+sylvan

In a sense, that tip of the tongue speculation is both one of the great draws and one of the drawbacks of Nad’s forthcoming long-player The Bride Said No. Obviously he’s coming in with a fair amount of Hackett-shaped baggage, but it’s difficult to completely shake the nagging feeling that he might at any time break into a medley of The Musical Box / Supper’s Ready or present a ready Ian Anderson cackle (coincidentally drummer Doane Perry is among those who serve). At one point he even makes a move on the middle ground occupied by the artists formerly known as Stiltskin. Obviously, if that sounds like your bag, then you’re going to be high in hog heaven by the end of this satisfyingly 33 RPM record-sized collection of brash and blustering epics.

In a sense, that tip of the tongue speculation is both one of the great draws and one of the drawbacks of Nad’s forthcoming long-player The Bride Said No. Obviously he’s coming in with a fair amount of Hackett-shaped baggage, but it’s difficult to completely shake the nagging feeling that he might at any time break into a medley of The Musical Box / Supper’s Ready or present a ready Ian Anderson cackle (coincidentally drummer Doane Perry is among those who serve). At one point he even makes a move on the middle ground occupied by the artists formerly known as Stiltskin.

For the fourth volume of music by Stephen Jaffe, the composer writes that he is "searching for sounds and musical relationships to create something new, like a poetry–where listeners may discover lyrical expression and an arc of narrative." These premiere recordings of three works written between 2006 and 2009, offer a program featuring Jaffe's collaborations with the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Borromeo String Quartet, and National Symphony Orchestra members David Hardy, cello and Lambert Orkis, piano.

The Main Thing delivers the band’s most inspired and self-aware set of songs to date, created over the course of a year at upstate New York’s Marcata Sound. Following his work on 2011’s Days, engineer Kevin McMahon returns as producer, and, for the first time ever, Real Estate have brought in outside instrumentalists and special guests like Sylvan Esso, whose vocalist Amelia Meath features on first single, “Paper Cup.” Across the album’s 13 interrogative tracks – as full of depth, strangeness, and contradictions as they are lifting hooks – the band balances existential, environmental, and political anxieties with fatherly sentiments, self-satirizing lyrics, forever-lively guitar lines, and shimmering strings.

For nearly 60 years, John Cale has been reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. MERCY, Cale’s first full album in a decade, moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronic torment toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future with the help of some of music’s most curious young minds. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; MERCY is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind.