It was really difficult to recommend only 10 records that came out today. It’s one of the most stacked release days of the year so far, so we feel very strongly about the 10 albums listed below. Other notable artists who released records today that we didn’t mention below include Will Butler, Public Enemy, Sweater Curse, Bullion, Thurston Moore, Deftones, Lydia Loveless, Shy Boys, Death Bells, IDLES and more. Scroll down for 10 essential albums for this New Music Friday.
1. Mint Field: Sentimiento Mundial
Mexican duo Mint Field know a thing or two about entrancing, dreamy music. Their second album Sentimiento Mundial, the follow-up to 2018’s Pasar de las Luces, isn’t your average dream pop record—its sonic possibilities are endless, folding in slightly sinister psychedelia, krautrock rhythms and even brass and strings. Their songs are filled with immersive, delicate sounds and invigorating guitar bursts, always blanketed by graceful lead vocals from Estrella del Sol. Its mystical beauty is pacifying, and their guitar lines pack plenty of stimulating twists, often kaleidoscopic, forceful or charred. Their songs are blissfully alive, either pulsing with energetic jolts or rocking you slowly with caressing vocals. —Lizzie Manno
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2. Pillow Queens: In Waiting
Following a steady stream of singles and EPs, Irish quartet Pillow Queens self-released their debut album In Waiting. It’s an album built on big hooks and aching hearts—their brand of indie rock centers on the ups and downs of intimacy, marginalized identities and the power of companionship. More than anything, it’s a record that feels like home, a place of safety and warmth and though insecurities and fears aren’t necessarily left at the door, there’s a benevolent, altruistic spirit that reminds us those burdens don’t define us and we’re not battling them alone. —Lizzie Manno
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3. Profligate: Too Numb to Know
Profligate (aka electronic musician Noah Anthony) has shared his fourth album and second for Wharf Cat Records, Too Numb to Know. His earlier material hinged on dense, throttling coldwave, but his new album follows the trajectory of 2018’s Somewhere Else in sounding a bit more human. For all its electronic jolts, Too Numb to Know also offers engrossing pop clarity, particularly on side one with tracks like “Mask,” “Hang Up” and even the tender “A Little Rain.” —Lizzie Manno
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4. Rituals of Mine: Hype Nostalgia
In the last five years, Terra Lopez lost her father to suicide and her best friend to a freak boating accident. Already living with depression, it sent Lopez into a harrowing tailspin, and she needed to create in order to heal. Hype Nostalgia is Lopez’s debut LP as Rituals of Mine (you might remember her excellent Sister Crayon moniker), and the music is nothing short of gripping electro-R&B from a queer perspective. On “Exceptions,” Lopez asks, “Am I the only one who’s had enough?” with a fluctuating vocal effect that makes us feel her pain and start to come to terms with our own as well. “Trauma” is an electro-punk number that calls to mind the musings of fellow Sacramento band Death Grips, but with a more even-keeled and palatable delivery. And on “Come Around Me,” she grapples with the lacking authenticity of people around her through a sparse yet menacing beat surrounding her celestial coo. With Rituals of Mine, Lopez presents a necessary voice when we’re all navigating the waves of depression like never before. —Adrian Spinelli
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5. Róisín Murphy: Róisín Machine
Irish pop singer Róisín Murphy first made a name for herself as one half of ’90s U.K. trip-hop duo Moloko. After the group disbanded in 2004, Murphy embarked on a solo dance-pop career that saw her release four riveting albums, then vault back into the limelight in 2018 as the vocalist on DJ Koze’s immaculate “Illumination.” She’s now revving up her fifth LP, Róisín Machine, which sees Murphy unfurling into a full blown disco diva with a collection of tracks she’s banked across the last decade. Róisín Machine is a collaboration with producer Crooked Man (aka Sheffield’s DJ Parrot), and tracks like “Murphy’s Law” and “Narcissus” are disco-pop at its absolute finest—this is seriously like Robyn meets Sylvester. Murphy needs to be considered among Irish pop’s most accomplished artists, and “Incapable” alone is one of the best dance floor tracks you’ll hear all year. —Adrian Spinelli
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6. Sad13: Haunted Painting
