Loud and Quiet's Albums of the Year 2023

It's been a long long time coming, but we are delighted to finally announce the release of our new album False Lankum, along with the premiere of the first single, Go Dig My Grave.  The album was recorded across 2021 & 2022 by our longtime producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy in Hellfire Studio and Guerilla Studios in Ireland. The cover was shot by Steve Gullick, famed for photographing Nirvana amongst many greats, with a Gustav Doré illustration featured in the lower third, designed and laid out by Alison Fielding. It is our most ambitious record to date and we are very proud to finally unleash it upon the world. As well as the standard black vinyl, we will be releasing a Limited Edition Burnt Orange Transparent Double LP & CD. There will be an opportunity to obtain four limited edition prints, by legendary photographer Steve Gullick. The individual prints will be available across the world, with a signed edition available from Bandcamp.

Part of what makes Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA such a natural pair is that they stick out in similar ways. They’re too weird for the mainstream but too confrontational for the subtle or self-consciously progressive set. And while neither of them would be mistaken for traditionalists, the sample-scrambling chaos of tracks like “Burfict!” and “Shut Yo Bitch Ass Up/Muddy Waters” situate them in a lineage of Black music that runs through the comedic ultraviolence of the Wu-Tang Clan back through the Bomb Squad to Funkadelic, who proved just because you were trippy didn’t mean you couldn’t be militant, too.

