Black Diamond

Chicago's Black Diamond debuts on We Jazz Records with their new album Furniture Of the Mind Rearranging on 5th July. Co-led by Artie Black and Hunter Diamond (composers, saxophones, and other woodwinds), Black Diamond appears in both quartet and duo formations. The first three album sides present the quartet, complete with long standing band members Matt Ulery (double bass) and Neil Hemphill (drums), under the heading Furniture Of the Mind. The remaining two tracks on side D fall under the title The Mind Rearranging, with Black and Diamond presenting a meditative duo encounter of two tenor saxophones.

Robert Forster's endearingly fey persona, equal parts Bryan Ferry and gangly bookstore clerk, reaches full flower on the Go-Betweens' fourth album, which tempers the angularity and occasional claustrophobia of the band's previous work with a new airiness and nervous romanticism. The lighter sound can be partly attributed to the growing influence of co-leader Grant McLennan, whose wistful "Cattle and Cane" and "Bachelor Kisses" lent grace to the Go-Betweens' sometimes stilted early records. McLennan's touch is all over Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express his "In the Core of a Flame," a love song that manages to be at once tenderhearted and impatient, is a highlight but this is still mostly Forster's show, and as such is a revelation.

When Black Pumas made their self-titled debut in 2019, the Austin-bred duo set off a reaction almost as combustible and rapturous as their music itself. Along with earning a career total of seven Grammy Award nominations (including Album Of The Year) and winning praise from leading outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, singer/songwriter Eric Burton and guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada achieved massive success as a live act, touring large theatres all over Europe and North and South America and delivering a transcendent show Burton aptly refers to as “electric church.”

black midi’s new album Cavalcade is a dynamic, hellacious, and inventive follow-up to 2019’s widely-praised Schlagenheim, “a labyrinth with hairpin-turn episodes and lyrics full of dourly corrosive observations” (New York Times, Best Albums of 2019). It scales beautiful new heights, pulling widely from a plethora of genres and influences, reaching ever upwards from an already lofty base of early achievements.

The most successful album of Neil Diamond's entire career remains his soundtrack for the film "The Jazz Singer", in which he also starred. Released in late 1980, the LP peaked at number three in both the US and the UK, earned a Grammy nomination, yielded three huge hit singles and has sold over five million copies.

The Diamond Family Archive are a unique English lo-fi, psych-folk, multi-instrumentalist roving ensemble led by the song writing of Laurence Collyer. Live, The Diamond Family Archive craft a mesmeric live-show from drums, acoustic guitars, lots of FX pedals, keyboards set to drone, tape delay, loops and bellows, bows, harmonicas, cosmic harps, toys and broken cymbals. All coming together to create music which holds echos of post-rock, traditional folk, spiritual soul music, psychedelic rock and lo-fi.

There is no overestimating the historical power and influence of Shania Twain's Come on Over. You can hear it in the music of Taylor Swift (all the way up through 1989, easily), as well as Carrie Underwood, Kelsea Ballerini, Carly Pearce, Kelly Clarkson, Maren Morris, latter day The Chicks, even Harry Styles.

Formed in 1976 under the riff-rolling leadership of guitarist Brian Tatler, Diamond Head would quickly establish themselves as a vanguard of the exploding New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene. This, their 8th studio album is the band's first since 2016's self-titled release.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine, “an exciting, boundary-defying performer” (Washington Post) known for her “bravura technique and soulful musicianship” (New York Times), headlines a groundbreaking album of blues-influenced classical works for solo violin and violin and piano by 20th and 21st century composers of African descent.

Starless and Bible Black is even more powerful and daring than its predecessor, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, with jarring tempo shifts, explosive guitar riffs, and soaring, elegant, and delicate violin and Mellotron parts scattered throughout its 41 minutes, often all in the same songs. The album was on the outer fringes of accessible progressive rock, with enough musical ideas explored to make Starless and Bible Black more than background for tripping the way Emerson, Lake & Palmer's albums were.