Features / The Weekend Stream

Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc’s review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. This week, classic rock icons celebrate their live history, a modern music icon gets serious, a master of horror films (and soundtracks) revisits his first non-movie music and a former folk duo open their vault.

The Doors, Live in Pittsburgh 1970 / Live in Philadelphia ’70 / Live in Detroit (Bright Midnight/Rhino)

Pittsburgh: Apple / Amazon
Philadelphia: Apple / Amazon
Detroit: Apple / Amazon

The Doors have been issuing live sets from their 25-year-old Bright Midnight Archives onto digital platforms this year, as part of the group’s 60th anniversary celebration. The three latest to be made available, despite the slight inconsistencies in title, all took place in an eight-day span in May of 1970, during the group’s final year of touring.

Fiona Apple, “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)” (Epic) (Apple / Amazon)

While it’s rude to ask, you’d be forgiven for wondering if and when Fiona Apple will grace fans with another studio album. (The deliberate, unique singer-songwriter has issued three LPs since 2005, most recently 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Since then, she’s recorded with Bob Dylan, Phoebe Bridgers and The Waterboys and released a few one-off covers. Her first original since Bolt Cutters is quite an important one, inspired by her last four years as a volunteer court watcher; incensed by the cash bail system that affects poor women stuck in detention before being heard by a judge, she wrote “Pretrial” in protest – even building a website for resources about how you can work against this practice.

John Carpenter, Lost Themes (10th Anniversary Edition) (Sacred Bones) (Apple / Amazon)

While legendary writer/director John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape from New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, They Live) hasn’t helmed a film in more than 20 years, the iconoclastic Master of Horror – who wrote or co-wrote nearly all the scores to his features – did pivot even further into composition with 2015’s Lost Themes, a collection of atmospheric electronic originals that marked his first collaboration with his son Cody and godson Daniel Davies. The trio issued three sequels between 2016 and 2024, as well as re-recorded collections of Carpenter’s famous themes, scores to a trilogy of Halloween sequels and a 2022 film remake of Stephen King’s Firestarter (Carpenter was initially approached to direct the original 1984 film.) This expanded reissue – also available on vinyl – includes two tracks from the original album sessions; it’ll be followed by the Carpenters and Davies taking residency at The Belasco in Los Angeles during the week of (what else?) Halloween.

The Civil Wars, “If I Didn’t Know Better (from the Vault)” (Sensibility Recordings) (Apple / Amazon)

Joy Williams and John Paul White’s folk duo The Civil Wars delivered aching, harmony-rich melodies that almost seemed too real to record. (Indeed, the four-time Grammy winners reportedly stopped speaking not long after their sophomore album dropped a year before their 2014 breakup – and when they appeared on a 2023 re-recording of Taylor Swift’s Hunger Games soundtrack hit “Safe & Sound,” they both recorded and were credited separately.) For a band in the past tense, though, they’re surprisingly active this spring: a best-of collection will drop in June (featuring this unreleased studio version of a song off their debut live EP), with an expanded vinyl reissue of debut album Barton Hollow arriving in August.