New Music Releases Thread



Arkle said:
Loads of new stuff this week. Quite the bumper time! My listening has included:

Nation of Language: I remember their debut getting a lot of praise on this thread. This is a fine follow up. Very early 80s synth pop influenced and highly enjoyable.
Parcels: they're a young band (two albums in) so making a double at this stage could be seen as over ambitious. However, this is bleeding magnificent! Kind of orchestrated disco pop, really well judged and wide ranging. Never overstays its welcome.
Hard Feelings: It's Joe Goddard from Hot Chip with DFA alumnus singing Amy Douglas singing. What you get is basically the dancier end of Hot Chip with strong female vocals. It's very good.
Nora Brown: the first of a few more folk based releases this week. She's a 16 year old banjo and ukelele prodigy. This is quite lo-fi but very good bluegrass/Americana.
Springtime: an Aussie supergroup containing Gareth Liddiard (of The Drones and Tropical Fuck Storm), Jim White (of The Dirty Three, Xylouris White and countless other projects) and Chris Abrahams (of the Necks). This is excellent. Seven slow burning tracks with Liddiard's lyrics no less angry than they are with TFS but with quieter but equally intense music. It's tremendous from start to finish.
Radiohead: a timely reappraisal of Kid A and Amnesiac. Both, to me, sound better now than they did on release. I guess the main attraction here for fans is the new material. There are two previously unreleased songs, "If You Say The Word" didn't make the cut at the time and "Follow Me Around", which is just Thom Yorke and an acoustic guitar. Both are excellent. Beyond that, we get alternate versions, demos and sketches. Well worth a listen.
Joan As Police Woman, Tony Allen and Dave Okumu: JAPW moving a bit away from her soul/folk crossover stuff to a more adventurous, maybe jazz based arrangement thanks to the late Tony Allen. Excellent!
Theon Cross: it's got to be difficult putting the tuba front and centre and making the record sound interesting but this works. Up there at the more danceable end of British jazz, as you'd expect given that he's a key member of Sons of Kemet.
FUR: they're young, British (specifically from Brighton) and sound a little American (largely the vocals). This is a good debut of 60s influenced indie rock. They're on Nice Swan, which seems to be an up and coming label, Rough Trade shops rate them and they did Challenge Lawro at the weekend (always a sign a young band are going places).
Penelope Isles: psych/fuzz/indiepop, also from Brighton and, again, sounding a little American. Their second album. The key members are brother and sister. There's a lot to like here. A good listen. They're on Bella Union, who rarely sign bad bands.
Fire Draw Near (compilation): old Irish folk field recordings. I'm enjoying this a fair bit, although it may be a tad niche. Some of it is moving and some is very funny.
The Brkn Record: the debut album from this project centred around Heliocentrics multi-instrumentalist Jake Ferguson, this meshes poetry, jazz and psychedelic soul. Lyrically/poetically, it's highly politicised. Reminds me a little of Sault's albums, although not quite as infectious. Still very good!
Ben Chasny: the Six Organs of Admittance/Comets on Fire man has made a relatively simple but very pretty album of solo guitar pieces. Good.
Margo Cilker: a very good country rock debut from a singer-songwriter to watch for. She's got some excellent songs, derived from travelling aroubd the Basque country to some degree and a high quality band playing with her. Very good! Possibly one for @Mickdundee I guess.
Neal Francis: I like this a lot. Piano driven rock/pop which zips along. Very good songs and a good vibe to it. His second album. The previous one was a bit more Bew Orleans blues influenced.
Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats: another uproarious album of folk, Americana and vintage R&B. As usual, really enjoyable. More upbeat than his last couple of releases.
New Age Doom and Lee "Scratch" Perry: a posthumous release from Scratch, of course. New Age Doom are, loosely, a drone metal band and this is basically them doing their thing while Perry rants over the top. A fun, experimental album.
Curtis Harding: really, really good. Lush psychedelic soul. Top notch songs, a great voice. He should be better known than he is.
Snail Mail: for me, given the ecstatic reviews its had from some places, this is a slight disappointment. It's fairly standard indie-folk rock with a few more synths than her debut. The songs are good but there's a lack of something that her debut, Lush, had. Still pretty good just not as good as I'd hoped.
Doran: they're a US based psych folk collective. This is a strong set of songs recorded in an attic over winter. Properly interesting.
Brian Fallon: discussed a bit earlier in the thread. This is Brian Fallon Fallonising traditional Christian songs (3 or 4 Christmas songs amongst them). I like it a lot, his blue collar rock style is ideal for most of the material.