Young Fathers occupy a unique place in British music. The Mercury Prize-winning trio are as adept at envelope-pushing sonic experimentalism and opaque lyrical impressionism as they are at soulful pop hooks and festival-primed choruses—frequently, in the space of the same song. Coming off the back of an extended hiatus following 2018’s acclaimed *Cocoa Sugar*, the Edinburgh threesome entered their basement studio with no grand plan for their fourth studio album other than to reconnect to the creative process, and each other. Little was explicitly discussed. Instead, Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole, and Graham “G” Hastings—all friends since their school days—intuitively reacted to a lyric, a piece of music, or a beat that one of them had conceived to create multifaceted pieces of work that, for all their complexities and contradictions, hit home with soul-lifting, often spiritual, directness. Through the joyous clatter of opener “Rice,” the electro-glam battle cry “I Saw,” the epic “Tell Somebody,” and the shape-shifting sonic explosion of closer “Be Your Lady,” Young Fathers express every peak and trough of the human condition within often-dense tapestries of sounds and words. “Each song serves an integral purpose to create something that feels cohesive,” says Bankole. “You can find joy in silence, you can find happiness in pain. You can find all these intricate feelings and diverse feelings that reflect reality in the best possible way within these songs.” Across 10 dazzling tracks, *Heavy Heavy* has all that and more, making it the band’s most fully realized and affecting work to date. Let Massaquoi and Bankole guide you through it, track by track. **“Rice”** Alloysious Massaquoi: “What we’re great at doing is attaching ourselves to what the feeling of the track is and then building from that, so the lyrics start to come from that point of view. \[On ‘Rice’\] that feeling of it being joyous was what we were connecting to. It was the feeling of fresh morning air. You’re on a journey, you’re moving towards something, it feels like you’re coming home to find it again. For me, it was finding that feeling of, ‘OK, I love music again,’ because during COVID it felt redundant to me. What mattered to me was looking after my family.” **“I Saw”** AM: “We’d been talking about Brexit, colonialism, about forgetting the contributions of other countries and nations so that was in the air. And when we attached ourselves to the feeling of the song, it had that call-to-arms feeling to it, it’s like a march.” Kayus Bankole: “It touches on Brexit, but it also touches on how effective turning a blind eye can be, that idea that there’s nothing really you can do. It’s a call to arms, but there’s also this massive question mark. I get super-buzzed by leaving question marks so you can engage in some form of conversation afterwards.” **“Drum”** AM: “It’s got that sort of gospel spiritual aspect to it. There’s an intensity in that. It’s almost like a sermon is happening.” KB: “The intensity of it is like a possession. A good, spiritual thing. For me, speaking in my native tongue \[Yoruba\] is like channeling a part of me that the Western world can’t express. I sometimes feel like the English language fails me, and in the Western world not a lot of people speak my language or understand what I’m saying, so it’s connecting to my true self and expressing myself in a true way.” **“Tell Somebody”** AM: “It was so big, so epic that we just needed to be direct. The lyrics had to be relatable. It’s about having that balance. You have to really boil it down and think, ‘What is it I’m trying to say here?’ You have 20 lines and you cut it down to just five and that’s what makes it powerful. I think it might mean something different to everyone in the group, but I know what it means to me, through my experiences, and that’s what I was channeling. The more you lean into yourself, the more relatable it is.” **“Geronimo”** AM: “It’s talking about relationships: ‘Being a son, brother, uncle, father figure/I gotta survive and provide/My mama said, “You’ll never ever please your woman/But you’ll have a good time trying.”’ It’s relatable again, but then you have this nihilistic cynicism from Graham: ‘Nobody goes anywhere really/Dressed up just to go in the dirt.’ It’s a bit nihilistic, but given the reality of the world and how things are, I think you need the balance of those things. Jump on, jump off. It’s like: *decide*. You’re either hot or you’re cold. Don’t be lukewarm. You either go for it or you don’t. Then encapsulating all that within Geronimo, this Native American hero.” **“Shoot Me Down”** AM: “‘Shoot Me Down’ is definitely steeped in humanity. You’ve got everything in there. You’ve got the insecurities, the cynicism, you’ve got the joy, the pain, the indifference. You’ve got all those things churning around in this cauldron. There’s a level of regret in there as well. Again, when you lean into yourself, it becomes more relatable to everybody else.” **“Ululation”** KB: “It’s the first time we’ve ever used anyone else on a track. A really close friend of mine, who I call a sister, called me while we were making ‘Uluation’: ‘I need a place to stay, I’m having a difficult time with my husband, I’m really angry at him…’ I said if you need a place to chill just come down to the studio and listen to us while we work but you mustn’t say a word because we’re working. We’re working on the track and she started humming in the background. Alloy picked up on it and was like, ‘Give her a mic!’ She’s singing about gratitude. In the midst of feeling very angry, feeling like shit and that life’s not fair, she still had that emotion that she can practice gratitude. I think that’s a beautiful contrast of emotions.” **“Sink Or Swim”** AM: “It says a similar thing to what we’re saying on ‘Geronimo’ but with more panache. The music has that feeling of a carousel, you’re jumping on and jumping off. If you watch Steve McQueen’s Small Axe \[film anthology\], in *Lovers Rock*, when they’re in the house party before the fire starts—this fits perfectly to that. It’s that intensity, the sweat and the smoke, but with these direct lines thrown in: ‘Oh baby, won’t you let me in?’ and ‘Don’t always have to be so deep.’ Sometimes you need a bit of directness, you need to call a spade a spade.” **“Holy Moly”** AM: “It’s a contrast between light and dark. You’re forcing two things that don’t make sense together. You have a pop song and some weird beat, and you’re forcing them to have this conversation, to do something, and then ‘Holy Moly’ comes out of that. It’s two different worlds coming together and what cements it is the lyrics.” **“Be Your Lady”** KB: “It’s the perfect loop back to the first track so you could stay in the loop of the album for decades, centuries, and millenniums and just bask in these intricate parts. ‘Be Your Lady’ is a nice wave goodbye, but it’s also radical as fuck. That last line ‘Can I take 10 pounds’ worth of loving out of the bank please?’ I’m repeating it and I’m switching the accents of it as well because I switch accents in conversation. I sometimes speak like someone who’s from Washington, D.C. \[where Bankole has previously lived\], or someone who’s lived in the Southside of Edinburgh, and I sometimes speak like someone who’s from Lagos in Nigeria.” AM: “I wasn’t convinced about that track initially. I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’” KB: “That’s good, though. That’s the feeling that you want. That’s why I feel it’s radical. It’s something that only we can do, it comes together and it feels right.”

