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 Red Hot Chili Peppers, Brian Eno, Plains, Bill Callahan and Frank Zappa. Read on for more insight into the records we have all queued up to spin.
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Return Of The Dream Canteen
Out today from Red Hot Chili Peppers is Return Of The Dream Canteen, the band’s second album of 2022. Vocalist Anthony Kiedis, guitarist John Frusciante, drummer Chad Smith and bassist Flea recorded the Warner Records 17-track collection during the same sessions held with producer Rick Rubin at Shangri-La in Malibu, Calfornia that yielded their last LP, Unlimited Love, which arrived this past April. Both albums marked the return of Frusciante to the Chili Peppers fold after a decade’s absence.
“We just want to leave ’em wanting less,” Chad Smith told Billboard and went on to explain that “it was just the four of us in a room and we just wrote a bunch of music and wrote and wrote with no time constraints and ended up recording all these songs. We always record more than what comes out on a record, but often they get left in the vault or unfinished or whatever. But we finished them all. We just felt like we had too many good songs to not put out another record. It’s not like a B-sides record or anything like that. Everything felt good and right, so, yeah, it’s all good.”
Brian Eno – ForeverAndEverNoMore
Brian Eno issued his first solo album in over five years, ForeverAndEverNoMore, today through Verve/UMC. In addition to being Eno’s first solo LP since 2017’s Refection, the release of ForeverAndEverNoMore marks the first record containing mostly Eno’s own vocals since 2005’s Another Day On Earth. The 74-year-old Eno recorded the new 10-track album at his West London studio. Those who appear on the record include Leo Abrahams, Roger Eno, Peter Chilvers, Clodagh Simonds, Cecily Eno, Darla Eno and Jon Hopkins. Thematically, ForeverAndEverNoMore addresses the climate crisis. Eno wrote ForeverAndEverNoMore’s lead single, “There Were Bells,” to perform with his brother Roger Eno and more for a concert at the UNESCO World Heritage site the Acropolis in Athens, Greece on August 4, 2021. Wildfires raged around the historic city the day the Enos and company were set to perform with temperatures hitting 113 degrees. “I thought, here we are at the birthplace of Western civilization, probably witnessing the end of it,” Eno said. He further discussed the album’s environmental themes, stating:
“Like everybody else – except, apparently, most of the governments of the world – I’ve been thinking about our narrowing, precarious future, and this music grew out of those thoughts. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’ve been feeling about it … and the music grew out of the feelings. Those of us who share those feelings are aware that the world is changing at a super-rapid rate, and that large parts of it are disappearing forever … hence the album title.
“These aren’t propaganda songs to tell you what to believe and how to act. Instead, they’re my own exploration of my own feelings. The hope is that they will invite you, the listener, to share those experiences and explorations.
“It took me a long time to embrace the idea that we artists are actually feelings-merchants. Feelings are subjective. Science avoids them because they’re hard to quantify and compare. But ‘feelings’ are the beginnings of thoughts, and the long-term attendants of them too. Feelings are the whole body reacting, often before the conscious brain has got into gear, and often with a wide lens that encompasses more than the brain is consciously aware of.
“Art is where we start to become acquainted with those feelings, where we notice them and learn from them – learn what we like and don’t like – and from there they start to turn into actionable thoughts. Children learn through play; adults play through Art. Art gives you the space to ‘have’ feelings, but it comes with an off-switch: you can shut the book or leave the gallery. Art is a safe place to experience feelings – joyous ones and difficult ones. Sometimes those feelings are about things we long for, sometimes they’re about things we might want to avoid.
“I’m more and more convinced that our only hope of saving our planet is if we begin to have different feelings about it: perhaps if we became re-enchanted by the amazing improbability of life; perhaps if we suffered regret and even shame at what we’ve already lost; perhaps if we felt exhilarated by the challenges we face and what might yet become possible. Briefly, we need to fall in love again, but this time with Nature, with Civilization and with our hopes for the future.”
