Notable Releases of the Week (1/27)

It’s already been a pretty great year for new music, but this feels like the first truly stacked week of 2023. I highlight eight albums below, and most of them feel like heavy hitters with staying power. Bill tackles more in Bill’s Indie Basement, including King Tuff. R. Ring, The Tubs, Mozart Estate (Lawrence of Felt), and the New Order Low-Life box.

On top of those, honorable mentions: The Arcs, White Reaper, Lil Yachty, Samia, Angel Electronics (Black Dresses), Pony Bradshaw, Hammock, Oozing Wound, Popstar Benny, Joe Henry (ft. Daniel Lanois, Allison Russell, Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell & more), Kimbra, Sam Smith, Styles P, Bass Drum of Death, ORA77K, Wolf Eyes, Deathprod, SG Lewis, triton., The World Is Quiet Here, Crosslegged, Jonah Yano (prod. BADBADNOTGOOD), JW Francis, New Miserable Experience (mem Rosetta, Revocation), Grief Symposium, Elliott Green, Ruhail Qaisar, Heavy Blanket, New Age Doom & Lee “Scratch” Perry, George, Mark William Lewis, the Sear EP, the Fatboi Sharif & Roper Williams EP, the Half Gringa EP, the Dead At Birth demo, the Winspear comp, the Flatspot comp, and the 25th anniversary edition of Green Day’s Nimrod.

Read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?

XL Life – The Boogie Down South
Venn Records

When it comes to breaking down genre barriers, Traxx is no stranger. As the co-frontman of the now-defunct Cardiff grime group Astroid Boys, he toured with the likes of Trash Talk and Body Count, and you could always hear hardcore and punk influences slipping into that band’s music too. When he left and formed XL Life with Astroid Boys guitarist Lewis Newbrook, he flipped the script, diving head-first into hardcore and finding exciting ways to fuse it with his many other influences. XL Life debuted with the Sweet Moves EP in 2020, put out the “Noise” single in 2021, and their best release yet is their debut album The Boogie Down South. With their fusion of groovy hardcore with danceable polyrhythms and Traxx’s catchy shouts, XL Life have gained some tough-to-deny comparisons to Turnstile, and they’ve definitely got similar DNA and scratch a similar itch, but the end result is something they can call their own. Throughout its nine-song, no-skips runtime, The Boogie Down South combines hardcore with jazz, grime, and glitchy electronics, and XL Life come off like true devotees of all of the music they incorporate. The Boogie Down South is a record that’s innovative, catchy as fuck, and full of clear passion. Like so many great hardcore lyricists before him, Traxx uses aggressive music to come at the darker aspects of life with a sense of hope, with the feeling that positive change and a better future is possible. They’re not idealists, they know nothing’s gonna happen overnight, but they also know there’s power in the baby steps.

Fucked Up – One Day
Merge

“After retreating into the fantasy world with Year of the Horse, this record is like we’re returning to real life,” Fucked Up vocalist Damian Abraham says of the band’s sixth proper album One Day. It’s titled One Day because guitarist Mike Haliechuk wrote and recorded the skeletons of these songs in a single day, and then passed the recordings around from band member to band member, who also had just one day to write and record their parts, and that sense of urgency helped make this one of the shortest, most down-to-earth, most traditionally-punk Fucked Up albums. It’s got that trademark Fucked Up formula of mixing classic punk and hardcore with whatever else pops into their heads, and setting Damian’s distinct bark against soaring, melodic backing vocals, with a few detours like the slow-paced “Falling Right Under” and the Mike Haliechuk-sung power pop of “Cicada.” It’s a record that often finds Fucked Up at their most concise and their catchiest; I’d call it a return to form, but in reality, Fucked Up don’t have any album in their catalog quite like this one.

To get an even better idea about what informed this album, we asked Damian and drummer Jonah Falco what their influences for One Day were, and both gave very detailed responses, with answers ranging from the Adolescents to The Undertones to the deaths of Riley Gale, Wade Allison, and Gord Downie, to various life and family experiences, and much more. Read what they had to say here.

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H.C. McEntire – Every Acre
Merge

Every Acre, the third solo album by Mount Moriah’s H.C. McEntire, is informed by grief and loss but it’s also one of H.C.’s warmest, most welcoming albums yet. Over a backdrop that weaves between country, folk, and rock, H.C. tells personal tales in her world-weary wail, and there’s just as much emotion in her voice as there is in the sprawling, Crazy Horse-esque guitar solos. Supporting roles come from S.G. Goodman and Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray, who sing backup on “Shadows” and “Turpentine,” respectively, and H.C.’s ace band helps give these songs exactly the kind of relaxed, earthy backdrop that they need without doing anything too fancy–just letting H.C.’s strong, impactful songwriting shine.

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Popcaan – Great Is He
OVO Sound

Dancehall icon Popcaan follows 2020’s great Fixtape with his second album for Drake’s OVO Sound, Great Is He. Like Fixtape, Drake appears on the album, as does Afropop superstar Burna Boy and rising dancehall artist Chronic Law; and producers include Dre Skull, Anju Blaxx, Dane Ray, and more. As you’d probably expect from Popcaan and the OVO team, it sounds amazing–big, lush production and a diasporic sound that bridges the gap between Jamaican dancehall, American hip hop, and more–and Popcaan’s voice just seems to get better and better.

