→ November 2, 2024
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Stick to baseball, 11/2/24.

My ranking of the top 50 free agents available this offseason is now up for subscribers to the Athletic; we’ve updated it now to reflect two players on the list coming off the board as their clubs picked up their options, adding two new players to keep it at 50. I also held a Q&A on the Athletic site on Friday to talk about the list.

For Paste, I reviewed Stamp Swap, a light new game from Stonemaier Games, whose products always have excellent components and art. The game play was meh for me – it was mostly stuff I’ve seen before, and in one case I think a mechanic just makes the game worse/slower.

I need to get another issue of my free email newsletter out soon, but got held up by the FA rankings and the relative lack of sleep I had thanks to the World Series.

And now, the links…

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→ November 1, 2024
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Music update, October 2024.

After all of that – by which I mean all the new tracks I listened to in the past month – October was one of the weakest months of the year for good new music. We did get two very strong albums that I’ve already featured on previous playlists in Katie Gavin’s What a Relief and Japandroids’ swan song Fate & Alcohol, and I’ve got a few left to work through. In the meantime, here are 24 songs that made the cut; as always, you can access the playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Waxahatchee – Much Ado About Nothing. A brand-new track from Katie Crutchfield just seven months after she released her latest album Tigers Blood … and this might be better than anything on the LP, which is really saying something.

Humdrum – There and Back Again. This is about as perfect a jangle-pop track as you’re going to find in this decade. Holy cow. I haven’t gotten to their debut album, Every Heaven, yet, but it’s next up in my queue.

Royel Otis – If Our Love Is Dead. The algorithms have been trying to convince me to like Royel Otis for a year, at least, but I just haven’t liked any of their songs all that much, or even remembered them. This track has a great little hook in the chorus, though. This indie pop due is huge in their native Australia, earning 8 ARIA nominations for their debut album PRATTS & PAIN; this song comes off the deluxe edition, retitled PRATTS & PAIN – It Ain’t Over Til It Ends.

The Tubs – Freak Mode. The Tubs are led by the former guitarist from Joanna Gruesome; Pitchfork’s review of their 2023 debut album Dead Meat referred to the “chiming sound of 80s college rock,” and it definitely has a lot of that sound – jangle-pop is back, baby – but this song has an incredible urgency to it that goes beyond those college-radio staples that didn’t stick except for their nostalgia value. It reminds me a little of The Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl,” but more melodic and less annoying.

Momma – Ohio All the Time. Momma broke out a little in 2022 with “Speeding ’72,” which made my top 20 of that year, but it’s just been a few scattered singles since then. This new track is pretty solid, with a great hook in the chorus and a similar contrast between the sweet-sounding vocals and the ‘70s-style distortion of the crunchy guitars.

The Smile – Eyes & Mouth. The Smile’s third album, Cutouts, includes some tracks recorded during the sessions for their last LP, but the sound is so different – the three tracks I’ve heard so far are all way jazzier funkier, with much clearer influence from drummer Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet and less of the mopey sound that Radiohead critics deride.

Black Doldrums – Hideaway. Darkwave trio Black Doldrums released their second album, In Limerence, in October, highlighted by this Bauhaus-y track driven by a twangy guitar line that almost begs for resolution.

Crows – Every Day of Every Year. I’m a huge Crows fan, as they come in somewhere between post-punk and hard rock; they should do a double bill with Kid Kapichi, who I unfortunately missed on their U.S. tour because I was out of town. Crows’ third album, Reason Enough, came out at the very end of September.

Kid Kapichi – Newsnight. Speaking of these lads, they released this track in October, one of four new songs on the deluxe version of this spring’s There Goes the Neighbourhood.

The Murder Capital – Can’t Pretend to Know. Sitting somewhere between punk and post-punk, this Irish group are more true to their style than their more ambitious and expansive countrymates Fontaines D.C. This track comes from the ongoing sessions for their third album, release date unknown.

Corker – Distant Dawn. Corker hail from Cincinnati, and this track sounds like a mash-up of Preoccupations and very early Killing Joke, complete with vocals that sound like they were recorded through a string connected to a coffee can.

Anxious – Counting Sheep. Anxious’s debut album Little Green House was one of my favorites of 2022, but then they dropped completely out of sight for almost two years. I was thinking about how they’d vanished a couple of weeks ago, only for this song to show up on my Spotify Release Radar a few days later. Serendipity, I suppose. Anyway, Anxious gets labelled as emo but they’re sharper and more interesting than just a revival of that subgenre. Their second album is due some time next year.

Sløtface – Quiet on Set. Sløtface’s latest album, Film Buff, is their first as a de facto solo project for vocalist Haley Shea, and the good news is that it’s on par with their previous two releases. If there’s a downside, it’s that there’s nothing new here, either; it’s really catchy pop-punk with witty lyrics.

La Sécurité – Detour. This Montréal-based “art punk” group released its debut album, Stay Safe!, in 2023, and returned last month with this throbbing, dissonant, and very dance-heavy track.

The Cure – A Fragile Thing. I read somewhere that Robert Smith wanted to go back to the Disintegration era of The Cure on this comeback album, and on this track, at least, he has succeeded. I think that’s their best record, so I may be biased in my opinion here.

Pastel – Leave a Light On (Velvet Storm). The last time I included a Pastel song, one of you commented that it was a blatant ripoff of The Verve; I don’t exactly hear that, but I get the criticism, and I think it’s as pronounced a similarity this time – although I hear more Primal Scream on this track.

The Horrors – The Silence that Remains. It’s a little ponderous, maybe a little pretentious, but Faris Badwan has earned at least some benefit of the doubt at this point. The Horrors’ sixth album and their first in nearly six years, Night Life, is due out in March.

Mindy Smith – Quiet Town. Mindy and I met in second grade in 1979, and we happen to share a birthday, although I’m a year younger than she is (I was the youngest person in my class). This is the title track from her latest album, her first one in 12 years, which also features “Jericho” and “The Hour of My Departure” (the latter with Daniel Tashian). I believe we are the only two members of our high school graduating class to have our own Wikipedia pages.

Lucius – Old Tape (feat. Adam Granduciel). A one-off single, for now, featuring the lead singer/guitarist of The War on Drugs; I saw both artists in September at the Mann in Philly, at which point Lucius’s Jess Wolfe was something like 11 months pregnant.

The Wombats – Sorry I’m Late, I DIidn’t Want to Come. This is mid as Wombats songs go, mostly because I think they’re capable of much catchier tracks, but I’ll take a mid Wombats song over a lot of other bands’ singles.

Orla Gartland – Backseat Driver. I wasn’t familiar with Gartland, an Irish singer-songwriter who released her debut album Woman on the Internet (great title) in 2021, until I heard this song, off her new album Everybody Needs a Hero. It’s a bouncy slice of indie-pop, slyly nodding at teen popstars but with lyrics that belie her age (she’s a ripe old 29).

WOOZE – Fantastic Fever. WOOZE is half of a defunct band first called Movie and then called Screaming Peaches; they put out a handful of songs, including the ridiculously fun “Mr. Fist,” then split up. WOOZE’s sound is more trashy glam-rock, although there’s still a danceable beat to all of their tracks. This is the best of the three singles I’ve heard from them this year, over “Sabre Tooth Spider” and “Weapons of Mass Seduction.”

Goat – Goatbrain. One of you suggested I check out the latest album from this anonymous Swedish fusion group, also called Goat; it was a solid tip, as I do like a lot of what they’re doing, blending sounds from various global music styles into a pretty cohesive whole, although the vocalists aren’t very strong and it holds the album back.

Blood Incantation – The Stargate [Tablet II]. Blood Incantation’s latest album Absolute Elsewhere is the most highly acclaimed metal album of 2024, and it is an impressive work of musicianship, comprising two songs, each in three “tablets,” running a total of 43 minutes and running the gamut from spacey 1970s prog-rock to Spiritual Healing-era Death. That latter bit means parts of the album are just unlistenable; the combination of blast beats and death growls just turns into noise to me, and I’m really here for the guitarwork anyway. This is the one track out of the six that is largely free of that nonsense, and despite running just five minutes, it gives you an idea of the stylistic range of the album.

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→ October 2, 2024
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Music update, September 2024.

Another month where I thought things started slow but by the turning of the calendar I found myself with 30+ songs saved and had to cut down to the ones I considered the best or most interesting. We also had a few albums come out on the final Friday that I’m still working through, so some tracks may bleed into October’s playlist. As always, if you can’t see the widget below you can access the playlist here.

Michael Kiwanuka – Lowdown (part i). Kiwanuka’s follow-up to his Mercury Prize-winning album KIWANUKA, called Small Changes, comes out on November 15th. This single, his second this year, is a lo-fi, bluesy track that recalls Jimi Hendrix’s version of “Hey Joe.”

clipping. – Run It. The first true new track from Daveed Diggs & company this year, not counting their wide release of 2020’s “Tipsy,” “Run It” has Diggs’s rapping front and center again, as in the best tracks from their last full-length album, Visions of Bodies Being Burned. The noise-rap trio are working on a new LP, possibly for next year.

