PlayARt - Bring Albums to Life

“I was born in the North Carolina mud,” says Jamil Rashad, better known as Boulevards, one of the most idiosyncratic artists making music in the Tarheel State. His fourth album, Electric Cowboy: Born in Carolina Mud, is caked in the soil where he grew up, mired in the muck of this place—not stuck but freed. Grounded in personal experience and haunted by personal demons, Electric Cowboy is an album that reaches out, that embraces the world, that mixes the confessional and the communal. But the dominant sound—the dominant mindset—is funk: gritty, warm, weird, charismatic. Rashad once again composed and recorded with Blake Rhein, guitarist for Durand Jones & the Indications, after they had worked so well together on 2020’s Brother! EP. They corralled an all-star team that included Adrian Quesada from the Grammy-nominated neo-soul act Black Pumas and Colin Croom from the Chicago indie-rock outfit Twin Peaks.

“On Electric Cowboy I wanted to make some modern funk that the kids would enjoy, but still have some soul elements and some punk elements. On the cover you see a black man on a horse running away from his demons. That’s me. You can hear it all in the songs – struggling with demons and still coming out on top of it all. That’s what funk is! You got some heavy, dark shit, but you also got some joyful compositions, funky basslines, dope harmonies, infectious hooks. So that’s me on the cover, the Electric Cowboy, slaying anything that comes in my path. I gotta keep riding, keep trucking, keep fighting, keep pushing.”

Original remastered album, previously unreleased full live concert and BBC Session Recorded in 2012, 2011 Electro-Vox Session, limited-edition poster and lithograph, “new car scent: air freshener, 100-page photo book.

The Black Keys release a special tenth anniversary edition of their landmark seventh studio album El Camino via Nonesuch Records on November 5, 2021. El Camino (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) will be available in several formats including a Super Deluxe edition of five vinyl LPs or four CDs, featuring a remastered version of the original album, a previously unreleased Live in Portland, ME concert recording, a BBC radio Zane Lowe session from 2012, a 2011 Electro-Vox session, a limited-edition photo book, poster, and lithograph, and a “new car scent” air freshener. A three-LP Deluxe edition, which includes the remastered album and the live recording, also will be available.

The Black Keys won three awards at the 55^th annual GRAMMY Awards for El Camino— Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album—among other worldwide accolades. In the UK, the band was nominated for a BRIT Award (Best International Group) and an NME Award (Best International Band).

El Camino was produced by Danger Mouse and The Black Keys and was recorded in the band’s then-new hometown of Nashville during the spring of 2011. In the UK, the record gave the band their first top 10 hit, and in the US it debuted at # 2 on the Billboard Top 200. The band was also the # 1 most played artist at Alternative and AAA radio formats for 2012 in the US.  The album’s first single, “Lonely Boy,” reached # 1 on the Alternative and AAA charts; it also entered the top 10 at Rock radio.  The second single, “Gold on the Ceiling,” also reached # 1 on Alternative radio and the third single, “Little Black Submarines,” reached the top 3 at Alternative radio.   El Camino has been certified Double Platinum in the US, Australia, and New Zealand; Platinum in the UK, France, Ireland, and Belgium; Quadruple Platinum in Canada; and Gold in Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. Of the album’s singles, "Lonely Boy" was certified nine-times platinum in Canada, triple-platinum in Australia, platinum in New Zealand, and gold in Denmark. "Gold on the Ceiling" was certified platinum in Australia and Canada.

Rolling Stone hailed El Camino for bringing “raw, riffed-out power back to pop’s lexicon,” and called it “the Keys’ grandest pop gesture yet, augmenting dark-hearted fuzz blasts with sleekly sexy choruses and Seventies-glam flair.” The Guardian said, “They sound like a band who think they've made the year's best rock'n'roll album, probably because that's exactly what they've done.”

Diana Ross sings “Thank You” to the world.  “This collection of songs is my gift to you with appreciation and love. I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to record this glorious music at this time,” said Ms. Ross. Her new album, “Thank You” is scheduled for release this fall through Decca Records / Universal Music Group. The title track and first single,” Thank You,” will be available for streaming and download on June 17.

