Ace of Cups

Ace Of Cups/ ‘Sing Your Dreams’/ High Moon Records

Ace of Cups, the pioneering all-women band from the ‘60s San Francisco psychedelic scene, will release their sophomore album Sing Your Dreams on September 18th via High Moon Records. The new album follows their warmly-received eponymous 2018 debut; a record which, in a testament to creative persistence, came out fifty years after their initial incarnation. Sing Your Dreams is a new collection of 12 songs and stories, produced by Dan Shea (Santana, Mariah Carey, Phil Collins, Bruce Hornsby), and features collaborations with Jackson Browne (who duets on album closer ‘Slowest River’), Sheila E. and the Escovedo Family, Bakithi Kumalo (whose iconic bass-playing was integral to the sound of Paul Simon’s Graceland), jam-band guitar luminary Steve Kimock (Jerry Garcia named him his ‘favorite unknown guitarist’), peace activist and counterculture icon Wavy Gravy, Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna), and David Freiberg (Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane/Starship).

Aloe Blacc

Aloe Blacc / ‘All Love Everything’ / BMG

All Love Everything is Aloe’s first album since his 2013 Grammy-nominated major label debut, Lift Your Spirit. All Love Everything was created through the lens of Aloe as a family man and is also  the singer-songwriter’s first collection of material written as a father, a journey that’s expanded his already heartfelt artistic palette. 

Angie McMahon

Angie McMahon/ Piano Salt/ Dualtone Records

Angie McMahon has announced Piano Salt (October 2nd / Dualtone Records), a riveting, stripped-down companion piece to last year's debut album Salt. After a truly breakout 2019 which saw her win the Grulke Prize at SXSW for Best Developing International Act (previously won by Courtney Barnett, CHVRCHES and Jade Bird), release her debut album Salt ("recommended if you like Fiona Apple and St. Vincent" per NPR Music) and open Hozier's massive US tour; 2020 has of course had some different plans.

Ferris & Sylvester/ ‘I Should Be On A Train’ EP/ LAB Records

Ferris & Sylvester -- the 2020 Americana UK Emerging Artist Award-winning duo of Issy Ferris and Archie Sylvester whose music “heads straight for the brain's joy receptors, and damned if it doesn't hit its target” (NPR) -- announce their latest EP I Should Be On A Train, out October 2nd on LAB Records.

Infinity Song/ Mad Love EP/ Roc Nation

On October 2, the fast-rising NYC-based music collective Infinity Song — composed of siblings Victory, Abraham, Angel, Israel and Thalia “Momo” Boyd — will share their Roc Nation debut EP Mad Love, an indelible introduction to their eclectic and effusive soul music. With an organic musicianship honed over years of pop-up performances in Central Park and the NYC Subway system, Mad Love presents a synthesis of cutting-edge production, vintage R&B songwriting, and a refreshingly positive lyrical outlook. It’s the sound of Black joy and self-love triumphing in a moment of darkness.

Brasstracks Livestream Mini Tour

GRAMMY® Award-winning duo Brasstracks (multi-instrumentalist Ivan Jackson and percussionist Conor Rayne) announce a mini livestream tour via Cadenza.tv that’ll take place on October 4th at 7pm ET at Brooklyn’s House of Yes to celebrate their new album, Golden Ticket (EQT Recordings + Capitol Records). The performance will also be streamed via Cadenza.tv to accommodate fans in Europe and Asia time zones (7pm BST & 7pm JST on October 5th).

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Kronos Quartet / ‘Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet & Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger’/ Smithsonian Folkways

The GRAMMY-winning Kronos Quartet has announced its new album Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger, a tribute to the music, political philosophy, and social impact of Pete Seeger, out October 9 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Joining the much-celebrated group are Sam Amidon — who appears on Kronos’ 2017 album Folk Songs (Nonesuch Records) — Maria Arnal, Brian Carpenter, Lee Knight, Meklit, and Aoife O’Donovan. These artists give voice to the plainspoken songs of struggle that Seeger both wrote and collected in his seventy-plus years as a musician, while Jacob Garchik and Kronos’ arrangements movingly (and seamlessly) translate his banjo-playing for the group’s two violins, viola, and cello. Together, the collective pays moving tribute to Seeger as a man and activist, and makes plain the continued relevance of the moral and political arguments he authored and amplified.

