FEATURE:
One for the Record Collection!
IN THIS PHOTO: Glass Animals/PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana
Essential August Releases
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NOT withstanding any surprise releases…
there are some great albums slated for release next month – that could be added to and, to be fair, some artists might delay their albums because of the lockdown situation. If you are in need of some guidance regarding the albums to own in August, then I have a few suggestions. Glass Animals’ Dreamland is out on 7th August, and I would encourage people to pre-order the album. The album was due earlier in the year because of various issues – the COVID-19 situation, and the band wanted to delay the album to support Black Lives Matter -, but is coming very soon. It seems that Dreamland will be a very different record to their last, How to Be a Human Being, of 2016. Dave Bayley of the band spoke with NME earlier in the year and talked about revelations from their previous album:
“The last album saw me digging into other people’s lives and asking them quite heavy questions – quite probing stuff that I probably shouldn’t have asked,” Bayley says. “The people I spoke to were amazingly open and at the end of all that, I thought it wasn’t fair I was asking them to do this and not myself.” Only one song on the album was personal to Bayley – the emotive closer, ‘Agnes’, which tells the story of a close friend who died from suicide. It received a staggering response from fans.
“The fan response to ‘Agnes’ was totally unexpected,” Bayley says. “I’ve always been really, really afraid to write about myself. I always thought it was selfish”.
Looking ahead to 14th August, and Biffy Clyro will release A Celebration of Endings. Go and pre-order a copy, as Biffy Clyro always bring something incredible. When Simon Neil spoke with NME, he revealed how Biffy Clyro are putting a lot of urgency into their next album:
“Lyrically, the record is a rallying cry. Having battled with depression and fought his way back to self-confidence for the band’s previous album, 2016’s freewheeling ‘Ellipsis’, frontman Simon Neil looked outside himself for the first time to find inspiration in society’s ills. A whirlwind on stage, Neil has never been a shrinking violet in person – but he’s also never allowed his politics to spill into the music before.
“I feel like I’ve investigated myself more than I probably should – more than is probably healthy!” Neil told NME as he talked us through the new tunes. “When you’re younger, you think that you can keep the personal and the political separate, but I really don’t think that we can now in this world that we’re living in. The world needs to change in the right way. It’s just been bad news for years”.
Turning in another direction and Pop superstar Katy Perry is releasing Smile. 2017’s Witness was one of her more divisive albums, so it will be interesting to see what comes from her upcoming sixth studio album. Singles like Daisies, and Smile show new lease and life in Perry, and I think the album will be met with more acclaim that previous works. You can pre-order the album, and it will be a record that Perry’s fanbase will snap up.
Although August is a quieter month in terms of big releases than July, there are a few other great albums arriving before the end of the month. On 21st August via Dead Oceans, Bright Eyes release Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was. It is going to be an album you will want to own, and it is clear there are very few bands like Bright Eyes around:
“Sometimes it feels like you hear a Bright Eyes song with your whole body. From Conor Oberst’s early recordings in an Omaha basement in 1995 all the way up to 2020, Bright Eyes’ music tries to unravel the impossible tangles of dissent: personal and political, external and internal. It’s a study of the beauty in unsteadiness in all its forms – in a voice, beliefs, love, identity, and what fills up the spaces in-between. And in so many ways, it’s just about searching for a way through.
The year 2020 is full of significant anniversaries for Bright Eyes. Fevers and Mirrors was released 20 years ago this May, while Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning both turned 15 in January. The latter, a singer-songwriter tour-de-force released amidst the Bush presidency and Iraq war, wades through incisive anti-war rhetoric and micro, intimate calamities. On the title track and throughout the record, Oberst sings about body counts in the newspaper, televised wars, the bottomless pit of American greed, struggling to understand the world alongside one’s own turmoil. In its own way, I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning carved out its place in the canon of great anti-war albums by being both present and prophetic, its urgency enduring 15 years later.
And while 2020 is a year of milestones for the band, it’s also the year Bright Eyes returns, newly signed to indie label Dead Oceans. Amidst the current overwhelming uncertainty and upheaval of global and personal worlds, Oberst, Mogis, and Walcott reunited under the moniker as both an escape from, and a confrontation of, trying times. Getting the band back together felt right, and necessary, and the friendship at the core of the band has been a longtime pillar of Bright Eyes’ output. For Bright Eyes, this long-awaited re-emergence feels like coming home”.