Album of the Week: there's a lot that could win the title in a normal week. I'm not going to include Radiohead, as it's not, strictly, a new album. With that in mind, I'm going to say Parcels as their album is a bit more "woah, what's this?" than anything else. Probably 5 or 6 others would get the nod in many other weeks.
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It’s a rare week when most new albums you play are great.

Parcels, Margo cilker, Penelope isles, nation of language, hard feelings all tip top.

Also, Munya - voyage to Mars is a brilliant synth pop album.

Snail mail isn’t as immediate as the debut, hoping it gets better with a few more plays.
Thanks for the list, a few more to try on there.
 
We've probably only got a couple of weeks before the December slow down in new releases start. Anyway, for this week, there are new albums from Courtney Barnett, Damon Albarn, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers, Gov't Mule, Idles, Jon Hopkins, Lee Ranaldo, Little Mix, Pip Blom, The Dodos, The Jazz Butcher (a best of box set), Jonny Greenwood (his Spencer soundtrack with his The Power of the Dog soundtrack following next Wednesday), Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O, Portico Quartet (delayed from last week), Endless Boogie, Yova and Devin Hoff.
 
Arkle said:
We've probably only got a couple of weeks before the December slow down in new releases start. Anyway, for this week, there are new albums from Courtney Barnett, Damon Albarn, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers, Gov't Mule, Idles, Jon Hopkins, Lee Ranaldo, Little Mix, Pip Blom, The Dodos, The Jazz Butcher (a best of box set), Jonny Greenwood (his Spencer soundtrack with his The Power of the Dog soundtrack following next Wednesday), Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O, Portico Quartet (delayed from last week), Endless Boogie, Yova and Devin Hoff.
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Beach House have a quarter of a double album out now too. They're releasing it over the course of a year...so it's a series of EPs essentially.
 
Arkle said:
We've probably only got a couple of weeks before the December slow down in new releases start. Anyway, for this week, there are new albums from Courtney Barnett, Damon Albarn, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers, Gov't Mule, Idles, Jon Hopkins, Lee Ranaldo, Little Mix, Pip Blom, The Dodos, The Jazz Butcher (a best of box set), Jonny Greenwood (his Spencer soundtrack with his The Power of the Dog soundtrack following next Wednesday), Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O, Portico Quartet (delayed from last week), Endless Boogie, Yova and Devin Hoff.
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Not a bad week

Barnett, Albarn, Idles, Hopkins, Ranaldo, Greenwood and Quartet for me Clive
 
Arkle said:
My favourite thing he's done is still "Diamond Mine" with King Creosote, which is probably the opposite of what you're looking for in a Jon Hopkins record.
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i loved that as a big fan of king C also. John Taylor’s month away is superb.
tomorows I believe is proper meditation ambience which I may struggle with !
 
Arkle said:
We've probably only got a couple of weeks before the December slow down in new releases start. Anyway, for this week, there are new albums from Courtney Barnett, Damon Albarn, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers, Gov't Mule, Idles, Jon Hopkins, Lee Ranaldo, Little Mix, Pip Blom, The Dodos, The Jazz Butcher (a best of box set), Jonny Greenwood (his Spencer soundtrack with his The Power of the Dog soundtrack following next Wednesday), Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O, Portico Quartet (delayed from last week), Endless Boogie, Yova and Devin Hoff.
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I’ve not been feeling well last few days so don’t think I feel like listening to anything. Will have Courtney Barnett, Damon Albarn and Endless Boogie lined up for next week.

You also missed Amanda Shires’ Christmas album off your list, although I won’t be listening to that until at least December, if at all!
 
Mickdundee said:
I’ve not been feeling well last few days so don’t think I feel like listening to anything. Will have Courtney Barnett, Damon Albarn and Endless Boogie lined up for next week.

You also missed Amanda Shires’ Christmas album off your list, although I won’t be listening to that until at least December, if at all!
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Yeah, I sort of felt that the Brian Fallon album from last week was, in part at least, a Christmas album, so listening to that in early November was a bit odd.
 
Enjoyed Damon Albarn’s radio 2 session the other night. Found out I’d been pronouncing his surname wrong my entire life - it’s not All barn, it’s Al barn :neutral:

In other less boring news, the new Nilufer Yanya single is great

 
Less than enthused by the new Damon Albarn record. The reviews are very good so hopefully I'll warm to it. Clinic's Fantasy Island is proving to be a very good album. Pleased they're still making interesting music after 20+ years.
 

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