Depending on who you ask, today is either Big Thief Day, Heterosexuality Day, New Spoon Day or—if you ask somebody boring—simply Friday. If you ask us, it’s a stacked New Music Friday with multiple marquee releases to its name, but also a surprisingly deep day for worthwhile new records, including (but not limited to) fresh collections from Empath, Crystal Murray and Zeal & Ardor. Buy ‘em, stream ‘em, whatever works—just make sure they end up in your ears.
Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
What great bands often do when they realize they’re at the peak of their powers is make a double album. The first year of the pandemic allowed Big Thief the time and space to indulge this hubristic tradition. Faced with their longest break from touring since 2016’s Masterpiece came out, they wrote at a feverish pace and spent five months recording in four distinct sessions—in upstate New York, in California, in the Rocky Mountains, and in Tucson—with four different engineers. By the last session, they had generated some 45 completed songs. The result is Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, a freewheeling creature that vibrates with the restlessness and ramshackle intimacy that have long distinguished this band, blown out to a new scale. It is an uncommonly warm and generous record, 20 songs in all—flitting from campfire folk (“Change”) to clanging cosmic rumination (“Time Escaping”) to countrified hoedown (“Spud Infinity”) in its first three tracks alone—and it solidifies Adrianne Lenker’s place as one of the greatest songwriters to emerge in the last five years. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is not really an indie-rock album, at least not in the way that Two Hands was. There is no successor to “Not” here, nothing that belongs on a mid-2010s indie mood board. Instead, it revels in the earthy, joyously uncool tones of a ’70s hippie-folk record excavated from a garage sale. It is Big Thief’s loosest album and most ambitious album all at once. —Zach Schonfeld
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Cousin Stizz: Just For You
Boston-bred rapper Cousin Stizz is offering up a new version of himself on Just For You, his first release since 2019’s Trying To Find My Next Thrill. As a freshly independent rapper once more, Stizz boasts an infectious energy and pride as he reflects on what he has learned throughout his rising career. Stizz flexes his skill over sparkling marching band and soul samples, dancing with new inflections and flows at each turn. He sounds revitalized, and Just For You shows the power in taking some time to find yourself. —Jade Gomez
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Crystal Murray: Twisted Bases EP
Rising French artist Crystal Murray was already regularly DJing Paris clubs at age 14, and released her debut EP I Was Wrong just three years later. Her second EP Twisted Bases, out now on Because Music (Shygirl, Logic1000, Christine & The Queens), is her most impressive accomplishment to date, a futuristic mixture of sleek neo-soul and electronic pop that features contributions from multi-instrumentalist Sacha Rudy, as well as Zelooperz, Thee Dian and Le Diouck. Murray sounds like France’s answer to Estelle on alluringly woozy opener “BOSS” (or to M.I.A., for that matter, on glitchy closer “GAMES”), but tracks like “Like It Nasty” are more indicative of her overall vision, combining throwback R&B smolder and visceral electronics, with a guitar-rock bridge to boot. It’s exhilarating to see an artist establishing their sound with one hand and pushing the boundaries around it with the other, and that’s just what Murray achieves on Twisted Bases. —Scott Russell
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Curtis Godino & The Midnight Wishers: Curtis Godino Presents The Midnight Wishers
