Ladies and gentlemen… The Weeknd and his new album Hurry Up Tomorrow are not included in this roundup. Why not? Well, A: He certainly doesn’t need my help telling people about his LP, and B: I couldn’t tell you the last time I voluntarily listened to one of his songs. By contrast, I am eagerly looking forward to hearing all the albums below — and quite happy to help spread the word. Hurry up and read on:
Lily Hiatt
Forever
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The nine-song set Forever is Lilly Hiatt’s first album in four years and was produced by her husband Coley Hinson, and mixed by Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, Hole). Forever is a raw, unvarnished work of love and trust that walks the line between alt-rock muscle and singer-songwriter sensitivity. It is a bold, guitar-driven, exploration of maturity and adulthood that grapples with growth and change, escape and anxiety, self-loathing and self-love, and the songs are intensely vulnerable, full of diaristic snapshots. After the pandemic, the world seemed to be changing faster than she could keep up with, and rather than embracing what should have been her triumphant return, Hiatt instead began retreating from everything she’d worked so hard to build. “I was on the phone with a friend who said she wasn’t sure where I’d been,” Hiatt recalls. “I realized I wasn’t too sure of that either.” The search for answers — where she’s been, who she’s become, what it all means — lies at the heart of Hiatt’s striking Forever.”
Charlie Houston
Big After I Die
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Big After I Die is a nine-song exploration of the precarious and often surreal experience of learning who you are while transitioning between phases of life. Growing up around Toronto, Houston was the youngest of four siblings. When she was eight years old, her dad, a fellow musician who used to play in local garage punk bands, gifted her a guitar. Whereas many singer-songwriters got their start performing covers, Houston remained focused on “making something that didn’t exist before.” She also began learning how to produce for herself on GarageBand, which felt like “unlocking a whole other world.” Houston’s music has always felt technical in its nuance and attention to detail, where melody and topline interlace themselves seamlessly, and the dreamy sonic exterior almost makes you forget what’s lurking underneath. Her songs are rife with nostalgia: the ghosts of people and places far gone but still fresh with emotional impact. Big After I Die rises from the ashes of these past experiences: Houston scrapped an entire hypothetical album after going through an intense break up. The songs she had written during a period of domestic bliss were now reminders of life’s many paths. “I didn’t really know who I was or who I wanted to be outside of her,” explains Houston. That searching would soon become the focus of her debut album.”
Jaye Jayle
After Alter
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Louisville musician and artist Evan Patterson never planned for Jaye Jayle to blossom from a stripped-down solo project into the otherworldly, full-band sonic experience that it is today. In the beginning, the songs were short and lighthearted, written on acoustic guitar with no intention of releasing them or even performing them publicly. Time, however, is a fickle thing. After Alter is an astounding collection of musical memories and emotional fragments, all drawn together from previous recording sessions and previous lives in order to chart a cathartic creative course into new, unknown territories. At once volatile, gut wrenching and serene; expect the unexpected. Raw remnants and lingering refrains from these pivotal moments are reframed to form a powerful reminder of what Jaye Jayle is and always has been: an unadulterated, unfiltered outlet for the sounds that pour out of Patterson’s mind at any given time or place. After Alter is a document of the indecipherable, of feeting feelings dragged once again to the surface.”
Manic Street Preachers
Critical Thinking
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Manic Street Preachers’ 15th studio album Critical Thinking celebrates conflicting ideas colliding, with unflinchingly soul-searching lyrics meeting some of the most head-on, addictive melodies the band have ever recorded. Bassist Nicky Wire says: “This is a record of opposites colliding — of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution. While the music has an effervescence and an elegiac uplift, most of the words deal with the cold analysis of the self, the exception being the three lyrics by James (Dean Bradfield) which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs. The music is energised and at times euphoric. Recording could sometimes be sporadic and isolated, at other times we played live in a band setting, again the opposites making sense with each other. There are crises at the heart of these songs. They are microcosms of skepticism and suspicion, the drive to the internal seems inevitable — start with yourself, maybe the rest will follow.”
Thee Mutilators
I Have Seen the Horror of the Future…
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Thee Mutilators!!! Jersey’s own farm fresh local egg. Drum machine ’n’ synth shredders. Raw world destruction punx.”
