FEATURE:
One for the Record Collection!
Essential November Releases
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AS we are in the last few days…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kylie Minogue
of October, it is time to look ahead to November and the great albums that are coming. The first that you need to get a hold of is Kylie Minogue’s fifteenth studio album, Disco. Make sure you pre-order the album, as it stuffed with Disco anthems and some of Minogue’s most uplifting songs in years! There have been a few good Disco-flavoured albums released this year – including Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, and Róisín Murphy’s Róisín Machine -, and it seems like Kylie Minogue’s latest album will be among the very best. In an interview with i-D, she spoke about Disco and what we might expect:
“Hi Kylie! How do you begin work on a new album? Do you start with a concept?
In the case of Disco and Golden, we didn't start with any concepts. I was just keen to get back into the studio. I think by the time I've done an album campaign and toured, I want to do something new and different. Usually, I go in with people I know and like. In this case it was with [writer and producer] Biff Stannard and we actually got "Say Something" in those first initial sessions. But normally, after a few sessions and hearing what's coming out during the period where we don't know where we're going, then the concept will be solidified. In this case, I'd been speaking with my A&R and just in general about heading straight back to the dance floor; that's where I want to go. I was inspired because it's my happy place, but also because on my last tour, going back almost three years, there was a Studio 54 section. It just felt like the burst of energy and such a fun place to inhabit.
There is a disco revival going on, as well as people like Dua Lipa referencing your earlier work. Have you collaborated with anyone else on the record?
I haven't at this stage. And there's actually nothing planned. But I do think that with more people being able to do remote recording, it could very well be possible. I genuinely love collaborations. It's better to be able to perform together and do live performances together. There's an unspoken understanding of what it is to be an artist and performer”.
There is another album from 6th November that is going to be worth your pennies. The live album, Return to Greendale, from Neil Young and Crazy Horse is arriving, and I would recommend that people pre-order an incredible album. I am not usually a big fan of live albums, but it seems like the 2003 recording is going to be worth getting hold of:
“Neil Young continues his ‘Performance Series’ archive releases with Return to Greendale a CD, vinyl and box set offering with audio and video from his 2003 tour.
On the tour, which supported the Greendale album (issued in 2002), Neil Young and Crazy Horse were joined on stage by a large cast of singers and actors to perform the story Neil Young wrote about the small town of Greendale and how a dramatic event affects the people living there. The ten songs from the original album are performed in sequence, with the cast speaking the sung words. It blends together the live performance, the actors portraying each song, with the story occasionally enhanced by scenes from the Greendale – The Movie.
Return to Greendale is being issued as a two-CD and 2LP vinyl set but also as a limited edition deluxe box set which includes both CDs, both vinyl records along with a blu-ray of the full concert film and a DVD of Inside Greendale (the making of the album documentary). The box sets are numbered.
Both the live concert film and the Inside Greendale documentary are directed by Bernard Shakey (you know who that is) and produced by L. A. Johnson”.
In terms of long-awaited albums, they don’t come much more exciting than AC/DC’s Power Up. It is an album you will want to own, and it is the seventeenth from the legendary band. Power Up marks the return of vocalist Brian Johnson, drummer Phil Rudd, and bassist Cliff Williams, all of whom left AC/DC before, during, or after the accompanying tour for their previous album, Rock or Bust (2014). The lead single, Shot in the Dark, is classic AC/DC! I am looking forward to the album’s arrival. In an interview with Rolling Stone, we learn more about the backstory to Power Up:
“The LP was recorded in late 2018 and early 2019, but Angus raided the AC/DC vault of unreleased songs before they began and every track is credited to Angus and Malcolm Young. “This record is pretty much a dedication to Malcolm, my brother,” says Angus. “It’s a tribute for him like Back in Black was a tribute to Bon Scott.”