Recorded in her home studio, “Thank You" offers a powerful, inclusive musical message of love and togetherness.  With its songs of happiness, appreciation and joy, it wholeheartedly acknowledges that we are in this all together. Her family, friends and loyal and loving audiences all around the globe have been an integral part of her wonderful life’s story. In this special moment, it is time to step into the light.

Ms. Ross co-wrote and collaborated on the 13 songs along with award-winning songwriters and producers including: Jack Antonoff, Troy Miller,Triangle Park, Spike Stent, Prince Charlez, Amy Wadge, Neff-U, Freddie Wexler, Jimmy Napes, Tayla Parx, Fred White, and Nathanial Ledgewick.

Let us come together in harmony and gratitude with Diana Ross now and for the future. “I dedicate this songbook of love to all of you, the listeners. As you hear my voice you hear my heart.  "Let Love Lead the Way”

Mastodon will release their anxiously awaited ninth full-length album, HUSHED AND GRIM, on October 29, 2021 via Reprise Records. Over the past year, the group recorded the album in their hometown, collaborating with producer David Bottrill [Tool, Rush, Muse, Peter Gabriel] behind the board. As their most ambitious body of work to date, it consists of 15 tracks, surveying sonic landscapes of rock, psychedelia, punk, metal, alternative, and prog threaded together by the innately expressive musical interplay of these four musicians. At the same time, an atmosphere of loss, loneliness, and longing permeates through the trio of cathartic vocals as they musically say goodbye to old friend, confidant, and longtime manager the late Nick John by architecting a magnum opus that bears the influence of his eternal memory.

In spite of the various crises that have occurred since 2017's Native Invader, Tori Amos has emerged with Ocean to Ocean, her most personal work in years - an album bursting with warmth and connection, with deep roots in her earliest song writing. Written during the third lockdown in Cornwall this year, Ocean to Ocean is a universal story of going to rock bottom and renewing yourself all over again.

SAVE FACE are a band who have always prided themselves on taking risks and the New Jersey band have doubled down on that sentiment with their sophomore album, Another Kill For The Highlight Reel.

Another Kill For The Highlight Reel, which features indelibly human performances, including a guest appearance from Thursday’s Geoff Rickly on “A.M. Gothic”. “There’s something about the New Jersey kinship [between Geoff and I] that really resonates with me,” Tyler Povanda explains. “New Jersey’s music scene is really something special.”

Musically, the album—which was produced by the Movielife’s Brett Romnes—sees Povanda taking influence from his Jersey brethren like Thursday but adds a theatrical twist. “‘GLITTER’ was the first song I wrote that ended up being on this album and it bridges the gap between Merci and Another Kill For The Highlight Reel, ” Povanda says. “I think that song serves as a cool sonic metaphor for the transformation of the band. I would say this album isn’t narrative in the same way as the last one, but it does feel much more immersive.”

Expectations never mattered to Bad Wolves. Instead, the Los Angeles band fused unpredictable metallic intensity and impressive instrumental proficiency to arena-ready hooks, transforming from underdogs into elite platinum-certified hard rock contenders without compromise or apology. Since 2017, the core group-John Boecklin [drums], Doc Coyle [lead guitar, backing vocals], Chris Cain [rhythm guitar], and Kyle Konkiel [bass, backing vocals]-have consistently subverted expectations and accomplished the seemingly impossible. In 2018, the band earned a platinum plaque, topped iTunes, and ruled Active Rock at #1 for three weeks straight. This momentum also propelled their debut album, Disobey, to a Top 25 debut on the Billboard Top 200. In between performing to sold out audiences on multiple continents with heavyweights such as Five Finger Death Punch and Megadeth, 2019's N.A.T.I.O.N. yielded their fifth straight #1 at Active Rock, "Sober," and brought their total stream tally past the half-billionmark-unprecedented for a modern rock band. Not to mention, LoudWire hailed it among the "50 Best Rock Albums of 2019" as Billboard and Consequence of Sound chronicled their rise. In the midst of 2021, Bad Wolves welcomed Daniel "DL" Laskiewicz-previously of The Acacia Strain-as lead vocalist, ushering in a new chapter with their third full-length offering, Dear Monsters,[Better Noise Music], led by the single "Lifeline."