Ezra Collective feat. Olivia Dean – No One’s Watching Me. Ezra Collective won the Mercury Prize last year for their 2022 album Where I’m Meant to Be, an album I hadn’t heard before but didn’t find that catchy. This spring, they started releasing singles from their new album, Dance, No One’s Watching, which just came out on Friday, and they’ve pretty much all been bangers. There’s definitely more emphasis here on melody, and they go well beyond modern jazz into 1970s soul, funk, Afrobeat, and more. It’s almost a full hour of music across 19 tracks.

flowerovlove – erase u. This 18-year-old bedroom pop artist had one of my top 20 songs of last year with her song “Next Best Exit,” and this song is another sunny pop gem in a similar vein. Her latest EP, ache in my tooth, comes out October 11th.

FKA Twigs – Eusexua. FKA Twigs’ third album, also called Eusexua, is due out on January 24th, which will be her first full-length LP since 2019’s Magdalene. In interviews, she’s promised a greater techno influence, and that’s certainly evident here in the backing music, but it’s not a techno song, or even much of a dance track, and her feathery vocals are by far the most prominent part.

Divorce – All My Freaks. This Nottingham quartet are suddenly everywhere, with this track getting quite a bit of media coverage for a band that won’t release its first album until March. It’s undeniably catchy, though, in a sort of alt-pop way. Also, the bassist/singer is a former actress named Tiger Cohen-Towell, which might be the most English name I’ve ever heard in my life. P.G. Wodehouse would have rejected it as too much.

Sløtface – Leading Man. Sløtface’s first album as a solo project for singer Haley Shea, called Film Buff, came out on Friday, but their sound is pretty similar to what it was before the other three band members departed: it’s witty punk-pop with strong hooks and a ton of cultural references. I’m glad she didn’t retool their sound.

Japandroids – All Bets Are Off. I just could not get into Celebration Rock, Japandroids’ big breakthrough album, but liked their 2017 follow-up Near to the Wild Heart of Life, and now I’m enjoying all of the singles from their upcoming album, Fate & Alcohol, except that they’ve announced this is their swan song. Good stuff.

Sunflower Bean – Lucky Number. Sunflower Bean’s new EP, Shake, has five songs that are mostly heavier guitar-driven stuff than what they’d been releasing, although I think if you go back to their first album and songs like “Wall Watcher” you can hear the seeds of this sound in there. “Moment in the Sun” is a great pop single, but I don’t think it’s representative of the band’s typical output.

High Vis – Drop Me Out. This British punk band’s third album Guided Tour will come out on October 18th, and this is the third single from the record, but this was actually the first track of theirs I’ve heard. There’s at least some melody lurking here beneath the shouted vocals, which at least superficially nod to singer Graham Sayle’s working-class roots.

Lambrini Girls – Company Culture. Then there’s Lambrini Girls, a straight-up punk duo from Brighton with very progressive politics and a great ear for melody even within the strict confines of the genre. They’re coming to the U.S. for just three dates, all in NYC, in early December.

Oceanator – Lullaby. I wasn’t familiar with Elise Okusami, who released her newest album Everything is Love and Death on August 30th, until hearing this and “Get Out” over the past month. This track opens like a melodic death metal song, but then veers back into more accessible hard rock territory, and you can hear metal influences throughout the album even though at no point would I call her music ‘metal.’

Pale Waves – Glasgow. I’ve never been a big fan of Pale Waves, who seemed to have better publicists than tracks, but this one from the Manchester pop/rock quartet has one of their best hooks.

Franz Ferdinand – Audacious. Franz Ferdinand peaked with their first three albums, but in the last fifteen years they’ve released just two albums – neither particularly good – and a couple of singles from a greatest-hits record, so when I say this is the best song they’ve released since 2009, that’s sort of damning with faint praise. It’s still clearly an FF song but with a song structure and tonal shifts drawn more from 1990s Britpop than their 1970s/early 1980s-influenced early work.

Blossoms – I Like Your Look. Blossoms’ last album was very Lord Huron/Head and the Heart/Ryan Adams, but this new album, Gary, is a big leap for them, a more ambitious medley of sounds that draws on new wave, notably the New York scene (I can’t hear anything but Blondie on this song);  and 1970s soul (“What Can I Say After I’m Sorry”), without totally abandoning their previous sound (“Perfect Me,” the title track). I liked a couple of songs off Ribbon Around the Bomb, but this is a welcome swing for the fences, even if they don’t all connect.

Atlas Genius – End of the Tunnel. My daughter alerted me to this new album from the Australian quartet, whose last full-length came out in 2015. The best track on the LP is “Elegant Strangers,” which they released as a single in 2021, and it also includes the one-off tracks from the late 2010s “63 Days” and “Can’t Be Alone Tonight”; this is the second-best song on the album after “Elegant Strangers.”

Temples – Day of Conquest. This track didn’t make the cut for 2014’s Sun Structures, so it’s on their upcoming EP of B-sides Other Structures, due out October 4th.

Foxing – Barking. Foxing’s new self-titled album was also self-produced and self-released, and it is the sound of a band being completely liberated from any label expectations. Opener “Secret History” starts out so quietly you might be tempted to turn up the volume, which would be a mistake around the two-minute mark when the death metal screaming starts up (is this Deafheaven?). “Hell 99” has guitarist Eric Hudson screaming “Fuck!” repeatedly in the heaviest track on the record. It feels like a window into someone cracking up, an album full of existential dread, angst, repressed anger finding any outlet to release the pressure. It’s a marvel and it’s also, at times, very hard to listen to. I included “Barking” here because it’s one of the most accessible tracks on the record, and in some way the most recognizable to fans of Nearer My God or Draw Down the Moon. Foxing’s interview with Stereogum is worthwhile reading if you’re a fan of the band.

Razorlight – Zombie Love. Razorlight were one of the original “landfill indie” bands, as Andrew Harrison coined the term in 2008 right before the release of their third album, which underperformed and put them into a decade-long hiatus.

Hinds – Mala Vist. Hinds’ fourth album, Viva Hinds, came out last month, their first new music since half the band quit in 2023, and it’s their best album yet.

Katie Gavin – Inconsolable. I couldn’t believe this was Gavin (also of MUNA), as it’s a straight-up country song and features Sara and Sean Watkins of bluegrass icons Nickel Creek. Gavin’s solo debut What a Relief comes out October 25th and all three singles to date have been outstanding.

The Aces – The Magic. The Aces return with a slightly funky pop track ahead of their upcoming, fourth album. This 2023 BBC profile of the Utah-born members’ journey, with three coming out as queer and all four leaving the Mormon church, explains a lot of the opening up of their sound since their second album came out right as the pandemic hit.

The Cure – Alone. The Guardian called this song “majestically wreathed in misery and despair,” and if I just told you that phrase and asked you to name the band, The Cure would probably be in your first three guesses, right? “Alone” is a clear attempt to bring the band back to its Disintegration peak, and is the first single from their first album since 2008, Songs from a Lost World, due out November 1st.

Wolfgang Press – Take It Backwards. Wolfgang Press were part of the latter wave of the post-punk movement in the 1980s, but really peaked with their 1991 album Queer, when they ditched most of their funereal goth vibes and went for a dance/funk sound that was unlike almost anything else of that moment because they still ultimately sounded like Wolfgang Press. Their cover of “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)” was a modest hit in the U.S., and was followed by the one-off single “A Girl Like You,” which was their biggest hit, but after their next album flopped in 1995 they appeared to be done. They’re back now with their first new album in 29 years, A 2nd Shape, which came out on Friday; the members are probably about 65 years old at this point, so I’m fascinated to give it a spin.

Flotsam & Jetsam – The Head of the Snake. I Am the Weapon, the fifteenth album from these thrash stalwarts, is more of the same, and I mean that in the best possible way. They still have two members from their 1980s peak, singer Eric Knutson and guitarist Michael Gilbert, so the core sound hasn’t changed much, and I admit I’m just happy to hear anyone still producing that particular strain of thrash.

Opeth – §3. Opeth’s new album The Last Will and Testament will come out on November 22nd, and is the first Opeth record to include death-metal elements since 2008’s Watershed … but this song is straight prog-metal in line with their last four albums, so it’s clear the death growls and such won’t be present everywhere on the album. I love all Opeth, notably Blackwater Park, which is a progressive death metal album through and through, but sometimes their musicianship can get clouded out by the growled vocals. Blackwater Park is especially strong for its long instrumental passages, often comprising several movements, so that when the vocals return there’s a real tonal shift and a clear demarcation between sections. I’m hopeful based on the first two tracks that The Last Will and Testament will be the same.

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→ September 5, 2024
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Music update, August 2024.