If The Shangri-Las had reunited in 1968 to lend vocals to the Night of the Living Dead soundtrack, this is what the tapes for the outtakes found in a back room of the Brill Building would sound like (honestly, I’m still not sure that that’s not what this is). The brainchild of Brooklyn musician/producer Curtis Godino, the album serves as a love letter to the ‘60s girl group sound, but with a deadly twist delivered with treacly earnestness via the voices of Jin Lee, Rachel Herman and Jessica McFarland. The group commits to the concept fully, but still leaves room to wink and let you know they’re in on the joke, making it nearly impossible not to get swept up in the spooky, candy-colored world they’ve created. “He’ll be gone in the morning / It’s okay cause he’s so boring,” the band deadpan on “I Hate to See You Leave,” and you can picture them all bouncing to the song in matching outfits, blank expressions on their faces. The two pairs of sisters who made up The Shangri-Las, who famously shared the exchange, “Well, I hear he’s bad!” “Mmmh, he’s good-bad, but he’s not evil,” on one of their biggest hits, would definitely approve of the tribute. —Elise Soutar
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Empath: Visitor
On their new album Visitor, the Philly noise-pop band Empath make the leap from homemade, self-recorded music to making a record with a real producer in a real studio. It’s a tricky maneuver for any small-but-getting-bigger band, but especially for one like Empath, a quartet with rock-solid DIY cred whose last album—2019’s Active Listening: Night on Earth—offers an endlessly charming blend of lo-fi fuzz, warped synths, punk spirit and pretty melodies. It doesn’t sound fussed over, by any means, but it does seem like a precarious sonic balance, where a significant tweak to the formula could throw off the group’s uncommon alchemy. Enter Jake Portrait, member of Unknown Mortal Orchestra and producer of Visitor. He’s the first person to record Empath in a “formal” studio, according to the band, and he handles the responsibility with skill and understanding, scrubbing away some (but not all) of the noise while retaining the pop. As a result, listening to Visitor is like looking at Empath through a magnifying glass wiped free of all but its most stubborn smudges, which means you get to hear their most distinctive qualities more clearly. —Ben Salmon
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Kill Alters: Armed to the Teeth L.M.O.M.M.
Meeting at what the album’s press materials refer to as “the intersection of electronics-infused rock, digital hardcore, freewheeling mutant noise experimentation, and incidental found sound culled from bandleader and composer Bonnie Baxter’s decades-old family recordings,” Kill Alters have returned to deliver their cathartic and, at times, straight-up scary debut full-length, following a string of acclaimed self-released mixtapes and EPs. Rattling percussion, heavy synths and horror movie howls (the acronym in the title stands for “love me or murder me,” which makes perfect sense for the music it contains) come together to create a chilling tribute to Baxter’s mother, presenting both the light and dark sides of familial nostalgia. There’s comfort in the chaos as voices from decades past are warped and torn apart, moving to push forward from trauma by twisting it into new auditory artwork. Making you squirm just as much as it’ll leave you awestruck, Armed to the Teeth L.M.O.M.M. makes for an engaging listen from the first second to the last, and it might not let you go even when you’re done. —Elise Soutar
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Shamir: Heterosexuality
On his eighth studio album Heterosexuality, Vegas-raised artist Shamir explores his queerness on his own terms and in a world that’s far more accepting, though he’s said “there’s really no mission statement in this [record].” The songs all have meaning, of course, but the ways in which they resonate with different listeners helps Shamir “feel less alone.” Heterosexuality can be an overwhelming listen, packed with emotion and production choices that leave you gasping for air , but it’s also deeply rewarding. Album opener “Gay Agenda” is an industrial banger, like some club-ready Sinead O’Connor. “You’re just stuck in the box that was made for me / And you’re mad I got out and I’m living free / Free your mind, come outside / Pledge allegiance to the gay agenda,” Shamir sings, the last two words soaring ever higher. The track flies in the face of the idea of the “good queer,” willing to make sacrifices for a veneer of acceptability in a heteronormative society, and relishes the idea of the “gay agenda,” that phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of conservatives everywhere. Shamir doesn’t give a fuck about those backwards ass religious nutjobs who claim to care for his soul: “Pray as much as you can, there’s no hope for me / I will see you in hell, I will be bringing the heat.” Regardless of your identity or Shamir’s, Heterosexuality bursts with meaning. Behind every unforgettable hook is a new way to look at ourselves and our world. —Clare Martin