Deluxe edition of the groundbreaking, genre-defying second album by Alabama Shakes. Certified gold and the winner of four Grammys, Rolling Stone called "Sound & Color” a "weirder, woozier, fiercer and sexier record than their debut in nearly every way.” This repackaged set features revised artwork, new photos, and seven bonus tracks pulled from unreleased studio material, b-sides and live songs cut at the world renowned Capitol Records Studio A.

The new album 'A Sentimental Christmas with Nat King Cole and Friends: Cole Classics Re-imagined' weaves Nat’s unparalleled, beautifully restored vocals with new arrangements and contemporary artists creating beautiful sentimental duets of holiday classics. Taking its lead from the GRAMMY award-winning virtual duet of “Unforgettable,” by Natalie Cole with her father, this holiday album features brand new duets with John Legend, Kristen Chenoweth, Calum Scott, Gloria Estefan & Johnny Mathis.

Translucent Orange Vinyl, comes with an autographed 11x17 poster

Time In The Sun is the 4th full length album from Charleston, SC band Susto. The album was written and recorded in the midst of a lot of life changing events for lead writer/singer Justin Osborne. Like everyone around the world, Osborne was navigating the global issues felt from the pandemic while normal life continued with its own blessings and challenges.. "We were navigating the global and national issues that everyone else was dealing with, but also I became a father and also lost my father. There was a lot of contemplation going on in my brain, a lot of personal evolution going on in my life, and songwriting was my way of working through it all. The title Time in the Sun is meant to be a monument to my own human existence and also a tribute to the human experience in general. I wouldn’t claim to understand what it means to be a human, from the countless different perspectives of the world, but I do have my own experience to reflect on and I want to be able to express and explain that in some way. I guess this album is an attempt at that. At the core though, it’s just a collection of songs about my life and my feelings." Time In The Sun is set for release on October 29, 2021 via New West Records. 

On their new full-length - the first new music since The Waterfall (2015) - My Morning Jacket reaffirm the rarefied magic that has made them so beloved, embedding each song with moments of discovery, revelation and ecstatic catharsis. It comes after a near permanent hiatus for the band until performing four shows in summer '19 left them with a new energy. Jim James engineered/produced at 64 Sound in LA where the band spent weeks in intentional seclusion emerging with their self-titled 9th album.

Sixx: A.M. HITS is the Ultimate Sixx: A.M. Collection featuring the first new song in six years and song that compliments his new book - 'The First 21', 2 more unreleased tracks "Penetrate' + "Waiting All My Life" and new mixes of "Talk to Me", " Skin" and the iconic "Life is Beautiful". Sixx: A.M. formed in 2007 by Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx, renowned guitarist DJ Ashba, and producer /songwriter James Michael, and has had #3 US top 20 albums with #9 US Top 20 singles and is best known for their debut album The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack and the #1 hits "Life Is Beautiful" and "Lies of the Beautiful People". Available via limited edition CD digi pack and color vinyl.

EVERY TIME I DIE is a loud rock institution committed to leaving an outpouring of chaotic passion and blissful malcontent all over their records and on the stage. With boiling charisma and unrelenting energy to spare, the Buffalo, NY band manages not one but two near-impossible tasks. They’ve survived two decades as an underground entity cherished for coloring outside the lines, and contrary to most career arcs, continually improving with each successive album as they charge ahead. ETID makes a glorious hardcore-punk noise. Alchemized by a swampy summoning of Southern rock and coarse poetry, the music swirls beneath sardonic and clever wordplay, cementing them as leaders, not followers.

