10 New Albums to Stream Now: Deafheaven, Dirty Projectors and More Editors’ Picks
EDITORS’ PICK: Deafheaven, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
“Deafheaven fancy themselves as a modern-day Bad Brains, but instead of blending hardcore punk and reggae, they combine vicious black metal with expansive space rock,” writes Kory Grow. “Now they’ve returned to their original muse and are splitting the difference between the battering-ram riffage of Darkthrone and the sparkly, soaring melodies of Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky…. It sounds much more organic this time, too, as the styles blend in and out of each other like a lava lamp.”
Read Our Review: Deafheaven’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love Is Wide-Ranging Post-Metal Fusion
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Dirty Projectors, Lamp Lit Prose
“Last year’s self-titled LP recast Dirty Projectors as Dave Longstreth’s one-man-avant-pop-band,” writes Will Hermes. “This suggested two possible blueprints going forward — the other branded on 2009’s Bitte Orca by the gorgeously ping-ponging vocals of his former bandmates Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian. For Lamp Lit Prose, Longstreth melds both strategies in a flood of ideas and magnificent vocal arrangements. The results are by turns dazzling and exhausting.”
Read Our Review: Dirty Projectors’ Lamp Lit Prose Is Full of Dizzying, Exhausting Prog-Pop
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Eric B. and Rakim, The Remixes (1987-1992)
The four studio albums in Eric B. & Rakim’s 10-disc The Complete Collection need no introduction as bedrock material for the last 30 years of stern, lyrically technical rap. But the box set’s two CDs of bonus material provide a wealth of forgotten material that paints a larger picture of the duo’s impact and reach. Leading with Coldcut’s masterwork, the “Seven Minutes of Madness” remix of “Paid in Full,” the discs include all the notable club mixes that emerged from in the sample-mad, collage-art United Kingdom of the late Eighties, with reworks by Richie Rich, Derek B, pre-Massive Attack crew Wild Bunch, Double Trouble (a team up between young Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook and Danny “D Mob” Poku) and others. “Friends,” the pair’s Top 10 collaboration with Jody Watley, painted a way forward for decades of rappers guesting on pop singles. The Nineties remixes are mainly curios that show Rakim’s rhymes matched with acid jazz, new jack swing and various dance-friendly beats. Christopher R. Weingarten
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Chris Lane, Laps Around the Sun
The new album from the North Carolina-born troubadour hits the beach with escapism-minded songs. “It’s my happy place,” he told Rolling Stone. “Some of the best moments in my life have been standing out on the water or on a boat. That’s just where I’m the happiest, so this time around I was like, ‘You know what, I want to record songs that embody that, and take me to that place.'”
Read Our Feature: Chris Lane Embraces Escapism on New Album
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Valley Queen, Supergiant
On their debut LP, this fantastic L.A. band envelops singer Natalie Carol’s bracingly afflicted, mountain-vaulting dream-country yodel in scrappy, sprawling guitar poetry. Carol can evoke anyone from Grace Slick to Florence Welch to Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries, giving the band’s California roots sound a kind of storm clouds-over-Laurel Canyon feel. “Chasing the Muse” is the weepy, earthen banger, with echoes of Nineties Radiohead in the stalactite guitars and Carol powering through a breakup with raw-boned gusto; “Supergiant” is fuzzed-up power-pop, with Carol’s voice drenched in heavenly echo as she sings about seeing the face of God in the night sky. She adds to the canon of ‘what the hell have I been doing out here all this time in glitzy fake Hollywood’ songs on “Bedroom,” rocking out in the Gilded Palace of Sin. The slower moments get close to Cowboy Junkies territory (especially the “Sweet Jane”-tinged “Gems and Rubies”), but even then the haunting power of Carol’s voice – at once muscular and fragile, anxious and boundless – keeps the drama high. Jon Dolan
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Taylor Bennett, Be Yourself
“I’m an outstanding Afro-American bisexual havin’ shit,” raps Taylor Bennett on the title track of his new EP. The Chicago rapper shares a lot of the same elements as his brother, Chance the Rapper; both favor bright pop-rap with sweet, chiming pianos. But unlike the spiritually minded Chance, Taylor’s aspirations are more direct – he wants the world, and he wants it now. His tracks often feel like demands; sometimes they’re seeking universal respect, and other times, like on “Better Than You Ever Been,” they’re rooted in his longing for beautiful women to take notice of his romantic potential. Be Yourself is bookmarked by two standout moments, the title track and “Everything I Can’t Handle,” where he unfurls his needs and desires, no matter how unrealistic. “Being rich, black in America when I’m 25/’Cause if you come from where I come from that’s a feast for sore eyes/’Cause if you came from where I came you in jail or you died,” he raps on the latter. Mosi Reeves
Read Our Feature: Taylor Bennett Is Getting Comfortable Being Himself
Listen: Soundcloud
Body/Head, The Switch
The second full-length from Kim Gordon and Bill Nace “digs past the craggy noise-rock crust into the subterranean magma,” writes Christopher R. Weingarten. “With its whammy bar yowl and nearly two minutes of squealing-but-fragile feedback, opener ‘Last Time’ sounds like Ry Cooder scoring a zombie film… The crumbly ‘In the Dark Room’ occasionally sounds like the 2000 installation where Christian Marclay recorded an electric guitar being dragged by a pick-up truck.”
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Lotic, Power
“With the release of their first full-length, Lotic opts for a kinder, gentler chaos,” Christoper R. Weingarten writes about the debut album from Berlin-via-Texas producer J’Kerian Morgan. “Vacillating between synthetic noise and vulnerable vocals, Lotic turns dance music textures into abstract expressionism – the results are sometimes protest, sometimes singer-songwriter statement, sometimes sheer dystopia, but usually fascinating.”
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Tanukichan, Sundays
Bay Area musician Hannah van Loon’s dewy voice takes center stage on this lovelorn collection of dreampop; it’s the quietly brooding through line through this taut 10-song collection’s bruising riffs (“Hunned Bandz”), taut grooves (“Bitter Medicine”) and open-road-ready guitar anthems (“Perfect”). An ideal soundtrack for those steamy summer days when it feels like it’s going to rain, but never does. Maura Johnston
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Flowers, Long Song
In 2016 this London trio released Everybody’s Dying to Meet You, a sunshower of shiny hooks and gentle letdowns that showcased Rachel Kenedy’s feather-light yet emotionally rich soprano. That album’s tart twee showcased their songwriting economy and pop panache; this release, which isn’t a “Long Song” as much as it is a winding, 77-minute, single-track album, is a journey toward the two-minute-bliss ideal that revels in its detours, whether they be feedback explorations or Kenedy’s airy lilt sighing phrases like they’re mantras. Flowers’ pop instincts are still quite sharp, as evidenced by the snippets of hooks and full songs that creep into the mix. Yet the single-song conceit (their spin on the British indiepop purveyor Where It’s At Is Where You Are’s Seven at 77 run of 77-minute CDs) allows the band to take distortion-heavy flights of fancy that recall Elephant 6 acts like Olivia Tremor Control and Secret Square in their curiosity and unpredictability. Maura Johnston
Listen: Bandcamp