We’re halfway through the year, which means it’s a good opportunity to take inventory of all the great music we’ve heard so far. In just five and a half months, we’ve heard an overwhelming amount of music, and are doing our best to stay caught up (have you seen how much music is out there?!). In any case, we know this music: These 40 albums most definitely stand on their own among the best albums of 2025 so far.
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
Marshall Allen – New Dawn
Just months before his 101st birthday, jazz legend and Sun Ra Arkestra leader Marshall Allen released his debut studio album, New Dawn. On New Dawn, he translates his cosmic jazz abilities into a wondrous presentation that soothes with serene melody. Working with an array of talented musicians, Allen’s compositions stir with flourishes that provide captivating atmospheres. Through deliveries of minimalist and maximalist instrumentation, Allen and company offer an awe-inspiring work that shines both technically and emotionally. New Dawn is not only a testament to Marshall Allen’s artistic legacy, but also serves as a beautiful reminder that the creative spirit is never ending. – Michael Pementel
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Backxwash – Only Dust Remains
Drawing a bright line from Rage Against the Machine to Kendrick Lamar and Denzel Curry, Ashanti Mutinta raps loudly here about the Other as “un-”: the unstable, the unhoused, the undocumented. Her plans for domination and liberation come booby-trapped with thoughts of self-doubt and self-harm, so add unsure to the mix. And speaking of mix: Only Dust Remains edges away from the overpowering metal production and vocal delivery of Backxwash’s prior releases. It’s the closest she’s come to pure trap, and it most clearly reveals her thematic complexities. With them is implied a pointed commentary on our times—who will come fight the power next when one fighter needs to tap out? – Adam Blyweiss
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Bambara – Birthmarks
Fusing goth, post-punk, and Morricone with a spine-shattering sneer, Birthmarks showcases Bambara at the height of their powers. Their fifth album overflows with thick layers of hooks even as dense clouds of synth haze swirl around the mix. It’s equal parts moody malice, gloomy grit, and somber storytelling—but instead of being a dour downer, standout songs like “Hiss,” “Letters from Sing Sing,” “Face of Love,” and “Dive Shrine” burst at the seams with barely controlled fury. Driven by snarling guitars, brash drumming, and Reid Bateh’s brooding baritone, this album absolutely rips. – Adam P. Newton
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Barker – Stochastic Drift
British-born, Berlin-based producer Barker delivered a breakthrough album with 2019’s Utility, a collection of vaporous techno haunted by just the faintest specter of a kick drum. Six years later, Stochastic Drift provides a similarly otherworldly and incorporeal permutation of techno, gorgeously rewiring beat-laden music to emphasize something other than the beat itself, its atmospheric arpeggiations constructing cloud cities of light and color. It’s less an exercise in genre than a record that employs its tools to arrive at a destination undisturbed by cliche and expectation, an electronic album with more than its share of room to stretch out and breathe. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Anouar Brahem – After the Last Sky
Veteran Tunisian-born jazz pianist Anouar Brahem delivers his music with exceptional care and consideration. After the Last Sky engages with the wider world, his approach to jazz imbued with wonderful Arabic flavors. From the first track, “Remembering Hind,” we dive down into an aquatic, sunlit space, breezy yet serious. Meanwhile, “The Sweet Oranges of Jaffa” is a longer work that never outstays its welcome. It’s rife with lush atmosphere while maintaining a minimalist approach. Many of the tracks on After the Last Sky blend one into the next, standing out as individual pieces while even greater when combined into a beautiful whole. – Konstantin Rega
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)
Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside
The music that Haley Fohr makes as Circuit des Yeux has always been dark, even intense, but on Halo on the Inside, an album she crafted entirely after hours, she finds a newfound hypnotic urgency to that darkness. In other words: It’s goth. And a spectacular permutation of goth for that matter, pairing Fohr’s penchant for orchestrated grandeur with beat-laden, synth-heavy pulses fit for finding thrills in leather and fishnets. There’s a noir romanticism to songs like “Organ Bed,” while “Megaloner” is menacing EBM at a low BPM. But she’s never sounded more badass than she does on “Canopy of Eden,” threatening any FM dial within earshot: “I can make a radio break.” – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Cloakroom – Last Leg of the Human Table