August brought a bunch of contenders for my year-end albums list, with LPs from Jack White, Fontaines D.C., Zeal & Ardor, Tank and the Bangas, and others, plus a surprise return from Opeth, a welcome single from Olympic stars Gojira, a farewell track from one of the most influential American punk bands, and a return from a band I was afraid had called it quits. As always, you can access the playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Gojira feat. Marina Viotti and Victor Le Masne – Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!). You know this song already, as it was the highlight of the stunning Opening Ceremonies to the Paris Olympics; now we get a studio version that packs the same punch, albeit without the visual impact of Gojira playing on the balconies of an old castle along the Seine.

Jack White – Old Scratch Blues. White’s new album No Name is his best solo LP to date, a return to his roots in classic rock and blues sounds from the 1940s through the 1970s, highlighted by this track, “Bless Yourself,” and “It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking).”

Fontaines D.C. – Here’s the Thing. Fontaines’ new album, Romance, is one of the big surprises of the year; the Dublin-based rockers have largely abandoned their punk sound in favor of a more ambitious array of influences that have them dancing around the edges of pop-rock without fully giving in to the sound. You can hear the punk roots in the background of songs like this one, but they’re in their post-punk/new wave phase now, and it’s fascinating. I still think “Favourite” is my … uh, favorite track on the record, but this and “Starburster” are also highlights.

Goat – Ouroboros. These Swedish psychedelic/fusion rockers return with their third album in three years, titled Goat, on October 11th; this is the radio edit of the album’s lengthy closing track, with a guitar riff that Nile Rodgers would approve.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Hog Calling Contest. The Aussie band’s 26th (!) album, Flight b741, came out in August, with an unusually long gap of ten months between records, and it’s more in the vein of their bluesy jam-band stuff than some of their heavier (and, to my ears, better) works.

Nice Biscuit – Fade Away. Not quite as good as “The Rain,” but we still get another strong guitar riff from this Australian indie-rock band, which marries some psychedelia with the pulsing beats of post-punk. Their new album SOS comes out on October 4th.

The Killers – Bright Lights. This one-off (for now) single dropped just a few weeks before the Killers started their residency in Vegas to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hot Fuss, with all four original members playing the entire album start to finish as part of the shows. The track bridges the gap between their earliest synth-pop leanings and the more country-tinged sound of 2021’s Pressure Machine.

Chime School – The End. The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel, the second album from Andy Pastalaniec (also of Seablite), continues with the project’s 1980s jangle-pop sound, which in itself derives from 1960s pop bands like the Byrds.

Sunflower Bean – Teach Me to Be Bad. Another heavier song from Sunflower Bean, and I’m into it. “Moment in the Sun” was a huge hit, and deservedly so, but the last thing I wanted from the band was an album full of attempts to re-create it.

X – Ruby Church. X announced that Smoke & Fiction will be their farewell album, accompanied by a final tour, four years after their comeback LP Alphabetland marked their return from 27 years away from the studio. I’ve never been a huge fan of X’s music, and am certainly not a fan of Exene Cervenka’s conspiracy theory-mongering, but I acknowledge the band’s huge influence on American music from the 1980s and 1990s.

Manic Street Preachers – Decline & Fall. The Welsh trio has said this track was inspired by several artists, including the War on Drugs, and that couldn’t be any clearer. I’m also stunned that James Dean Bradfield still sounds this good at age 55. The BBC has a story on some recently unearthed photographs of the band taken shortly before lyricist/guitarist Richey Edwards disappeared.

Hayden Thorpe – They. The former lead singer of Wild Beasts will drop his third solo album, Ness, on September 27th; it’s just a different sound than that of his former band, and I’m still kind of getting used to his individual style, which has some of the art rock leanings of Wild Beasts but in a quieter mode. He released two singles in August, this one and “He.”

Katie Gavin – Casual Drug Use. The second single from the MUNA singer’s upcoming debut solo album, What a Relief, due out on October 25th, is another smooth indie-pop track that borrows as much from alternative country singers like Kacey Musgraves and Brandi Carlile as it does from MUNA’s college-rock influences.

Bananagun – Free Energy. I dug this Australian experimental psych-rock band’s 2020 debut album The True Story of Bananagun – seriously, why is Oz so rife with psychedelic rock music? – but we haven’t had a peep out of the band since. They’re back with this frenetic track, which feels like it’s almost all drum-and-bass with a little vocals sprinkled on top, ahead of their sophomore album, Why is the Colour of the Sky?, due out November 8th.

Spirit of the Beehive – I’ve Been Evil. I hear a lot of Pinback and even Polvo in this track from Spirit’s newest album, You’ll Have to Lose Something, which, like most of their albums, is interesting but all over the place.

Jamie xx feat. The Avalanches – All You Children. Jamie xx’s second solo album, In Waves, finally comes out on September 20th, nine years after his debut In Colour, which had two of my favorite tracks of the decade in “See Saw” and “Loud Places.” I haven’t heard anything quite to that level from the five singles already released from the new album, with this one perhaps the best for its more accessible EDM sound.

Tangent feat. Rakim – Get Right, Keep Tight. Rakim put out a short comeback album in July that didn’t feature anywhere enough of him; his verse here as a guest on an otherwise unremarkable track from Tangent might be the best thing Rakim has done this year.

Maxïmo Park – Quiz Show Clue. There are too many bands, part 837: I’d never heard of Maxïmo Park before this spring, only to discover they’ve been around for 20 years and are about to release their eighth album, Stream of Life, on September 27th. They’re a post-punk revival band often lumped into the “landfill indie” pile, which, to be entirely honest, kind of fits; I actually first heard of them when I went down that rabbit hole (after the Libertines’ new album came out) and found VICE’s list of the 50 greatest landfill indie songs of all time, which has two Maxïmo Park tracks on it.

Ten Fé – Space Invader. I’m thrilled that Ten Fé is back, as they hadn’t released any music since 2019’s Future Perfect, Present Tense, although this song reminds me a little too much of Keane and doesn’t quite have the hook of some of Ten Fé’s best singles to date.

Sports Team – I’m in Love (Subaru). I loved Sports Team’s 2022 album Gulp!, so I’m not sure how I feel about them suddenly deciding they’re going to channel the band ABC.

Geordie Greep – Holy, Holy. So this is a rare case where I’m including a song I don’t particularly like. Greep was the lead singer/guitarist for black midi, which announced its breakup in August (or maybe an indefinite hiatus), with Greep then releasing this single a few days later. It’s kind of a mess, although I wouldn’t expect anything other than that from a black midi member, but the problem here is more in the lyrics, which might have worked for an older singer but just come off as snotty and ridiculous here. His solo album A New Sound comes out on October 4th.

Satan – Turn the Tide. I can’t believe these guys are still together, with both founding guitarists (Steve Ramsey and Russ Tippins) still in the band 45 years on, along with Blitzkrieg vocalist Brian Ross, who sang on their first full-length LP, 1983’s Court in the Act, before leaving the band until their 2011 re-formation.

Zeal & Ardor – Kilònova. Zeal & Ardor, a Swiss/American band that fuses black metal with African-American spiritual music, just released their fourth LP, Greif, in August; from the three singles I’ve heard, they seem to be drifting more towards a mainstream metal sound, with fewer of the more ridiculous trappings of extreme metal like death growls (there’s a little on “Clawing Out”) or blast beats.

Devin Townsend – Power Nerd. Townsend is a virtuoso metal guitarist whose first band, Strapping Young Lad, earned him a following but was way too harsh for my tastes. His post-SYL output, which has basically all been solo material but sometimes under monikers like the Devin Townsend Project, is a mixed bag, but this speed-metal track has a fantastic hook in the chorus.

Opeth – §1. Opeth hasn’t used death growls on any album since 2008’s Watershed, but they did on this track, the opener of their album The Last Will and Testament, a concept album due out on October 11th.  

Tribulation – Tainted Skies. Tribulation’s music wouldn’t be out of place on a mid-80s episode of Headbanger’s Ball, but they mix in some death growls and wear silly corpse paint. The music is almost comically melodic for the genre – this is metal, but it ain’t heavy other than the vocals, and it hits an almost nostalgic note for me because I listened to so much (admittedly mediocre) metal in the 1980s.

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→ August 2, 2024
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Music update, July 2024.

July finished with a bit of a bang, from a music perspective, at least, as this playlist doubled in size over the final week of the month. It also had two of my favorite new albums of the year so far, from Griff and Childish Gambino, as well as new singles from three contemporary artists I really like – from three entirely different genres, too. As always, if you can’t see the playlist below, you can access it here.

Griff – Tears For Fun. Griff’s full-length debut, Vertigo, came out this month and was a huge success in her native UK, coming in at #3 on their album charts in its first week. It’s an incredible record of lush pop tracks, replete with sophisticated melodies, the sort of record that should appeal to fans of Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, etc. if American fans even hear any of her music.

