Things are heating up in most parts of the world, and the album front is no different. Whether diving into the effortlessly cool 070 Shake record to kick off June or jamming out to Bartees Strange’s highly anticipated follow-up to Live Forever later in the month, there’s a lot to sink your teeth into. Between all the tours and festivals, Paste will always bring the finest selection of tunes to fit into your busy schedules. Check out our most anticipated albums of June below.
June 3
070 Shake: YOU CAN’T KILL ME
G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam Recordings
070 Shake, G.O.O.D. Music’s resident crooner, made waves with her breathtaking debut Modus Vivendi in 2020. Now, her brooding R&B returns with YOU CAN’T KILL ME. Dark, ambient textures writhe and whisper with Shake’s conversational alto. Part baby-making music, part queer empowerment, Shake’s experimental R&B is universal. YOU CAN’T KILL ME is exactly that, and she stands tall as one of the genre’s most exciting innovators. —Jade Gomez
Angel Olsen: Big Time
Jagjaguwar
On Big Time, the grand, burgeoning, symphonic gestures of Angel Olsen’s last three studio LPs are gone, substituted with Phases-era, minimalistic, pedal steel-tinged sobcore and dreamy twang. It’s a one-woman show, a prize fight where the challenger no-showed. Big Time isn’t a bummer opera; it’s a last-call, honky-tonk bar encore—and it rules. On opener “All The Good Times,” Olsen surrenders the album’s thesis, declaring that she’s done making excuses for everyone else. “I can’t say that I’m sorry when I don’t feel so wrong anymore,” she sings. The horn arrangements here are subtle, and Drew Erickson’s organ trembles slightly beneath Olsen’s vocals. It’s an announcement, a warning, that this is a new era of her songwriting. —Matt Mitchell
Horsegirl: Versions of Modern Performance
Matador Records
Horsegirl are three friends who make music in a basement. It’s true, and they want you to know that, not because they’re shy about the attention they’ve received as indie rock’s latest breakthrough, but because the Chicago trio of Penelope Lowenstein, Nora Cheng and Gigi Reece want you to know that they’re having fun. They’re accomplishing that in the way that only passionate teenagers can: professing their admiration for Kim Gordon, painting T-shirts haphazardly, and throwing riffs against the wall until they unfurl into songs. The end product of those basement hangs, Versions of Modern Performance, impressively combines noisy, punk-minded influences that congeal into a wondrous concoction of post-punk, no-wave, early shoegaze, and more. While inspired by the ’80s and ’90s cadres of emergent indie rock’s noisier actors, Horsegirl’s sound is singular, curious and glossed with a healthy layer of irony that Gen Z wears like a reliable pair of workboots. —Devon Chodzin
S.G. Goodman: Teeth Marks
Verve Forecast
S.G. Goodman turns the sleepless nights spent yearning over unrequited love into a delicate delve into her psyche on her latest album, Teeth Marks.The first three singles from the Kentucky singer-songwriter’s follow up to 2020’s Old Time Feeling feature a delicate finger-plucked electric guitar and subtle southern influence. It feels like pressing on a bruise as she revisits old wounds, comes to terms with an emotionally unavailable lover, and recalls it all through fragmented details like the dead birds they prayed over in the park. With the first glimpse of the record already packed with so much raw emotion and intimate half-hushed confessionals, it’s clear that the rest of the album will be just as tender-hearted. —Samantha Sullivan
More notable June 3 releases: Al Riggs: Themselves, Andrew Bird: Inside Problems, Drive-By Truckers: Welcome 2 Club XIII, Fantastic Negrito: White Jesus Black Problems, Frank Zappa: Zappa/Erie, GWAR: The New Dark Ages, iamamiwhoami: Be Here Soon, Jasmyn: In The Wild, Kamikaze Nurse: Stimuloso, Mary Gauthier: Dark Enough To See The Stars, Namir Blade: Metropolis, Poliça: Madness, Post Malone: Twelve Carat Toothache, Purity Ring: Graves EP, Queen of Jeans: Hiding in Place EP, The Sheepdogs: Outta Sight, The Zells: Ant Farm
June 10
Grace Ives: Janky Star
True Panther/Harvest
Grace Ives comes up for air on her latest record, Janky Star. The queen of charmingly claustrophobic beats, some of the angular synths, and punchy percussion from 2019’s 2nd resurface in her singles. However, she pairs this ear candy with pensive gaps that give her a chance to catch her breath. While she’s ornate as ever on tracks like “Loose,” other singles like “Lullaby” are mellow in comparison as her vocals melt into a shimmering laze of electro-pop. The themes Ives touches on are as complex as her composition, as she discusses sobriety, overdoses, escapism, attempting to slow down, and trying to find solid ground in a world that never stops spinning. —Samantha Sullivan
