Record Store Day Black Friday 2025 preview: Alternative, ’90s & 2000s
Record Store Day’s Black Friday is swiftly approaching—it’s Friday, November 28, in case you forgot—and our preview coverage of all the worthwhile releases is swelling like a tick. And we haven’t even gotten to the classic rock stuff yet.
Today we're looking at all the reissues of 1990s and 2000s music, with an emphasis on alternative—a nearly meaningless term that’s broad enough to encompass bands like Wilco, Sugar, and Ween. But we’ve also crammed a country box set and a dance record into this preview, so let’s not get too bogged down in genre demarcations.
In yesterday’s newsletter, I mentioned an announcement coming from Chad Kassem of Acoustic Sounds and Analogue Productions. That turns out to have been slightly anti-climactic, as all he revealed was that Analogue Productions would start manufacturing 2-LP 45 RPM versions of selections from the Rhino catalog. The first two titles are Van Morrison albums: 1968’s Astral Weeks and 1970’s and Moondance, but there is credible info that the series will also include something from the Ramones and Genesis’s 1980 album Duke—which is very welcome news, as that latter album has incredibly long sides that could benefit immensely from being split into a 2-LP set. More concrete info will follow a couple of weeks.
The complete RSD Black Friday list is here. And if you missed any of our brilliant RSD Black Friday coverage thus far, it’s all available here:
Robert Ham, Ned Lannamann
Big Head Todd and the Monsters: Sister Sweetly [Real Gone]
Whatever you might think about Sister Sweetly, the 1993 breakthrough album from Boulder, Colorado, jam-blues-pop band Big Head Todd and the Monsters, this reissue is exactly the kind of thing that Record Store Day and its Black Friday spinoff were made for. A pretty popular album in its day—it went platinum with the help of singles like “Bittersweet” and “Broken Hearted Saviour”—Sister Sweetly has never been issued on vinyl, ever. Real Gone Music has decided to rectify this, offering a single-disc pressing on sky-blue vinyl with a lyric insert. Listening to it from the vantage point of 2025, the music is mostly pleasant nostalgia-bait, a chiller Blues Traveler elevated by Todd Park Mohr’s soulful voice, with elements of Los Lobos and Stevie Ray Vaughn. An RSD First release. NL
Black Kids: Partie Traumatic [Echo Base]
While the MP3 blog era of the ’00s saw hundreds of up-and-coming bands find audiences, acclaim, and a long list of tour dates to post on their MySpace page, it could also be brutal for some bands. Jacksonville, Florida’s Black Kids might be the truest case in point. With a widely acclaimed debut EP, Wizard of Ahhhs, and an explosively successful single in “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You,” the world was (briefly) their oyster. But when they signed to Columbia and dropped their much-anticipated debut full-length Partie Traumatic, the backlash was ferocious. A legendary Pitchfork shit-post in the form of a record review demolished their indie cred, and the band had more or less run its course by 2010. A second album eventually materialized in 2017, and Black Kids seem to have weathered those initial headwinds, as now a new edition of Partie Traumatic is coming out on Black Friday, its first vinyl appearance since 2008. While we would prefer a re-release of Wizard of Ahhhs—one of the primary complaints about Partie Traumatic was that Black Kids re-recorded the EP’s best songs in inferior versions—we’re also ready to give this much-maligned band another listen with fresh ears. NL
Bratmobile: The Real Janelle & The Peel Session [Kill Rock Stars]
Bratmobile has long been a love-’em-or-hate-’em artist from among the first wave of riot grrrl, primarily due to the singular vocals of frontwoman Alison Wolfe, which can be… let’s say, an acquired taste. This music fan has always loved them, which means I’m especially fired up for this Record Store Day Black Friday release, which pairs the long out-of-print The Real Janelle EP from 1994 with the four songs the band recorded for John Peel’s radio show a year before that. The latter material is especially fun, as it kicks off with a lovingly arch take on Blur’s then-hit “There’s No Other Way” before the trio zips through a few hopped-up punk originals. RH
Deee-Lite: The Very Best of Deee-Lite [Rhino]
In 1990, “Groove Is in the Heart” was like a confetti bomb going off, combining the hip-hop beats and samples of the maturing rap movement with the house grooves of the New York City gay dance scene. It also threw into the mix a Herbie Hancock sample, a disco beat, a healthy helping of retro Americana kitsch, and guest appearances from Bootsy Collins and Q-Tip. While Deee-Lite never matched the single’s massive success, the rest of their recorded output occasionally matched its ingenuity. Their 2001 hits collection, The Very Best of Deee-Lite, amply covers all angles, and it’s being pressed to vinyl for the very first time, on fittingly festive purple and orange vinyl. NL
Linda Perry: In Flight [Kill Rock Stars]
I often think of this as 1990s music’s « baby Hitler » moment.
