This week
Sage Francis, The Dead Weather, The National, Jackson Browne & David Lindley, Keane, Sam Quinn (formerly of The Everybodyfields), Unkle, Otis Taylor, Jim Lauderdale, Fela Kuti re-issues, Crash Test Dummies, Coco Rosie,

And last week
Broken Social Scene, Deftones, Flaming Lips, Hold Steady, Minus The Bear, New Pornographers, James Taylor & Carole King, Josh Ritter, Flying Lotus

And recent arrivals from our artist-direct department
Matt Butcher, Benyaro, David Wax Museum, Charles Hedgepath (w/Yonrico Scott, Ike Stubblefield), Feeding The Fire, East North, restocks on Niel Brooks – Prairie Fire, Aaron Berg – Madame X, Angela Easterling – Blacktop Road, Mac Leaphart – Line, Rope, etc, and yes we have some copies of The Piedmont Boys – Walking Pneumonia.

Oh my! The Vinyl blessings
Massive arrivals of used bargains in all categories CD, DVD, LP and Books, they’re every where just waiting to be adopted and find a nice new home.

JACKSON BROWNE & DAVID LINDLEY – Love Is Strange 2 CD set VINYL LP
“Have to report on the Jackson Browne: goosebumps, smiles, laughs, awe, amazing, beautiful live recording, listening on the headphones, lots of old favorite hits done with a fresh approach — Lindley’s awesome fiddle, Hawaiian guitar, bouzouki, oud and on and on. Jackson’s vocals sound much as they did 30 years ago, how does he do it? I was not prepared to like this so much. Music has come to rescue me again. All this and I’ve only made it part way through the first disc.” —Barbara Berger

On record and in performance, Jackson Browne and David Lindley have a musical association reaching back almost 40 years. Regarded as a legendary stringed-instrument virtuoso, Lindley has played on many of Browne’s albums, beginning with 1973′s For Everyman, and on classics including Late For The Sky and The Pretender (the latter two both on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time). Browne also produced Lindley’s best-known LP, 1983′s acclaimed El Rayo-X. These two musicians played together in a 2006 run of concerts in Spain-in grand concert halls, rock venues, and intimate clubs alike. That tour resulted in this album Love Is Strange, “En Vivo Con Tino”- featuring Browne and Lindley live with celebrated Spanish percussionist Tino di Geraldo. In liner notes Browne wrote for Love Is Strange, he considers Lindley’s reputation for elusiveness, nearly as mythic as his string-playing prowess. “Why had I not thought of this before? Take him where he doesn’t speak the language and he will HAVE TO leave the gig and come with you to the restaurant, or to the club,” says Browne. “This was an unexpected strategy breakthrough in a pursuit that for a legion of friends, disciples and admirers has become known as ‘stalking the wild Lindley.’”

THE DEAD WEATHER – Sea Of Cowards CD/LP
Available on Deluxe Gatefold VINYL LP
Jack White has long found a way to do virtually anything he wants in music. As the singer and guitarist for the godzillion-selling rock titan The White Stripes, he can’t release a new album every few months, so he’s made multiple names for himself with multiple bands; namely, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, which indulge his respective love of guitar-drenched power-pop and dirty, blues-infused rock ‘n’ roll. The Dead Weather made its debut in July 2009 with Horehound, on which White collaborated with The Kills’ singer, Alison Mosshart, as well as guitarist-keyboardist Dean Fertita and bassist Jack Lawrence, both from The Raconteurs and Queens of the Stone Age. Given White’s tendency to act quickly and decisively — a recent piece on All Things Considered has him describing his willingness to rush raw ideas from concept to completion — it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that The Dead Weather has already recorded a follow-up. Sea of Cowards, which again features White sharing vocal duties with Mosshart and playing drums. Sea of Cowards is no sterile product of endless studio tinkering: At 35 minutes, it’s a blistering and compact slab of thunderous, bluesy hard rock, whether it shines a spotlight on White (the sinister “Blue Blood Blues”) or Mosshart (the slinky and biting “I’m Mad”). Born out of aggression more than invention, it’s an appropriately barbed and consistently sturdy addition to White’s rapidly expanding canon. —Stephen Thompson, npr.org

NEW! PICK 2: NATIONAL – High Violet CD/LP
Limited edition individually-numbered on audiophile 180 gram colored VINYL + includes free MP3 download of entire album
The National’s Matt Berninger, personal demons often take on literal forms. “It’s a terrible love and I’m walking with spiders.” “I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees.” “I was afraid I’d eat your brains, ’cause I’m evil.” Berninger’s deep, deadpan baritone, when dressed up in intricately lovely arrangements, can make The National’s music seem remote at times. But his words are the stuff of blood and guts; the stuff of emotions so powerful, they’re downright gruesome.

No mere navel-gazer, Berninger knows how to enshroud his gloomy observations in mystery and nuance, and he’s surrounded by music that broods and swells at all the right times. EPs and an odds-and-ends collection aside, High Violet is The National’s fifth album, and it spends a good deal of time gently roughing up the glimmering beauty of its divine predecessor, Boxer. But the new record still achieves the balance that’s made the band so widely beloved: It locates the sweet spot between majesty and mopery, catharsis and wallowing, soaring grace and wounded confessionals. —Stephen Thompson, npr.org

NEW! PICK 3: SAGE FRANCIS – Li(F)e CD/LP
Available on 2LP VINYL set + includes coupon for a free MP3 download of entire album
Li(f)e is a marked evolution for Sage Francis. The celebrated agent-provocateur of hip hop brings his signature wordplay, a dazzling mix of sardonic humor and biting social commentary, to a setting complimented by a talented band consisting of producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron and Wine) and cohorts Jim Becker and Tim Rutili of the acclaimed Chicago outfit Califone. Along for the ride are some of indie rock’s most prestigious songwriters. Take album opener “Little Houdini,” a stirring Steinbeckian tale of prison break, with music written by ex Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle. “We specifically sought out songwriters who had never worked with a rapper,” Francis explains. “I didn’t want them to write music they thought they should for hip-hop. The music for ‘Little Houdini’ was a long epic instrumental piece Jason had just hanging around which I then worked my story into.” With collaborations with Chris Walla from Death Cab for Cutie, Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, Calexico, and DeVotchKa, Sage is pushing the envelope of a genre he helped create, with a confrontational tongue and wit to match Shepard Fairy’s iconic album artwork. The record’s title says it all: a deliberate amalgamation of the words life and lie. As Francis says, “What about life is a lie? What we’re told about God is a lie. What we’re told about race, gender roles, beauty, war, food, drugs, sexuality, capitalism, history, the nature of humankind…a gang of lies. I feel it in my gut, I think it in my brain, I write it with my hands and I speak it with my mouth.”

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change. —Miles Davis