July’s final New Music Friday just might be its biggest and brightest, with an array of appointment-listening-level releases vying for our collective eardrums. At the tippy-top of Paste Music’s minds are the latest albums from TORRES, Yola, Son Volt and Durand Jones & The Indications, but new records from Billie Eilish and Isaiah Rashad aren’t to be missed, either, and nor is Prince’s posthumous Welcome 2 America, a previously unreleased record that resonates all the more over a decade after it was shelved. Don’t just take our word for it—hear all of today’s top-priority releases for yourself below.
Billie Eilish: Happier Than Ever
Following the chart-topping, reputation-establishing charm of 2019’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? sounds like a monumental task, but on Billie Eillish’s new album Happier Than Ever, she makes it seem effortless. In some of the most dynamic, emotionally complex and brilliantly produced music of her career thus far, the singer copes openly with the strain her recent superstardom has had on her relationships, her sexuality and her path in life. Bold risks, like the multiple sections of “GOLDWING” or the 2000s neo-soul revival of “Billie Bossa Nova,” pay off in part because of the artist’s incredible capacity for building emotional tension within her lyrics. Happier Than Ever ranges between club ragers, personally empowering pop and all-out confessionals, marking a distinct shift from the singer’s knowingly playful debut that pays off wonderfully. —Jason Friedman
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Durand Jones & The Indications: Private Space
The May release of lead single “Witchoo” made it immediately clear that, with their third album Private Space, Durand Jones & The Indications were making music with one foot planted in the past (via their throwback soul sound) and the other in the present: We praised that track as “an irresistible ode to getting together and having a good time,” adding that “with a cathartic summer right around the corner in the States, the band’s timing couldn’t be better.” This summer hasn’t proven quite so simple, unfortunately—but fortunately, neither has Private Space. Jones, Aaron Frazer and their bandmates acknowledge both the pandemic and ongoing struggles against police violence in album opener “Love Will Work It Out,” presenting their record’s thesis statement in response: “Joy will set us free / If you do believe / So don’t you ever doubt / That love will work it out.” That clear-eyed conviction makes the band’s slickly soulful jams shine all the brighter, positioning Private Space as an oasis in troubled times. —Scott Russell
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Horsey: Debonair
Oddball English rock quartet Horsey make their full-length debut with Debonair, out now on London label untitled recs (Jerskin Fendrix, Famous, Brad Stank, TAAHLIAH). Lead single “Seahorse” features none other than King Krule, aka art-rock singer/songwriter Archy Marshall, whose brother Jack Marshall plays in Horsey alongside Jacob Read (Jerkcurb), Theo McCabe and George Bass. Debonair ends on “Seahorse,” but it opens with Horsey’s November 2020 standalone single “Sippy Cup,” a madcap, sub-two-minute art-rock ripper about finding happiness by way of one’s inner child—beloved filmmaker Edgar Wright, and this is true, called the song “2 mins of blissful insanity.” That’s about as ringing an endorsement as you’ll see, and par for the course among Horsey’s dedicated cult following. Embrace the madness and Debonair will embrace you back. —Scott Russell
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Isaiah Rashad: The House Is Burning
It’s been five years since we’ve last heard from Isaiah Rashad, the Top Dawg Entertainment rapper whose name is doused in mysticism. Glimpses of songs shared on Instagram sustained hungry fans for years, who pieced together any sign of life. Rashad finally delivers on The House is Burning, picking up where he left off. Anchored in his struggle with his mental health, Rashad’s thoughtful deconstructions of life’s vices are carried by the album’s minimalist production, influenced by the sparse, percussive Dirty South mixtape sound. Three 6 Mafia and Project Pat samples are morphed into haunting lo-fi loops that thread through Rashad’s path to making sense of himself and the world around him. As the smoke finally dissipates, Rashad can finally fill in the gaps left in his absence and look toward the future. —Jade Gomez
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LUMP: Animal
LUMP—a collaboration between London singer/songwriter Laura Marling and producer/Tunng frontman Mike Lindsay—is one of those side projects that makes you wonder, “Wait, do I actually prefer this to the main project(s)?” Marling has called LUMP “so the repository for so many things that I’ve had in my mind and just don’t fit anywhere in that way,” and the result on Animal, their second album after 2018’s self-titled debut, is, as Marling sings on single “Gamma Ray,” “a twist on every page.” Lindsay’s electro-psych-pop textures (which depend heavily on the Eventide H949 Harmonizer, David Bowie’s Low pitch-shifter) commune with Marling’s Rorschach-test lyricism to create something engaging, yet ever-shifting—running wild like its namesake. There’s something uniquely exhilarating about creativity unmoored from convention, and LUMP use that notion as their North Star. —Scott Russell
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Prince: Welcome 2 America
