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 Zach Bryan, Susan Tedeschi, Devendra Banhart and Soccer Mommy. Read on for more insight into the records we have ready to spin.
Zach Bryan – Boys Of Faith
Surprise! Zach Bryan today released a previously unannounced EP entitled Boys Of Faith via Warner Records. Bryan has had an eventful few weeks since the release last month of his critically and commercially successful self-titled album. That record topped the Billboard 200 Albums chart while simultaneously going to #1 on Billboard’s Country, Rock & Alternative, Americana/Folk, and Rock Album charts. Bryan was also arrested earlier this month for obstruction in his home state of Oklahoma. Now comes the new five-song EP, which like Zach Bryan, was written and produced by Bryan. Also like its predecessor, Boys Of Faith includes notable guest appearances. Fellow singer-songwriter Noah Kahan appears on the song “Sarah’s Place” while Bon Iver contributed to the EP’s title track.
Susan Tedeschi – Just Won’t Burn
Guitarist Susan Tedeschi released an expanded, 25th anniversary edition of her debut solo album, Just Won’t Burn, today through Fantasy Records featuring several bonus tracks. Co-produced by Tedeschi and Tom Hambridge and released in 1998, Just Won’t Burn was recorded by Sean Carberry at Rear Window Studio in Brookline, Massachusetts, near Tedeschi’s native Boston. The album featured contributions from guitarists Adrienne Hayes and Sean Costello and harmonica player Annie Raines. Tedeschi recorded originals as well as covers of associated with Ruth Brown, Junior Wells, and John Prine. Just Won’t Burn garnered impressive sales, leading to it being certified Platinum. After its release, Tedeschi was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, alongside Macy Gray, Kid Rock, Britney Spears and eventual winner Christina Aguilera. Previously-unreleased bonus tracks include a cover of blues legend Koko Taylor’s “Voodoo Woman,” an alternate version of the album cut, “Looking For Answers,” outtake “Waste Of Time,” and live recordings of “Looking For Answers” and the title track performed by the Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Beacon Theatre in New York City in October 2022. Tedeschi reflected on the 25-year-old release:
“Making Just Won’t Burn was a pivot. All of a sudden, I was working with different groups of people, new musicians, new songwriting collaborators. We had no idea how it was going to turn out. I think the thing that held it all together was the blues. Blues is a language that I love. You can take it anywhere in the world and communicate with people, which isn’t necessarily true about other forms of music. And being a white artist in a black milieu, you just have to let the music speak.
“Sometimes when I look back on the 25 years since the release, I think about the places I’ve been and the adventures I’ve had, and I feel like Forrest Gump. I say, ‘No! You’re a baseball mom. You didn’t do all that!’ But I must have. The blues has its demands. You have to be honest — musically, emotionally, and personally — above everything else, and that can lead to some uncomfortable truths. But the blues hasn’t burned me. It hasn’t hurt me. It’s my main resource. I can express myself and get stuff out about my life – or, like B.B. [King] always said, ‘whatever ails you.’ The blues got me here.
“The way people react to Just Won’t Burn has always been heartwarming and surprising. I used to get letters from a prisoner who identified with the songs and found hope in them, and then I started getting letters from the rest of the prisoners on the cell block because it was the only cassette they had.”
Devendra Banhart – Flying Wig
Singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart today released Flying Wig, his 11th album and first on the Mexican Summer record label. The album was produced by Banhart’s Mexican Summer label mate, Cate Le Bon, with whom he shares a “precious friendship.” The 10-track LP follows Banhart’s 2019 album, Ma, and his 2021 ambient collaboration with Noah Georgeson, Refuge. Banhart was “constantly listening to the Grateful Dead” at the woodland studio in Topanga Canyon where the new album was recorded. Banhart revealed the following about Flying Wig:
“It’s about transmuting despair into gratitude, wounds into forgiveness, grief into praise … ‘and yet’ (inspired by [the haiku] A World of Dew by 19th century Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa). The ‘and yet, and yet,’ is our ability to face despair with hope, to keep on failing and loving. My whole life has been filled with sadness. Everything I do in life is to help cope with that sadness.
“[Cate Le Bon’s] the only person I wanted to make this record with. We set out to make a record sonically unlike anything I have made before – with a new creative partner at the helm. We definitely wanted a new sound, electronic yet organic and warm … we wanted to draw out and emphasize the emotional aspect of a synthesizer.”
Soccer Mommy – Karaoke Night
Nashville-based singer-songwriter Soccer Mommy (Sophie Allison) turned the songwriting over to others on her new EP, Karaoke Night, which arrived today on Loma Vista. Karaoke Night follows Soccer Mommy’s critically acclaimed album, Sometimes, Forever, which came out in June 2022. The five-track EP is constructed entirely of covers. Included are Soccer Mommy’s takes on Pavement’s “Here,” Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up The Sun,” Slowdive’s “Dagger,” R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” and Taylor Swift’s “I’m Only Me When I’m With You.”
“I really wanted to cover this song because it’s one of my favorites from Taylor’s first album,” Allison said regarding covering Swift’s song. “I listened to that record so much when I was a kid and I think it had a lot of influence on me then.”
Compiled by Team JamBase.