Lotte Gallagher – This Room. I assume I won’t be the last person to wonder if she’s related to the Oasis boys, but she’s not; she’s a singer/songwriter from Melbourne, Australia, which seems to be producing as much great indie pop/rock music per capita as any country in the world right now. I wish I’d come up with the comparison to Sam Fender, but I saw it in a fluffy profile of Ms. Gallagher and I can’t find a better one.

Michael Kiwanuka – Floating Parade. The first new track from the 2020 Mercury Prize winner since the 2021 single “Beautiful Life” is a gorgeous, bass-forward track with meditative lyrics about the struggles of daily life and how we seek out ways to escape it.

Sampha & Little Simz – Satellite Business 2.0. Theoriginal “Satellite Business”was an 84-second filler track with no percussion on Sampha’s 2023 album “Lahai,” but this version is blown out to 4:53 with a drum machine and a bangin’ guest verse from Little Simz. It completely reimagines the track with a big, frenetic energy that makes it one of Sampha’s best songs to date.

Jorja Smith – High. Smith appeared on Bando Stone and now returns with her first new solo track of 2024, not counting the ‘reimagined’ version of falling or flying she released in May. “High” really showcases her voice over a smooth house beat, with production that puts her vocals front and center, where they belong.

Childish Gambino feat. Foushée – Running Around. If Bando Stone & the New World is indeed the last Childish Gambino album, it’s a real tour de force and a hell of a swan song. Donald Glover bounces across all manner of genres, even going full emo on this track, in a broad, unpredictable, ambitious record by a mad musical genius. I also recommend “Lithonia,” a ballad with a great twist at the chorus; and the instrumental “Happy Survival,” featuring Khruangbin.

Crows – Bored. Crows’ third album, Reason Enough, comes out on September 27th; this lead single seems to lean harder into their punk roots, which I suppose isn’t that surprising for a band on IDLES’s record label.

Japandroids – Chicago. Japandroids released this new single off their upcoming album Fate & Alcohol with anote that this record will be their last. It’s their first new music since 2017’s Near to the Wild Heart of Life.

Pastel – Deeper than Holy. Pastel’s handful of singles so far have shown a deep reverence for the heyday of Britpop, often bridging the gap between that era’s biggest rivals, Blur and Oasis.

Primal Scream – Love Insurrection. Primal Scream’s first new music since 2016 sounds like they paired up with Khruangbin to reimagine late-1970s funk/disco. Their twelfth album, Come Ahead, comes out in November.

Los Bitchos – Kiki, You Complete Me. Los Bitchos play cumbia-influenced rock, mostly instrumental, with this particular song recalling 1960s surf rock and spy-movie soundtracks.

O. – Sugarfish. That’s about as SEO-unfriendly a band name as you can conceive. O. is a duo from London that works with saxophone and drums, but they run the sax through all kinds of effects pedals to make it sound like other instruments, including a distorted guitar. Their debut album, the appropriately titled WeirdOs, dropped in June.

Sunflower Bean – Shake. This title track of an upcoming EP from the Brooklyn trio is probably the heaviest thing they’ve ever done, driven by a single guitar riff, with Julia Cumming ceding most of the lead vocal work to Nick Kivlen.

Hinds – Superstar. This is the fourth single from the duo’s upcoming album, Viva Hinds, which drops in September, and continues a trend of cleaner production and tighter songwriting that preserves the chaotic nature of their overlapping vocals.

Katie Gavin – Aftertaste. Gavin is the lead vocalist for MUNA and will release her first solo album, What a Relief, on October 25th on Phoebe Bridgers’ label. This is unabashed folk-pop and utterly infectious.

GIFT – Light Runner. The fourth single from GIFT’s second album, Illuminator, which is due out August 23rd, is my least favorite so far but does continue in a similar vein of shimmering, layered psychedelic rock, just without as strong of a hook as “Wish Me Away” or “Going in Circles” offered.

Blossoms – Perfect Me. Blossoms’ latest album, Gary, comes out in September, and they’ve released two singles so far, with this upbeat indie-pop number miles ahead of the drab, pretentious title track.

The Beaches – Takes One to Know One. The Beaches had a minor hit last year with their album Blame My Ex and the track “Blame Brett” – I mean, with that big brain on him, who else would you blame? – and now they’re back with what appears to be a one-off single that has a similar sound to the last record, with a sunny pop-rock vibe belied by the cynical lyrics.

Alison Goldfrapp – I Wanna Be Loved (Just a Little Better). I can’t believe Goldfrapp is 58, but, then again, I can’t believe I’m 51. This is her first single on her own record label, coming on the heels of her first solo album, last year’s The Love Invention. The backing music, a new wave/disco blend, sounds like it could have been an outtake from a Yaz record, although the vocal style is obviously quite different from the other Alison’s.

Envy – Beyond the Raindrops. I was completely unfamiliar with Envy before I heard this track, even though they’ve been recording since 1998. They’re a Japanese post-hardcore/post-rock band who started out in the ridiculously-named “screamo” scene, a term that seems to mean nothing at all at this point other than that I generally don’t dig bands lumped under that umbrella. This track, from Envy’s upcoming album Eunoia, is somewhere between post-hardcore and shoegaze, with a darkly atmospheric vibe and spare vocals.

Glass Animals – A Tear in Space (Airlock). Glass Animals’ latest album, I Love You So Fucking Much, is their first since the global success of “Heat Waves,” which now holds the records for the longest stay on the Billboard Hot 100 and the longest time on the chart before hitting #1. There’s nothing on this album to rival that track or “Life Itself;” it’s consistently good, without any huge standouts. If you like Glass Animals in general, you’ll like the album.

Flotsam & Jetsam – Burning My Bridges. The second track from their fifteenth album, I Am the Weapon, due out on September 13th, finds these 1980s thrash icons just a little bit mellowed, but still thrashing away, with just two members remaining from their debut album. I prefer the previous single, “Primal,” but this is still a solid throwback to the Bay Area thrash sound that marked their first couple of LPs.

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→ July 5, 2024
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The ten best albums of 2024 so far.

I don’t think I’ve done one of these midyear album updates since 2020, but given how many solid or better albums there have already been this year, I had plenty of choices for this post, and I know from experience it helps me do the year-end wrap-up if I’ve at least gotten a head start and summarized the first six months. This list is in alphabetical order by artist, although I do identify my favorite album of the year in the text. (No spoilers.)

Alcest, Les chantes de l’aurore

Alcest started out as a death-metal project for the musician who goes by Neige, then incorporated shoegaze sounds to create something called “blackgaze” that was later co-opted by Deafheaven (with whom Neige has worked), after which Alcest added a second member and released an album that was all shoegaze with no metal. They’ve varied their mix of genres on subsequent albums, but this latest one gets the balance right, as they did on 2016’s incredible Kodama. The album is primarily heavy shoegaze, with some very infrequent screamed vocals deeper in the mix, so the wall-of-guitars sound is really the emphasis. Other strong metal albums this year include Wheel’s Charismatic Leaders, Pallbearer’s The Mind Burns Alive, and Crypt Sermon’s The Stygian Rose.

Courting, New Last Name

Quirky pop music with a post-punk edge, New Last Name grabs you right away with the 2023 single “Throw,” followed by the poppiest track on the record, “We Look Good Together (Big Words),” both of which are anchored by infectious, clean guitar riffs. They show their post-punk influences more on “Flex,” which has some clear Buzzcocks influence and lyrically references “Mr. Brightside,” because that song is over 20 years old. You’re welcome.

Kid Kapichi, There Goes the Neighborhood

They’re probably never quite going to match their incredible, no-skips debut album, but Kid Kapichi keeps churning out angry yet catchy working-class anthems with a touch of Alex Turner in the lyrics but a heavier, crunchier backdrop of guitars more inspired by punk and pub-rock. Highlights here include “Let’s Get to Work,” “Can EU Hear Me?,” and the wonderfully weird “Tamagotchi.”

The Libertines, All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade

This is my most listened-to album of the year so far, as the likely lads came back better than ever, with a slew of intoxicating and surprisingly upbeat tracks – ”Oh Shit,” “Run Run Run,” “Shiver,” and “Night of the Hunter” – that still bear that clear Doherty/Barât sound, just with better production and less breaking and entering.

Mdou Moctar, Funeral for Justice

This is my album of the year so far, and it’ll be hard to top. Hailing from Niger, a country that has been torn by political strife including a military coup this time last year, Moctar blends Tuareg music with western rock styles, particularly psychedelic rock and blues rock, crafting indelible guitar riffs and furious solos beneath the protest lyrics (sung in his native language, Tamasheq) that have boosted his popularity in the Sahel. I caught the last show of Moctar’s U.S. tour, at Union Transfer in Philly, and he blew the doors off the place, with incredible shredding and extended jams for several of the songs he played, including jumping into the crowd for his final guitar solo.

