Out This Week 5/15

A pair of duos top this week’s list of new releases. Baltimore’s Beach House (Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand) have undoubtedly the most anticipated release out this week, if not this year, with their second Sub Pop released LP, and if you thought 2010′s Teen Dream was beautiful, wait until you hear Bloom. Our Music Director, Don Yates, calls it a “breakthrough” with its “gorgeously layered, reverb-drenched sound combining celestial keyboards, shimmering guitars, ethereal vocals and sublime pop melodies into heartbreakingly beautiful pop songs.” For more “heart-tugging, mostly melancholy songs,” check out the latest from LA’s Best Coast. On The Only Place, Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno clean up their previously lo-fi style on this “gorgeous-sounding affair” with songs “steeped in the sound of ‘60s girl groups... with jangly and shimmering guitars, ethereal xylophones and other instrumentation” amid “summery nostalgic melodies.”

Perhaps 2012 will turn out to be the Summer for Dreams because even more atmospheric dream pop abounds just on this week’s list! The mostly Seattle band Craft Spells (band leader Justin Vallesteros just moved to San Francisco) returns with a “stellar 6-song EP blending ‘80s-influenced dream-pop and post-punk, featuring a hazy, atmospheric sound combining twinkling synths, jangly guitars, propulsive rhythms and some gorgeous pop melodies,” while on their second full-length, Brooklyn trio Violens “successfully blends jangly dream-pop with some aggressive psych-rock on a variety of ethereal, well-crafted songs featuring a dynamic, atmospheric sound combining jangly/crunchy guitars, propulsive rhythms, hazy lead vocals, soft harmonies and soaring pop melodies.” You get the idea. In 2012, prepare to jangle and dream.

And while Willie Nelson might seem a far cry from all of these New Wave lovers, the Red Headed Stranger is quite familiar with altered states of mind. On Heroes, his latest (and who knows how many studio albums this makes -- somewhere over 60!), he refers to his favorite smoke on more than one song. The album itself features a range of songs, written by himself, his son Lukas, and many others, including a pair of covers from Coldplay and Pearl Jam, and a whole host of musical guests like Merle Haggard, Snoop Dogg, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joe Shaver and Sheryl Crow.

A batch of other new releases this week come from dance-friendly Brits: UK-based maverick beat maker Greg Feldwick a.k.a. Slugabed; British techno maestros Simian Mobile Disco;
and veteran UK electronic producer Tom Jenkinson, a.k.a. Squarepusher. More dazzling production comes from two young Americans, Giraffage & XXYYXX, who treat us to a new single of “aerial, bass-heavy, beat-centric dream-pop” (yes, we’re not done with that term just yet!)

Also this week, British mixologists Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres return for the eighth Cornershop release; Seattle label Green Monkey Records releases for the first time on CD The Green Pajamas ’84 LP Summer of Lust; and Jack Black and Kyle Gass slay with another comedic album of mock cock rock as Tenacious D.

You’ll find all of these and more at your local record store today. Just be sure to sample the many fine selections collected here before you head out -- you don’t want to miss out on any potential new discoveries.