Paste is the place to kick off each and every New Music Friday. We follow our regular roundups of the best new songs by highlighting the most compelling new records you need to hear. Find the best new albums of the week below, from priority picks to honorable mentions.
Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties: In Lieu of Flowers
When it comes to Aaron West, it’s easy for the plot mechanics to consume much of the conversation. But In Lieu of Flowers contains some of Dan Campbell’s best melodies and soaring choruses. There’s the rising, triumphant hook on “Monongahela Park,” which pairs nicely with the track’s story of rekindling an old flame. On the title-track, Campbell crafts one of the year’s strongest songs out of a package of horns, strings and understated apologies—peaking with a hollered chorus, which is punctuated with the line “I’m with you ‘till the bitter end.” And on “Alone at St. Luke’s,” the booming folk-punk groove—complete with horns from the Roaring Twenties’ newly unveiled 16-piece lineup—manages to make West’s loneliness while touring sound like a rallying call. “We might as well be drinking,” he shouts, both victorious and setting himself up for failure.
In Lieu of Flowers concludes with a cavalcade of twists, and lands on West finding hope for the near future in this open-ending narrative. On the riotous “Runnin’ Out of Excuses,” West seeks rehab after his drinking starts to accumulate steam again. The aching, belted chorus slightly recalls “A Song for Patsy Cline” off of the Wonder Years’ No Closer to Heaven—if that downtrodden narrative was underscored by piano chords and exasperatingly strummed acoustic guitars. The album’s conclusion, “Dead Leaves,” begins even further in singer-songwriter territory—note the occasionally overbearing touches of pedal steel—and finds West retracing his steps, going back into New York City and encountering something (or someone) shocking from his past. It’s a startling, paralyzing moment of sorrow on an album that’s found spurts of optimism. But West manages to brush it off and head towards his band’s show in the Village that night, finding certainty when it’s most needed. He has more songs that need to be sung. —Ethan Beck [Read our full review and full feature]
Bad Bad Hats: Bad Bad Hats
Bringing a dancier twist to their classic indie rock sound, Bad Bad Hats’ self-titled album returns to the Minneapolis duo’s GarageBand demo roots in a funky, freewheeling spirit. Their fourth full-length and first self-produced album, Kerry Alexander and Chris Hoge—with prompts from their Patreon fanbase—expand on the smaller slices of life, like inconvenient parking tickets and scorching grocery store lots. The album brings their classic melancholy dressed in new clothes—accented with electronic flourishes and vibrant looping samples. “Bored In The Summer” explores nostalgia with a jerky yet rhythmic guitar-driven beat, as Alexander divulges, “I get bored in the summer / I read all of your books now I got nowhere to go / And you get a little a bit older / Every time you come around for the L.A. show.” Their quirky sense of humor colors the scenic “TPA” as they poke fun at the monotonous nature of Tampa: “I need no atlas, Streetview or Mapquest / Cause whichever street I’m on, it’s a / Strip mall with a nail salon,” they echo over a cyclical lick. They bring their past back in full force on “My Heart Your Heart,” which draws from a lyric they wrote in 2018 during the recording of their second album. With a bright, jangly guitar, Alexander bestows the greatest honor to her beloved when she sings, “When I die, I want you to have my CDs.” Bad Bad Hats are bringing a revitalized whimsy to their sound by mining gems from the past and polishing them into glittering diamonds on Bad Bad Hats. —Olivia Abercrombie
Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee
Throughout the following two hours of music, there are moments on Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee where instrumentation will be either recorded or manipulated to sound like it’s coming from the other room, if not another gauzy galaxy, only for the sound quality to change suddenly, jutting out at you. “If You Hear Me Crying” on the second “disc” does this beautifully, shifting from sunshine pop bounce to what sound like muted, sarangi-accompanied passages, all bulldozed by a day-glo guitar break in a matter of a minute. This melding of influences and styles produces some of the record’s most daring turns—notably where “Flesh and Blood”’s percussive intro throbs until a dam breaks into sustained synth textures, a bass-driven groove and wordless backing vocals. Only adding to the shambolic charm, the song notably speeds up or slows down at certain points, as if it’s careening on railroad tracks, propelling itself into an outro of more pronounced cymbal crashes and even more crunchy, psychedelic shredding.
