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New Music Releases Thread


Arkle said:
My weekend's listening:

Sufjan Stevens: electronic, neo-classical. Might be better listened to split into the indiviual disks?
Riley Downing: solo debut from The Deslondes main man. Interesting, eccentric, kind of Americana without being country. Very good!
The Chills: their late career renaissance continues. This is, as usual, excellent. "Safe and Sound" is one of the songs of the year.
Paul Weller: starts off strongly then descends into okayness. He's trying a lot of ideas, some work, some don't. Good that he still moves on rather than settling for the tried and tested, I guess.
St Vincent: quite 70s influenced but also forward thinking. It's very good. St Vincent albums are consistently very good so that's expected.
Matt Berry: one of his slightly proggy, slightly folky, slightly late 60s sounding albums. It's a good listen.
The Black Keys: maybe a bit overly long but something of a return to form after the disappointment of Let's Rock. I think I prefer Dan Auerbach's productions to his work with The Black Keys though.
Growing: two long tracks of ambient noise from veterans of this type of thing. Quite relaxing!
Holly Macve: I like this a lot. She has a really good voice. It's a pretty straightforward country rock album done very well.
Sarah Neufeld: violin led neo-classical type stuff. Gets quite uplifting at times. File under good.
Sons of Kemet: again really good, again as expected. Arguably more of a party album than they've made previously. Makes you want to dance badly.
Old Sea Brigade: I've been trying to come up with a reference point for this album. At times, I'd say early National but the opening track is a little bit Beta Band, if anything. Essentially, they're the solo project of Ben Cramer. Well worth investigating.
Johnny Flynn & Robert NcFarlane: starts off a bit more bluesy than I've heard from Flynn previously but then settles down into something akin to his other releases (Detectorists theme etc.). A thoroughly enjoyable listen!
Damien Jurado: another artist who is consistently very good. It's an album of downbeat, lyrical Americana, which is what he does. Very good.
Warish: the most rock album I've listened to this week by far. They're very grunge influenced (but the side of grunge that came from indie-rock not metal so Sub Pop bands). A rollicking musical ride.
Buffet Lunch: one left over from last week following @chunkylover53's recommendation. Eccentric, off kilter indie, which I quite like. Probably prefer the tracks sung by the female vocalist to those sung by the chap. Pretty good.

Album of the week: probably goes to The Chills but only just from Riley Downing, Sons of Kemet, St Vincent and Old Sea Brigade.
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I’ll add, if I may, that I think the Juliana Hatfield is a very solid album. Just got around to listening to it today (my physical copy arrived a few days late and got accidentally sidelined by several musical birthday gifts). Real old-school JH vibe about it. I was concerned after watching a rather ramshackle launch stream the previous week - she attempted to play one of the new songs 3 times because she kept messing up and having to stop. Not a good look😬 Feared the worst but very pleasantly surprised.
 
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Crayola-Kid said:
I’ll add, if I may, that I think the Juliana Hatfield is a very solid album. Just got around to listening to it today (my physical copy arrived a few days late and got accidentally sidelined by several musical birthday gifts). Real old-school JH vibe about it. I was concerned after watching a rather ramshackle launch stream the previous week - she attempted to play one of the new songs 3 times because she kept messing up and having to stop. Not a good look😬 Feared the worst but very pleasantly surprised.
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Yeah I’ve enjoyed it too. By no means her best album but definitely solid.
 
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Arkle said:
This week's crop of new releases includes albums from Blake Shelton, CHAI, Chrissie Hynde (Dylan covers), Colleen, Fly Pan Am, Gary Numan, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Gruff Rhys, Lord Huron, Mdou Moctar, Mickey Dolenz, Nicholas Krgovich, Olivia Rodrigo, Patrick Paige II, Paula Cole, Twenty One Pilots, Trees Speak, Nadja, Billie Marten, Lambchop, David John Morris, Emma Houton, Reigning Sound, Robert Finley, FACS, Conrad Clipper, Caterina Barbieri, Balkan Taksim and Steve Almaas.
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Lambchop is a poor Lambchop record
Gruff is excellent
Lord Huron is worth a listen if you like the Fleet Foxes
Mdou Moctar is Tuaregtastic
Fly Pan Am is massively disappointing

my album of the week is Cult of Dom Keller
 
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Right then, my usual potted review of my weekend (and a bit beyond) listening to new things:

