Yet Again: Grizzly Bear Expands Latest Album with Demos and B-Sides

Acclaimed Brooklyn rockers Grizzly Bear broke a three-year gap between albums with last year’s beloved Shields. This fall, they will deepen the experience of that album with a double-disc, demo-packed expanded edition.

After a brief band hiatus following the promotion of 2009’s Veckatimest, the quartet began sessions for Shields in Marfa, Texas, before ultimately moving back to the same Cape Cod property that gave 2006’s sophomore album Yellow House its name. The band began to write and record more collaboratively than ever, while still maintaining the same densely produced, richly harmonic sound audiences had come to expect. Shields ultimately gave the band its highest U.S. chart placement at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, and landed high on critics’ year-end best-of lists from Pitchfork to Rolling Stone.

Shields Expanded will feature an eight-track bonus disc featuring several of the tracks from the Marfa sessions that were ultimately shelved. (One of those, “Will Calls,” is the lead single for the project and can be heard above.) Three remixes, including one released on a Record Store Day-exclusive single in 2013, will round out the package. Those who already bought the album can experience the tracks separately as Shields B-Sides, a separate 12″ record to be released alongside the expanded set. (Shields B-Sides will include the five demos and B-sides, with the remixes offered as free digital downloads.)

Shields Expanded and Shields B-Sides are due out on November 12. Amazon links are not yet live, but the track lists are below.

Shields Expanded (Warp, 2013)

Disc 1: Original LP (released as Warp Records LP 229, 2012)

1. Sleeping Ute
2. Speak in Rounds
3. Adelma
4. Yet Again
5. The Hunt
6. A Simple Answer
7. What’s Wrong
8. gun-shy
9. Half Gate
10. Sun in Your Eyes

Disc 2: Shields B-Sides

1. Smothering Green
2. Taken Down (Marfa Demo)
3. Listen and Wait
4. Everyone I Know (Marfa Demo)
5. Will Calls (Marfa Demo)
6. Sleeping Ute (Nicolas Jaar Remix) (released on Warp Records 12″ WAP346, 2013) *
7. A Simple Answer (Liars Remix) *
8. Gun-Shy (Lindstrom Remix) (download-only exclusive, 2012) *

* digital download-only on Shields B-Sides standalone vinyl

UMe Says “Respect the Classics” with Hip-Hop Reissue Series

Perhaps no genre is as underrepresented in the catalogue world as modern hip-hop. Remastered and expanded editions are hard to come by, for whatever reason – be it sample clearance, market demand and the like. Universal Music Enterprises is doing their best to change that this year with a new wave of multi-format reissues called “Respect the Classics.”

“Respect the Classics” draws from critically-acclaimed titles in the Def Jam, Interscope, Priority, and Virgin Records discographies and represses them on CD or vinyl. Thus far, UMe’s reissued N.W.A.’s 1987 debut N.W.A. and The Posse on CD and their seminal Straight Outta Compton (1988) on 180-gram vinyl. They’ve also re-released two N.W.A. solo albums: Eazy-E’s Eazy-Duz-It (1988) gets the CD and LP treatment, while Ice Cube’s 1990 debut AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted is reissued on vinyl.

Most exciting for expanded reissue fans is a 25th anniversary edition of EPMD’s Strictly Business on CD. It’s appended with five bonus tracks, including remixes of “I’m Housin’,” “You Gots to Chill,” “You’re a Customer” and “It’s My Thing.” Eazy-Duz-It also features two bonus 12″ mixes on CD.