The Mysterines, Afraid of Tomorrows

I loved the Mysterines’ early output, fun, punchy, uptempo tracks like “Gasoline,” “I Win Every Time,” “Bet Your Pretty Face,” and more, but their debut album Reeling didn’t include any of those, and saw Lia Metcalfe & co. wallowing a bit more in slower and less catchy territory. This album, released last month, is far more in line with what I want from the Mysterines, because it puts the rock part front and center, and then Metcalfe’s smoky voice is that much more potent. Highlights include “Sink Ya Teeth,” “Stray,” and “The Last Dance.”

Pond – Stung!

Pond are all over the place yet again, and I’m good with it because the highs are high enough. They’re an experimental rock band from Australia with a heavy emphasis on psychedelic rock, but are comfortable veering into funk-pop (“So Lo”) or a mélange of 1970s hard rock and 1960s Motown rhythms (“(I’m) Stung”), or just straight-up psychedelic rock that your parents might have heard at Woodstock (“Neon River”). The album is 14 songs and 54+ minutes long, so it does wear out its welcome a bit as it goes on, but I put it on this list over some other albums I liked, such as Ride’s Interplay and Parsnip’s Behold, because it’s more ambitious.

Sprints, Letter to Self

The long-awaited debut full-length from this Dublin punk-rock band did not disappoint, and it’s one of the most true-to-form punk albums of the last few years, with spare lyrics and repeated lines over fast-paced guitar lines that mostly get out in under 3½ minutes. (Unfortunately, lead guitarist Colm O’Reilly left the band abruptly in mid-May.) Highlights include “Heavy,” “Adore Adore Adore,” “Literary Mind,” and “Up and Comer.”

Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood

While I loved Katie Crutchfield’s 2020 album Saint Cloud, I think I respect this album more than I love it, as it’s a slower, more tenebrous affair than the previous record, and I like her music when she incorporates a little more rock or folk and works less in the traditional country lane. Highlights include “3 Sisters,” “Evil Spawn,” “Bored,” and “Crimes of the Heart.”

Yard Act, Where’s My Utopia?

This wasn’t quite up to the level of their debut album The Overload, but Yard Act are always messing around with styles and genres, and “Dream Job” might be their mostly overtly poppy song yet, even with their typical offbeat lyrics – how many pop hits can you name that use the word “kowtow?” Vocalist James Smith has cited his love of hip-hop in interviews, and that’s more evident in the words and his delivery across this album, and he moves seamlessly between rapping, talk-singing, and outright singing across the record. Other highlights include “We Make Hits,” “Petroleum,” and “When the Laughter Stops.”

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→ July 3, 2024
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Music update, June 2024.

June brought three of the best albums of the year so far and a slew of comeback singles from bands I thought weren’t recording any more, so I’d call it a good month even beyond the part where it included my birthday and my daughter graduating from high school. Anyway, if you can’t see the playlist below, you can access it here.

Rakim feat. Kurupt and Masta Killa – Be Ill. The world has been waiting for new music from Rakim for 15 years, and for good new music from him for at least 25 years. We’re getting a new album, modestly titled G.O.D.s NETWORK: REB7RTH, on July 26th, and this song has Rakim sounding as good as he has since the 1990s.

GIFT – Later. More shoegazey than straight shoegaze, with a heavier dose of ‘80s synths, cleaner guitars, and way more prominent vocals. GIFT’s second album, Illuminator, their first as a full band (rather than a solo project for vocalist/guitarist TJ Freda), comes out on August 23rd, but the three singles they’ve released so far are all bangers – this one, “Going in Circles,” and my favorite, “Wish Me Away.” There’s definitely some Slowdive/Ride influence here, but Freda is doing more than just mimicking his idols, especially when it comes to building towards a big chorus or other hook.

Hundred Waters – Towers. I had long given up on hearing more music from Hundred Waters, whose sophomore album The Moon Rang Like a Bell was also one of my top albums of the 2010s, but whose last release was 2017’s Communicating. The trio, led by singer Nicole Miglis, released a four-song EP called Towers on June 14th, and Miglis still sounds incredible, while the band continues to experiment with the electronic sounds that back her up. I’m hoping there’s a full album to come but I’ll take what I can get.

The Mysterines – Hawkmoon. The Mysterines’ sophomore album Afraid of Tomorrows came out on June 21st, the same day as Pond’s and Alcest’s newest albums, and it’s a huge step forward from Lia Metcalfe’s quartet across the board, but especially in the quality of its hooks. My friends at Paste interviewed Metcalfe and drummer Paul Crilly about the new record.

Pond – So Lo. Stung!, the latest album from these Australian experimental psych-rockers, is all over the place, for better and a bit worse, but I take that as the price of admission given their willingness to jump between genres. This has strong mid-80s Prince vibes, as well as the 1970s funk songs that inspired his Revolution era sound.

The Howl & the Hum – Same Mistake Twice. Imagine a mashup of gang of youths and the Front Bottoms and you get this song from the Yorkshire quartet whose name unfortunately sounds like a discount version of The Head & the Heart.

Sløtface – Ladies of the Fight. This is what I want from Sløtface’s Haley Shea, who is now the only official member, and has a knack for punk-pop hooks and witty, sardonic lyrics. This track is full of movie references, including Fight Club and A League of Their Own, fitting since the upcoming album is titled Film Buff (September 27th).

Color Green – God in a $. This is just good old-fashioned blues-based rock and roll, maybe with a dash of jam-band sensibility thrown in. I’d love to see them live, although their summer tour doesn’t go anywhere west of Boise.

Good Looks – Broken Body. This Austin jangle-pop band released their second album, Lived Here for a While, in June, featuring this track and the lead single “If It’s Gone,” which showcase their sense of melody and wistful lyrics.

Chime School – Give Your Heart Away. More sunny jangle-pop goodness from San Francisco Giants fan and Seablite drummer Andy Pastalaniec, whose second album, The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel, drops on August 23rd.

Los Campesinos! – Feast of Tongues. We do love Welsh bands around here, but I have to admit that Los Campesinos! have often missed the mark for me – they’ve often struck me as trying too hard to be snarky or different, or just generally too cool for school. This track, from their upcoming album All Hell (out July 19th), is something I at least haven’t heard from them before, reminiscent lyrically of Okkervil River and musically of Mercury Rev.

Mercury Rev – Patterns. Oh hey, what a coincidence. I thought Mercury Rev had hung it up after 2015’s The Light in You (which I barely remember), and I can’t say I’ve been into anything they’ve done since 2001’s epic All Is Dream. This song feels like a throwback to that record, with spoken, philosophical (or just) lyrics over a psychedelic space-pop backdrop. Their new album Born Horses drops on September 6th.

The Jesus Lizard – Hide & Seek. These 1990s noise-rock icons haven’t released an album in 26 years, but Rack drops on September 13th. They’ve promised a departure from their old sound; this track sounds more like the clean punk sound of the Descendents than Goat or Liar.

Amyl and the Sniffers – Facts. Seth Meyers’ favorite band put out two singles at the end of May, this one and “U Should Not Be Doing That,” and they haven’t changed their fast-driving throwback punk sound a bit.

Fontaines D.C. – Favourite. Fontaines D.C. go Britpop on the closing track from their forthcoming album Romance, due out in August. I saw this Irish post-punk band open for Arctic Monkeys last September and they were unbelievable live, so much so that I would have said I wasn’t a fan before seeing them but definitely became one after.

Hayden Thorpe – They. Thorpe was the lead singer of Wild Beasts, whose final album Boy King ranked 5th on my list of the best albums of the 2010s, but his solo output since their breakup has lacked some of the urgency and verve of Wild Beasts’ best material. I’m cautiously optimistic about his next album, Ness, out September 27th, given the more ambitious music on this track.

One True Pairing – Mid-Life Crisis. So Hayden Thorpe’s return sent me down a Wild Beasts rabbit hole that led me to One True Pairing, the nom de chanson of their bassist Tom Fleming, who put out a self-titled album under that moniker in 2019 and has put out three singles in the last eight months. He also doesn’t sound quite like Wild Beasts did, but there’s a sweeping, lush texture to this song that kept me coming back to listen to it again. (It’s not a cover of the Faith No More track. Sorry.)

Griff – Anything. Griff’s full-length debut Vertigo comes out on July 12th and includes a bunch of the singles she’s already released, including this banger, the title track, “Astronaut,” and “Pillow in My Arms.” She’s playing Philly in September … on a Monday when I’ll be in Chicago for Stadium.

Soccer Mommy – Lost. A lovely acoustic ballad from Sophia Allison, her second single (along with last year’s “Lose You,” with Bully) since her 2022 album Sometimes, Forever.

Hinds – En Forma. Hinds began as a duo, became a quartet, went dark after a one-off single in 2021, lost two members, and now are about to release their first album with their original lineup of Carlotta Cosials and Ana García Perrote, Viva Hinds, on September 6th. They’ve released three singles so far, and it sounds like they’ve cleaned up their sound and production enough that they no longer sound like they recorded the record in a subway bathroom or are just learning to play their instruments.

