Vinyl

Years solidifies the point: Sarah Shook & the Disarmers have moved from getting people’s attention to commanding it. The album–with its sharpened songwriting, unique perspective, deepened sound and roll-up-your-sleeves attitude–will grab you by the collar and put a defiant finger to your chest. It is resolute, blunt, and unflinching.

It’s a wild, electric phantasmagoria of blues, rock, garage, and soul; it blasts off into diverse orbits only to come back together into a singular Savage cosmology. Soul Flowers of Titan is about people shooting guns, separating, coming home (someday), falling in love, running around, leaving this earth, going crazy, drinking coffee, and thinking about Sun Ra.

Informed as much by the wide-open landscapes of her homeland as the intimate writing circles of Nashville, 'Don't Talk About It' may range far and wide but always maintains a firm sense of place. Echoes of first wave UK power pop and jangly punk intersect with the every(wo)man indie and pop-inflected muscle of Best Coast.

Collection of Lydia Loveless’s summery 5-song EP Boy Crazy, on vinyl LP for the first time, plus six non-album singles and B-sides.

Four Lost Souls is pure Americana, not just because of where it was recorded or who played on what track, but because it is beyond the news of the day. It is a travelogue of sorts; it goes to a place where the differences between country, soul, blues, and rock-and-roll are blown aside by the warm languid breezes.

Imagine the Dead Kennedys three decades on. Fiery cosmic psychobilly and retro R&B/garage tones. Sacrebleu!

Birmingham/Nashville group’s second full-length has one foot firmly planted in reality as the other tip-toes in and out of mental complexities, self-perception and altered-state illusions. The results are revealing, exhilarating and profound.