June 2022
03 June
03 June
Andrew Bird/ ‘Inside Problems’/ Loma Vista
On his brand new album Inside Problems, Andrew Bird acknowledges all of the complex thoughts, questions and middle-of-the-night obsessions swirling around in each of us. Arriving June 3rd via Loma Vista Recordings, Inside Problems is a collection of eleven original songs that take on those inner demons that run amok when things get especially quiet. It's a lush and rousing entry to his acclaimed, constantly evolving and perennially curious career.
03 June
Fantastic Negrito/ ‘White Jesus Black Problems’/ Storefront Records
Three-time Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, musician and activist Fantastic Negrito (neé Xavier Dphrepaulezz) announces his most ambitious project to date, White Jesus Black Problems, out June 3 via his own label, Storefront Records. To accompany the full-length studio album, Fantastic Negrito created an entire companion film set to the music. White Jesus Black Problems was written, recorded, and filmed in Oakland, where the artist grew up and currently resides. The multi-media work is based on the true story of Negrito’s seventh generation white Scottish grandmother (Grandma Gallamore), an indentured servant, living in a common law marriage with his seventh generation African American enslaved grandfather (Grandfather Courage); in open defiance of the racist, separatist, laws of 1750s colonial Virginia.
03 June
Adrian Quesada/ ‘Boleros Psicodélicos’/ ATO Records
Adrian Quesada announces the release of Boleros Psicodélicos, a sprawling and singular tribute to the golden era of balada music. Out June 3 on ATO Records, the brand new album from the GRAMMY-winning guitarist, producer and Black Pumas co-founder serves as a celebration of the super funky, slightly delirious and deeply soulful sounds that transcended the cultural boundaries of Latin America throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Featuring vocals from Puerto Rican icon, GRAMMY-winner and former Calle 13 member iLe, Colombian-American visionary Gabriel Garzón-Montano, Mexican R&B star Girl Ultra, as well as Angelica Garcia, Gaby Moreno, contributions from living legends such as Marc Ribot and Beastie Boys musician Money Mark, and many more, Boleros Psicodélicos consists primarily of original Adrian Quesada compositions, as well as covers of La Lupe's "Puedes Decir De Mí," Jeanette's "El Muchacho De Los Ojos Tristes" and other balada classics. All twelve tracks were produced, engineered, mixed and largely performed by Adrian Quesada, honoring and extending the influence of a personal obsession that he has cultivated over the past 20 years.
03 June
Nataly Dawn/ ‘Gardenview’
Berkeley-based roots singer-songwriter Nataly Dawn is known as the lead vocalist of YouTube sensation Pomplamoose, whose highly creative, energetic videos have garnered 380 million views over the last decade. With Dawn at the helm, the band grew into a media company, releasing a song and video every week, engaging dozens of contractors and several full-time employees. While Pomplamoose continued to release weekly music when the pandemic hit, Dawn, like so many, felt exhausted and aimless. In an attempt to re-learn to love what she viewed as the most “unlovable” parts of herself, she shifted her focus away from the high-energy band and toward her acoustic guitar. “I was just doing what everyone else was doing - trying not to be too hard on myself. But the isolation wasn’t making that easy.” After many long walks, hard talks, daily reminders to befriend herself, Gardenview was brought to life. Due out June 3, the brand new ethereal collection transcends genre and time, and it ultimately proves why Dawn has been named a “force to be reckoned with” (Consequence).
10 June
American Aquarium/ ‘Chicamacomico’/ Losing Side Records/Thirty Tigers
American Aquarium announce their new studio album Chicamacomico out June 10 via Thirty Tigers – a heart-wrenching reflection on loss that finds frontman BJ Barham scaling new expressive heights, resulting in the band’s most elemental and emotionally resonant work to date. Named after a former life-saving station built in 1874 on the Outer Banks of the band’s native North Carolina, and produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Nathaniel Rateliff, Hurray for the Riff Raff) at Sonic Ranch, the ten songs on Chicamacomico are shot through with a sense of loss: of life (Barham recently lost his mother and grandmother), of a child, a spouse, or one’s way in the world.
10 June
Michaela Anne/ ‘Oh To Be That Free’/ Yep Roc
Michaela Anne has announced the forthcoming release of her new album Oh To Be That Free, due out June 10 via Yep Roc Records. Written before the foundation-shaking events she faced during the global pandemic - including nearly losing her mother to a hemorrhagic stroke while pregnant with her first child - the Nashville songwriter found a deeply-prescient new significance in these songs while confronting life’s unimaginable challenges. “It’s kind of surreal the way this record turned out to be exactly what I needed to hear when I was at my lowest,” she reflects. "These songs became healers, almost as if I’d written them as letters to my future self.”