Plains – I Walked With You A Ways
Singer-songwriters Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) and Jess Williamson released their debut album as Plains. The duo’s debut, I Walked With You A Ways, arrived today via ANTI- Records. The self-described “one-time only” and “incredibly special” collaboration, I Walked With You A Ways was recorded in Durham, North Carolina with renowned producer Brad Cook, who previously worked on the Waxahatchee records Saint Cloud and Great Thunder. Drummer Spencer Tweedy and multi-instrumentalist Phil Cook also contributed to the 10-song LP. Williamson shared her thoughts on working with Crutchfield and more:
“Making this record with Katie was a deeply expansive experience for me as a songwriter. I really trust her ear and sensibilities, and she encouraged me to explore aspects of my songwriting that in the past I’ve shied away from. Katie’s support was so important for me as we wrote this album. We gave ourselves permission to lean into the music that raised us and write the kind of classic timeless songs that we both grew up singing along to. For me, that was The Chicks and Dolly Parton, and having a place to channel those influences was an absolute blast. My hope with Plains was to tap into something Universal. I love the album we made, and I’m so excited to play it live.”
“I’ve felt a connection to Jess’ songwriting and a kinship with her since we met years ago,” Crutchfield added. “Getting to lean into the influence of the music we both grew up with while also making something that feels very current and fresh to me was a great experience and I’m so happy to finally share it.”
Bill Callahan – YTI⅃AƎЯ
Drag City today released singer-songwriter Bill Callahan’s new album, YTI⅃AƎЯ. Callahan tapped guitarist Matt Kinsey, bassist/vocalist Emmett Kelly, pianist/vocalist Sarah Ann Phillips and drummer Jim White for the recording of the follow-up to 2020’s Gold Record. Callahan, who has also recorded under the Smog moniker, also recruited contributions from Carl Smith on contra alto clarinet and the brass section of Mike St. Clair and Derek Phelps. Callahan’s statement regarding YTILAER follows below:
“I wanted to make a record that addressed or reflected the current climate. It felt like it was necessary to rouse people — rouse their love, their kindness, their anger, rouse anything in them. Get their senses working again. I guess there was already plenty of anger! But we needed a better anger. To get out of this hypnagogic state. Hypnagogic rage. Disassociated rage that destroys the community and leaves only the individual eating themselves alive instead of feeding others. We were born to feed others. We have milk, breasts. We have language, tongues. We have music, ears. All to feed.
At the time it felt like we were coming out of something, getting clear of it. So I was picturing songs that would make sense to take before an audience at this crucial juncture — venturing out — where things could go either way. A reintroduction to the basics of life. Of human interaction. Face to face. A new clear vision. A new way. Which is probably just an old way we’d abandoned somewhere back there as we retreated into our screened, blindered existence.
Sometimes you forget the most basic things. The biggest things! And it just takes a little nudge to get your head back on track. I wanted sounds and words that made you feel and that lifted you up. But first there was a need to bond, to clear the air. Or to just acknowledge the air. So there is some of that on the record. I went for horns because horns are heralds, triumphs, second line funerals and just breath forced through a metal maze or amusement park slide. And I wanted voices, I wanted multiple voices, not just mine. There is too much of just mine right now. So there are 6 or 7 people singing on this record.
Listening to this record takes one hour. Ah hour sounds like a year to me these days. Taking an hour of someone’s life. I fault the internet. I fault ourselves for falling for the internet. An hour is actually lovely, nothing, a lifetime. You have to live that lifetime though in order to appreciate the hour. I’m not suggesting people must listen to this record all the way through in one sitting. It IS sequenced for that particular purpose, though, in case anyone wants to.”
Frank Zappa – Zappa ’75: Zagreb/Ljubljana
Frank Zappa brought a short-lived The Mothers lineup to Yugoslavia in November of 1975 for what turned out to be the late guitarist’s only shows in the country. The latest FZ Zappa Records/UMe live archival set, Zappa ’75: Zagreb/Ljubljana, features highlights from the two nights in Yugoslavia assembled into a 27-track collection released today. Zappa was backed by Andre Lewis (keyboards), Napoleon Murphy Brock (tenor sax and lead vocals), Norma Bell (alto sax, vocals), Roy Estrada (bass) and Terry Bozzio (drums) in Zagreb on November 21, 1975 and Ljubljana on November 22, 1975.
Co-producers Joe Travers and Ahmet Zappa assembled the best takes on each song sequenced in the same order of the concerts’ setlist for Zappa ’75: Zagreb/Ljubljana. The release containing nearly two and a half hours of previously unreleased music also includes three bonus performances. Material featured spans Zappa’s complete career through that point and incorporates early versions of such sings as “Filthy Habits,” “Five-Five-Five” and “Wind Up Workin’ In A Gas Station.” Frank also previewed 1976’s Zoot Allures with takes on the title track and “Black Napkins.”
Compiled by Scott Bernstein, Nate Todd and Andy Kahn.
