Now that Ice magazine has folded, whither shall we go?? For the past 10 years (at least), I’ve been flipping through the pages of that monthly publication to find out what I might be missing on The Great Big Offical Release List. Inevitably there would always be an album listed that I had no idea about. And the bootleg listings and reviews - whose gonna take that over?? Search engines are the new Ice, of course, but it means more digging and takes a bit of work.

So here’s what I’ve found out in my new release sleuthing:

First, there was a Dan Bern album release scheduled for late summer. An Australian record store listing I found here mentioned September 18th. However, this all got thrown in limbo last week when Dan Bern announced from the stage at a gig that he has “an EP coming out this summer.” My guess is the EP will be a teaser for the album which will probably come out early next year (Dan has promised no overlap of material between the EP and the album, which is nice). Yes, that means hearing less studio work from Dan this year, but I’d already heard rumors about this great song or that great song getting left off the new album, so I’m holding out hope that some of these songs will show up on the EP.

Next, Kaki King has a new album out on August 8th called “Until We Felt Red”. If you read alot of rock journalism, you’ll know that Kaki King is The Queen Of The Acoustic Guitar. Her last album (”Legs To Make Us Longer” - 2004) came out on a major label, was spectacular, and oddly enough would probably be loved by your disapproving parents. It’s Miles Davis’ “Sketches Of Spain” for the 20-somethings. For this new release, Kaki is shaking things up — she left the major label, enlisted Jim O’Rourke as producer, added beats and other non Kaki-like instrumentation to the sound, and most interesting of all — she sings on about half of the tracks. It doesn’t sound like my kind of album (at least not compared to the last one — I lurved that one) but I appreciate that she’s not making “Legs Part 2″ and will definitely try it out.

Also on August 8th, the new album “Reprieve” from Ani DiFranco. Glad to see that, I was beginning to wonder if we’d go a whole year without an Ani studio release. I really liked the last one (”Knuckle Down”) and this new album features more of bassist Todd Sickafoose, so it should be a good deal. The album was recorded in New Orleans last year. Once Katrina hit, I heard that Ani took her album and hightailed it back to Buffalo to finish it there.

Go here for an mp3 of Reprieve track “Millenium Theater” (it’s official; not clandestine)

Finally, there is to be a release this year from Erin McKeown — an album of STANDARDS! Details are not forthcoming at this point, which probably means that it is coming out in the fall. But, you can go to Daytrotter and download a session that Erin did for them earlier this year. The session features one of the songs that could make it onto the album, so go check it out.

That’s all the release news I have - at least for singer/songwritery stuff. There are some cool band releases coming too — The Minders have a new full-length coming out next month, and there’s a batch of Cure reissues I’m looking forward to hearing. Enjoy your summer! Send me some recommendations if you have a minute. Thanks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 4:16 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.