These are our picks for the best albums of the last three months.
Diane Birch
Flying on Abraham
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
On Flying on Abraham, pianist and singer-songwriter Diane Birch tunes into the sounds of ‘70s AM radio, channeling smooth soul and jazz, R&B and soft rock. Despite her decade-long hiatus, Birch sounds perfectly at ease inhabiting the lane of a modern-day Carly Simon, her voice as smooth as the pull on a lit Winston on opener “Wind Machine.” Personal favorite “Jukebox Johnny” plays like a Hall & Oates joint with its rock ’n’ soul swing, squelching electric guitar, and earworm of a chorus. Elsewhere, lead single “Used to Lovin’ You” cruises in on twilight-hued synth pads, shifting the dial from morning oldies to the ’80s slow jam. Graceful and confident, Flying on Abraham is a welcome salve for those who need it. Pour yourself a cup of Folgers, light up that Winston, and tune in.
–Stephanie Barclay
Candy
It’s Inside You
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette, T-Shirt/Shirt
Imagine a hardcore show. Now imagine an illegal rave. Now imagine a Boiler Room set. And now, imagine all three events going on at the same time: that’s more or less It’s Inside You, the third album from Virginia hardcore visionaries Candy. With the help of mega-producer Kurt Ballou, the band explore the shared lineage of hardcore punk and electronic music, positing them not as stylistic opposites, as many listeners are wont to do, but rather two sides of same coin; after all, as they told critic Larry Fitzmaurice ahead of the record, hardcore is dance music. “You Will Never Get Me,” featuring Trapped Under Ice’s Justice Tripp, restores nü metal to its ultra-rhythmic, fusion-led base state—a promising reminder that the style may yet be redeemed—while “Dancing to the Infinite Beat” has vocalist Zak Quiram barking over pulverizing gabber kicks and bright synth melodies that sound like someone hot-wired a Game Boy using the mixing board. These strobe-lit sojourns are balanced by more straightforward rippers like “Terror Management” and “Silent Collapse,” which retain the same metallic, hardcore reptile brain that made their predecessors so formidable. The final result is a half-hour of dance music that indulges our universal desire to party hard in raw, clever, and ultimately, transformational ways—not unlike a certain monocolored pop album released that same day to similarly deserved acclaim.
–Zoe Camp
Ani DiFranco
Unprecedented Sh!t
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Ani DiFranco‘s music has always been a barometer of the times, so the fact that her latest record is called Unprecedented Sh!t isn’t exactly comforting. At their best, DiFranco’s songs conjure a sense of “We’re all in this together,” but in Unprecendted Sh!t, the second part of that sentence is: “…and we all might be equally fucked.” The album’s mix is mercilessly dry—DiFranco’s beautifully weathered voice shoved all the way to the front so that all of the cracks show. Throughout, she grapples with uncertainty. There’s a beguiling opaqueness to the line, “I see people around with badges/ And I just don’t know how I feel,” especially given DiFranco’s own history with being policed. Elsewhere, the danger is clearer: The title track is one of a few points throughout the album where DiFranco lards the instrumentation with distortion so that it sounds more like machinery than music, grinding and clanking. “I know this is about to be some unprecedented shit,” she warns, “and I don’t know if I have whatever this is.” Her trademark staccato playing has been jettisoned here in favor of either giant, deliberately ugly blocks of sound or haunting, skeletal arpeggios. Unprecedented Sh!t is an album made by someone staring into terrifying storm clouds, warning us all to take cover.
–J. Edward Keyes
Julie Christmas
Ridiculous & Full of Blood
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP, T-Shirt/Shirt
Welcome back, Julie Christmas—and not a moment too soon. It’s been a long 14 years since the release of The Bad Wife, but Christmas sounds as feral as ever, charging her way through massive, thorny thickets of guitar. If anything has changed between albums one and two it’s that now those brambles occasionally give way to spacious, breathtaking clearings. As the riotous “Silver Dollars” nears its conclusion, the guitars suddenly seem to ignite and shoot skyward—a full-on fireworks display of sound. And album standout “Supernatural” has the scope of the best post-rock: tense, bottom-of-the-fretboard riffing that generates high-arcing constellations of sound. But the star of the show, as ever, is Christmas, and her return handily reasserts her position as one of the best heavy music vocalists working today. There’s a temptation to label her performance “dramatic,” but doing that would make the range of emotions she travels on Ridiculous feel either calculated or method actor-y. No, every single note here is sung from the spleen, and Christmas dazzles in her ability to volley between manic and maniacal. It is a powerhouse performance, and it anchors one of the year’s best hard rock records.
–J. Edward Keyes
English Teacher
This Could Be Texas
“The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” off UK indie rock outfit English Teacher’s debut album is surreal, absurd, and delivered with the utmost seriousness. A mash-up of angular post-punk and shoegaze fuzz, lead vocalist Lily Fontaine’s sing-talk vocals deliver each lyric with a deliberate weightiness regardless of their silliness (lines like “I am the world’s biggest paving slab/ So watch your fucking feet”). But like all good Dadaists, there’s a worldly anxiety lurking behind the absurd—uncertainty, disdain, mistrust—reflecting the illogical cruelty that is living through the 2020s. Thankfully, the Leeds foursome have heaps of musical talent to back it up. Despite its 50-minute run-time This Could be Texas paces itself beautifully, building tension into enveloping dirges only to cut it loose at the next time signature change, oftentimes all within one song. The poetic obfuscation of Fontaine’s lyrics coupled with the band’s sweeping vistas of sound lend themselves to a Texas-sized grandeur that the outfit clearly aspire to. It’s an ambitious first outing—and so far one of the year’s best.
–Stephanie Barclay
Gatecreeper
Dark Superstition
Dark Superstition, Gatecreeper’s first studio effort in five years, marks a major tonal shift in the Arizona band’s sound with significant implications for their career. With Fred Estby, drummer of Swedish metal greats Dismember, assisting on songwriting, and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou behind the boards, Gatecreeper embark on an exodus away from the barren, sun-scorched death metal that comprised their first two albums, through grinding cosmos and gothic pocket dimensions, before settling upon a groovier, more concise sound reminiscent of Carcass and Cradle of Filth. It’s not quite an oasis—no clean vocals in sight—but between the colosseum-sized love songs honoring astral bodies (“Dead Star”), the proggy guitar antics (“A Chilling Aura”), and blackened hardcore bangers (“Superstitious Vision”), but for heavy music lovers, it’s paradise. I’ve got a feeling that the next time they lope into the desert, they’ll have legions of faithful at their backs.
Read our Album of the Day on Dark Superstition.
–Zoe Camp
iglooghost
Tidal Memory Exo
On Tidal Memory Exo, Seamus Rawles Malliagh, aka Iglooghost, weaves a vast web of self-made, genre-avoidant, primarily oceanic-themed club music styles to deliver one of the most ambitious feats of worldbuilding we’ve heard all year. Amphibious forms dominate the landscape here; hybrids of jungle and glitch, hip-hop and ambient with seapunk-esque names like ”Tidal Scene,” “Sporestyle,” “Germ Music,” and “Tektonikore.” As anyone familiar with the Dorset, UK-based artist knows by now, however, Iglooghost regards novelty not as a gimmick, but a portal to another universe. Unified by dank, corroded textures and post-apocalyptic angst (the album’s lore constantly references climate change, government surveillance, and societal collapse), Tidal Memory Exo plays like an underground radio show broadcasted from an abandoned oil tanker, or maybe a beachside DJ set performed in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane with all the amps still plugged in. It’s all a bit intense, but don’t worry—the water’s fine, we promise.
–Zoe Camp
La Luz
News of the Universe
Vinyl LP, T-Shirt/Shirt, Compact Disc (CD)
California is the setting, love is the answer, and change is the only law on News of the Universe, the best record yet from the best rock band in the universe. La Luz have never sounded more luminous than on this gorgeous work of humane psychedelia, their harmonies reaching for heaven and guitars doused in hellfire. The musical arrangements reflect the galactic tightrope act between life and death where everything can change in a moment: sonic motifs that promise to return never do, roaring riffs blaze into existence before melting into the gentlest of doo-wop songs, sweet love songs are interspersed with languidly dubbed out jams. Shana Cleveland’s lyrics are poetic and striking, a newfound appreciation for the beauty of creation in the aftermath of a devastating cancer diagnosis soon after the birth of her son shimmering through her use of naturalistic imagery: blooming waves of California poppies, sunny dandelions that turn to moons in the heat of the summer, the shadow of clouds drifting over the meadow, once-shuttered hearts opening wide to drink in the temporary joy of existence—look alive in the strange world, indeed.
Read our interview with La Luz’s Shana Cleveland.
–Mariana Timony
LustSickPuppy
CAROUSEL FROM HELL
The debut album from Brooklyn artist Tommy Hayes, known to most as gender-nonconforming, genre-defiant provocateur LustSickPuppy, contains rage music done the New York underground way, a 20-minute love letter to the city’s interconnective punk, rave, hip-hop, and noise scenes signed in blood, sealed with BDSM tape and a hot-pink lipstick kiss. If you’ve yet to encounter Hayes’ dominatrix alter ego before now, get ready for the demon time of your life. Combining Lil Kim’s braggadocio-laced bars with Biohazard’s rap-metal instrumentation and DRMCRUSHER’S brutalist techno, “AMERICAN HEALTHCARE” and “BLISSTER” position LustSickPuppy as one of the heaviest punishers around; they’re also one of the most hilarious, reading hardcore snobs, fairweather friends, toxic exes, and potential rivals all to filth on highlights like “KETCHUP MUSTARD” (“You on my glizzy/ Ketchup Mustard”) is going straight into the burn book). Metalheads, misfits, punks, club kids, rap fans: CAROUSEL FROM HELL’s got more than enough seats for everyone, assuming you can withstand a little pain.
–Zoe Camp
Mary Ocher
Your Guide to the Revolution
Vinyl LP
It is difficult to make an overtly political experimental pop album that neither indulges in self-seriousness to the point of being preachy nor is so transparently engineered for mass appeal that it negates its own raison d’etre, but Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist Mary Ocher makes light work of it on Your Guide to Revolution; a compelling piece of genre-spanning avant-pop equally suffused with a love of humanity, reflected in its voracious appetite for the many nuances of groove and sound, and an abhorrence for the many ways humanity is oppressed, compressed, and vaporized via the soul-crushing pressures of capitalism and encroaching technocracy. Backed by her band, Your Government, and a litany of guest musicians, Ocher snakes her way through a cosmic gospel of groovy sounds, zipping from clanking post-punk and psychedelic synthwave to a reworking of pieces from The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby, a triumphant and unjustly obscure work of spiritual jazz, made slinky and sexy by Ocher and company. But don’t be fooled. Even at her most playful—and Your Guide to Revolution is undoubtedly a record of play—Ocher never loses sight of her essential targets. Short interlude “Autotune Your Life” might seem a tossed-off critique of a production tool that promises to “tune your life”—ha ha ha!—until the pixelated bloodcurdling scream that ends it. Tune that.
–Mariana Timony
Parsnip
Behold
Vinyl LP
The sophomore record from Parsnip is an accomplished work of psychedelic pop that handily splits the difference between ’60s sunshine pop and the ’80s twee punk it inspired, appealingly playful and appealingly hard-edged. Here you’ll find serpentine knots of close harmonies, brightly bouncing organs, breathless guitars, and the odd saxophone occasionally chiming in on clattering songs that build and crash into each other at knock-kneed angles, with choruses that explode and bridges that soar. But while it does have the overall feel of a day at the funfair, all sugar and helium and flashing lights and sticky fingers, Behold is undergirded by a modern sense of melancholia that becomes more apparent on the record’s weirder, more dissonant second half when the Melbourne group leans fully into a bohemian Highs in the Mid-Sixties meets Live at the Witch Trials sound that is exactly as great you think it is.