Cloakroom’s fourth album is bookended by the kind of dense, widescreen shoegaze that’s become their signature over the past decade. But in between those two endpoints is an even more vast spectrum of sound and image, more intimate stories and character sketches depicted through more immediate surges of power pop (“Cloverlooper”), new wave (“Unbelonging”), even dreamy, vintage surf-pop (“Bad Larry”). Last Leg of the Human Table is solid in its foundation, the kind of record where if you stripped away all the effects, you’d still have a spectacular set of songs. But when they do fire up the engines again on a song like “Story of the Egg,” it’s a blast to just watch them go. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Darkside – Nothing
Darkside made their name on spacious, cosmic psychedelia, their name evoking the classic Pink Floyd album with good reason as Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington stretched out downtempo pulses into epic jams. But as they’ve expanded into a trio on third album Nothing, adding percussionist Tlacael Esparza, the group fill in the open spaces in their music with dirtier, nastier grooves, playing up the more physical aspects of their music rather than follow a more ethereal muse. Moments like highlight “Graucha Max” showcase Darkside at their most manic, where something like “American References” turn up the heat, pushing its humid grooves to where you can almost the beads of sweat trickle down the back of your neck. There remain sinister underpinnings to Darkside’s songs, but their method of navigation winds through much more hedonistic trails. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Richard Dawson – End of the Middle
It’s a big enough swing to try and condense the human condition into song form, even more so through tales about medieval weavers or a nuclear family huddled around the TV to watch Noel Edmonds. Rich(ard) Dawson does both of course, and after an ambitious three album series based on past, present and future, has returned to domestic tales still well beyond the straightforward Little England he parodies. There’s alien activity (“Bolt”), the joys of tending to an allotment commingle with the sadness of losing a green-fingered partner (“Polytunnel”), families get cursed by Edgar Allan Poe-style eldritch horrors (“The question”) and corned beef pies and doggie ringbearers simultaneously define and mask life’s mundanity (“Knot”). Dawson’s characters embody the strangest of quirks, which become so oddly relatable when sketched by this humble maestro armed with a half-broken guitar. – Elliot Burr
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power
Since their 2011 debut, Roads to Judah, Deafheaven have embraced an aesthetic palette that transcended heavy music itself, but black metal firmly remained the core of their sound. With 2021’s Infinite Granite, the band brought that idea into question for the first time, mostly casting aside the scream and scorch in favor of dreamier shoegaze textures. Four years later, Lonely People With Power offers not just the reassurance that black metal remains essential to who Deafheaven are and what they do, but genuinely rivals any of their prior releases as their best. Still swirling in elements of dream pop, post-punk, noise rock and other sounds, Deafheaven sharpen their focus and go for the throat on more concise, finely honed rippers like “Magnolia” and “Doberman” while stretching their limits even further on versatile standouts such as “Heathen” and “Body Behaviour.” Lonely People With Power captures Deafheaven at their most beautiful and brutal, and an astonishing spectrum in between. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Destroyer – Dan’s Boogie
Dan Bejar is a character. He’s first and foremost an observer of people and things that may have never existed, making snow angels, chasing cocaine through the backrooms of the world, getting it on with the hangman’s daughter and so on. But on Dan’s Boogie, he’s an actual character, the protagonist in a series of songs that feel brighter yet breezier than the material on many of his recent albums yet given an added-first person gaze that often feels like a closer look at Bejar’s own internal monologue. There’s a sense of opulence and grandeur in the lush opening of “The Same Thing As Nothing At All,” and the trip-hop drum loops in “Bologna” provide a fitting backdrop for its break-up lounge groove. The stakes get raised in the climactic, piano-pounding “Sun Meet Snow,” the rare moment where breezy turns manic and Bejar gets comfortable getting a little chaotic, inviting us to trust where he’s going with this: “I’m into it if you’re into it.” – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Ditz – Never Exhale
Brighton noise rock group subscribe understand something that’s implicit to many of rock’s greatest bands: “People like being pissed off,” as they put it in a Loud and Quiet interview back in 2018. With their sophomore album Never Exhale, it’s still paying dividends, its caustic screeds and brutal dirges providing necessary catharsis when a good scream is both necessary and inevitable. Every inch of the album creeps with menace, every riff leaves a mark, and vocalist C.A. Francis can make even sardonic humor sound like a veiled threat. “Grey skies gonna clear up, let’s put on a happy face,” they sing at the opening of “Space/Smile.” I wouldn’t count on it. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
McKinley Dixon – Magic, Alive!
