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New Music Fridays: Everything Everything, Charli XCX, ScHoolboy Q 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 stuff this week. Here's what's caught my eye ~
New release from Indie Rock band Everything Everything titled 'Mountainhead'. Seems to be a very positive response from fans so far.
Charli XCX has announced an upcoming album 'brat' to be released this summer, and dropped her lead single 'Von ductch' along with a music video (slightly NSFW vid). Charli is moving away from the radio appeal of 'Crash' and toward more of a club sound, this new single definitely reflects that.
ScHoolboy Q has dropped a studio album 'BLUE LIPS' after five years, not dispelling theories that Top Dawg (Kendrick's old label) is hesitant to release albums. Feeling it's unlikely we have many Q fans here on Tildes, but if there are any I'd love to hear from you! Can't believe it's been 10 years since Oxymoron. Response to this one seems fairly positive so far.
More under the radar, Modern Classical Pianist Nils Frahm has a new album out titled 'Day'. The snippets I heard are mellow and easy on the ears.
Leftovers from last week ~
Any Indietronica fans should definitely check out acloudyskye's release from last Friday. It's an imperfect album, but has some of my favourite moments this year so far. Some real Midwest Emo and Electropop inspiration on this one.
Also, if anyone fancies some really dark, vulgar trap with a strongly appropriated African religious themes, Skrilla's debut from last week is a unique listen.
I knew there was something I was looking forward to this month! The singles from Mountainhead have been great so far, I'm excited to listen to the rest of the album this weekend.
The other exciting (for me at least) album out today is Yard Act's "Where's My Utopia?" - again, I've not had a chance to listen to that yet, but I've been loving "We Make Hits" and the other singles they've released, so I'm really looking forward to diving into that.
So at least music-wise, I had a good weekend! Also I made pork pies, but that's less relevant.
Mountainhead is pretty much what I was expecting - it's Everything Everything singing about an allegory for capitalism, and it's fun and dance and bouncy and everything else in exactly the measure you want from them. I'm sure a lot of this album is going to make its way onto my regular listening lists.
Where's My Utopia is also great, although less what I was expecting. You can feel Yard Act experimenting with more stuff, although it's still fundamentally Yard Act - "Blackpool Illuminations" in particular feels like it's inviting a direct comparison between the monologues of The Overload and its own rambling tale of childhood injury. The whole thing feels a bit like listening in on someone's therapy session, but scattered through with enough irony to throw you off scent of anything truly real. And there's still some bangers in there - "We Make Hits" shines, but I really enjoyed tracks like "A Vineyard in the North".
One of my favorite artists came out with their newest album STRFKR - Parallel Realms
Indie synth pop with fuzzy ambient tracks in between, well worth a listen if you've never heard them before
Thanks for putting Friko’s ‘Where we’ve been, Where we go from here’ on my radar last week, TooFewColours.
I probably never would have come across it without your recommendation, and I’ve been loving it! It’s so interesting and varied. I can’t really pin down what I like about it, but it’s hitting me with a resonance that few albums do.
I’m also looking forward to diving into the new Everything Everything release this week. I generally enjoy their stuff, though I tend to like only a handful of their songs more than I do their full albums.
Glad you liked it! That's a big reason why I wanted to change up the format of these threads to be more of a pitstop between each week for recent music. Big name releases are fun, but usually the best albums of the week bubble to the surface after a bit of time, and often it was a shame to miss them.
I've been behind again. Catching up. Here are my March 1 picks.
🌿 = Top recommendation
Non-metal
STRFKR - Parallel Realms
Shoegaze-inspired dance/dream-pop veterans STRFKR release their seventh full length and their fifth on Polyvinyl (a record label I highly recommend). Very dreamy, lush production and tone choices. For fans of Beach House and MGMT.
Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven
Noisy rock that is tough to describe. It's got screamy hardcore punk attitude in some tracks, noise vibes, and in 20 seconds can go from an emo throwback sound to garage rock. It will toss you back and forth between mean and serene.
Metal (primarily clean vocals)
None this week
Metal (primarily harsh vocals)
🌿 Misotheist - Vessels by which The Devil is Made Flesh
Satanic black metal from Norway. Sinister and raging but melodic. Gorgeous darkness.
🌿 convulsing - perdurance
Wow, this caught me by surprise. Antifascist metal by Brendan Sloan from Altars (highly recommended death metal band!) that is tough to nail to a particular genre and hard to describe without referring to some sketchy French bands I'd rather not mention. Dissonant, pounding, extremely tight riffing, the perfect matching vocals on top. Tons of space and progression but constantly heavy.
🌿 Devastator - Conjurers of Cruelty
UK black/thrash that stays pretty safely in the genre's sound but is increasingly becoming one of my favorites. They just absolutely nail it on this full-length. Great beefy production, solid black/thrash riffs, and a gritty/growly/raspy vocal that nearly reminds me of Joel Grind. For fans of Hellripper, Midnight, and Wraith!
Volcandra - The Way of Ancients
Melodic black/death from Kentucky. The cover art had me thinking it might be inspired by Diablo II's Act V "Ancients" fight, and it appears that assumption was correct, judging from the other Diablo references found in the lyrics.
Celestial Sword - Nocturnal Divinity
"Vampiric" raw black metal / dungeon synth hybrid from the US. Great use of the raw sound- it's done well to preserve plenty of tone and atmosphere while simultaneously sounding like a cassette you unearthed from a dimly-lit castle dungeon. Not an easily accessible genre for many, but if you get it, you get it.
Cabinet - Hydrosylated Ordination
Continuing with the "inaccessible, niche genre" vibe is this very grimy and noisy death metal. It's "gross" but in the best ways. It's no surprise not all extreme metal fans will be into this, but it works for me somehow. It's a frightening, claustrophobically produced, oppressive atmosphere.
Negative Prayer - Self // Wound
Debut album from this two-person US death/crustpunk band. Features the drummer from Ascended Dead and Funebrarum. Very much a mix of crustpunk and death metal- the rhythms of the former with the vocals of the latter. Great release.
Beenkerver - De Rode Weduwe
One-man melodic black metal from the Netherlands. Icy, foggy, and haunting atmosphere. Great shrieking vocals that are deep in the mix and not too forward. Despairing and melancholic.