Out This Week 12/9

As we get closer to the end of the year, the new release list gets shorter and shorter, which should make it easier for you to vote for your Top Albums of 2014! (No need to wait and see what else will come out this year!) Get your votes in before Tuesday, December 16th at 6:00 PM, and then, tune in on Friday, December 19 at 10:00 AM to hear us count down the KEXP Listener's Top 90.3 Albums of 2014.

As for this week, highlights include the new album from Smashing Pumpkins, which you can read an in-depth review of here on the KEXP Blog. KEXP Blogger Gerrit Feenstra calls the release, a "brief but beautifully crafted effort from a master songwriter that should not be ignored in these last couple weeks of the year."

Other highlights include a new collection from Tompkins Square titled When I Reach That Heavenly Shore: Unearthly & Raw Black Gospel 1926-1936, featuring 42 tracks curated by Christopher King, known for his vast collection of 78s. Veteran Bay Area band Cracker return with their 10th album, which KEXP's Music Director Don Yates calls, "a rock-solid 2-CD set that does a fine job of summing up the band’s various influences, with the first disc focusing on the more aggressive, punk-influenced rock side of their sound and delivering sharp-edged songs about the Bay Area’s increasing gentrification and inequality while the second disc pays tribute to the rootsy sound of Bakersfield country-rock." Captured Tracks releases the lost home-recordings of Molly Drake, Nick's mother. Los Campesinos! share a holiday EP. And DJ Premier and Royce da 5'9" team up as PRhyme for their outstanding debut release.

• (Various Artists) Edward W. Clayborn – “Let That Lie Alone”
• from When I Reach That Heavenly Shore: Unearthly & Raw Black Gospel 1926-1936 on Tompkins Square
• Bastille – “Torn Apart (Bastille VS. Grades)”
• from VS. (Other People's Heartache, Pt. III) on Virgin EMI
• Ben Frost – “Venter (HTRK Remix)”
• from V A R I A N T on Mute
• Cracker – “Almond Grove (Exclusive Mix)”
• from Berkeley to Bakersfield on 429 Records
• Ghostface Killah – “Love Don't Live Here No More”
• from 36 Seasons on Tommy Boy
• J. Cole – “Going Off (06' Freestyle)”
• from 2014 Forest Hills Drive on Roc Nation LLC
• Los Campesinos! – “When Christmas Comes”
• from A Los Campesinos! Christmas on Turnstile
• Molly Drake – “I Remember”
• from Molly Drake on Captured Tracks / Squirrel Thing
• The Monster / Nostalgia 77 – “Measures”
• from Measures on Tru Thoughts
• PRhyme – “Dat Sound Good ft. Ab-Soul & Mac Miller”
• from PRhyme on PRhyme / Universal Music
• Smashing Pumpkins – “Being Beige”
• from Monuments to an Elegy on BMG Rights Management
• tētēma – “Tenz”
• from geocidal on Ipecac