The last calendar page of the year (and, in this case, even the first!) means a bounty of soundtrack reissues! La-La Land Records, Varese Sarabande and Quartet have all recently planned some exciting expansions for your favorite score collector. La-La Land may have claimed that they were “serving coal” this year, with a lot of their typically big end-of-year titles stuck in approval delays – but they still prepared two late-period favorites from two classic film composers (plus an exciting vinyl title for James Bond fans) before kicking off January with two…
Release Round-Up: Week of October 10
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today! As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Power to the People (Capitol/UMR) 9CD/3BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store 4LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Links TBD / Official Store 2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store 1CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store One of the most incendiary periods of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s life together is being explored anew in a new 9CD/3Blu-ray box set. Power to…
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Release Round-Up: Week of May 23
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Sheena Easton, Modern Girl: The Complete EMI Recordings Volume 1 (Cherry Pop) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Sheena Easton’s latest reissue collaboration with Cherry Red covers familiar ground in a slightly new way. Modern Girl: The Complete EMI Recordings, Vol. 1 is a 5CD set that covers the bulk of the Scottish singer’s first five albums – Take My Time (1981), You Could Have Been with Me (1981), Madness, Money and Music (1982), Best Kept Secret (1983), and the…
Release Round-Up: Week of November 29
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! While most labels are concentrating today on Record Store Day’s Black Friday releases, we’ve chosen to spotlight a few non-RSD titles out today, as well. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Tommy Steele, On Air (Stage Door Pop) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Stage Door Records’ Pop imprint celebrates The Happiest Millionaire and Half a Sixpence star Tommy Steele with On Air, a collection of 31 tracks culled from his 1964 U.K. radio series The Tommy Steele Show. None of these tracks have been released since their original broadcast sixty…
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Release Round-Up: Week of May 26
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today! Carole King, Home Again: Live in Central Park (Ode/Legacy) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada DVD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Coinciding with the documentary/concert film of the same name, Carole King’s Home Again: Live in Central Park captures her concert – the first-ever free concert at New York City’s Great Lawn – in front of a reported 100,000 people. King opened the…
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Release Round-Up: Week of May 27
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of new titles available in stores and online today! ABBA, Album Box Set (Polar/UMe) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Picture Disc Bundle: Official Store To coincide with the arena show ABBA Voyage setting sail in London on May 27, the band’s 2021 studio album Voyage will be canonized in a new career-spanning box set featuring every one of the quartet’s nine studio LPs plus a specially-curated collection of singles and B-sides. The new box clones the previously released The Vinyl Collection, offering all the original international track…
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Release Round-Up: Week of April 29
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of today’s new releases! Neil Young, Official Release Series Volume 4 (Reprise) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada LP: Greedy Hand Store A new box set brings together three of Neil Young’s ’80s albums, along with a rare EP making its widest release yet. Official Release Series Volume 4 runs the gamut of Young’s eclectic output in the ’80s – likely because it only covers his releases on his longtime home base of Reprise Records. (From 1982 to 1987, Young signed instead to Geffen Records.) The ’80s were a…
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Strange Animals: BMG Reissues Five Albums from Sparks in New 21st Century Collection
Director Edgar Wright’s 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers brought much-deserved attention to cult rock heroes Ron and Russell Mael and their prodigious, singular output as Sparks. Now, BMG has announced the 21st Century Sparks collection: a series of deluxe CD and vinyl reissues encompassing Balls (2000), Lil’ Beethoven (2002), and Hello Young Lovers (2006) arriving on Friday, April 29; and Exotic Creatures of the Deep (2008) and The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman (2009) following on Friday, May 27. All five titles have been newly remastered for the 21st Century Sparks collection and…
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Open My Eyes: Ace Celebrates Todd Rundgren and Gus Dudgeon in Label’s Producers Series
In recent weeks, Ace Records has made two new additions to its ongoing Producers Series, and both titles spotlight the versatility of the respective talents, Todd Rundgren and Gus Dudgeon. The Studio Wizardry of Todd Rundgren is, in many senses, an update of Rhino’s 1992 compilation An Elpee’s Worth of Productions. Like that set, it paints a portrait of the singer-songwriter largely in service of others’ songs, though a handful of his own compositions appear, too. Ace’s collection spans 1970-1990, when the prolific Rundgren worked his studio magic on essential recordings by…