Three more waves of “Respect the Classics” reissues are planned for 2013, with eight more titles announced, as well:

• October 22: DMX’s It’s Dark and Hell is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, both released in 1998, will get double-vinyl reissues on gold and blood-splatter colored vinyl, respectively.
• November 12: Two Def Jam classics from 1988, Slick Rick’s The Great Adventures of Slick Rick and Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, will be reissued on vinyl. Additionally, 50 Cent’s 2003 debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’ will receive a double-vinyl reissue.
• December 13: Gang Starr’s seminal Step in the Arena (1991) gets a vinyl reissue, while hardcore group Onyx’s debut Bacdafucup (1993) is reissued on CD.
• 2014: a host of vinyl reissues for modern hip-hop classics from the late ’90s and 2000s, including Tupac Shakur’s Greatest Hits (1998), Eminem’s major-label debut The Slim Shady LP (1999), Common’s acclaimed Like Water for Chocolate (2000), N.E.R.D.’s In Search of… (2001 – UMe indicates this will be a double-vinyl title, likely based on the 2002 rock-oriented mix/pressing), both albums by Eminem side-project D12 (Devil’s Night (2001) and D12 World (2004)), Lil Wayne’s The Carter (2004), and Kanye West’s polarizing electronic venture 808s & Heartbreak (2008).

In the meantime, keep checking UMe’s official Respect the Classics page for updates and trivia, and hit the jump for all the available titles.

Hangin’ Out with Henry Mancini and Ferrante and Teicher: Intrada, Vocalion Revisit 1970s Gems

For fans of the legendary composer Henry Mancini, these really are the days of wine and roses.  The soundtrack specialists at Intrada have just announced the CD release of Mancini’s score to the 1974 adventure film The White Dawn for the very first time in a deluxe edition with bonus material.  And the U.K.-based Vocalion label is looking to the same decade with the reissue of two of Mancini’s never-before-on-CD RCA albums plus another pair from piano duo Arthur Ferrante and Lou Teicher.

Ferrante (1921-2009) and Teicher (1924-2008) met while studying at New York’s famed Juilliard School.  By 1947, they had begun performing in nightclubs and then in classical-oriented venues, and by the early 1950s, their recording career had begun.  Ferrante and Teicher had remarkable longevity, not retiring until 1989.  Over the course of those four decades, the duo recorded for labels including Columbia, MGM, ABC, and most notably, United Artists Records.  At UA, they occupied a spot on the roster from 1960 to 1979, expanding their musical horizons from Broadway favorites by Leonard Bernstein and Lerner and Loewe to film scores by John Williams (Star Wars, Superman) and even disco (1979’s Classical Disco).

Vocalion brings together on one CD Ferrante and Teicher’s 1973 album Killing Me Softly and 1974’s In a Soulful Mood.  As the titles would indicate, both albums featured the stylistically-eclectic piano pair – backed by orchestra – on a variety of then-contemporary pop songs.   On the former album (included second on the new CD), Ferrante and Teicher tackled songs from a variety of sources: Broadway (Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’ title song from Seesaw), Hollywood (Gato Barbieri’s theme to Last Tango in Paris, Walter Scharf and Don Black’s title song from Ben, Sammy Cahn and Garry Sherman’s “Don’t Ask Me Why” from The Heartbreak Kid, Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Living Together, Growing Together” from Lost Horizon) and the Top 40 (“Killing Me Softly”).  Vocalist Lois Winter joined them for a rendition of Michel Legrand’s love theme from Lady Sings the Blues, and they supplied two originals with “Night Sounds” and “The Summer is Coming.”

On In a Soulful Mood, Ferrante and Teicher placed even more of a pronounced emphasis on hit songs.  The Thom Bell/Stylistics songbook yielded four selections: “Break Up to Make Up,” “You Are Everything,” “I’m Stone in Love with You” and “Betcha By Golly Wow,” all with lyrics by Linda Creed.  Motown wasn’t ignored, either, with piano takes on the anthemic “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and romantic “My Cherie Amour.”  Even Barry White got the Ferrante and Teicher treatment with the album’s opening “Love’s Theme.”  Two more F&T compositions rounded out the LP, “Hong Kong Soul Brother” and “Early Morning.”

David Ades supplies new liner notes, and both albums have been remastered by Michael Dutton from the original analogue masters. After the jump: Let’s rediscover The White Dawn, and take a look at The Mancini Generation and Hangin’ Out with Henry Mancini!  Plus: track listings and order links for all three CDs!