WIN ACCESS TO A SOUNDCHECK AND TICKETS TO A UK HEADLINE SHOW OF YOUR CHOOSING BY PRE-ORDERING* ANY ALBUM FORMAT OF 'HEAVY HEAVY' BY 6PM GMT ON TUESDAY 31ST JANUARY. PREVIOUS ORDERS WILL BE COUNTED AS ENTRIES. OPEN TO UK PURCHASES ONLY. FAQ young-fathers.com/comp/faq Young Fathers - Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and G. Hastings - announce details of their brand new album Heavy Heavy. Set for release on February 3rd 2023 via Ninja Tune, it’s the group’s fourth album and their first since 2018’s album Cocoa Sugar. The 10-track project signals a renewed back-to-basics approach, just the three of them in their basement studio, some equipment and microphones: everything always plugged in, everything always in reach. Alongside the announcement ‘Heavy Heavy’, Young Fathers will make their much anticipated return to stages across the UK and Europe beginning February 2023 - known for their electrifying performances, their shows are a blur of ritualistic frenzy, marking them as one of the most must-see acts operating today. The tour will include shows at the Roundhouse in London, Elysee Montmartre in Paris, Paradiso in Amsterdam, O2 Academy in Leeds and Glasgow, Olympia in Dublin, Astra in Berlin, Albert Hall in Manchester, Trix in Antwerp, Mojo Club in Hamburg and more (full dates below) To mark news of the album and the tour, Young Fathers today release a brand new single, “I Saw”. It’s the second track to be released from the album (following standalone single “Geronimo” in July) and brims with everything fans have come to love from a group known for their multi-genre versatility - kinetic rhythms, controlled chaos and unbridled soul. Accompanied by a video created by 23 year old Austrian-Nigerian artist and filmmaker David Uzochukwu, the track demonstrates the ambitious ideas that lay at the heart of this highly-anticipated record. Speaking about the title, the band write that Heavy Heavy could be a mood, or it could describe the smoothed granite of bass that supports the sound… or it could be a nod to the natural progression of boys to grown men and the inevitable toll of living, a joyous burden, relationships, family, the natural momentum of a group that has been around long enough to witness massive changes. “You let the demons out and deal with it,” reckons Kayus of the album. “Make sense of it after.” For Young Fathers, there’s no dress code required. Dancing, not moshing. Hips jerking, feet slipping, brain firing in Catherine Wheel sparks of joy and empathy. Underground but never dark. Still young, after some years, even as the heavy, heavy weight of the world seems to grow day by day.

Protomartyr’s slurred ramblings and miasmic clouds of guitar have always had a touch of the apocalypse in them, or at least of the decay that might lead there. The paradox is how the Detroit band manages to make that decay sound so grand. New Wave rippers (“For Tomorrow”) and leather-jacket music (“Fun in Hi Skool”), ’50s slow dances (“Make Way”) and jock jams for the recently undead (“Polacrilex Kid”): Where some post-punk bands lean into their artiness and Eurocentrism, Protomartyr sound like Midwesterners raised on arena rock and the looming intensity of Bible stories. “Welcome to the haunted earth/The living afterlife,” Joe Casey moans at the album\'s onset. He’s grinding his teeth under the bleachers as we speak.

Like all great stylists, the artist born Sean Bowie has a gift for presenting sounds we know in ways we don’t. So, while the surfaces of *Praise a Lord…*, Yves Tumor’s fifth LP, might remind you of late-’90s and early-2000s electro-rock, the album’s twisting song structures and restless detail (the background panting of “God Is a Circle,” the industrial hip-hop of “Purified by the Fire,” and the houselike tilt of “Echolalia”) offer almost perpetual novelty all while staying comfortably inside the constraints of three-minute pop. Were the music more challenging, you’d call it subversive, and in the context of Bowie as a gender-nonconforming Black artist playing with white, glam-rock tropes, it is. But the real subversion is that they deliver you their weird art and it feels like pleasure.