— Thierry (@tcote.bsky.social) November 5, 2025 at 7:35 PM
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An RSD First release. NL
Sleigh Bells: Treats [Mom + Pop]
As the calendar pages turn, it’s looking more and more like Sleigh Bells were a lot more future-forward than we gave them credit for at the time. Their 2010 debut album Treats—boasting viral hits like “Tell ’Em” and “Rill Rill”—now looks like the canary in the coal mine for the hyperpop genre, predicting the blown-out drums, exaggerated metal-leaning guitars, and sugar-bomb synths that became the tricks of the trade for an entire wave of bands. Treats is receiving a 15th-anniversary vinyl pressing for Black Friday, and while the RSD promo page says it hasn’t been on vinyl since 2012, Discogs includes a 2018 picture disc among its listings. Regardless, this is probably your easiest chance to get it on wax in many years, and it comes on blue and white vinyl with a poster and a 16-page booklet. It’s a super-limited pressing of 1500, but it is an RSD First release, so a wider release should follow in 2026. NL
Son Volt: Trace (30th anniversary edition) [Rhino]
Song for song, this is probably one of the best things you can buy on Black Friday. Son Volt’s debut album turns 30 this year, and it sounds just as good as ever. Upon Trace’s release in 1995, the band’s gorgeous alt-country sound was the perfect mixture of calm and storm, and Jay Farrar’s next-level songwriting provided more than enough proof that Son Volt was the horse to back in the aftermath of the Uncle Tupelo breakup. (That worked out just fine. Shut up.) To coincide with the album turning 30, Trace gets its first US vinyl pressing in 10 years (a Music on Vinyl version appeared overseas in 2020), and there’s a second disc with B-sides, demos, and more. This is at the top of our shopping list, and we doubt we’re the only ones—with only 3000 copies getting sent out to stores, this is going to be a hot commodity on November 28. NL
Soul Coughing: Ruby Vroom Remixes [Round Hill]
On the heels of a 30th anniversary re-release of their debut album, Ruby Vroom, and a hugely successful reunion tour, Soul Coughing has dug into the archives and compiled remixes of tunes from that 1994 LP that were only ever released on promo CDs sent to radio stations and print publications. This makes for a fine companion to the original Vroom, as most of the remixes are radical deconstructions of album cuts. British producer Omni Trio, for example, gives a drum ’n’ bass overhaul to the previously measured “Sugar Free Jazz,” while one of the versions of “Down to This” on this collection pulls the song apart like hot taffy. RH
Sugar: Copper Blue: The Singles Collection [BMG]
The timing of this release is suspiciously perfect. Just last month, news broke that Sugar, the power-pop trio Bob Mould started in the early ’90s, was reuniting for a handful of live performances and would be releasing some new music. And just in time for all of that comes this box set of four EPs reprinting the quartet of singles taken from the group’s 1992 debut album Copper Blue. Not to pour cold water on this, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t advise y’all that the original 12-inch singles, most released by Creation Records in the UK, are readily available on the secondary market, and it would likely cost you a lot less to track those down than plunking down a chunk of change for this set. That said, there are some sweet tunes to be found here, including “Clownmaster,” the scorching B-side to “If I Can’t Change Your Mind,” and a live cover of the Who’s “Armenia City in the Sky” that was originally released on the “A Good Idea” single. RH
Touché Amoré: Chasing Brightness: The Complete BBC Sessions 2011–2025 [BMG]
