Three years before *Gag Order*, Kesha released 2020’s *High Road*, a cheery-sounding LP that attempted to return to her early party-pop days, despite the clear-eyed courage of its predecessor, 2017’s soulful *Rainbow*. After the “TiK ToK,” Jack Daniel’s-swilling early days of Kesha’s career came very public litigation with her former producer and label head Dr. Luke, whom she accused of sexual assault. It’s not something she can legally address on record, but the title of her fifth studio album is a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to her ongoing battle. Produced by Rick Rubin, the album is her most innovative to date. There’s the minor-key, Auto-Tuned ode to hallucinogenic transcendence “Eat the Acid” and the indie-folk neuroticism of “Living in My Head.” The minimal synth turned explosive experimentalism of “The Drama” was co-written with Kurt Vile and includes an inspired interpolation of the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.” If early fans celebrated Kesha for her bravado, now they’ll find her fearlessness expressed in both new sonic textures and a new emotional vocal performance: laid bare, raw, undeniable.
“I got hit by a truck, I got hit by a truck and it drove off and left me here for dead,” Labrinth sings plainly in the opening seconds of *Ends & Begins*, the savant artist-producer’s third studio album. When we last heard from Labrinth—on 2019’s *Imagination & the Misfit Kid*, a concept record that told the story of a young artist who trades his creativity to a businessman in exchange for success—he was excavating himself from underneath the pressure that had piled on him since signing to Simon Cowell’s now defunct record label Syco. *Ends & Begins* is a tight 10-track record that consolidates his experimentation years into a sound that feels wholly original, yet familiar. It draws an immediate line under those difficult times, picking up directly where *Imagination & the Misfit Kid* left off, and explores what happened next. “I was touched by a God and it fucked me up like an electric current pulsing through my veins,” he continues on “The Feels,” a floating expanse of piano plinks and swelling harmony, unsure of whether the lightning strike has been a defibrillating jolt or a finishing blow. It’s the opening chapter of a story of love as salvation—potent and all-consuming, suffocating and disorienting—and the fight to hold on to something good, no matter the challenges. The front half of the record sees Labrinth in the depths of his passion and clinging to it like a life preserver, singing of feeling “safe under your protection, your sacred embrace” on “Covering” and making zealous declarations of devotion on “Kill for Your Love” over the buzzing thrum of percussion and synth. Single “Never Felt So Alone,” a collaboration with FINNEAS and Billie Eilish (featuring vocals from Eilish), steers into the turbulence, nosediving into different, more intimate struggles and pulling up before impact. “What can they take from us when we’re already living on ground zero?” he questions rhetorically on “Only Way Is Up,” a modern take on classic ’80s rock that underscores the despairing melodrama. It’s the album’s title track “Ends & Begins” that resolves the narrative—a lyrical infinity loop over cinematic synths, with Labrinth’s vocals echoing into the spaces of the production. It sounds like approaching the end of a tunnel. Not stepping into the light, but illuminated from within; still surrounded by darkness, but keeping it at bay. Roll end credits. It’s reassuring to discover that Labrinth’s drive to innovate and refine has not diminished. Instead, his Emmy-winning time spent building the musical world of HBO’s hit drama *Euphoria* has elevated his ambition, lending his production a sense of dramatic flair that was perhaps absent from his previous records. Labrinth’s artistic strength lies in his ability to communicate a feeling—with *Ends & Begins* he treats those feelings with the gravity they deserve.
**RELEASED 20TH JANUARY 2023**
Lana Del Rey has mastered the art of carefully constructed, high-concept alt-pop records that bask in—and steadily amplify—her own mythology; with each album we become more enamored by, and yet less sure of, who she is. This is, of course, part of her magic and the source of much of her artistic power. Her records bid you to worry less about parsing fact from fiction and, instead, free-fall into her theatrical aesthetic—a mix of gloomy Americana, Laurel Canyon nostalgia, and Hollywood noir that was once dismissed as calculation and is now revered as performance art. Up until now, these slippery, surrealist albums have made it difficult to separate artist from art. But on her introspective ninth album, something seems to shift: She appears to let us in a little. She appears to let down her guard. The opening track is called “The Grants”—a nod to her actual family name. Through unusually revealing, stream-of-conscious songs that feel like the most poetic voice notes you’ve ever heard, she chastises her siblings, wonders about marriage, and imagines what might come with motherhood and midlife. “Do you want children?/Do you wanna marry me?” she sings on “Sweet.” “Do you wanna run marathons in Long Beach by the sea?” This is relatively new lyrical territory for Del Rey, who has generally tended to steer around personal details, and the songs themselves feel looser and more off-the-cuff (they were mostly produced with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff). It could be that Lana has finally decided to start peeling back a few layers, but for an artist whose entire catalog is rooted in clever imagery, it’s best to leave room for imagination. The only clue might be in the album’s single piece of promo, a now-infamous billboard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, her ex-boyfriend’s hometown. She settled the point fairly quickly on Instagram. “It’s personal,” she wrote.
The first song on Lil Yachty’s *Let’s Start Here.* is nearly seven minutes long and features breathy singing from Yachty, a freewheeling guitar solo, and a mostly instrumental second half that calls to mind TV depictions of astral projecting. “the BLACK seminole.” is an extremely fulfilling listen, but is this the same guy who just a few months earlier delivered the beautifully off-kilter and instantly viral “Poland”? Better yet, is this the guy who not long before that embedded himself with Detroit hip-hop culture to the point of a soft rebrand as *Michigan Boy Boat*? Sure is. It’s just that, as he puts it on “the BLACK seminole.,” he’s got “No time to joke around/The kid is now a man/And the silence is filled with remarkable sounds.” We could call the silence he’s referring to the years since his last studio album, 2020’s *Lil Boat 3*, but he’s only been slightly less visible than we’re used to, having released the aforementioned *Michigan Boy Boat* mixtape while also lending his discerning production ear to Drake and 21 Savage’s ground-shaking album *Her Loss*. Collaboration, though, is the name of the game across *Let’s Start Here.*, an album deeply indebted to some as yet undisclosed psych-rock influences, with repeated production contributions from onetime blog-rock darlings Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson and Patrick Wimberly, as well as multiple appearances from Diana Gordon, a Queens, New York-hailing singer who made a noise during the earliest parts of her career as Wynter Gordon. Also present are R&B singer Fousheé and Beaumont, Texas, rap weirdo Teezo Touchdown, though rapping is infrequent. In fact, none of what Yachty presents here—which includes dalliances with Parliament-indebted acid funk (“running out of time”), ’80s synthwave (“sAy sOMETHINg,” “paint THE sky”), disco (“drive ME crazy!”), symphonic prog rock (“REACH THE SUNSHINE.”), and a heady monologue called “:(failure(:”—is in any way reflective of any of Yachty’s previous output. Which begs the question, where did all of this come from? You needn’t worry about that, says Yachty on the “the ride-,” singing sternly: “Don’t ask no questions on the ride.”
LA-based, Dallas-raised artist Liv.e, announces her sophomore album 'Girl In The Half Pearl' due February 10th via In Real Life. 'Girl In The Half Pearl' seizes on both the creative and personal liberation Liv.e has experienced in the time since her 2020 debut album 'Couldn't Wait To Tell You...'. The album's 17 tracks are a document of self-examination, as she works through realizations prompted by grief and grapples with the dynamics of her role in the relationships in her life. Building upon the foundation she laid with CWTTY, 'Girl In The Half Pearl' bares her process of growth, forgiveness and reclamation of her sense of womanhood across an immersive soundscape. The album's artistic shifts developed during her time experimenting with live performance in London earlier this year while under residency at London's Laylow. The 24-year-old artist first garnered attention with her 2017 EP, FRANK, and 2018's Hoopdreams EP. Over the past year, Liv.e shared the standalone Mndsgn-produced single "Bout It," along with a COLORS performance and released 'CWTTY+', the deluxe version of her 2020 critically-acclaimed debut album. She's since performed alongside Earl Sweatshirt and Ravyn Lenae. Liv.e's unique sensibilities have also caught the eye of the fashion world, marked by an appearance in a Miu Miu ad campaign photographed by Tyrone Lebon. Most recently, she was featured on the new Mount Kimbie single titled "a deities encore."
Margo Price’s fourth album is a record born from journeys. There’s the physical one, in which the Nashville-based singer-songwriter and her husband/collaborator, the musician Jeremy Ivey, traveled first to South Carolina to focus on writing new material, much of which made it onto *Strays*, then to California’s Topanga Canyon to record the final LP. And, perhaps more consequently, there’s the spiritual journey, as Price and Ivey spent part of their writing retreat taking intentional, exploratory psilocybin trips in an effort to tap more deeply into their own creative wells. Accordingly, *Strays* is Price’s most expansive, adventurous LP yet, employing an intricate, far-reaching soundscape of rock, psychedelia, ’70s pop, and subtle flourishes of her earlier brand of left-of-center country. The shift in sound didn’t shift Price’s focus, though, which is, as always, crafting songs that stand the test of time. “Sonically, it’s a little bit different,” she tells Apple Music. “But if you strip away all the instruments, what you have left at the end of the day is still a song that’s great that you can play on the piano or guitar and it’ll stand up on its own.” Opener “Been to the Mountain” is part origin story, part battle cry, as Price chronicles the many roles she’s played—a mother, a child, a waitress, and a consumer, among others—before defiantly declaring, “I’ve been called every name in the book, honey/Go on, take your best shot.” The Sharon Van Etten collaboration “Radio” is Price at her poppiest, pairing melodic hooks with frank observations on womanhood and motherhood. “County Road” grapples with mortality and pays tribute to late drummer Ben Eyestone, envisioning the afterlife as an escape from earthly troubles. And closer “Landfill” opens with a gut punch of a lyric—“I could build a landfill of dreams I deserted”—before ultimately ending the LP on a hopeful note. Below, Price shares insight into several key tracks on *Strays*. **“Been to the Mountain”** “This was one of the very first songs that flowed out the next day after we came down from our mushroom trip. I just really wanted to incorporate poetry. I wanted it to be really psychedelic, and I wanted this album to be able to serve as a record that people could put on if they were going to maybe dabble in psychedelics. I think it can be a companion piece in that regard. I feel like whenever I have taken a psilocybin trip, there’s always that moment right before everything starts happening in your brain and your body, and you feel like you’re about to go on a roller coaster. That’s what I wanted—to capture that feeling.” **“Radio” (feat. Sharon Van Etten)** “The melody to the song came to me when I was walking in the woods. I just started singing the melody and the words into my phone and made a little voice memo. I got back home, picked up the guitar, and I was really proud of what I had, but I really wanted the label to be excited and to trust in my ability to write a pop song. So, I said that it was written with somebody I had planned to co-write with, and it just didn’t happen. But I did send it to Sharon Van Etten, and I was like, ‘Does this need a bridge? Do you like this song?’ And she’s like, ‘I absolutely love this song. It’s incredible. I don’t think it needs a bridge, but I would change these lines.’ She began co-writing on it and then put all those incredible harmonies and just added her touch to it. I think she’s one of the greatest writers that’s currently out there right now. I love her and I think everything she touches gets this beautiful, I don’t know, chrome feeling to it. There’s just a little bit of magic in everything that she worked on.” **“County Road”** “This is a song \[for late drummer Ben Eyestone\] that means a lot to me and my band collectively. We truthfully all have to hold back tears when we play it; we just miss him so much. But we know that he is still around, and sometimes we’ll feel his energy when we’re playing that song. It was just really tragic how he passed. A lot of things were at play. I think the American healthcare system and a lot of things just worked against him. He died \[from cancer\] so tragically and so suddenly. But at the same time, it was pre-pandemic. It was before everything changed in our world in so many ways during that year of 2020. It’s a dark song. We say things like, ‘Maybe I’m lucky I’m already dead.’ But really, I think that there is this freedom that has to come with death. You’re not suffering here and going through all these incredibly difficult life lessons.” **“Lydia”** “It’s strange sometimes how you have this premonition that you don’t want to come true, or you don’t think it’s going to go this way. I never saw this *Handmaid’s Tale* future. I thought things were fucked up, but they weren’t this bad. That song was written after walking around Vancouver and seeing a lot of people there that were struggling with opioid addictions. They all seemed like they had this vacant, ghostly quality, and so did the city and the area of town that we were in. There was a methadone clinic really close by, and the venue owners literally told us, ‘Be really careful. There’s a lot of needles out the back door. You guys go that way.’ It was just a really heavy mood. While it has pieces of me and little vignettes of who I’ve been at times in my life, I think this is definitely a character study. It was a person that I created, something that was fictional but that is ultimately a portrait of what it might be to be living in the lower class and struggling in America right now.” **“Landfill”** “I think we go through such wild territory throughout the album, and we’re definitely getting some high highs and some low lows. I really just wanted to end the album with a little bit of clarity and a little bit of peace. I wanted the last word that I say on this album to be ‘love.’ I wrote that song also in South Carolina, and it was at the very end of our trip, after we’d been there for seven or eight days. We were trying to find this abandoned lighthouse and passed a landfill on the way. I just started thinking about the metaphor of how your mind can be that way; you have so many memories and difficult things that you bury and push down. But I wanted it to still be hopeful.”
Produced by Margo Price and Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty), Strays was primarily recorded in the summer of 2021, during a week spent at Fivestar Studio in California’s Topanga Canyon. While the songwriting began the summer prior – during a six-day, mushroom-filled trip that Price and her husband Jeremy Ivey took to South Carolina – it was amongst the hallucinatory hills of western Los Angeles that Price experienced the best recording sessions of her career. Instilled with a newfound confidence and comfortability to experiment and explore like never before, Margo Price and her longtime band of Pricetags channeled their telepathic abilities into songs that span rock n roll, psychedelic country, rhythm & blues, and glistening, iridescent pop. Having been together since the days before Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, her 2016 debut that Rolling Stone named one of the Greatest Country Albums of All Time, Price and her band tracked live in the same room, simultaneously expanding upon and completely exploding the notions of every other album they have made together. With additional vocals from Sharon Van Etten and Lucius, plus guitar from Mike Campbell, strings, synthesizers and a breadth of previously untapped sounds, Strays is also Price’s most collaborative record yet. “I feel this urgency to keep moving, keep creating,” says Margo Price. “You get stuck in the same patterns of thinking, the same loops of addiction. But there comes a point where you just have to say, ‘I'm going to be here, I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm not going to put so much stock into checking the boxes for everyone else.’ I feel more mature in the way that I write now, I’m on more than just a search for large crowds and accolades. I’m trying to find what my soul needs.”
