April was a lighter month for good singles, but we’re heading into a heavy period of new album releases starting today (Arcade Fire, Belle & Sebastian, Sunflower Bean, Warpaint). We get new albums from The Smile, Everything Everything, Porridge Radio, Stars, and Liam Gallagher this month, and Bartees Strange, Foals, Soccer Mommy, and Post Malahahahaha I can’t even finish that, next month. As always, you can click here to access the playlist if you can’t see the widget below.
Kae Tempest feat. Grian Chatten – I Saw Light. Tempest is a poet and spoken-word artist whose work I was unfamiliar with, but this song, featuring Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C., flattened me. I heard the song and thought they might be a poet, just because the lyrics are that good, especially the depth of imagery within them.
Belle and Sebastian – Young and Stupid. This is the sweet spot for me with Belle and Sebastian – lush and a little more uptempo, with Murdoch’s wry humor throughout the lyrics, which he also exhibited in this tweet on Wednesday.
Sports Team – R Entertainment. Strong lyrics might be the theme for this month’s playlist; Sports Team does that thing I keep mentioning that I like where we get some British singer sing-talking clever lyrics over post-punk backing music. They’re just the right side of obnoxious for me.
Just Mustard – Mirrors. I think this Irish shoegaze band is starting to come into its own heading into their second album, with a better sense of its sound, including a slightly more prominent melody, and better production that better centers the vocals.
Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler – The Eagle and the Dove. Yep, that’s Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley and former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. Buckley’s career started on a British reality competition show, where she finished second, with the winner getting a part in a new stage production of Oliver! … which is a long way of saying she was a singer before she was an actress. It turns out she’s great at both, which you can see in 2019’s Wild Rose.
Let’s Eat Grandma – Levitation. I understand the joke in this band’s name (the importance of proper punctuation!) but I still don’t like it. Their sound, though, has a very mid-80s synthpop vibe that is catnip to me as a child of that era. This is my favorite song from them so far, coming off their third album, Two Ribbons, released last month.
Everything Everything – I Want a Love Like This. One of my favorite bands of the last decade, EE will release their sixth album, Raw Data Feel, on May 20th. This is the third single from that album – a fourth, “Pizza Boy,” dropped this morning – and I’m pretty excited about the direction so far.
Foals – Looking High. Foals promised that their upcoming album, Life Is Yours, due out June 17th, would be upbeat and danceable, and the early singles have delivered on that promise.
Cory Wong – Power Station. Wong has worked with a few musicians who worked with Prince, and this track sounds a lot like something we might hear from Prince’s endless well of unreleased tracks. I’m in.
beabadoobee – See You Soon. Beatopiacomes outon July 17th; withthis and “Talk,” both very strong singles with different vibes (this one is quieter and more lush, “Talk” is more straight-up rock), coming out in the last few weeks, I’m expecting a big leap forward on her second record.
The Head and the Heart – Shut Up. Every Shade of Blue came out in April and it’s really all over the place – it sounds like the work of three different bands who split the album between them – with this my favorite track on the album.
Arcade Fire – Unconditional I (Lookout Kid). I definitely worry any time Arcade Fire puts out a song with a second part, but this is actually a simpler and less pretentious affair than Win Butler has offered on similar diptychs (“Infinite Content,” the Orpheus/Eurydice tracks from Reflektor, or the two singles they released in March).
Interpol – Toni. The lead single from their forthcoming album The Other Side of Make-Believe, due out July 15th, is an understated affair from Interpol as they celebrate their 25th anniversary, a change from how they usually announce new albums – “PDA,” “Slow Hands,” and “The Heinrich Maneuver” were all heavier rock tracks and the lead singles from their respective albums.
Sunflower Bean – I Don’t Have Control Sometimes. This jangle-pop trio’s third album, Headful of Sugar, comes out today, featuring five songs we’ve heard already – four advance singles as well as the bonus track “Moment in the Sun,” a one-off single from 2020 that made my top 100 from that year.
Fontaines D.C. – Skinty Fia. Speaking of these Dublin punks, they dial the intensity down on their third album, as on the title track here. It’s hit or miss, unfortunately, as I think they’ve lost the righteous anger that made their last album, A Hero’s Death, more successful.
Iceage – All the Junk on the Outskirts. This track was left on the cutting room floor during the recording of 2018’s Beyondless, but they’ve “reconfigured” it and released in advance of their summer/fall tour.
Buzzcocks – Senses Out of Control. I assumed the death of Pete Shelley in 2018 would be the end of the Buzzcocks, but here they are … and this is actually pretty good, wth 66-year-old Steve Diggle handling vocals.
Working Men’s Club – Circumference. I don’t know if WMC qualify as “darkwave,” but I love their darker spin on new wave, which at least has strong roots in 1980s darkwave bands like Clan of Xymox and Bauhaus.
Wet Leg – Ur Mum. I’m just not on this duo’s wavelength despite the wide critical acclaim; the weird high/low vocal delivery just rubs me the wrong way, and I find myself in the minority in thinking their lyrics aren’t that witty. That said, there are three songs on their self-titled debut album I like, this one “Angelica,” and “Wet Dream,” which is a pretty solid effort.
SAULT – Luos Higher. SAULT changed their entire sound for their sixth album, Air, released last month with no advance notice, as with their previous records. They’ve dispensed with the ’70s funk and soul sounds, and all of the Black Lives Matter-themed lyrics are gone … in fact, just about all of the lyrics are gone. Air is almost all instrumental, highly experimental in music styles and forms, and simultaneously impressive and disappointing. I respect the ambition here, but what made SAULT’s first four albums in particular so incredible was their combination of smart, incisive lyrics and a modern twist on classic genres of music. Bring that beat back, Inflo.
Looking forward to diving in on this. “Air” was my favorite SAULT album so far, but my immediate thought was, “oh man, this is going to absolutely alienate their fanbase.” I think every act should make an album just for pretentious weirdos like me.
Saw Interpol last Thursday and they’ve still got it. They played the two new songs that have been released as singles, but also a couple other from the new album that are definitely ‘the norm’.
Saw Fontaines DC last Saturday – what intensity they may have lost in their third album is not lost live. Relentlessly intense. I don’t hear it as a loss of intensity but more gaining maturity. Either way – live the album’s opening track is VERY intense. They opened with that, then followed with Lucid Dream, Sha Sha Sha, and Hurricane Laughter, and the crowd was berzerk the rest of the show.
Just Mustard opened for them. Yeesh. I wanted to like them – their first song was good, but by the third song the shtick was old. Droning shoegaze that just went nowhere… (I’m a bass player, and I was very underwhelmed with their bass player. Seemed like he was either just going through the motions and barely playing or he possibly wasn’t even plugged in)
Maybe my favorite new album so far this year is Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway – Crooked Tree. Just released in April. A modern take on traditional Bluegrass. Excellent singer and song writer and a world class flat picker. Worth a listen even if like myself you were never into Bluegrass.