Welcome to our weekly music post, where we spotlight our favorite new songs and albums. Hop in the comments and tell us: What new music are you listening to?
“5 Mile Gyre” spends about 30 seconds thrashing against itself before settling into something like Y2K-era Europop. Then, it’s back to thrashing. After releasing her kooky-cool album Dangerous Animals in 2021, Rodman returned with new music earlier this year with “TSPG69.” With “5 Mile Gyre” now in the mix too, it sounds like we can expect a crunchier, more electronic sound from her next album, SCALD,out on October 10.
Bass Drum Of Death, “Never Gonna Drink About You”
With their upcoming album Six, Bass Drum Of Death sought to return to the rawness of their first few recordings. “Never Gonna Drink About You” certainly achieves that goal, offering 140 seconds of no-fills power-punk that throws back to the genre’s origins in the 1970s and its resurgence in the 2000s. Six arrives on September 20, the same day the band embarks on a two-month tour covering most of the United States.
After over a year of releasing singles, musician and producer james K’s album Friend is almost here, but not before one last single comes out. “Idea.2” does what james K does best, looping an ethereal vocal around spacey synths to create an effect that feels both digital and analog. It’s the kind of music that sounds just as good scoring a private walk with your headphones on as it does coming out of speakers that fill a whole room. Friend arrives in full on September 5.
Mac DeMarco, Guitar
It’s been over a decade since Mac DeMarco started to define shoegaze via bedroom pop and thus remade a good chunk of 2010s indie in his image. But it’s been over six years since the last classic DeMarco album, with his interim output consisting of a compilation album and an instrumental album in 2023. The bite-sized pieces of Guitar shared in advance of the album’s release today gesture toward the late-’60s/early-’70s melodies of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, with the minimalist support of a plucked electric guitar. Suddenly, the album title makes sense.
Mariah The Scientist, Hearts Sold Separately
Mariah The Scientist has a knack for melody and a woozy sense of cadence that stands apart from the rest of her generation of R&B singers. Hearts Sold Separately, the fourth full-length from the Atlanta native, arrives today. Lead single “Burning Blue” is the kind of slow jam that Mariah does best, while the Kali Uchis duet “Is It A Crime” already feels like a trap-soul torch song long before the distorted violins come in. Hearts Sold Separately is a promising end-of-summer arrival, as the nights start to arrive earlier and get longer.
Superchunk, Songs In The Key Of Yikes
Their first album in over three years, Superchunk return this week with Songs In The Key Of Yikes. After 12 albums, the band is still in top form, and there are great moments and details across the songs Superchunk released in advance of the album: the quick little shifts in time in “Stuck In A Dream,” the new key just for the middle eight in “Is It Making You Feel Something,” the ironically uplifting quality of “No Hope.” “It only hurts when I breathe,” Mac McCaughan sings on the Rosali-assisted “Bruised Lung,” but he sure sounds fine to us.
