Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C Taylor will find out this weekend if his last LP, 2019’s Terms of Surrender, takes home the Best Americana Album at this year’s Grammy Awards. Even with that anticipation looming, the ever-prolific Americana artist has already set his sights on his next effort, as he’s today announced Quietly Blowing It. As a preview of the June 25th release, Taylor has shared “If It Comes in the Morning”. Arriving via Merge, Quietly Blowing It was written during the spring and summer of the tumultuous 2020. Even before that year “rolled up on us like an existential mugger,” as Taylor himself puts it, he was feeling burnt out. He’d canceled an Australian tour in 2019, and left the road ready for “the time and space to mourn something, though I wasn’t sure what.” When h...
Hard rockers Dirty Honey have announced that their self-titled debut album will arrive April 23rd. The L.A. band has also shared the music video for the opening track and lead single, “California Dreamin’”. Not to be confused with the ’60s pop hit of the same name by The Mamas and the Papas, Dirty Honey’s take on the Golden State is a darker portrayal. Vocalist and lyricist Marc LaBelle said the track and its video explain that the Cali dream is just that: a dream. It doesn’t always come true. “Lots of people come out to California, chasing a dream, and sometimes, people just don’t make it,” LaBelle said in a press release. “California isn’t always the ‘land of milk and honey,’ dreams don’t always come true here, and that’s the perspective this song and video take. The video is a dream thr...
Country superstar Miranda Lambert has teamed up with songwriters Jack Ingram and Jon Randall for the new album The Marfa Tapes. It drops May 7th, and to preview the release, the group has unveiled the lead single “In His Arms”. Lambert, Ingram, and Randall are hardly strangers; the trio previously collaborated on Lambert’s twice Grammy-nominated single “Tin Man” (2016), as well as the fan favorite “Tequila Does” (2019). Fresh takes on both of those songs will appear on The Marfa Tapes, but the majority of the 15-track effort has never been heard outside of Marfa, Texas. The small town is home to only about 1,800 people, but for five days last November it also hosted three musicians, two microphones, and one acoustic guitar. The stripped-down recording session tried to capture the stark bea...
Yoko Ono Lennon has announced a massive deluxe reissue of John Lennon’s debut solo album, titled John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – The Ultimate Collection. Ahead of its release on April 16th, preview the collection with “Mother (Ultimate Mix)” below. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band was originally released on December 11th, 1970 following the break-up of The Beatles earlier that year. Influenced by his experiences with primal therapy, it features minimal production with simple and sparse instrumentation. The new box set contains 159 tracks across six CDs and two Blu-ray audio discs, including 87 never-before-heard recordings. There are unreleased and rare demos, rehearsals, outtakes, jams, and studio conversations detailing how the songs came together. All of the tracks have been mixed from scrat...
After dropping a handful of standalone singles, Rostam has announced a new solo album is on the way. It’s called Changephobia and it’s due out June 4th via Matsor Projects/Secretly Distribution. Best of all, you can stream a new track from the record, titled “4Runner”, below. Changephobia spans 11 tracks in total, including the previously release singles “These Kids We Knew” and “Unfold You”, which Rostam used to explore new-to-him sounds like retro bebop and ’90s neo-psych rock. Not only is it the ex-Vampire Weekend member’s third studio album, but it’s also his first full-length LP in four years following 2017’s Half-Light. In a press release, Rostam said that he was compelled to write Changephobia after meeting a stranger on a park bench. The two opened up to one another ...
Michelle Zauner has announced a new Japanese Breakfast album called Jubilee, due out June 4th via Dead Oceans. Today, Zauner is getting the party started with the lead single, “Be Sweet”. The singer-songwriter’s third studio album follows 2016’s Psychopomp and 2017’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet, but it finds her traversing new emotional ground. While her first two albums dealt with the devastation she felt after her mother’s death from cancer, Jubilee is meant to be just that: a celebration marking the passage of time. In a statement, she explained the intention behind the project and its first single “Be Sweet”, saying, “After spending the last five years writing about grief, I wanted our follow up to be about joy. For me, a third record should feel bombastic and so I ...
Justin Bieber has announced the release of a new album called Justice, which will arrive on March 19th via RBMG/Def Jam Records. Justice marks Bieber’s sixth album to date and arrives a little more than a year after its predecessor, Changes. In a statement announcing the release of Justice, Bieber said his goal was “to make music that will provide comfort; to make songs that people can relate to, and connect to, so they feel less alone.” “In a time when there’s so much wrong with this broken planet, we all crave healing – and justice – for humanity,” Bieber commented. “In creating this album, my goal is to make music that will provide comfort; to make songs that people can relate to, and connect to, so they feel less alone. Suffering, injustice and pain can leave people feeling helpless. M...
The last album Wolf Alice put out, Visions of a Life, earned them the coveted Mercury Prize in 2018. Now, it looks like they’re preparing to turn heads again with a brand new full-length called Blue Weekend. It’s due out June 11th via Dirty Hit/RCA, but you can stream the lead single “The Last Man on Earth” in advance below. This is the band’s third studio LP, following Visions of a Life and 2015’s My Love Is Cool. The British alt-rockers created Blue Weekend in hopes of emboldening their storytelling and refining their musical style. “The Last Man on Earth” makes good on that promise by pushing singer Ellie Rowsell‘s voice to the front over ballad-style piano, lush vocal harmonies, and empowering percussion. Come the end, the Wolf Alice track could be mistaken for a rousing...
The Offspring will return on April 16th with their tenth studio album. Entitled Let the Bad Times Roll, it serves as the long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s Days Go By. As was the case for Days Go By, The Offspring recruited Bob Rock to produced Let the Bad Times Roll. The new album spans 12 tracks in total. The title track serves as the lead single and is streaming below. “Coming For You”, a song originally released way back in 2015, also appears on the tracklist, as does a newly recorded version of the band’s 1997 classic “Gone Away”. Last year, The Offspring released a quarantine cover of Tiger King’s “Here Kitty Kitty”, and celebrated the holidays with their own version of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”. [embedded content] Let the Bad Times Roll Artwork: <img data-attachment-id=&q...
Guided by Voices released three albums in 2020, and it looks like they plan on continuing that impressive pandemic pace in the new year. The legendary indie rockers have just announced another new record called Earth Man Blues, due out April 30th via Rockathon. Earth Man Blues is the 33rd studio album (!) of Guided by Voices’ career. It’s comprised of songs from the past decade that were never used on previous LPs and organized here to create an overall theme. After realizing it sounded like a musical stage production, Robert Pollard decided to lean into that style and named the album after his elementary school’s theater playbill. “I was blown away that I had discarded them,” Pollard said of the tracks in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Anyway, I combined some of them and created new ar...
Slash co-conspirator and Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy has announced his second solo album, The Ides of March, due out May 14th. In anticipation, Kennedy has shared the lead single, “In Stride”. The Ides of March follows Kennedy’s debut solo effort, 2018’s Year of the Tiger. The singer-guitarist first told Heavy Consequence about the new album in our interview last year, where he revealed “a lot of it is blues-based.” The single “In Stride” definitely has some bluesy elements, with a bit of a country-rock tinge. Throughout the song, Kennedy’s soulful voice is front and center. The single’s chorus of “take it all in stride” could be considered Kennedy’s advice for coping with the pandemic, as he wrote the lyrics during the panic of the first wave of lockdowns. “Chill out. That pretty mu...