It’s another one of those perfect-storm weeks: There are more than 500 new titles on the way. Plenty are from artists you know. Plenty more are from artists you should know. So this roundup could easily have included 50 titles or more. But ain’t nobody got time for that (including me). So I tried to keep it to 20. I succeeded — barely. But ultimately, think of this list as the equivalent of 500 politicians blasted into space — a good start. The rest is up to you. Let’s hit it and quit it:
Joe Armon-Jones
All The Quiet (Part I)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Keyboardist, producer and songwriter Joe Armon-Jones shares his most elevated solo project to date, All The Quiet. A galvanising statement of intent, traversing jazz, funk, dub, hip hop, and soul music, entirely written, produced and mixed by Armon-Jones himself. As a band member, he is best known as part of the Mercury Prize-winning Ezra Collective, who capped 2024 by being the first jazz band to headline London’s Wembley Arena. All The Quiet is a two-part album, released on his own label Aquarii Records. Guest musicians and features include Greentea Peng, Wu-Lu, Yazmin Lacey, Hak Baker, Nubya Garcia, Oscar Jerome and more. Six years have passed since Armon-Jones’ last solo album, 2019’s Turn To Clear View was released on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings, but don’t mistake that gap for a break. In this time he’s toured the world, built a studio, contributed to albums from the great and good of U.K. jazz, and recorded collaborative releases with Liam Bailey, Fatima, Baker, Prince Fatty, Ranking Joe, Maxwell Owin, and dubstep legend Mala.”
Backxwash
Only Dust Remains
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Backxwash aka Ashanti Mutinta is a Zambian-Canadian rapper and producer in Montreal. She is most noted for her 2020 Polaris Music Prize-winning album God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It. Backxwash’s trilogy of albums from 2020 to 2022 reflected different points in her life and delves into themes of identity, spirituality, and personal struggle, blending haunting beats with unfiltered, introspective lyricism. Backxwash emerges from the shadows of that trilogy with Only Dust Remains. The album takes a new direction that showcases her evolution into a broader sonic landscape. Saus Backxwash: ‘These are the songs of a person who was brought back to life but is now haunted by death itself.’ ”
The Blue Stones
Metro
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “You settle into the worn seat of a subway car barely holding together, graffiti scrawled across its walls beneath flickering ads for bionic enhancements and synthetic upgrades. A mechanical voice crackles through the loudspeaker: ‘The next stop is… your tiny, stupid little worthless life.’ This is Metro: A dark, gritty ride through rebellion, duality, and self-discovery — and The Blue Stones’ boldest album yet. The album follows a protagonist navigating a dystopian subway, confronting a personified version of their darker side — a manifestation of their buried need for authenticity. Singer-guitarist Tarek Jafar says, “The subway is a metaphor for the conflict we all face, it’s about balancing societal expectations with your own self-serving desires.” The loudspeaker’s voice, eerie and detached, becomes the protagonist’s inner critic, a manifestation of societal pressure that feels alien yet inescapable. With Metro, Windsor’s Blue Stones deliver their most unfiltered, unapologetic work yet. Step aboard. The next stop is whatever you make it.”
Brkn Love
The Program
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “An impromptu 2023 trip to visit a friend in Charleston, S.C., gave rise to their third studio album, The Program. Justin Benlolo initially planned on spending a weekend in town. That weekend turned into nine weeks, and he returned to Toronto with the bulk of the album’s material. “I didn’t have anything else to do, so I brought all of my gear and studio equipment,” he recalls. “I was so inspired by the environment and the friends I made. It’s a big city, but it’s not huge. It’s just beautiful though. The experience inspired the whole record. Instead of being so picturesque and metaphorical, I told stories.” The album title even referenced the name of the text group for his new friends in Charleston, embedding the experience and the city in the fabric of the music. The vision had already crystallized before he left for Los Angeles where he recorded with longtime producer Anton DeLost (Cleopatrick, State Champs). These friends, and a variety of other characters he met, ultimately inspired the concept at the heart of The Program.
Cold Specks
Light For The Midnight
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Light For The Midnight, the fourth album from singer, songwriter and producer Cold Specks (aka Al Spx), is a 10-track collection of fervent ballads and atmospheric songs, with Spx’s soulful voice channelled into expansive sonic worlds. At its core, it is a raw and deeply emotional personal reflection on endurance, survival, and transformation. Light For The Midnight was conceived during a challenging period in Spx’s life, with work beginning amidst struggles with her mental health, experiences that are deeply embedded in the music. Spx emphasises its universality, despite its personal origins: “I definitely wanted to reflect on the last couple of years because it impacted me so much, but I also wanted the audience to walk away with this album. You know, the songs belong to them once I release them.” The record was crafted in Toronto and Bristol, with Spx co-producing alongside Adrian Utley and Ali Chant. The album features string arrangements by Owen Pallett and additional contributions from Graham Walsh of Holy Fuck. Spx also worked with a stellar line up of collaborators, including Chantal Kreviazuk, Malcolm Middleton of Arab Strap, Ben Christophers, Terry Edwards, Ed Harcourt and Jonathan Quarmby.”