The band’s ninth studio album, Radical, is 16 tracks of peak-ETID, including raucous new anthems. They deliver what you have come to know and love and then diverge into new paths. To say that “All This And War” featuring guest vocals by Josh Scogins from The ‘68 is absolute brutal heaviness is an understatement. It’s an addictive punch in the face, you’ll want on repeat. The boys then run off to explore the dark haunted woods of a more somber and melodic side in the track “Thing With Feathers” featuring Andy Hull from Manchester Orchestra.

Radical proves with every track that it is a distillation of the strengths of their past, injected with their unyielding revelry and signature sarcasm while cognizant – and fiercely combative – of the present state of world affairs.

Introducing Jackson + Sellers and their debut album Breaking Point, on ANTI records. Jade Jackson and Aubrie Sellers, two rising stars who aligned during the pandemic to write one of the most compelling duo albums of the last decade.

Drawn together by instant chemistry, cosmic forces and their ability to write intuitive romantic breakup songs for each other, their album is a window into the dissolution of two different relationships and the formation of another: a perfect, platonic, creative union. United in their desire to write a record that reflected their expansive musical interest from 70s rock to raucous roots to indie pop, their LA written, Nashville recorded album is a masterclass in unexpected vocal harmonic convergence.

With Breaking Point, Jackson + Sellers will establish themselves as two individual artists who together, share a deep friendship, musical kinship and the ability to craft tight singular pop rock songs that will embed themselves in your ears for the rest of time.

Pokey LaFarge’s 7th studio solo album, In the Blossom of Their Shade, showcases the positivity of coming out of the darkness and into the light. When the 2020 global pandemic hit, LaFarge’s rigorous work ethic powered him through the potentially challenging creative period. As days became a couple months, songs blossomed from embryonic ideas into full-formed ones and he was ready to move on, which typified his mindset as a working artist. With this record LaFarge captures the thematic notion of being the perfect summer afternoon soundtrack...the type of music you want to listen to while having a cocktail with your significant other. It makes sense musically as well — LaFarge intentionally crafted songs that created space and have melodies that can glide throughout a composition that’s a far cry from the swing and blues-infused songs of his earlier work. LaFarge is an artist who refuses to rest on his laurels and compromise. He’s always motivated and ready to create. With In the Blossom of Their Shade the album is one of LaFarge’s strongest and most mature efforts to date.  

Singer, songwriter and entertainer Toby Keith will release his first all-new Show Dog Nashville album in more than five years October 15. Peso In My Pocket was co-produced by Kenny Greenberg and Keith, and features the highest Billboard Country Airplay chart debut of his career with the lead single "Old School."

Though Keith has accomplished much since the 2015 release of 35 MPH Town - perhaps most notably in writing the Clint Eastwood inspired "Don't Let The Old Man In" - a new studio album was long overdue. And Peso In My Pocket has more than a little to do with the worldwide pandemic. "My whole musical career, I haven't been off the road this long," Keith says, calling 2020 "a reset button I never would have hit."
Also deserving of credit for the collection is Mexico, where Keith has a house he stayed at for the first several months of the crisis. "It was like being on the moon," he says. "A lot of my friends down there were afraid they wouldn't be let back in the U.S., so they all went home. I wasn't on the road and nobody could go anywhere, so I thought, 'You've written a long list of songs by yourself, dumbass. Get up and get busy!' I went through the ideas I keep on my phone and thought, 'Shit, I need to write these.'"

Not only did he come to the table with more than a few songwriting pesos in his pocket, he added outside contributors to the mix. Notable songwriting credits include The Warren Brothers, Ryan Hurd, Maren Morris, Jesse Jo Dillon, Brett Tyler, and Sammy Hagar. Keb Mo joined Keith in the studio on a cover of his "Old Me Better," as did well-known Oklahoma artist Mike Hosty, whose "Oklahoma Breakdown" kicks off the album. Keith also offers a tribute to the late John Prine on the Prine-John Mellencamp co-write "Take A Look At My Heart." And, of course, the 2015 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee has several solo writes, led by the title track.