Are You Ready for the Sex Girls? Omnivore Reissues Gleaming Spires Discography
“Of the hundreds of new records unleashed on the public each year, few stand out as truly inspired, literate works of art,” began Sparks’ Russell Mael in his liner notes to Gleaming Spires’ 1981 debut Song of the Spires. “Fewer still go beyond that. Though I have not personally had the time to listen to this, the Gleaming Spires’ first recorded effort, two of my bridge partners tell me that this record goes way, way beyond.” Sparks’ tongue-in-cheek endorsement (to which Russell’s brother Ron helpfully added, “This is the best Gleaming Spires…
Release Round-Up: Week of July 9
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Various Artists, Almost Famous: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (UMe, 2021) Out today: 2CD Highlights: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP Black Vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Stillwater Vinyl EP: uDiscoverMusic.com Out August 20: 5CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 6LP Black Vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 5CD/7LP/1-7″ Super Deluxe Edition and color variants: uDiscoverMusic.com Cameron Crowe is revisiting the soundtrack to his 2000 instant classic Almost Famous in near-complete form as a 5-CD or 6-LP set as well as in shorter highlights versions and a Super Deluxe box containing all of the music…
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Get In The Swing: Waxwork Preps Soundtrack to Sparks Documentary “The Sparks Brothers”
Director Edgar Wright’s new film The Sparks Brothers (in theatres now) rewrites the book on music documentaries. The film about cult band Sparks – a.k.a. brothers Ron and Russell Mael, long more popular in Europe than in the U.S. – doesn’t have much in the way of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. As for what it does have of “rock and roll,” it’s something altogether more outré, not to mention endlessly inventive. The Sparks Brothers sheds little light on Ron and Russell Mael’s personal lives and truth to tell, it doesn’t…
Wake Up You Sleepy Head: “Oh! You Pretty Things” Collects 66 Glam Rock Nuggets
Oh! You Pretty Things: David Bowie’s 1971 song became an anthem for the glam era: “Don’t you know you’re driving your mothers and fathers insane? Let me make it plain, you gotta make way for the homo superior…” Bowie’s alien persona – androgynous, dangerous, sexy, and flamboyant – connected with youth and caused a stir among their parents. The song’s title has now been adopted by a new 3-CD box set from Cherry Red’s Grapefruit imprint. Alas, “Oh! You Pretty Things” doesn’t appear anywhere on the collection. If Bowie’s recording couldn’t be…
Beat The Clock: Sparks Celebrate 40 Years Of ‘No. 1 In Heaven’ With CD, Vinyl Reissue
Ron and Russell Mael have always open to musical influences. Over the course of their four-decade career as Sparks, the art-pop legends have traversed genres and influenced generations. The L.A.-based Mael brothers formed their first group, Halfnelson, in 1970 and eventually landed a deal with Bearsville Records. At Bearsville, Todd Rundgren produced their self-titled debut album. Three years later, the band had rechristened themselves Sparks and caught the attention of the music press and a fervent fanbase following the release of A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing. As the years passed, the group…
Sparks Announce “Tangible Object” for October Release
Essentially quirky rock heroes Sparks have announced a “tangible object” – a new five-disc, swag-packed box set – for release through Universal Music’s U.K. arm in October. New Music for Amnesiacs: The Ultimate Collection collates just about the entire experience of the band founded and fronted by hyperactive frontman Russell Mael and his Chaplin-mustached, scowling keyboard brother Ron. The set spans four discs, starting from the early art-rock of breakthroughs like Kimono My House and U.K. hit “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” to their reinvented state as an electronic…
Release Round-Up: Week of August 7
The Beach Boys, Japanese 2012 Remasters (EMI) Released last week across the sea, these new Japanese remasters of 12 of the boys of summer’s first LPs (spanning from 1963 to 1971 but, alas, incomplete) should be hitting our shores around now. Has anyone had the chance to hear them yet? Roxy Music, The Complete Recordings 1972-1982 (Virgin) This 10-disc set, kicking off a planned 40th anniversary celebration of the iconic New Wave pioneers, features new remasters of the band’s first eight albums and two bonus discs of non-LP B-sides and mixes, several of which are making…
The Long and Short of Sparks: Two Compilations Coming from Pop Icons
Calling all fans of eclectic rockers Sparks: two compilations are coming from Repertoire Records, both collecting their late ’70s and early ’80s single output in two different ways. On August 13, the German label will release Shortcuts: The 7 Inch Mixes (1979-1984) and Extended: The 12 Inch Mixes (1979-1984), a pair of two-disc sets chronicling every side released by the group, in every size, on every label the band were signed to around the world. The brothers Mael – Ron and Russell, from Pacific Palisades, California – already had a major round of chart…
