Shipwreck - Rabbit in the Kitchen With a New Dress On
(None/PV) CD $10.00
Listen: Walk In The Woods • House of Cards • Atlantic
Local combo Shipwreck goes nationwide with their second full-length album (following their awesome self-released Walk In The Woods and House of Cards EPs). In keeping with their moniker Shipwreck rocks to-and-fro in an ocean of sound, a sound defined early on as "sub-aquatic country and ethereal astro-punk" and more recently evolving into something majestic and good-naturedly new wave. [more]

Whiskey Priest - Hungry (Bric-A-Brac) CD $11.00
Listen: Here • Love & A Gun • Seek Ye First
Essential Soft Pop: Oh. My. Whiskey Priest (Easterly’s Noah Hall) has just delivered The Best and downy softest soft-pop, singer-songwriter record of the year. Songs sung in a Beautiful Hushed Voice, gently impelled by toney unplugged plucks and strums, backed by piano, reedy keys and various otherworldly sounds, like a celestial music box. Think Kevin Tihista at his most intimate and balladeering. [more]

Japancakes - Loveless (Darla) CD $12.25
Listen: Only Shallow
Happily intrigued by the idea of anyone covering My Bloody Valentine’s iconic Loveless in its entirety, the promise of Japancakes doing this instrumentally, with pedal steel and slide guitar carrying the vocal lines, was titillating. Japancakes doesn’t try and minimize the pink-noise geyser action either, they go for it, although their version is a bit more post-coital than coital, if you catch my drift. [more]

Club 8 - The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming (Labrador)
CD $15.75 Listen: Heaven
New album on import, their 6th, from Swedish duo, Johan Angergård (also in Acid House Kings and The Legends) and partner in sublime Karolina Komstedt. Twelve further tracks of the duo's trademark indie-pop bliss, featuring dreamy co-ed vocals, an extra helping of personable playfulness, and a double caress of lissome bossanova and twittering exotica. Darling! [more]

Gram Parsons & Flying Burrito Bros. - Archives Vol. 1
(Amoeba) DCD $17.00
27-track live set recorded at the Avalon Ballroom in 1969, just recently discovered sleeping in the Grateful Dead vaults, long-dormant but now available officially for the very first time. The best Gram Parsons live recordings ever? Set features material never before available along with some sweet rarities. Includes a gianormous booklet with never before published photos, a beautiful package. [more]

Favorita - Self-Titled (Popsicle) CD $13.00
Listen: I Can Change the World (Yeah) • Seven Comforts
Recorded 12 years ago and never released due to label implosion Swedish quartet Favorita’s first-n-last album certainly deserves the headline: Buried Swedish Guitar-Pop Treasure Unearthed! Favorita featured former Beagle and future Metro Jets frontman Magnus Borjeson, so yes this also qualifies as The Missing Link! CD includes original album, 8 bonus tracks, videos... [more]

Doug Burr - On Promenade (Velvet Blue/Spune) CD $7.00
Listen: Slow Southern Home • Graniteville
Texan singer-songwriter Doug Burr plays spectral, rustic, melancholy rock with twinges of the past (Townes van Zandt, Johnny Cash, and Neil Young) and the present (Will Oldham, Richard Swift, Rocky Votolato, and Damien Jurado), that plucks, twangs and strums at your heartstrings at every harmony- and harmonica-happy turn. [more]

Anna Ternheim - Self-Titled (Decca) CD5 $6.50
Listen: Today Is A Good Day
Jim's pick: Award-winning Swedish songstress' domestic debut is here, in EP teaser form, highly recommended for Cat Power, Frida Hyvönen and Imogen Heap fans. Six mostly-acoustic songs include the 'Naked Version' of her recent single “Lovers Dream”, a Bowie cover, plus a live video of her righteous Broder Daniel cover, “Shoreline”, a song so good I’m posting her piano version and BD’s bombastic original. [more]

Tulsa - I Was Submerged (Park The Van) CD $9.75
Listen: Mass • Break Thin
Heroic, echoing, near-shoegazing roots-rock with a Laurel Canyon vibe, full of Rhodes piano-induced classic rock charm and modern invention; a truly spellbinding set that begs comparisons to Band of Horses and My Morning Jacket, channeling Neil Young (and sometimes The Byrds) in the same seductive way. Fans of our own New Ruins’ debut album (and late-90s Texan spacerockers The 7% Solution) will find some similar sentiments expressed, sonically and thematically. [more]

Wooden Shjips - Loose Lips (Sub Pop) 45 $3.50
Vinyl-only pair of new or at least unreleased songs from Bay area retro-psych shamans, "Loose Lips" b/w "Start to Dreaming", pressed on black wax. [more] Need an entrée with your appetizer? Need long-form sensory overload? Need to fully immerse yourself in The Shjips' visceral acidrock murk? Then check out their highly recommended, self-titled, debut album on CD and LP vinyl. Sound sample here.

