Some all-time big hitters and some less known grooves. Really decent stuff.
1985: The Miracle Year is a previously unreleased live set from Minnesota punk trio Hüsker Dü and it is honestly absolutely brilliant. The recordings were intended for a live album but were shelved, then thought to be lost forever in a house fire, but thankfully unearthed and man alive, do they ever kick like a mule! There is something about their SST years (also Minutemen) that feel as eerily relevant as they must have done forty years ago.
This all-new 4LP/2CD edition includes Beau Sorenson’s restoration of an entire January, 30 1985 set, twenty extra live tracks from the year’s touring schedule, and a deluxe booklet detailing twelve months of history-making music. They are wonderful things.
Tell you what, been really enjoying going in on Goldie’s Timeless album this week, that is lavishly back in print and celebrating its 30th Anniversary. If you did listen to it in 1995, then listening again in 2025 is pretty evocative stuff, you drop back in pretty quick. It really was audacious stuff.
+ Available on very limited double Gold Swirl Vinyl.
+ Available on double white vinyl too.
Tom Waits’ Nighthawks at the Diner - his third LP - receives a 50th Anniversary pressing this week. The album was recorded over four sessions in July in the Los Angeles Record Plant studio in front of a small audience to recreate the atmosphere of a jazz club. I don’t know about you, but I can’t read a menu without narrating it in my head like Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson).
+ Double Yellow vinyl.
Captured Tracks release a 10th anniversary edition of Mac DeMarco’s Another One album. Lo-fi melancholy and sweet jams with clever changes. He is good you know.
+ This limited edition 10 year anniversary pressing collects both Another One and newly remastered Another One Demos on 2LPs housed in a gatefold jacket and pressed on clear & blue Far Rockaway vinyl. Includes a 12-page booklet with new liners written by Mac, and previously unpublished photos from the era by Laura-Lynn Petrick.
Hailing from the small Zimbabwean town of Kwekwe, Zig-Zag Band burst onto the scene in the 1980s with a sound they called Chigiyoa. A vibrant fusion of reggae, traditional rhythms, brass arrangements, and mbira-inspired guitar. Chigiyo Music Kings, really enjoying getting to know this one better.
The Pogues’ utterly raucous Rum Sodomy & The Lash celebrated its 40th anniversary back in August and we have a double pressing on Red Marble vinyl to celebrate this week. It needs no introduction, really, does it? Influence, fairly seminal, and really… raucous!
We have the first three Black Sabbath albums as deluxe editions this week to include alternative and instrumental bonus tracks. Double pressings of the eponymous Black Sabbath, Paranoid and Master of Reality, that were unbelievably originally released within 18 months of one another at the start of the seventies. An amazing band during that period. Black Sabbath, Paranoid and Master of Reality.
This week’s Best New Reissues ends with two absolutely fantastic releases under the Dinked Archive badge.
Elaenia is the debut LP from Sam Shepherd as Floating Points, an improvisational and inspired set. Drawing on classical, jazz, electronic, soul and Brazilian influences, it moves with warmth and fluidity. Utterly timeless and beautifully composed, it’s a glowing, detailed record that feels as expressive as it is precise. An absolute treasure.
+ Available as a limited Dinked Archive Edition.
The Violet Hour is just an absolutely gorgeous album of hazed-out psychedelic pop from the London-based trio, The Clientele. Swirling, reverb-drenched tones with dreamlike imagery and curious, hallucinogenic asides. The patchwork nature of it just makes it all feel so tangible, it really is an affecting 50 minutes.
+ Available as a limited Dinked Archive Edition.