Loudon Wainwright III

Loudon Wainwright III / ‘I’d Rather Lead A Band’ / Thirty Tigers

Loudon Wainwright III has unveiled his new album, I’d Rather Lead A Band (October 9/Thirty Tigers). A collaboration with Vince Giordano and his band The Nighthawks, and producer and music supervisor Randall Poster, the 14-song collection is a loose, fresh, and “anti-nostalgic” take on classic songs from the 1920s and ‘30s featuring Wainwright as singer and band leader.    

Patty Smyth/ ‘It’s Abot Time’/ BMG

Patty Smyth announces her first album of brand new, original music in 28 years. Out October 9th on BMG, It's About Time pairs the same passion and ferocity the Grammy and Oscar nominee first introduced as the lead singer of Scandal with the hard-earned wisdom she's gained from decades of touring, writing, acting for film, and raising six kids with husband John McEnroe. Recorded in Nashville's Blackbird Studios and produced by Grammy-winner Dann Huff (Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, Kelly Clarkson), these six songs - plus covers of Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" and Tom Waits' "Downtown Train" - declare Smyth's return to rock n roll as an artist who has embraced a new stage of life, but hasn't shed the resolute and rambunctious defiance of her youth. 

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Leyla McCalla/ ‘Vari-Colored Songs’/ Smithsonian Folkways

Celebrated bilingual multi-instrumentalist, cellist and singer Leyla McCalla has announced the reissue of her debut album, 2014’s Vari-Colored Songs, out October 16 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Of this collection of her musical settings of poems by Langston Hughes alongside original compositions and traditional Haitian folk songs, McCalla says, “All of these songs are manifestos of my life as a Black, Haitian-American woman and the daughter of Haitian immigrants, and an homage to the humanity and creative spirit of Langston Hughes.”

Rockabye Baby!

Rockabye Baby!/ Lullaby Renditions of Pitbull/ CMH LAbel Group

Mr. Worldwide, Mr. 305 ... and now, Mr. Sleepy-Eyed: on October 16th, Rockabye Baby is putting out its latest pop-turned-lullaby epic, Lullaby Renditions of Pitbull.

For this latest release, the remix masters at Rockabye Baby have made bedtime the time of our lives. (Because you’ll actually get a full night’s sleep!) By transforming the mega-rapper and producer’s sizzling hot club hits into gentle, baby-friendly sleepy-time favorites, they delivered on this objective. 

Foreign Air/ ‘Good Morning Stranger’

Foreign Air - the DC/LA-based duo known for their “transcendent indie-rock-meets-electronica,” “forceful guitars” and “haunting vocals” (Billboard) - announce their debut album ‘Good Morning Stranger,’ out October 16th.

Northcote/ Let Me Roar/ Black Box Music

Canadian singer-songwriter and storyteller Northcote (Matthew Goud) announces his new album Let Me Roar, out October 23 via Black Box Music. Written in the wake of a low point in Goud’s life, Let Me Roar charts his journey out of darkness. Now not quite into the light, but at peace with the messiness of the things he cannot change, this Canadian troubadour shares stories of loss, addiction, friendship, parental sacrifice and more to portray his own journey of personal growth and self-acceptance with intimacy and immediacy.

Ben Harper/ Winter Is For Lovers/ ANTI-Records

Ben Harper has unveiled his new album Winter Is For Lovers (ANTI- Records), and in many ways his entire musical life has culminated in this moment. The solo recording, which features just Harper and his Monteleone lap steel guitar, is a 15-song work of original instrumental compositions imagined as a symphony. Harper has pushed musical boundaries since his 1994 debut and his lap steel guitar has played a tremendous role in his distinct sound throughout his career. But he’s never made an album that so purely distills his reverence for the instrument, and his mastery of it. 