Megan Moroney’s debut album opens with a wry smirk of a song. At first listen, opening track “I’m Not Pretty” sounds like another variation of the common enough country trope of reminding listeners that they’re beautiful, haters be damned. But Moroney, a swiftly rising star in the genre with a firebrand personality, takes it a step further when addressing an “ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend”: “Keep on telling yourself I’m not pretty.” Such bold assertions populate the rest of the LP, which the Savannah, Georgia-born singer-songwriter recorded alongside producer Kristian Bush, also known as one half of Sugarland. Following Moroney’s wildly popular 2022 breakout EP *Pistol Made of Roses*, *Lucky* takes the best of that EP—Moroney’s sass and swagger, in particular, but also the vulnerability of tracks like “Fix You Too”—and offers a fuller portrait of her specific vision of country music, which is reminiscent of early Miranda Lambert or Kelsea Ballerini. “Girl in the Mirror” is a painful look at sacrificing one’s own selfhood for a wayward lover. “Another on the Way” pairs a dark, swampy arrangement with a tale of a wise barkeep called Miss Daisy, who sagely advises the heartbroken narrator, “Men, they’re like trains/If you miss one, there’s another on the way.” Closer “Sad Songs for Sad People” has Moroney declaring, “I want every word to hurt like blue eyes crying in the rain,” as a gently soulful rhythm section accentuates her natural twang. And “Tennessee Orange,” which was an early viral hit for Moroney, cleverly plays on Southern football rivalries to tease out the complexities of a relationship.
On Melanie Martinez’s third LP, her Cry Baby trilogy comes to an end. If 2015’s *Cry Baby* debut introduced the titular character (and reintroduced Martinez as a fearlessly creative avant-pop creator outside of her covers on *The Voice*) and 2019’s *K-12* “used school as an analogy for life and the systems of power our society continues to live under,” as she tells Apple Music, *PORTALS* is about death and what lies beyond. “I wanted to challenge my listeners’ perspective by essentially saying: Just like us, after Cry Baby’s vessel on earth has died, she lives on as a spirit in the cosmos. It was important for me to show the immortality of being a human with this record—to give people hope that there’s life after death.” Across 13 tracks largely written in her home’s “portal room”—a space she describes as “an entry point for benevolent spirits to come and rest on their journey”—*PORTALS* is a synthy vaudeville, from the sped-up heartbeat production and spoken-word intro “DEATH” to the uptempo alt-pop of closer “WOMB.” The lines between life and the afterlife are blurred. “I hope grief becomes easier for people while listening to this record,” she adds. “That they can enjoy this life to the fullest knowing we’re all just here to grow, create, feel, and have shared experiences with one another to help each other evolve.” Below, Martinez walks through her new album in a track-by-track guide she wrote exclusively for Apple Music. **“DEATH”** “One day, I sat in the portal room alone and started singing melodies. I heard a spirit with a completely different tone than mine repeat a melody I had sung out loud in the silence and it sent a chill down my body. I was really scared at first, then continued on, using that moment as confirmation from the other side. I laid down the chords; I added a simple drum loop in the chorus. That was later replaced by production from my favorite collaborator CJ Baran, as well as live drums from Ilan Rubin of Nine Inch Nails, who also put drums down for a couple of other songs.” **“VOID”** “This is the first song I fully produced on my own, also in the portal room. The first thing I put down was that bass guitar top line—it was an exact melody from a voice memo I had recorded a few days prior. The chorus melody and lyric came all at once just from looping the bassline. I put down a simple programmed drum loop that was later replaced and mixed in with live drums by Rhys Hastings.“ **“TUNNEL VISION”** “I wrote this song while in Hawaii in February 2021 with Kinetics & One Love. We were surrounded by coqui frogs singing to us, the sound of rain hitting the roof, and pure connection.” **“FAERIE SOIRÉE”** “There were many days I sat in the portal room wanting to create outside of my own perspective. I asked Jeff Levin (my A&R) to send me as many folders as possible of instrumental tracks created by different producers. After searching through the folders for a while, there was one track labeled ‘Respect Vol 1’ by this producer named Hoskins that struck me. It was an infectious drum groove over a guitar top line. I wrote the song very quickly.” **“LIGHT SHOWER”** “There is a place in the afterlife people under hypnosis describe as a soul cleansing, a place where gem-colored rays of light shine through every inch of your soul, cleansing your spirit of the trauma it had experienced during your last lifetime. I remember reading about this sitting on the roof of my garage. A few weeks later I sat in my bathtub with my guitar and stayed up all night writing a love song about this light. It was also the very first song I ever wrote for this album.” **“SPIDER WEB”** “‘SPIDER WEB’ is written about social media’s chokehold on society. I wrote this one on my guitar in the portal room, recorded a voice memo of it, and sent it to CJ. He created an incredible instrumental track for it that same day and even created the perfect drop using his own mouth sounds that gave it that extra spidery feel.” **“LEECHES”** “The next few songs are about conflict on earth. Living in the most vapid and isolating city of Los Angeles, I decided to write ‘LEECHES’ about people who live here for the wrong reasons, and how they act around people in the spotlight.” **“BATTLE OF THE LARYNX”** “This was the last song that was written and added to the album. I wrote this one to be about two different conflict styles: one person who yells a bunch of nothing really loudly to try and intimidate, and the other who can calmly and concisely use their words and wit to prove their point.” **“THE CONTORTIONIST”** “This conflict song is about bending over backwards for someone who doesn’t accept you as you are.” **“MOON CYCLE”** “I wrote this song in the portal room alone over a guitar loop by Pearl Lion. On each of my albums, I like to include at least one ‘taboo’ song about something many people deal with, but no one talks about in music: I wanted to write a fun, lighthearted song about being a person who experiences menstruation, how blood represents vitality and life. I wanted the chorus to be pretty and to use analogies for bleeding that were sweet. The rumbling sounds that lead into the song are my actual period cramps, recorded on my phone. With the conflict of patriarchal society brainwashing straight cis men to believe they should have any kind of say over other people’s bodies, I wanted to make the song extra uncomfy for them by going on to describe a man who lives for period sex.” **“NYMPHOLOGY”** “The ending interlude of this song is actually called ‘Amulet.’ My partner Verde was cleaning out his computer and an instrumental randomly started playing and my ears perked up. It was a track he had produced years ago that was just sitting there collecting digital dust. I immediately wrote over it, but writing a full song for it was difficult. I loved it so much and had no idea what to do with it. One day in the studio I randomly was like, ‘Hmm, maybe “Amulet” can be an interlude after a song,’ and as fate had it, the very last note of ‘NYMPHOLOGY’ is the very first note of ‘Amulet.’ A perfect puzzle piece.” **“EVIL”** “My favorite of the conflict songs. It flowed. It was a mental turning point, where I was finally able to articulate perfectly what I had dealt with in my last relationship. I wanted the lyrics to be the most savage—every time I wrote something, I was like, ‘No, it’s not mean enough.’ It’s about dealing with a narcissist who ironically calls you evil because you’re able to see through them. I spent the entire day blowing out my vocals recording it.” **“WOMB”** “I knew I wanted the album to end on the title ‘WOMB.’ This was one of the earliest songs, written in 2020. I had a session one day with Omer Fedi, and he started playing these guitar chords that were so beautiful, I asked him to play it on loop while I stared at the corner of the room, quickly writing lyrics. CJ and I had Rhys come in and record live drums around two years later to complete it. This song is written from the perspective of entering a new lifetime—the nerves and excitement that arises when you’re about to let your human experience on earth move your progression forward.”