When eerie, wordless vocalizations come in following the chorus of “Dont Tell Me I’m Wrong” (“Without you close to me / All I’ve got’s this song / And this melody”), it opens up a space for streaks of mascara running down a monochromatic face. Similarly, the more full-bodied drowse of “Government Cheque” feels like a ‘70s soul slow jam that shocks itself into its wah-wah-laden, cinematic close—ending with just a few seconds of a monastic choir’s hum, sounding like the end-times between guitar breaks. It sounds like those figures are re-animated through Patrick Flegel’s arrangement, glorious in their excess. Diamond Jubilee will overwhelm you, there’s no getting around that. The sheer volume of what Flegel has created willfully takes up space, and it’s expected that the listener will have to wrestle with something of this scope, even as they’re wowed by what they’re hearing. But again, there’s something thrilling now about that type of challenge, when so much is so easily digestible. Even if the Cindy Lee project doesn’t exist in its current form by the time this upcoming tour is over, it won’t really matter—their masterwork, beamed down from another world, will always feel out of time and, therefore, feel at home in any given moment. The album’s sprawl has no beginning and no end. It’s just a question of when or where you’re ready to join it. —Elise Soutar [Read our full review]
English Teacher: This Could Be Texas
If you’ve been tuned in at all, then you might already be aware of just how good Leeds quartet English Teacher’s debut album, This Could Be Texas, is. With Lily Fontaine’s voice at the center of it all, these 13 tracks wail and ache and resonate. Truly, this record is chalk-full of some of the cleverest lyricism of the year thus far—a massive accomplishment for a band on their first proper release. And the buzz is earned, as the work arrives profound in its attention to sublime simplicity. A verse like “The thing is, I’ve got a taste of what it feels like to be close enough, and I hope I can get my mind right so I can keep it up” on “R&B” works because Fontaine delivers it in such a way that the melody’s catchiness sneaks up on you and refuses to let you go. On “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab,” the guitars nurture Fontaine’s vocals ever so preciously until they don’t—eventually erupting into a rapturous bevy of riffs that reek with post-rock ingenuity. But it’s all so sticky-sweet, with tracks like “Mastermind Specialism” and “Albert Road” flaunting English Teacher’s sharp command of pop-rock sensibilities and in-sync craftsmanship. If there ever were a new band worth keeping tabs on, here’s one making it all look easy. —Matt Mitchell
James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg: All Gist
On their new collaborative album, All Gist, James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg have turned in instrumental work that evokes the duo’s confidence in working together. Not as dense as the 29-song Me Neither but just as stirring all the same, All Gist is nothing but guitar ballads that sound as lush and precious as orchestral string compositions would. A song like “Death Wishes to Kill,” titled after a chapter in T.S. Powys’ Unclay novel, has a balance of pensive togetherness and an edge of villainy to it. Elkington and Salsburg so deftly let joy and anxiety converge, forging a real Wild West of sonics. Bassist Nick Macri and violinist Wanees Zaroor pitch in, and their presence is a game-changer. Elsewhere, moments like “Buffalo Stance” and “Nicest Distinction” and “All Gist Could Be Yours” float between brooding and summery pastorals, arriving beautifully constructed and twanged out with pillows of pedal steel and vibrant finger-picking. —MM
Maggie Rogers: Don’t Forget Me
Recorded over the course of five non-consecutive days, Don’t Forget Me picks up where Surrender left off—with Rogers grappling with feelings of uncertainty. But now, at 29, Rogers has done the emotional labor to know she’ll emerge from any sort of heartbreak—whether it stems from love, loss or unexpected change. “I just don’t know what to do / I’m fine, but feel I’m breaking through,” she sings on the album’s opening track, “It Was Coming All Along.” The arrangement—‘80s-infused synths paired with a swinging drum pattern—evokes a feeling of brightness, setting the scene for a more confident chapter, as Rogers seeks meaning and purpose through it all.
