Album of the Week – 14-06-19

Ok, so everyone knows we love Bill Callahan. If you’re not sure about it, you can read our review here.

“The songs here are brittle and brief and as already mentioned it can feel like one (very) long song. But the material really is of the highest quality. Listening to it is enough to make any Sunday afternoon absolutely blissful and make everything feel alright in the world. This album will not be far off the top of many people’s album of the year lists. To quote Writing, where he sings “it feels good to be writing again” and later “it feels good to be singing again”. It sure does Bill.” – Killian Laher

There is another album released this week that we also love, and that’s Perfect Version from Chastity Belt lead singer Julia Shapiro. Yes, it’s quite lovely.

“Julia recorded virtually every instrument on Perfect Version herself. Throughout the record Shapiro tries on different ways of living, all thematically centered around the idea of what it would be like to be a perfect version of yourself. “How can someone be so blindly confident/I wanna know that trick,” she wonders on “Natural,” the opening track that begins using another person as a mirror and then pans back to a bigger picture: what would it take to really love yourself? 

When Julia Shapiro flew home from a cancelled Chastity Belt tour in April 2018, everything in her life felt out of control. Dealing with health issues, freshly out of a relationship, and in the middle of an existential crisis, she realized halfway through a tour supporting her band’s third album I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone that she was going through too much to continue. “I was really struggling; I was really depressed. I felt like I couldn’t sing or be a person,” Shapiro recalls. “At that point I couldn’t even imagine playing a show again, I was so over it.””

Other Albums released today – 14 June 2019

Bad Books – III

Baroness – Gold & Grey

Bastille – Doom Days

Bruce Springsteen – Western Stars

Iron & Wine + Calexico – Years To Burn

Kate Tempest – The Book of Traps And Lessons

Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real – Turn Off The News (Build A Garden)

Madonna – Madame X

Mattiel – Satis Factory

Old Man Luedecke – Easy Money

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood – Servants Of The Sun

Two Door Cinema Club – False Alarm

X Ambassadors – Orion

​Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Black Star