“It was very easy to do,” Joanna Sternberg tells Apple Music of making their second full-length. “I was having fun and as comfortable as could be. It felt like the right thing.” Recorded over five days in the cartoonist/singer-songwriter’s native New York—with indie guitar hero Matt Sweeney producing—*I’ve Got Me* certainly sounds like it came easy. But Sternberg—a virtuoso musician who studied jazz, blues, and ragtime at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music—has a way of making difficult things sound simple and obvious, whether it’s self-acceptance (the huglike title track), resilience (“Mountains High”), or playing every instrument here. Yet, somehow, every line feels like it might weigh a ton, too. “It’s hard for me to get up the courage to show people one of my songs,” Sternberg says. “I have to really, really, really, really consider if I show people. I haven’t shown people a lot of them, but I have, like, 200.” **“I’ve Got Me”** “It’s kind of just about what it says it’s about—being very isolated and not having any friends. I think it’s kind of the theme of the whole album, because writing songs and stuff is what got me to have people wanting to be my friend. I mean, the song is about not feeling lonely—like I stopped being upset about being alone.” **“I Will Be With You”** “I just wrote the song while I was waiting for an orchestra rehearsal to start. I was at the piano, just having fun. I was trying to write an Irish love ballad. I wrote it in, like, three minutes; it was fine.” **“Mountains High”** “I was listening to lots of Cajun music with accordion in it, where they’re repeating accordion patterns. In my building, there’s a practice room in the basement because it’s artist housing. And after 11, you could go in as long as you want, so I would just go in and try to write songs. And I wrote this song in one of the rooms—just came up with the melody, and it kind of just wrote itself very fast.” **“I’ll Make You Mine”** “My mom wanted me to put that on the record, so I did. But that was one of the first songs I wrote, because I just kind of made it up on the piano. I don’t really like the song very much because it’s cheesy, but she said I had to put it on the record.” **“Stockholm Syndrome”** “I thought it kind of sounded like something that reminds me of middle school and the music everyone liked in middle school, and I didn’t like it. So, I didn’t think it was even good. But then all my friends were loving it. So, then I just forced myself to get used to it, and now I like it. I’m very lucky to play my songs, and I love to do it, but that song took a while to write because I thought it was really, really annoying and embarrassing. Then I just kind of accepted it.” **“The Love I Give”** “Sometimes, when I’m walking around, I come up with melodies. My producer Matt Sweeney really encourages me to take walks, so I can come up with melodies. So, that’s really, really helpful that he does that, because I forget to do it. I wrote that song while I was just walking to the train, and I just wrote it really fast. It was just about being around people who are hurtful to you, but you don’t want to change who you are.” **“She Dreams”** “I wrote that song when I was asleep. I wrote it in a dream, and I woke up, and it was all written. It was the only time that’s ever happened. And I think it was the first song I ever wrote. It’s pretty.” **“The Song”** “I kind of wrote it based on the first melody in Dvořák’s *New World Symphony*, of the English horn solo. It was a really nice melody, and then I just went off of that. That was all I needed to just write the whole thing.”

“I’ve always liked the quote: “Sleep, those little slices of death - how I loathe them.” So reckons Matt Baty of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, vocalist and lyricist of a band as comfortable wading through the darker quarters of their subconscious as they are punishing ampstacks. Whether dwelling in the realm of dreams or nightmares, the primordial drive of the Newcastle-based band is more powerful than ever. Land Of Sleeper, their fourth record in a decade of riot and rancour, is testimony to this: the sound of a band not so much reinvigorated as channelling a furious energy, which only appears to gather momentum as the band’s surroundings spin on their axis. “Shouting about themes of existential dread comes very naturally to me, and I think because I’m aware of that in the past I’ve tried to rein that in a little” reckons Matt. “There’s definitely moments on this album where I took my gloves off and surrendered to that urge.” Whether this means Pigs, a band once associated with reckless excess, have taken a darker turn to match the dystopian realm of the 2022 everyday, is open to debate. The band themselves aren’t necessarily convinced; “Sobriety does funny things to a man” reckons guitarist Adam Ian Sykes wryly. “I know from my perspective, I was trying to write some much heavier and darker music” says guitarist and producer Sam Grant. “But this was an aim more as a counterpoint to earlier material, as opposed to any sort of political or social commentary. I still very much see these heavier moments as musically euphoric, and emotionally cut loose or liberating.” “For obvious reasons, the anticipation for the writing of Land of Sleeper was unlike anything we’d felt before” Adam adds. “These sessions were an almost religious experience for me. It felt like we were working in unison, connected to some unknowable hive mind.” The intensity of feeling is writ large right from the pulverising drive of opener ‘Ultimate Hammer’, and its rallying cry “I keep spinning out, what a time to be alive”. Yet, whilst ‘Terror’s Pillow’ and ‘Big Rig’ are rich with the band’s trademark Sabbathian power, there’s scope this time around that supercedes anything they’ve previously attempted. Matt’s duet with the traditional folk vocals of Cath Tyler on the closing lament ‘Ball Lightning’, for example, is one particularly potent illustration of their expanded horizons. In terms of emotional impact, a pinnacle on Land Of Sleeper is ‘The Weatherman’. Replete with devotional rapture and radiant intensity, the band’s attack slowed down to a mantric and mesmeric crawl, it marks a collaboration with the ululatory tones of Bonnacons Of Doom vocalist Kate Smith and a choir including Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington. The resulting tumult constitutes a sound not unlike The Stooges ‘We Will Fall’, reinvented and adrenalised as an invigorating sermon for the zeitgeist. “This one presented an opportunity for me to do something completely unbridled. I wanted to surrender to the weight of the song, so the lyrics came about in much the same way I imagine a frenzied artist might throw paint at a canvas.” relates Matt “I just wanted the lyrics to present an uncontrollable energy.” For all that the last few years have seen Pigs’ stature rise in the wake of triumphant festival slots and sold-out venues alike, this remains a band, consummated by bassist John-Michael Hedley and returning drummer Ewan Mackenzie, who are fundamentally incapable of tailoring their sound to a prospective audience, instead standing alone and impervious as a monument of catharsis. “Writing and playing music is often surprising and revealing, it can be like holding up a mirror and seeing things you didn’t expect to see” reckons Mackenzie. “For me, the darker tracks on the record hold in common a determination not to lose faith, despite the odds.” The better to unite slumber and waking, Land Of Sleeper is no less than an act of transcendence for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - new anthems to elucidate a world sleepwalking to oblivion. ---