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Ava Max – Diamonds & Dancefloors
Atlantic

Ava Max took the pop world by storm with her 2018 breakout single “Sweet But Psycho,” and she kept the momentum going with a string of other infectious and inescapable singles (“Kings & Queens,” “So Am I,” “My Head & My Heart”), all of which found a home on her 2020 debut album Heaven & Hell. As far as I can tell, the songs she’s been releasing in the leadup to her sophomore album Diamonds & Dancefloors haven’t had the same commercial impact, but her knack for irresistible melodies has not lessened; Diamonds & Dancefloors is stuffed wall-to-wall with earworms. Working with her partner and frequent collaborator Cirkut (whose credits include The Weeknd’s “High For This,” Miley’s “Wrecking Ball,” Katy Perry’s “Roar,” and much more), Ava Max makes dance-pop for people who like anything from ABBA to early Madonna to “The Rhythm of the Night.” And as we’re in the midst of a house-diva renaissance and witnessing the critical and cultural appreciation for the synthpop revival of The Weeknd and Dua Lipa’s latest albums, Diamonds & Dancefloors brings a type of nostalgia that the current musical climate is clearly hungry for. She dishes out hooks that you feel like you’ve known for whole life, and unlike Heaven & Hell‘s “Barbie Girl” and “Around the World (La La La La La)” reboots, Diamonds & Dancefloors mostly avoids using hooks you’ve actually known your whole life. Ava did a good job of picking singles–nothing really tops the lightning-strike chorus of “Weapons” or the thumping ’80s synthpop of “Dancing’s Done”–but she’s got some cool deep cuts on there like the Dua Lipa-goes-Daft Punk of “Hold Up, Wait A Minute,” and it’s easy to picture non-singles like “Sleepwalker,” “Ghost,” or “Turn Off the Lights” getting pushed as singles down the line. In a pop landscape that seems caught between critic-baiting Statement Albums and bloated attempts at landing on as many genre playlists as possible, it’s refreshing to get a focused, unpretentious pop album with no filler like this one.

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Sightless Pit – Lockstep Bloodwar
Thrill Jockey

Sightless Pit’s debut album Grave of a Dog was made by the trio of Dylan Walker (Full of Hell), Lee Buford (The Body), and Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota), but they’ve now downsized to a duo without Kristin (who gave this new album her blessing), and without Kristin’s vocal range in the mix, Sightless Pit have recruited a diverse cast of guest vocalists. Over a noisy backdrop of industrial and power electronics, you get the haunting dream pop vocals of Midwife’s Madeline Johnston on one song, the auto-tuned avant-pop of claire rousay on another, and Dylan Walker’s own harsh shrieks up against veteran rappers like Frukwan of Gravediggaz and the late Gangsta Boo of Three 6 Mafia on others. It’s always morphing into something different, and it’s done a lot more seamlessly than it might sound on paper. Lockstep Bloodwar is a much different beast than Grave of a Dog, but they achieve a similar goal in different ways: providing abrasive, demanding music that’s strangely accessible.

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Meg Baird – Furling
Drag City

From Espers to Heron Oblivion to The Baird Sisters to her solo career to various other projects and collaborations, just about everything Meg Baird touches turns to gold and Furling is no exception. It’s her first proper solo album in eight years (and her first new album at all since her 2018 collaborative LP with Mary Lattimore), and it’s yet another gorgeous, timeless reinterpretation of British and Appalachian folk music that feels totally removed from the fast-paced, plugged-in world that we so often find ourselves in. Furling is like a meditative retreat. For more on this album, Bill’s got a longer review in Indie Basement.

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Florry – Sweet Guitar Solos EP
Dear Life Records

Philly’s Florry have just signed to Dear Life Records, the same label that released MJ Lenderman’s acclaimed Boat Songs, and they’re also about to begin a tour opening for MJ. That’s good timing for the release of their Dear Life debut Sweet Guitar Solos, a four-song offering of ragged alt-country that I think will very much appeal to fans of MJ’s music (and fans of his band Wednesday). The EP is kind of an odds-and-ends release–it’s got a finished version of their 2020 demo song “Cowgirl In A Ditch,” an electric version of the acoustic title track of their 2021 LP Big Fall, a cover of Drive-By Truckers’ “Lisa’s Birthday” that Florry really make their own, and the new song “When I Kicked You Out of the Band (I Wasn’t Kicking You Out Of My Life)”–but it feels like a complete project and it gives you a great idea of what makes this band so appealing. In addition to Drive-By Truckers, the band’s influences range from Gram Parsons’ “Cosmic American Music” to Gillian Welch and Wilco, and they’ve got a rough, ramshackle sound topped off with Francie Medosch’s twangy drawl that really matches the rural vibes of their recent press photos. Especially on something like “Cowgirl In A Ditch,” you can just picture the seven members of Florry sitting around on a campfire in the woods and playing this song, having way too much fun to care how it’ll sound to anyone else.

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Read Bill’s Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including King Tuff. R. Ring, The Tubs, Mozart Estate (Lawrence of Felt), and the New Order Low-Life box.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive or scroll down for previous weeks.

For even more metal, browse ‘New Metal Releases’ each week on Invisible Oranges.

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