Record Shopping with The Annuals

On a recent press junket to New York, I caught up with the Raleigh-based band Annuals as they perused a downtown record store. In desperate need of new music for their playlists before they embark on a national tour with Minus the Bear (one day after their sophomore album, Such Fun, hits shelves October 7), the band revealed some of their favorites, their inspirations, and even followed a staff recommendation or two.

● Aruna Sairam: “It has melodic combinations not heard in Western music. Very free-moving.”
● Ecstatic Peace: A choice solely because the tracks are named only from one infinity to five infinity.
● Stanley Jordan: “It’s used and $7.99, and he’s a virtuoso guitar player.”
● Mountain Gospel: Not for the albums themselves but because “old mountain music is where the whole mountain sound comes from.”
● Calexico: The band toured with this fellow sextet a few years back, and claim that they are “a really great example of what we’d like to be.”
● Fleet Foxes: When it comes to indie folk music, frontman Adam Baker claims that their LP is the “best album in the past seven or eight years that I can remember.”
● Return to Forever: This 1970s band is currently on a reunion tour, but drummer/guitarist Zack Oden discovered the band because, “My grandmother got me into Chick Corea!”
● The Dodos: The group played with them back when the duo was known as The Dodo Birds. “These guys are fucking awesome!”
● Konono No. 1: The band picked up this Congo-based, Bazombo trance influenced, album because of their interest in African drumming. Oh, and because it was a “suggestion from the guy who works here.”