For drummer Yussef Dayes, music is a family affair. Getting his first taste of performance as a teen by playing with his older brothers in the jazz group United Vibrations, Dayes has gone on to build a formidable family of collaborators. From working with pianist Kamaal Williams as Yussef Kamaal and kick-starting a new London jazz scene with the release of 2016’s *Black Focus* to duetting with guitarist Tom Misch on 2020’s *What Kinda Music*, Dayes channels an intuitive connection when it comes to his energetic, improvised music. Now releasing his debut solo album, *Black Classical Music*, Dayes places family front and center. “I became a father in 2020 and it led me to reflect on the amazing influence of my own parents,” he tells Apple Music. “My mum passed away in 2015 and this album is guided by her healing spirit. It’s my tribute to all those I love, in music and beyond.” The result is a creatively boundless 19 tracks, traversing epic jazz harmonies on the title track, Bahian beats on “Chasing the Drum,” head-nodding hip-hop on “Presidential,” and orchestral expansions on “Tioga Pass,” all anchored in the foundation of Dayes’ innate groove. “Genres are restrictive when it comes to what I play,” he says. “I’m just chasing the rhythm, tapping into the Black classical music.” Read on for his in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Black Classical Music” (feat. Venna & Charlie Stacey)** “We wanted to kick off the album with a jazz epic, something to reference the lineage of improvised music I’ve grown up on. It features my live band with Charlie Stacey on keys and Venna on saxophone, and it’s the tune we always open our shows with. It never fails to get everyone dancing, which is exactly what jazz has always done.” **“Afro Cubanism”** “In 2019, I took a trip to Havana and worked with some great musicians to learn the technicalities of Cuban rhythms and the clave groove. We came up with this tune on the spot in the studio, jamming after ‘Black Classical Music.’ It instantly took me back to my time in Cuba. Plus, it’s ‘Afro’ since I have a huge one on the album cover!” **“Raisins Under the Sun” (feat. Shabaka Hutchings)** “I’ve known Shabaka since I was a kid. He lived in my area and I always remembered seeing him as this super-tall guy getting on the train with his instrument cases. I later started playing with him and was on the drums for some of his Sons of Kemet shows. He is one of a kind, a person full of wisdom and artistry, and I knew I had to have him on the record. He’s on bass clarinet for this tune, which takes its name from the Sidney Poitier film, and is simply perfect.” **“Rust” (feat. Tom Misch)** “Ever since me and Tom started playing together in 2018, it’s always been a vibe. We’re both independent artists who keep our playing free and we’ve never been in the studio and not had a wicked idea. He takes me out of my comfort zone and provides a great fusion between styles. It only felt right to continue our collaboration on this album.” **“Turquoise Galaxy”** “We invested in a Moog One synth for the album and created a new patch for this track that I played a shuffle beat to. For some reason, that combination took me to another place, to the summer and the sky and the color of turquoise, which was my mum’s favorite and is still all over my family house.” **“The Light” (feat. Bahia Dayes)** “This track was first recorded in 2019. I used to play it to my daughter Bahia as a lullaby while she was a newborn. When it came to making the album, I was listening to Stevie Wonder’s *Songs in the Key of Life* and got inspired by how he uses his daughter’s voice in his tracks. I decided to do the same thing for Bahia’s favorite tune, so you hear her throughout this.” **“Pon di Plaza” (feat. Chronixx)** “My dad’s Jamaican and, recently, I’ve wanted to tap into my Caribbean heritage more. I’ve known and loved \[Jamaican reggae star\] Chronixx’s music for ages and this ended up being a beautiful Jamaican collaboration after we got in touch during lockdown. He sent over the vocals and arrangements and it was so fun to put together and produce. I’m really pleased we managed to make it happen.” **“Magnolia Symphony”** “I recently took a trip to New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, and was so struck by the music on every street corner there, as well as the gorgeous magnolia trees that are all over the city. This track became an ode to that beauty, chopped from an outtake the Chineke! Orchestra played when