The road to POWER UP was the most arduous one that AC/DC has walked since Back in Black, which was cut in the immediate aftermath of singer Bon Scott’s death 40 years ago. Brian Johnson was recruited shortly before Back in Black was cut and he remained at the front of the group for the next 36 years, but during the 2015–16 Rock or Bust tour, he started to encounter significant hearing issues
“It was pretty serious,” he says by telephone from England. “I couldn’t hear the tone of the guitars at all. It was a horrible kind of deafness. I was literally getting by on muscle memory and mouth shapes. I was starting to really feel bad about the performances in front of the boys, in front of the audience. It was crippling. There’s nothing worse than standing there and not being sure.”
Most fans had no clue what was happening, but it was painful for his band to watch up close. “He’d pull his in-ears out and just shake his head,” says Williams via phone from his home in North Carolina. “He couldn’t pitch. He was having a real hard time.”
This is the first AC/DC album recorded after the death of Malcolm Young, though his presence was felt strongly by everyone throughout the entire process of creating it. “Even when I sit at home and pick up my guitar and start playing, the first thing that enters my head is, ‘I think Mal will like this riff I’m playing,'” says Angus. “That’s how I judge lot of stuff.”
“Malcolm was always there,” says Johnson. “As Angus would say, the band was his idea. Everything in it ran through him. He was always there in your minds or just your thoughts. I still see him in my own way. I still think about him. And then in the studio when we’re doing it, you have to be careful when you look around because he seems to be there”.
There are a couple of other albums due on 13th November that are pretty awesome. Marika Hackman’s Covers. It is, as the title suggests, Hackman tackling some well-known songs. Rough Trade explain more:
“Marika Hackman returns with Covers, a darkly beautiful, self-produced new album which showcases a more vulnerable side.
During the extended lockdown period of the last few months, Marika felt that creating a covers record was a way of exploring new sound ideas and expressing herself without having the pressure of the blank page. She recorded and produced Covers between home and her parents' house, then got David Wrench to mix it”.
Another terrific album that I am looking forward to is The Cribs’ eighth, Night Network. Go and pre- order the album, as it is shaping up to be one of the finest releases from the Yorkshire band - it was planned for 13th November, but the band have moved it back to 20th. In a month that is promising some golden albums, Night Network is going to be right near the top of the pile. Rough Trade reveal more about Night Network:
“The Cribs are back and on blistering form, brandishing their brand new eighth album, Night Network. The self-produced 12-track album was recorded at the Foo Fighters Studio 606 in Los Angeles in the spring / summer of 2019. Night Network is as fresh, cathartic and vital as anything they’ve ever put out. There’s no weariness, no bitterness, just a clear desire to get back to doing what they do best – that unique blend of bittersweet melody, brutal lyrical honesty and riffs for days.
It’s wall-to-wall Cribs bangers, the fruit of that special, symbiotic relationship between the songwriting, singing brothers, drawing on the boiled-down influences they felt had always been there: The Motown stomp of Never Thought I'd Feel Again and Under The Bus Station Clock, red and blue album-era Beatles (Running Into You and In The Neon Night, respectively), melodic 70's style pop on Deep Infatuation, and even early work by their own band.
The Cribs are romantics and they’re realists, and the balance, for a hot minute, nearly tipped in the favour of the latter. But now they return empowered, beholden to no one, on the greatest form and still screaming in suburbia”.
Also on 20th November, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard release both K.G., and Live in S.F. '16. The live album promises to be one that you cannot be without:
“Just under a month after delivering their award-winning 2016 album Nonagon Infinity, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard took the stage at San Francisco’s The Independent for a set both wildly frenetic and meticulously executed. In one of their final club gigs before bursting onto the international scene—soon selling out amphitheaters and headlining festivals—the Melbourne septet laid down a breakneck performance that, in the words of SF Weekly, “made every organ ache just right.” Newly unearthed by ATO Records, Live in San Francisco ’16 captures an extraordinary moment in the band’s increasingly storied history, a 13-song spectacular likely to leave every listener awestruck and adrenalized.