Pentagram
Lightning In A Bottle
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “You can try if you want — you wouldn’t be the first — but Pentagram are undeniable. More than 50 years on from the first incarnation of the band, through decades of tumult, hard wins and tough losses, the band has cast an influence across doom the likes of which few have ever attained, and as with Candlemass, or Saint Vitus, Trouble or any other ‘legendary’ name you want to drop, modern doom cannot not take the shape it has without them. The singular presence of frontman Bobby Liebling has been the consistent driving factor keeping them going against odds, gods, and, sometimes, better judgment — Pentagram’s history is known almost as much for drama and scandal, the comings and goings of members, sometimes acrimonious, as it is for classic songs. It’s 2024 and Pentagram stand ready for another impossible comeback with another revamped lineup and their 10th studio album Lightning In A Bottle — a record that brings new ideas and perspectives while remaining true to Pentagram’s history in riffs and facebound groove.”
Prison
Downstate
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Ready to go back? Prison’s still out there, breaking rocks in the haze and rumbling in the heat, just waiting for you to come around. Prison’s been active since 2015, but if you didn’t catch ’em live in N.Y.C., then you didn’t know — until late in the summer of ’23, when Upstate dropped. THEN you knew! Prison hit HARD, with jams so long and varied, they hadta have two titles each and the album was only four songs long, one per side. Yeah, Upstate was heavy, but always the fun kind, you know? And there’s so many other kinds of heavy yet to be… Downstate, the second official Prison stint, shows ya some, stretching to insane new places while pumping out MORE of some of the toughest jams around. Leap-hogging from one vibe to the next, Prison cop a variety of grooves, from minimalist (like Guru Guru) to sweat-shaking (Stooges) and chaotic (No Trend). It feels like they’re coming from everywhere! They switched it up in almost every way they could this time. But that’s just Prison being Prison.”
Adrian Quesada / Various Artists
Home Free Soundtrack
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The soundtrack to the acclaimed 2024 indie comedy “Home Free” is produced by Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas, Grupo Fantasma) and features songs by Quesada, J. Mascis, Mix Master Mike, Fatlip (Pharcyde), Lucious Jackson, James Petralli (White Denim), Neal Francis, Ben Kweller and many more. It’s an eclectic blend of hip-hop, funk, and more stripped down, singer-songwriter tracks, that help bring to life this coming-of-age story set in the 1990s.”
Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado
House Of Sticks
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Scandinavia’s premier roots-rock renegades Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado return with their brand new album of high-energy swamp rock, smouldering ballads and cinematic blues-rock. Their ninth studio album House Of Sticks delivers a fresh, modern take on the blues. It channels the vibes of giants like The Black Keys or JJ Cale, while staying true to the band’s deep blues roots. House Of Sticks was recorded between April and June 2024 between Medley Studios and Mill Factory NuVenue Studios in Copenhagen. It was produced once again by Risager and bass player Søren Bøjgaard, with additional production by guitarist Joachim Svensmark. “I can’t write songs when I’m on the road,” Risager explains. “There’s too much going on when I’m touring. So, I need to be very concentrated and very focused on the concert. I recently found out that when I’m home I can write the best between 9 a.m. and noon. It’s taken a long time to work that out. Once I have written the song and I take it to the band, that’s because I know this is going to hold water. We don’t work on songs with the band or in the studio that won’t be on the album.”
Jim White & Trey Blake
Precious Bane
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “It started in London with a shy fan offering Americana outsider Jim White a gift — an obscure 19th-century novel called Precious Bane. Over the years they kept up a correspondence, with White becoming increasingly intrigued by this shy, impoverished woman who led a fairly desperate hand to mouth existence in the south of England. That woman is Trey Blake, a neurodivergent artist living in obscurity in Brighton, UK. Growing up with undiagnosed autism, she managed her condition and the resultant inability to function in the mainstream world through various addictions. Along the way she sought to create art (songs, prose & photography) that encompassed both light and dark, drawing on her experiences of brokenness and loss on one hand and transcendent beauty and oneness on the other. The two have paired up to deliver Precious Bane, a haunting effort that finds them trading songs from across the ocean — her parts being recorded by Joe Watson of Stereolab, whom Trey randomly met in a Brighton coffee shop. Like Jim, Joe was instantly struck by this exotic outsider. The resulting collaboration is an enigmatic sonic journey that transports the listener to a mythic, darkly lyrical soundscape.”
