Descendents - 9th & Walnut - Epitaph
Formed in L.A.’s South Bay in 1978, Descendents began as a power trio featuring bassist Tony Lombardo, drummer Bill Stevenson, and guitarist Frank Navetta (d. 2008). The band recruited vocalist Milo Aukerman in 1980 and began establishing themselves as major players in the Southern California Punk movement. Over the years, the band has sustained a potent chemistry and shared vision, further cementing them as punk legends.  In 2002, the original four-piece lineup — Frank Navetta, Tony Lombardo, Bill Stevenson, and Milo Aukerman — got back into the studio to finally record their first-ever songs. The songs were written by the band from 1977 through 1980, before recording the Fat EP (1981) and the Milo Goes to College LP (1982). Put simply, this is the DESCENDENTS’ earliest material, representing a “lost” pre-MGTC album. Most of these songs have not been heard—until now.  Every element of DESCENDENTS’ genre-creating sound is here: Stevenson’s hyper-caffeinated surf-beats, Lombardo’s intrepid bass, Navetta’s crunching attack, Aukerman’s impassioned, infinitely relatable singing—and all those great melodies and harmonies.

  

Rodney Crowell - Triage - RC1 Records
'Triage' offers a rare look inside of the songwriter. This album finds Rodney Crowell introspectively looking for answers and for healing, resulting in what he has called his most personal record yet.  This new collection of songs was written during the great political, environmental and economic upheaval that has marked recent years. The noise of that chaos encouraged Crowell to look inward for solace and answers. The result is this series of songs that contend with these themes, but approaches them from a place of healing, love and solution. That they are being released while we find ourselves walking through a global pandemic, is a gift of perfect timing.

  

Parker McCollum - Gold Chain Cowboy - MCA Nashville
Parker McCollum will be releasing his major label debut- Gold Chain Cowboy on MCA Nashville on July 30^th.  He is born and raised in the Houston-TX market and has been based in Austin-TX since he released is first independent single and EP in 2013.  He has performed and will headline numerous radio station festivals during the summer.  The 10 Tracks on his debut album will feature the #1 Platinum-"Pretty Heart" and his current Top 40 hit- "To Be Loved By You". 

  

Los Lobos - Native Sons - New West Records
Los Angeles based band, Los Lobos, have always been inspired by their surroundings and the place they call home. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country, zydeco, folk, R&B, blues, brown-eyed soul, and traditional music such as cumbia, boleros and norteños. With Native Sons the band set out to showcase all of these influences with their own take on the songs of Los Angeles from some of the cities greatest songwriters. Native Sons features 13-songs from well known LA artists such as Buffalo Springfield, WAR, Jackson Browne and the Beach Boys as well as deep cuts from the Jaguars, The Basters and The Premiers. The album title track is the sole original composition written by the band. 

  

Various Artists - Almost Famous: Soundtrack - Geffen
Celebrating 20 years of the Academy Award winning film by Cameron Crowe, the Grammy® winning Almost Famous soundtrack is reissued as a deluxe 2CD with 35 songs from the film including Stillwater, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, and many more. Unreleased songs: “Tiny Dancer (Almost Famous Version)” with Elton John & cast and the unique mix & edit for The Who’s “Amazing Journey / Sparks (Almost Famous Version).” Newly expanded artwork includes unreleased photos and an introduction by Cameron Crowe. Also Available: 2LP and coming 8/20: Super Deluxe 6LP and Super Deluxe 5CD

Half Waif - Mythopoetics - Anti
With her musical project Half Waif, Nandi Rose dives deep into the waters of artistic expression by layering evocative vocals and synths to create a powerful form of pop music. On Mythopoetics, Rose ex- plores a full spectrum of sounds that sparkle with memorable hooks, otherworldly production and uplifting grooves. “This is the record I’ve been trying to make for 10 years,” Rose says. Previous albums The Caretaker (2020) and Lavender (2018) garnered acclaim for their compelling journeys through solitude, desire and the search for independence. Half Waif declares a new chapter on Mytho- poetics, a collection of 12 new songs – mythical stories that transcend time, each sung with a glorious contralto wrapped up in synths and electronic percussion, and her lyrical piano serving as the backbone. It is an essential reminder that we have the power to shape the stories we tell and the myths we make of our lives. This is music that you feel.

