Record Rack: A round-up of the week’s new albums, expanded reissues and/or box sets, appearing each Monday on Slicing Up Eyeballs.
ARTIST: Social Distortion
RELEASE: Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes
BACKSTORY: The long-running Los Angeles punk icons this week release their seventh album in 30 years — and their first in more than six years. The 11-track album — Social D’s long-promised follow-up to 2004’s Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll — was recorded over several months earlier this year at a studio in Burbank, Calif.
BUY IT: Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes via Amazon.com
ARTIST: The Fall
RELEASE: This Nation’s Saving Grace: Omnibus Edition
BACKSTORY: The expanded “Omnibus Edition” box set of Mark E. Smith’s landmark 1985 album arrives this week, packed with 31 singles, alternative edits, John Peel session recordings and previously unreleased “working mixes” that “reveal different balances to the ingredients of the sonic jigsaw (often with clearer vocals).” The 3CD, 42-track set, with the discs housed in Japanese-style paper sleeves, will include a 48-page book with interviews. (See full tracklist here.)
BUY IT: This Nation’s Saving Grace: Omnibus Edition via Amazon.com
ARTIST: Mudhoney
RELEASE: Head on the Curb
BACKSTORY: The Seattle proto-grunge outfit this week releases a vinyl-only, 12-track collection of mid-period demos and rough takes — almost all of it previously unreleased. Much of the material would be “studio-fied” for the band’s 1992 major-label debut Piece of Cake (including “Ritzville,” “13th Floor Opening” and “Acetone”).
BUY IT: Head on the Curb via Amazon.com
