New Music Monday: Mumford and Sons, Six Feet Under, Best Coast, My Morning Jacket, and More!!

Happy Monday music maniacs! LIke new stuff? Great! You’ve come to the right place. Each week all sorts of audiolicious goodies are unleashed onto the masses and this is where they come to be judged. I’ll tell ya what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s a waste of your time. Thanks for stopping by!

The Big News!
The time has come – the new Mumford and Sons record. It’s called Wilder Mind and it’s… different. When I played the single ” The Wolf” for my wife she said “Is this the Foo Fighters?”. The Guardian expounded upon that notion: “[the] frantically-strummed banjo is gone, as is the plonk of the Mumfords’ double bass, the wheeze of their accordion, and a great many of the other trappings of M&S’s signature sound.” Yep, it’s a rock record. Ugh, it’s a rock record.

Indietastic!
Been a minute since we heard sumthin-sumthin from My Morning Jacket. Like four years. This week Jim James and his band of Kentucky kids return with their seventh release The Waterfall.Super cool music reviewers Northern Transmissions notes that the record “finds the band treading its now-familiar middle ground between tongue-in-cheek neo-soul and rock traditionalism.”

Ultra endearing California kids Bobby and Bethany, better known as the dreamy, druggy Los Angeles based duo Best Coast, return with their first rekkid since their 2012 breakthrough The Only Place. Called California Nights, the slab o’ wax is purportedly nothing like Place, which had a laid back Gram Parsons feel. In it’s place are “chunkier, ’90s-style power-pop: turbo drums, crunching guitars and bombastic production” and “more sobering concerns – medication, heartbreak, insomnia”, according to NME.

Headbanger’s Ball
Veteran death dealers Six Feet Under growl and scream back with Crypt of the Devil, their eleventh evil opus and first since 2013. It is, according to Wonderbox Metal, “yet another solid slab of mid-paced Death Metal that’s meaty enough to satisfy that craving for rotten, putrid flesh that I know you all crave.” Don’t you love it when a reviewer just knows your cravings. Yum!!

Louisville based punk/metal powerhouse Coliseum slap you in the face with their latest, Anxiety’s Kiss, their fifth release. It’s “a change-up from the band’s usual bulldozing Motörheadian blend of punk and metal”, according to Under the Gun, which features synths and stuff. And I hope the term Motorheadian gets into the dictionary soon.

English Class
A pair of notable releases from some Brit brats this week. Rockers Django Django offer up their sophomore effort Born Under Saturn this week.The up and coming English rockers have developed “a more meditative, intoxicating sound” in the three years since their debut, according to Digital Spy.

The second release from Palma Violets, Danger in the Club, sounds like an instant classic. Quoth NME:”This album is – quite deliberately – a complete omnishambles, perilously held together by gaffer tape and good intentions. If preserving that all-important “element of youth” was their primary aim, then you couldn’t call it anything other than an unqualified success.”

RIP
Sad news from the other side this week. Jazz legend, and former Louis Armstrong pianist, Marty Napoleon passed away this week at the age of 93.

Guy Leblanc, keyboardist for Camel and Nathan Mahl, died at the age of 54 last week.

Soul legend Ben E King shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 76.

And Jack Ely, of The Kingsmen, who popularized the classic “Louie, Louie” left this realm at the age of 71.

My Recommendation
I’ve been sort of excited about this debut from Chris Stapleton. NPR’s had in on First Lesson all week, and I’m no longer all that excited. But you should check it out. And that new Palma Violets.

Next Week
Tune in next week, same new music time, same new music channel for new new stuff from Snoop Dogg!!