As we settle further into our quarantine lifestyles, one thing is becoming clear: Adding new things to our routine can often help prevent cabin fever, so why not make one of those things some new music? While many artists have elected to delay their album release dates, others are chugging on, perhaps more eager than ever to share songs to comfort their fans. The most notable artists who decided to weather the storm and drop albums today (April 10) include The Strokes, Laura Marling and Hamilton Leithauser (of The Walkmen). Plus, today brings records from smaller, but equally exciting names like Flat Worms, Why Bonnie and Midwife. Scroll down to dive into a brand new LP, or check out all 10 of Paste’s New Music Friday recommendations.
1. Eerie Gaits: Holopaw
Wild Pink songwriter John Ross has shared Holopaw, his second album as Eerie Gaits. Ross grew up near the Florida town that shares this album’s name, which has a population of less than 5,000 people. It follows his 2017 full-length Bridge Music, and while both are warm, guitar-based instrumental albums that fold in ambient elements, Holopaw adds percussion and feels more expansive. It’s the perfect fusion of mystical and meaningful. —Lizzie Manno
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2. Flat Worms: Antarctica
For some reason, ear-splitting guitars are one of very few excruciating sounds that’s not only tolerable, but enjoyable. Flat Worms have perfected the art of absolutely filthy garage rock guitars—fans of grimey feedback and distortion will drool over this band. Their 2017 self-titled debut (recorded and mixed by Ty Segall) was driven by smoldering guitars, but unlike other noise punk bands, frontman Will Ivy’s vocals weren’t covered in the same soot. His clear, matter-of-fact speak-sing was a sharp contrast to their sonic sludge, and when paired with vigorous rhythms, it was the perfect soundtrack to boomeranging off the walls. Their 2020 sequel Antartica, L.A.’s Flat Worms (guitarist/vocalist Will Ivy, bassist Tim Hellman and drummer Justin Sullivan) sees them dust off their instruments of mayhem, and though this record’s guitars might be ever so slightly less mucky and the tunes not quite as memorable, it’s still enough of a spastic, good time. —Lizzie Manno
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3. Hamilton Leithauser: The Loves of Your Life
The teaser videos for the first two singles from Hamilton Leithauser’s third solo LP, The Loves of Your Life, are some of the coolest album promo clips you’ll ever see. In the videos, the former frontman of The Walkmen paints himself to be a bit down and out as he traverses New York to play a new song for his friends Maggie Rogers (“Isabella”) and Ethan Hawke (“Here They Come.”) As the tracks play, Rogers cuts Leithauser’s hair, while Hawke casually beats him up. Just as much as the uncanny wail that’s been at the crux of so many of his stellar albums, Leithauser’s wits are very much still present. The singles are filled with upbeat folk rhythms and layered arrangements that beg for the repeat button. The album was recorded and produced over three years in Leithauser’s home studio, and his solo catalogue is definitely building into a similarly solid gold collection to the one that made The Walkmen so great. —Adrian Spinelli
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4. Laura Marling: Song For Our Daughter
Earlier this week, Laura Marling announced that her album, Song For Our Daughter, would drop today (April 10), months ahead of schedule via Partisan/Chrysalis. The British folk singer/songwriter released a highlight from the album, “Held Down,” and pinned a letter to her Twitter followers about her decision to release the album early, writing “An album, stripped of everything that modernity and ownership does to it, is essentially a piece of me, and I’d like for you to have it.” —Jarrod Johnson II
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5. Midwife: Forever
Denver multi-instrumentalist Madeline Johnston (also of Sister Grotto) has shared her latest drone release Forever, which also serves as her debut for San Francisco experimental label The Flenser (Have a Nice Life, Deafheaven). Her self-described “heaven metal” is crushingly beautiful—it mixes slowcore, drone-pop and ambient music, and despite its dark sonic shades, it’s a hopeful album, especially in its context: The album was made while she was grieving the death of her friend and artistic inspiration, Colin Ward, and it’s now dedicated to his memory. One line from “Anyone Can Play Guitar,” a highlight from this six-track release, is particularly moving as Johnston sings wistfully over feedback-drenched guitars: “Anyone can fall in love / Anyone can play guitar / Anyone can say goodbye.” —Lizzie Manno
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6. The Strokes: The New Abnormal
Let’s face it: In 2020, nobody is expecting a new Strokes album to compete with the band’s classic, essentially perfect first two albums. When the seminal, ’70s-inspired garage rock group dropped the latter of those albums, 2003’s Room on Fire, some fans and critics complained that it sounded too similar to 2001’s groundbreaking Is This It. Seemingly in direct response to those criticisms, Julian Casablancas and co. have avoided anything resembling musical consistency on every Strokes release since. Angles’ “Taken for a Fool,” Comedown Machine’s “All the Time” and a handful of Impressions songs suggested that our leather-clad early-aughts heroes might still possess a flicker of their initial spark. That magic reappears in flashes on The New Abnormal—the first Strokes release since Future Present Past and their first full-length in seven years—but even if the album’s strong songs are among the liveliest, most effortless music the band has made in over a decade, their bursting energy only modestly offsets the LP’s many sharp lows. —Max Freedman
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7. Sunwatchers: Oh Yeah?
