Taylor Swift, Dinosaur Jr., and 20 more albums we can’t wait to hear in April
Music Features Dinosaur Jr.
Graphic: The A.V. Club
The weather is warming up. Vaccination numbers continue to rise at a reassuring pace. The trailer for The Suicide Squad looks fun as hell. And on top of all that good news, we’ve got a bunch of great new albums to look forward to in April. From instrumental titans like Godspeed! You Black Emperor to the ubiquitous Taylor Swift, there are releases of all kinds to bring relief to your ears in the coming month. Fans of old-school rock should especially take note: Not only is there a new Dinosaur Jr. record to provide your necessary ear-splitting guitar squeals, but Cheap Trick is ready to do the AC/DC thing and potentially deliver a great late-period album. We shall see.
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25 Comments
Spring is starting to start up, I’m getting my fricking Shots finally and a buncha cool new music is coming!?!? I’m almost starting to feel something like… Hope? (Yay!)
meh
13 out of 20 that I’ve actually heard of!
I got 13 as well. I feel pretty effin’ hip for once.
I remember, about a decade ago, I had purchased a couple greatest hits albums from 90’s indie bands to find out that they had been rerecorded because those bands weren’t getting any royalties from the original recordings. I understood it and I was happy to support the bands but I had no desire to listen to inferior copies of the originals. Who wants to listen to a bunch of 40-year olds dudes trying to pretend they are in their 20’s.
While I fully support Taylor Swift’s attempts to dilute the value of her own back catalog and screw over Scooter Braun and anybody who is doing business with him, I just can’t wrap my head around getting music that I already have,
Giant Sand rerecorded their first two albums and I got both, but probably because I never had the originals to begin with.
I don’t think Swift cares about casual listeners like you and me, she’s rerecording her albums so that she can allow the music to be used in film and other media, and for Spotify and streaming services to promote the new versions instead. Diehard fans of Swift will buy the record regardless, which will boost her streams and make it a financial success. She’s doing it as more of a ‘fuck you’ to Scooter Braun than anything else IMO.
A collection of Guided By Voices unfinished demos is the ne plus ultra of albums I can wait to hear
How can you tell which Guided by Voices songs are unfinished demos and which are finished releases?
(Looking for a punchline here…)
Godspeed, Dino Jr, GBV, Teenage Fanclub and Will Oldham all with new albums? I just got all 90s indie rock tingly.
Missed one. April 2: Dry Cleaning. New Long Leg on 4AD. So excited!
I’m on board. Their EPs are great.
I think I’m like two albums behind on Guided by Voices’s discography. I guess it’s time to catch up before I’m three albums behind.
I’m like 40 releases behind – and I own quite a few GBV records (at least more than anyone I know!).
The last Guided By Voices bought was via Rockathon Records website month or two ago. Was prolly a cd or two. Don’t remember. Anyways, don’t have GBV – Suitcase 3 & it’s never for sale on ebay. Bid on copy ($69.00) awhile ago but in lat two seconds got outbid by a buck. Boring but true story. ‘Kid Marine’ & ‘Not In My Air Force’ should arrive this week. Have prolly purchased each of these cds a coupla times. Okay, Over/Out.
There’s just so much of it, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t matter.They came to my region a couple years ago on the “Space Gun” tour and I obviously had to go see them, though I hadn’t listened to “Space Gun” until then. And it was a fucking awesome show that didn’t require you to know the whole suitcase, and afterward I listened to “Space Gun” and it’s an awesome album.Also, GBV were so loud that it fucked with my ears to the point I couldn’t balance myself for a couple days afterward, and Robert Pollard gave me a big hug when the band came out the front of the venue while I was waiting for a cab.
Missed the 3 new Eric Church albums on April 16th, 20th, 23rd.
The Armed – Ultrapop (April 16). I’ll be curious how it turns out–I preferred the pure hardcore of Untitled more than the art-noise of Only Love (which sounds like 2 separate albums being played at the same time to me). I wouldn’t mind something between the two.
Thanks for introducing me to Pony! I ran out and bought their album as soon as I heard “Chokecherry”.Well, not “ran out” so much as “clicked over to Bandcamp and preordered”, but you get the idea. This is far and away my favorite ‘discovery’ since the pandemic started.
its just sad to see a band that has been around for so long still referring to itself as Dinosaur Jr. I think its time they quit their job at the dealership and prove they can make it without Dinosaur Sr constantly propping them up!
They actually started as Dinosaur but some bullshit SF band that Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead’s idiot scribe) and guys from Country Joe and the Fish and BB and the Holding Co were in called The Dinosaurs sued them over it.
what a tease, literally…I hoped you meant a NEW Sharon Van Etten album 🙁
By “third solo album” I assume you meant 18th solo album plus 7 with Wings, and lots and lots of classical/electronica/live/miscellaneous stuff.
probably just an awkwardly phrased way of saying it rounds out the McCartney I-III trilogy of literal “solo” albums where he produced/played all the parts himself in relative isolation.
Hey AV club, put some more ads in your articles. That way my phone will completely freak out and tell me “an error has occurred” sooner and I can stop reading. Thanks!