Purity Ring – Shrines
Since those early singles all mined such similar sounds, it was an open question how Purity Ring might mix things up over the course of an 11-song, 38-minute full-length. But Shrines is not about range, instead offering subtly different versions of a single, near-perfect idea. You might think of the album as a sculpture, and each track offers a different vantage point. “Ungirthed” is how you see it head on; “Fineshrine” is what it looks like from a low angle, with a bit of shadow from the overhang providing an extra touch of darkness; “Crawlersout”, with its sharper percussive edges and extra portion of ghosted vocals, is the view from 90 degrees to the left; and then “Grandloves”, with unwelcome guest vocals from Isaac Emmanuel of Young Magic, is like having a guy standing between you and the work, and he won’t stop talking on his cell. Read the full review on Pitchfork

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxDASw6Ry9c
Mumford and Sons – Big Easy Express DVD
In the opening scene of Big Easy Express, Jade Castrinos, singer for folk troubadours Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, is seen frolicking between train cars. The setting is last spring’s Railroad Revival Tour, a multi-day jaunt that found Castrinos’ band, Mumford & Sons and Old Crow Medicine Show traveling by a 14-car train from Oakland to New Orleans, playing six concerts along the way. Read the full review on Rolling Stone

Passion Pit – Gossamer
Gossamer, Passion Pit’s second full-length release, comes nearly three years after the band’s debut album, Manners, which itself dropped almost a year after Angelakos’ Valentine’s Day demos caught the attention of music blogs and major labels in 2008. The gestation period, long by today’s publish-or-perish standards, belies a record that wasn’t easy for Angelakos to make. It’s not the easiest to listen to, either. Dark topics and production difficulties slam against Passion Pit’s glittery sound to create an album that, while peppered with catchy melodies, is overstuffed and under-edited. Gossamer is a tortured beast, disguised in a crunchy candy shell. Read the full review on Pretty Much Amazing

Yooo! We’ve got loads of freebies to give away with the purchase of new releases on vinyl or CD. Check this out! And stop by the store to get your new tunes and freebs– while supplies last, of course.

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Old Crow Medicine Show: Carry Me Back // $10.99 – CD // $16.99 – LP

>>Comes with a FREE canvas tote bag<<

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JEFF the Brotherhood: Hypnotic Nights // $11.99 – CD // $22.97 – LP

>>Comes with FREE JEFF the Brotherhood sunglasses! (Seriously, they’re rad.)<<

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Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver Of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do // $12.49 – CD // $19.97 – LP

>>Comes with a free 7″ featuring “Every Single Night” and “Anything We Want (Live)”. We’ll also give this to you if you can say the title of the new album ten times fast without blinking.<<

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Grace Potter and the Nocturnals: The Lion The Beast The Beat // $11.99 – Regular CD or $17.49 – Deluxe CD // $18.99 – LP

>>Comes with a free 7″ featuring “Piss On Your Hand” and ” Goodbye Kiss (Original Demo)”.<<

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Tallest Man On Earth: There’s No Leaving Now // $13.49 – CD // $14.99 – LP

>>Comes with a free 7″ featuring “1904″ and “Cycles”. We’ll also give this to you if you can prove that you are, in fact, the tallest man on Earth. <<

Jeff The Brotherhood – Hypnotic Nights
Just over a year after dropping We Are the Champions, Nashville duo JEFF the Brotherhood try out their new deal with corporate behemoth Warner, delivering Hypnotic Nights (not to be confused with last month’s Hypnotic Knights EP, all four songs of which appear here). Despite the heavy-hitting financial backing, the brothers don’t really bother to switch anything up ― any of these tracks could have appeared on either of their last two albums. But while the basic premise is the same ― singer/guitarist Jake Orrall’s lackadaisical vocals are featured overtop some of the best punk, garage and psychedelic rock tracks going. Read the full review on Exclaim

Old Crow Medicine Show – Carry Me Back
However, in contrast to previous album, 2008′s Tennessee Pusher, a thrilling, rabble-rousing record about drug users, hustlers and the disaffected, Carry Me Back has a more down-home feel to it.

It moves from a gentle, toe-tapping porch song mood on tracks like the pleading and twangy Ain’t It Enough and Genevieve, which has an emotional bite to it with lines like “your love like fire and your heart like a guillotine”, to a thigh-slapping jaunt on the lovely fiddle-driven ditty Levi. Read the full review on NZ Herald

Baroness – Yellow & Green
Rather than settle into a specific signature, Baroness, and in particular frontman and guitarist John Baizley, has chosen to expand the palette through, in many cases, simplification. This is a more direct record than “Red” or “Blue”. Baizley has added more melody, more hooks, without surrendering the foundation he started the band with.

“Take My Bones Away” helps the listener transform from the fractal edginess of “Blue” to the warmer tones of “Yellow & Green”. Call it a hinge song, if you will. The fuzziness and grunge root remains, but the metallic weight is tempered by maturation. This sets us up for the anthemic feel of “March to the Sea” which flows into “Little Things”. Read the full review on Examiner

Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan
Culled from a batch of roughly 40 demos, these tunes explore vulnerability and vexation, sweetness and cynicism with more manageable musical complications than ever before. For instance, the gorgeous “Impregnable Question” finds the seam between Heart of Gold-era Neil Young and late-1960s Serge Gainsbourg; it’s a love song between Coffman and Longstreth, her coos helping him to soften his voice above a warm acoustic shuffle. Over handclaps and a ragged, wrapping riff on “Dance for You”, Longstreth offers one of his most intuitive and immediate hooks. There’s gusto and playfulness here, too, from the way Longstreth clears his very-warped throat before launching into the first verse of opener “Offspring Are Blank” to the brilliant decision to record Coffman and Dekle mocking some of Longstreth’s most impenetrable lyrics toward the end of the irrepressible “Unto Caesar”. When he sings “Down the line/ Dead, the martyrs’ morbid poetry,” Coffman teasingly answers, “Uhh, that doesn’t make any sense, what you just said.” You want to be in the room with this band. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Aesop Rock – Skelethon
Once Rock opens his mouth on Skelethon there’s nary a respite until the wrinkled-nose voice of anti-folkie Kimya Dawson breaks the album in half, over the tersely beautiful intro to “Crows 1.” It’s as if Rock had been hemorrhaging rhymes, having stored words for so long. The gracious beats also deserve credit for balancing the forbidding noise familiar from his Def Jux years. On “Racing Stripes,” an acid-jazz intro gives way to hallway-echoing drumrolls, while the gamelan-tinted vibraphone that cradles “Fryerstarter” is almost sexy. There’s never been blown-speaker boom-bap like “Tetra” on an Aesop Rock album before; and the occasional finished thought, like “This is why we can’t have nice things” or “When I see your picture I draw dicks on it,” helps keep him earthbound. Read the full review on AV Club

Gojira – L’Enfant Sauvage
“L’Enfant Sauvage” begins quite plainly as a celebration of the traits that the band have worked hard to single out as their own over the last decade – exaggerated harmonics, dynamic pick scrapes, nuanced drumming behind sledgehammer riffs. The guitars are crisp but swing low when required, often distinguished more by their pick attack or palm muting than melody or rhythm. It can make for repetitive listening, but once in the right frame of mind the small changes from song to song, from one kind of groovy riff to another, are easier to appreciate. The bouncing title track and aptly-titled “Explosia” may be similar in some regards but will take on different character when they inevitably take their place on Gojira’s live setlist. Read the full review on Ultimate Guitar