The first few notes of McKinley Dixon’s Magic, Alive! contain multitudes. On a basic level, the gentle plucks of harp, accompanied by flute, immediately position the album, much like its spectacular 2023 predecessor, as a phenomenal sounding hip-hop record. But those minor key notes tap into a deep well of emotions, even as the Richmond-raised, Chicago-based rapper just scratches the surface of the album’s affecting and intricate narrative of three best friends transformed by grief: “It’s so easy to write about death when none of y’all n—s is really alive.” Built on rich live-band arrangements, Magic, Alive! injects a dose of the mystical into a deeply human set of stories, its title a conjuration for the wonder contained therein. It’s ambitious, certainly, but deeply moving as well, merging the somber, the spiritual and the celebratory into a singular musical experience. -Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
FKA twigs – EUSEXUA
FKA twigs is a dancer, but to date her recorded output most closely corresponded to performance art or interpretive dance rather than a good, sweaty writhe on the club floor. EUSEXUA, her first proper LP, makes up for that by almost exclusively comprising songs made for recreational dancing. From the opening of the title track, a four-on-the-floor house beat takes over and provides a method of transportation into the flashy Björk-isms of “Girl Feels Good,” the 2-step pulse of “Perfect Strangers” and the booming glitch of “Drums of Death.” It probably goes without saying that this is her most immediate album, providing dopamine thrills from the jump. I could go deeper here, and my colleague L.D. Flowers already did, but most of all EUSEXUA just makes me want to dance. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)
Honningbarna – Soft Spot
Honningbarna keep shattering their own bounds, almost physically on Soft Spot, where the sheer volume feels like the very instrumentals you’re hearing (and the humans playing them) are on the verge of collapse. Since pivoting from power-chord friendly punk to the instant level-upper of 2021’s Animorphs, the 5-piece has coated danceable post-hardcore and even indie sleaze in their own graffiti, now making noise rock part of the cavalcade—”noise” being the optimum word. The extremity brews from the very start of Edvard Valberg’s spoken word diary entry, swerves via shuffling industrial (“God gutt”) and weighty breakdown passages in “Amor fati” and “Rød bic” that are as catchy as they are chaotic. It’s another slab of excellence from a band whose catch-all radar is gladly growing: “avanti, avanti”. – Elliot Burr
Listen: Spotify
Horsegirl – Phonetics On and On
It’s a neat trick but it’s no gimmick. On Horsegirl’s sophomore, Cate Le Bon-produced album Phonetics On and On, the Chicago trio (mostly) strip away the distortion, trading the Sonic Youth haze and post-punk jerk of their debut album for a more pristine jangle-pop chime, equal parts Velvet Underground and Beat Happening. They embrace repetition and space alike, decluttering rock songs until they’re beautifully stark shrines of melody, the likes of which often end up being some of their most moving songs to date (“In Twos,” “Julie”). But amid these moments of grace are those such as the dadaist “da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da” hooks of “2468,” which suggest that for all its elegance, Phonetics On and On need not be so serious. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Japanese Breakfast – For Melancholy Brunettes (and sad women)
The consistently evolving musical project founded and fronted by Michelle Zauner, Japanese Breakfast has attracted a fast following and a variety of listeners, particularly since their 2021 release Jubilee, which offered a lighter yet raw musical flavor. Chaneling a more acoustic sound with tracks like “Orlando in Love,” this year’s For Melancholy Brunettes pays homage to literature as well as acts of self-discovery. The band plays with reverb and chamber folk elements, furthering their musical exploration and journey as a group. Tracks like “Mega Circuit” have a bit of bite to them via the backing instrumentals, while “Magic Mountain” exhibits Zauner’s soft vocals paired with folksy atmospheres to deliver a wistful and beautiful song about temporality and change. Every bit as charming as their Grammy-nominated 2021 release, this latest effort shows that Japanese Breakfast has much more to give. – Konstantin Rega
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Lifeguard – Ripped and Torn