The ethics of Prince’s vault and the continuous release of its contents by the late legend’s estate are thorny, indeed. Perhaps Welcome 2 America—recorded, then shelved by the Purple One in 2010—would have seen the light of day eventually, and perhaps it would have remained under indefinite lock and key at Paisley Park. We can’t know. But what we can know is that Welcome 2 America is a legitimate late-career standout from a musical giant, with Prince using the States’ Obama-era failings as fuel for just under an hour of caustic, collaborative funk, rock and soul. His lyrics are upsettingly relevant over a decade after the fact, unflinchingly addressing everything from the surveillance state and legislative gridlock to gender inequality and modern-day slavery—and that’s just on the opening title track. But beyond all that righteous anger is a joyous resilience that makes the argument that now is the perfect time for Welcome 2 America’s release: “Ain’t got no breaks but got a whole lot of bend / Every broken heart can mend / You better believe it,” Prince, Shelby J., Liv Warfield and Elisa Fiorillo sing on “Hot Summer,” telling us just what we need to hear, when we need to hear it. —Scott Russell
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Skirts: Great Big Wild Oak
Out now on Double Double Whammy (Frankie Cosmos, Hovvdy), Great Big Wild Oak is the full-length debut of Dallas, Texas, singer/songwriter Alex Montenegro, aka Skirts. Montenegro recorded her debut with her live band-members and friends Vincent Bui and Joshua Luttrull, working in various home studios around Dallas to piece together what she calls a “Frankenstein album” in its press materials, part revenant demos and part negative space from which fresher songs were cut. You’d never know it from Great Big Wild Oak itself, a rustic, intimate 10-song set that encompasses electric bedroom rock (“Always”), baroque Americana (peddle steel, horns and strings all rub elbows on “Easy”) and intimate folk (the sweetly fingerpicked “Sapling”). Montenegro evokes her Lone Star home with the gently dueling banjo and electric guitar of “Remember,” the sunset sky of pedal steel on “Swim,” the saloon-appropriate piano on “True” and tranquil interlude “Oak.” Her music has that warmth you can only ever find at home. —Scott Russell
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Son Volt: Electro Melodier
Even amid the lingering chaos and cruelty of the Trump years, a global pandemic, and protests and unrest in response to the ever more visible framework of structural racism in America, Jay Farrar sees cause for a measure of optimism on Electro Melodier, Son Volt’s 10th album. He’s a believer in grassroots, bottom-up solutions that involve people working together, a notion that recurs in Son Volt’s latter-day work. He makes the idea explicit on “Living in the USA,” a centerpiece of the new album that catalogs the contradictions inherent in 21st-century America, from the dark money and fear-mongering that undermine the system to the resilience of those fighting for a better, more equitable nation. “Power invested in people, let the ideas shine,” Farrar sings over a bed of acoustic guitar topped with overdriven electric guitar licks and a steady beat. The songs on Electro Melodier are the subtly engrossing work of a songwriter who continues to hone his craft, and shift his worldview, more than three decades after he started. —Eric R. Danton
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TORRES: Thirstier
Amid the seriousness of her 2017 album Three Futures—it was primarily about reckoning with religious trauma, after all—TORRES’ Mackenzie Scott predicts, in the glow of disjointed synth-pop, “There must be a greener stretch ahead.” And after what feels like a lifetime, it sounds like the Georgia-born, Brooklyn-based artist is finally basking on those green lawns she sketched out nearly four messy years ago. The music of TORRES has never been desolate, but there’s a clear change in tone on Scott’s fifth record under the moniker. Scott’s music has shifted from experimental rock to progressive pop and back again, and her career has been exciting to witness, but there was always the sense she was capable of something more energized, more her. In her latest release, Thirstier, we finally have the complete picture, and it’s as lively a rock album as you’ll hear this year. —Ellen Johnson
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Yola: Stand for Myself
String together the song titles on Bristol-born and Nashville-based singer Yola’s new record, Stand for Myself, and you can patch together fragmented poetry as creative connective tissue: “I’m barely alive dancing away in tears in my diamond studded shoes. Be my friend?” The link between track names gives Yola’s work continuity of sentiment to contrast with her varied musical expressions. Stand for Myself straddles a wide gulf of styles, like soul, rock, Americana, gospel and doo-wop, as well as tempos, from upbeat to slow-groove. There’s seemingly no aesthetic Yola won’t embrace and no pace she can’t keep up with, or at least nothing she won’t fully commit herself to if she decides to try it. Coloring the album only in sunny shades belies the deep-rooted sadness at its core, because Yola has, like everyone on the planet, gone through a hell made just for her through the last year and change. Stand for Myself isn’t the product of a Pollyanna. It’s frank and fresh in its fashion, carrying darkness and unguarded emotions on crests of S-tier artistry. It’s demonstrative, too, showing us more of who Yola is two years after she announced herself with her excellent debut Walk Through Fire. Best of all, though, the album actively seeks out hope under duress. That’s work we all have to do. Yola shows us how. —Andy Crump
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And don’t forget to check out… Bleachers: Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night, Cookie Kawaii: Vanice, Grizfolk: Grizfolk, John Glacier: SHILOH: Lost for Words, King Woman: Celestial Blues, kole?anka: Place Is, Leela James: See Me, Los Lobos: Native Sons, My Idea: That’s My Idea EP, Skepta: All In EP, Tobacco City: Tobacco City, USA, The Tubs: Names EP, VIAL: Loudmouth
