Out This Week 3/31

This week in new releases, we hear from several artists who've been dormant for a while. Sufjan Stevens returns with his majestic new album, Carrie & Lowell, named after his mother and stepfather and partly inspired by his mother’s death. Several KEXP DJs have already hailed it as a contender for "Album of the Year," and KEXP Music Director Don Yates says, "it’s a powerful, deeply poignant album with a spare sound combining finger-picked acoustic guitar, occasional piano, atmospheric synths, hushed vocals and unflinching, autobiographical lyrics of love, family and death."

Local luminaries Death Cab for Cutie return with their first new album in four years, and their first without founding member Chris Walla. Yates states, "the album’s moody, atmospheric alt-rock sound is very much in the Death Cab tradition, though it’s a bit darker and more restrained than usual, with a variety of smartly crafted songs combining bittersweet melodies with lyrics of lost love, separation and renewal." Another Northwest treasure, The Sonics, re-emerge with their first new album since 1967. "Remarkably, the legendary Tacoma band sounds as vital as ever on their first album in 48 years, a scorching set of high-octane garage-rock with loud guitars, honking sax, searing organ, pounding rhythms, urgent vocals and primal rock screams."

Other highlights this week include the latest from Lower Dens, "a well-crafted set of hypnotic, ‘80s-steeped post-punk and dream-pop with ringing guitar lines, chilly synths and metronomic rhythms accompanying Jana Hunter’s haunting vocals and increasingly personal and direct lyrics." Oakland artist Luis Vasquez (aka The Soft Moon) releases "a potent set of adventurous, goth-tinged coldwave and postpunk, featuring a bleak, dystopian sound with cold, alien synths, industrialized rhythms, ominous vocals and dark lyrics." And Iowa-based singer/songwriter William Elliott Whitmore releases his seventh album, "a fuller, more electric sound on a variety of well-crafted, tradition-steeped songs ranging from gritty electric blues-punk to sparse folk ballads. "

• 8:58 (Paul Hartnoll of Orbital) – “8:58 (Featuring Cillian Murphy)”
• from 8:58 on ACP Recordings
• Angélique Kidjo
• from Sings on 429 Records
• Blancmange – “The Fall”
• from Semi Detached on Cherry Red
• Boz Scaggs – “Last Tango on 16th Street”
• from A Fool to Care on 429 Records
• Death Cab for Cutie – “No Room In Frame”
• from Kintsugi on Atlantic
• Death Grips – “Up My Sleeves”
• from The Powers That B on Electro Magnetic
• Eliane Elias – “Incendiando”
• from Made in Brasil on Concord Jazz
• Faith Healer – “Again”
• from Cosmic Troubles on Mint
• Föllakzoid – “Electric”
• from III on Sacred Bones
• Fort Romeau – “Insides”
• from Insides on Ghostly International
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “Peasantry or Light! Inside of Light!”
• from Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress on Constellation
• Hannah Cohen – “Keepsake”
• from Pleasure Boy on Bella Union
• Hiiragi Fukuda – “Seacide”
• from Seacide on Trouble in Mind
• Houndstooth – “No News From Home”
• from No News from Home on No Quarter
• James Blackshaw – “Confetti”
• from Summoning Suns on Important Records
• Jesse Malin – “Addicted”
• from New York Before the War on One Little Indian
• José James
• from Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday on Blue Note
• Lost Boy ? – “Love You Only”
• from Canned on Papercup Music
• Lower Dens – “To Die In L.A.”
• from Escape from Evil on Ribbon Music
• Ludacris – “Call Ya Bluff”
• from Ludaversal on Def Jam / Virgin EMI
• Polar Bear – “Don't Let The Feeling Go”
• from Same as You on The Leaf Label
• The Prodigy – “The Day Is My Enemy”
• from The Day Is My Enemy on Warner Bros.
• Prong – “Banned In DC”
• from Songs from the Black Hole on SPV / Steamhammer
• Reptar – “Ice Black Sand”
• from Lurid Glow on Joyful Noise
• Ringo Starr – “Postcards From Paradise”
• from Postcards from Paradise on Universal
• Robben Ford
• from Into the Sun on Provogue
• Ryley Walker – “Primrose Green”
• from Primrose Green on Dead Oceans Records
• Scott Weiland & the Wildabouts – “Modzilla”
• from Blaster on Universal
• Sneaky Feelings – “Someone Else's Eyes”
• from Send You on Flying Nun
• The Soft Moon – “Black”
• from Deeper on Captured Tracks
• The Sonics – “Bad Betty”
• from This Is the Sonics on Revox
• Sufjan Stevens – “Should Have Known Better”
• from Carrie & Lowell on Asthmatic Kitty
• Tim Foljahn - "Fucking Love Songs"
• from Fucking Love Songs on Kiam Records
• Translator
• from Sometimes People Forget on Omnivore
• Wale – “The White Shoes”
• from The Album About Nothing on Maybach
• William Elliott Whitmore – “Civilizations”
• from Radium Death on Anti