Phosphorescent - Pride (Dead Oceans) CD $11.50
Listen: A Picture of Our Torn Up Praise • Wolves
Gorgeous, melancholy, harmony-heavy roots-pop with spiritual and psychedelic undertones, sporting a sound and style akin to The Palace Brothers’ more expansive productions, with hints of Damian Jurado, Neutral Milk Hotel and Akron/Family, but truly inhabiting its own sepia-tone sonic otherworld. Epic and timeless, highly recommended. [more]

Fred Armisen - Jens Hannemann Complicated Drumming Technique
(Drag City Instructional) DVD $14.00
You Tube Promo: Jens Hannemann
Former Trenchmouth/Blue Man Group drummer, current SNL cast member (Ferecito!), and occasional movie star Fred Armisen has created 'complicated drummer' character Jens Hannemann for a spoof on low-budget drummer technique DVDs and rock percussion geekery in general. Everyone will laugh, musicians will bust a gut. [more]

The Wooden Sky - When Lost At Sea (Self-Released)
CD $11.00 Listen: This Bird Has Flown • North Dakota
Twangy Toronto combo The Wooden Sky’s rustic, rootsy rock has been the soundtrack to our Autumn. The album starts off frosty and serene but within the band’s expansive dynamic range there’s room for a blaze of fall foliage and a couple raging bonfires as well. The Wooden Sky has been compared to Okkervil River and Townes Van Zandt and we hear plenty of Bright Eyes at their most earthy and elemental. Really nice. [more]

Richard Lloyd - The Radiant Monkey (Parasol)
CD $10.00 Listen: Monkey
Parasol Label Group: The Radiant Monkey is the new solo album from Richard Lloyd, former guitarist for legendary NYC punk act Television, inspiration for several generations of post-punk acts and artists. 11 new songs represent Lloyd’s first studio album in seven years, and is his most audacious and transfixing work to date, all the while totally rocking. Not surprising from a guitar conjurer, rock-n-roll stateman, mystic and guru of Lloyd's stature. Check out The Radiant Monkey page for more details, more song samples, free mp3, etc.

Band of Horses - Cease To Begin (Sub Pop) CD $13.25
Listen: Is There A Ghost
Having said farewell to co-founder Mat Brooke, relocated from the Pacific NW to the Carolinas, and traded just some of the bombast of their incredible debut, Everything All the Time, for some seriously sweet textural and mood explorations, Band Of Horses have been in a state of flux. Don’t worry, from the high-energy reverbed rockers to the dark dirgey ballads Cease to Begin is their debut’s equal, if a little more of a cerebral, slowburn affair. Highly recommended. [more]

Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala (Secretly Canadian)
CD $11.50 Listen: The Opposite of Hallelujah
More manchild-in-a-mobius-loop magic from Gothenburg songsmith, a concept album themed on the "suburban hell" he grew up in... Meanwhile his chiming, charming, self-referential orch-pop numbers are augmented with sampledelic recyclables from classic soul and disco sides, which, adds a quaint timelessness to the proceedings, his forté! Night Falls features guest appearances by pals Frida Hyvönen and El Perro Del Mar gal Sarah Assbring. [more]

Johnossi - Self-Titled [U.S. release] (Control Group)
CD $12.50 Listen: The Show Tonight • Lottery
The best Scandinavian Rock record of 2006 gets an official U.S. re-release. Swedish duo Johnossi is John (who plays acoustic guitar thru many amps and effects pedals) and Ossi (who beats the crap out of his drums), two guys with a gargantuan garage rock sound, slathering on enough swoon-worthy melodies to keep everyone happy. An astounding live act, be sure to catch them in support of countrymen Shout Out Louds nationwide this month. [more]