they were in to record the track ‘Tioga Pass.’” **“Early Dayes”** “This is a little family skit, taken from a VHS my dad filmed when I was a kid and you can hear me in the background playing the drums. It’s a link back to those childhood days of being free, as well as an appreciation for my parents—you have to have patience when there’s a drummer in the family!” **“Chasing the Drum”** “I’m always chasing rhythms and trying to find different drums native to each place I’m traveling to. This track is dedicated to the rhythms I picked up in Salvador in Brazil. It’s an ode to my time there and my interpretation of the way those incredible people express themselves through their drums.” **“Birds of Paradise”** “‘Birds of Paradise’ is one of the first sessions I laid down at \[one of the album’s co-producers\] Malcom Catto’s studio back in 2021, with my core band of Rocco Palladino on bass, Charlie Stacey on keys, and Venna on sax. It’s a lover’s song that reminds me of the beauty of nature and how we need to take care to protect it.” **“Gelato”** “I love listening to funky house and dance music, and ‘Gelato’ is inspired by that vibe, creating a little dance riddim in the album to get the people moving. It’s a tune for driving along to, named after a nice strain of one of my favorite herbal remedies.” **“Marching Band” (feat. Masego)** “I met \[Jamaican American singer-songwriter\] Masego in 2022 and we really got along, he’s such good vibes. He invited me over to his house to record and we had a conversation about my love of Brazil and how he was starting to learn Portuguese. Once he got in the booth, he freestyled what we were speaking about in one take, on the spot. It was amazing to watch and be a part of.” **“Crystal Palace Park” (feat. Elijah Fox)** “\[Pianist/producer/songwriter\] Elijah joined the live band in summer 2022 and we soon started working together in the studio. This is his interlude and space for him to shine. He’s from North Carolina, where John Coltrane and Nina Simone are from, and he channels this contagious, positive energy that really comes through when he plays.” **“Presidential” (feat. Jahaan Sweet)** “Jahaan Sweet is an incredible producer from the US who I worked with when we were in a session for Kehlani. This is a tune we came up with then that showcases my love of rap music. Listening to it makes you feel presidential, it gives you such confidence, and it has perfect space in it for a vocal feature, which hopefully could come through in the future.” **“Jukebox”** “I grew up listening to records played on an old 7-inch vinyl jukebox my dad has. Over the lockdowns, my brother repaired it and this track is dedicated to the sounds and feeling of those records being loaded and played. It’s also a collaboration with my good friend, the producer and guitarist Miles James, as it references his love of West-Coast G-funk and ’80s drum machines. It was my chance to bruk out with him on his flex.” **“Woman’s Touch” (feat. Jamilah Barry)** “\[UK singer-songwriter\] Jamilah joined us on our 2021 UK tour, and she has such incredible talent. I wanted to give her a moment to shine on the record. ‘Woman’s Touch’ has a great Sade feel to it and spotlights Jamilah’s beautiful voice. It’s amazing to be able to curate a record like this and to collaborate with so many great artists I know and love.” **“Tioga Pass” (feat. Rocco Palladino)** “The bass and drums combination is super important, from Sly & Robbie to The Wailers and The Headhunters, it’s the foundation. Rocco and I had the same upbringing in music and we essentially have a telepathic connection when we play—he knows exactly what I’m going to do. This track is his moment to play beautiful lines and it reminded me of the epic nature of Yosemite, which is the last family holiday I took with my mum in 2014. It also features the incredible Chineke! Orchestra, who are a blessing to have on the album.” **“Cowrie Charms” (feat. Leon Thomas and Barbara Hicks)** “I wanted to end on a note of healing and peace, so this track features a recording of one of my mum’s yoga classes, where she’s guiding us in a shavasana. It was always my favorite part of her practice, as you can just lay down and relax. The track also features the amazing vocalist Leon Thomas, who I linked up with in 2022. It’s really special to be able to collaborate with my mum in this way and it also channels the good energy of the cowrie-shell necklace that I got given in Senegal and that features in the artwork.”

