This is the last Friday before September, and I guess everyone’s scrambling to drop before Labor Day Weekend, because this might be the busiest week for new albums of 2023 yet! I highlight 13 below, and this is one of those weeks where all 12 fall into the “highly anticipated” category. And that’s not all. Bill tackles Sonny & The Sunsets, Cindy Wilson (The B-52’s), Who Is She? (Chastity Belt, Tacocat, Lisa Prank), Film School, The Lilac Time, and the Drab Majesty EP (ft. Slowdive & Uniform members) in Indie Basement, and this week’s honorable mentions list is pretty loaded too.
Honorable mentions: Filter, Wreckless Eric, A Giant Dog, Becca Mancari, Hannah Georgas, Hiss Golden Messenger, Clementine Valentine (fka Purple Pilgrims), Fat Tony & Taydex, Blut Aus Nord, Sid Sriram, Islands, Ruth Garbus, Maluma, Incantation, Prison (Endless Boogie, Love As Laughter), Victoria Monét, Strawberry Runners, Terrace Martin & James Fauntleroy, Old Crow Medicine Show, Sauce Walka, Alice Cooper, Berthold City, MXPX, Bebel Gilberto, Nellie McKay, Diego Raposo, Yeek, Jaboukie, Digga D, Crooks & Nannies, Our Broken Garden, Celestial Sanctuary, DJ Muggs, Simple Minded Symphony, Helicopter Leaves, the Full of Hell/Gasp split, the Harmony (ex-Girlpool) EP, the Toro y Moi EP, the Joliette EP, the TV Star EP, the Nyck Caution EP, the This Is Lorelei (Water From Your Eyes) EP, the Sea Lemon EP, the Lutalo EP, the flypaper EP, the expanded Sun’s Signature EP, the Mello Music Group comp, the lost Danger Mouse & Jemini album, the Grandaddy rarities album, the SPELLLING of re-imagined recordings, the live album of Hüsker Dü’s early years, the Nick Cave & Warren Ellis live album, the Erin Rae live album, and the live Runnner album.
Read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?
Prewn – Through The Window
Exploding In Sound
The comfort of familiarity and the thrill of newness are often presented as opposing forces when it comes to music consumption; as Izzy Hagerup’s debut album as Prewn is a reminder of, they don’t have to be. When I heard the way Izzy messes with time-tested folk music traditions on lead single “But I Want More”–a hair-raising song inspired by her father’s longtime journey with Parkinson’s disease–my instinct was to compare it to the freak folk era of the mid 2000s, but the more I listen to that song and the rest of the equally-stunning Through The Window, the less I think Prewn actually sounds like anyone from that era. The ingredients are similar–hearing the contrast between Izzy’s earthy warble and the ramshackle guitars is like being transported to an alternate universe where Karen Dalton was raised on Dinosaur Jr–but the presentation is all her own.
True to the idea that you have your whole life to write your debut album, Izzy has been workshopping the songs on this album for close to a decade, while playing in other projects including Pelican Movement, a collective led by Kevin McMahon, who helped Izzy bring this album to completion during lockdown. Parts of the album were also home-recorded, which is fitting. Sometimes the rickety drum machines and the bare-bones acoustic guitars feel like the work of bedroom-dwelling lo-fi auteurs, and other times the loud, noisy climaxes sound like the Northeast DIY rock scene that Prewn’s label home Exploding In Sound has been connected to for over 10 years. The production and instrumentation is charmingly shambolic, and Izzy’s voice is as eclectic as it is undeniably powerful. She’s too talented to be contained by the underground forever, but also favors a sense of weirdness that ties Through The Window to the long lineage of outside-the-box folk and rock music. It truly feels like one of those hard-earned, refreshing debut albums that only come around once in a while.
Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist – Voir Dire
Tan Cressida/ALC/Warner
Finally, after years of working together and teasing an entire collaborative album, Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist have released a full-length together. (No word if any of it is the same as the collaborative album they allegedly released on YouTube under a fake name.) As on the various tracks they’ve made together over the years, The Alchemist’s hazy samples and Earl’s abstract, stream-of-consciousness lyricism go together like two peas in a very trippy pod. It’s hypnotic from start to finish, instantly-satisfying but clearly requires multiple close listens to unpack the many layers in Earl’s delivery. It has one guest appearance–likeminded rapper MIKE–and is otherwise fueled by the inner-workings of Earl’s mind, without so much as a hook for the casual listener to latch onto.
