As we bid adieu to spooky season and cannonball into the holidays, now is a good time to start thinking about your end-of-year music list. Good thing we’re back with the latest roundup of new vinyl bestsellers at Paradise Found Records and Music (1646 Pearl St.) From local death-metal darlings Blood Incantation to Texas R&B crooner Leon Bridges, here’s what October sounded like in the People’s Republic.
1. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere
2. The Smile – Cutouts
3. Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II (reissue)
4. Leon Bridges – Leon
5. BadBadNotGood – Mid Spiral
6. Godspeed! You Black Emperor – No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead
7. Nujabes & Fat Jon – Samurai Champloo Music Record: Departure (reissue)
8. Thee Sacred Souls – Got a Story to Tell
9. The Hard Quartet – The Hard Quartet
10. Phish – Billy Breathless (reissue)
STAFF PICK: Imagine The Beach Boys, but instead of bronzed blonde men singing about surfing and girls, it’s a bunch of art kids pumping out lo-fi songs about Godzilla, Rapunzel and the existential drag that is life under late capitalism. EELS, the sophomore album from Austin, Texas-based Being Dead, is the perfect album for this absurd moment in world history: kitschy, campy, silly fun with an undercurrent of aching depression. Being Dead could have written Pet Sounds, but The Beach Boys could never have created EELS. – Shay Castle, editor in chief