In parallel to the ongoing year, we are also celebrating some of the biggest hits from 1989, celebrating their 30 years anniversaries. Here is the first to start with. One of the finest music "accidents" and the cover than even outgrew the.
original and stayed on the top of the UK charts through out most of the February 1989.
Bananarama will return with a brand new Album 'In Stereo' this spring. This album will also sign the ten year anniversary since their last studio album in 2009. In 2017 the ladies reunited with former member Siobhan Fahey for a ‘original line-up tour’, but as per media announcements she will not be involved in the works from the new album. The first single, "Dance Music", was released on 18 January 2019 the album will be out on April 19th.
American singer and songwriter Sharon van Etten released
her fifth studio album 'Remind me Tomorrow' on Jagjaguwar in mid-January. This
album, in a way, also marks the ten year anniversary since her eponymous
debut in 2008 and comes as a follow up to her 2014 release ‘Are We There'. There is an evident gap of four years which Sharon has been using to explore new grounds with acting and
she also gave birth to her first child. New events in life certainly have had an
impact on this new content which Sharon presented in ‘Remind me Tomorrow’.
"Remind Me Tomorrow" was produced by John Congleton
which already successfully worked with Dirty Projectors and St Vincent. It
clocks at 41 minutes and includes ten tracks out of which only one goes over 5
minutes and it seems prettymuch like a straight
forward release. As we did not experience much of Sharon’s previous work, we will
treat this as standalone album review. Overall the album has a nice atmosphere and
feel, and it is very evident that synth arrangements are taking the leads on
this record. All in all, going track by track, there are also small instrumentation parts involved, but very measured which keeps up the listeners attention throughout the record. The decision
with the two opening tracks in not something I am very happy about, neither lyrically
nor production wise, but somehow this is the path up, to the first highlight of
the album, the song “Memorial Day” which together with “Jupiter 4” and “Hands”
mark this record's highlights. The blanket of synth ambiance seems to be spread
over the most of the album's songs and the diversity and quality comes with the layered
elements which bring the right amount of decoration to the sound. Organic elements meet with
the synthetic textures and manage to spice it up with glitch
drums, quirky synths and drone sounds. At the same time Sharon sticks to her
very distinct style and her voice modulates perfectly and remains in the center of things.
Overall the album has a nice narrative and although there are weaker tracks it does not threat the dynamics of the
whole album nor does it bore the listener. There do not seem to be exceptional lyrical highlights, yet the
Sharon mangers to convey her emotion to the listener. Having also listened her previous album while I am writing this review, only confirms that that Sharon steps beyond her scope to create this new cosmic artwork.
LCD Soundsystem have released a new live album this week, titled 'Electric Lady Sessions'. The 12-track double-LP was recorded live at the Electric Lady studios in New York. The album features live renditions of cuts from the band’s comeback LP 'American Dream' along with some of the LCD Soundsystem favorites from 80's including The Human League’s “Seconds and Heaven 17’s “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang.”
The live album is available to preorder now on vinyl or digitally.
Robert Alfons aka TR/ST will release a double album this year and both will be entitled 'The Destroyer'. As per media announcements, the first part of the album is expected to be more up-tempo where as the Destroyer part 2 will explore more the dark side of electro. The first part of the album i going to be released in April while the second will come in autumn. The first single form 'The Destroyer' part 1 has been revealed this week with the stream on YouTube below.
Pet Shop Boys are releasing a brand new EP this week. It will be entitled 'Agenda' and will feature four tracks which will be revealed throughout the week starting with “Give stupidity a chance”. CD of 'Agenda' is also available to pre-order exclusively with Pet Shop Boys’ once-a-year publication 'Annually' which has been announced today and will be published on April 12th.
A Certain Ratio are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year and on this occasion they will release a new box set titled 'ACR:BOX' which will be available vinyl, CD, download and streaming services. They have also revealed a brand new acoustic version of "Won’t Stop Loving You". The 'ACR:BOX' box set will be available as a signed 7 x coloured vinyl set and limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 4 x CD set and digitally and its release will coincide with a series of dates starting from May 4th whereas the compilation will officially released a day before on May 3rd.