Colleen: ambient electronica, mostly instrumental but some vocals. Kind of moves into the more electronic end of shoegaze/dreampop at times. I like this quite a lot.
Anthony Joseph: spoken word over jazz (Joseph is a Trinidad born but UK resident poet/vovelist). It's very good, reminds me of Gil Scott Heron, in some ways.
Grave Flowers Bongo Band: awful name, really. They're a breezy psych rock band who remind me a bit of King Gizzard or Oh Sees in their lighter moments. Well worth a listen.
David John Morris: the singer from Red River Dialect recorded this while on a 9 month retreat at a Buddhist monastery. It's quite sparse (much more so than RRD's records) and also rather lovely.
Antonis Antoniou: traditional Cypriot music blended with post-punk, electronica and post-rock (to a lesser degree). This is very, very enjoyable.
Fly Pan Am: vetern Canadian post-rockers and associates of GSY!BE. This is a bit more electronic than their last album (C'est ca). It was seemingly created in collaboration with a choreographer so meant for dancers (as opposed to dancing). It's interesting is my verdict.
FACS: their fifth album of fairly ferocious art-punk. What it lacks in hooks, it makes up for in muscularity. Bracing and, at times, exhilarating.
Steve Almaas: he's a veteran of the Minneapolis punk scene that brought us Husker Du and The Replacements.His new album (his sixth, I think) is an interesting slice of Americana/roots rock. Pretty good.
Mdou Moctar: Tuareg rock from Niger. Really good. The guitar is most definitely the star here.
Robert FInley: an autobiographical album from the veteran blues/soul man, produced by Dan Auerbach (who's clearly stayed busy in lockdown). This is very good. Finley has a great, somewhat lived in voice. Arguably the album this week you'd most likely play to your mate whose taste is a bit more mainstream than yours is.
Reigning Sound: more veterans. The first in a while from Greg Cartwright's (of The Oblivians) other band. This is a bit less frantic than The Oblivians were, a little less garage rock. A bit of a mix of psych and country really.
Gruff Rhys: as good as usual, although maybe a little less quirky. In some ways, I think this is Gruff's most Super Furryesque solo album. Keyboard/piano is very much to the fore instrumentally.
BLK JKS: indie rock from South Africa. This is their first album since 2009 (and only their second). It's very good. They remind me a bit of TV On The Radio sound-wise (maybe it's the more harmonised vocals) but with obvious African undertones (there are touches of desert rock). Really good.
Kasai Allstars: this came out a little while back. Their fifth album of what generally gets referred to as Congotronics (after the album series). This is basically the sound of a large group of people (they can feature up to 25 members) having tremendous amounts of fun. As such, it's a really enjoyable album.
Lambchop: it's okay. Plus point is that Kurt Wagner seems at least partly over his Vocoder fetish. Not sure the songs are that great and I'd love them to make an album more reminiscent of their early country-indiepop records or more reminiscent of their country-soul period (or something reminiscent of their quietly loud live shows of the early 2000s).
Billie Marten: her third album. It's a pretty good slice of major label post-folk pop. Intriguing. Also, she's a fan of alpacas, according to wikipedia and they're groovy.
Rosie Tucker: punkish singer songwriter. A similar sound to Speedy Ortiz. Perfectly fine, I'm sure, just not it's to my taste.
Johanna Samuels: I seem to have group all of the female singer-songwriters together this week, not intentional, just the order I listened to things. Anyway, high quality folk rooted songs with some interesting instrumentation and production. Tis good.
Allison Russell: as mentioned a few posts back by @Mickdundee, this is the solo debut by the co-leader of Birds of Chicago. I didn't realise she was one of the members of the all female folk supergroup, Our Native Daughters, which is relevant, given that one of the obvious comparisons is Rhiannon Giddens. This maybe has more jazzish overtones than GIddens' music, which tends to be more tradtionally folkish.
Cult of Dom Keller: dark hearted psychedelic rock from Nottingham. They're never short of ideas. Starts off almost poppishly, goes industrial in the middle, ends epically. It's very good.

Album of the week: it's a tight call as usual but I'm going to say that it's a tie between Antonis Antoniou and BLK JKS. I guess technically it should go to the latter as their album was actually released this week. The David John Morris album runs them close, as does Johanna Samuels, and Gruff is basically Gruff so I always find it difficult to judge his albums alongside other artists (see also Mogwai, Tindersticks, PJ Harvey, The National, Nick Cave and several others).
 
Arkle said:
Grave Flowers Bongo Band: awful name, really. They're a breezy psych rock band who remind me a bit of King Gizzard or Oh Sees in their lighter moments. Well worth a listen.

Steve Almaas: he's a veteran of the Minneapolis punk scene that brought us Husker Du and The Replacements.His new album (his sixth, I think) is an interesting slice of Americana/roots rock. Pretty good.


Rosie Tucker: punkish singer songwriter. A similar sound to Speedy Ortiz. Perfectly fine, I'm sure, just not it's to my taste.


Cult of Dom Keller: dark hearted psychedelic rock from Nottingham. They're never short of ideas. Starts off almost poppishly, goes industrial in the middle, ends epically. It's very good.
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A few there that I wasn’t aware of that sound like they might be up my street.
 
For any My Bloody Valentine nuts, last week's Domino reissue of EPs 1988-1991 has two unlisted songs at the end of the second cd that weren't on the 2012 release.

Untitled

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Don't Ask Why (Demo?)

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love the new LUMP song, album out July...

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A few recent releases getting plenty of plays...

Rosali - no medium
It’s a little bit different to her previous, lovely vocals, really nice guitar sound, good song variation, her best album.

Lily konigsberg - right now
a few of her recent singles and EPs hoyed into an album, sounds a bit like frankie cosmos, with longer tracks, really good indie pop.

Morgan Wade - reckless
her songs, and sound, remind me of Jason Isbell, slightly poppy country rock songs, I like it.
 
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Sunbirds (Cool to Be Kind). Bit of an oddment that I missed at the time (apparently just before Christmas) but unearthed today - doesn't appear to have been brought up on here. Dave Hemingway of Housemartins/Beautiful South. I'd describe it as something like perfectly nice Anglocentric Americana with an occasional nod to the Beautiful South (he takes most of the leads but there's a female singer in there, as per). I'd stay clear if you don't care for those other bands - I know they're a bit Marmite/celery.
 
There are albums this week from Bachelor, Backxwash, Bent Arcana, Black Midi, Blackberry Smoke, DMX, k.d. Lang, Kele, Loscil, Lou Barlow, Moby, Penelope Trappes, The Datsuns, Cheval Sombre, Masayoshi Fujita and Caterina Barbieri.

Metacritic reckons Lana Del Rey is releasing an album (Rock Candy Sweet) on Tuesday. A quick google confirms this was true as of the back end of March.
 
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