  

The Flatlanders - Treasure of Love - Rock'em Records
Almost 50 years after the sessions that would make them an “accidental Texas supergroup” (Rolling Stone), The Flatlanders have returned with Treasure of Love, their first new album in more than a decade. Completed during COVID-19 lockdowns with the help of longtime friend and collaborator Lloyd Maines, the record finds the iconic trio of Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock in classic form, serving up a rollicking collection of twang-fueled, harmony-laden performances full of wry humor and raw heartbreak. While a few songs here are never-before-heard originals, the vast majority of the tracklist consists of tunes the band picked up during their half-century together, some stretching as far back as the group’s earliest performances in the honkytonks around Lubbock, TX, where you might have spotted Willie Nelson or Townes Van Zandt in the audience.

  

Marco Vezzoso and Alessandro Collina - Italian Spirit In Japan - ITI Records
Marco Vezzoso and Alessandro Collina, the jazz duo that has conquered the countries of the Rising Sun! Italian Spirit In Japan collects 10 of the most beautiful songs of Italian music reinterpreted in a refined instrumental version for trumpet, piano, and percussion. The artists offer a skilful reinterpretation of unforgettable pieces, creating a generational bridge between pop music and jazz. This live version is also a tribute to the artistic partnership between Vezzoso and Collina, which began in Japan and reached China via Cambodia, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In the 'Italian Spirit live' project we decided to invite the percussionist Andrea Marchesini. Andrea is a highly talented and experienced musician who, like us, loves contamination between genres. It was therefore easy for us to integrate Andrea's artistic vein, who adapted very well to our playing. Indeed, he did much more, enriching the pieces with rhythmic details, sometimes almost melodic, without ever being invasive. 

  

T. Hardy Morris - The Digital Age of Rome - New West Records
Heading into the spring of 2020, T. Hardy Morris had 12 demos that he thought would make-up his next album, then, everything changed.  The world took a break and so his plans to record did as well. As we all watched and waited out the storms; viral and societal, we seemed to wake up scrolling through a whole new century, a time Morris began to refer to as The Digital Age of Rome. He scrapped the demos and began a collection of songs in quarantine where the unprecedented times and topics were unavoidable. He wanted to document the era sonically and lyrically in some way. “I wanted it to sound like how the world felt to me in the second half of 2020. Uncomfortable and chaotic, dystopian but still beautiful.”  The Digital Age of Rome was recorded in a deserted downtown Athens, Ga. With long-time collaborator / producer Adam Landry.

  

Gary Allan - Ruthless - EMI Nashville
Gary Allan releases a brand new album of all new material this week. Ruthless is Gary's first studio album in over 8 years. Overall, Allan's nine studio and greatest hits albums have produced 26 singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts, including the number one hits "Man to Man", "Tough Little Boys" (both 2003), "Nothing On but the Radio" (2004), and "Every Storm (Runs Out of Rain)" (2013). Seven more of his singles have reached the Top 10 on this chart as well: his debut single "Her Man", "It Would Be You" (both at #7), "Right Where I Need to Be" (at #5), "The One" (at #3), "Best I Ever Had" (a cover of a Vertical Horizon song) (at #7), "Life Ain't Always Beautiful" (at #4), and "Watching Airplanes" (#2).

  

Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band - Banned - Anti
Yves Jarvis and Romy Lightman are a pair of idiosyncratic and restlessly creative artists. In the past decade, Jarvis’s ever-expanding swatch have earned international acclaim, while Lightman’s twin-sister-led band Tasseomancy has transfixed listeners since the late 2000s. The Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band marks the duo’s first collaboration, slingshotting both musicians out of their comfort zones into spellbinding territories of lysergic folk and impressionistic rock. Banned was recorded in the tranquil environment of the Tree Museum, an outdoor art gallery in rural Ontario, Canada, hosting residencies for contemporary sculptors over the past 20 years. The pair credit its 200 acres of natural spaces intermingling with human-made creations as the fuel for their unfettered process. Recorded over two weeks in a free-flowing stream of improvisation, the album finds Lightman on synthesizer with Jarvis on drums and guitar, as their voices weave together into an electrified pastoral tapestry.

  

Vincent Neil Emerson - Vincent Neil Emerson - La Honda Records
Vincent Neil Emerson is a torchbearer of the Texas songwriter tradition. He channels the straightforward truth-telling and resonance of his songwriting heroes in Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Steve Earle into something fresh and distinctly his own. Where his 2019 debut Fried Chicken and Evil Women proved that he is one of the most reverent students of country and Western musical traditions, his follow-up LP, the masterful Rodney Crowell-produced Vincent Neil Emerson, which is out this week via La Honda Records/Thirty Tigers, is a brave step forward that solidifies his place as one of music's most compelling and emotionally clarifying storytellers. His songs are cathartic and bluntly honest, never mincing words or dancing around uncomfortable truths.

