New, Nostalgic, and Combative Music Coming to Our New Orleans Record Store
A new month means that new music releases are hitting the shelves at Mushroom New Orleans. Here are four we're excited about.
Alabama Shakes, "Boys & Girls" (Deluxe Edition)
Release Date: December 9
Alabama Shakes, known for its groovy, soulful, backwoods feel, Alabama Shakes has announced a special tenth-anniversary reissue of their first album, "Boys & Girls." In 2012, Blues Rock Review declared the debut to be a "wonderful blend of blues, rock, and a Motown vibe" and "one of the best albums so far this year."
The new edition includes hardly-before-heard tracks from the band's 2012 session from KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" music program. We're looking forward to the studio jams of these soul legends.
SZA, "SOS"
Release Date: December 9
The track list of this highly anticipated follow-up to SZA's album "Ctrl" includes a whopping twenty-three songs. No wonder "SOS" was five years in the making. The album features artists like Don Toliver, Phoebe Bridgers, Travis Scott, and the late Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard. Wow.
"Versatility largely wins out," says The Guardian's Kitty Empire. "Only SZA could find room for Travis Scott on a slow jam ballad, 'Open Arms,' as well as Phoebe Bridgers ('Ghost in the Machine'), the grunge-pop of F2F and a self-explanatory strummed track, 'Nobody Gets Me.' "
SZA has been nominated for many awards, including Best New Artist in 2018, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Song Written in 2019.
Weezer, "SZNZ: Winter"
Release Date: December 21
"SZNZ: Winter," an extended play record, will be the fourth and final installment of Weezer's SZNZ series of records. It will be released on the official first day of winter.
Band member Rivers Cuomo expressed that "SNZ: Winter" would evoke the work of the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. The EP would feature "lots of loss and despair and kind of quiet," Cuomo said. "I had the thought that winter sounds more like the original pre-'Blue Album' Weezer than the 'Blue Album' does. There hasn't been this much acoustic guitar and finger picking in Weezer since our first year together."
Anti-Flag, "Lies They Tell Our Children"
Release Date: January 6
Tackling bigotry, injustice, and oppression, Anti-Flag has been mad as hell for three decades. Anti-Flag is ready to keep its momentum going with its newest release, "The Lies They Tell Our Children."
Because of the pandemic, the band has spent more time working on this album than they've devoted to others over the last decade. It will feature guests like Tim McIlrath of the band Rise Against, Stacey Dee of Bad Cop/Bad Cop, and Brian Baker of Bad Religion. A music video for a single from the album, "Victory or Death (We Gave 'Em Hell)," was released in early December.
Anti-Flag says that the album "is the first conceptual album the band has ever done, spawned out of a compulsive need to not just comment on the dystopian corporate wasteland we all face, but to trace it back to the origin of this fate; the political policies, cultural shifts, laws, and lineage of injustice that have led us to the world we live in today."
What releases have you been waiting for? Drop by Mushroom New Orleans to let us know, and maybe trade in some of your used records to make room for something new.
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