Fresh Off the Press: Pull Up a Chair
One hundred and fourteen albums. The October 30 drop is the biggest Fresh Off the Press yet, and it has the feel of a gathering where everybody brought something. A supergroup returning to the table. A Grammy winning voice writing its next chapter. A jazz master leading a new band. A Queen concert frozen in time since 1986, finally on vinyl. Pull up a chair.
Dinner Party, Whatchu Bringing?
Start at the head of the table. Dinner Party is the supergroup of Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington, and 9th Wonder, four musicians whose separate careers have shaped contemporary jazz, hip hop, R&B, and soul, and whose shared language goes back years. Whatchu Bringing? is their third album, and it plays like the group exhaling: nine tracks, twenty five minutes, no wasted motion.
The record opens with poet J. Ivy laying down the house rules, and from there it runs on warmth and economy. Chicago vocalist Phoelix is the album's sole voice across seven tracks, his falsetto gliding over Glasper's keys and Washington's saxophone while 9th Wonder and Martin keep the beats uncluttered. The lead single, "If It Ain't Broke (Love Wins)," sets the tone: love as a practice, groove as a given. The album arrived digitally in August; the vinyl lands with this drop.
In the shop now: Dinner Party, Whatchu Bringing?.
Durand Bernarr, BERNARR.
Then the voice that stops the room. Durand Bernarr's BERNARR. is the next chapter after his Grammy win for BLOOM, and it carries that confidence without ever raising its voice to prove it. Bernarr has always sung like someone who knows exactly how much a song needs, no more, no less, and this record is that instinct refined: R&B built on restraint, feeling, and phrasing that lands where it means to.
If Dinner Party is the gathering, Bernarr is the late night conversation after most of the guests have gone, the one you remember on the drive home.
In the shop now: Durand Bernarr, BERNARR..
Christian McBride, Points Of Light
And then the low end. Christian McBride is one of the great bassists of his generation, and Points Of Light introduces Ursa Major, his new band, with a debut album that states its case plainly: acoustic jazz, played by people who have spent decades learning how to listen to each other. McBride has anchored everyone else's sessions for years. Here he leads, and the record has the relaxed authority of a musician with nothing left to prove and everything still to say.
In the shop now: Christian McBride, Points Of Light.
Queen, Budapest
The archival treasure of the week is also its most emotional. Queen's Budapest concert, captured on July 27, 1986, arrives on vinyl for the very first time, a 3-LP set of the band's last filmed live performance with Freddie Mercury. It is a document of a band at full power, in front of a crowd that knew it was witnessing something rare, pressed at last in the format it always deserved.
In the shop now: Queen, Budapest.
Also out this week
The first pressings deserve their own mention. Jacquees' Mood, the 2016 mixtape that made his name, arrives on vinyl for the first time. The Zombies' Continue Here is the record that never was until now, singles and B-sides from 1964 to 1967 collected on one album for the first time. And Zeni Geva's Total Castration, released on CD only in 1991, finally comes to vinyl.
The reissues go loud
If the new records are the gathering, the reissue shelf is the noise coming from the garage. This week's stack leans heavy and historic.
The Stooges' Fun House, from 1970, still sounds like the blueprint for everything loud that followed. Buddy Guy and Junior Wells' Play The Blues, their 1972 Atlantic summit, reminds you where so much of it started. The Sugarhill Gang's Best Of collects the foundation of recorded hip hop. Michael Jackson's Thriller returns in a red and black marble pressing, the biggest album of all time in new clothes. Todd Rundgren's first two records, Runt from 1970 and The Ballad of Todd Rundgren from 1971, sit beside Mogwai's Young Team from 1997, a run of four Mudhoney reissues spanning 1992 to 1998, and the B-52's Cosmic Thing from 1989.
Fifty one reissues landed in this drop. The ones above are where to start.
The full drop
These are four of the records in the October 30 Fresh Off the Press drop, plus the first pressings and reissues above. See the whole lineup of 114 at Fresh Off the Press, October 30.