Ripped and Torn is billed as Lifeguard’s debut album. That maybe depends on how you look at it; the Chicago group released a cassette-only full-length in 2020 just after their first year as a band. But Ripped and Torn is a more cohesive and commanding statement, still steeped in the full-throttle energy of their previous two EPs but allowing in space for an exploratory kind of dissonance, oddball effects and experiments, and an even more prominent dub influence, with No Age’s Randy Randall capturing their firecracker intensity on tape. When Isaac Lowenstein’s drums echo out into King Tubby space on standout track “Like You’ll Lose,” it’s clear that Lifeguard are entering new territory. It’s not starting over, but it is the start of something exciting. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Messa – The Spin
There’s nary a misstep to be heard on Messa’s fourth record and first studio effort in three years, The Spin. And, in another step of maturity and confidence, the Italian quartet ditched their Pallbearer-esque slow, heavy, chunk guitar sound from their previous full-lengths. The results are illuminating, in at least a few ways. For one, Messa’s compositions shine more brightly than ever before thanks to Alberto Piccolo’s and Marco Zanin’s shift to a more shoegazey guitar sound. For another, the band flaunting its ability to crafty catchy, metal-pop probably wasn’t too high on anyone’s bingo card. Eleven years into their career, they achieve exactly that on “At Races” and penultimate track “Reveal,” which is the strongest song The Spin has to offer. The record also gives vocalist/percussionist Sara Bianchin more opportunities to showcase her expertise in singing without a lick of irony or pretense. Add in some intriguing passages pockmarked with synthesizers and horns, and what you have here is a great, if not perfect, record. – Kurt Orzeck
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Mizmor & Hell – Alluvion
A.L.N of Mizmor and M.S.W. of Hell are forces of doom. After two decades of friendship and one prior split album, the two artists have come together for their first full-length collaboration, Alluvion. Comprising four epic tracks, the record is rife with gloomy drones, harsh distortion and shrieking vocals. While doom frequently carries themes of dread and despair, Mizmor and Hell set out to create a work of perseverance—of learning how to find one’s way up those metaphorical mountains. With their forces combined, Mizmor and Hell craft a statement of grim intensity that trudges through the murk in order to reach a higher plane. – Michael Pementel
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Model/Actriz – Pirouette
Model/Actriz once described their music in a Reddit AMA as “sexy industrial dance” and since then it’s only gotten sexier, dancier and reinforced with stainless steel. But as loud as Pirouette thumps and as much muscle as there is driving their urgent dancefloor anthems, Pirouette is ultimately an album about vulnerability, of self-possession, openness and healing. In that context, the throttle and scrape of a song like “Cinderella” or “Poppy” feels more like armor than the more aggressive sounds of their 2023 debut. The beauty of it is that it’s transferable—turn this up and see how quickly it makes you feel invincible. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Kathryn Mohr – Waiting Room
Some of the best moments on Kathryn Mohr’s Waiting Room are frantic and fraught, unpolished shards of scraggly anti-folk laced with toxic doses of distortion. Some of them are hushed, barely audible transmissions from the subconscious, barely remembered dreams and faint, disorienting lights beaming through the window at 3 a.m. Recorded in Iceland in solitude, Mohr’s set of lo-fi dirges reflects the island nation’s summer and winter simultaneously, times when the sun never fully rises or the darkness never entirely sets in, confusing internal clocks and sleep patterns even while surrounded by a beautiful stillness. Nothing’s ever fully settled on Waiting Room, a beautifully tense purgatory of elliptical thoughts and sleepwalking lullabies. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Monde UFO – Flamingo Tower
Flamingo Tower is a pirate radio broadcast from a swanky space-age bachelor pad, a D.I.Y. show in a lush, midcentury conversation pit. It’s a sleek and stoned celebration of psychedelic eclecticism, a central hub that connects Syd Barrett and Sun Ra through Velvets drone and lackadaisical slacker-rock drawl. The world within their delightfully druggy haze keeps expanding even as the fuzz and fog remains heavy and thick, inviting you to peer deeper into the clouds to see what marvelous shapes they’ll take. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Pachyman – Another Place
