Now Downloading: New Releases 11.17.09

We're headlong into gift-giving season, so feel free to make your year-end list, as it's no mans land as far as quality releases. That being said, there are a couple albums that provide more than stocking fodder. The Led Zep/Queens of the Stone Age/Foo Fighters supergroup Them Crooked Vultures doesn't disappoint, and Macca's got a live album that aims to please. Elsewhere, it's mostly meh in new releases -- tis the season for reissues.

Playlist: New Releases 11.17.09

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Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures
Stream / Purchase [mp3]

The debut from this heavy metal supergroup is a near perfect sum of it's parts. Featuring a dream team rhythm section of Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones TCV builds the songs on fat bass & drum grooves, and while some of Josh Hommes' guitar work is pulled out of a LedZep trick bag, thankfully nobody is going to confuse him with Robert Plant. That's what keeps this effort from sounding like a tired tribute and instead something inspired by the real thing. Essentially, it's in the same vein as Homme's Queens of the Stone Age classic Songs for the Deaf (which featured Grohl on the drums), but with a bit more Zep worship - especially the atmospherics of In Through the Out Door, which contains some of John Paul Jones' best work. At its core, Them Crooked Vultures is really just cheap thrills, but sometimes that's all you need.

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Paul McCartney - Good Evening New York City
Stream / Purchase [mp3]

In someone else's hands, the set list for Paul McCartney's concert in New York (CitiField) might seem like pandering. Ok, there is a bit of pandering, but there's a time and a place for it, and we're all kind of Beatles hungry again, right? Macca only performs a couple songs from this decade (23 of the 33 are from Beatles era), sprinkling them in the first disc w/ songs from both Wings and Beatles, leaving the second disc entirely to Beatles faves. His enthusiasm for the material is such that they all feel like new songs again. For a bit, anyway.

Free AOL album stream

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More on the radar (and in the mp3 player) this week:
Tape Deck Mountain - Ghost / "Ghost Colony" [mp3]
Real Estate - Real Estate / "Beach Comber" [mp3]
SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Remixes! / Xiu Xiu - "Volcana (I Hope You Hear the Train Crashes remix)" [mp3]
tUnE-yArDs - BiRd-BrAiNs / Free AOL album stream
Lovvers - Think EP
Dan Zanes & Friends - 76 Trombones
Alexandre Desplat - The Twilight Saga: New Moon (The Score)

REISSUES
David Bowie - Space Oddity: 40th Anniversary Edition
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour: Deluxe Edition
The Blood Brothers - Burn, Piano Island, Burn [Bonus Track Version]
The Blood Brothers - Crimes [Bonus Track Version]
The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes [Bonus Track Version]
The Blood Brothers - March On Electric
Children
RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke: Deluxe Edition / Free AOL album stream
RJD2 - The Horror: Deluxe Edition / Free AOL album stream
John Entwistle - Rigor Mortis Sets In

tags: music, album review, them crooked vultures, macca, indie rock, new releases, rhapsody