Who, exactly, *is* Miley Cyrus? Is she the country music progeny turned former child star turned pop provocateur, twerking on awards shows and throwing middle fingers to critics? Is she the hopeful young balladeer, lending her naturally emotive voice to Top 40 anthems like 2009’s “The Climb”? Or is she the rock star in hiding, getting trippy with The Flaming Lips on their collaboration *Dead Petz* and channeling her inner Joan Jett on 2020’s *Plastic Hearts*? While her shifting identities can distract from her formidable musicianship, it is exactly this restless, chameleonic nature that makes Cyrus one of our more engaging and enduring pop stars. On eighth LP *Endless Summer Vacation*, Cyrus finally finds a way to bring these seemingly disparate parts together. She tapped four producers to help helm the album, each with an ear toward one of Cyrus’ primary lanes. Greg Kurstin (Adele, Maren Morris) brings his trademark gravitas to the cutting but compassionate breakup ballad “Jaded.” Kid Harpoon, who recently took home a Grammy for Harry Styles’ *Harry’s House*, has fingerprints all over the LP, as on powerhouse opener “Flowers,” Cyrus’ biggest single since 2013’s “Wrecking Ball.” Tyler Johnson, a fellow Nashvillian with credits ranging from Taylor Swift to Toni Braxton, pairs well with Cyrus, his own catholic tastes dovetailing nicely with hers. Mike WiLL Made-It, a longtime Cyrus collaborator, jumps in on tracks like the Brandi Carlile feature “Thousand Miles,” which feels country-adjacent but ultimately transcends genre, and the dark, industrial Sia collab “Muddy Feet,” which boasts one of the LP’s most biting lyrics: “You smell like perfume that I didn’t purchase.” Lines like that may provoke curiosity into Cyrus’ personal life—she’s made no effort to conceal that much of the material was inspired by her divorce from Liam Hemsworth—but the music itself is sturdy enough to transcend tabloid fodder. There are also other notable—and at times unexpected—co-writers on the LP. Cult-favorite indie filmmaker Harmony Korine (*Spring Breakers*, *Kids*) is credited on the woozy, gauzy “Handstand,” which lyrically references one of his paintings, “Big Twitchy.” Acclaimed R&B/electronic artist James Blake joins on album highlight “Violet Chemistry,” which feels like a spiritual and sonic cousin of Taylor Swift’s *Midnights* cut “Lavender Haze.” Country artist and songwriter Caitlyn Smith, who co-wrote the *Plastic Hearts* standout “High,” contributes to “Island,” a groovy, low-key banger about the double-edged sword of independence. Cyrus closes *Endless Summer Vacation* with a demo version of “Flowers,” the kind of bonus track that can, more often than not, function as little more than filler. In this case, though, the contrast between the song in its infancy and its buoyant, assertive final form is striking and emotional. The hard-won strength of the studio version is there, but it\'s drenched in a raw, gritty sadness that sounds painfully real. In its studio incarnation, you can hear that Cyrus buys what she’s selling, that she’s not only content to be her own companion but actually prefers her own company. In this demo, though, her words seem to function more as a compass than a proclamation, a hopeful road map out of the woods of heartbreak. For an artist whose musical talent is often overshadowed by her offstage antics, this glimpse into Cyrus’ creative process is a welcome one, and a fitting way to end her most fully realized album yet.
Dogsbody, the debut album by Brooklyn-based Model/Actriz (vocalist Cole Haden, guitarist Jack Wetmore, drummer Ruben Radlauer, and bassist Aaron Shapiro), is a coming-of-age album set between the hours of dusk and dawn. It is as much an exploration of love and loss as it is a sharp, piercing, and violent ode to the explosive joy of being alive - the overwhelming brightness of staring at the sun.
Niall Horan\'s second album *Heartbreak Weather* came out in early March 2020—as the pandemic was forcing everyone indoors. The Irish singer-songwriter\'s promotional tour was canceled, and he went home to regroup—the first time he\'d had a chance to sit still and think since he broke through as a member of One Direction in the early 2010s. “I was like, ‘All right, okay, I don\'t think we\'re going anywhere for a while, I\'ll sit still and take this as still time for the first time,’” he tells Apple Music\'s Zane Lowe. *The Show*, Horan\'s third album, began coming together a few months later when he walked over to the piano in his house and began playing. “The first line I wrote was ‘Life is like a board game some of the time,’” he recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, okay.’” That sweeping title track draws on Horan\'s experiences as one of the world\'s most scrutinized pop stars to offer support to people going through tough times, noting that if life was constantly easy, people wouldn\'t be able to appreciate the sunnier moments. When he\'d finished it, he knew he was ready to embark on his next chapter. “I felt like, \'Right, we\'re away, we\'re out the gates,’” he says. *The Show*, Horan says, is “the most emotional record I\'ve made.” The sleek 10-song collection shows off his airy voice on plainspoken pop songs like the anthemic “Heaven,” upbeat guitar-rock cuts like the breezy “Save My Life,” and the supportive ballad “Science.” Throughout, his lyrics dig deeply into emotions and relationships in a new way, the result of him finally having a moment to breathe. “I\'d had this massive period of reflection looking into the future a bit,” he says, “looking left and right more than I\'d ever done.”
Few rock bands this side of Y2K have committed themselves to forward motion quite like Paramore. But in order to summon the aggression of their sixth full-length, the Tennessee outfit needed to look back—to draw on some of the same urgency that defined them early on, when they were teenaged upstarts slinging pop punk on the Warped Tour. “I think that\'s why this was a hard record to make,” Hayley Williams tells Apple Music of *This Is Why*. “Because how do you do that without putting the car in reverse completely?” In the neon wake of 2017’s *After Laughter*—an unabashed pop record—guitarist Taylor York says he found himself “really craving rock.” Add to that a combination of global pandemic, social unrest, apocalyptic weather, and war, and you have what feels like a suitable backdrop (if not cause) for music with edges. “I think figuring out a smarter way to make something aggressive isn\'t just turning up the distortion,” York says. “That’s where there was a lot of tension, us trying to collectively figure out what that looks like and can all three of us really get behind it and feel represented. It was really difficult sometimes, but when we listened back at the end, we were like, ‘Sick.’” What that looks like is a set of spiky but highly listenable (and often danceable) post-punk that draws influence from early-2000s revivalists like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party, The Rapture, Franz Ferdinand, and Hot Hot Heat. Throughout, Williams offers relatable glimpses of what it’s been like to live through the last few years, whether it’s feelings of anxiety (the title cut), outrage (“The News”), or atrophy (“C’est Comme Ça”). “I got to yell a lot on this record, and I was afraid of that, because I’ve been treating my voice so kindly and now I’m fucking smashing it to bits,” she says. “We finished the first day in the studio and listened back to the music and we were like, ‘Who is this?’ It simultaneously sounds like everything we\'ve ever loved and nothing that we\'ve ever done before ourselves. To me, that\'s always a great sign, because there\'s not many posts along the way that tell you where to go. You\'re just raw-dogging it. Into the abyss.”