Over the course of Don’t Forget Me’s overarching narrative, Rogers finds peace with the idea that the traditional, picket-fence life isn’t for her—or, at the very least, not at this point in her life. By now, we’ve all heard Don’t Forget Me’s self-assured title track, on which Rogers sees the friends around her getting married, while she finds joy in other forms of love. But the final songs leading up to “Don’t Forget Me,” which serves as the album’s closer, are equally poignant. “Never Going Home” details a sense of closeness and losing oneself in love, and a sexy guitar solo at the bridge reflects the feeling of letting go. The stripped-back, acoustic guitar-driven “All The Same” features Rogers assured in the love around her, while realizing the idea of traditional romance that many have idealized may not be for her just yet. “Give me the chance to wake in a full romance / Just knowing that you chose to stay / If only just to keep on hoping / Maybe even knowing there’s another way,” sings Rogers on one of the song’s verses. —Alex Gonzalez [Read our full review]
Nia Archives: Silence is Loud
24-year-old Bradford-born, London-based multi-hyphenate talent Nia Archives brings jungle-style music into the 21st century on Silence is Loud and, after scoring a supporting slot on Beyoncé London tour stop last year, the drum-and-bass electronic artist brings her new-gen flavor to her debut album. On “Cards On The Table,” Nia slows down the tempo to a melodic undertone accented with the supersonic beats overtop the jazzy vocal stylings reminiscent of Erykah Badu and Nina Simone. In “Unfinished Business,” she combines the energy of bedroom rave music with a hopelessly failing romantic narrative as she confesses, “My lover, please don’t make me cry / Don’t wanna find the good in bye / When you get distant I don’t pry / Unfinished business I know why.” Though she isn’t shy in expounding upon her ‘90s jungle inspirations, the only track that feels like an authentic recreation is the ferocious “Forbidden Feelingz,” otherwise, she is bringing a fresh pop-star power to the classic genre, giving it the refresh it has long deserved. With youthful vivacity, Silence is Loud morphs jungle in Nia’s image to create a unique, eclectic pop revival of a genre aching to no longer be left behind. —OA
Shabaka: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
Shabaka Hutchings’ latest LP, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, is a towering and powerful offering from the jazz virtuoso. The record features Moses Sumney, Jason Moran, Nasheet Waits, Carlos Niño and others, and the final product is potent in its own genius, as songs like “The Wounded Need to Be Replenished” and “Insecurities” revel in the abstract while conjuring beautiful textures and emotional spectrums. “End of Innocence” finds Shabaka putting down his saxophone in favor of a sublime lead clarinet, making for a sharp detour from the riotous sphere he normally orbits in projects like Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming, but it’s no less mountainous. There’s something subtly mystifying about this song and the album, both a culmination of Shabaka’s colorful chemistry with his ensemble and his desire to take risks within his own oeuvre. The woodwinds and brass sound dim light, while the piano that’s a set piece behind many of these compositions unravels delicately. Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace is a marvel. —MM
Best New EP: The Ophelias: Ribbon
On Ribbon, the Ophelias are queer, trans and full of joy. A song like “Black Ribbon pairs Andrea Gutmann Fuentes’ chilling violin with a grieving, sluggish chord progression from Spencer Peppet—both of which build upwards into this chunky, synthy, full-band explosion of noise, while Peppet vocalizes through the chaos in the eye of the storm, examining the genesis of a new queer relationship. “Some kind of desire that I cannot categorize,” she sings. “You’re a Springsteen song, dark sky in overdrive into the warm night.” On “Soft and Tame,” write a heartbreaking homecoming lament. “Giving up love in the South of Ohio, I hate it here, in the in-between,” Peppet sings out. “I wanna feel safe, I wanna feel seen. The curve of the hills when the sun is gone, a knot in my throat, another fucking song.” Fuentes’ violin rips through the noise of the track with a paradoxical, piercing delicacy that renders “Soft and Tame” into a brand new register of beauty. Ribbon flourishes like a full-length, setting its own in-betweens ablaze with emotionality arriving mercilessly from every angle. Few bands cater to my tastes so distinctly—Ohio representation, Springsteen mentioned, queer as a three-dollar bill—but the Ophelias are not like other bands. —MM
hemlock: amen!
At six songs, hemlock’s latest offering—amen!—finds Carolina Chauffe, Kyle Dugger and Lindsey Verrill so in-sync that you’d be remiss to not give them your full attention. The EP is stunning from “widest wing” to “prayer,” with centerpiece “bones” unraveling in the eye of the storm. “bones” is an emotional rollercoaster of forward momentum; a track big-hearted and clear-eyed and packed to the brim with sublime, tenderly devastating registers of hope and love. Performed in Silsbee, Texas with Lomelda, amen! is caught somewhere between y’all-ternative and lo-fi language arts rock. And hemlock understood the assignment. “I’m gonna move across the country or down the hall,” Carolina sings with a flex of twang that flirts with a yodel but never quite explodes into anything but an amen ensconced in warmth. “be/long” is primed to be an under-the-radar song of the year candidate, as Carolina singing “And I chose you as family, now a glow from deep inside of me is ripe for the reclaiming” will light a fire within you. “To give despite the taking, to let go of it all,” they continue. “May we land somewhere soft.” amen! does exactly that. —MM
Other Notable New Album Releases This Week: BODEGA: Our Brand Could Be Yr Life; Future & Metro Boomin: We Still Don’t Trust You; girl in red: I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY!; Melts: Field Theory; METZ: Up on Gravity Hill; The Reds, Pinks and Purples: Unwishing Well