Full disclosure: I have never understood adults who celebrate Halloween. In fact, if I’m being honest, I think there’s something weird (and not in a good way) about grownups who are excited to wear costumes to a party. Having said that, I definitely enjoy treats. Which is why I dug up 18 of them for you — with not a single trick in the bunch. Grab a handful and please don’t TP my house:
Military Genius
Scarred For Life
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Military Genius is songwriter and producer Bryce Cloghesy. His new album Scarred For Life is the followup to his atmospheric 2020 debut Deep Web. Scarred For Life is a genre-flexing mix of bass-heavy R&B, spaced dub, and jazz that is newly grounded within a more traditional rock framework and centered on lyricism. Lead single Darkest Hour — out now alongside a self-directed video filmed near his new desert home in Joshua Tree — reflects a head first journey into the unknown. “Darkest Hour encapsulates the feeling of being swept away by time, into an endless night,” says Cloghesy. “There is a certain melancholy in leaving the past behind, dwelling on simpler, antiquated ways of life as we are pushed forward. This message is poignant on a personal level–becoming a father has led me to contemplate my own childhood, witnessing a purity of emotion prior to self-awareness. This applies to a broader collective consciousness too, as the march of progress fundamentally alters our shared experience. It’s all about embracing the journey, stepping beyond the point of no return, and facing the future.”
Mount Eerie
Night Palace
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “These songs point at a moment of release, of peace found in a non-intellectual lightning strike after long waves of turmoil and surrender. I tried to give them all they needed to go out beyond my little story independently. I have traveled through decades of fluctuations, swinging between the concrete and the mystical, between attachment and annihilation, between certainty and dust, now washed up on a shore in what I’m pretty sure is an authentic state of peace. The desperate reaches toward belief and the recoils of aversion have calmed. A raven loudly flaps through the branches above me and I say hello like it’s no big thing. Here. On this ground, in this flashing moment, I made songs. Night Palace opens and orients: A spirit world found / out past where belief blows away. That’s where we are.”
Willie Nelson
Last Leaf On The Tree
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Last Leaf On The Tree is Willie Nelson’s 76th solo studio album and his 153rd album overall, according to Texas Monthly’s All Willie Nelson Albums Ranked list. It marks the first time he’s worked with his son Micah Nelson in the producer’s chair, though the two frequently perform together onstage. Micah has also been part of family-oriented albums such as 2017’s Willie And The Boys (along with older brother Lukas Nelson) and 2021’s The Willie Nelson Family. Tom Waits initially released the first single Last Leaf on his 2011 album Bad As Me, with Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards singing along. Willie covers Richards elsewhere on the album, and he revisits the Waits songbook for House Where Nobody Lives. But on Last Leaf, Willie fittingly sings alone, summoning a bittersweet spirit that recalls the title track of Nelson’s 2018 self-titled album Last Man Standing. Willie, who turned 91 in April, has forthrightly addressed the finality of life in recent years, and Micah tapped into that as producer. “There are little side-quests,” Micah says, “but that became the through-line — facing death with grace.”
Peter Perrett
The Cleansing
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There is typically talk of a ‘second coming’ but much less, if at all, of a ‘third coming’ but that’s what Only Ones frontman Peter Perrett’s third album The Cleansing epitomises. Following the second coming of its two predecessors — both unexpected given his 2017 solo debut How The West Was Won was Perrett’s first album in almost 30 years whilst his pattern of vanishing from sight was broken by 2019’s followup Humanworld — The Cleansing doesn’t only match his best work but expands it: An ambitious double album comprising 20 songs. Alongside his trusted team of sons Jamie (guitar / production) and Peter Jr (bass) plus members of his live band, Perrett is assisted by a roster of starry guests including Johnny Marr, Bobby Gillespie, Fontaines D.C.’s Carlos O’Connell and Dream Wife guitarist Alice Go. Perrett’s uniquely narcotic and alluring melodies, gorgeous South London drawl and ravishing rock dynamic now allied to a wider span of musical arrangements and lyrical concerns — touching on themes of art, addiction, ageing, social media and witch trials amongst others. “I know some of the subject matter is death, suicide and depression,” Perrett notes, “but I feel there is an uplifting atmosphere to the album, because I’m obviously enjoying recognising what is going on around me.”