Lucy Dacus
Forever Is A Feeling
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “While Lucy Dacus’s last album, Home Video, explored the world of childhood and adolescence, Forever Is A Feeling is decidedly adult. The lushness of the album’s sound is matched by a new frankness in Dacus’s approach to sexuality and romance. “So bite me on the shoulder, pull my hair,” Dacus sings on “Ankles.” “Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed, and take me like you do in your dreams.” The sex in Ankles remains fantasy — as in many of the songs, love doesn’t come easy, desire has to be resisted — but the willingness to talk about it shows a new forthrightness, a new and brave willingness to express desire. The song was originally written as a ballad, Dacus says, but on the album melancholy has been transfigured. Pulsing strings build to a thick texture of drums, guitars, a dancingly exuberant bass line, and electronics. Frustration becomes flirtatious, playful, full of the excitement of shared attraction. Most of the songs on Forever Is A Feeling were written between Fall 2022 and Summer 2024. “I got kicked in the head with emotions,” says Dacus. “Falling in love, falling out of love.” She had to make peace with the price of the love she wanted. “You have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life.”
The Darkness
Dreams On Toast
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Darkness’s upcoming album Dreams On Toast marks a bold new chapter for the band. With their signature blend of flamboyant rock anthems and tongue-in-cheek lyrics, this album cements their place at the pinnacle of British rock. Expect soaring guitar riffs, infectious hooks, and a nostalgic yet fresh take on the genre that will resonate with longtime fans and new listeners alike. “You know that thing when God’s breath tickles your soul and tells you to create?” says frontman Justin Hawkins. “Yeah, makes me giggle too. But you can’t resist. God might not be the power she once was, but say what you like about her, she knows damn well that what the world needs now, is rock sweet rock. And who are we, mere mortals of extraordinary ability, to argue with the divine? So we knuckled down and thought really hard about the best of the best, the elite songs, the life-changing music of the ages. Then we popped out a dozen bangers before lunch. And these bangers we present to you here, wallowing in an aromatic aural ragu, served atop the charred remains of our envious contemporaries… ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dreams on Toast. Close your eyes, loosen your cummerbund, and enjoy…”
Dead Meadow
Voyager To Voyager
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Dead Meadow’s 10th studio album Voyager To Voyager marks a defining moment in their illustrious 26-year journey. Revered as a pioneering force in the heavy psychedelic rock scene since their formation in the late ’90s, the band delivers not only their most emotionally charged and sonically expansive album to date but also a powerful tribute to their brother, late bassist Steve Kille, whose battle against cancer and untimely passing in early 2024 has made it the poignant end of a chapter in the band’s history. Written and recorded across three intense sessions in downtown L.A.’s Ultrasound Studios, Voyager To Voyager perfectly encapsulates Dead Meadow’s raw energy and creative chemistry. During the sessions, the band worked quickly, using only the first or second take to preserve the immediacy found in their live show, with drummer Mark Laughlin delivering some of his best performances to date. With Voyager To Voyager, Dead Meadow once again affirms their place in the pantheon of modern psych-rock by pushing their sound to new heights, all the while honoring the deep creative bond they have shared through nearly three decades of melting minds worldwide… and perhaps even beyond that time and space continuum.”
Deafheaven
Lonely People With Power
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Deafheaven release their new album Lonely People With Power via their new label home, Roadrunner Records. Recorded with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (St. Vincent, M83), Lonely People With Power follows Deafheaven’s 2021 studio album Infinite Granite, which saw the Grammy-nominated band charting new ground and expanding stylistic boundaries. On Lonely People With Power, Deafheaven again confound expectations, piling element on element, and towering towards the sky with their most ambitious release yet. Tracked at EastWest Studios, Lonely People With Power includes additional vocal contributions from Jae Matthews of Boy Harsher and Paul Banks of Interpol.”
Destroyer
Dan’s Boogie
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Dan Bejar started Destroyer as a solo home-recording project in the ’90s, exploring and overturning genres such as glam, MIDI, yacht rock, and even underground Spanish independent artists. His is a body of work that consistently flouts convention in favor of musical leaps of faith, statements of purpose cloaked in subterfuge, and the joyous refrain of an optimist’s heart cloaked in cynicism. Dan’s Boogie is, in true Destroyer fashion, a contradiction: A breakthrough album for Bejar that began its life as a disappearing act and, as such, does things no Destroyer album to this point has ever done. Its nine songs — spectacle-laden pop epics, personal piano ballads, and smouldering works of mood that blur the lines between song and novel and cinema — imagine Bejar as a lounge singer, a hustler, and, at times, a supporting character in his own fantasies in nine all-timer Destroyer songs that have the urgency of a state secret hiding in the mind of a tortured spy.
