Around the time of her big break with 2022’s *Preacher’s Daughter*, Ethel Cain was dubbed a pop star, though it was often hard to tell from her songs. Aside from “American Teenager,” a Springsteen-esque anthem that laundered sneakily unpatriotic sentiments through arena-ready melodies, that album’s songs were largely dirges (gorgeous ones, at that) preoccupied by ideas of doomed love, faith, and fate. Written and produced almost entirely by Cain (the stage name and alter ego of Hayden Anhedönia), the project’s lore was nearly as compelling as the music itself, launching Anhedönia into something like stardom. Since then, Anhedönia’s spoken freely about the pitfalls of popularity; she penned a Tumblr post last year identifying an irony epidemic within online fan culture: an aversion to approaching art with sincerity rather than memes. You could be tempted to view *Perverts*, Cain’s first release since *Preacher’s Daughter*, as a provocation—an often-challenging 90-minute work that seems designed to scare off a stan or two. Songs like “Pulldrone” and “Housofpsychoticwomn” are noise experiments that stretch well past the 10-minute mark, full of eerie drone, depersonalized spoken word, and terrifying imagery regarding sex and sin. The moments of hard-earned beauty feel all the more rewarding: the fuzzy, sultry “Vacillator,” or “Etienne” and “Thatorchia,” a pair of elegiac instrumentals that sound like beams of heavenly light piercing through the darkness.
According to Alex Kapranos, longtime lead vocalist of Franz Ferdinand, fear may be the largest untapped source of renewable energy on the planet. The millennial-era stalwarts are hoping that by charging headlong into that which frightens us most, maybe, just maybe, we’re all capable of tapping into the secret drive hidden on the other side. “I think we all have fears within us and fears that we confront in our life at different times,” Kapranos tells Apple Music’s Hanuman Welch. “And how we react to those fears is how we learn who we are really. And fear is not necessarily a bad thing either. Fear is associated with some of the greatest things you do in your life. Think about asking somebody out on a date: There\'s quite a lot of fear that you have to overcome to do that. Yeah, no. I think it\'s a fascinating insight into who we are.” Kapranos and Franz Ferdinand are no strangers to self-reflection. *The Human Fear* arrives at the peak of millennial-era revivalism thanks to the cresting wave of indie-sleaze nostalgia. But the band’s workmanlike approach to touring hasn’t seen them slow down much in the two decades since their self-titled art-rock debut catapulted them to fame. A lineup change also inspired the band to get back into the studio, where they captured a bit of that anthemic energy on the album’s lead single “Audacious,” a glam-rock bruiser they say serves as a bit of a mission statement for the entire album. “I think the spirit of the song encapsulates what I think being in a band should be, which is quite an audacious thing,” bassist Bob Hardy reveals. “There’s no point being onstage or getting on a stage unless you’re going to do it in an audacious way. If you’re not going to do it the whole way, then what the fuck are you doing?” Much of that “what the fuck are you doing” energy emerged organically when the band reassembled in the studio. Not that a sense of zeal has ever been absent across the band’s discography, but the Scottish quintet wanted to make sure they were hitting the record button with their guitars already firmly tuned. “We made sure that the songs were bangers first and foremost,” Hardy says. “And then we got the band together and learned them. And a lot of the album’s recorded live, so it’s the live sound of the band really tearing into it, and I think it gives the whole record a really exciting feel. It sounds like we’re having fun, and we were having fun making it.” “I hear stories about bands that will go into the studio and say that, ‘Well, the studio\'s jammed a bit.’ And then the record just came, and you can hear it sometimes,” Kapranos adds. “I like the idea of going to the studio when you’ve got some great songs and you know how to play them. I think that makes for a good record.”
Tamara Lindeman’s music as The Weather Station seems to expand and contract with every movement. The long-running project broke through in 2021 as fifth album *Ignorance* grew her folk-rock milieu to encompass the sounds of sophisti-pop acts like The Blue Nile and Prefab Sprout, while 2022’s companion record *How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars* pared back her arrangements to nearly nothing. On her seventh album, *Humanhood*, Lindeman has blown up her sound yet again: Alongside the nocturnal vibe she so expertly cultivated across *Ignorance*, these 13 tracks—initially recorded straight to tape over the course of two improvisational sessions in late 2023—encompass freewheeling ’60s psychedelic pop, darkly shaded jazz, and flurries of spoken-word sound collage. Joining her trusty supporting players from the *Ignorance* sessions is a who’s who of left-field sounds, including orchestral-folk auteur Sam Amidon and ambient-saxophone jazz sensation Sam Gendel. At the center of it all, Lindeman’s ability to pull back and let silence briefly reign remains as breathtaking as her most acrobatic vocal moments. Her lyrical focus picks up from where she left off on the previous two Weather Station records, pivoting specifically from the encroaching threat of climate change towards an episode of depersonalization she experienced while contemplating the world’s ever-evolving ills. What results is an album that’s contemplative and soul-searching, as Lindeman avoids finding easy answers and instead seems to channel her thought process in real time. “I don’t know quite where to begin,” she sings over the brushed drums and elegiac piano of *Humanhood*’s quietly devastating closer, “Sewing.” “I know it don’t look like I’m doing anything.” Quite the opposite, in fact.