Pachy Garcia’s social media is rife with videos of the L.A.-based artist in the studio, drumming or playing keyboards, offering a behind-the-scenes (but still aesthetically stylized) view of the process of creating sounds that may have well come from outer space. Pachyman’s continued exploration and expansion of the grooves and riddims of dub hits a summer sweet spot on Another Place, a soulful and psychedelic career best that draws more than a little bit of its taut pulse from ’80s-era post-punk while awash in rich and lush arrangements, all played by Garcia himself. A maestro at the control, Pachyman makes studio wizardry look and feel effortless. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Pink Siifu – BLACK’!ANTIQUE
Shape-shifting rapper Pink Siifu said his aim with BLACK’!ANTIQUE was to showcase his uniqueness as an artist. That much was never in doubt; anyone who can deliver both the jazz rap of Ensley and the noisy aggresion of Negro is undoubtedly one of a kind. But the lengthy, ambitious BLACK’!ANTIQUE, more than any other album in Siifu’s catalog, shows the breadth of his capabilities through some of his most wildly experimental impulses. Progressing in a kind of a reverse order from most abstractly confrontational to most accessible, BLACK’!ANTIQUE tests the listener’s resolve and commitment, throwing up a blistering wall of static in “ALIVE & DIRECT’!” before oozing into a dark and mournful trap with “SCREW4LIFE’! RIPJALEN’!” and eventually the soulful, jazzy groove of “LAST ONE ALIVE’!” Pink Siifu is an edition of one, and the unpredictable sprawl of BLACK’!ANTIQUE reinforces just how rare an artist he truly is. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Pulp – More
Coming back to studio work after 24 years is bold. Doing so with little to no fireworks is even bolder. But when you have songwriting this strong and a frontman this effortlessly charming, what use are fireworks? Pulp are not only master songwriters but master dramaturgists and they know it, reveling in a sonic blueprint that feels like either a more down-to-earth version of Sparks or a clear precursor to the avant-prog breakouts like black midi and Black Country, New Road. They can execute arthouse cool without odd meters, layer instrumentation with subtlety and grace, lean on wise craft choices over bombast. This puts them in rare company, the likes of Peter Gabriel and Nick Cave, people who make every choice matter rather than making wild choices. In a word, it’s superb. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Rwake – The Return of Magik
Arkansas-based sludge metal band Rwake made their return after 13 years with The Return of Magik, a powerful comeback that offers a more melodic expanse of sound. The band’s latest brings elements of Southern rock to the forefront and a jammier vibe with guitar solos cascading around the songs, while Brittany Fugate’s scathing vocals provide a counterpoint to the lower, ominous vocal tones of Chris Terry. The songs are long, winding explorations into dark and caustic places that would convince any other sludge band they need to step up their game, as the band are at their most ambitious with a balance of crunch and even country nuance to their guitar-driven melodies. The Return of Magik soars well above and beyond the bounds of the average contemporary metal band. – Wil Lewellyn
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Scowl – Are We All Angels
Scowl’s second LP should bring a smile to the face of every curmudgeon who laments the state of pop-punk, a genre that is seemingly averse to evolving and still counts decades-long vets such as Green Day, blink-182 and Paramore as its figureheads. With Are We All Angels, Bay Area hardcore bruisers Scowl toll the death knell loudly and fiercely with material so strong from start to finish that it should dethrone the Santa Cruz squadron’s “peers,” if they can even be called that. Indeed, Scowl’s pop-meets-hardcore sound truly jells on their sophomore outing, and it’s as smart as it is satisfying. No, every song isn’t balls-to-the-wall. Yes, these punks-at-heart have irrefutable songwriting capabilities. Add to that strong hooks and melodies in each song, and it makes sense why The Late Show With Stephen Colbert brought the group out from the pit and onto a mainstream television talk-show stage last month. – Kurt Orzeck
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Sharp Pins – Radio DDR
Sharp Pins’ Radio DDR showed up on our list of great albums from late 2024 you might have missed. But given the lateness of the hour and a proper physical release this year, who’s counting anyway? Release dates are trivia, but Sharp Pins’ purely joyful and impeccably crafted lo-fi power pop is essentially timeless on arrival. Reminiscent of prime Guided by Voices, Big Star, Cleaners from Venus—pick whichever analog-recorded janglers show up on your radar—Radio DDR is pop perfection by any other name. The project of Lifeguard’s Kai Slater (who shows up here twice—how’s that for bragging rights?), Sharp Pins capture a certain kind of vintage that sounds great no matter how or when it graces your headphones: 2024, 2025, 1974, 1993, it’s all good. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Alan Sparhawk – With Trampled by Turtles