Conceived of in a dream and sketched out during a series of pre-dawn sessions before the talons of logic took hold, *Seven Psalms* is a frankly mysterious album that nevertheless finds its way back to the same thematic wells Simon has drawn on for more than 50 years: loneliness (“Trail of Volcanoes”), aging (“Wait”), the existential questions of ordinary people (“The Sacred Harp”), and the sense of humor that keeps them gently at bay (“My Professional Opinion”). With an arsenal of rustling percussion and eerily resonant bells to back up a lone acoustic guitar, he plays the role of the solitary man haunted by a history of voices. And while the music is rarely catchy (at least for someone who wrote “Cecilia”), it continually refers back to itself with a subtle magic that honors the places from which it came. He’s always played it close to the vest; here, he’s deep inside it.
Sam Smith’s fourth album, *Gloria*, opens with the kind of music we’ve come to expect from the British singer-songwriter: “Love Me More” is a gospel-inflected ballad celebrating the power of self-acceptance. But after that, Smith goes off script. “I wanted it to be a patchwork of pop, it’s something that I was really passionate about,” they tell Apple Music. “I want to be flipping from genre to genre to genre to genre.” *Gloria*, then, brings us sensual R&B, dazzling dance floor moments (“Lose You” is perhaps Smith’s best sad banger yet), twisting hyperpop, a dancehall-indebted earworm, and even choral music, with embraces of sex, the power of community, and queer joy and history along the way. “My aim with this record was to make sure there is not one song on this album that I don\'t like,” adds Smith. “I\'ve put so much into this record in terms of the production and the time. I became obsessed. I lived inside the music. I\'ve never worked that hard before.” There’s a confidence present that most artists reach a few albums deep, but it’s more than just the gains of experience you can hear here. Made between Suffolk, LA, and Jamaica, *Gloria* is an album of rebellion, liberation, and letting go of the past, as one of modern pop’s biggest voices unveils their most assured music—and self—yet. “I don’t want to sound cheesy, but *Gloria* for me is like when a butterfly leaves a cocoon,” says Smith. “That’s what I wanted this record to feel like all the way through. I wanted there to be strength within every single song. I feel like my true artist self has arrived in a way.” Read on as Smith delves deep into every track on *Gloria*. **“Love Me More”** “I knew I wanted to write a song that said how I was feeling. I find the whole self-love thing quite cringey. Self-love sometimes feels like a destination; with self-acceptance, every day I have to try and accept myself and show myself love. That\'s what I was trying to put across in this song. I started this album like my old music. ‘Love Me More’ is the last opportunity I was giving my older fans to come into this next stage with me. This is a song written for my fans, and every song after it is written for me.” **“No God”** “This comes from a personal story about someone in my life who I’ve lost to drastic opinions. But as me, \[songwriters and producers\] Jimmy \[Napes\] and Stargate were writing it, it became a rhetoric on a certain type of person with a god complex. It’s about the ignoring of a human being and allowing someone’s drastic politics to get in the way of caring for someone else. The magic of this song came from the production: the live playing, the backing vocals. We just picked away at it until it sounded perfect. To me, it sounds super expensive.” **“Hurting Interlude”** “I found this amazing piece: a news anchor speaking at the first-ever Gay Pride in New York. What he says in this interlude broke my heart and took me back to ‘Lose You,’ a song written about a lesbian friend who had her first queer relationship with a woman. Someone\'s first heartbreak as a queer person can be very intense because of what we do go through when it comes to love. I felt like it was the perfect quote before ‘Lose You.’” **“Lose You”** “As a queer community, we love our sad dance songs. With this album, you could dedicate every song to a pop diva of mine. ‘Love Me More’ would be Whitney, ‘No God’ would be Brandy, and ‘Lose You’ would be Robyn or George Michael. I wrote this song with some of the most amazing pop writers and it felt like a mastering of a beautifully formed pop song. The production wasn’t taking me to Berlin, though, and I needed it to take me to a German gay club. The little things we did towards the end of this song really took it there—it gives me this really Euro, unashamed, gay, chic feel. It\'s drama, drama, drama.” **“Perfect” (feat. Jessie Reyez)** “This is where sex starts to come into the record. I feel like I’ve been a bit desexualized during my career, and I was very young when I started. Being 20 years old and moving onstage in the way I would in a gay bar was petrifying. Jessie really taught me to be brave: I would say things to her in the studio and she wouldn’t laugh or feel uncomfortable. The whole concept of the song is saying, ‘I’m a hot mess,’ and feeling yourself in a really imperfect way. This song is the Rihanna moment—we worked with Stargate on it, who worked on *Rated R*, one of my favorite Rihanna records. Stargate got hold of Nuno Bettencourt, who does guitar solos on *Rated R*, and he just ripped all over the song—I love it so much.” **“Unholy” \[with Kim Petras\]** “We were in Jamaica and \[producer\] Omer Fedi was fucking around on the guitar and playing this scale, which I started singing to. Everyone in the room was really confused; they didn’t know if they liked it or not. I had someone on my mind who was pissing me off and I just had to get it out. After we got back, everyone liked the song but said, ‘This is not on brand.’ But it kept prodding at me. I said everything I needed to in the first verse, and that’s when Kim came into the picture. There were about eight guys in the studio who were trying to push Kim’s verse in one direction. We spent all day doing it that way, but then something in my gut said, ‘This is shit.’ There’s a certain humor that only a queer person can understand because we’ve been through it and we live it. And that’s what the verse needed. We needed to tease the man, we needed to make him a ‘Balenciaga daddy.’ This is the most powerful part of the album and it\'s the most powerful piece of music I\'ve ever been a part of. It’s like an exorcism.” **“How to Cry”** “This is about the same person ‘Unholy’ is about. I wanted that breath, but I also only wanted one of these moments, because this isn’t the record for super organic, stripped music. In ‘Unholy’ I’m laughing and taking the piss. But at the heart of that emotion is a very sad story. It’s also about a relationship I was in, and about how I think being an emotional person is such a strong characteristic. I really do believe it’s a superpower. So it’s a love letter to me.” **“Six Shots”** “It’s a paragraph change—after ‘How to Cry,’ this is the pre-drinks to a night. But they’re intense pre-drinks, because we start having sex. This is the first proper sex song I wrote—I just felt really freed by it. At the time, I was insanely single and that’s where the lyric ‘There’s no loving me’ comes from. I was so single that I was almost taken. I wasn’t open to love.” **“Gimme” (feat. Koffee and Jessie Reyez)** “I’m obsessed with this song—it’s possibly my favorite on the album. It’s the most sexually intense lyrics I’ve ever written, and the verse lyric is actually filthy! The song is basically about wanting the dick so much you can cry. I love dancehall music and have tried many times to write songs that have a dancehall feel. I needed to be in Jamaica to do it in a way where it felt authentic, and I’m so proud that ‘Gimme’ did that. Like a lot of the record, this song is about sharing the moment—I didn’t