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a description of boygenius that doesn’t contain the word “supergroup,” but it somehow doesn’t quite sit right. Blame decades of hoary prog-rock baggage, blame the misbegotten notion that bigger and more must be better, blame a culture that is rightfully circumspect about anything that feels like overpromising, blame Chickenfoot and Audioslave. But the sentiment certainly fits: Teaming three generational talents at the height of their powers on a project that is somehow more than the sum of its considerable parts sounds like it was dreamed up in a boardroom, but would never work if it had been. In fall 2018, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker released a self-titled six-song EP as boygenius that felt a bit like a lark—three of indie’s brightest, most charismatic artists at their loosest. Since then, each has released a career-peak album (*Punisher*, *Home Video*, and *Little Oblivions*, respectively) that transcended whatever indie means now and placed them in the pantheon of American songwriters, full stop. These parallel concurrent experiences raise the stakes of a kinship and a friendship; only the other two could truly understand what each was going through, only the other two could mount any true creative challenge or inspiration. Stepping away from their ascendant solo paths to commit to this so fully is as much a musical statement as it is one about how they want to use this lightning-in-a-bottle moment. If *boygenius* was a lark, *the record* is a flex. Opening track “Without You Without Them” features all three voices harmonizing a cappella and feels like a statement of intent. While Bridgers’ profile may be demonstrably higher than Dacus’ or Baker’s, no one is out in front here or taking up extra oxygen; this is a proper three-headed hydra. It doesn’t sound like any of their own albums but does sound like an album only the three of them could make. Hallmarks of each’s songwriting style abound: There’s the slow-building climactic refrain of “Not Strong Enough” (“Always an angel, never a god”) which recalls the high drama of Baker’s “Sour Breath” and “Turn Out the Lights.” On “Emily I’m Sorry,” “Revolution 0,” and “Letter to an Old Poet,” Bridgers delivers characteristically devastating lines in a hushed voice that belies its venom. Dacus draws “Leonard Cohen” so dense with detail in less than two minutes that you feel like you’re on the road trip with her and her closest friends, so lost in one another that you don’t mind missing your exit. As with the EP, most songs feature one of the three taking the lead, but *the record* is at its most fully realized when they play off each other, trading verses and ideas within the same song. The subdued, acoustic “Cool About It” offers three different takes on having to see an ex; “Not Strong Enough” is breezy power-pop that serves as a repudiation of Sheryl Crow’s confidence (“I’m not strong enough to be your man”). “Satanist” is the heaviest song on the album, sonically, if not emotionally; over a riff with solid Toadies “Possum Kingdom” vibes, Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus take turns singing the praises of satanism, anarchy, and nihilism, and it’s just fun. Despite a long tradition of high-wattage full-length star team-ups in pop history, there’s no real analogue for what boygenius pulls off here. The closest might be Crosby, Stills & Nash—the EP’s couchbound cover photo is a wink to their 1969 debut—but that name doesn’t exactly evoke feelings of friendship and fellowship more than 50 years later. (It does, however, evoke that time Bridgers called David Crosby a “little bitch” on Twitter after he chastised her for smashing her guitar on *SNL*.) Their genuine closeness is deeply relatable, but their chemistry and talent simply aren’t. It’s nearly impossible for a collaboration like this to not feel cynical or calculated or tossed off for laughs. If three established artists excelling at what they are great at, together, without sacrificing a single bit of themselves, were so easy to do, more would try.