METTE – MUSCLE. I had no idea who METTE was when I heard this song, and while I don’t generally go for this kind of commercially-oriented electro-pop, this damn thing would not let go of my ears for days. Then I found out METTE is actress Mette Towley, who was in Hustlers and The Old Guard and briefly in Barbie, and she’s opening some of Taylor Swift’s shows in the UK, so, uh, good job me finding out about the famous person.

Nubya Garcia – The Seer. Garcia is an English jazz saxophonist who released albums in 2017 and 2020 but nothing since; this track, which caught my ear for the obvious John Coltrane influence on her playing, is her first in four years and the lead single from her forthcoming album Odyssey, due out September 20th.

NIJI – A13 Fuji. Nigerian-British jazz pianist Niji Adeleye released his first proper LP Somewhere in the Middle in January and is already back with another track that blends western jazz styles with Afrobeat sounds. The main horn riff here is quite an earworm.

Ezra Collective feat. Yazmin Lacey. Ezra Collective won last year’s Mercury Prize for their 2022 album Where I’m Meant to Be, and have now released a pair of singles from their follow-up record Dance, No One’s Watching, due out September 27th. I think they’ve embraced a more pop-oriented sound, going more for strong melodies in either their music or in the guest vocals. I didn’t quite get the acclaim for the last record, at least compared to other candidates for the Mercury Prize, but I’ve liked both this and “Ajala” quite a bit more.

Jamie xx – Treat Each Other Right. Jamie xx put out two singles in June, this and “Life” featuring Robyn, leading up to the release of his second solo album In Waves on September 20th. So far, I haven’t heard anything as strong as “Loud Places” or “SeeSaw,” both featuring his bandmate Romy from the xx; it’s been more tracks like this, big house beats but without the same hooks or cross-genre experimentation.

Alcest – Komorebi. Alcest’s new album Les Chants de l’Aurore is the best metal album of the year so far by a mile, and one of the best albums of the year, period. It’s at least the best thing they’ve done since 2016’s Kodama, and I think represents the perfect balance of progressive metal, shoegaze, and extreme/death metal, three genres with which guitarist/singer Neige has experimented for his entire career, varying his use of all three. This album is a journey and I have already taken it many times.

Crypt Sermon – Thunder (Perfect Mind). Crypt Sermon does a souped-up take on doom metal, with a little more groove to it than typical adherents of that genre, with a very polished but still heavy, crunchy take on the style on their new album The Stygian Rose, which came out in June.

Flotsam & Jetsam – Primal. Props to Flotsam & Jetsam, who just keep churning out thrash tracks like it’s 1986. I’ll always be a sucker for this style of metal even though its moment was short and it’s hopelessly outdated now.

Dark Tranquility – Not Nothing. Dark Tranquility are one of the leaders of the Gothenburg style of metal, often called melodic death metal, here mixing clean and growled vocals with a heavy, proggy guitar riff through the chorus.

Tribulation – Saturn Coming Down. Tribulation gets labelled as “black metal” or “death metal” because their vocals are growled and they wear silly corpse paint, but their music isn’t actually that extreme – it’s straight metal and often wouldn’t be out of place on a compilation of ‘80s metal. On this new track they switch to clean vocals with a very goth sound in the chorus and it really elevates the whole endeavor; I know the death growls are part of their schtick but they’re leaving money on the table because the music is way more accessible than the labels indicate.

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→ April 30, 2024
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Music update, April 2024.

Whew; April was loaded, and took me more time than usual because I had to sort through so many songs I’d saved and listened to a bunch of albums from April and from my March backlog. I also have had the Libertines’ All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade on repeat for much of the month. Anyway, here’s my April playlist, and you can access the Spotify list here if you can’t see the widget below.

The Mysterines – Sink Ya Teeth. I’ve been a Mysterines fan since some of their earliest singles, including “Gasoline,” “Bet Your Pretty Face,” and “I Win Every Time,” but their debut album, Reeling, left me a little disappointed, as they eschewed some of their uptempo hard-rock sound for slower, broodier material. This is their best song since 2021, at the very least, ahead of that debut album and their other singles “Stray” and “Begin Again.” Their second album, Afraid of Tomorrows, comes out on June 7th.

Geese – The Bonecracker Acetates. What a great opening guitar riff from one of my favorite bands going. These NYC experimental rockers love to play with genres and forms, and they aren’t afraid to stretch a song out to play with its structure, but this time around they play it straight, maintaining the blues-rock vibe throughout its nearly 5-minute run time.

Fontaines D.C. – Starburster. I became a much bigger Fontaines D.C. after seeing them open up for the Arctic Monkeys in September; they’re incredible live, and despite being just as loud as you’d expect, the music came across as more textured and melodic, while lead singer Grian Chatten had great presence. This song is pretty accessible as their stuff goes, although I’m not sure if we needed to hear Chatten inhaling like some sort of inverted death-metal growl, though.

RINSE & Hatchie – Kiss Me (Kill Me). RINSE is Joe Agius, and he’s also Hatchie’s husband; they’ve collaborated before on “Back Into Your Arms.” This song has some of the dream-pop stylings of Hatchie’s solo work, but there’s more shoegazey guitars in the background here, and I think it complements Hatchie’s voice – which I’ve always thought was a bit thin to be mixed in the front of her songs – extremely well. I assume the B-side is called “Hold Me (Thrill Me).”

GIFT – Wish Me Away. I loved “Gumball Garden” from this NYC-based psychedelic-rock band in 2022, and they’ve returned now with what appears to be their first new song since that last album Momentary Presence.

Swim Deep – First Song. I don’t think I’d heard anything from Swim Deep before, but the shoegaze revival brought them to my ears and is probably a good thing for their pockets – this is straight-up shoegaze right out of my college years.

Pond – (I’m) Stung. So many bands draw from rock of the 1970s, particularly the psychedelic rock of the early part of that decade, but Pond manages to sound like they’re in the 1970s and just dropped by our era via the Tardis.

Mdou Moctar – Imouhar. Funeral for Justice will be out on Friday, May 3rd, his long-awaited follow-up to Afrique Victime, which put the Tuareg guitarist/singer on the global map.

Altin Gün – Vallahi Yok. The Anatolian rock stars return with a two-sided single, along with “Kirik Cam.” Their signature sound blends psychedelia with traditional Turkish music; if I didn’t know who the band was, I’d say this sounds like a perfect song to get stoned to, if you’re into that sort of thing.

STONE – My Feelings Go. This might be STONE’s most melodic track yet, which cuts both ways – it’s bordering on emo, without the harder punk edge of some of their previous tracks.

Phosphorescent – Revelator. First Kacey Musgraves, now Phosphorescent? Am I going soft in my old age? This song is just gorgeous, a lush alt-country number that reminds me of the better Jason Isbell stuff.

Parsnip – The Babble. Behold is now out, and it’s full of little pop gems with a subtle edge to them, like this, “The Light,” “Duality,” and “Turn to Love.”

Griff – Pillow in My Arms. Griff released her latest EP, ver2igo vol. 2, earlier this month, and will be touring the U.S. in the fall. “Miss Me Too” is definitely the best song of the four on the record, but I’m really waiting for a full-length release from the British singer-songwriter, who has put out some of my favorite pop songs of the last five years (“One Night,” “Black Hole,” “Head on Fire”).

Sløtface – Tired Old Dog. Sløtface has been a solo project of Haley Shea since June of 2022, after which she put out an EP and a few singles that sounded like she’d changed the band’s sound or just kind of lost interest; their earliest work was funny, edgy, and rooted in classic punk. Her first album since the lineup change, Film Buff, is due out in September, and this second single is definitely her best work since at least 2020’s Sorry for the Late Reply.

Spiritual Cramp feat. White Reaper – Whatever You Say Man. This is apparently one half of a split 7” between White Reaper, the world’s greatest American band, and the San Francisco punk band Spiritual Cramp. It doesn’t sound exactly like either of their sounds, but it leans more towards Spiritual Cramp.

Bob Vylan – Reign. Vylan’s latest album, Humble as the Sun, is a righteously angry affair that blends alternative rock and traditional hip-hop in a way that makes them into a single sound, rather than, say, the rap-metal hybrid that terrorized the populace in the early aughts.

Les Savy Fav – Limo Scene. Oui, LSF, this Chicago noise-rock band’s first new album in 14 years, will be out on May 10th, with this the second single from the record.

BODEGA – Cultural Consumer III. So there are indeed three tracks by this name on BODEGA’s latest album, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life, but the other two suck. This one’s chorus is really catchy, and the lyrics paint an interesting picture of consumerism run amok.

Jamie xx & Honey Dijon – Baddy on the Floor. It’s an average track for Jamie xx, not his best, but I’d say better than “Kill Dem,” which I assume will also be on whatever album he’s planning. I wasn’t familiar with Honey Dijon (the DC, not the salad dressing), but she’s apparently pretty well-regarded in American DJ circles.