10 June
Nick Mulvey/ ‘New Mythology’/ Fiction Records
“The time of the lone wolf is done” is the first totemic lyric from Mercury Prize-nominated Nick Mulvey’s new single “Star Nation,” an immediate call to personal and environmental action, and a microscope into the transformative journey Nick has gone on over the five years since his critically acclaimed second record Wake Up Now. “Star Nation” is both a tender and stark beginning, which comments on the individualistic human systems that have caused climate change, with a stunning video directed by photographer Kate Bellm in Mallorca, Spain. The song sets the scene for Mulvey’s third album, New Mythology, to be released June 10 (Fiction Records). New Mythologyis an album that centers on “interbeing”; a collection of songs that meets this moment in time head-on and shows Mulvey’s exceptional talent for putting complex, philosophical ideas into three-minute songs.
10 June
Elvis Costello & Allan Mayes/ ‘Rusty: The Resurrection of Rust’/ EMI/Capitol
Elvis Costello and his partner in his first band Rusty, Allan Mayes, have reunited for, as Costello puts it, “the record we would have cut when we were 18, if anyone had let us."
Costello - then, D.P. MacManus - joined Mayes’ band Rusty on New Year's Day 1972, and while for the next twelve months they played dozens of gigs, from almost deserted clubs to one of Liverpool's most beautiful Victorian recital halls and even ventured into the unknown lands, near Widnes, they never made it to the recording studio.
17 June
girlfriends/ ‘(e)motion sickness’/ Big Noise
(e)motion sickness is the highly anticipated follow-up to the bands’ self-titled debut, which was produced by John Feldmann (5 Seconds Of Summer, blink-182, The Used), and included standout tracks like “California,” “Where Were You” (featuring Travis Barker), and “Jessica.” Girlfriends conjure songs that are once pleasingly familiar, warmly unique and passionately vulnerable and (e)motion sickness is just that.
17 June
Coffey Anderson/ ‘Come On With It’ EP/ Riser House Records
When it comes to new music, Riser House Records' Coffey Anderson is ready to 'Come On With It,' revealing the forthcoming release of his 8-track EP — out June 17.
Featuring a collaboration with Kentucky troubadour Dillon Carmichael and tunes written by some of country music's biggest hitmakers, including Florida Georgia Line's Tyler Hubbard and Jon Pardi, 'Come On With It' serves as the Bangs, TX, native's first full project in more than three years. The collection of tunes continues to build on Anderson's neo-traditional style — a signature, nostalgic-driven sound that has defined the trailblazer's career for more than 20 years and led to his starring role in the Netflixreality series about his life, 'Country Ever After.'
17 June
Pharis & Jason Romero/ ‘Tell ’Em You Were Gold’/ Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Pharis and Jason Romero—whose old-time, country-folk, and early roots music has made them three-time Juno Award and seven-time Canadian Folk Music Award winners—have announced the release of their new album, Tell ’Em You Were Gold, out June 17th, 2022 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. It’s Pharis and Jason’s seventh album as a duo, and the first since 2020’s Bet on Love, which won praise from the BBC and NPR; American Songwriter said, “To call Bet on Love anything other than masterful would be a disservice.”
17 June
Wild Up/ ‘Julius Eastman Vol. 2: Joy Boy’/ New Amsterdam Records
On June 17, 2022, the acclaimed Los Angeles-based new music collective Wild Up will release Julius Eastman Vol. 2: Joy Boy, the follow-up to last year’s Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine, a record that was hailed “a masterpiece” (The New York Times), “instantly recognizable” (Vogue), “absorbing” (Pitchfork, in its 8.1 review), and “singularly jubilant” (NPR, who placed Femenine among its top 10 records of 2021, across all genres). Arriving, once more, on New Amsterdam Records, Julius Eastman Vol. 2: Joy Boy is the second entry in Wild Up’s seven-volume anthology celebrating Eastman, the late composer whose musical vision was repeatedly dismissed during its day, but is now being unearthed to critical acclaim. It includes performances of never-before-recorded compositions including “Joy Boy” and “Buddha.”
17 June
17 June
BLKBOK/ ‘Black Book DLUX’/ icons+giants
Neoclassical pianist and Detroit native BLKBOK is set to soundtrack this year’s Juneteenth celebrations with the deluxe version of his debut album 'Black Book'. Arriving on June 17 via icons+giants, ‘Black Book DLUX’ is a timely natural continuation of BLKBOK’s critically-acclaimed debut as a composer, reflecting on pertinent social issues, with counterpoints, and sustaining a dialogue through his thought-provoking pieces. The package includes 11 new interstitial poems woven throughout the album, written and narrated by award-winning Jamaican poet Lauren Delapenha.
24 June
Ibrahim Maalouf & Angélique Kidjo / ‘Queen of Sheba’
Ibrahim Maalouf and Angélique Kidjo have announced that their new album Queen Of Sheba will be released June 24. While these two superstars of international music have collaborated before, this is their very first album together. Maalouf is a world-renowned trumpeter, composer and multi-instrumentalist who has sold out the biggest arena in his home country of France and was recently a musical guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Kidjo is a 5-time GRAMMY winner (winning Best Global Album for her latest album Mother Nature at the 2022 Awards) and recently named a Time 100 Most Influential Person.