want to be in the song too much.” **“Dorothy’s Interlude”** “The opening quote is Divine, which is just pure sass and fabulousness. Next is Judy Garland—there are so many queer connotations with Judy, namely the famous myth that when she died, everyone congregated in New York at Stonewall and the riots started the same night. Then after that you’ve got Sylvia Rivera. It’s quite a harrowing speech at Gay Pride in New York, talking about all of the awful things that are happening in the homeless hospitals to trans people, and her own community of gay men were booing her onstage. After that it goes into RuPaul saying one of the most incredible sayings we have out there. This interlude goes through the ages.” **“I’m Not Here to Make Friends”** “This song was made with Calvin Harris, Stargate, me, and Jessie Reyez. It was a joy to make. I went on a date the night before and I was just so sick of going on dates where people treated me like a friend or just wanted to meet me because I’m Sam Smith. Even though the song has nothing to do with it, the song title is also an attitude and spirit on the record that I have: I’m done trying to please people now.” **“Gloria”** “The sound of this song is one of the most beautiful sounds I\'ve ever created. And the reason I think it’s one of my favorite songs is that I’m not on it. \[Producer\] David Odlum helped convince me to actually sing on this song. At the beginning of my career, I remember everyone telling me I was a good singer, but no one ever really gave me credit for my songwriting. And what I love about this song is it\'s not about me, it\'s about something I wrote. This song is about opening your arms to the sky and singing your song as loud as you can. And I really think that my younger self needed it. I went with this idea of, I want this to be an album for a younger me that will give me joy and hope. The lyric is incredibly deep, but it\'s also playable like a lullaby.” **“Who We Love” \[with Ed Sheeran\]** “Ed sent me this song, and I was fearful to begin with because I don’t usually take songs and make them mine. Ed and I have been friends for a long time. I’m not interested in doing an Ed collab that sounds like a hit—I wanted it to mean something. And when I heard this, I felt truly touched. I felt like it was a queer ballad anthem written from a friend. There was something so poignant and beautiful about it. Ed has personally guided me through tough times and been a friend in a very cold industry. I wanted everything about this song to feel warm.”
No one could accuse Sonny Moore of being unmotivated in the years following 2014’s *Recess*—the electronic maverick better known as Skrillex kept up a seemingly endless stream of singles, remixes, high-profile collabs (Justin Bieber, Travis Scott), and co-signs of rising artists—but the lack of a follow-up album was nevertheless conspicuous. Nine years later, with *Quest for Fire*, he more than makes up for lost time. At once sprawling and punchy, the 15-track LP offers the fullest picture yet of the visionary producer’s range. Skrillex’s fondness for bass is well-represented: Virtually every track is flooded with voluminous low-end frequencies, typically in the form of stonking FM patches that glisten like oil slicks. The opening “Leave Me Like This” rides a wriggly riff straight out of the UK style known simply as bassline; “Tears,” a collaboration with UK producer Joker and Sleepnet, an artist from Noisia’s orbit, pays tribute to old-school South London bass music. Yet dubstep, for all its importance to Skrillex’s origins, is little more than a footnote on *Quest for Fire*. Stylistically, the album covers lush, melodic garage (“Butterflies,” with Starrah and Four Tet), Middle Eastern club (“XENA,” with Palestinian singer/composer Nai Barghouti), futuristic dancehall (the gargantuan “Rumble,” with Fred again.. and Flowdan), and more. What it all has in common, beyond the seismic undertow, are Skrillex’s filigreed vocal chops and intricate drum programming, which continue to unlock new levels of hyperkinetic energy. Skrillex has always tended to pack the studio with pals, and *Quest for Fire* is his most collaborative effort yet, stuffed with names both big and small. Missy Elliott drops new verses (and a clever interpolation of “Work It”) on the hip-house anthem “RATATA.” Rave dreamweaver Porter Robinson and hitmaker Bibi Bourelly add emotional uplift to “Still Here (with the ones that I came with),” a teary-eyed garage banger. The most surprising cameo might come from Eli Keszler, an experimental percussionist better known for working with avant-garde figures like Laurel Halo. Sometimes, the collaborators help lead Skrillex to some unexpected places: Who knows what kind of alchemy resulted in “TOO BIZARRE (juked),” in which rapper Swae Lee, post-everything producer Siiickbrain, and bass musician Posij come together in an unprecedented fusion of R&B, juke, pop punk, and screamo. Yet no matter who ends up in the booth with Moore, there’s no mistaking who’s behind the boards. Simply put, nobody else sounds like Skrillex, and no matter how far he roams, his sound is always unequivocally his.
The last time we heard new music from Summer Walker was in 2021 with her sophomore effort, *Still Over It*, which chronicled her messy and complicated relationship with Atlanta producer London On Da Track before, during, and after her pregnancy. The album’s relatability, cohesiveness, and introspective lyrics made *Still Over It* a certified hit, giving Walker her first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart. Since then, the singer-songwriter has been featured on tracks with Ari Lennox, Ciara, and The Weeknd, as well as expanding her family by welcoming a set of twins. “I’m really loving life right now, enjoying this new outlook on life, loving the new me, loving my kids and not letting life pass me by anymore,” she writes in an exclusive statement to Apple Music. Walker is in her soft-life era, which, according to social media, is a life free of struggle and stress and focuses more on joy and self-care. These ideals and themes are evident on Walker’s latest EP *CLEAR 2: SOFT LIFE*, a follow-up in her *CLEAR* series, which she debuted in 2019. “The first one was kinda sad—all my music is sad—but I’m in a different space, so this one is more happy,” she said. “It’s a continuation in the sense of the music because it’s all live.” Where *Still Over It* deals with the loss of a relationship and the emotions that come with a breakup, *CLEAR 2: SOFT LIFE* shows the singer-songwriter leaving those feelings of heartbreak and anxiety behind and embracing a life filled with ease. However, she still needs a reminder now and then. On the opener, “To Summer, From Cole (Audio Hug),” J. Cole reaffirms her by letting her know it’s okay to take some time to clear her mind and forget the stresses from her fame. Summer tackles this newfound life that she’s chosen for herself by not following the same patterns from her past relationships (“New Type”) and quickly cuts ties with connections that no longer serve her (“How Does It Feel,” “Pull Up,” “Finding Peace”). On “Mind Yo Mouth,” she finds the confidence to say what’s on her mind, even if it bruises a man’s ego: “Wanna be with me then you gon’ get up off your bottom/Uh, wanna lay with me then you gon’ be a real man,” she swaggers. In true Summer fashion, she offers up introspective lyrics and reflects on her journey within her past relationships on the album closer, “Agayu’s Revelation.” On the Steve Lacy- and Solange-produced track, Summer talks about a realization she had during a conversation with her spiritual guide when she discovered that the partners she chooses are the reason her relationships fail: “They’re fragile/Their egos are fragile/They’re not quite ready to face themselves/Maybe now or ever.” “Maferefun oya, Maferefun Oshun,” Walker writes, with an intriguing kicker: “PS: album 3 soon.”