The Rills
Don’t Be A Stranger
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Rills have certainly shed a skin or two to reach this point, on the eve of their effervescent debut album Don’t Be A Stranger. Produced by Dave McCracken (the indie mastermind behind Ian Brown solo records and key works by dEUS and The Rifles as well as lending a hand to albums by the likes of Depeche Mode, Sports Team, The Snuts and Beyoncé), Don’t Be A Stranger sees these three young friends take that untapped energy that made them viral sensations and darlings of the grassroots scene and direct it something more considered, complete and heartfelt. Callum Warner-Webb and frontman Mitch Spencer met in their native Lincoln as young teens, losing their spare time in a skate park. A few years later, that same urge to kill smalltown boredom saw them pick up guitars and start jamming together. A brief stint living in Sheffield chasing some of that Arctic Monkeys magic saw them soon return home to university, where Essex lad Mason Cassar joined as drummer and their lineup was complete.”
Thus Love
All Pleasure
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In the age of streaming platforms and social media, stimulation is easy to come by. Real pleasure, however — the kind that feeds our soul rather than draining it — is in shockingly short supply. The second LP by Thus Love is full of that kind of nourishing euphoria. It swoons, shakes, and swaggers with a combination of grit and sensuality that’s been hard to locate in music lately. It’s called, fittingly, All Pleasure. The album came out of a period of dizzying growth and transformation for the group. When they began work on it, singer-guitarist Echo Mars and drummer Lu Racine were still reeling from the runaway success of their 2022 debut Memorial — a set of lush, elegant post-punk — along with processing the departure of the founding bassist. For All Pleasure, the band re-formed with new bassist Ally Juleen and guitarist/keyboardist Shane Blank. The group convened in a barn in the woods that Mars had transformed into a recording studio, and kept one rule at the forefront: “If it’s not joyful, don’t do it.” What emerged from that mission is a stunningly gorgeous album, full of big, arcing melodies and a range of kinky stylistic twists that will surprise listeners who know the group just for their chorus-drenched ’80s-style psychedelia.”
Tuxedo
Tuxedo IV
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bonding over a shared love of Parliament, Zapp and other signs in the greater funk Zodiac, Mayer Hawthorne (Aquarius) and Jake One (Taurus), collectively known as Tuxedo, return with their fourth studio album, fittingly titled Tuxedo IV. Their powers combined have yet again yielded a bevy of absolute slappers that are packaged perfectly for dance floors in 2024. Roll the windows down and turn the volume up. Tuxedo are back for more. Don’t think twice.”
Various Artists
Brown Acid: The Nineteenth Trip
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There is no light at the end of this tunnel! Brown Acid: The Nineteenth Trip fires 10 more savage nails deep into the coffin of ‘60s psychedelic idealism. This series is the top-dog journey into the rarest and most wasted early local eruptions of heavy rock, unleashed at a time when harsh reality, human nature and disillusionment drove prevailing underground rock glimpses of a ‘better’ world into ever darker selfabsorbed comedowns. Mind expanding ’60s love energies transform into toxic aggression right before your ears! The great thing is that these moves are totally justified, ‘we are all one’ is cosmically good in theory but ‘get it while you can’ ends up perhaps better advice in the light of human history. Both of those angles of awareness can coexist, some of these bands deliver unrelenting sideways positive energy but they aren’t over-thinking it, they are youthfully driven by hunger for life and satisfying the undeniable urges their DNA thrusts upon them. Brown Acid: The Nineteenth Trip is scary… the bottomless pit of deranged vintage heavy rock the series presents continually expands over time… One deadly dose too many and you might be trapped in the bad trip loop forever… Enjoy it or lose your mind!”
Weezer
Weezer (The Blue Album) 30th Anniversary Edition
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On May 10, 1994, DGC Records released Weezer, the self-titled debut album by Weezer. No one thought it would do very well. The assumption was that people would say “who?” and laugh. And that’s exactly what happened at first! Finally, after a few months, a radio station in Seattle started playing Undone. Things escalated quickly after that. KROQ Los Angeles added Undone, it got a video which MTV played, which led to a tour opening for Lush and Live, followed by the Buddy Holly video… and so on. What else is there to say but thank you for the decades of love and support from all the fans, colleagues, friends and family? Well, there is something else to say, in fact! With the Blue 30 box set, you get a full disc of unreleased early recordings, a full disc of unreleased early live recordings, The Kitchen Tape in its fully realized album format (as the band hoped would be possible back in ’92, but never happened till now), 1995 BBC sessions in their entirely, and a 7″ of the entire 1993 LMU sessions that produced Jamie.”
