Is There Anyone Out There? Maroon 5 to Expand Debut Album Alongside Newest LP (UPDATE 5/11)

As crazy as it may sound, the debut album by pop-rock band Maroon 5 is turning 10 this year, and the band is picking a strange time to commemorate it.

The band and their label, A&M/Octone, are partnering to release a double-disc expanded edition of 2002’s Songs About Jane featuring “original demos, unreleased material and videos.” The set will be released to general retail on June 5; a deluxe bundle, available on the band’s website, also comes with a bonus lithograph “incorporating original art inspired by each song” in addition to the album’s distinctive cover art.

What makes the timing of the reissue odd is it’s due to arrive alongside the release of the band’s fourth album, Overexposed. It’s easy to question the marketing sense behind pitting a quadruple-platinum Top 10 smash against a more current album, whose debut single “Payphone” debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, setting a first-week digital sales record of 493,000 units sold.

But it’s also hard to deny the impact Songs About Jane had on the group, serving as one of the last great slow burns in pop history: the band was forged from the failure of power-pop group Kara’s Flowers, whose Rob Cavallo-produced debut stiffed in 1997, when the members were still in high school. Adding an extra guitarist and embracing R&B and soul stylings, Songs About Jane didn’t go anywhere for over a year, until fans began to notice the radio-friendly riffs and striking good looks of the band members (notably lead singer Adam Levine, who’s parlayed his singing career into a prime spot as a judge on NBC’s The Voice).

Ultimately, Jane spun off four Top 40 hits, including the Top 5 smashes “This Love” and “She Will Be Loved.” Constant touring in support of Jane – not to mention a Grammy Award for Best New Artist – led 2007’s sophomore album It Won’t Be Soon Before Long to the top of the charts, and the group’s foray into dance music with 2011’s “Moves Like Jagger” was a solid No. 1 hit for weeks.

UPDATE (5/11): The full specs of the reissue have been announced, and bonus content is plentiful. The 17-track bonus disc includes demos of every song on the album, a non-LP B-side, “Rag Doll”; demos of three rare or unreleased tunes (“Woman,” heard on 2004’s Spider-Man 2 soundtrack, and the unissued “Take What You Want” and “Chilly Winter”) and an alternate mix of album track “The Sun.” The disc will also unlock video content including footage of the band recording Jane and the original EPK for the album. Hit the jump to check the full track list!

Be My Baby: Sundazed Preps Spector Reissues On Vinyl

It’s once again time to go back to mono.  Sundazed has just announced the vinyl reissue of four classic albums from Phil Spector’s Philles label.  On July 31, The Ronettes’ Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica by the Ronettes; Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah by Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans; and The Crystals’ Uptown and He’s A Rebel will all receive the Sundazed treatment.  All four albums were reissued on CD last year from Phil Spector Records and Legacy Recordings as part of The Philles Album Collection box set, but this Sundazed campaign marks their return to their original vinyl format.

These four LPs tell the early Spector story and in doing so, the story of a shift in American popular music as the music business took notice of the buying power of the teenager.  The then-21 year old Spector’s earliest hits, The Crystals’ “There’s No Other (Like My Baby)” and “Uptown,” are both heard here, as well as the breakthroughs “Be My Baby,” “Baby, I Love You” and “Walking in the Rain” for the Ronettes.  The development of the “Wall of Sound” is traced from the early New York sessions, many with arranger Arnold Goland, to the famous Hollywood recordings on which Spector was aided by the power of the Wrecking Crew and arranger Jack Nitzsche.

After the jump, we’ll take an in-depth look at all four albums!   Plus: track listings and a pre-order link!

More Ventures in Summer from Sundazed

Following a successful reissue of five Ventures titles on LP and CD earlier this year, Sundazed has four more in the pipeline for June.

The guitar-rock pioneers recorded with a frequent intensity that earned them the moniker of “The Band That Launched a Thousand Bands.” These four albums, the live The Ventures on Stage, Wild Things!, Super Psychedelics and Hawaii Five-O, released between 1965 and 1969, feature a fantastic cluster of six-stringed covers of some of the best pop and rock songs of the time, including “Wild Thing,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Happy Together,” “Theme from ‘A Summer Place,'” “The Letter,” “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” and, most famously, the theme to the hit television show Hawaii Five-O. The Ventures’ version of Morton Stevens’ classic tune was a Top 5 hit for the group, and stands with “Walk, Don’t Run” (which is captured in a spirited rendition on The Ventures on Stage) as the band’s signature tunes.

Sundazed is now taking orders for the reissues of these albums, presented from the original stereo masters and with the artwork from the original Dolton and Liberty sleeves restored, on both CD and colored vinyl (red for Stage, yellow for Wild Things!, blue for Super Psychedelics and green for Hawaii Five-O). They will ship to arrive on their in-store date of June 19.

Hit the jump to order your copies now!