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New Music Fridays: Kacey Musgraves, Little Simz, Usher and more
This is a thread to discuss 2024 releases that have recently arrived on our doorstep, or been announced for the future. Feel free to share albums, singles, EPs or reissues that have caught your eye and interest, or share your thoughts about any new music that you've had the chance to listen to this week.
Discussion Points
Is there anything you've been looking forward to listening to?
Any releases that have surprised you?
Have you listened to any new music recently? What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past? How does their latest work compare?
Links:
Pitchfork - Out This Week
AllMusic - All New Releases
Stereogum - New Music
Some good energy to this week.
New single from Kacey Musgraves (country pop), 'Deeper Well', to kickstart the rollout of her next LP of the same name. It's nice.
EP release from UK MC Little Simz. A shift to a more UK Garage sound that's resulting in some mixed reception - I think it's the best stuff she's done in a long time.
Vampire Weekend have announced their fifth studio album
Usher coming through with his 9th studio album! Normally wouldn't pay this much mind, but I really liked the single 'Ruin' he dropped last week. It's got some real stinkers (including an Uptown-Girl remix, of all things), but a fun listen for any R&B fans.
New album from Kali Malone, classical drone artist. Malone has been pretty unstoppable, this is her third album in three years. I wasn't quite so hot on this release, but if you think you'd enjoy some very meditative and minimal choral/classic pieces, definitely give it a go.
And leftovers from last week ~
I think power pop lovers will really enjoy Liquid Mike's album that released last week, a very solid release. I've had K2 in my head all week.
I love Kacey's first couple of albums, Golden Hour a little less so, and I'll admit I probably haven't given star-crossed enough time. But Deeper Well seems a bit of a return to Golden Hour (the dreamy quality) if not Pageant Material (the guitar style). I like it.
Golden Hour was my intro to Kacey and has since become one of my favourite records. I really tried hard with her last release, but I think ultimately it was a big step backwards. I'd expect a little bit more from a title track, but it's a neutral enough track to leave me guessing where she'll take the full release.
Chelsea Wolfe released her new album yesterday, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She. I have given it a few spins so far and am absolutely loving it. Overall it is a far more synth-heavy record, somewhat akin to Pain is Beauty, with a lot of trip-hop influences incorporated throughout which blend in beautifully with her signature sound and often bring to mind the likes of genre luminaries such as Portishead and Massive Attack.
Some highlights:
Whispers in the Echo Chamber
Dusk
Breathtaking!! I'm a new fan. Thanks for sharing.
With this final catch-up post we're up to date. Hope to have this week's albums actually posted this Friday or weekend!
Favorite releases (Week of 02/09/2024)
Non-metal
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
bandcamp
Haunting new album from Chelsea Wolfe. Dark and haunting as always but shades of electronica, industrial, and trip-hop this time. Inspirations from NIN, Depeche Mode, and so on can be felt pretty strongly. Inspired by Wolfe becoming sober as of January 2021.
Metal
Chapel of Disease - Echoes of Light
bandcamp
Goth rock/metal in the vein of Tribulation with some somber parts too.
Fange - Perdition
bandcamp
French industrial noise/sludge. Somehow this weird mix of genres works.
Hulder - Verses in Oath
bandcamp
This one's going to ruffle feathers. Hulder introduces some slow tempos and clean vocals into their typical black metal sound. Sound stays heavy and has plenty of blasting though. Cleans are more ritualistic and chant-leaning than anything. Understandbly a significant shift in sound, so not all fans may be on board. Genre gatekeepers also likely unhappy. But who cares- call it whatever genre you want. It's still dark, haunting, contains plenty of majestic black metal and harsh vocals and it's done so well it works! Hulder is nowhere near the first artist in extreme metal, particulary black metal even, to experiment this way. The world is better for it.
Petrification - Sever Sacred Light
bandcamp
Plodding death metal with fun guitar leads and divebombs, beefy production, and filthy vocals. Lots of tempo changes. Doom influence too. Great video for Twisted Visions of Creation track too.
Spectral Voice - Sparagmos
bandcamp
Four tracks and over forty minutes of heavy atmosphere. Ambient moments. All sorts of genres swirling here. Slow, dissonant, almost funeral doom left-turns into death/black blasting and the sound stays oppressive and frenetic throughout. Despair swaps with aggression. Lamentation turns to terror. It's a goddamn experience.
Theophonos - Ashes in the Huron River
bandcamp
An assault on the senses. A lot to keep up with. Keeping with the theme of dissonance- we turn to this release. Followup to Nightmare Visions (which I enjoyed) sees even more chaos and a slightly different production this time. Vocals are buried a different way. Honestly I can't tell if it's cleaner or muddier overall. It's just different. Originally I liked Nightmare Vision's production more but this one has grown on me. It stands on its own. The music is still a wonderful, dissonant, chaotic avant-garde blackened hardcore.
That Hulder album is fantastic! Really murky sorta second-wave core sound with some, as you say, majestic moments throughout. I particularly like how intelligently the orchestral parts are woven in, always supporting the song rather than succumbing to the overblown bombast typically seen in the genre (not to knock the likes of Dimmu though, there's a time and place for that too).
Completely agree. I feel like it still carries the spirit and the atmosphere of straightforward aggressive black metal but in a way that isn't 'cheesy' like Dimmu (which I also enjoy but yeah, completely different sound). To me it's done in a way that's medieval, borderline sinister, etc- it is just an additional subtle layer woven in, vs. being over-the-top and "taking over" the tracks.
The Fearless Flyers just dropped a new EP! https://www.diggersfactory.com/vinyl/316416/the-fearless-flyers-the-fearless-flyers-iv-first-pressing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
MAX - STUPID IN LOVE (feat. HUH YUNJIN of LE SSERAFIM)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qklsqykuD_0
I really enjoy MAX's music, and adding my bias from Le Sserafim is the cherry on top, it's on repeat for me right now :)
Not sure how much traction something like this will get but nothing,nowhere released a new album on Friday and it is endlessly listenable imo. Very catchy and a return to some older sounds (WTF (am i doing with my life) sounds like it could be a bonus track off ruiner) but also exploring some new sounds too. A few of the first songs are a little trap heavy for my taste but OKOK and Dark Magic stand out in the emo slant.
Edit: I don't take the time to spread the word of n,n often enough, so I'll just say if you dig any part of this record, definitely check out his older stuff (Bummer and Who Are You? as well as his full lengths ruiner and *Trauma Factory" at the very least.) He doesn't always hit -- I think a lot of his last album was a miss -- but he's not afraid to explore and has roots in emo and post-hardcore. He also puts on a really fun show. I discovered him when he was opening for La Dispute like 7 or 8 years ago and he's become one of my favorite artists in that time.