  

Rosie Tucker - Sucker Supreme - Epitaph
Sucker Supreme is the third album from Rosie Tucker, and first for Epitaph Records. It is a coming of age album that aches with self-discovery, self-definition, and self-redefinition. Sucker Supreme is also just the right follow-up to where their last album, 2019’s Never Not Never Not Never Not, left off: still playfully observed, still sneakily political, still indebted to folk singers of the past – but also much, much bigger, brighter, louder and noisier than anything Tucker has dared before. It delivers mightily on an ambitious M.O.: to be relentlessly catchy and muscular and noisy but also beautiful; be achingly sad and searching, but never too far away from funny, either; and to spotlight Tucker’s empathetic, yearning vocals on top of it all. It takes a unique group of people to make an album that leaps out of the speakers at you like this one. Sucker Supreme is the first record made by Tucker’s current touring band: drummer Jessy Reed, guitarist Jess Kallen, and bassist Wolfy, who also occupied the producer’s chair. It’s a group of people as eager to share their long-dead folk music heroes as they are to pay homage to their still-kicking pop-punk heartthrobs.

  

Styx - Crash Of The Crown - UMe
A new era of hope, survival, and prosperity comes calling on Styx's Magnum Opus, Crash Of The Crown, the band's first studio album since 2017's The Mission. Though the 15-track album takes a hard look at some inherently dark subjects, the prevalent light at the end of the tunnel eventually becomes each song's focal point - a persistent fervor to keep moving forward and achieve the greater good. Featuring "Crash of the Crown," "Reveries" & more, available on black vinyl.

Mammoth WVH - Mammoth WVH - Ex1 Records
Mammoth WVH is the debut, self-titled album of Mammoth WVH – the band created by Wolfgang Van Halen. This collection includes the chart topping new single, "Distance” plus “Don’t Back Down,” “Epiphany,” “Mammoth” and more. At the beginning of 2015, Wolf broke ground on what would become Mammoth WVH with producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette [Alter Bridge, Slash] behind the board. Wolf began to embrace his voice, inspired by everyone from his father, to bands like AC/DC, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, TOOL, and Jimmy Eat World. In addition to writing and singing every song on the self-title debut album, remarkably Wolfgang plays every instrument. “The name Mammoth is really special to me.” says Wolf. “Not only was it the name of Van Halen before it became Van Halen, but my father was also the lead singer. Ever since my dad told me this, I always thought that when I grew up, I’d call my own band Mammoth, because I loved the name so much.”

Danny Elfman - Big Mess - Anti / Epitaph
Big Mess marks Danny Elfman’s first solo collection in more than thirty years, but it’s no return to form. Clocking in at 18 tracks, the sprawling, ambitious double album finds the Grammy and Emmy Award-winning composer breaking bold new ground as both a writer and a performer, drawing on a dystopian palette of distorted electric guitars, industrial synthesizers and orchestra in an effort to exorcise the demons brought about by four years of creeping fascism and civil rot. The songs here call to mind everything from Nine Inch Nails, to David Bowie to XTC at times, balancing dense, harmonically complex arrangements with biting, acerbic wit as they reckon with the chaos and confusion of the modern world. Elfman wrote almost all of the record during quarantine, and while the anger, frustration, and isolation of it all is palpable in his delivery, Big Mess is about more than simply blowing off steam. In making the space to truly sit with his emotions and write without limitations, Elfman achieved a kind of artistic liberation on the record that had been eluding him for decades, rediscovering his voice and reinventing himself all at once in the process. Born and raised in southern California, Elfman began his career as part of a surrealist, avant-garde musical theater troupe known as The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo. The group would eventually morph into the critically acclaimed rock band Oingo Boingo, whose high-energy performances and genre-bending sound garnered them a fanatically devoted cult following in the 1980s and ’90s. Among the group’s early fans was fledgling director Tim Burton and Paul Reubens (aka Pee-wee Herman), who enlisted Elfman to score their first feature film, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The collaboration would prove to be the start of a long and fruitful partnership for Elfman and Burton, with Elfman going on to score a string of iconic Burton features like Batman, Beetlejuice, Big Fish, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. To date, Elfman has scored more than 100 films.

  

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Live Bullet - Capitol
Considered to be one of the best live albums of all time, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band’s 'Live' Bullet was captured at Cobo Hall, Detroit, MI, in September 1975. The album was released April 12, 1976, and helped to supercharge Bob Seger’s career. To mark the 45th anniversary, the album has been remastered and will be released in its original 2LP format in both black and color vinyl.

