Each week Release Day Picks profiles new LPs and EPs Team JamBase will be checking out on release day Friday. This week we highlight new albums by Tedeschi Trucks Band, Maggie Rogers, Amanda Shires, Beyonce, Little Feat and Nico Georis. Read on for more insight into the records we have all queued up to spin.
Tedeschi Trucks Band – I Am The Moon: III. The Fall
Today, the Tedeschi Trucks Band released the six-track I Am The Moon: III. The Fall. The collection marks the 12-piece ensemble’s third of four I Am The Moon albums following the previously issued I Am The Moon: I. Crescent and I Am The Moon: II. Ascension with I Am The Moon: IV. Farewell slated to complete the ambitious project on August 26. All four albums were recorded at Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi’s Swamp Raga home studio in Jacksonville, Florida and come accompanied by Alix Lambert-directed visuals.
The Fall features songs written by four different band members as well as additional collaborators. Trucks shines on keyboardist Gabe Dixon’s “Somehow,” which was penned with Tia Sillers. Vocalist Mike Mattison joined forces with Tedeschi to write the dirge “None Above,” while Susan stars on the bluesy “Yes We Will.” Dixon has a turn fronting the band on “Gravity,” which he co-wrote with Oliver Wood and Mattison channeled his grief from the loss of Kofi Burbridge into the lyrics for “Emmaline.” The full band brings the LP to a powerful climax on the Tedeschi/Trucks/Mattison/Dixon co-write “Take Me As I Am.”
Maggie Rogers – Surrender
Singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers returns with Surrender, her new full-length follow-up to her 2019 album, Heard It In A Past Life. Rogers co-produced the 12-track Surrender with the assistance of Kid Harpoon. Rogers recorded the new album at three separate locations: her parents’ garage, New York City’s Electric Lady Studios and Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios near Bath, England. Among those who appear on the album include Florence Welch and Jon Batiste. The recording sessions coincided with Rogers attending Harvard Divinity School, where she earned a master’s degree this spring. At a Spotify listening event held at Electric Lady, Rogers discussed creating the new album, stating:
“I love writing … I only wrote one song on this record when I was in grad school, which is ‘Honey.’ When we left Electric Lady – it was in the middle of this record that I decided to apply to grad school – I had this vision that I would make the record and then go to grad school, and there would be this clean split. I’d have my personal life and my public life, and they would be really separate, and the two lives wouldn’t cross. We left Electric Lady in the summer of 2021, and I thought we were done. I got on the plane and listened to the record down and knew there was a hole on the B Side, the track listing just wasn’t right. So I was like OK, I’m going to have to surrender, I’m going to have to let go. And I think the greatest lesson was that they weren’t supposed to be two separate things. There was an integration, at least in my life, that ended up being really important for me – weaving in all my thinking about spirituality and power and these systems of oppression that are a part of our life and peace and more to my life in music. There is a deep creative inspiration when it comes to songwriting and essay writing.”
Amanda Shires – Take It Like A Man
Take It Like A Man is the new album released today on ATO Records by Nashville-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Amanda Shires. The follow-up to her 2021 holiday album and 2018’s To The Sunset was recorded at Nashville’s Historic RCA Studio B with Shires’ recent frequent collaborator, producer Lawrence Rothman. Rothman also added various instrumentation to the album, which also features guitar from Shires’ husband, Jason Isbell, and vocals by Shires’ The Highwomen bandmates, Maren Morris and Natalie Hemby as well as Brittney Spencer. Regarding Take It Like A Man, Shires stated:
“Everything on the record is autobiographical. I didn’t hold anything back. Then, if the details were boring I infused other stories [laughs]. Like my granddad said, if your story’s not good enough just make it better … I think what I’ve learned is any time you get your heart broke, from love, music, your business, your life, you always think that’s it! But it hardly ever is. You look back and say ‘I’m glad that wasn’t it at all.’ It’s a cycle that keeps repeating over and over, like Gabriel García Márquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude. The end is rarely the end; it’s just another loop of the wheel. Matters of the heart get confusing. But when you’re in need of something, somehow the universe gives it to you if you can just hold on a little bit longer.”
