We’ve already gone on record about this month’s outstanding slate of new releases, and October’s second New Music Friday—today, Oct. 8, for the layperson—is just more proof of our point. Lillie West’s “monumental artistic leap” of a new album as Lala Lala, the much-anticipated debut of Extremely Online pop duo Magdalena Bay, and the latest effort from electronic mainstay James Blake lead the pack of premiering must-hears. Lend your ears to them all below.
BADBADNOTGOOD: Talk Memory
BADBADNOTGOOD is a trio now, and with such a big change came a much-needed reflection on where the band wanted to go. Five years after IV, BBNG rekindle their flame with Talk Memory. There are no features, a formula that has proven successful for the band in the past, with the album instead capturing the essence of jazz: improvisation and spontaneity. Bass and guitar fuzz clash with gorgeous horns and drums, a notable departure from their hip-hop-infused heyday. It’s their way of deconstructing their past, getting back to the foundations of what sparked their love of music in the first place. It also helps that it’s aided by legends such as Terrace Martin and Arthur Verocai. Talk Memory is as much of a reminder for the band themselves of why they love making music as it is an album for wider consumption, and that passion comes through in the songs. —Jade Gomez
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Efterklang: Windflowers
Efterklang continue to evolve on their sixth studio album (and first for City Slang) Windflowers, affectionately named for the anemones that blossom across Denmark’s forest floors each spring. Casper Clausen, Mads Brauer and Rasmus Stolberg craft a serene, atmospheric blend of chamber-pop, post-rock and electronics, with an unshakable innocence that belies their 20+ years as a band. The Danish trio are known for their ever-fluctuating sound, but to describe Windflowers as “experimental” is to do its accessibility a disservice. The album is a kind, gentle monument to optimism—to the belief that things can, and will, get better—and a font of peace in tempestuous times. —Scott Russell
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James Blake: Friends That Break Your Heart
Friends That Break Your Heart has a more linear format than James Blake’s otherwise structural whirlwinds of albums, but linear is not boring when Blake does it. Detailing the love, loss and confusion of breaking up with a friend, Friends has fierce emotional depth, but also a resonant playfulness. Blake’s thoughts are as crystal clear and piercing as his falsetto, while refreshingly displaying the emotional capacity that he often brings to his music. The conventionality of the format, though, doesn’t parallel the production, which is always a distinctly Blake-ian concoction of folk-flared, soulful, ambient electronic music. To be able to conjure the spacial and poignant intensity of his previous work, in such an unfamiliar way, is no small feat. —Ana Cubas
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Lala Lala: I Want the Door to Open
On the third Lala Lala album, Chicago’s Lillie West is taking a monumental artistic leap and it’s working on every level. Each of the singles in the lead-up have been an absolute thrill. “DIVER” is an extravagantly arranged number that teems with gorgeous vocals, big drums (from fellow Chicagoan Nnamdi Ogbonnaya) and a beautiful violin (from OHMME’s Macie Stewart, also from Chicago). “Color of the Pool’’ feels like a leather jacket-clad motorcycle ride into the night (hat tip to the spot-on video, below) with a build-up of synths and saxophone explosion from Landlady’s Adam Schatz. It’s the peak of the album’s lyrical hallmark of dissecting the ins and outs of the inter/intrapersonal dynamic, as West sings: “And yes you know I love it / When we are both looking straight at me / But I’m feeling multiplied / Feeling far away from what I need.” The mirror analogy is apt imagery for conversations we have with ourselves while trying to make sense of connection, and West has tapped into a quality that great artists possess: the ability to consciously make yourself a vessel for listeners to confront the inner truths, doubts and hurdles that we face in our daily lives so that we can grow. This is some of the best music of the year. —Adrian Spinelli
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Magdalena Bay: Mercurial World
Synth-pop duo Magdalena Bay, aka Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, have fully embraced the secret blessing of the pandemic. Following the unfortunately timed release of their 2020 EP A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling at the cusp of lockdown, the ensuing isolation gave time for the EP to resonate with fans, leading to a growing support system that crystallized into the hype for their impending debut album Mercurial World. The duo fully embrace the changing tides of pop music via their take on bubblegum and electro-pop with the vulnerability of Gwen Stefani and the infectious hooks of Grimes, two influences the group regularly circle back to. Mercurial World finally offers the space for the two to sink their teeth into the ideas touched upon in their previous projects, with a newfound vigor that only a global crisis could incite. —Jade Gomez
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Matt Maltese: Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow
2020 and all its attendant losses sent many of us grasping for lifelines, whether by confronting pain we’d previously avoided, or seeking out new ways of connecting with the world. 23-year-old South London singer/songwriter Matt Maltese was no exception, opting to “celebrate the theatre in all the small things” while writing his third record, Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow. The album is charming in its songwriting and instrumentation alike, with Maltese deftly juggling lush piano-pop, soft psych-rock, airy synths and acoustic jangle across 13 songs of joy and sadness, including a duet with Bedouine (“Oldest Trick in the Book”). Even just the titles of songs like “Everyone Adores You (at least I do)” and “1000 Tears Deep” convey the sense of humor Maltese brings to his scenes of longing and loneliness, making universal everyday struggles feel like something special. —Scott Russell
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Porches: All Day Gentle Hold !
