[purlieu]

If it's being released in coordination with another label again - Caroline, Cooking Vinyl, whoever - the vinyl lead time won't be quite that bad. Generally the smaller the artist/label, the longer they have to wait, and big customers get queue jumps (I know FSOL releases seem to take around four months; my last album on a tiny label took nearly a year). Plus, if it's announced two or three months before release - as is usually the case - then the manufacturing time will mostly be eaten up by that period anyway. They could finish the mastering today and still announce it in September and release it in November if they wanted.

I'm wondering if they maybe thought the album was near completion and then decided to go back and rework it a lot.