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Spoon: Lucifer On The Sofa
It’s hard to think of many bands who have been as consistently excellent for as long as Spoon have. For close to 30 years now, the Austin group have managed to maintain a restless, unsettled energy, expanding their sonic palette and transcending their obvious early influences as Britt Daniel, Jim Eno and a shifting lineup of collaborators honed a distinctive sound all their own. Spoon haven’t eased off a bit on Lucifer on the Sofa. The band’s 10th album is also its first since 2017, and while it’s been a while since Spoon have had anything to prove, they still sound hungry. Indeed, Daniel has said that the title of the album refers to battling against “the bitterness, or lack of motivation or desperation that keeps you down and makes you do nothing or self-indulge.” Suffice to say that lack of motivation wasn’t a problem here. Lucifer on the Sofa is taut and textured, mixing trebly, caustic guitar licks with piano and big, propulsive currents of rhythm. Sometimes there’s a potent urgency underpinning the songs: “Feels Alright,” for example, opens with an abrading descending guitar riff and a boom-bap beat, then pivots into a vamp right on the edge of funk, with a lot of movement in the bassline. Elsewhere, “The Hardest Cut” is a tough boogie that bubbles and seethes with guitars over a relentless, clapping beat. There’s more than a hint here of another Texas stalwart, ZZ Top, but refracted through Spoon’s own particular sensibility. If Lucifer has taken up a position on their sofa, Spoon have no intention of sitting there and keeping him company. —Eric R. Danton
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Tomato Flower: Gold Arc EP
Gold Arc is the debut record from Baltimore-based four-piece Tomato Flower, but the band—Austyn Wohlers, Mike Alfieri and Jamison Murphy, joined after the EP’s recording by Ruby Mars—don’t pull any conceptual punches on their introductory release. Tomato Flower wrote their way into a heady question—”How might a Utopia exist?”—seeking what Alfieri calls a “sustainable paradise” over six clipped pieces of shapeshifting indie pop-rock. They conjure mathy intensity on “Truth Lounge” and “Stone,” Crumb-like psych-pop on “Red Machine” and “World to Come,” spacey romance on “Lover’s Arc,” and combine all of the above on mesmerizing closer “Shying.” Tomato Flower pack years of ideas into just 12 minutes on Gold Arc, delivering a debut release that punches way above its weight. —Scott Russell
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Zeal & Ardor: Zeal & Ardor
Zeal & Ardor’s exploration of Black spirituality intertwined with black metal seems strange at first, but frontman Manuel Gagneux proves there is a lot of overlap between those two spheres. Gagneux’s rich, bluesy vocals sit atop gorgeous harmonies and the clanging of chains, paying ode to the slave chants that the blues was founded upon. Vicious screams cut through dizzying vocal overlays without sounding out of place. Zeal & Ardor channel physical, spiritual and philosophical freedom on their thrilling self-titled, envisioning the beliefs behind black metal in new ways. —Jade Gomez
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And don’t forget to check out … alt-J: The Dream, Amos Lee: Dreamland, Andy Bell: Flicker, Boulevard: Electric Cowboy: Born In Carolina Mud, Buke & Gase and Rahrah Gabor: Buke and Gase + Rahrah Gabor EP, Cautious Clay: Deadpan Love (Deluxe), Chris Farren: Death Don’t Wait (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), Claire Rousay & More Eaze: Never Stop Texting Me, Cult of Luna: The Long Road North, Eddie Vedder: Earthling, Foxes: The Kick, Frank Turner: FTHC, Jason Mraz: Lalalalovesongs, Jazmine Sullivan: Heaux Tales, Mo’ Tales: The Deluxe, Joywave: Cleanse, Kim Petras: Slut Pop, Lady Pills: What I Want, LANNDS: lotus deluxe, Mary J. Blige: Good Morning Gorgeous, Mild Orange: Looking For Space, Moonchild: Starfruit, Napalm Death: Resentment Is Always Seismic, No Monster Club: deadbeat effervescent, Raveena: Asha’s Awakening, Sports: Get a Good Luck, Trentemøller: Memoria, Voivod: Synchro Anarchy
