Best New Releases, July 11: Wet Leg, Clipse, and more
The three-day weekend is in the rearview and we’ve arrived at another Friday full of essential new listens. Among this week’s Best New Releases are the long-awaited return of Clipse, the highly anticipated sophomore album by Wet Leg, plus the surprise arrival of our Album of the Week by Pygmy Lush, and so much more. Check out the week’s best new releases below.
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Wet Leg – Moisturizer
Wet Leg returns with the follow-up to their infectious self-titled debut album, featuring a set of songs that’s loose and eclectic but no less fun, like the standout first single, “Catch These Fists.” In our review of the album, Wil Lewellyn said, “If anything, they delivered a sophomore album that’s less mainstream, building on their successful self-titled debut while allowing themselves room to grow as a band.” -Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Clipse – Let God Sort ‘Em Out
Clipse, the Virginia Beach rap duo of Malice and Pusha T, have returned with their first new album in 16 years, produced by Pharrell Williams. And it comes with a long list of high-profile guests: Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the Creator, Nas, John Legend and more. But it’s a more personal set of songs for the two siblings, who are a little older and who have each taken different paths since 2009’s Till the Casket Drops, Pusha in particular having delivered a stellar string of solo albums. It’s been a while, but the duo are in top form here, and on moments like “E.B.I.T.D.A.” and “Let God Sort Em Out/Chandeliers,” the combination of Pharrell, Push and Malice realigns into a sound as strong as you remember it. -Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)
Pygmy Lush – TOTEM
Virginia’s Pygmy Lush, featuring members of pageninetynine, played their first shows in seven years last fall and have since begun work on their first new music in over a decade. TOTEM was recorded in 2016 but never released until now, and it’s our Album of the Week. In our review, we said, “what’s here, however much of a sharp turn away from the band’s gorgeously captured gloom of earlier records, is not only excellent enough to raise the question of why it was ever shelved in the first place … but offers a bridge between pageninetynine’s incendiary chaos and Pygmy Lush’s prettier balladry.” -Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
The Swell Season – Forward
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová first came together as The Swell Season 20 years ago, and the duo earned the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2007 for “Falling Slowly” from Once. But it’s been a long 16 years since their last album Strict Joy, which makes their return all the more noteworthy. Forward is, as expected, a gentle and gorgeous album of ballads marked by mesmerizing vocal harmonies and deeply moving songwriting. But it harbors some darker, bluesier moments like “Great Weight,” with great use of saxophone and a grittier edge. It’s a wonderful thing to hear this duo back together again. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Ólafur Arnalds & Talos – A Dawning
Composer Ólafur Arnalds is best known for ambient and modern classical sounds, but his latest is a collaboration with Talos that lends vocals and a subtle pop sensibility to his ethereal sounds. In our review, Langdon Hickman said, “Talos provides the final human component, the one that keeps this record from being merely a new age-inflected orchestral/electronic hybrid record that provokes unbidden emotionality in certain types of us.” – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)
Matt Jencik & Midwife – Never Die
What an impact a whisper can make in a world that won’t shut the fuck up. While Matt Jencik is listed first in the collaborative duo’s billing, one could easily mistake Never Die for a proper studio effort by Madeline Elizabeth Johnston’s Midwife. Muted, melancholic, sometimes meandering and always mysterious, hers is a tranquilizing sound. Perfectly picked partner in crime Matt Jencik substantially reworked a substantial amount of material that both musicians believed needed further development. Because Jencik is as well-acquainted as Midwife with minimalism—thanks to his stints with Slint and Don Caballero—he connected with Midwife’s incomplete creation and knew the proper ways to fix it. In helping shape the identity of the record, he probably deserves a producer credit on Never Die as well. Not only is Matt Jencik & Midwife’s minimalistic approach to songcraft captivating, so too are the personal sentiments that Johnston speaks so quietly that they demand close attention. Even though a funereal quality coats the record, and even though death is the album’s central focus, Never Die is a beaut. –Kurt Orzeck
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Flooding – Object 1
Flooding left a big impression with their 2023 album Silhouette Machine, merging Codeine-like slowcore with heavy eruptive bursts of noise rock, the combination of which likewise forms the sonic terrain of new EP Object 1. Though much more concise, Object 1 finds the group employing grace as a form of tension, arriving upon even more menacing bursts of noise and aggression as a result. For Flooding, a slow burn is just a means toward total destruction. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Kokoroko – Tuff Times Never Last
London collective Kokoroko first garnered buzz with their self-titled 2019 EP before delivering their first proper LP Could We Be More in 2022, each of which showcased their knack for merging jazz instrumentation with Afrobeat rhythms and soulful vocals. Tuff Times Never Last follows suit, a lushly arranged compendium of grooves and gorgeous headphone layers. It doesn’t feel quite right to simply pigeonhole them as “jazz,” though that’s certainly part of it—the genres are fluid, but the beauty in their sound is constant. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Molly Joyce – State Change
Molly Joyce is a fearless experimentalist whose sonic and deeply personal probings yield a distinct form of tension and release that proves cathartic for composer and listener. Over the course of her singular oeuvre, Joyce has used disability as a creative springboard to realize her vision in which music is a healing force, however unsettling. As a child, Joyce suffered severe injuries to her left arm and hand in a car accident. That traumatic event, the surgeries that followed and the life-altering challenges it brought to playing traditional instruments has helped shape her path as an artist. State Change, Joyce’s stunning third album, serves as a musical travelogue that, with each dreamlike piece, recounts the day of the accident and each surgery and medical procedure that followed. The meditative and ethereal droning and throbbing shapeshifters Joyce sculpts–intensified by her angelic voice reciting text from the actual medical reports–hits at emotional levels few can touch. State Change runs the gamut, from near-tragic circumstances to ultimately hope and optimism and Molly Joyce chronicles her journey with a human and artistic spirit that is truly something to behold and to be inspired by. – Brad Cohan
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Joey Waronker & Pete Min – King King
The L.A. jazz and improvised music scene is one big hotbed bustling with some of the most adventurous music out there led by veteran greats and rising stars alike. Add Joey Waronker and Pete Min into that fray of sonic exploring game-changing heads. King King is the duo’s epically trippy debut and it further cements L.A.’s vast grip as an unstoppable force of the jazz and experimental underground. The union of Waronker, an in-demand drummer who’s worked with the likes of R.E.M., Elliott Smith and Beck and multi-instrumental dynamo and producer and Colorfield Records label head Min is the electro-jazz collaboration you’ve been waiting for. The album’s 11 tracks, sublimely constructed by these two studio pros, are so liquid and chill, it’s easy to fall under its spell and escape to the otherworld. With heady contributions from local scene stalwarts like guitarist Jeff Parker of Tortoise, saxophonists Josh Johnson and Nicole McCabe and other luminaries, Waronker and Min have made a record that unmistakably manifests the forward-looking creativity and serene vibe of their beloved hometown. – Brad Cohan
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
