The fourth in a series of comprehensive box sets chronicling David Bowie's entire career: Loving the Alien (1983-1988) covers a period that found Bowie at a popular peak yet somewhat creatively adrift. Once Let's Dance went supernova in 1983, as it was designed to do, Bowie's productivity slowed to a crawl: he knocked out the sequel, Tonight, in a year, then took three to deliver Never Let Me Down. By the end of the decade, he rediscovered his muse via the guitar skronk of Tin Machine, but Loving the Alien cuts off with Never Let Me Down, presented both in its original version and in a new incarnation containing tasteful instrumentation recorded in the wake of Bowie's death…
Surfing with the Alien belongs to its era like Are You Experienced? belongs to its own – perhaps it doesn't transcend its time the way the Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1967 debut does, but Joe Satriani's 1987 breakthrough can be seen as the gold standard for guitar playing of the mid- to late '80s, an album that captures everything that was good about the glory days of shred…
St. Paul and The Broken Bones release their new album The Alien Coast on ATO Records. Produced by Matt Ross-Spang, and featuring eleven new, original songs, The Alien Coast is the first St. Paul and The Broken Bones album tracked in the band’s hometown of Birmingham, AL. The arrangement allowed the octet to spend more time and tap a broader creative community than ever before, resulting in their most ambitious work to date. Led by singer and lyricist Paul Janeway - a former bank teller and preacher-in-training who learned to sing in his church choir - the octet explore thrilling new territory on The Alien Coast, a fever dream convergence of soul and psychedelia, stoner metal and funk, animated by the very “fire and brimstone” which Janeway invokes in the album’s opening line.