As Show Dog gears up for the album's release, Keith recently resumed touring on his Country Comes To Town Tour. He will receive the Academy of Country Music's prestigious Merle Haggard Spirit Award in August for "following his own path, crafting great songs and epitomizing Merle's spirit." Keith received the National Medal of Arts earlier this year. He is being inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame this November. And in June he raised another $1.4 million to help sick children and their families in Oklahoma through his OK Kids Korral.

Official reissue of North Americans' 2018 breakthrough album.

Originally limited to 100 vinyl LPs.

"For a piece that feels as if it could float away into nothing, GOING STEADY becomes the night." - NPR

Xenia Rubinos is a New York City based artist who's been revered for her innovative voice and maze-like knack for melody. Una Rosa is Rubinos' third album, her second on Anti- Records, following up her critically acclaimed Black Terry Cat (2016).Xenia Rubinos dips in and out of genre and structure to create movingly powerful songs. Her powerhouse vocals stem from a combination of R&B, Hip-Hop and Jazz influences, all delivered with a soulful punk aura. Pitchfork has lauded the radiant singer as "a unique new pop personality" while The New Yorker described her work as "rhythmically fierce, vocally generous music that slips through the net of any known genre."Having previously collaborated and toured with acts as diverse as Battles, Deerhoof, Man Man and Tune-Yards, Rubinos' energetic live show echoes some of the larger than life icons she admired as a child like Nina Simone and Erykah Badu, while wielding a space in music that is utterly her own. "I think my sound is a collage of different music coming together on a visceral level, connecting the dots with my voice and imagination," she said.Una Rosa is produced by Rubinos along with her longtime collaborator and drummer Marco Buccelli, and is full of color- drawing much of it's multichromatic sound from the bright colors of pop art, which Xenia was immersed in during the writing process.

Norah Jones has been a warm voice of comfort and reassurance for nearly 20 years since her cozy 2002 debut, Come Away With Me. Now, the 9x GRAMMY-winning artist has made her first holiday album with I Dream Of Christmas, a collection of timeless seasonal favorites (“White Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Christmas Time Is Here”) and profound new originals that explore the complicated emotions of the past year and our hopes that this holiday season will be full of joy and togetherness.

To emerge from a global pandemic with a renewed sense of situational awareness, hard won insight, and a new album is the kind of move we’ve come to expect from THRICE over the last twenty years. With Horizons/East, Dustin Kensrue and his bandmates address, with candor and courage, the fragile and awkward arrangements that pass for civilization, while inviting us to dwell more knowingly within our own lives. Without surrendering any of the energy and hard edge of their previous albums, they’ve given us a profoundly meditative work which serves as a musical summons to everyday attentiveness.

Since forming THRICE with guitarist Teppei Teranishi, bassist Eddie Breckenridge, and drummer Riley Breckenridge in 1998, Kensrue has never been one to back down from a mental fight. This mood is set by the opening synth-driven number “Color of the Sky,” which sounds well-suited to accompany the closing credits of the Stranger Things season finale. Think Flying Lotus giving way to Elbow and setting the listener down in a new dimension. A self-recorded effort, Horizons/East conveys a palpable sense of danger, determination, and possibility.

REVIVED REMIXED REVISITED is a reimagined collection of her most iconic songs. REVIVED features exciting new arrangements of fan favorites like “Is There Life Out There” and “Can’t Even Get The Blues” recorded with Reba’s touring band. REMIXED takes songs like “Little Rock” and “I’m A Survivor” and spins them in ways like you’ve never heard Reba before. REVISITED produced by the Grammy® award-winning Dave Cobb strips back songs like “Somebody Should Leave” and “Consider Me Gone” to let the raw power of Reba’s vocals shine and features a long-awaited pairing between Reba and Dolly Parton on Reba’s most famous duet, “Does He Love You.” The collection spans Reba’s entire career and offers something for every Reba fan.

Dori Freeman’s inimitable signature sound is in peak form on her fourth studio album, Ten Thousand Roses. Raised among a family of musicians in the Blue Ridge Mountains and hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of the most authentic vocalists to emerge from the hills of southwestern Virginia in recent years,” she’s a bonafide Appalachian artist, while simultaneously shattering the archetype by empowering the characters in her songs with personal strength and homegrown wisdom. Through this process, she both defies and expands notions of what it means to be from the region.

