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Fresh Album Fridays: Taylor Swift, PJ Harvey, ANOHNI and the Johnsons and more
Good morning. This is a thread to discuss new album releases arriving at our doorsteps today (and until next week!). Feel free to comment albums that have caught your eye and interest.
Discussion Points
What are you looking forward to listen to?
Have you listened to any of these releases?
What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past?
Why Friday?
Most (but not all) new LPs release on a Friday, as labels want to give the release a full week of sales before entering the charts.
~~ Any feedback on the format welcome!
Artist:
Taylor Swift
Album:
Speak Now (Taylor's Version)
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Release: 7th July, 2023
Genre(s): Pop Rock
Country: United States
Spotify
RYM
I might be a bit biased as a Taylor fan, but it really amazes me how good she is at making her old tracks sound more full and mature. No doubt it's because she's rerecording them with a more mature voice, but there's a fullness to the recordings that add to all the tracks. Some of my favorite tracks are on this album, and I'll probably only listen to the TV from now on.
When I went to the Eras tour, there was a girl in front of me literally shrieking the lyrics to Enchanted during the bridge, no doubt she lost her voice but I hope she's really enjoying this album lol.
I'm sure it's a combination of her having refined as a vocalist, and also new techniques in recording and mixing. I suspect Taylor works with the absolute best audio engineers in the industry now. It's not an easy thing to do, record new versions of old songs, but Taylor does seem to have cracked it.
Speak Now is my favorite Taylor Swift album, so this is the revamp I’ve been waiting for.
It is, of course, great.
The best improvement is “Better Than Revenge”. Not only does the song itself sound more mature than the original, but she changed the weakest and most off-putting lyric in the chorus: “She’s better known for the things she does on the mattress” got changed to “He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches”. Not only is it a better line in general, but it’s a better thematic fit for the song.
I'm probably not going to make any friends with this backstory, but I was super excited for SNTV until the whole Matty Healy debacle. After MH I was disappointed enough with Taylor that I removed all of her songs from all of my Spotify playlists and put them into one playlist (so I'd remember which ones were my favorites when I inevitably come back, lol). So I was on the fence on whether or not I would listen to SNTV today. But "I Can See You" was in my Release Radar today and I decided to give it a chance and it was awesome! So I listened through SNTV once through (I'll probs listen again) and added my favorites to the relevant playlists. Favorites include "I Can See You", "Electric Touch", "Superman", "The Story of US", "Long Live", "Castles Crumbling", " Haunted", and "Better than Revenge". I listened to the original "Haunted" a ton a couple years ago and I'm going to have to get used to the new version. I hope Taylor writes more songs with a sound like "I Can See You" because it is, like I already said, awesome. So, TL;DR, SNTV = good && Taylor = good again, lol. I should have known that I couldn't stay away.
Today was also the release day of "The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs of Nick Drake", a collab album featuring covers of a handfull of Nick Drakes' songs by different artists. I've been a huge Nick Drake fan for ages (Pink Moon is easily in my top 5 albums of all time now and forever) and didn't really know what to expect, but all in all I quite like what the artists have done with their versions. What will catch most peoples eye will probably be the cover of "Pink Moon" by major artist Aurora - and it IS really good - but for me, highlights were the versions of "'Cello Song" which was transformed into a really cool rock / rock'n'roll song by Fountaines D.C., "Place To Be" by David Gray which is now less melancholic and feels a bit more lightweight, without taking all the weight out of the lyrics, and "Time Of No Reply" by awesome duo Joe Henry and Meshell Ndegeocello, who sticks with a folk-singer-songwriter style, but find a way to extend it with strings and some wind instruments.
All in all I love that they mainly stuck to smaller artists (with a few outliers like Aurora, Bombay Bicycle Club, Emeli Sandé and Feist) and that it feels like they really poured their love of Nick Drake into his songs. Definitely a recommendation from me, a strong one if you like Nick Drake anyway.
Artist:
ANOHNI and the Johnsons
Album:
My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
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Release: 7th July, 2023
Genre(s): Slowcore, Chamber
Country: United States
Bandcamp
Spotify
RYM
Artist:
Little Dragon
Album:
Slugs of Love
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Release: 7th July, 2023
Genre(s): Pop, Indietronica
Country: Sweden
Bandcamp
Spotify
RYM
Music videos that can be found via Tildes:
Artist:
PJ Harvey
Album:
I Inside the Old Year Dying
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Release: 30th June, 2023
Genre(s): Art Rock
Country: United Kingdom
Bandcamp
Spotify
RYM
Artist:
First Aid Kit
Album:
Palomino Deluxe (Child of Summer Edition)
Release: 7th July 2023
Genre: Folk
Country: Sweden
Links: Wikipedia | Spotify
Music videos that can be found via Tildes:
Blackbraid - Blackbraid II - Atmospheric Indigenous Black Metal
Serpent Corpse - Blood Sabbath - Death Metal
Fen - Monuments to Absence - Atmospheric Black Metal
Odz Manouk - Bosoragazan (Բոսորագազան) - Experimental Black Metal
Odz Manouk - Ծուռ (Tzurr)