The first new music that Alan Sparhawk released after the end of Low and death of longtime partner and bandmate Mimi Parker, White Roses, My God, comprised sounds filtered through electronics and Auto-Tune—not necessarily a surprise given Low’s recent records, but curiously bright given the album’s thematic grief. Less than a year later, Sparhawk reworked two of those songs, plus seven other haunting dirges, into a looser, starker set of folk with fellow Duluth band Trampled by Turtles, delivering a work that views that very same grief from a different angle—one unfiltered and more direct in its pain. These songs are underrehearsed and loosely arranged, beautifully sparse in their blend of acoustic instruments and gorgeous vocal harmonies, which on a highlight such as “Get Still” is utterly transcendent. Even in its light touch, its emotional effect is heavy, offering more than enough room to hurt and heal with the help of friends, family and a pretty melody. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Squid – Cowards
The world that Squid envision on third album Cowards looks a little bit like our own—but it’s just a little off. With songs inspired by books about cannibals and reflective of modern society’s seeming lack of self-awareness, it might just as easily be called Villains. But there’s an absurdity here that tints these vignettes in a strange light, bending reality just enough to put an even more absurd spin on human behavior as they build some of their most dazzling musical arrangements around them. Ornate art-pop, minimalist-inspired new wave, buzzing post-punk and swirling psychedelia—it’s all part of Squid’s kaleidoscopic and twisted vision, perhaps a no less perilous world than the one we inhabit but frequently more interesting. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Stereolab – Instant Holograms on Metal Film
There’s a certain sense of comfort in hearing that the first new album from Stereolab in 15 years contains much of what made their back catalog so beloved and continuously rewarding: lush jazz-pop arrangements, twisty time signatures, splashes of Marxist politics, pop-art visual aesthetics, playfully dadaist song titles and a sense of melody that prevails in spite of or perhaps even because of their litany of avant garde influences. It’s identifiably, unmistakably a Stereolab album, reacquainting us with the groop’s playfully cerebral aesthetic, always evolving but identifiably their own, whether drifting into dreamy ambience or firing up some “Electrified Teenybop!” The sound of Instant Holograms on Metal Film after so much, even arriving after all this time, is enough to make you believe no time had passed at all since they brought a close to their first act—the logic of the timeline of their choosing is the only one that matters. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Sumac and Moor Mother – The Film
Boundaries do not exist for artists like Moor Mother and Sumac. Throughout their respective careers, the two acts have defined themselves as genre-defying artists, constantly pushing back against convention and raising the bar on artistic possibility. With The Film, Sumac and Moor Mother combine their genius to present a work of poetic and technical depth. Throughout the record’s runtime, Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother’s lyrics paint illuminating imagery of a world both tearing itself apart and striving to heal. Alongside Ayewa’s words, Sumac craft a remarkable tapestry of noise metal, the band’s performances constructing soundscapes of thundering intensity and somber ambiance. Whereas individually both acts have created incredible albums of their own, with The Film, Moor Mother and Sumac give us a work of art that’s uniquely profound. – Michael Pementel
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Emma-Jean Thackray – Weirdo
Even when facing grief, Emma-Jean, in proper Brit fashion, still knows how to take the piss out of a lead balloon. Between a cheeky album cover with a toaster in the corner of a bathtub she’s luxuriating in, to videos where she drags tastemaker du jour and label boss Gilles Peterson in for a Velveeta version of himself, all of this plays because both parties know that Weirdo, her second long-player, is Thackray’s Songs in The Key of Life and Sandinista! all in one. She runs the voodoo down, confronting being autistic, having ADHD, and mourning the loss of her partner.