William Prince/ Gospel First Nation/ Glassnote Records

Xavier Omär/ if You Feel/ RCA Records

R&B trailblazer Xavier Omär announces his upcoming LP if You Feel set for release on October 23 via RCA Records. if You Feel is the San Antonio native’s follow-up to Moments Spent Loving You, a collaborative album with producer Sango.

“This album means finding a moment for every emotion I may have, whether in love, friendship, or how I feel about myself, and allowing myself to fully feel that emotion even if it’s negative," Omär explains. “I need to feel the fullness of each emotion to either keep it with me or learn from it.” 

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band/ Letter To You/ Columbia Records

Bruce Springsteen’s new studio album with the E Street Band, Letter To You, will be released by Columbia Records on October 23. A rock album fueled by the band's heart-stopping, house-rocking signature sound, the 12 track Letter To You is Springsteen's 20th studio album, and was recorded at his home studio in New Jersey.

Peter Guralnick

Peter Guralnick/ Anthology Looking To Get Lost: Adventures In Music And Writing/ Little, Brown

On October 27, Little, Brown will publish Looking To Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing, the first book in five years by best-selling and award-winning author Peter Guralnick.  Nearly fifty years after the publication of his first anthology of music writing, Guralnick is sharing his most personal collection to date as he pulls back the curtain on the writing process itself, and some of his memorable encounters with music icons like Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, Eric Clapton, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Howlin’ Wolf, Solomon Burke, Merle Haggard, and Dick Curless. A starred Kirkus review calls it “revelatory” while historian Douglas Brinkley has hailed it as “a pulsing jukebox of a memoir and cultural history…a literary masterpiece.”

Cory Henry

Cory Henry/ Something to Say/ Culture Collective

Singer/songwriter, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and all-around keyboard master Cory Henry announces his new studio album ‘Something To Say.’ Due on October 30, the eleven-track collection further highlights Henry’s self-described genre of “future soul.” Born in the midst of one of the most challenging times our world has ever seen, ‘Something To Say’ tackles subjects like love, breakups, social consciousness, injustices and the effects of being emotionally drained.

Andrew Bird

Andrew Bird/ Hark!/ Loma Vista Recordings

Andrew Bird has just announced Hark!, a brand new holiday album out October 30th on Loma Vista Recordings. Building upon last year's EP of the same name, the thirteen-song set delivers freshly recorded originals - including "Christmas in April," perhaps the first COVID-inspired holiday song, which Andrew wrote during lockdown ("when will we know/if we can meet under the mistletoe?") - plus holiday classics and wintertime reimaginings of seasonally ambiguous deep cuts by John Cale, John Prine and Handsome Family. For the first time since 2002's Ballad of the Red Shoes, Andrew Bird collaborated on the album artwork with his mother, who was also the inspiration for Hark!'s exquisite, solo violin arrangement of "Mille Cherubini in Coro" - her favorite piece from the Pavarotti and Vienna Boys Choir performance she and Andrew would always listen to when he was a child. 

Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello/ ‘Hey Clockface’/ Concord Records

PREP

PREP/ ‘PREP’/ Bright Antenna Records

British indie-pop four piece PREP announce their self-titled, debut album out October 30th via Bright Antenna Records. Drawing from contemporary influences such as Cory Wong of Vulfpeck (they even have a song together), Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Thundercat, Tyler the Creator, and Mac DeMarco, PREP is ready to share their funktronic, synthetic and explosive sound in the form of a full length LP. 

Common/ A Beautiful Revolution Pt 1/ Loma Vista Recordings

Common announces the release of his new project, A Beautiful Revolution Pt 1, out Friday, October 30, through Loma Vista Recordings. This instant hip hop classic and call to action from the modern-day renaissance man – a GRAMMY-, Emmy-, and Oscar-winning artist, activist, actor, and two time New York Times Bestselling author – features seven new songs and two new interludes that catch Common at a new prime in his career. With a core band that includes Robert Glasper (keys), Karriem Riggins (drums), Burniss Travis (bass), Isaiah Sharkey (guitar), and PJ (vocals), plus features from Black Thought and Lenny Kravitz, A Beautiful Revolution Pt 1 is music meant to “uplift, heal, and inspire listeners dealing with racial injustices as well as other social injustices,” says Common.