Guitars like divine sunrise, the sound of heartbreak, funk and soul essentials and Neil with The Horse.

We start this new week (and month as it happens) with a proper spiritual cleanser. Drag City presents a reissue of guitarist Lee Underwood’s utterly sublime California Sigh. A 1988 guitar opus if ever we’ve heard one. Besides spending the 1970’s as a music journalist for DownBeat, Rolling Stone and LA Times, he was perhaps best known as guitarist for Tim Buckley, bringing all the magic and sparkle to that incredible run of Elektra albums. Although you can hear that familiar picked-string trippiness, California Sigh is all about Underwood and the way he brings the tempo up and down is really lush, with field recordings of birds and crashing waves for that extra bit of heartstring plucking. Great liner notes from Byron Coley, this one is an album to just bathe in.

Jagjaguwar release a deluxe 10 Year Anniversary Edition pressing of Sharon Van Etten’s Are We There album. Whereas 2012’s Tramp had doubtless been her breakthrough, the self produced Are We There that followed just two years later is a real masterclass in intimacy and highlights what a great writer she is and her ability also to connect directly with the listener. She’s always really good, but this one is especially really good!

+ Pressed on limited Black/Silver/Clear - Tri-Colour Split colour vinyl.
Weird Vacation have made a special anniversary pressing of Liam Hayes’ 1998 More You Becomes You album under his Plush name. Such lush off-kilter pop weirdness, he really is a killer songwriter. This pressing has been remastered from the original tapes by Jason Hillier with new Digital and DL masters created by Bob Weston who also recut new lacquers for the vinyl reissue. Oversleeve and White vinyl pressing.

Merge have gone into the esteemed vaults of The Mountain Goats for a new pressing of 2000’s The Coroner’s Gambit album. Hasn’t been around for ages this one and John Darnielle has written new notes for it.

Animal Collective’s iconic Merriweather Post Pavilion is reissued this week on double colour vinyl. We wrote a little more about that trippy beast here for Sunday Classic.

We have a couple of really superb compilations for you today.

Firstly, Soul Jazz Records Present - Arthur Baker presents Breaker’s Revenge - Original B-Boy and B-Girl Breakdance Classics 1970-84. Full of the hits that filled the crates of ​​Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, this really is all killer and will get you in fine form ahead of Breakdancings debut this month at the Olympics.

Then, Numero are coming in hard with the twelfth episode of their Shanghai'd Soul series. A rough and rugged collection of underground soul stompers. We don’t know how they keep turning them up! Pressed on limited Yellow & Black Splatter vinyl.

Some serious juice via Craft Recordings. Originally released in 1974 on the Stax imprint Truth Records, The Round Robin Monopoly’s funk-soul extravaganza Alpha returns to vinyl for the first time in 50 years! It’s pretty hard not to roll across furniture when this bad boy is in full swing.
So how about this then folks. Neil Young unveils Early Daze, a set of recordings that he made with Crazy Horse back in 1968 that act as a companion to his classic ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere’. This was Young’s first band after the breakup of Buffalo Springfield and Early Daze represents the first time that many of these iconic originals have been collected together. Unreleased and alternative versions of Dance Dance Dance, Wonderin’, Down By The River, Helpless and Cinnamon Girl, this really is the good good.

You all know how much we love Neil Young, but man oh man is this ever a killer record!

+ Available on a limited and exclusive Clear vinyl pressing.