Today is Friday, the most wonderful day of the week for music lovers because it’s the day when new albums are released. We want to start celebrating Fridays with our fellow music lovers in the best way we can think of: highlighting some of today’s new releases. This initial installment has a twist in that all three featured acts have concerts coming up this fall in Madison. Do your homework so you’re not the only dork who doesn’t know the lyrics come show time.
Deer Tick
Deer Tick Vols. 1 and 2 (Partisan)
John McCauley has always been a diverse songwriter, alternating tender acoustic moments with barroom shit-kickers, and all of them are good. So I’d imagine it’s tough for McCauley and his Deer Tick bandmates to have to leave anything on the cutting room floor. With Deer Tick, the band’s new two-volume affair, no song gets left behind.
Vol. 1 is Deer Tick unplugged — 10 new stark, moving tunes that showcase not just McCauley’s but also guitarist Ian O’Neil’s and drummer Dennis Ryan’s skills as songwriters. Deer Tick has always had an unsung, The Band-like aesthetic in which everyone contributes, and like the Band it turns out they’re all pretty good at it.
The other thing Deer Tick is really good at is writing big, rowdy rock songs to get drunk to, and that brings us to Vol. 2, the Incredible Hulk to Volume 1’s Bruce Banner. It’s 10 more treatment-bound bangers that will remind you why Deer Tick is one of the best live bands on the planet.
Deer Tick plays the Majestic on Oct. 19.
Foo Fighters
Concrete and Gold (RCA/Roswell)
The Foos are a band that needs no introduction. They’re one of the most popular rock bands on the planet and have been since the mid-1990s. Even before that, Dave Grohl was in Nirvana, so the dude’s been in the industry pretty much his whole life. Accordingly, he’s had to deal with growing up and older in the public eye, so when it came time for him to reflect on lost youth on Concrete and Gold, he does it in a different way than, say, buying a motorcycle.
Grohl has described Concrete and Gold as being “Motörhead’s version of Sgt. Pepper,” which is not only an incredibly Dave Grohl thing to say but also a pretty apt description of the album if the driving-yet-lush single “The Sky is a Neighborhood” is any indication. The new album also features a host of guest appearances, including people you’d expect to hear on a Foo Fighters album (Paul McCartney, The Kills’ Alison Mosshart) and ones you wouldn’t (Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman, Justin Motherfuckin’ Timberlake). Count us in.
Foo Fighters headline the Kohl Center on Nov. 8.
Open Mike Eagle
Brick Body Kids Still Daydream (Mello Music Group)
Open Mike Eagle has a wry wit and childlike sense of wonder that sets him apart from many other rappers. That’s always shown through in his music, on albums like Dark Comedy and Hella Personal Film Festival.
His latest, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, is set to be another ambitious capstone in the emcee’s oeuvre. A concept album about a Chicago housing project (Robert Taylor Homes) that was torn down in 2007, it tells the story of years of economic and social divide and uses the imagery of stuff like mythological pyramids and iron knights.
Eagle recently had his live show The New Negroes (co-hosted with stand-up Baron Vaughn) picked up by Comedy Central. He plays High Noon Saloon on Sept. 20, so don’t miss the chance to see him live before he’s selling out, like, Radio City Music Hall and shit.
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