It’s been over a month in quarantine, which means we’ve been screaming into the void since then. If you need some new music to scream along to, we’ve got you covered. This week brings new releases from Americana giant Lucinda Willliams, retro pop singer/songwriter Hazel English, Yuck guitarist Max Bloom, experimental jazz group Onyx Collective and so much more. Scroll down to sample 10 essential new releases, out today.
altopalo: farawayfromeveryoneyouknow
Experimental New York quartet altopalo are flipping guitar-driven music on its head. With their sophomore album farawayfromeveryoneyouknow, a follow-up to 2018’s frozenthere, they blend electro-pop, jazz, R&B and rock, resulting in a heady hi-fi record with twists at every turn. —Lizzie Manno
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Hazel English: Wake UP!
Straw-man time: If it’s hard to make a truly bad dream-pop album, it’s equally tricky to make a really good one, and for identical reasons. The essential ingredients are the same in either case. You need reverb, introspection and hazy melodies that evoke ’60s pop. How you fit them together is what makes all the difference. Australian-born Los Angeles transplant Hazel English puts those elements to use in service of 10 songs that glide by comfortably on her full-length debut, Wake UP!. It’s a respectable enough effort, full of chiming guitars and sleek vocals as English delivers lyrics that parse feelings of isolation and explore power dynamics from romantic relationships to capitalism. —Eric R. Danton
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Hotel Lux: Barstool Preaching
London-via-Portsmouth band Hotel Lux have shared their debut EP Barstool Preaching, following a handful of singles over the years like “The Last Hangman,” “Berlin Wall” and “English Disease.” The five-track release spans slow-crawling, introspective rock (“Charades”), self-aware post-punk (“Loneliness of the Stage Performer”) and even jubilant organ-led guitar-pop (“Ballad of You & I”). “The songs are more introspective lyrically than we’ve been in the past, more personal as opposed to stories so the EP has an air of vulnerability to it—to us at least,” frontman Lewis Duffin says. —Lizzie Manno
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Kali Uchis: To Feel Alive
Following her 2018 album Isolation, which Paste named one of the best pop albums of that year, Kali Uchis has shared a new four-track EP called To Feel Alive. The Colombian-American R&B-pop singer tweeted about the release: “it will be a 4 song ep i made in a couple days, during quarantine. recorded all of it alone, in my room, bcoz i won’t roll out my real album right now, but wanna give my babies something. nobody needs to listen to it, & i don’t want ANYONE to buy it. thank u.” —Lizzie Manno
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King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard: Chunky Shrapnel
Last week, Australian psychedelic-prog outfit King Gizzard & The Lizard shared a feature-length documentary featuring performances from their 2019 U.K. and European tour, and today, they’ve shared its accompanying live album. The physical album is available on May 29. The film will be screening for a second time on Vimeo for a 24-hour period from April 24 at 6 p.m. to April 25 at 6 p.m. ET. Visit their website to view screening times for various cities around the world. —Lizzie Manno
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Lucinda Williams: Good Souls Better Angels
Lucinda Williams is the opposite of every Boomer stereotype. She’s politically enraged, and she’s certainly not worthy of the “out of touch” label slapped on many Boomers. On her new album Good Souls Better Angels, and during a recent phone call, she sounds just as fed up with everything as millennials are. The songs on Good Souls, while a perfect snapshot of this enlightened anger, aren’t all brand new. The sludgy blues tune “Bone Of Contention” dates back to 2005, just missing the cutoff for the alt-country troubadour’s 2007 album West. “You’re the splinter in my finger / you’re the knife in my back / you’re the bone of contention,” Williams sings in her signature snarl that has made her a legend in the eyes of so many, sounding more furious than she ever has before. That fury is what makes this album, even the songs that were written a few years earlier, so topical. Similar to the way Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters resonated so fiercely just a week ahead of Williams’ Good Souls Better Angels, these songs weren’t written about our current state of frenzied pandemic panic, but their arrival during spring 2020 gives them an especially clairvoyant air. —Ellen Johnson
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Max Bloom: Perfume
Yuck guitarist Max Bloom recorded his debut solo album Perfume following a painful breakup and a move back into his family home after 10 years of independence. Bloom pivoted to a more intimate, downtempo sound with unadorned vocals, influenced by the likes of George Harrison and Harry Nilsson, following three blown-out indie rock albums with Yuck. The result is a contemplative record that pivots between sunny melancholia, tongue-in-cheek humor and good old-fashioned yearning, and Bloom’s perky guitar work lightens the mood. “I decided to call the album Perfume because of how powerful smell can be,” Bloom says. “For me anyway, smelling a familiar smell can send me back in time like no other sense can. And when I smelled a jumper she had left behind, it brought everything back again.” —Lizzie Manno
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Onyx Collective: Manhattan Special
New York City experimental jazz group Onyx Collective have dropped a new album Manhattan Special, which reimagines songs from legendary musical theater songwriting duos Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II and Rodgers & Lorenz Hart. The album features appearances from frequent collaborators Ian Isiah, Kelsey Lu, Okay Kaya, Nick Hakim, Duendita, Julian Soto and Roy Nathanson. —Lizzie Manno
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RVG: Feral
RVG, the Australian band blending rock, punk and pop sensibilities in order to fuel their alchemic sound, have shared their sophomore album Feral via Fire Records. Feral follows RVG’s 2017 debut A Quality of Mercy. RVG shared the singles “Perfect Day,” “I Used to Love You” and “Christian Neurosurgeon” ahead of their album release. —Natalia Keogan
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Wares: Survival
Edmonton outfit Wares is the project of singer/songwriter and guitarist Cassia Hardy, and today, the band has shared their first release for Mint Records, Survival. It’s an emotionally uplifting record characterized by inner turmoil and guitars that range from furiously sweltering to pleasantly warm. “This record is dedicated to decolonial activists, anti-fascist agitators, prairie queers fighting for community and a better life,” Hardy writes in the liner notes. —Lizzie Manno
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