–Mariana Timony
Jessica Pratt
Here in the Pitch
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
You may press play on opening track “Life Is” off Jessica Pratt’s new album, encounter the Phil Spector-esque rolling percussion and strummy pop melody à la The Ronettes, and think you know what you’re getting—but you’d be wrong. At its surface, Here in the Pitch is spectral ‘60s pop that feels flung out of space. Venture further and you’ll be cast into a netherworld of retro influences, where a miasma of bossa nova, psychedelic folk, doo-wop, and jazz take on a surreal, if not foreboding, atmosphere; where guileless la-la-la’s and melodies that sway like a hula girl car ornament foreground lyrics about the Manson family murders, betraying flower power visions of coastal ease. At its heart, Here in the Pitch is a quintessentially Los Angeles folk-noir—and Pratt’s best work as yet.
–Stephanie Barclay
Previous Industries
Service Merchandise
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Open Mike Eagle, STILL RIFT, and Video Dave are almost daring writers to brand their debut as Previous Industries “nostalgic,” but I refuse to fall into that trap. Sure, it’s named after a now-bankrupt retail chain whose catalogs every ‘80s kid pored over lustily; and yeah, if you listen closely, you’ll catch references to the Nintendo Game Genie, Bill & Ted, 21 Jump Street, and Tekken. But the point of Service Merchandise isn’t to get misty-eyed over the past, it’s to grapple with getting older—those name-checks are more of a confirmation that the trio know their audience, and are purposely using reference points they’ll be able to relate to. They’re also a way for them to contextualize the present; as a line in “White Hen” goes: “I’m trying to separate the memories from something profound,” which is more or less the album’s thesis statement. Sonically, the album is very much of the now: the production from Child Actor, (with Smoke Bonito and Quelle Chris stepping in for one and two tracks, respectively) favors terrifically woozy instrumentals: humid atmospherics, stumbling jazz piano loops, and strings and organs that are smeared just so. Through it all, OME, RIFT, and Dave tease out the throughlines between who they were and who they are, while also trying to work out who they’re going to be. To borrow a phrase from a film of similar vintage: Life comes at you fast. Previous Industries are here to help those of us in a certain age bracket try to make sense of it all.
–J. Edward Keyes
Reyna Tropical
Malegría
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
It’s rare to find a collection of songs that so perfectly harmonize the feeling of radiant joy with incredible sorrow as those on Malegría. This gorgeous collection of Latin indie pop from L.A. newcomer Reyna Tropical takes its title from a little-used word for “bittersweet”—a combination of mal, meaning “bad,” and alegría, meaning “happy”—and is as much a celebration of the queer Latinx experience as it is a tribute to the passing of her collaborator and “musical soulmate” Nectali “Sumohair” Díaz. Brimming with tropical sensuality, infectious Afro-Indigenous polyrhythms, and fluid, dreamy guitar riffs, Malegría traverses easily between moments of humid calm and riotous laughter, with love positively radiating off of every track. A celebration of culture, identity, and partnership, Malegría is an expression of profound joy even in the face of profound sadness.
–Stephanie Barclay
Seán Ronayne
Wild Silence
It might be debatable whether an album of field recordings qualifies for a “Best Of” list alongside composed works of music, but if it is at least one job of the artist to reflect back to us the world we share through their individual purview, then Wild Silence earns its spot in spades. The project of ornithologist and sound recordist Seán Ronayne, Wild Silence is nominally a record of Ireland’s natural soundscapes and their inhabitants—and one can certainly enjoy the singing and croaking of various birds, the flapping of wings, lapping waves, dribbling rain, and howling storms as meditative background music or sleepy time sounds: it is beautiful and soothing enough for such activities. But much like with nature itself, take the time to peer a little closer and another world reveals itself, one as purely magical as it is in real danger of disappearing forever. The faint chirping of the last pair of Irish Ring Ouzel on the heartbreaking “Extinction – Here and Now!” contains within it enough urgency, agency, and pure emotion to rival that of even the most epic of orchestral symphonies.
Read our interview with Seán Ronayne.