“I feel like there are two sides of me,” says the Nashville-based singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso known as Sunny War. “One of them is very self-destructive, and the other is trying to work with that other half to keep things balanced.” That’s the central conflict on her fourth album, the eclectic and innovative Anarchist Gospel, which documents a time when it looked like the self-destructive side might win out. Extreme emotions can make that battle all the more perilous, yet from such trials Sunny has crafted a set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles, as though she’s marshaling all her forces to get her ideas across: ecstatic gospel, dusty country blues, thoughtful folk, rip-roaring rock and roll, even avant garde studio experiments. She melds them together into a powerful statement of survival, revealing a probing songwriter who indulges no comforting platitudes and a highly innovative guitarist who deploys spidery riffs throughout every song. Because it promises not healing but resilience and perseverance, because it doesn’t take shit for granted, Anarchist Gospel holds up under such intense emotional pressure, acknowledging the pain of living while searching for something that lies just beyond ourselves, some sense of balance between the bad and the good.
Early into the Brooklyn-based rockers’ ninth studio album, Craig Finn sums up a practical but no less potent mantra: “We do what we do to survive.” Staying true to form as he enters his 20th year with The Hold Steady (while also putting out a steady flow of solo records in a similar vein), Finn continues to write, with equal reverence, detailed stories of working stiffs and scumbags trying their best to get by. Nothing ever comes easy for these characters, whether by circumstance or choice, from a traveling couple searching for meaning in their lives despite their dwindling funds to a football-field crasher who never grew up. While there’s a distinctive familiarity to their lyrical concepts, their classic-rock-indebted sound is anything but. The band comes armed with a whole new set of tricks—whether it’s horn-filled lounge-funk (“Understudies”), synth flourishes (“Grand Junction”), or improvised sax accents (“The Birdwatchers”)—to add texture against the dual-guitar attack of Tad Kubler and Steve Selvidge. On “Sideways Skull,” Finn plays with irony, singing about aging rockers attempting to reclaim their glory days.
THE PRICE OF PROGRESS is our 9th studio album and comes out March 31, 2023 via Positive Jams, in association with Thirty Tigers. Once again we made this record with producer Josh Kaufman and engineer D. James Goodwin at The Clubhouse studio in Rhinebeck NY. The history and comfort of working with these two made the sessions joyful and exciting. We were able to get to new places in the music and atmosphere, while retaining a familiar THS vibe. The result is our most cinematic and expansive release yet. THE PRICE OF PROGRESS features ten narrative rock and roll songs about people trying to survive in this modern age. It’s a great way to celebrate our 20 years as a band. We are very excited to be sharing THE PRICE OF PROGRESS with you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for understanding. Stay Positive. The Hold Steady
It’s essentially in The New Pornographers’ all-star DNA to write hooks that get stuck in your head for days, but occasionally, they move into moodier territory. And there’s good reason for main songwriter A.C. Newman to pivot, considering he wrote the bulk of *Continue as a Guest* while coping with the boredom of pandemic life. His melodies are just as instantly likable, but the overall pacing is slower and song structures are more expansive. Take “Cat and Mouse With the Light,” which moves in a hazy reverie of keyboard swells and elegant sax (courtesy of Zach Djanikian) as longtime member Neko Case sings one of the album’s most clever and tender moments: “You’re the last of my first mistakes left/And you can take that as a compliment.” The harmony-rich “Bottle Episodes” and “Really Really Light” (erstwhile Pornographer Destroyer’s Dan Bejar shares a co-writing credit on the latter, a repurposed outtake from 2014’s *Brill Bruisers*, shining even in his absence) bring them back to their upbeat selves, but there’s less bounce. Meanwhile, “Angelcover” is a full-on New Wave romp. Not since the lavish baroque-pop of 2010’s *Together* has the band made such big changes to their sound, which, given Newman’s concerns about overstaying his welcome with the project, hopefully doesn’t imply he’s made his last hurrah.
TWICE, one of the world’s largest K-pop girl groups, has long been celebrated for its cheer-y pop bops and buttery harmonies. *READY TO BE*, their 12th EP, is no exception. But instead of middling with a workable formula, they push boundaries: disco production on the single “SET ME FREE” (available in Korean and English here), asymmetrical falsetto on “MOONLIGHT SUNRISE,” shout-along gang chants on the 2010s electro-pop “GOT THE THRILLS,” even energetic rap-rock on “BLAME IT ON ME.” When they sing, “We can keep going at all hours,” on the synth slow-burn “WALLFLOWER,” one of a couple co-written by Dahyun of the group, it’s easy to believe them.
Part of the appeal of Meg Remy’s music is that you can think and feel with it in almost equal measure. Inspired by her experience as a new mother (she delivered twin boys in 2021), *Bless This Mess* draws from a similar ’80s-pop Petri dish as 2020’s *Heavy Light* and 2018’s *In a Poem Unlimited*, and with the same mix of gut passion and high-concept remove. Do you need to know, for example, that the after-school-special balladry of “Bless This Mess” was inspired by the punishment of the Danaïdes in Greek mythology? Or that the hypnotic funk of “Pump” came from Remy’s reflections on how motherhood turns the female body into a kind of machine? Not to derive pleasure from them, clinically speaking, but there’s no doubt she wants you to be aware of the conditions she’s working with when it comes to gender, history, and economy, and to recognize pop as a viable way to get there. And if the ideas start to feel heavy, you can always dance them off.