Following a pair of 2018 albums—II and 3 Characters—and a 2019 LP Illegal Moves, experimental jazz outfit Sunwatchers have unleashed their next album Oh Yeah?. Paste recently featured Sunwatchers on our list of 10 NYC Bands You Need to Know in 2020, noting “You’re in for wailing horns, krautrock rhythms, synth dissonance and mind-numbing experimentation, so buckle up before entering this thunderdome of weightless imagination.” —Lizzie Manno
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8. Trace Mountains: Lost in the Country
There’s always a new beginning in an end: In the wake of the 2018 dissolution of LVL UP, the band he co-founded in college, Dave Benton has returned to his Trace Mountains moniker with release of his new album, Lost in the Country, on Lame-O Records. Benton released his debut album as Trace Mountains, A Partner to Lean On, in March 2018, just a couple of months before LVL UP’s break-up. He’s since relocated to Kingston, a small city in New York’s Hudson Valley, and made more of an effort to write candidly, “finding a creative process that requires me to be honest with myself,” as he explains. But Lost in the Country is hardly a solo effort, to hear Benton tell it: He credits his collaborators Jim Hill (Slight Of), Sean Henry and Susannah Cutler (Yours Are the Only Ears), as well as his former LVL UP bandmate Greg Rutkin (Cende), as key contributors. —Scott Russell
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9. Watkins Family Hour: Brother Sister
Sara Watkins just can’t keep still. You may know her as a member of beloved indie folk group Nickel Creek, or, more recently, as one-third of the bluegrass supergroup I’m With Her, who released their acclaimed album See You Around in 2018. She’s also a member of what you might call a more tight-knit collective: Watkins Family Hour, the group made up of Sara and her brother Sean Watkins. The pair will release their spirited new album Brother Sister this month, and so far the singles have been energetic acoustic jams featuring the kind of harmonies only family can create. This is Watkins Family Hour’s first release in five years. “It felt really good to dig into the potential of two people…the primary goal of this record became to see what we could do when it is just the two of us,” Sara said of the release in a press statement. “The arrangements and the writing were all focused on that. Listening now, I’m really proud of what we did. These are songs that would not have come out of either one of us individually and it feels like a band sound, like this is what we do, the two of us.” The more the merrier. —Ellen Johnson
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10. Why Bonnie: Voice Box
Occasionally when a hip new band starts to get considerable buzz there’s one single in particular tied to the hype. For Austin-based indie rock group Why Bonnie, that song just might be the blistering “Athlete,” a recently released single from their new Voice Box EP. It’s truly an attention-grabber, full of fortified feedback fuzz, screeching guitars and the unmistakable power of frontwoman Blair Howerton’s soft yet deep voice. It begins with scratchy violin strings straight out of a horror flick before the band pokes at the idea of athletic prowess. “‘Athlete’ is the most ‘rock and roll’ track on the EP so we wanted to make a video that embodied that, but also felt like casual, day-in-the-life footage,” the band said in a statement. “Kind of like watching a home movie that you found in a box in your parents’ attic, but instead of you as a three-year old on the soccer field, you’re a grown adult with about the same skill level.” “Athlete” isn’t the only star single, though: The Voice Box title track is just as attractive, but a bit closer to the dream-pop side of things. Any band who can squeeze this much beautiful noise into such a small amount of output is one to keep your eyes on. —Ellen Johnson
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