Different shades of heavy, dream pop swirls, deep swoon, and a boatload of Latin bangers.
We are starting this Best New Reissues dispatch with the heaviest first this week, and a beautifully chonking box from the Nick Drake estate. Pressed on 4LP or 4CD sets, the Making Of Five Leaves Left includes unaccompanied demos, studio outtakes and previously unheard songs that tell the story of how Nick Drake’s debut album ‘Five Leaves Left’ came to be released on Island Records in 1969. It’s not like Five Leaves Left was heavily produced in the studio, so these raw and skeletal versions aren't exactly night and day to the final album, but the intimacy and fragility really are quite stirring stuff. They really are exquisite things and we do not have many left. Don’t miss out.
We have a couple of celebratory editions from Mazzy Star this week that we’ve been enjoying plenty on the stereo. We have an ‘Aqua and Blue Marble’ pressing of the debut She Hangs Brightly album, and a ‘Bone’ vinyl pressing of the band’s third LP, Among My Swan. Hope Sandoval’s whispered vocals remain deeply enchanting, and for all their dream pop credentials, Mazzy Star always leaned into the darker edges of psychedelic sound. Full of pensive melancholia.
Please note, Mazzy Star’s second LP, So Tonight That I Might See, is also being repressed, but that one lands late in August.
Richard Hawley’s sublime Coles Corner album gets a nice twentieth anniversary pressing this week, and it is sounding pretty delicious on a Half Speed Master. His third studio album is just a master class in subtlety, full of vintage hues and graceful performances. It was really very different to everything around at the time, with lavish and swooning production wrapping around his rich baritone voice. On receiving the Mercury Prize for their debut Arctic Monkeys LP, fellow Sheffield songwriter Alex Turner announced "Somebody call 999. Richard Hawley's been robbed" about their fellow nominee. It remains an album to get totally lost in.
Amazonas is a mid seventies LP from legendary vibraphonist Cal Tjader, an explosive and grooving Brazilian jazz fusion inspired set. Recorded in LA, it is a Latin-hot blur of flutes, synths and floating vibes. We’ve been enjoying this a lot.
+ This Jazz Dispensary Top Shelf reissue of Amazonas was cut from the original analogue tapes (AAA) by Kevin Gray, pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI, and comes packaged in a tip-on jacket.
Originally released in 1998, Electro-Shock Blues is one of the most beautiful but emotionally crushing records in the EELS / Mark Oliver Everett vaults. Written in the wake of tragic personal losses, it is a raw and beautiful exploration of grief. As ever, plenty of dark humour too, but it’s the emotional directness that gets you.
+ This special 2-disc edition is pressed on solid blue 140 gram 12” vinyl at 45 RPM, offering upgraded sound from the original 10” 33 RPM.
Lastly today, and weirdly also ending on the heaviest, we have Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method, the fourth full-length studio album by the mighty American drone rock band Earth. It is actually one of their least droning in the way they usually bring neolithic drones, more centered as a sort of grizzled companion to Paris, Texas with rattling and sand blasted guitar tones. The album was influenced by Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian (every song title on the album is named after a phrase found in the text of the novel) and the way they channel hard and raw life really is astonishing stuff. Like a kick to the chest from a mule. We think? Play loud.
+ Limited 2LP pressed on "Blood Meridian" vinyl, including a 18"x 24" poster.