The highly anticipated eighth album by U.S. Girls, the nom de plume of North American multi-disciplinary and experimental pop artist Meg Remy, will be released on 24 February entitled Bless This Mess. A dynamic suite of dexterous melodies and a nuanced artistic response to the complexities of motherhood, Bless This Mess was crafted in tandem with the conception and birth of Remy’s twin boys. It expands the sonic and thematic palette of U.S. Girls, fusing the muses of funk, mythology, and the radical disorientation of joy into an electric tapestry of anthems, aches, and awakenings. To celebrate the announcement, today U.S. Girls releases the slow jam gem, ‘Futures Bet’ alongside a music video directed by Alex Kingsmill that explores the visual wonder and resiliency of trash. A combination of traditional 3D animation & composited live action footage was fed into various Stable Diffusion deep learning models. Some images in the video have up to 6 passes of the artificial intelligence reinterpretations at various strengths to create the effect. It co-stars Remy and Carlyn Bezic, who also sings on the track and will open for U.S. Girls’ 2023 tour dates under her moniker Jane Inc. As Remy’s body changed so did her voice; her diaphragm lost breathing room, adjusting to the growing lives inside. Many takes on Bless This Mess were tracked with the babies in utero, or in her arms. (She even samples her breast pump on the album’s poetic closing cut, “Pump”). The resulting performances are suffused by the physicality of this journey: more blood, more feelings, the interwoven wonders, and wounds of procreation. The ten songs on Bless This Mess were pieced together stem by stem with a vast cast of collaborators (Alex Frankel of Holy Ghost!, Marker Starling, Ryland Blackinton of Cobra Starship, Basia Bulat, Roger Manning Jr. of Jellyfish and Beck,) and audio engineers (Neal H Pogue, Ken Sluiter, Steve Chahley, Maximilian Turnbull). Long-time collaborator, husband, and co-parent Turnbull played a key role facilitating these fluid muses. The production throughout is exquisite, warm, and wood-panelled, framing the voice, keys, bass, and rhythms in heightened textural harmony. ***Pre-orders will include a pin-badge***
A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter/vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, the Asheville quintet’s new and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic. Across the album’s ten tracks Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis build a shrine to minutiae. Half-funny, half-tragic dispatches from North Carolina unfurling somewhere between the wailing skuzz of Nineties shoegaze and classic country twang, that distorted lap steel and Hartzman’s voice slicing through the din. Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It’s not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void – somehow – you see everything. Rat Saw God was written in the months immediately following Twin Plagues’ completion, and recorded in a week at Asheville’s Drop of Sun studio. While Twin Plagues was a breakthrough release critically for Wednesday, it was also a creative and personal breakthrough for Hartzman. The lauded record charts feeling really fucked up, trauma, dropping acid. It had Hartzman thinking about the listener, about her mom hearing those songs, about how it feels to really spill your guts. And in the end, it felt okay. “I really jumped that hurdle with Twin Plagues where I was not worrying at all really about being vulnerable – I was finally comfortable with it, and I really wanna stay in that zone.” The album opener, “Hot Rotten Grass Smell,” happens in a flash: an explosive and wailing wall-of-sound dissonance that’d sound at home on any ‘90s shoegaze album, then peters out into a chirping chorus of peepers, a nighttime sound. And then into the previously-released eight-and-half-minute sprawling, heavy single, “Bull Believer.” Other tracks, like the creeping “What’s So Funny” or “Turkey Vultures,” interrogate Hartzman’s interiority - intimate portraits of coping, of helplessness. “Chosen to Deserve” is a true-blue love song complete with ripping guitar riffs, skewing classic country. “Bath County” recounts a trip Hartzman and her partner took to Dollywood, and time spent in the actual Bath County, Virginia, where she wrote the song while visiting, sitting on a front porch. And Rat Saw God closer “TV in the Gas Pump” is a proper traveling road song, written from one long ongoing iPhone note Hartzman kept while in the van, its final moments of audio a wink toward Twin Plagues. The reference-heavy stand-out “Quarry” is maybe the most obvious example of the way Hartzman seamlessly weaves together all these throughlines. It draws from imagery in Lynda Barry’s Cruddy; a collection of stories from Hartzman’s family (her dad burned down that cornfield); her current neighbors; and the West Virginia street from where her grandma lived, right next to a rock quarry, where the explosions would occasionally rock the neighborhood and everyone would just go on as normal. The songs on Rat Saw God don’t recount epics, just the everyday. They’re true, they’re real life, blurry and chaotic and strange – which is in-line with Hartzman’s own ethos: “Everyone’s story is worthy,” she says, plainly. “Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating.” But the thing about Rat Saw God - and about any Wednesday song, really - is you don’t necessarily even need all the references to get it, the weirdly specific elation of a song that really hits. Yeah, it’s all in the details – how fucked up you got or get, how you break a heart, how you fall in love, how you make yourself and others feel seen – but it’s mostly the way those tiny moments add up into a song or album or a person.
With A Hammer is the debut studio album by New York singer-songwriter Yaeji. “With A Hammer” was composed across a two-year period in New York, Seoul, and London, begun shortly after the release of “What We Drew” and during the lockdowns of the Coronavirus pandemic. It is a diaristic ode to self-exploration; the feeling of confronting one’s own emotions, and the transformation that is possible when we’re brave enough to do so. In this case, Yaeji examines her relationship to anger. It is a departure from her previous work, blending elements of trip-hop and rock with her familiar house-influenced style, and dealing with darker, more self-reflective lyrical themes, both in English and Korean. Yaeji also utilizes live instrumentation for the first time on this album—weaving in a patchwork ensemble of live musicians, and incorporating her own guitar playing. “With A Hammer” features electronic producers and close collaborators K Wata and Enayet, and guest vocals from London’s Loraine James and Baltimore’s Nourished by Time.
The wistful, slightly uncertain feeling you get from a Yo La Tengo album isn’t just one of the most reliable pleasures in indie rock; it practically defines the form. Their 17th studio album was recorded nearly 40 years after husband and wife Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley decided that, hey, maybe they could do it, too. *This Stupid World*’s sweet ballads (“Aselestine,” “Apology Letter”) and steady, psychedelic drones (“This Stupid World,” “Sinatra Drive Breakdown”) call back to the band’s classic mid-’90s period of *Painful* and *Electr-O-Pura*, whose domestications of garage rock and Velvet Underground-style noise helped bring the punk ethic to the most bookish and unpunk among us. Confident and capable as they are, you still get the sense that they don’t totally know what they’re doing, or at least entertain enough uncertainty to keep them human—a quality that not only gives the music its lived-in greatness, but also makes them the kind of band you want to root for, which their fans do with a low-key fidelity few other bands can claim.
Coming February 10: the most live-sounding Yo La Tengo album in years, This Stupid World. Times have changed for Yo La Tengo as much as they have for everyone else. In the past, the band has often worked with outside producers and mixers. In their latest effort, the first full-length in five years, This Stupid World was created all by themselves. And their time-tested judgment is both sturdy enough to keep things to the band’s high standards, and nimble enough to make things new. At the base of nearly every track is the trio playing all at once, giving everything a right-now feel. There’s an immediacy to the music, as if the distance between the first pass and the final product has become more direct. Available on standard black vinyl, CD and on limited blue vinyl.
Convenient though it may be, sometimes you have to give in and accept the metaphor. *Gumbo*, the engrossing fourth album from Atlanta’s Young Nudy, is what it says on its packaging: a collection of painstakingly crafted component parts (“Okra,” “Duck Meat,” “Shrimp,” “Portabella”) simmered together to become more than their mere sum, an alchemic blend of flavors and textures. And as with the titular dish, a mere recitation of ingredients would give an imitator little insight into how the real thing is made—the secret ingredients, of course, are proprietary. To shift to another culinary metaphor, there’s a use-every-part-of-the-animal ethos at play on *Gumbo*. Even the most mundane parts of the recording process become opportunities for innovation: Where many rappers use punch-ins to lay verses that are difficult to land in a single take, Nudy uses this technique to achieve a hallucinatory effect. See the opener “Brussel Sprout,” which comes to sound more like a lullaby than the opening salvo to a rap record with such punishing low ends. Rather than feeling stitched together, the takes overlap like blankets falling onto one another; the listener has to track whether Nudy in each subsequent layer is underlining what was said before, or subverting it. Produced in large part by Coupe (with an assist from Nudy’s longtime collaborator Pi’erre Bourne on the Key Glock-featuring “Pot Roast”), *Gumbo* is a heavy, percussive album, its punishing bass and yawning negative space giving the rapper ample room to deploy the most fluid flows of his career to this point. Nudy is a chameleonic rapper, able to dance through complicated patterns or communicate via monosyllables through sheer charisma. On *Gumbo*, those and other approaches are used in precise measures—as the recipe demands.