Def Leppard - Volume Three [Limited Edition 9 LP Box Set] - Mercury
The 3rd in four volumes of Def Leppard's complete recorded output, this box set contains all of the recordings from the band in the 2000's and features the original packaging. Housed in rigid boxes, the set also contains a hard-backed book with rare photos by Ross Halfin and liner notes by Classic Rock's Paul Elliott. Band members Joe Elliott, Rick Savage, Rick Allen and Phil Collen have also contributed introductions to the set. Limited Edition 180gm 9 LP Box Set.

Mike Cooley, Patterson Hood & Jason Isbell - Live At The Shoals Theatre - Southeatern Records
On June 15th 2014, Jason Isbell reunited onstage with former Drive By Truckers bandmates Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley for a special round-style night in Muscle Shoals Music. The setlist includes acoustic versions of Isbell-era Truckers gems including “Heathens,” “Decoration Day” and “Zip City” as well as post-Isbell Truckers tracks like “Space City” and solo Isbell faves such as “Cover Me Up.” The set opens and closes with a pair of classic Hood-sung numbers, 2004′s “Tornadoes” and 2001′s “Let There Be Rock.”  

 

Atreyu - Baptize - Spinefarm
Atreyu ushered in a new movement in heavy music. They've broken into the Top 10 in the Billboard 200 more than once; 2 of their albums are certified gold. Yet, 2 decades since the release of their first album, Atreyu is just getting started. Baptize is a definitive work for a new era. Atreyu recorded Baptize w/ producer John Feldmann. Guests include Jacoby Shaddix & Travis Barker. Songs like "Warrior," "Catastrophe," & "Save Us" are massive.

cleopatrick - BUMMER - Nowhere Special Recordings
"Listening to the story of Canadian duo cleopatrick is a bit like hearing the plot of the best, most righteously validating coming-of-age film never made. Two friends meet aged four in Hicksville, Nowheretown (real name: Cobourg, Ontario, population 19,000), grow up completely inseparable, form a band and, against numerous obstacles, blossom into a genuine, global underground sensation. There are heroes and villains, highs and lows and, crucially, some of the most poetic plot twists that could seem almost too perfect, were they not completely true.

Take the story of 2017 breakthrough track ‘hometown’ for example. “It’s one of the craziest, most ironic things that’s ever happened,” begins vocalist and guitarist Luke Gruntz. “I was going to college because I was too scared to put all my chips in the band pile, and that’s what ‘hometown’ is about: it’s a song about feeling like we’re doing all this stuff and we’re working so hard and we’re just never going to be heard. It’s literally a song about people probably never hearing our songs. And then by some act of the universe, that song ended up unlocking all the doors for us.”

Today, cleopatrick has logged 77 million streams and counting - all from an increasingly dedicated fanbase who’ve found the duo, completed by drummer Ian Fraser, their own way: no major label, no big budget, just two best pals knuckling down, cementing a unique sonic alchemy and filling a space of honest, empathetic yet undeniably heavy-hitting rock music that they’d been searching for themselves for years. Between multiple sold out tours in Canada, the US and the UK/EU and appearances at Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Reading/Leeds, the pair have been crafting BUMMER: a debut album that sees cleopatrick harness all the magic they’ve been brewing over their two-decade friendship and funnel it into a record that aims to reinvigorate the rock landscape from the ground up. Taking the ethos of their New Rock Mafia collective - a group of friends and fellow bands, united in making a more inclusive, equality-driven space in rock music - and imbuing it with the sonic ambition and ferocity of a record designed to be played hard and loud, it’s an album about two friends, who’ve been with each other since the formative first steps that adorn ‘BUMMER’’s heartwarming cover image and made something that’s a testament to the power of sticking to your guns."

   

Rostam - Changephobia - Mastor Projects
Changephobia is the 2nd full-length solo record from Grammy Award-winning songwriter, producer, and composer Rostam Batmanglij. An adventurous new direction for Rostam, the songs collected on Changephobia are deeply personal, yet universal for anyone who has ever experienced doubt. In addition to being a founding member of the seminal New York Indie Rock Band, Vampire Weekend, Rostam has been described as "one of the great pop and indie-rock producers of his generation." Rostam has produced & co-written critically heralded recent albums by Clairo and Haim, as well as singles from Maggie Rogers, Solange, Charli XCX, Frank Ocean, Santigold and others