British indie rockers Tindersticks, who made a name for themselves as one of the most distinctive bands of the 1990s, return with The Waiting Room. Trailing behind 2012’s The Something Rain, this marks the tenth release by Tindersticks, which currently consists of Stuart Staples, David Bolter, Neil Fraser, Dan McKinna and Earl Harvin. The Waiting Room showcases their particular brand of poetic, restrained rock with brass arrangements by Julian Siegel. Guest appearances include Jehnny Beth of Savages and the late Lhasa de Sela, who sang a poignant duet with Stuart Staples on “Hey Lucinda” before her passing. The album doubles as a collaborative film project, with each track accompanied by a short and vivid “visual interpretation” directed by renowned filmmakers including Christoph Girardet, Pierre Vinour, Claire Denis, Gregorio Graziosi, Gabriel Sanna, Rosie Pedlow and Joe King.

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Wry, irreverent and rife with slapstick goofiness, Moonwalkers is a British riff on the “fake lunar landing” conspiracy theory. The film is written by Dean Craig (Death at a Funeral) and helmed by first-time director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet. Ron Perlman (Hellboy) plays Agent Kidman, a PTSD-stricken CIA operative recently home from Vietnam and tasked with hiring director Stanley Kubrick to film a staged moon landing in case the Americans don’t quite make it. It all cascades into a drug-fueled rollercoaster when hapless rock manager Jonny (Rupert Grint) pretends to represent Kubrick, pocketing Kidman’s cash offering. Set to a groovy soundtrack, Moonwalkers pairs absurdity with quick-witted action, delivering a kitsch version of 1969 laced with plenty of campy gore.

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Three years after their debut with If You Leave, Daughter release the brooding Not To Disappear. The London-based trio recorded the album with producer Nicolas Vernhes (Deerhunter, War On Drugs, Animal Collective) at his Rare Book Room studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

via Glassnote Records/4AD

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Following a prodigious first few years, Madrid’s charming Hinds release their debut album Leave Me Alone. The band, founded by singer-guitarists Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote under the name Deers, is known for its sunny, DIY garage sound and origin story. Three years ago, Cosials and Perrote taught each other guitar on the beach before dropping out of school to pursue music. Joined by bassist Ade Martin and drummer Amber Grimbergen in 2014, the band has released three EPs, Demo, Barn and The Very Best of Hinds So Far, and toured worldwide. As pioneers of the often-isolated Spanish music scene, Hinds channel their deliberate all-girl dynamic into infectiously energetic videos and live shows.

Leave Me Alone is produced by fellow Madrid rocker Diego Garcia of The Parrots, who has worked with Hinds on previous releases. The LP will include old favorites “Castigadas En El Granero” and “Bamboo” alongside new, moodier tracks.

›› ISSUE Feature: Live performance and interview with Hinds

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Actor Ross Partridge (Baghead) adapts, directs and stars in his second feature filmmaking project, the psychologically uneasy and potent Lamb. As middle-aged narcissist David Lamb, whose wife left him and father recently died, Partridge meets and bonds with a lonely 11-year-old girl in a parking lot. This is Tommie, played by Oona Laurence (Southpaw) with the sadness and fiery uncertainty of a young girl becoming something more. Lamb is determined to save Tommie from her bleak future in their Chicago suburb by showing her the beauty and freedom of the American wilderness. Their decidedly platonic-yet-intimate relationship is steeped in rogue complicity, bending moral boundaries as they travel farther and farther from home. Based on the novel by Bonnie Nadzam, Lamb is shot against the American sky, golden plains and Rocky Mountains, an expansive context for its more claustrophobic axis of love, manipulation and dependency.

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David Bowie is back with Blackstar (stylized as ★), recorded at NYC’s Magic Shop studio with local jazz musicians. The title track has already been excerpted as the theme of Sky Atlantic heist series The Last Panthers. The rest features Bowie’s famous vocals amidst consistently enigmatic tracks, another twist in his chameleon-like career.

(Ed Note: Published on January 8, 2016, David Bowie’s 69th birthday. We are grateful he could successfully release his 25th studio LP. A true pioneer, Bowie’s fiery originality will be greatly missed.)

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Artist and photographer Robert James Campbell roved the 1950s and ’60s Greenwich Village scene documenting jazz and its evolution into the beat and folk movements. With work largely published by the Village Voice and Downbeat Magazine, Campbell captured the artists who shaped the jazz era and its cultural landscape—the likes of John Coltrane, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Philly Joe Jones, Count Basie, Bud Powell, Richie Havens and Chuck Berry.

In 2002, these photographs were discovered by a college student, Jessica Ferber, in a pile of cardboard boxes at the homeless shelter in Burlington, Vermont, where Campbell had died alone. Together, these photos tell Campbell’s story as diligently reconstructed by Ferber. A promising figure in the Greenwich jazz scene, Campbell was wrought with financial hardship, mental struggle and health failures, which dissolved his nascent career and set him wandering from New York to Los Angeles and back to New England in total obscurity. Rebirth of the Cool is Ferber’s time-capsule monograph of the forgotten talent, compiling Campbell’s best photography from legendary clubs like Birdland, The Village Vanguard and The Gaslight Café, alongside his street photography, travels in Germany and tour photos. A play on Birth of the Cool, Miles Davis’ 1957 album, Rebirth of the Cool is an insightful piece of revived history and an important addition to the annals of an American revolution.

via powerHouse Books

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The newest from Charlie Kaufman in conjunction with animation director Duke Johnson, Anomalisa is a stop-motion animated film following motivational speaker and writer Michael Stone through his identity crisis at a Cincinnati hotel. Kaufman, known for his complex and inventive screenplays Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, originally wrote Anomalisa as a 2005 “sound play” under the pen name Francis Fregoli. Anomalisa explores mundanity and solipsism as Stone, voiced by David Thewlis, moves through a world where everybody sounds the same (as recorded by Tom Noonan) until he falls for a woman with a voice all her own (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Thousands of Kaufman fans made Anomalisa possible via Kickstarter funding, resulting in a film totally uncompromised by studios and strikingly unorthodox in its pairing of stop-motion animation with a Kafkaesque meditation on life.

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