Beyoncé – Renaissance
Beyoncé released her seventh solo album, Renaissance. The 16-track LP is the vocalist’s first full-length solo release since her visual album Lemonade, which was issued in 2016. Those earning co-writing credits for Renaissance include Beyoncé’s husband, hip-hop star Jay-Z, as well as Skrillex, 070 Shake, The-Dream, and Drake. Producers who worked on the album include Beyoncé, Nova Wav, The-Dream, Symbolyc One, Honey Dijon, Beam, Tricky Stewart, Bloodpop, Skrillex, Hit-Boy, No I.D., P2J and others. Additional contributors include Nile Rodgers, Sheila E., Raphael Saadiq and more. The album — recorded during the pandemic and said to be the first part of a three-part trilogy — also features Beam on the song “Energy” and Grace Jones and Tems on “Move.” The record reworks songs and samples of tracks by Donna Summer & Giorgio Moroder, James Brown, Teena Marie, Robin S. and others. Beyoncé shared the below statement regarding Renaissance:
Creating this album allowed me a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world. It allowed me to feel free and adventurous in a time when little else was moving. My intention was to create a safe place, a place without judgment. A place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release, feel freedom. It was a beautiful journey of exploration. I hope you find joy in this music. I hope it inspires you to release the wiggle. Ha! And to feel as unique, strong, and sexy as you are.
Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus: Super Deluxe Edition
Out today from legendary rock band Little Feat on Rhino is Waiting For Columbus: Super Deluxe Edition featuring an expanded reissue of their legendary 1978 live album. The 8-CD set pairs a newly remastered version of the original live double album with three previously unreleased concerts captured in 1977. Waiting For Columbus was recorded with the Tower Of Power horn section at select Summer Tour 1977 shows in the UK and U.S.
The acclaimed collection includes such beloved songs as “Dixie Chicken,” “Time Loves A Hero,” “Oh Atlanta” and “Spanish Moon” as all six studio albums recorded up through that point are represented. Little Feat’s lineup at the time featured guitarists Lowell George and Paul Barrere, keyboardist Billy Payne, drummer Richie Hayward, percussionist Sam Clayton and bassist Kenny Gradney. With Waiting For Columbus: Super Deluxe Edition fans get to hear three complete concerts from the run that yielded the original live double album taped in Manchester on July 29, 1977; London on August 2, 1977 and Washington D.C. on August 10, 1977.
Nico Georis – A Rainbow In Curved Air
Experimental musician Nico Georis new album, A Rainbow In Curved Air, arrived today on the Spiritual Pajamas label. Consisting of four tracks, em>A Rainbow In Curved Air begins with a reimagining of experimental artist Terry Riley’s 1969 composition of the same name. Georis explained the impetus behind reworking the Riley piece:
“Terry Riley’s 1969 experimental classic ‘A Rainbow in Curved Air’ has been an all time fav amongst my friend circles. In late 2019 I went to see Terry and his son perform this piece of music for the 50th anniversary of its release. In this stripped down live setting I was able to hear and understand for the first time the central riffs that drive this piece at its core. These riffs haunted me for months to the point where it felt like I had caught ‘rainbow disease.’ I just couldn’t stop playing the riffs, and they challenged me to no end. Over the course of the coming two years I joyously stalked the vague and magical traces of Terry’s path back into his hidden wonderland of sound.”
The album’s three original compositions consist of “Vapor,” “a plant music duet that features Georis playing along with the plaintive washes of sound produced by a cannabis plant connected to a biodata sonification device,” which was spontaneously composed as he broadcast across his pirate radio station Milky Way Radio from his home in Big Sur, California. The album’s two other original compositions, “Hot Slots” and “777,” utilize slot machine sounds and were inspired by Riley’s work “Arica.” Georis further stated:
“The first time I ever heard ‘Arica’ it sounded to me like a bunch of slot machines come to life, as if in some Disney Fantasia cartoon. This original impression is what inspired the entirety of side B. “Hot Slots” is littered with sounds of slot machines at their original speed, while “777” is built from a foundation of slot machine patterns that have been slowed way down. Side B marks a clear departure from ‘Arica,’ looping forward from the curved air of the ’60s into a blissed-out slot machine K-hole of today.”