This double-LP set collects five EPs that Los Angeles post-hardcore band Touché Amoré has released over the years, documenting their performances for the Beeb. In some ways it’s a fitting career retrospective for a band that has been one of the more consistent punk bands of the last decade and change. The earliest session bears a raw, laser-focused sound and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it song durations, while later recordings are more muscular and mature and less reliant on youthful exuberance. Consistent throughout are Jeremy Bolm’s larynx-shredding vocals and the band’s full-throttle approach, which never turns down the volume but does evolve over the years to become less confrontational and more meditative and deliberate. NL
Ween: Shinola Vol. 1 [Rhino]
Oh, Ween, Ween, Ween. So many of my friends enjoy your music, and, in theory, I appreciate your genre hopping, your DIY rise, your emphasis on the live experience, and your Zappa-derived sense of musical humor. And yet… and yet. The Pennsylvania goof-rock act has still never made a piece of music that brings me any kind of sensation other than mild to severe annoyance. Unfortunately, the 20th anniversary reissue of their 2005 odds-’n’-sods collection, Shinola Vol. 1, is not likely to change my mind. Filled with outtakes, demos, and general scatologia, it’s mostly mired in the “gross-out-your-mom” genre, with tracks like “Tastes Good on th’ Bun” and “Big Fat Fuck” combining unpleasant noises with drugged-out teenage humor. The most genuine moments are when the band performs musical cosplay, as on the Thin Lizzy ripoff “Gabrielle” or the Roxy Music homage “The Rift.” Still, this vinyl repress—the album’s first since 2017—should please the Ween cult to no end, and it fittingly comes pressed on a shade of shit brown. Mmmm! NL
Wilco/Jeff Tweedy/Daniel Johnston: dBpm 15 [dBpm]
Wilco’s record label dBpm turned 15 this year, and this comp collects album cuts, outtakes, and previously unreleased tracks from the label’s decade-and-a-half-long history. Naturally it’s almost exclusively Wilco and Jeff Tweedy tunes, but there’s also a never-heard-before duet from Tweedy and Daniel Johnston performing “Casper the Friendly Ghost.” Wilco-ites more learned than I can discern what the other rarities are here, but apparently much of the stuff hasn’t appeared on vinyl before, and with this red vinyl comp coming at an affordable price point, it should allow the devoted to fill in some gaps in the vast Wilco/Tweedy discography. NL
Dwight Yoakam: And Then I Wrote... The First Three Albums of the ’90s [Rhino]
By the time the 1990s rolled around, Dwight Yoakam had already established himself as a mighty force in country music: a student of the genre who honored forebears like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens while also finding common ground with contemporaries like Lone Justice and the Blasters who brought punk energy to the honky-tonk party. The three albums included in this set—1990’s If There Was a Way, 1993’s This Time, and 1995’s Gone—find Yoakam settling into cruising altitude as he aimed more directly at the country charts and mainstream success. He came closest with This Time and its fantastic single “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” which helped sell three million copies of the LP. The real jewel of this collection is the bonus LP compiling compilation tracks and rarities from the same period. It’s worth it alone for his cover of Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”—originally recorded for a 1999 greatest hits collection—that takes the song right back to its rockabilly roots. RH
Earlier entries in The Vinyl Cut's Record Store Day Black Friday 2025 coverage:
Ned Lannamann
Ned Lannamann
Ned Lannamann
Ned Lannamann
Robert Ham