Porches burst onto the scene years ago with Slow Dance Through the Cosmos, an album that blended lofi synthscapes, blunt guitar lines and neurotic, but funny lyrics. Maine really found his footing with 2016’s Pool, though. That album toyed with bohemian new wave, oblique dance music and alluringly vague songwriting. It set Maine up for success, thrusting him to the forefront of the alternative underground, alongside his ex-partner Frankie Cosmos. But right when it seemed like Maine was poised to be one of the most beloved weirdos of our time, he fell off. The albums that followed, The House and Ricky Music, were brief, rigid affairs that felt a touch too tailored for Spotify playlists like Pollen and Soirée. Toying with a myriad of styles, and drawing inspiration from genres past, Porches’ latest, All Day Gentle Hold !, finally breaks the mold that listeners may have come to expect from Maine’s recent endeavours. Flirting with new wave, dream pop and electronic music, it doesn’t quite recapture the magic of the good old days, but it definitely feels ambitious compared to the two records that preceded it. —Ted Davis
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Shannon Lay: Geist
Following L.A.-based singer/songwriter Shannon Lay’s August, Geist is a gentle, poetic folk album even more intimate than her last. Each gracefully simple track has her vocals at the heart of them, often only accompanied by an acoustic guitar and keys. It’s as if the intricate, bright harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young found themselves in Lay’s layered vocals. Geist also includes a glowing, angelic cover of Syd Barrett’s “Late Night” that makes the album worth listening to all by itself. —Ana Cubas
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The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die: Illusory Walls
The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die have a flair for the dramatic, if their name is anything to go off. Noted as one of the main bands that brought emo into the spotlight again (and for all the purists out there, yes, we mean ’90s emo and not early-’00s pop-punk/emo), TWIABP capitalize on the emotions present in the pandemic in releasing Illusory Walls. As they settle into their new lineup as a five-piece, their chemistry shines. Fuzzy guitars explode into ear-shattering feedback that cradles gorgeous vocal melodies. TWIABP craft a brilliant, immersive and surreal world on Illusory Walls, juxtaposing inevitable doom with sweet optimism. —Jade Gomez
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W.H. Lung: Vanities
Manchester synth-rock quintet W.H. Lung are back with the follow-up to their acclaimed 2019 debut Incidental Music. Tom Sharkett, who shares songwriting duties with Joe Evans, called the lead track “a transition from the old W. H. Lung to new,” while Vanities as a whole documents a period of flux for the group, in which they lost a member to a move and were drawn to the inclusive community of dance music. Where Incidental Music found the band blending post-punk and krautrock guitars with synth-pop propulsion, Vanities shifts the scales towards the latter end of the rock show vs. dance floor spectrum. On lead single “Pearl in the Palm,” synth sounds evoking both Blade Runner and Giorgio Moroder swirl around uptempo drums and Evans’ reedy vocals, with funky guitar accents, group vocals and a sprawl that never slows evoking the best of dance-punk greats like LCD Soundsystem. W.H. Lung seem to understand that, in times this dark, the unconscious escape that dance music provides is not a luxury, but rather an urgent necessity, and with this record, they’ve risen to the occasion. —Scott Russell
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And don’t forget to check out … Atmosphere: WORD?, Band Gang Lonnie Bands: Hard 2 Kill, Del Water Gap: Del Water Gap, Kevin Morby: A Night at the Little Los Angeles, Natalie Hemby: Pins And Needles, Paris Texas: Red Hand Akimbo EP, S. Raekwon: Where I’m at Now, Sam Fender: Seventeen Going Under, Taraka: Welcome to Paradise Lost
