I wanted to have 20 albums in this roundup. And for a while I actually did. But I had to delete one because I couldn’t find a single shred of information about it anywhere online. That almost always means one of two things: 1 | The release has been delayed but they didn’t tell anyone; 2 | The artist or label is too disorganized / clueless / arrogant to post even the most basic info about their own music — or to find someone else to do it. Frankly, life is too short to deal with dumbasses like that. Especially when you can spend your time listening to folks like these, who clearly have their shit together (in more ways than one). Let’s run the numbers:
Bdrmm
Microtonic
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The 10-song Microtonic, recorded with long-term collaborator Alex Greaves and featuring guest appearances from Sydney Minsky Sargeant of Working Men’s Club and Olivesque of Nightbus, is unquestionably a bold leap for British shoegazers Bdrmm, who have embraced a fuller spectrum of tones and atmospheres. “I felt very constrained writing a certain type of music to fit the genre (we were known for) but something lifted and I felt more free to create what I want,” says Ryan Smith. “And what I seem to be doing at the moment is a lot of electronic music — taking influence from different spans of electronica, from dance music to ambient and more experimental sources.” Make no mistake: Bdrmm’s trademark sound hasn’t disappeared by any means; the band’s more guitar-heavy beginnings remain a blueprint and influence on many of the groups breaking through in the here and now, a time when shoegaze is enjoying its strongest revival since its inception in the ’80s. But those guitars are now incorporated into a broader, more expansive and varied sonic palette.”
Andy Bell
Pinball Wanderer
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell’s third solo album Pinball Wanderer is an otherworldly collection of intergalactic wizardry that mixes psychedelic melodies, Can-via-The Stone Roses grooves and Arthur Russell-style experimental textures. With guest appearances from Dot Allison and Neu! legend Michael Rother on a cover of The Passions’ peerless post-punk classic I’m In Love With A German Film Star, it is perfect for both deep-listening headphones moments and cutting across the coolest, most understated dancefloors. The loose-limbed rhythm tracks were the starting point and were laid down with the help of Andy’s old Oasis bandmate Gem Archer. The rest followed after an intense all-night session last summer, with the completed album being delivered the following morning. It’s Andy’s finest work to date; a quintessential nighttime record where you can slip through the gaps in the notes and revel in the moment.”
Marty Bohannon
A Scar Is Born
Matt Bohannon
Go Back To Your Roots
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Headed by brothers Marty and Matt Bohannon, Chattanooga bad The Bohannons are one of America’s underappreciated musical treasures. A massively under appreciated band that has been doing it their way for 20-plus years. Coming off of 2023’s spectacular Night Construction, the brothers decided to try something different: They split up for a minute and independently recorded solo albums. If you’ve ever asked yourself, from where does the magic of The Bohannons come? Who’s carrying most of the weight in this incredible enduring band that hardly anyone seems to know about? Is it Matt? Is it Marty? With the arrival of their solo albums, Matt’s Go Back To Your Roots and Marty’s A Scar Is Born, we have a clear answer: It’s each of them. And it’s both of them. Each brother shines in his own brilliant way on their respective solo albums, but also in the most unmistakable and indelible way. The Bohannon way.”
Cloakroom
Last Leg Of The Human Table
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Cloakroom released their last album Dissolution Wave into the world on Jan. 28, 2022, commemorating their 10th anniversary. The trio spent the months that followed embarking on tours, growing together as a cohesive unit and pushing the boundaries of what could be accomplished in a short amount of time together. At one point, the troupe traveled from Chicago to Salt Lake City and back in a mere six days, playing six shows in the process and traveling no less than 600 miles a day. As the calendar flipped to 2024, Cloakroom launched on their most ambitious schedule to date, playing 27 shows across Europe in just over four weeks time. While this is being written, the band are resting their bones after a 34-date North American run that was completed in 37 days. By their own standards, their new album Last Leg Of The Human Table is a couple of years early. Initially setting out to test the waters with a four-song EP, Cloakroom booked three days at the famed Electrical Audio studio in Chicago in December of 2023 and set out to write a batch of new material. The composing sessions between singer-guitarist Doyle Martin and bass player Bobby Markos proved more fruitful than expected though, and soon the band was faced with the dilemma of picking which songs to include on an abbreviated release and which to save for the album.”