Belle & Sebastian – What Happened to You, Son? Another new track from the Scottish indie popsters, this one left on the cutting floor from their Late Developers sessions.

The Folk Implosion – Moonlit Kind. They’re never going to match “Natural One,” but I’m glad Barlow & Davis are back at all. They returned after a 19-year hiatus in 2022, put out a four-song EP last April, and now we have this new track, heralding Walk Thru Me, their first full-length album with John Davis since 1999’s One Part Lullaby. It’s due out on June 28th.

A Certain Ratio – Keep It Real. ACR were part of the first wave of post-punk bands in the UK, contemporaries of Wire, Gang of Four, Siouxie & the Banshees, and PiL, but never achieved the commercial or critical success of those bands. Their earliest sound incorporated more funk and dance influences than their peers, but not enough to latch on to the second, new wave that followed, where they were overshadowed by Joy Division and the Cure (and inferior to other commercially unsuccessful bands like The Sound or Josef K). ACR reunited in 2020 after a twelve-year hiatus, and they sound quite a bit like they did in their 1978-1982 peak.

Lionlimb feat. Angel Olson – Dream of You. Lionlimb is Stewart Bronaugh, who has also played in Olsen’s backing band, along with Joshua Jaeger, and their newest album Limbo comes out on the 24th. I’m not a huge fan of Olsen’s solo work, but this track has a trippy Portishead vibe that grabbed me on first listen.

Ezra Collective – Ajala. Ezra Collective won last year’s Mercury Prize, which, to be honest, was the first I’d heard of them, but they remind me quite a bit of Ozomatli and that’s good enough to put them here, even if that represents a pretty low bar for my taste in jazz.

Yannis & the Yaw feat. Tony Allen – Walk Through Fire. That’s Yannis Phillippakis of Foals, and Tony Allen was a legendary Nigerian drummer who’d worked as Fela Kuti’s musical director for over a decade. The two recorded some material in the late 2010s, but Allen died in 2020 before they could finish the project; Phillippakis completed the few tracks they had begun and is releasing this five-song EP, Lagos Paris London, due out August 30th.

Wheel – Disciple. Charismatic Leaders, the third album from this Finnish-American prog-metal band, drops on Friday the third; despite numerous lineup changes, their sound has been pretty consistent over the last five-odd years.

Alcest – Flamme Jumelle. Alcest will release Les Chants de l’aurore, their first new album in five years, on June 21st; based on the two tracks we’ve heard so far, it sounds like they’ve gone back towards the straight shoegaze sound of Shelter, or at least most of the way there, with no sign of the black-metal trappings of their earliest work or the blackgaze sound of Spiritual Instinct. For the record, I like pretty much all of it.

Crypt Sermon – Heavy is the Crown of Bone. The latest LP from these Philly-based doom metal artists, The Stygian Rose, drops on June 14th; I love this track, which is heavy and crunchy and draws heavily on classic doom acts (Sabbath, Candlemass, Cathedral) but also some NWOBHM as well.

High on Fire – Lamsbread. High on Fire dropped their ninth album, Cometh the Storm, on April 19th; everyone describes them as sludge metal or stoner metal (including Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Metallum), but there’s too much thrash in here to lump them into those groups. I assume it’s just because Matt Pike is a co-founder of actual stoner metal band Sleep.

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→ April 19, 2024
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All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade.

I was lukewarm on the Libertines in their brief, drug-addled heyday, and largely oblivious to the drama around their self-titled second album, which looked for a decade like it might be their last, as the band broke up and Pete Doherty was in and out of rehab (and legal trouble). The likely lads returned in 2015 with a third album, Anthem for Doomed Youth, which had one great song (“Gunga Din”) but a lot of tepid material that couldn’t come close to the energy of their first two records. Even if you didn’t love their songs, those albums crackled with the thrill of a band that always felt like it was teetering on the edge of disaster – much like Oasis did at its peak, and in both cases it seemed to fuel greater creativity as well.

Over the last twenty years I’ve come to appreciate the Libertines even more. “Time for Heroes” has long been my favorite of their songs, and “Can’t Stand Me Now” is another banger that also has one of the best album intro passages I can remember hearing, but, taken together, their 2003-04 output feels like they captured a specific moment in British music history. They came along just a few years after the implosion of Britpop, owing something to that genre’s melodic instincts, but their playing was messier, almost dirtier, and they paired it with wry, witty lyrics, bringing some obvious Stones influence along with elements of punk and even …

The Libertines returned just this month with their fourth album, their first in nine years, All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, and I think it’s the best thing they’ve ever done. It’s certainly the most interesting new album I’ve heard this year, mixing in styles and sounds we haven’t heard from Carl Barât and Doherty before with that same reckless energy that made their first two LPs so exciting. (I’m not ignoring Cowboy Carter, which was nothing if not interesting, but I was shocked by how un-catchy much of that album is.) All Quiet is the album that they should have come back with in 2015. It’s a statement record, and just happens to be full of incredible hooks.

The album opens with one of the lead singles, the incredibly catchy “Run Run Run,” with its winking earworm chorus: “You’d better run, run, run/Faster than the past” might just refer to the band’s own sordid history, one would think. It’s a strong choice to start the record, setting the stage for the mostly uptempo songs to come while still sounding very much like the Libertines right from the introductory drum line. It’s one of four tracks on the record that connect this album to the first two, along with “Oh Shit, “I Have a Friend,” and “Be Young,” all of which are, to use the technical term, bangers.

Those tracks buy some goodwill for the lads to experiment a little, and fortunately this time around the experiments mostly land. “The Night of the Hunter” interpolates a bit of “Swan Lake,” of all things, while managing to sound like it came from the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. “Oh Shit” starts with a guitar lick that sounds so familiar – an inverted version of the main riff from “Boys Don’t Cry?” – and never takes its foot off the gas. “Shiver” is not a cover of the Coldplay song, but instead is a swirling, psychedelic track that’s unique in their catalog for its melding of that ‘70s psychedelia with some of the 1990s Britpop that paved the way for their initial success, and hearing the lads sing about “Reasons to stay alive/Not to die at 25” should certainly bring to mind the unlikeliness of this band still being intact twenty years on.

I couldn’t totally get on board with the closer, “Songs They Never Play on the Radio,” although the fact that the Libertines utilized a backing chorus on several tracks also marks some of the band’s progression into this older, wiser status. “Man With the Melody” is just a miss, one where I can’t even see the vision in what feels like a throwaway track in both music and lyrics, and “Baron’s Claw” also kills some of the momentum built up by the prior two tracks. “Merry Old England,” however, shows the Libertines slowing down the tempo while still managing to incorporate a strong hook, with some of their best lyrics ever, appropriating the language of the xenophobic right – even stealing a headline from The Sun about “illegals” – to cover the plight of migrants coming to England in search of a better life, only to receive “a B&B and vouchers for three square.”

The Libertines have now scored their second #1 album in the UK with All Quiet…, after their self-titled sophomore album did the same in 2004, but their commercial success has been limited to Britain and they’ve barely made a dent in the U.S. It contributes to an underrating of the band’s importance in music history, as they were critical in the resurgence of rock music after the death of Britpop in the late 1990s ushered in an era of more commercial pop and less rock-oriented indie pop acts like Coldplay and Travis. Without the Libertines, do we get the Arctic Monkeys, who have a very similar sound but cleaner production and playing, and take Doherty & Barât’s witty lyrical style to another level? Or Franz Ferdinand, the Wombats, Jamie T, the Rills, or Sports Team? The Libertines’ original two albums were part of a brief revival of garage-rock – often mislabeled as post-punk because they kind of played fast – that opened the doors for multiple waves of Brit-rock after their initial breakup. Let’s hope that this album gets them their due beyond the shores of merry old England.

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→ April 4, 2024
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Music update, March 2024.

March had a slew of big album releases, even just limiting them to artists whose work I’ve liked at some point in the past: Ride, Everything Everything, Liam Gallagher/John Squire, Waxahatchee, Elbow, Kacey Musgraves, Judas Priest, Sheer Mag, Yard Act, and more. There are a few I liked, but several were just okay – not bad, but nothing that special. There were a lot of songs from upcoming albums that I’m excited for, and this playlist has tracks from four different albums due out on May 3rd, so I guess that’ll be a busy listening weekend for me. As always, you can access the playlist here if you can’t see the Spotify widget below.

Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice. Moctar became a global phenomenon with 2021’s Afrique Victime, bringing his blend of Touareg music and Western guitar to a much broader audience as the English-language music press began to sing his praises. (It was #5 on my top albums of 2021.) This is the title track from his follow-up album, due out May 3rd, and it’s very heavy on Moctar’s mesmerizing guitar work.

Elbow – Good Blood Mexico City. This banger from Elbow’s latest album, AUDIO VERTIGO, feels like the best song Doves never recorded. It’s fast and loud and intense, with a great hook at its heart. The album is solid and I think it’s the best new album from last month, at least of the ones I’ve listened to all the way through.

