paradiseofbachelors

Terry Allen Examines Love and the War in Afghanistan on New Song “Bad Kiss.”

The first taste of a three-song suite—titled “American Childhood”—that forms the emotional core of upcoming album Just Like Moby Dick, “Bad Kiss” tells of a high school girl who enlists, leaving home and an abbreviated romance for the war-torn Middle East. But history repeats itself in an endlessly stuttering cycle of brutality and death: “It’s just the war/Same fucking war/It’s always been/Never ends.” Also, see images from Terry’s exhibition at Nina Johnson.

Krampus Day Sale: 20% off through December 13th + Grammy Nom News.

Today is the ninth anniversary of our very first release, Said I Had a Vision (two songs of which appear in the Oxford American’s new SC Music Issue.) Just in time, we’ve received our first Grammy nomination, for Best Album Notes for Terry Allen’s Pedal Steal + Four Corners. So there are ample reasons for celebration. Use coupon code KRAMPUS for 20% off all non-preorder items.

Red River Dialect Share New Video for “BV Kistvaen” + February Tour Dates.

Following the release of their album Abundance Welcoming Ghosts in September, Red River Dialect have announced a string of UK tour dates for February 2020. The band also play their sold-out album launch tomorrow night, Saturday 16 November at Servant Jazz Quarters. To celebrate, they’re sharing the beautifully animated video for “BV Kistvaen”, made by animator and band member Robin Lane Roberts.

Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band: Just Like Moby Dick (PoB-055)

Allen’s heartbreaking, hilarious new album, the spiritual successor to Lubbock (on everything) (1979) and his first set of new songs since 2013, explores all manner of tragicomic disasters, abandonments, betrayals, bad memories, failures, and fare-thee-wells, featuring the full Panhandle Mystery Band, including co-producer Charlie Sexton, Shannon McNally, and Jo Harvey Allen; mainstays Bukka Allen, Richard Bowden, and Lloyd Maines.

Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band: Just Like Moby Dick.

When the circus comes to town / In the city of the vampires / And there’s nary a soul to be found / When the sun glints off the church spires / The citizens have all gone to their basement / To wait for the night time in their coffins / So you better go exercise the elephants / Ohh Ohh while you can

Itasca’s Sublime Spring Is Out Today.

Today is El Día de los Muertos, an apt day to celebrate Itasca’s captivating, sublime new album Spring, which is now in stores and streaming worldwide. Songwriter Kayla Cohen’s careful, impressionistic prose and swoon-worthy arrangements have earned acclaim from, among others, The Fader, NPR, Uncut, and MOJO, whose lead review lights on themes particularly redolent on the Day of the Dead.

Itasca Shares Werner Herzog-Inspired “Only a Traveler” Video.

Kayla Cohen directed the video, shot on Super 8 in both CA and NM. “It’s influenced heavily by the opening sequence in Heart of Glass, the film by Werner Herzog, which shows blurred scenes of Bavaria, Germany and Yellowstone National Park, against a soundtrack by Popul Vuh,” she says. Spring is out Nov. 1. Check out rave lead reviews from MOJO and Uncut.

Red River Dialect’s Abundance Welcoming Ghosts is Out Today.

Now available to stream and purchase worldwide. Recorded right before songwriter David Morris moved to a Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia, and featuring guest appearances from Joan Shelley and Tara Jane O’Neil, the record has earned acclaim from Uncut, MOJO, and notably, The Guardian, who chose it as their Folk Album of the Month, perceptively describing it as “anti-colonialist folk … a wide-eyed, curious creature, willingly alert to the world.”