Just as the music is off-kilter, so is the way to listen to it. The album is streaming for free on the NFT website Gala and also available to purchase (or “collect”), and those who purchase it become eligible to receive additional awards. The song “Sentry” (ft. MIKE) is streaming everywhere and also has a video out now and you can watch that right here:
Ratboys – The Window
Topshelf
Ratboys’ founding duo of vocalist/guitarist Julia Steiner and guitarist Dave Sagan solidified their lineup with bassist Sean Neumann (Jupiter Styles, Single Player) and drummer Marcus Nuccio (Dowsing, Pet Symmetry, The Please & Thank Yous, Mountains For Clouds) before the making of 2020’s Printer’s Devil, but The Window was the first album that they wrote collaboratively as a four-piece from start to finish. It was also the first album that Ratboys recorded outside of their Chicago hometown; they made it in Seattle with producer Chris Walla, who they met while opening Foxing’s tour in support of 2018’s Nearer My God, which Chris produced. Both the extensive, collaborating songwriting process and the strong relationship that Ratboys formed with Chris Walla led to the band making one of their strongest albums to date. The album moves from big, crunchy alt-rock to musical and lyrical nods to hometown math rock heroes Maps & Atlases (on “I Want You [Fall 2010]”) to the band’s trademark twangy indie rock that Julia once half-jokingly described as “post-country.” As Marcus pointed out in a recent interview with Billboard, “post-country” has kind of become a real thing in recent years with bands like Big Thief, Wednesday, and Florry, so it’s great timing for Ratboys to come back with a new album that scratches that same itch. It’s a reminder that Ratboys were a little ahead of their time, but also just that they’re the type of band to keep doing what they’re doing, regardless of whether or not it’s in line with any current trends.
Zach Bryan – Zach Bryan
Warner
Zach Bryan, the country star who hates Ticketmaster and loves lo-fi recording, is back again. Last year, the extremely prolific artist released nearly 50 songs across an album, an EP, and some standalone singles, and now he’s already got a new 16-song album. It’s self-titled, self-written, and self-produced, and nothing about it sounds like the work of a typical mainstream country star. With songs that range from bare-bones folk to fiery Southern rock to sparse piano balladry, the album feels raw and alive the way a mid ’70s Neil Young record would. It features a stunning duet with another artist who challenges the norms of mainstream country music, Kacey Musgraves, as well as songs with retro bluegrass/jazz artist Sierra Ferrell, country-soul duo The War and Treaty, and folk rock band The Lumineers. Some moments are stronger than others, but as always, Zach seems more concerned with letting the world hear all of his ideas than with making the perfect album. And that’s not meant to be disparaging; especially when it comes to honest, sincere folk songs like the ones Zach Bryan writes, perfection isn’t always the goal.
Turnpike Troubadours – A Cat In The Rain
Bossier City/Thirty Tigers
By the end of the 2010s, Turnpike Troubadours had become influential lifers of alternative-leaning country and Americana, but a series of unfortunate events–detailed in a recent Rolling Stone feature–led to their breakup. As the story goes, lead singer Evan Felker had an affair with country star Miranda Lambert while on tour with her, which led to Turnpike exiting the tour early and Felker divorcing his wife Staci. The controversy apparently attracted even more people to Turnpike’s shows, which led to the introverted Felker cancelling shows at the last minute to avoid the spotlight. In 2019, he walked away from the band for good.
Since then, Felker got sober, reconciled with and remarried Staci, and got to the point where he was again comfortable with playing music and having an audience. The band made a triumphant return to the stage in 2022, and it’s only gotten even more triumphant from there. Now they finally release their first new album in six years, and it feels exactly like the new beginning that Felker and his bandmates–including Kyle Nix, who recently overcame his own struggles–sound like they needed. It has the wise, mature, reflective tone of a band who’s seen the many ups and downs that Turnpike have, and it also has the urgency that Turnpike had on their breakthrough album Diamonds & Gasoline 13 years ago. If Turnpike were, as the Rolling Stone article suggests, “elbowing for a place in [Americana’s] pantheon alongside artists like Jason Isbell and Brandi Carlile,” A Cat In The Rain should be the album that makes it happen. The world loves a good comeback story, and like Isbell did, Turnpike turned life’s lemons into some of the best songs of their career. There are moments that feel as triumphant as their comeback tour, as well as moments that feel as somber as life’s woes. It’s an album that adds a lot to Turnpike’s already-rich legacy, and if you’re a newcomer, it’s not a bad place to start either.
