country folk stories about a little town called Trouble.

Fleetwood Mac - Kiln House: This the 1970 album, the band's first without founding guitarist and vocalist Peter Green, but unlike the few albums that followed, this one kept to the blues format of the Peter Green records. It actually has an early Beatles feel to it, especially when they try out old fashioned Buddy Holly type tunes. This was album that I'd been wanting to hear for a while, having really enjoyed the transitional albums of the early '70s. This is better than the two that followed, and up there with the best of their early work.