Let the Moon Be a Planet marks the first volume of Reflections, a new series of contemporary collaborations orchestrated by RVNG Intl., and documents an inspired exchange between guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn and pianist and composer David Moore of Bing & Ruth. Conjured by a mutual curiosity, and appreciation, for the respective musician’s work, Let the Moon Be a Planet initially took form over a progression of remote sessions and ultimately harmonized when Gunn and Moore completed the album together in the bucolic surroundings of Hudson, New York. Let the Moon Be a Planet is an invitation to relive the intimate moments shared between two artists finding their way along a single path, and into a world where the most subtle of gestures can ripple for an eternity.

Less was recorded on the island of Great Bernera in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, during September 2022.

ANOHNI’s music revolves around the strength found in vulnerability, whether it’s the naked trembling of her voice or the way her lyrics—“It’s my fault”; “Why am I alive?”; “You are an addict/Go ahead, hate yourself”—cut deeper the simpler they get. Her first album of new material with her band the Johnsons since 2010’s *Swanlights* sets aside the more experimental/electronic quality of 2016’s *HOPELESSNESS* for the tender avant-soul most listeners came to know her by. She mourns her friends (“Sliver of Ice”), mourns herself (“It’s My Fault”), and catalogs the seemingly limitless cruelty of humankind (“It Must Change”) with the quiet resolve of someone who knows that anger is fine but the true warriors are the ones who kneel down and open their hearts.

“As I got older I learned I’m a drinker/Sometimes a drink feels like family,” Mitski confides with disarming honesty on “Bug Like an Angel,” the strummy, slow-build opening salvo from her seventh studio album that also serves as its lead single. Moments later, the song breaks open into its expansive chorus: a convergence of cooed harmonies and acoustic guitar. There’s more cracked-heart vulnerability and sonic contradiction where that came from—no surprise considering that Mitski has become one of the finest practitioners of confessional, deeply textured indie rock. Recorded between studios in Los Angeles and her recently adopted home city of Nashville, *The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We* mostly leaves behind the giddy synth-pop experiments of her last release, 2022’s *Laurel Hell*, for something more intimate and dreamlike: “Buffalo Replaced” dabbles in a domestic poetry of mosquitoes, moonlight, and “fireflies zooming through the yard like highway cars”; the swooning lullaby “Heaven,” drenched in fluttering strings and slide guitar, revels in the heady pleasures of new love. The similarly swaying “I Don’t Like My Mind” pithily explores the daily anxiety of being alive (sometimes you have to eat a whole cake just to get by). The pretty syncopations of “The Deal” build to a thrilling clatter of drums and vocals, while “When Memories Snow” ropes an entire cacophonous orchestra—French horn, woodwinds, cello—into its vivid winter metaphors, and the languid balladry of “My Love Mine All Mine” makes romantic possessiveness sound like a gift. The album’s fuzzed-up closer, “I Love Me After You,” paints a different kind of picture, either postcoital or defiantly post-relationship: “Stride through the house naked/Don’t even care that the curtains are open/Let the darkness see me… How I love me after you.” Mitski has seen the darkness, and on *The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We*, she stares right back into the void.

Like any great takedown or scathing tabloid opinion, the beauty of Sleaford Mods’ self-described “electronic munt minimalist punk-hop rants for the working class and under” is how they turn their anger into fun. So if the band’s rise from fortysomething never-wases to bellicose fiftysomethings who reliably make the English Top 10 seems unlikely, consider that they’re less a product of post-punk or early rap than than of an online discourse that privileges quick draws and sure shots. Their crude melodies are catchy (“Right Wing Beast”) but not quite as catchy as their persistent omnidirectional yelling (“UK GRIM”). And because they’re adults, they have enough humility to ask their therapist why they feel like slapping all these posers (“DIwhy”)—even if the therapist tells them, “Because they’re fucking c\*\*ts.”

Sleaford Mods will return in 2023 with new album UK GRIM. Throughout their music the duo's poetic protest and electronic resistance has seen them consistency chart and call out their times with an eloquence and attitude that has made them one of the most urgent and unique voices in modern music. Hailed by the likes of Liam Gallagher, Seth Myers, Iggy Pop, Amyl & The Sniffers and a legion of loyal fans whose devotion for the band would rival most sports supporters. Continuing this sonic vocation on their new album, Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn's creative evolution now finds them capturing the atmosphere of their era too. Though no strangers to the dancefloor, the minimal yet immersive beats and grooves of UK GRIM's tracks – which include collaborations with Dry Cleaning's Florence Shaw and Jane's Addiction's Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro among them – add a new, physical dimension to Sleaford Mod's sound that makes their words more vital than ever. Music for body AND mind.