Mar 20, 2021
April 2021 New Music Releases
Spring has sprung — at least in the aisles of your local record shop. The list of April 2021 new music releases is overstuffed with fresh sounds to help us all forget a long, quiet winter.
Cheap Trick are set to release the follow-up to 2017’s holiday-themed Christmas Christmas. Peter Frampton’s new studio project, the impishly titled Frampton Forgets the Words, is all instrumental with covers of songs by David Bowie, George Harrison, Roxy Music and others.
Elsewhere, Greta Van Fleet have completed their second album, The Battle at Garden’s Gate, and The Living: 1982 showcases previously unheard sessions from a pre-Guns N’ Roses band featuring Duff McKagan.
The slate of concert recordings includes a live set from classic-era Lynyrd Skynyrd, captured during a 1976 festival appearance in England. Fleetwood Mac’s Live: Super Deluxe Edition will include more than an hour of unreleased music recorded between 1977 and 1982. Pink Floyd will release a stand-alone version of Live at Knebworth 1990, featuring a performance previously found only on 2019’s Later Years box set.
Paul McCartney’s McCartney III Imagined, a reinterpreted version of his most recent solo album, is likely this month’s most offbeat reissue. The new set features covers and remixes from Beck, St. Vincent, Josh Homme, Phoebe Bridgers and others. Plastic Ono Band, the first proper solo release by McCartney’s former bandmate John Lennon, also returns as an eight-disc super-deluxe box set.
The Who’s new expanded reissue of The Who Sell Out balloons to a whopping 112 tracks, 46 of which are previously unreleased. Jethro Tull’s six-disc return to A, their first album of the ’80s, is titled A (A La Mode) 40th Anniversary Edition.
More information on these and other new rock-related efforts can be found below. Remember to follow our continuously updated list of 2021 New Music Releases for details on projects issued throughout the year.
April 2
Al Stewart, Year of the Cat (3CD/1DVD 45th-anniversary deluxe reissue)
Beat Farmers, Tales of the New West (deluxe edition reissue)
Damned, Punk Oddities & Rare Tracks 1977–1982
Mark Bryan , Werewolves of Portland
Mammoth WVH, Mammoth WVH
