New releases, Tuesday, August 18

In the “they’re still together?” segment of this week’s new releases, Third Eye Blind puts out Ursa Major and Sister Hazel has Release.

MUTEMATH‘s Armistice is the biggest release this week, as we are really entering the post-summer doldrums in the lead-up to the holiday release season. Allmusic is saying that this is a more experimental album from the band, while Paste, who usually triumph music that I find amazingly mediocre, seems to think that it’s “one step closer to middle-of-the-road alt-rock anonymity.”

Watch Me Fall, Jay Reatard‘s newest full-length, is the first proper album he’s done for Matador since signing with them last year. He’s released scads of singles and splits, but this marks his first full-length since 2006’s Blood Visions. It’s pretty much rote for Reatard at this point. The songs are short, poppy, and well-produced garage nuggets, and sounds exactly like everything he’s released over the oast three or four years.

GWAR‘s Lust In Space is, well, GWAR. You either like their brand of comic book horror movie metal or you don’t. To be fair, this is really just grist for the live show mill. Fans will buy the record, but it’s not necessarily anything in which a casual listener is going to find anything. I hear that it’s more thrash than recent albums, as well. Personally, I think that once you get past Ragnarok, it’s all pretty unnecessary, and the live show is where it’s at.

This is a DVD, but still bears mentioning that Old Crow Medicine Show releases Live at the Orange Peel and Tennessee Theatre on DVD today. OCMS is one of those bands that could just as easily play on a street corner (as they’ve done the night before a Lawrence performance or two), at Winfield, Bonnaroo, or the Grand Ole Opry. They’re energetic, timeless, and an act that I can’t get enough of. I’m curious to check this out, to see if any of the tunes from Tennessee Pusher get kicked up a notch.