New Music: This Week's New Releases -- Raveonettes, Nick Lowe, AMC, and more!

The Raveonettes: Take a picture -- it'll last longer...

One of the best jobs I ever had was working in a used CD store in Ithaca, New York. I worked for a man named Sven Smith (if you're out there in Blogistan Sven, drop me a line) who had impeccable taste in music and entrusted me with his store for days at a time while he explored the wonders of morphine or hydroponically grown weed. Among his heroes was Nick Lowe, who shared his fondness for well-cut suit jackets. It was through Sven that I learned to appreciate Lowe's first solo album, 1978's Jesus of Cool (retitled Pure Pop For Now People in the States so as to prevent incidents of record store firebombings at the hands of future Mike Huckabee voters). Both titles describe it to a T.

Lowe's first and best is re-issued this week on Yep Roc with lots of juicy extras, some of which come from his Bowi EP, so named in response to David Bowie's concurrent Low LP. Lowe said he wanted to get Bowie back for naming an album after him and not even spelling it right. Here's Lowe in an awesome Riddler-esque jacket doing "I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass":


Mark Eitzel reactivates his American Music Club moniker for a new album of moody sullenness and top-notch songwriting. The new album is called The Golden Age, that sarcastic bastard. Here's the video from their album Engine for the song "Rise":


Ex-Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty shows us what he thinks of red-eye reduction settings and dental hygeine with the first video from his new album The Golden Delicious, "27 Jennifers":


Atlas Sound, which is the more melodic alter ego of Deerhoof dude Bradford Cox, release their new one entitled Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel. Like, heavy man. Here's the vid for "River Card":


The Raveonettes finally unleash last year's Lust Lust Lust on hard up Americans. Here's "Candy":