Multi-tracked and impeccably mixed, Live in San Francisco ’16 simultaneously channels the massive energy of King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard’s set while echoing the sweaty intimacy of the 500-capacity venue.
With nearly half the setlist made up of Nonagon Infinity tracks, Live in San Francisco ’16 unfolds with the same exquisitely controlled chaos King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard brought to that arguable masterpiece—a nine-song body of work crafted as the world’s first infinitely looping LP (i.e., each track flowing seamlessly into the next, with the album-closing Road Train linking straight back into the opener)”.
If you want to order K.G., then you can do so via the Australian band’s Bandcamp page. The guys are among the most prolific around, and K.G. is the band’s sixteenth studio album since 2012 – the fact that they are averaging two albums a year is pretty unheard of!
There are a few albums due on 27th November that I would recommend people buy. The second great covers album of November comes from Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong in the form of No Fun Mondays. I am fascinated by a great covers album, so I will be sure to check out Armstrong’s forthcoming release.
“Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong release his covers series No Fun Mondays into a 14-song collection via Reprise / Warner Records. No Fun Mondays sees Armstrong putting his signature melodic-punk spin on the songs that have formed the soundtrack to his life, including classics by John Lennon, Billy Bragg, and Johnny Thunders.
Kicking things off with his perfectly on-trend cover of Tommy James and the Shondells’ golden oldie, I Think We’re Alone Now, Armstrong treated fans to a new home-recorded cover song each Monday, accompanied by a DIY video. Beyond paying respects to his punk-rock forefathers (The Avengers’ Corpus Christi, Dead Boy Stiv Bators’ Not That Way Anymore) and working-class heroes (John Lennon’s Gimme Some Truth, Billy Bragg’s A New England), Armstrong also indulged his love of sugary pop through reverent versions of The Bangles’ Manic Monday and the Beatlesque theme to Tom Hanks’ 1995 film That Thing You Do! The latter was performed in tribute to the song’s writer, Adam Schlesinger, who passed away from COVID-19 complications in April. While the project’s inspiration was solemn at times, these songs are here to uplift. Home-recorded though it may be, No Fun Mondays is as revved-up as any of Green Day’s arena-ready anthems, a masterclass in punky power-pop from a true connoisseur of the form”.
There are two other big releases on 27th November. One album that has recently been announced is Miley Ray Cyrus’ Plastic Hearts. Rough Trade gives us some details:
“Artist and trailblazer Miley Cyrus with her new album Plastic Hearts via RCA.
Includes Miley's summer hit, Midnight Sky, and her critically acclaimed live covers of Blondie's Heart of Glass and The Cranberries' Zombie, which are being referred to as the dawn of Miley Cyrus' best era, with her voice being hailed as perfectly suited for Rock and Roll. These raw and raucous renditions of classic hits that Miley has made her own are a taste of what is to come with her seventh studio album, Plastic Hearts, that includes 12 original songs.
Iconic Rock and Roll photographer, Mick Rock, shot Miley’s cover art which embodies the music and exemplifies Miley's sound. Adding her to the list of legends Mick has photographed over the years including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett, and Debbie Harry. Miley's personal handwritten message below contextualizes her album and the inspiration behind it”.
I think the critics will react really well to Plastic Hearts, and Cyrus’ seventh studio album follows 2017’s, Younger Now. The final album you need to get next month is Smashing Pumpkins’ Cyr. The legendary band are delivering a double album that Rough Trade explain it thus:
“The Smashing Pumpkins return with a new double album. The LP features 20 tracks, including the title track Cyr and The Colour of Love, and was recorded in the band’s native Chicago with Billy Corgan serving as producer.
Cyr marks Smashing Pumpkins’ second LP since their semi-reunion with guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, following 2018’s Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. The album is also the band’s first with Sumerian Records, who recently signed them”.
If you need some guidance and tips regarding albums out next month that are worth buying, I think the above are the cream of the crop. There are other terrific albums due, but the ten I have listed are…
DEFINITELY ones you will want to pre-order.