Erasure’s The Neon is another key release coming next month, and I would suggest the album to people, whether there are a fan of the band or not. The legendary English Synth-Pop duo, consisting of singer and songwriter Andy Bell and songwriter and keyboardist Vince Clarke, are preparing their eighteenth studio album. It does seem like The Neon is going to be something pretty special:
“The Neon is a place that lives in the imagination, that we – you and me – put in the real world. It could be a night club, a shop, a city, a cafe, a country, a bedroom, a restaurant, any place at all. It’s a place of possibility in warm, glowing light and this is music that takes you there.
Written and produced by Erasure, the album’s initial sessions saw the Vince and Andy reunited to work on the follow up to 2017’s World Be Gone with a fresh optimism and energy, in part born from their own recent personal projects. Vince goes on to explain, “Our music is always a reflection of how we’re feeling. He was in a good place spiritually, and so was I – really good places in our minds. You can hear that.”
Taking inspiration from pop music through the decades, from bands Andy loved as a child through to the present day, he explains, “It was about refreshing my love – hopefully our love – of great pop. I want kids now to hear these songs! I wanted to recharge that feeling that pop can come from anyone”.
There are a few more albums that I want to push people’s ways. Not everyone is a fan of The Lemon Twigs, but I really like the band, and, on 21st August, they release Songs for the General Public. It comes out on the 4AD label, and it is going to be an album you’ll want to own. I think a lot of music sounds very samey but, with The Lemon Twigs, you get something genuinely inventive and different. They are so young and prodigiously talented so, for a sense of sheer wonder, their upcoming album is worth investment and time:
“The D’Addario brothers return with their third Lemon Twigs album, Songs For The General Public - written, recorded and produced by the D’Addarios at their home studio in Long Island, Sonora Studios in Los Angeles and Electric Lady in New York City.
The prodigiously-talented brothers first emerged as The Lemon Twigs in 2016 with their debut LP Do Hollywood, whose showstopping melodies mined from every era of rock quickly earned fans in Elton John, Questlove, and Jack Antonoff. Go To School, the ambitious 15-track coming-of-age opus, followed in 2018 and solidified the band’s reputation for building grand walls of sound around an audacious concept”.
Two great albums come out on 28th August that will be worthy of your money. One of them is Inner Song from Kelly Lee Owens. She is an incredible talent, and the Welsh artist spoke with The Guardian earlier in the year. It seems that, even during lockdown, she is finding some positives:
“Owens is keen to find positives everywhere she possibly can. She recently tweeted the definition of the word “apocalypse”, to mean “revelation – an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known”. Does she think, then, that there could be tiny positives to the pandemic at all? “I do, and that’s just because I’m in a very privileged position to say it,” she says. “I’m hyper-aware of how you can come across when you say: ‘This is good for the planet.’ But it also is important to point out the duality of consciousness, and raise awareness of what can happen when we are apathetic.”
The track on her album, Wake-Up, points to this idea, too. “One of the things [it questions],” she says, “is never pausing to take it in, always avoiding your sense of dread.” A world-changing event like this “forces us to ask important questions. Globally, we are connecting now. That’s what’s important”.
Disclosure’s ENERGY is the last album that I want to recommend for August, as it is going to be a huge one, and Disclosure are another one of these acts that deliver incredible albums:
“Disclosure return with a their most direct album Energy. A global spectrum of talented artists grace the record – and for the first time this includes rappers. Appearances from Mick Jenkins, Channel Tres, Aminé and slowthai sit comfortably alongside the legend that is Common. Other features include the inimitable Kelis who opens the album and Fatoumata Diawara who the boys have also linked up with previously. Cameroon’s Blick Bassy brings his own flow to the table while a powerhouse team of Kehlani and Syd ease the pace with their contribution.
Every track was written really quickly. Through an epic process of creation and distillation the path to producing their shortest, most direct album - 11 songs, 39 minutes - ran through around 200 tracks: everything from drum loops to fully realised songs. Since live touring has been paused during the global pandemic and their own plans for 2020 now being put on hold, Guy (and sadly not Howard as they isolated in different countries) found an outlet for his desire to give people a good time no matter what the circumstances by doing a regular run of their popular Kitchen Mix parties via live stream, a set for Boiler Room and a one off special to celebrate Earth Day”.
Those are the albums that you will want to own through August and, whilst there are others that are worthy of investigation, the ones I have outlined are the best. As we are still sort of in lockdown, I think music is going to be very important, and what better way to get through these tough times than stock up on some terrific sounds?! Even if there are not quite as many blockbusters out next month, there are still some golden records due that are bound to…
IN THIS PHOTO: Katy Perry
KEEP you entertained.