Notable Releases of the Week (4/7)
Happy April! The spring weather (here in New York) seems like it's finally on the way, and we've used the seasonal change as an opportunity to look back at 31 great albums from the first quarter of 2023 and look forwards towards 55 albums we're anticipating for spring 2023. This is an especially exciting week for new music, and many of those anticipated albums are out today. I highlight eight new records below, and Bill tackles more in Bill's Indie Basement, including FACS, Mudhoney, Public Interest, Erlend Øye, and more.
On top of those, this week's honorable mentions: Thomas Bangalter (Daft Punk), Tim Hecker, Meyhem Lauren, Madlib & DJ Muggs, Rae Sremmurd, Curren$y & Jermaine Dupri, Josephine Foster, Worriers, Daughter, Niontay, Heather Woods Broderick, Calvin Johnson, Billie Marten, Emma Tricca, God Is War & Andrew Nolan, Ben Gregory (Blaenavon), HMLTD, Ellie Goulding, Daniel Caesar, Ruston Kelly, Hayden, Alaska & Steel Tipped Dove, Crocodiles, Covet, Heretic Plague, Frenzal Rhomb, Jason Cruz and Howl (Strung Out), Knife Club, THEY., Vic Spencer, Fire-Toolz, Gregory Pepper & His Problems, It's All Quiet Here, Mast Year, Walter Smith III, Issei Herr, Chessa Rich, Sarah and the Safe Word, North Americans, the Ted Leo EP, the Bad Blood (Scott Vogel) EP, the Tribulation EP, the Signs of Progress EP, the Es EP, the Flycatcher EP, the Mediocre EP, the Mozzy EP, the LIFE demo, the Backwoodz Studioz comp, the Susanna Hoffs covers album, the deluxe edition of Hatchie's Giving the World Away, Sell the Heart Records' Operation Ivy tribute comp, and the 20th anniversary edition of Linkin Park's Meteora.
Read on for my picks. What's your favorite release of the week?
Wednesday - Rat Saw God
Dead Oceans
When live music finally returned and Wednesday started playing shows again, they were surprised to look out into their crowds and realize they'd built up a fanbase of unfamiliar faces. "I had no idea that anyone we didn’t know personally would want to come see us," drummer Alan Miller said in a recent interview with Ian Cohen for The Ringer. Their 2021 album Twin Plagues--one of that year's true indie rock gems--had gradually and organically built up word-of-mouth buzz, and more and more people were catching on to the band's uniquely appealing music. That album was the band's third, but first with longtime collaborator Jake Lenderman as a full-time member, and it came out on Orindal Records, the small-but-trusty record label co-run by Owen Ashworth of Advance Base and Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Jake--who's also Wednesday singer Karly Hartzman's partner--also releases solo music as MJ Lenderman, and his 2022 album Boat Songs also stirred up quite a bit of acclaim, drawing even more attention to Wednesday and to Jake's casual drawl, which pops up a bit in Wednesday songs as well.
The momentum Wednesday had built up helped them ink a deal with Dead Oceans--the label that's home to big-name indie acts like Phoebe Bridgers, Japanese Breakfast, and Mitski--and their first album for Dead Oceans, Rat Saw God, became one of the year's most talked-about indie rock albums even before its official release. It's presumably the album Wednesday would've written whether there were all these eyes on them or not, but it's also the perfect album to release when you're on the verge of a breakthrough. It's bolder, grander, and flat-out better than anything Wednesday had released prior, it currently stands as the best introduction to this band's work.
Picking up where Twin Plagues left off, Rat Saw God is like an alternate history of the '90s, one where alt-country, shoegaze, and grunge were all fused into one thing. Wednesday aren't shy about their '90s-era influences--their 2022 covers album includes songs by Drive-By Truckers, Medicine, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Greg Sage of Wipers (and DBT get namedropped on this new album)--but they never sound like they're imitating any of them; they're drinking them up and spitting them back out in a way that sounds unique to Wednesday. The album's first two singles are the band's most sprawling songs yet--the country-gazing "Chosen to Deserve" and the eight-and-a-half minute grunge epic "Bull Believer," which ends with an explosive climax that finds Karly screaming her head off. This is the work of a band who demands to be heard, and the rest of Rat Saw God follows suit. There are heavy, loud guitars that would've shaken alt-rock radio in the '90s, and there are soft, countrified moments that are perfect for lazy Sundays. Karly's singing and lyrical style are both gripping and full of range, and the moments when she and Jake sing together add an additional, special layer of warmth. There are certain aspects of Rat Saw God that fit in with today's indie zeitgeist, but Wednesday don't seem very concerned about following trends, which gives the album an already-timeless quality. Rat Saw God is a record that would turn heads no matter what year or decade it was released.
Pick it up on purple vinyl.
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Scowl - Psychic Dance Routine EP
Flatspot Records
Having built up a reputation as one of the brightest new voices in hardcore, Scowl expand their musical palette with their remarkable new EP Psychic Dance Routine. It fuses the band's hardcore influences like Negative Approach and Ceremony with '90s alternative rock bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Hole; it finds vocalist Kat Moss mixing it up between piercing screams and anthemic clean vocals; and it's got the band's strongest songs yet. Read our new feature on Scowl and listen to our podcast with Kat for more.
