Encore Records

Joan Osborne

Bring It On Home

For Bring It On Home, Osborne once more digs into the soul, blues, and R&B wellspring.

Co-producing with Jack Petruzzelli and using her road band, a horn section, and guests, she turns in the rawest, most kinetic moment in her recording career thus far.

The choice of material is stellar.

Ultimately, there isn’t a performance here that isn’t drenched with passion and a true stylist’s sense of invention.

This isn’t a reverential recording; it’s authoritative; she makes these songs her own. Bring It On Home carries Osborne’s mature voice in way that’s never been heard on her studio recordings, making it stand head and shoulders above them.

Paul Weller

Sonik Kicks

Sonik Kicks features 14 brand new tracks and includes special guest appearances from both Noel Gallagher and Graham Coxon.

With Sonik Kicks Paul Weller once again shakes up his palate and stirs his influences anew. He mixes pop art punch with soulful communication; jazzy explorations into Psychedelia and dub with razor-sharp melodies and abstract soundscapes with clear- eyed forest-folk.

Mars Volta

Noctourniquet

While Noctourniquet was, in typical Mars Volta fashion, written by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala and produced by Rodriguez-Lopez, the album explores musical territories previously uncharted in the duo’s 20 or so years of creating music together.

The spectrum of musical and emotional textures conceived and created by Rodriguez-Lopez on Noctourniquet ranges from the opening bombast of “The Whip Hand” to the menacing crawl of “The Malkin Jewel” punctuated throughout by hypnotic melodies and borderline electro-ambient washes, most notably in the epic “In Absentia. ”

The bold diversity of the new material combined with Rodriguez-Lopez’s assured producer’s hand guiding The Mars Volta’s most confident and refined performances to date make Noctourniquet an early contender for this year’s most challenging and rewarding listen.

Esperanza Spalding

Radio Music Society

Deluxe CD/DVD edition includes bonus DVD. 

Among its many strengths, Radio Music Society is a celebration of the men and women who have helped cultivate Spalding’s talent, as well as those who have nurtured her vision and inspired her along the way. In addition to longtime partners Joe Lovano, keyboard player Leo Genovese and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, the ranks contain Jazz legends Jack DeJohnette and Billy Hart; guitar heroes Jef Lee Johnson and Lionel Loueke.

Roy Buchanan

Live From Austin, TX

There is so little professionally shot video footage of Roy Buchanan officially available, that this frustratingly short half-hour set is a major find for the late guitarist’s devoted fan base.

Recorded November 15, 1976 when he was 37.

These five tunes find the Telecaster master at his most potent. He doesn’t wait to pull out his bag of tricks, such as playing leads with his left hand while drinking a beer with his right and using it over the fret fingerings to alter the sound of his guitar, doing both on the opening “Roy’s Blutz.”

Most of the songs had been in his live set for many years, but that doesn’t diminish the power and sheer intensity of his string bending on “Sweet Dreams” and a closing version of “The Messiah” that will leave viewers slack jawed.

Zeus

Busting Visions

With the help of vintage gear and a stellar ear for melody, Zeus’ debut Arts & Crafts album Say Us earned the band XM The Verge’s Album of the Year award and was long-listed for Polaris Music Prize.

The lead single from Busting Visions, “Are You `Gonna Waste My Time”, continues in the fashion of their first record, with smart pop hooks, sweet harmonies and jangling electric guitars.

3 Inches Of Blood

Long Live Heavy Metal

3 Inches Of Blood make their living playing unapologetic, blistering Heavy f*ckin’ Metal that immediately goes straight for the jugular with a voracious barrage of intensity.

Keeping true to their core and bringing their album title to life, fans can expect a blast of pure metal assured to leave no face un-melted.

“All of us have a special feeling about this one. We’re more committed than ever to the cause of real, honest, no bullshit Heavy Metal.

Albert Collins

Live From Austin, TX

CD & DVD set.

Recorded live in 1991.  Features songs not on the original tv broadcast. 

The CD and DVD both contain the complete performance.

Cowboy Junkies

The Wilderness

The Wilderness is the fourth and final volume in the Cowboy Junkies’ ambitious Nomad Series, a project that saw them release four albums of new material in an 18-month period.

Earlier volumes were focused tightly around various unconnected themes; inspirations from a trip to China, a set of noisy acid blues, and an entire album’s worth of Vic Chesnutt covers as a loving tribute to a departed friend.

These conceptually sound chapters bring us to The Wilderness, ten songs centered on no fixed theme, but rather traversing a wider array of emotional settings.

Unlike the previous installments of the Nomad Series, this album plays out the most like a standard Cowboy Junkies album. All the songs are penned by guitarist Michael Timmins and sung by his sister Margo Timmins with what has come to be her signature hushed yet powerful delivery.

Joel Plaskett

Scrappy Happiness

Rather than follow the now common schedule of write, record, manufacture, release over a period of a year or so; Joel is taking the album out of the incubator, one song at a time.

During Jan. 10 - March 13, 2012, Joel has one week to record and produced on a strict weekly schedule that have premiered on CBC Radio2.

Scrappy Happiness is the culmination of this latest project.