–Mariana Timony
Shaboozey
Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
Country music and hip-hop have been bleeding into each other for the last 20 years now—usually, it’s the former lifting from the latter, and usually it’s to incredibly mixed results. (“Fancy Like,” anyone?) In that environment, Shaboozey’s Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going hits like a blast of A/C on a sweltering day. The two genres are stitched together so beautifully here you can’t even detect the seams; not only that, the whole thing is just a joy to listen to. Lead single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is an early high—a boisterous country stomper with a wry sense of humor (Shaboozey’s biggest problem in it is that his “baby wants a Birkin”) and a chorus so raucous it could double as the fight song for Jack Daniels University. The mellower numbers land just as well—“Annabelle” is a terrific mid-tempo pickup truck heartbreaker, Shaboozey sliding down the octave marvelously in the chorus; and high point “My Fault,” with a gorgeous vocal turn from Noah Cyrus, could play as the bleak sequel to “A Bar Song,” a sparse campfire ballad in which the vocalists watch a loved one slowly ruined by substance abuse. Throughout, lap steel and Morricone-whistles snake between acoustic guitar and Shaboozey’s evocative baritone; and as it winds into its final stretch, Shaboozey’s tone turns introspective. “All my friends have got careers/ And mine just might be over/ If I don’t sell my soul again/ For another viral moment/ But I’m good if it’s all over.” On this point, Shaboozey is wildly off base: It’s clear from Where I’ve Been that things are just getting started.
Read our Album of the Day on Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going.
–J. Edward Keyes
somesurprises
Perseids
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
While the shoegaze field is undoubtedly oversaturated at present (with POSERS!), the lushly rounded dream pop sound achieved by Seattle group somesurprises on Perseids is astonishing in its sheer beauty. Polished but never plasticine, borderless without collapsing into effects pedal–induced sonic morass, bright and cutting as crystal yet as warm as an embrace from a beloved friend, this is elegant guitar pop that rises equally effortlessly to gorgeous MBV-esque crescendos as much as it revels in stretched out sections of graceful guitars that sway and shimmer like light refracted through stained glass. But what is perhaps most compelling is the feeling of contentment suffusing the music, a sense of joy that scatters stardust in its wake. “And rejoice! And rejoice!” sings Natasha El-Sergany on “Bodymind,” and we do.
Read our Album of the Day on Perseids.
–Mariana Timony
Esy Tadesse
Ahadu
The roots of Ahadu, guitarist Etsegenet Mekonnen’s debut as Esy Tadesse, may be in Ethiopian music, but by its gorgeous second song, it’s already wandered far, far afield from that starting point. “Egzio” is a jaw-dropper, Mekonnen’s soft, breathy voice delivering an Elizabeth Fraser-esque vocal melody over a hushed, spiraling guitar lead. The result is mystery upon mystery, centered around an instrumental line that curls like a question mark. Mekonnen’s gentle touch on the fretboard is the key to Ahadu. Even when her guitar lines snake endlessly forward—as they do on “Shinbra,” which sounds like the kind of song Multau Astatke might have written if he played guitar instead of vibraphone and organ. Mekonnen’s voice appears fleetingly throughout the record—never as a lead, always as another quiet tone mingling amongst the others. Other genres enter and fade—“Bati” is begging to be covered by a Midwestern post-rock band—and Mekonnen guides all of it with a sure hand. Ahadu is nothing short of hypnotizing—as alluring as a mirage, and just as magical.
–J. Edward Keyes
Winged Wheel
Big Hotel
Vinyl LP
Winged Wheel’s debut, Big Hotel, is a transcendent psychedelic rock album hiding a remarkable auditory illusion. To the naked ear, the Detroit-based group, comprising members of Spray Paint, Tybek, Powers/Rolin duo, Matchess, and Sonic Youth, could easily pass for a sophisticated jam band; weaving together kosmische synths, cascading guitar tones, airy vocal melodies, and percolating percussion into extended, latticework-like arrangements that ooze in-person chemistry. Turns out, the whole album—even space rock fever dreams like ”Sleeptraining” and “Demonstrably False”—was composed and recorded remotely, each member’s contributions working in concert like an assembly line. What we’re left with is one of the trippiest engineering marvels on record.
Read our Album of the Day on Big Hotel.