The Libertines – Oh Shit. The lads’ fourth album, All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, is due out on Friday, a week later than originally scheduled, and the singles so far have still been rough-and-ready but definitely show a mellower side of Barât and Doherty.

Kaiser Chiefs – Reasons to Stay Alive.The Kaisers may be approaching 30 years together as a band, and their most popular record, Employment, may turn 20 next year, but their new album has two absolute bangers in this and “Beautiful Girl.” I doubt it’ll get much play outside of the U.K., given the way we dispose of bands in the U.S. music scene, but they’ve had more than a few winners even post-“Ruby.”

Kid Kapichi – Can EU Hear Me? Angry Kid Kapichi is the best Kid Kapichi, and I wish the whole album – There Goes the Neighborhood – maintained this level of righteous rage throughout. This is obviously an anti-Brexit track (“I don’t wanna live alone on this island/But they put it to a vote, and they just kept lyin’”) but like all of the best Kapichi tracks it has some incredible hooks and the indignation shows up in the furious rhythm guitar.

Liam Gallagher/John Squire – You’re Not the Only One. Yeah, well, the anticipation was fun, but the album is kind of a snoozer. I think everyone – myself included – was so excited at the potential for some real John Squire material on par with his Stone Roses output that perhaps we ignored two key facts: Squire is a terrible lyricist, and Liam hasn’t seemed engaged with any music he’s put out since Oasis’s 2005 album Don’t Believe the Truth. One track on the album is called “I’m So Bored,” and when Liam sings it, I believe him.

Mourn – Endless Looping. I thought Mourn had disbanded after 2021’s Self Worth, as they seemed to vanish from the internet, but they returned in March with The Avoider, which feels oddly muted for a trio whose songs usually burst with energy that helped power them through even when songs weren’t polished or their vocals were (deliberately) a little off key. This opening track is the best on the record, although “Could Be Friends” is solid too.

White Reaper – I Can’t Escape Myself. White Reaper released this one-off single, a cover of the opening track from UK post-punk icons The Sound’s debut album Jeopardy!, to tide fans over until there’s a new Reaper album on the way. It’s a faithful cover translated through the White Reaper sound, with more polished production than the original but still the same haunting quality.

Yard Act – A Vineyard for the North. Where’s My Utopia?, the second album from these UK post-punks, didn’t quite hit as hard as their debut album did, although I applaud the band for experimenting further with their sound rather than just resting on the plaudits from the first record. This is maybe the fifth-best song on the record, but I’ve already included “We Make Hits,” “Dream Job,” “Petroleum,” and “When the Laughter Stops” on previous playlists.

Sheer Mag – Golden Hour. Sheer Mag were lo-fi critical darlings in their early EP stages, when they were harder-edged and leaned more into garage rock and punk, even flirting with metal at times, but their new album Playing Favorites – which started out as a disco EP during the pandemic that grew into a full-length album seems to dispense with punk influences entirely. There’s a lot of 12-bar blues here and some rockabilly sounds (“Golden Hour”), with some great melodies (“Moonstruck”) but not a ton of experimentation – except on this track, which features a killer guitar solo from none other than Mdou Moctar.

Lauren Mayberry – Change Shapes. I’ve been surprised by Mayberry’s solo output so far, including this sugar-sweet pop track about how to survive in a relationship with a manipulative partner; if the lyrics didn’t have a dark edge I’d call it twee and leave it off the playlist entirely.

Richard Hawley – Two For His Heels. Hawley, formerly of the shortlived Britpop band Longpigs and then briefly of Pulp, hasn’t released anything since his 2019 album Further, but he’s back with this single (taking its title from a cribbage rule, so, hey, boardgames!) ahead of the May release of his latest album In This City They Call You Love. This track is very noirish, suiting its lyrics about a deal gone wrong.

La Luz – Strange World. Speaking of noir, La Luz doesn’t do anything other than that, and that’s fine with me. The quartet has changed by 50% since their last album in 2021, but leader Shana Cleveland is still on board. They’ll release News of the Universe on May 24th, featuring this track and the lugubrious “Poppies.”

Khruangbin – Pon Pón. A LA SALA, their first album of new material since 2020’s Mordechai, arrives this Friday; I loved Mordechai but it didn’t land with critics the way their earlier work had. This and “A Love International” are both standouts already, ahead of the slower (and non-instrumental) “May Ninth” of the three singles they’ve released from the album.

Kamasi Washington – Prologue. The acclaimed jazz saxophonist will release his latest album, Fearless Movement, on May 3rd, and this track is actually the last one on the record, despite the title. Nobody is the new John Coltrane, but Washington’s work does remind me a bit of the GOAT.

Kacey Musgraves – Cardinal. I guess I’m a Kacey Musgraves fan now.

Waxahatchee – 3 Sisters. I still haven’t listened all the way through Tigers Blood, and I think part of it is that I thought Saint Cloud (her last album, released almost exactly four years before this one) was so good that I can’t imagine this will live up to it. I don’t think there’s a “Lilacs” or an “Under the Rock” here, at least not yet, but this song is quite lovely, especially the harmonies in the chorus.

Parsnip – Turn to Love. I wouldn’t rate this above the Aussie’ quartet’s previous single, the incredible power-pop gem “The Light,” but if you hang on here until the chorus you’ll hear what they’re capable of. Their sophomore album Behold drops on April 26th.

Love Fame Tragedy – My Head’s in a Hurricane. LFT is Matthew Murphy, lead singer-songwriter for the Wombats, and his second solo album under that moniker, Life is a Killer, actually feels like a really good Wombats album – more than his solo debut did, certainly.

Courting – Battle. Courting’s New Last Name might be my top album of 2024 so far, and this extra track from those recording sessions has the same jangly, alt-poppy vibe as much of the LP did.

Blushing – Tamagotchi. The second song with this title to appear on one of my playlists this year, oddly enough, this “Tamagotchi” comes from a shoegaze band from Austin who’ve released two albums already, one co-produced by Mark Gardener of Ride. Their sound is very similar to early Lush, and indeed they covered “Out of Control” on an early release. Blushing’s third full-length album Sugarcoat comes out May 3rd.

Ride – Portland Rocks. Speaking of Ride, their latest album Interplay came out last month, and it’s a solid grade-B record: exactly what you would want and expect from Ride, nothing more, nothing too novel, but nothing amiss, either. They came back from hiatus at the same time as slowdive, so the comparisons are a little too easy, but where slowdive has leaned more into their shoegaze roots and are riding the wave of the genre’s revival, Ride have reemerged in a softer form, closer to dream-pop than shoegaze, with Interplay harkening back more to British new wave than the original shoegaze movement that Ride helped pioneer.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Venal Eyes. The Guardian called the Reid brothers’ second comeback album “three-quarters of a good record” by way of praise; I might put the ratio closer to half. (Their real comeback album was 2017’s Damage and Joy, coming after a 19-year layoff; the wait this time was just seven years.) TJ&MC were always more shoegaze-adjacent to me, with more noise-rock elements and I think a pretty clear intent to create some chaos on record. This song does all of that, and does it well.

Drop Nineteens – Nest. Concluding the shoegaze portion of the playlist we have perhaps the only American band associated with the genre’s original heyday. Drop Nineteens put out a new album, Hard Light, in November of 2023, their first album in 30 years; this song didn’t make the album but came out of the same sessions.

Wheel – Empire. One of my favorite progressive metal bands going, Wheel has put out two singles from their forthcoming album Charismatic Leaders, this and the seven-minute “Porcelain.” The new album drops May 3rd and will be their first as a trio after bassist Aki Virta left the band amicably last July.

Ministry – New Religion. Al Jourgensen is 65 years old now and as pissed-off as ever, with Ministry’s new album HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES, which he’s hinted might be their last, a furious tirade against incels, white nationalists, right-wing grifters, and Trump himself.

Judas Priest – Invincible Shield. Then we have Judas Priest, with three members in their 1970s, still shredding like in their peak, but definitely with a way more uplifting message than I’d expect from the folks behind “Breaking the Law” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming.”

Pallbearer – Where the Light Fades. The kings of American doom metal will release their fifth album Mind Burns Alive on May 17th, their first new music since 2020’s Forgotten Days.

Ufomammut – Leeched. An Italian doom metal band who’ve been around for almost a quarter-century now, Ufomammut just crossed my radar for the first time about a week ago; this is some seriously heavy stuff, with menacing vocals to go along with it.

Messiah – Sikhote Alin. Messiah were part of the Swiss metal vanguard in the 1980s along with Celtic Frost and Coroner, then broke up in the mid-1990s and, as far as I knew, were done for good. They actually returned in 2020 with their first new album in 26 years, and just released their second post-reunion album, Christus Hypercubus, last month. Their music is still heavily rooted in thrash, with shouted vocals that are a little less abrasive than the typical death-metal style. This isn’t totally my cup of tea, but old-school thrash riffing will always appeal to me on some level.

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