Melissa Kacar

Happy Record Store Day! To celebrate one of the biggest events of the year for independent record stores, Noah Kahan released a special vinyl EP titled Town Hall: Stick Season Collaborations.  It is a limited edition vinyl that features eight of the bonus tracks from his 2022 album Stick Season , each reimagined two years following it's initial release as duets with different collaborators.  This is the first time it is released as a standalone EP on vinyl, previously it was only ever featured on the deluxe pressing of the complete edition of Stick Season (We'll All Be Here Forever) .  Town Hall  is limited to 15,000 copies and was sold exclusively at indie record stores on Black Friday. It is pressed on what they described as "tiger eye brown", which looks like a beautiful translucent ember brown with black swirl. It perfectly suits the earthy aesthetic of the album artwork. It also comes with a really nice photo insert too, which is designed to look like a newspap...

Happy Record Store Day! One of my most anticipated releases for the Black Friday drop this year was a special version of Billie Eilish 's incredible album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT , which features only her isolated vocals. You can only slightly hear parts of the instrumentals in the background because she recorded the songs without headphones, but this variant of the album puts a major emphasis on only her gorgeous vocals. It's a really cool concept, it almost sounds like you're in the studio with her hearing it recorded live.  There is so much depth to her vocal comps with all of the hidden vocals and ad libs that are hidden underneath the production. There are so many small details that otherwise get buried in each song that now get the chance to fully shine. Billie and Finneas ' creative process is so fascinating, and this record give a glimpse into the way all of these songs came together. An album like HIT ME HARD AND SOFT  is meticulously produced and every layer is s...