With George Duke fusion and Frank Zappa’s sublime acerbic wit, Thackray, the odd-duck polymath who can play the shite out of any instrument she touches, runs through all the stages of despair, jumping from grunge to funk and eventually choir-like thankfulness on the closer, celebrating being alive just for one more day. Weirdo is a one-woman show—she performed, recorded, mixed, produced, and arranged it entirely in her South London flat—and it fulfills funk rule number one as told to me by George Clinton so many years ago: Funk is whatever it needs to be to save my life. We’re thankful Thackray subscribes to the same notion. – John-Paul Shiver
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory – Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory
The first full-length effort from Sharon Van Etten’s new band came out about when the singer/songwriter walked into practice and asking her touring band to just jam. The magic of spontaneity she found in this experience taught her the freedom found in relinquishing creative control and giving into the collaborative spirit. Frequently delving into the early brand of post-punk and new wave that came from New York in the late ’70s, the dynamic range of this album leaves plenty of room for Sharon to flex her vocal cords. She made all the right choices on this album, just by getting a little help from her friends. – Wil Lewellyn
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Whatever the Weather – Whatever the Weather II
Loraine James has created some of the best electronic albums of the decade. Her albums made under her own name draw from drill, grime, emo, and minimalism to create mind-bending music. With her Whatever the Weather alias, however, she cultivates ambient bliss perfect for introverted contemplation. Her sophomore Whatever the Weather releases weaves thoughtful melodic dalliances into verdant synth pads that warble into the middle distance while also allowing some space for the glitched-out rhythms on her clubbier work. Led by top-notch tracks like “3∞C,” “20∞C,” “9∞C,” and “12∞C,” the result is a 12-track testament to the importance of intricate details in the development of mood, ambiance, and aesthetic. -Adam P. Newton
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Eli Winter – A Trick of the Light
Our editor mentioned being impressed by A Trick of the Light in passing so, having a promo myself, I took some time to give it a listen. Less then 5 minutes later, my all-caps email simply read THIS IS THE ALBUM OF THE WEEK, RIGHT? (Ed.: It was!) That feeling in me still stands. Sometimes we look for musicians, singers, lyricists, songwriters who make music that twines around our hearts or maybe once did, years ago. This record is something a little more special. This feels as natural and intuitive as any set of notes you might have ever heard, the kind of thing a musician can feel percolating up and out of their skin with their instrument in their hand. It moves by lines of flight governed by imagination and not formalism; it is avant-garde in a way that bristles with sonic intrigue but almost never feels off putting or abstruse. Opening with a Don Cherry piece and killing it? There’s rarely so bold a proclamation that a jazz player is as great as they know they are and fewer ways to back it up so quickly. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
billy woods – Golliwog
More than a few nightmares slipped through the floorboards to haunt billy woods albums prior to Golliwog, but only with this latest LP has it been delivered in the form of an audio horror film. Golliwog shivers with spine-tingling samples, from the clattering projector reel in “Jumpscare” to the creepy-as-hell child whispering at the end of “Make No Mistake” and the weeping woman that sobs throughout “Waterproof Mascara”—the most unsettling song I’ve heard in some time. Yet despite the presence of familiar tropes and a who’s-who of producers wallpapering the record with wobbly piano loops and dissonant strings, billy woods employs his singular narrative talents to home in on everyday horrors: the banal efficiency of drone warfare, the inevitability of death, the cruel indifference of capitalism. It’s not for the faint of heart, reinforced by a question asked in third-person midway through the album: “Is this as dark as it gets?” The implicit conclusion on Golliwog is that it can always get darker. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Wren – Black Rain Falls
On their third album, Black Rain Falls, Wren confirmed their position as the UK’s best post-metal band. Vocalist Owen Jones’ traumatized, painful vocals soared over the constantly sludgy, occasionally wistful-sounding guitars. While songs like “Metric of Grief” showcased the London quartet’s ability to blast out riffs at full volume, subtler selections like “Precede the Flint” displayed softer, more melancholic elements to Wren’s music, with their downbeat lead guitar lines and samples of spoken-word dialogue recalling bands like Slint and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Black Rain Falls indicated that there’s plenty more musical development and innovation to come from this band. – Greg Hyde
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Young Widows – Power Sucker
11 years after their last album, Easy Pain, on Power Sucker, Louisville noise rock trio Young Widows deftly blend melodic guitars with thick-sounding, down-tuned basses and clean, melodic vocals that recall ’90s desert rockers like Josh Homme. Songs like the title track and “The Holy Net” juxtaposed jagged-sounding guitars with vocals that remained mellifluous while imparting sinister lyrics like “You can taste / The spoiled meats / A mouth full of kingdoms / Choking on yourself.” The slow bass on “Hotel of Crows” set a steady pace for a song that gradually developed into a sonically accomplished finale. – Greg Hyde
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
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