Sadie Dupuis has had a hand in almost every creative aspect of the music industry—between playing in her indie rock band Speedy Ortiz, collaborating with Lizzo, running Wax Nine Records and combining music with advocacy, she’s done it all. Now, Dupuis is back with her first solo album since 2016’s Slugger under the moniker Sad13. The writing process for Dupuis’ new album Haunted Painting started after she witnessed an apparition at a Seattle art gallery, but she dives into ideas larger than her own haunting experiences. “What was it like to come of age in such a cruel place?” Dupuis sings on “The Crow.” The album leans on a loose horror theme, between the vampiric video for early single “Oops….!” and Dupuis presenting as a self-proclaimed “frontdemon.” Despite the concept, lyrics like those on “The Crow” feel aware of their place at this moment amid a tense political climate and months spent in pandemic isolation. —Lexi Lane
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7. Sufjan Stevens: The Ascension
“I shouldn’t have looked for revelation,” Sufjan Stevens sings on “The Ascension.” “I should have resigned myself to this.” For 20 years, Stevens’s songs—their genres ranging from bare-bones indie to pop electronica—have reckoned with religion. On his latest album, The Ascension, global issues, rather, come to the forefront. Suddenly, looking to the heavens seems less essential; if you ignore pressing, earthly issues, you’re complicit. A sonic sibling to 2010’s electro-pop Age of Adz and a direct follow-up to 2015’s autobiographical, folk-orchestral Carrie and Lowell, The Ascension looks outward. Mired in anxiety, The Ascension’s existential questions are numerous (“What’s the point of [love] when everything’s dispossessed?,” “Is it all for something? Is it all part of a plan?,” or simply the refrain, “What now?”). While these questions are concerned with death, rebirth and determinism, they also apply to global concerns and American civilization—topics Stevens has never before tackled in such depth. —Caitlin Wolper
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8. Sylvan Esso: Free Love
Electronic duo and festival favorites Sylvan Esso will release their highly anticipated third LP later this month, and it feels like the perfect time to receive their buoyant, joyful, dance-inducing music. “It’s a record about being increasingly terrified of the world around you and looking inward to remember all the times when loving other people seemed so easy, so that you can find your way back to that place,” the pair said in a statement. Sylvan Esso is made up of Amelia Meath (who you also may know from her folk project Mountain Man) and producer Nick Sanborn. Their music has become increasingly polished over the years, first catching fire with more ambient songs like “Hey Mami” and “Coffee” on their 2014 self-titled debut and following it with 2017’s more pop-forward What Now. Free Love seems to position them somewhere in between those two sounds. Single “Ferris Wheel” is tremendously fun, but it’s also weirdly cleansing. Meath describes this phenomenon best: “Nick wants things to sound unsettling, but I want you to take your shirt off and dance.” There you have it. —Ellen Johnson
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9. Tim Heidecker: Fear of Death
Tim Heidecker and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering have chosen an alarmingly on-the-nose year to release a mostly sunlit album about death. Although the duo and a host of collaborators recorded Fear of Death in 2019, the absurdity of the album’s release amid a global pandemic, overdue uprisings against police brutality, raging West Coast wildfires and the 2020 election cycle only amplifies these songs’ often upbeat morbidity. Heidecker and Mering certainly aren’t strangers to the absurd and its accompanying hilarity. Over Heidecker’s 20-or-so-year career, he’s developed a distinctly surreal, ironic brand of hipster humor through the cult Adult Swim shows Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and Decker. Even before Mering jumped to the forefront of the chamber-rock pack with last year’s apocalypse-themed instant classic Titanic Rising, she was singing about how bizarre the world’s end will look. Both also share a passion for ’70s soft rock, as do some of their Fear of Death collaborators. —Max Freedman
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10. Ziemba: True Romantic
Singer/songwriter René Kladzyk released True Romantic, her latest album as Ziemba. Between flowy art pop and the loftiest power ballads imaginable, Kladzyk’s songs are perfect for a wide variety of settings: an experimental theater production, a slow dance at prom, an Olympic opening ceremony or an accompaniment to calming nature webcams. Her powerful, ribbon-like voice truly knows no bounds, and her songs are lovingly crafted. —Lizzie Manno
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