Today has a healthy crop of new albums with a variety of musical styles — something for everyone in my lane of interests. Here’s what I found intriguing today:
Katy Kirby — Blue Raspberry. Excellent bedroom pop that seems promising. Her voice is delicate, but she writes compelling songs with nice hooks and the production makes her voice shine through. I loved her debut album Cool Dry Place in 2022 and this is a worthy follow up.
Sarah Jarosz — Polaroid Lovers. Her seventh album takes her in a poppier direction. She has an amazing voice and these songs are so easy to listen to.
Torres — What an Enormous Room. I love how musically adventurous she continues to be. I find every album of hers to be a grower — it takes time to click with what she’s doing, but it almost always happens for me. On first taste, this is intriguing and likely worth the attention.
The Smile — Wall of Eyes. Another one that will need a few listens to sink in. Second album from the Radiohead spin-off band promises to be excellent headphone music.
Future Islands — People Who Aren't There Anymore. There is always room for hyper-accessible synthpop and this one is such an easy listen. I always find singer Samuel Herring’s voice weirdly compelling and I’ll need to see how this does over repeated listening.
My Friday routine has been thrown off the shift NPR Music’s New Music Friday has taken this month — I used to listen to it on my Friday morning walk before starting work and now it doesn’t come out until near the end of the day. But it’s going in a very interesting direction, with much more in-depth discussion about a few albums out today. I was happy to hear Ann Powers, Tom Huizenga, and Sheldon Pearce really dig into the Katy Kirby and The Smile albums. And because the podcast didn’t come out first thing in the morning, I got to listen to those two albums before hearing their analysis.
Album Spotlight
The first excellent album of 2024 for me is Marika Hackman’s Big Sigh, a great multi-faceted breakup album that feels like a career best for her. I won’t be able to give it the justice it deserves, but here’s a quick review.
“The Ground” starts the album on a wistful tone with the repeated words “Gold is on the ground/I was happy for a while” in a heavily distorted voice. The final song of the album will reveal that the gold on the ground is the yellow brick road away from the relationship she’s ending. “No Caffeine” starts deceptively wistful but it soon becomes clear that this is a banger. The song has verses that are full of self-care advice (“Make a herbal tea, don’t throw up/Remember how to breathe, maybe try and fuck”), but the chorus brilliantly (and catchily) expresses all the negative stuff (“‘Cause you got me good/And I feel so stupid”). The title track sort of inverts that theme, the verses wallowing in self-pity (“I’ve been good, I’ve been bad, I’ve been better”), but the chorus is epically cathartic.
The rest of the album is filled with perfectly crafted gems. “Hanging” is a beautiful brooding song that continues to recount everything that’s going wrong (“Remember when you said I’m a disease/And how you’d like to kill me in your dreams” — yikes) and then the song utterly explodes at the end with “Yeah, you’re a part of me/I’m so relieved it hurts.” In “Vitamins” we find out her family aren’t any better (“Mum says I’m a waste of skin”) and we get two extended instrumental interludes that are top-notch. “Slime” is the highlight of the album for me. Another great banger, this time about sex. Hackman manages to be witty and erotic (“Open up and spread me thin/Feel around the brain in my legs”) and the production of the song is amazing.
In the finale, “The Yellow Mile,” the gold on the ground from the first song is back and now it’s clear that it’s a golden road away from this relationship. “But gold was on the ground/A heavy yellow mile/I couldn’t stand to leave/I was happy for a while/But I can’t believe I loved you.”
Enjoyed listening this week to
Bill Ryder-Jones — Iechyd Da (2024)
Eilen Jewell — Get Behind the Wheel (2023)
Lizzie No — Halfsies (2024)
Next Week
I’m very excited to hear Brittany Howard’s What Now and Runnner’s Starsdust. I’ll see what else comes out next Friday.