Darkside
Nothing
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Nothing is the third album from Darkside: Nine transmissions of negative space, telepathic seance, and spectral improvisation. On their first two releases, Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington entered the studio with a clutch of scattered ideas and loose melodic fragments to mold into what became the revered Psychic (2013) and Spiral (2021). But Nothing reflected a search for form borne out of spontaneous elliptical jams, acoustic riffing, and digital levitations. And in a fundamental shift from their first dozen years as a band, Jaar and Harrington recruited their longtime friend and collaborator, the drummer and instrument designer Tlacael Esparza, to become a full-time member. The outcome is magnetic and hieroglyphic. This album slips through the cracks of convention with serpentine guitars, extraterrestrial static, and cavernous drums. Haunted rhythms, distorted vocals, and uncanny beauty.”
Deep Sea Diver
Billboard Heart
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In the middle of July 2023 in a Los Angeles studio, Deep Sea Diver mastermind Jessica Dobson took a guitar solo but somehow felt nothing. Just days earlier, her Seattle band played a series of semi-secret shows for devotees at a hometown bar, de facto rehearsals for cutting a new record. The sets had gone well, but the sessions didn’t. The songs’ essence seemed muddled, Dobson’s conviction lost somewhere in the 1,000 miles between Southern California and the home studio she shares with partner, drummer, and frequent cowriter Peter Mansen. On that first night in L.A., she broke down, wondering what she was doing there, what her band could do to fix it. For the first time, Deep Sea Diver retreated, heading home without an album. Did they need to scrap it all, to begin again with new material? Not at all: Following a brief break, Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. She found ways of working that helped her reimagine and reinvigorate Deep Sea Diver and led directly to the power and brilliance of Billboard Heart, her fourth album. It is a coup, a triumph over self-doubt in which what first felt like failure became an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and strength. You can hear it in each of these 11 songs, the beating heart that makes everything here feel like a new anthem for finding your own way forward.”
Doves
Constellations For The Lonely
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Doves return with their first new music in over four years, reclaiming territory all their own. Frontman Jimi Goodwin and twins Andy and Jez Williams’ winding path to a sixth album culminates with the 10-track Constellations For The Lonely. Signing off the previous chapter of their story with the release of their third U.K. chart-topper, 2020’s boundary-pushing The Universal Want, the release of Constellations’ first single Renegade concluded a patchwork of writing and recording sessions that began in the same year. Reading from the same page on their new single’s sense of dystopian drama, the trio’s own sense of change, uncertainty and determination pervades the intricate, Goodwin-fronted collage of cinematic sound.”
Everything Is Recorded
Temporary
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Everything Is Recorded is the collaborative music project centred around producer Richard Russell. It features an incredible roll call of collaborators including Sampha, Bill Callahan, Noah Cyrus, Florence Welch, Maddy Prior, Berwyn, Alabaster Deplume, Jah Wobble, Yazz Ahmed, Laura Groves, Kamasi Washington, Rickey Washington, Roses Gabor, Jack Peňate, Samantha Morton, Clari Freeman-Taylor and Nourished By Time. On Temporary, Russell reboots his musical DNA: While his music had previously been about rhythm, words and melody in that order, on Temporary he swaps rhythm and melody, the rhythm taking up less space and the melody coming to the fore.”
Ella Fitzgerald
The Moment Of Truth: Ella At The Coliseum
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Ella Fitzgerald virtually invented the live album. The reason is simple: Her performances were so consistently great that almost any live show was special enough to release as a record. In a sense, for Fitzgerald, every night was The Moment of Truth. But this previously unknown concert stands out from the pack. In the summer of 1967 Fitzgerald was in a particularly interesting place. She was in the middle of an especially rewarding three-year touring and recording collaboration with Duke Ellington and was incorporating hit pop songs of the late-’60s into her concert repertoire — two of which are presented here for the first time on record. Tapes were unearthed in the private tape collection of Verve Records founder Norman Granz — mixed directly from four-track tapes recorded by Wally Heider — resulting in higher-fidelity audio than most ‘lost’ recordings. This album Includes the first Ella recordings of the hit songs Alfie and Music to Watch Girls By and her band features the rarely heard but hard-swinging trio of Jimmy Jones, Bob Cranshaw and Sam Woodyard. The Ellington band captured here was at its peak, featuring Cat Anderson, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope.”
