Albums Galore
Valentimes Are Here Again
It kinda seems like this might be a playlist full of love songs, so let's see if I can channel the spirit.
Hey, I'm thinking about moving the playlist to exclusively Tidal and Bandcamp. Please let me know how you'd feel about that. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with Spotify and want to follow the example that Lars Gotrich set with his Vikings Choice newsletter. Related: did you know that I only do this newsletter because I adored what Lars was doing on VC?
The Playlist
Michael Bublé is out here serving orchestral brilliance on My Valentine. What a way to wake up. I really love the trumpet and harp on this track. Dolly Parton has another song here from her upcoming novel with James Patterson. In this case, it's a song that's supposed to stand in as what two of the characters in the novel would have written together.
Skacore newcomers Dissidente just put out their debut album on Bad Time Records and it's a ripper. Here's Reproductive Reichs, which uh... kinda self-explanatory name. To keep us turned up on the energy, I've got Zeal & Ardor's Death to the Holy from their s/t album out now. Between the two of these, I've got my week's listening settled and we're not even ten songs into the playlist.
Oof, this is gonna be a big week isn't it.
Mel Stone, one of my favorite trans artists, has a new single out which she describes as "a song i wrote about realizing that relationship is irrevocably changing and trying to handle it with compassion and grace".
Hold onto your horses, cause art folk/indie rock superstars Big Thief just dropped their fifth full-length album and raised the stakes by making it a massive 20 track double album that comes in at just over 80 minutes long. Hot damn. I'm not complaining. More Adrianne Lenker is never a bad thing in my book. We've got fiddle solos, we've got bass guitar as a highlighted feature, and we've got whistling. What the fuck more do you monsters want?
Okay, so I'm recalibrating my week's listening. It's fine. I can obsess over three records this week, even if one's a double album. I just need to not have any more full albums come across my radar.
We're still less than ten songs in.
Fuck.
Let's just all take a moment and take a nice drink of The Macallan whisky. Sure it's morning and clearly too early to be drinking, but post-rock legends Mogwai just collabed with them on a new art-based marketing campaign that's pretty damn cool and includes a bronze sculpture of three hands, holding the bottle of this extremely rare release, so uh... raise a glass? Here's a link to the campaign, if you're interested in this kind of thing.
Jordana isn't an artist that I know much about, but this style of bedroom pop meets indie rock is really custom designed to hit all my buttons, so I'll be keeping this on repeat and digging backwards in her catalogue. God, that kick/snare -> fill right at the end of the song? :chefskiss: That's the good shit.
In their first release since losing founding member Edwin Congreave, Foals bring us a dance influenced indie-rock track that serves as the first single for their just announced seventh studio record. Prepare yourselves for me dropping every single that they release into this playlist as they ramp up to the release, cause I can't get enough of this band.
I got to see indie pop-punk artist The Beths right after their first record came out. They're now prepping for their third and the riffs are as catchy as ever while vocalist Elizabeth Stokes has clearly put in the work to improve the breadth of what she's capable of. I'm really excited to hear the rest of this record when it comes out and will hopefully be able to finally catch them on tour again soon.
Singer-songwriter Helena Deland has Swimmer out today: a song written for mother, who passed away late last year. It's sparse, environmental, and delicate. Kinda reminds me a lot of John Wayne Gacy Jr. by Sufjan Stevens in the way that it plays with delicacy while maintaining an undercurrent of discord that keeps the tension high. Really masterful work here.
Deland is actually on tour soon, supporting our next artist: Andy Shauf. I won't bore you with Shauf's Christian rock roots, but will instead focus on the present, where he's just released a track called Satan. Similarly to Deland, Shauf has a sparse singer-songwritery sensibility that speaks to a strong sense of self. I really admire artists like this.
I don't think I really need to write about Father John Misty much anymore unless he does something really unexpected. What more is there to say anyway? He's found his lane and he's pretty fucking perfect in it. The harpsichord inspired keys on this are rad as hell, though, so I'll point those out.
Shamir is a queer indie-pop(?) artist who just put out an album titled Heterosexuality. Though he is non-binary, he does use he/him pronouns, which I think is its own form of important context before listening to this record. Okay, let's look at some track names and I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the rest of the record. The track listing is:
Gay Agenda
Cisgender
Abomination
Stability
Caught Up
Father
Cold Brew
Marriage
Reproductive
Nuclear
Yeah, I'll be listening to this one on loop, undoubtedly. You know, if I find time between all the other full records that I'm overly excited for this week. Records like Spoon's Lucifer On The Sofa, which certainly won't dominate my end of year lists as I forget about every other artist who isn't Spoon.
I am just a feather
Floating on your breath
In the morning
Superchunk - On The Floor
The marching band vibes of Factor Chandelier and Open Mike Eagle's new track are so much fun that you'll have to restart the track to even hear how good the rest of the track is. A treat.
Melodic hardcore act A Wilhelm Scream just released the first single from their upcoming seventh record, marking their first new record since 2013! It's been a long time, but all three singles so far absolutely rip and I can't wait for this.
I'm going to fail
I'm just too flawed
I'm going to feel
I've dropped the ball
I'm going to give
Give you my all
But even my best
Even my best
Won't be good enough
Rosie Thomas - Even My Best Won't Be Good Enough
Saweetie and H.E.R. have a sex-charged new track in Closer, a perfect track for this Valentines week. Underoath are back on the new release train, with a new version of their song Hallelujah, this time redone with vocal help from relative newcomer Charlotte Sands.
Okay, bear with me, but Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift have a very sweet new collaboration out and it's so annoyingly good that it makes you wonder why Ed keeps wasting his time on mediocrity that isn't collaborations with Taylor.
Jazmine Sullivan impressed us all last year with Heaux Tales and now we get a bit more as she's released a deluxe edition that nearly doubles the album's track count. Really exciting to keep hearing from her this soon after one of the best records in 2021.
Let's see here, Doja Cat covered Hole, with reworked lyrics by Courtney Love and drums by Travis Barker for a Taco Bell Superbowl commercial. Normal shit. We've also got a new children's choir drenched single from Caroline Polachek, marking her second new track in the past year. Hopefully this means big things soon?
There's a new album from R&B superstar Mary J. Blige today, which will surely be on many people's heavy rotations this week. I've picked out her collaboration with Anderson .Paak, because of course I have.
Orville Peck, everyone's favorite mid-tempo gay cowboy has released the first part of his upcoming project Bronco, with a four track EP. Very excited for this. Speaking of projects... Kim Petras has a fifteen minute long new album called Slut Pop which is exactly my type of hypersexual shit.
This collab between Juicy J, Wiz Khalifa, and BIG30 was such a good pump up track that I may end up having to listen to the whole record. As the counterpoint to that, we have Mckenna Grace desperately pleading do all my friends hate me?, which is uh... a full mood.
I don't know much about Joywave, but this track feels very Killers inspired, which is enough to catch my ear. We've got Chris Farren's new soundtrack album to the spy movie Death Don't Wait, with Laura Stevenson joining him for the film's main theme.
And that's all I've got time to write about today.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did!