Pick up our exclusive red "cloudy" vinyl variant.
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Yaeji - With A Hammer
XL
The cover of Yaeji's first official full-length album features a picture of Yaeji holding a sledgehammer with an angry face painted on it--a very literal depiction of album title With A Hammer. It's a metaphor for one of the driving forces behind this album: rage. As she's discussed in multiple interviews and the essay accompanying the album, Yaeji felt rage towards the rise in blatant racism and hate crimes that the world was hit with during the pandemic, as well as rage on behalf of her childhood self, "because I felt like I was wronged." The result is the most direct, forceful music she's ever written, even more direct than her breakthrough single "Raingurl." Yaeji tells Pitchfork that she's currently most interested in "exploring weird songwriting that is peripheral to dance music," and With A Hammer puts her vocals--which are in both Korean and English--front and center. The album is full of boundary-pushing electronic production, but this is a pop album more than anything else; a weird, artsy, avant-garde pop album, but a pop album nonetheless. She'd already established herself as a masterful producer, and With A Hammer feels like the moment that she fully arrives as a singer/songwriter too.
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Blondshell - Blondshell
Partisan
So many artists have started out making loud rock music and gotten poppier over the years; Sabrina Teitelbaum is doing the opposite. After spending a few years releasing radio-friendly electronic music under the name BAUM, she realized she'd rather explore the grungy guitars of Nirvana and Hole, and she adopted the moniker Blondshell for her new endeavor. She debuted the project with the instantly-buzzed-about single "Olympus" last June, and continued to roll out equally good songs, all of which now appear on her self-titled debut album. The grunge influence is apparent in the album's explosive climaxes, but Blondshell doesn't stop at '90s revival. She applies her pop smarts in more subtle ways, and also brings a modern singer/songwriter element that's not too far off from the new Boygenius album. Her knack for good hooks is matched by her knack for deadpan one-liners about TV, sex, therapy and other everyday occurrences, and she really knows how to deliver these songs in a widely appealing way.
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Jana Horn - The Window Is The Dream
No Quarter
Texas singer/songwriter (and former Reservations member) Jana Horn released one of last year's best folk albums with her debut LP Optimism, and she's already back with a followup. The Window Is The Dream picks up where its predecessor left off, channelling the cultishly loved '60s/'70s folk music of artists like Sibylle Baier, Judee Sill, and Leonard Cohen, and this one's just a little bigger and cleaner sounding, but for the most part Jana doesn't fix what ain't broke. She plays a very specific type of music that never seems to go out of style, especially when it's done as expertly as Jana does it, and this album is just one starkly gorgeous song after the next.
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Desire Marea - On The Romance Of Being
Mute
South African musician Desire Marea's 2020 debut solo album Desire was primarily fueled by electronic production, but his sophomore LP (and first for Mute) was recorded live with thirteen musicians, and the result is an album that feels like more of a living, breathing organism than its predecessor. These shapeshifting songs range from loud, crashing rock music to exploratory jazz to a nine-minute song where guest vocalist Zoë Modiga takes things into opera territory. Desire said that recording with live musicians "was a way to ensure that the music carried the soul. We were all united in the most intimate parts of our consciousness. The music made us one." It would sound hyperbolic, but On The Romance Of Being really does sound like a many-membered collective pulling sounds and inspirations from all over and morphing into a unified force.
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Fly Anakin - Skinemaxxx (Side A)
Lex Records
Richmond underground rapper Fly Anakin's 2022 album Frank felt like a landmark release in his prolific career, and not just because he considers it his "debut album," and he's got even more ambitious plans for its followup, Skinemaxxx. It's a two-part album, and the first half came out this week (release date for second half TBA). It was made entirely with producer Foisey, guests include Pink Siifu and Big Kahuna OG, and it continues down the lush, melodic path that Anakin has been on for years. It's too off-kilter to be pop-rap, but still warm and welcoming in its own way.
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Sunrot - The Unfailing Rope
Prosthetic
NJ's Sunrot are back with their first album since their 2017 debut LP Sunnata and first for Prosthetic, and they've clearly come a long way since then. The Unfailing Rope was recorded three times before the band ended up with the Scot Moriarty-recorded version we're all hearing, and both the production and songwriting are the band's best yet by a mile. The record offers up an abrasive, uncompromising blend of sludge riffs, blackened shrieks, and noise that would sit nicely next to a band like Thou, even if Thou members Bryan Funck and Emily McWilliams hadn't lent their voices to "Gutter." And its harsh vocals aren't always easy to make out, but the lyric sheet is worth a read; The Unfailing Rope is inspired by oppression and cruelty and the ways so many people have been fighting back, and vocalist Lex Santiago conveys that gracefully.
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Read Bill's Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including FACS, Mudhoney, Public Interest, Erlend Øye, and more.
Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive or scroll down for previous weeks.
Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episodes with Kat Moss from Scowl, Mike & Nate Kinsella from American Football, and more.