Spanish Love Songs – No Joy
Pure Noise
Spanish Love Songs singer/guitarist Dylan Slocum calls their new album No Joy “the closest we’ve ever gotten to figuring out how to translate what I hear in my head with more clarity,” so maybe that’s why–despite being their fourth full-length in eight years–No Joy feels like a grand introduction. Since forming a decade ago, Spanish Love Songs have been stirring up a melting pot of punk, emo, and heartland rock, and at this point they sound like much more than a product of their influences. There’s a distinct Spanish Love Songs sound, and that sound really comes alive on No Joy. The heartland rock elements are more pronounced than ever, and the band’s emo/punk sincerity is at an all time high. Despite the gloomy title, Dylan says the album is about finding joy, even in the moments where that feels impossible, and as a result, the album feels both melancholic and hopeful. And as much as No Joy feels like the culmination of everything that Spanish Love Songs have been working towards, you can also feel that the band is still chasing something, still yearning for something more. To stop chasing, Dylan says, “To me, that’s death.”
Open Mike Eagle – Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering
Auto Reverse
Following last year’s solo-album-meets-label-showcase A Tape Called Component System With The Auto Reverse, the prolific and endlessly creative rapper Open Mike Eagle is back with another project, Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering. It’s got nine songs, two of which feature OME’s Auto Reverse pals Video Dave and Still Rift. One of those songs is a posse cut with the Auto Reverse crew and Hannibal Buress’ rap alter-ego Eshu Tune, and Another Triumph also has appearances from West Coast underground rap hero Blu and East Coast rap veteran / Outsidaz member Young Zee. Mike says “These songs are all fancy ways of saying ‘fuck you’ to people that ignore us and ‘thank you’ to people that care if we live or die,” and he urges you to “pay close attention to the song titles,” which include “I bled on stage at first ave,” “BET’s rap city,” “a new rap festival called falling loud,” and “the wire s3 e1.” Like Component System, it’s a delightfully weird project born out of a pure love of rap music. You can tell that Open Mike Eagle is an artist who’s absorbed influences from all throughout rap history, and he warps and reshapes familiar sounds into something that’s entirely his own. The beats never really go where you expect them to, and the raps are even more unpredictable. If you’re one of the people who’s been ignoring Open Mike Eagle, Another Triumph is as good a reason as any to stop doing that.
jaimie branch – Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))
International Anthem
The extraordinarily talented jazz/experimental musician jaimie branch died at age 39 last year, and before her passing, she and her band Fly Or Die had almost entirely finished their third album together, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)). Since her passing, her bandmates–Lester St. Louis (cello), Jason Ajemian (bass), and Chad Taylor (drums)–put the finishing touches on the album, and it gets released this week, to honor the one-year anniversary of jaimie’s passing. The band says, “This album is big. Far bigger and more demanding — for us, and for you — than any other Fly or Die record. For this, jaimie wanted to play with longer forms, more modulations, more noise, more singing, and as always, grooves and melodies.” That all comes across on this album, whether it’s through the fiery horn lines and hypnotic hip hop beats of “Borealis Dancing,” the shouted vocals and Afrobeat polyrhythms of “Take Over The World,” the bustling arrangements and purposeful singing of “Burning Grey,” or the way jaimie and Jason duet on a rustic re-imagining of the Meat Puppets’ “Comin’ Down” (retitled “The Mountain”). The album breaks down so many musical barriers, and it never allows for passive listening. These are big, lively songs that jump out and grab you. It’s a blast to listen to, and it’s a reminder that jaimie had just kept pushing forward all the way up to her very last days.
The Armed – Perfect Saviors
Sargent House
The Armed made it clear when promoting their last album, 2021’s ULTRAPOP, that they have no interest in being tied to any specific genre, including punk and hardcore, which they had frequently been described as. Guitarist/vocalist Dan Greene preferred to call that album “anti-punk,” if he was going to call it any genre at all. On Perfect Saviors, they definitely don’t sound like a punk or hardcore band. Vocalist Tony Wolski calls it “our completely unironic, sincere effort to create the biggest, greatest rock album of the 21st century,” and the music on this album does indeed sound more like The Armed are competing with Big Rock Bands like The Strokes and recent tourmates Queens of the Stone Age (whose Troy Van Leeuwen co-produced the album with Wolski and Chelsea Wolfe collaborator Ben Chisholm). It still has the turned-up-to-11, wall-of-sound chaos of the previous Armed records, but Perfect Saviors pushes The Armed towards big, catchy, clean-vocal rock choruses and away from hardcore fury. Between The Armed’s own many-membered, supergroup-worthy lineup and this album’s list of guest contributors, performers on Perfect Saviors range from Julien Baker to Converge’s Jacob Bannon to members of Jane’s Addiction, METZ, and more. Even with its star-studded cast, there are no show-stealing guest appearances; just countless talented musicians piling on each other and creating something with layers upon layers of sound.
Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain
4AD
Haunted Mountain is Buck Meek’s third solo album, and it’s his first for 4AD, also home to his band Big Thief and to Big Thief singer Adrianne Lenker’s solo career. He made it with the same core band as his first two albums–Mat Davidson of Twain (who also produced it), Adam Brishin, and Austin Vaughn–plus new bassist Ken Woodward and Buck’s brother Dylan Meek, but this time Buck wanted to go for something more hi-fi than the intentionally raw Two Saviors. It is indeed a bigger sounding (folk) rock record than anything Buck has released on his own before, but still an album that cares about intimacy and sincerity. The band recorded it live in a room to two-inch tape with no headphones, so they could really feed off of each other in a natural way. Lyrically, Buck set out to write about love in a way that felt as honest as possible. (“A love song is no good if it’s not sincere,” he says.) He made the album with some lyrical contributions from Jolie Holland, and closing track “The Rainbow” sets unfinished Judee Sill lyrics to original music by Buck. It’s an album that shows off a side of Buck Meek only rarely heard in Big Thief, but like that band, even his solo carer is fueled by the power of collaboration and community.
Morgan Wade – Psychopath
Ladylike Records/Sony
Since releasing her 2021 breakthrough album Reckless, Morgan Wade has been on a clear rise–two sold-out nights at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom and appearances at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza included. The attention she’s getting is much deserved–I don’t think I can think of anyone more primed right now to be the next Kacey Musgraves/Jason Isbell-style country/indie crossover act that Morgan Wade. She clearly feels it too–“I was nervous (still am) about following such a ‘critically-acclaimed’ album,” she said in a statement accompanying her new album–but Psychopath avoids feeling like a sophomore slump. (And not just because it’s technically her third album.) Like Reckless, it was produced by Isbell guitarist Sadler Vaden, and Morgan and Sadler continue to really gel. Morgan has a way of blurring the lines between country traditions, punk grit, and pop appeal, but more important than any of her stylistic choices is just how strong her songwriting is. Regardless of your genre preference, the way she turns a phrase and delivers a melody will catch you off guard on first listen.
Burna Boy – I Told Them…
Spaceship/Bad Habit/Atlantic
The prolific Afro-fusion leader Burna Boy had been releasing an album a year since his 2018 breakthrough Outside, and after only putting out some non-album singles in 2021 (maybe blame COVID), he’s back on track. Love, Damini came out last summer, and now he follows it with I Told Them. Burna Boy has said that ’90s US hip hop was a big influence on this album, and it shows; RZA and GZA both contribute spoken word interludes, recent single “Sittin’ On Top of the World” (ft. 21 Savage) is based around a nostalgia-inducing Brandy & Ma$e sample, and J. Cole adds a ’90s-style verse to closing track “Thanks.” The album also still has plenty of Burna Boy’s usual breezy, polyrhythmic Afrobeats, some modern Atlanta trap, an R&B-leaning collab with UK rapper Dave based around a pitched-up sample of British-Ghanian singer Kwabs’ “Cheating On Me,” a folk ballad, and more. It’s Burna Boy’s shortest album to date, and multiple songs jump out as early highlights.
Be Your Own Pet – Mommy
Third Man
Nashville garage punks Be Your Own Pet were thrust into the hype machine-driven spotlight when they were still in their teens, and they broke up just four years later. Now they’re back with their first album in 15 years, and to paraphrase Bill’s review, this is an older, wiser version of BYOP that’s just as fun to listen to as their mid 2000s indie hits. Read his full review for more.
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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Sonny & The Sunsets, Cindy Wilson (The B-52’s), Who Is She? (Chastity Belt, Tacocat, Lisa Prank), Film School, The Lilac Time, Drab Majesty, and more.
Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive or scroll down for previous weeks.
Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episode with Norman Brannon (Texas Is The Reason, Thursday, Anti-Matter).