More notable June 10 releases: American Aquarium: Chicamacomico, Big Gigantic: Brighter Future 2, Billy Howerdel: What Normal Was, BTS: Proof, Carrie Underwood: Denim & Rhinestones, The Dream Syndicate: Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions, George Ezra: Gold Rush Kid, Joyce Manor: 40 Oz. to Fresno, Liss: I Guess Nothing Will Be The Same, Mother Nature: Nature World’s EP, Shearwater: The Great Awakening, Sinead O’Brien: Time Bend and Break the Bower, Vance Joy: In Our Own Sweet Time, Wylderness: Big Plan for a Blue World, Xylø: Unamerican Beauty, Yann Tiersen: 11 5 18 2 5 18
June 17
Bartees Strange: Farm to Table
4AD
Bartees Strange has been sowing for years, and with his follow-up to 2020’s universally acclaimed Live Forever, the aptly titled Farm to Table, it’s finally time for the genre boundary-obliterating artist to reap. The repeated refrain in the Paste Music chat during the rollout of Strange’s 4AD debut has been, “This new single sounds unlike anything else he’s done,” from hyper-confident hip-hop/indie-rock hybrid “Cosigns” to the tear-jerking twang of Gianna Floyd-inspired ballad “Hold the Line.” The list of musical feats Strange can’t achieve gets shorter every day. Fortunately, though, Farm to Table doesn’t take reservations—it’s for everyone. —Scott Russell
Perfume Genius: Ugly Season
Matador Records
Despite its title, Perfume Genius’ Ugly Season contains a lot of beauty. The album, which arrives 2 years after Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, has no recent singles. If the two released (“Pop Song” and “Eye In The Wall”) are any indication, Perfume Genius widens the eerie abyss of his forward-thinking pop. Ugly Season will accompany The Sun Still Burns here, a dance piece made in collaboration with choreographer Kate Wallich. According to visual artist Jacolby Satterwhite, the piece asks “How do you architecturally mold and render an idealized version of utopia?” and says, “It’s about making something that you desire so beyond your scope that it’s hard to grapple into a concrete form.” —Jade Gomez
More notable June 17 releases: Alanis Morissette: the storm before the calm, Fashion Club: Scrutiny, Flasher: Love Is Yours, Foals: Life Is Yours, Greg Puciato: Mirrorcell, Grey Daze: The Phoenix, Hazel English: Summer Nights EP, Hercules & Love Affair: In Amber, Horse Jumper of Love: Natural Part, Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler: For All Our Days That Tear The Heart, Joey Bada$$: 2000, Kevin Gates: KHAZA, Logic: Vinyl Days, Mt. Joy: Orange Blood, Nick Cave: Seven Psalms, Pet Fox: A Face In Your Life, Spencer Krug: Twenty Twenty Twenty Twenty One, TV Priest: My Other People, Yaya Bey: Remember Your North Star
June 24
Regina Spektor: Home, Before and After
Warner Records
Six years after 2016’s Remember Us to Life, Regina Spektor will release her highly anticipated eighth studio album, Home, before and after. The album was recorded in upstate New York and produced by Spektor and Grammy-winner John Congleton. The two singles that have been shared so far, “Up the Mountain” and “Becoming All Alone,” have a refined sense of poise and polish. Both songs possess a theatrical flourish due in part to her grand arrangements (which sounds like she recruited a small orchestra to pull off) and her stately vocals. Spektor brings effortless elegance to both tracks, which will no doubt lace its way through the rest of the record. —Samantha Sullivan
Soccer Mommy: Sometimes, Forever
Loma Vista Recordings
Merely putting Sophie Allison’s indie-rock project Soccer Mommy and Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never in the same sentence would have been enough to lock this album into a spot on our most-anticipated list. But from lead single “Shotgun” on, Allison has showed off her sharpest combination of nuanced sonics and bittersweet songwriting yet, wielding emotion and melody like the dual barrels of that song’s eponymous weapon. The Lopatin-producedSometimes, Forever promises the continued rise of Soccer Mommy’s star, which has long been one of the indie rock space’s brightest. —Scott Russell
Zola Jesus: Arkhon
Sacred Bones Records
Nika Roza Danilova, better known under her alias Zola Jesus, makes music that defies expectations and pierces the psyche. Her chilling voice summons endless entities both good and bad, filling the vast expanse her music creates. Aided by Randall Dunn (Sunn O)))) and percussionist Matt Chamberlain (Fiona Apple, David Bowie), Danilova crafted Arkhon. It’s an expression of pain as much as it is relief, unlocking emotions not yet discovered. It’s Danilova at her most vulnerable, surrendering herself to the audience and the collaborators involved, for a truly unique experience. —Jade Gomez
More notable June 24 releases: Alexisonfire: Otherness, Art d’Ecco: After The Head Rush, The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees, Caamp: Lavender Days, CANDY: Heaven Is Here, Conan Gray: Superache, Damien Jurado: Raggae Film Star, Day Wave: Pastlife, G. Love: Philadelphia Mississippi, Goose: Dripfield, Jack Johnson: Meet The Moonlight, Joan Shelley: The Spur, Katie Alice Greer: Barbarism, Katie Bejsiuk: The Woman on the Moon, Lupe Fiasco: Drill Music In Zion, MUNA: MUNA, Noah Reid: Adjustments, Porcupine Tree: CLOSURE/CONTINUATION, The Tragically Hip: Live at the Roxy, Tim Heidecker: High School, Wire: Not About To Die, Young Guv: GUV IV