“For this record Freeman says she leaned more into pop-inspired vocals than she ever has before. “I did some vocal layers and experimented with harmonies in a way I haven’t on previous records,” she says. The songs throughout the album tend to be shorter, and that was intentional. “I’m a big fan of the radio-ready tight three minute song,” she says. “I think there’s just something nice about a concise, but effective song. It’s like a couple sweet moments you can live in.” Ten Thousand Roses showcases an artist who knows exactly who she is and is ready to push past others’ assumptions about who she should be.”

Ten Thousand Roses was produced by Freeman’s husband, Nicholas Falk, who’s also an in-demand drummer who has toured extensively with artists such as Molly Tuttle and The Wood Brothers. Falk counts jazz and funk as his major influences, so quite fittingly his percussion punctuates the album. Freeman contributed guitar for the first time on her own recordings. The couple are joined by Victor Furtado bringing his skills as the youngest-ever recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo, Eli Wildman (The Wildmans) contributing acoustic guitar and mandolin, the much sought-after keyboardist Sam Fribush on piano, keys, and organ, Berklee College of Music graduate Eric Robertson adds additional guitars and bass, as well as acclaimed multi-instrumentalist Aaron Lipp contributing banjo and bass.

Grandson of country pioneer Hank Williams and the son of outlaw legend Hank Jr., Sam Williams is the latest in a long line of American originals, but he’s not here for the sake of tradition. He sings with his own singular voice and he writes in his own singular style, fusing gut-wrenching honesty and plainspoken poetics with raw vulnerability and deep empathy. Williams’ extraordinary debut, Glasshouse Children, is proof of that. Set for release this summer via UMG Nashville, the record is a gorgeous meditation on hurt and healing, on growth and loss, on sin and redemption, but more than that, it’s a reckoning with fate and free will and the family ties that bind us. Williams has already released a series of early songs, including “10-4,” “Can’t Fool Your Own Blood,” SHUTEYE,” and “The World: Alone,” to widespread acclaim—Rolling Stone raved that “his voice exudes equal parts power and grace,” while CMT declared that he’d “inherited the gift of wondrous country lyricism.” His late-night television debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, brought his lyricism to life exemplifying his vocal prowess and grand storytelling. Sam Williams continues to prove that he is making a legacy for himself that is completely his own.

Sometimes, the best place to begin is at the end. If you really want to dig deep into Illusory Walls, the fourth album by THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE & I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE, it definitely helps to do that. That’s because epic closer “Fewer Afraid”—all 19 minutes, 44 seconds of it—doesn’t just revisit the themes and ideas on the ten songs that precede it, but also offers a self-aware summary of the Connecticut band’s entire history. It’s the conclusion of all the stories within the record as well as a nod to all the lives that helped make them—little glimpses of everything that’s come before, on both a micro, immediate level, and a more universal one. “That song is a higher level look at my whole life and the whole world,” explains vocalist/guitarist David F. Bello, “as well as the album, our band and our discography. It places the band in the context of the rest of the world, as if we’re listening to everything that came before. It touches on all the themes of the previous songs, but there are also callbacks to songs
from earlier in our career. But in this song, they’re the object, not the subject—I’m talking about a world in which these things happen, not talking about these things happening.”

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the band—completed by Steven K. Buttery (drums and percussion), Joshua Cyr (bass/vocals) and Katie Dvorak (vocals/synth)—had nothing but time to realize the full extent of their musical and thematic aspirations. And so, four years on from lauded third album Always Foreign, they were able to make what is undoubtedly the band’s most ambitious and epic record to date. Written and recorded remotely—a first for the band—Illusory Walls takes on the weight of human existence while it’s buckling under the pressure of today’s near-dystopian society. Personal anxieties and political struggles collide with a series of portentous, apocalyptic and dramatic tunes, resulting in some of the darkest music the band has made since forming in 2009.