Best New Releases, March 15: Four Tet, Gouge Away, and more
Best New Releases took a week off last week for a much needed holiday, but not because there weren’t some great new releases (you guys have heard that amazing new Kim Gordon record, right? Right?!) But we’re back this week with a whole mess of great new records from the likes of Four Tet, Kacey Musgraves and Gouge Away, plus an unexpected jazz and art-punk collaboration, an innovative footwork producer’s latest, and so much more. Check out this week’s best new releases.
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Four Tet – Three
Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden has made a habit of releasing a handful of singles each year, either solo or in collaboration with artists like Burial, William Tyler, or Skrillex and fred again… Three contains some of those singles, notably closer “Three Drums,” which appeared on our Best Songs of 2023 list, but it likewise offers covers a broad swath of the veteran producer’s strengths, from gorgeous downtempo on opener “Loved” to the upbeat house pulse of standout “Daydream Repeat.” A new Four Tet album is always cause for celebration and this is no exception. We’ll have more on this one soon.
Listen at Bandcamp
Buy at Turntable Lab
Gouge Away – Deep Sage
After a six-year pause, Gouge Away have delivered the follow-up to their excellent 2018 album Burnt Sugar, featuring more personal reflections, more nuanced post-hardcore arrangements, and plenty of searing energy for good measure. It’s currently our Album of the Week, and in our review of the album, we said, “Deep Sage finds Gouge Away allowing more room for quiet, with [vocalist Christina] Michelle screaming a bit less than she used to, but their music’s never sounded more urgent.” And while you’re at it, read our interview with Gouge Away about their return.
Listen at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well
After broadening her pop ambitions with 2018’s Golden Hour and delivering a reflection on divorce with 2021’s Star-Crossed, Kacey Musgraves returns with an album that’s earthy and direct, steeped in acoustic guitars and catchy melodies. Neither a traditional country album nor one of her most wildly eclectic, Deeper Well nonetheless puts her songwriting front and center, which on moments like the jangly opener “Cardinal” and the breezy “Moving Out,” showcase Musgraves at her best. And understated moments like “Giver/Taker” reveal just how haunting her songwriting can be at its most spacious. Deeper Well is Musgraves at her most understated, but sometimes that can be a much needed breath of fresh air.
Listen at Spotify
Buy at Rough Trade
Heavee – Unleash
Chicago producer Heavee came up in the footwork collective Teklife, which has also included members such as DJ Spinn, RP Boo, and its late co-founder, DJ Rashad. With his new album Unleash, Heavee juxtaposes the frantic rhythms of footwork against an eclectic backdrop of sounds that range from buzzing bass and ethereal synths to more intricate jazz-influenced arrangements. And yet the beats themselves, while clocked at escalating BPMs, often feel as featherlight as the gauzy textures he wraps around them, crafting a record engineered for zero-gravity dancefloors. It’s heavenly.
Tierra Whack – World Wide Whack
Philadelphia rapper Tierra Whack made a name for herself with 2018’s Whack World, a landmark 15 minutes of rap in which each song ran a lean one-minute apiece. World Wide Whack expands on that streamlined template a bit, showcasing a broader range of sounds (and track lengths) that finds her embracing both atmospheric R&B on highlights like “Burning Brains” and thumping hip-house bangers like “Ms Behave.” It’s a mostly low-key affair with moments of high energy thrills and occasional psychedelic pop excursions like “Imaginary Friends.” Whack’s world is rapidly expanding and encompassing even more than she initially revealed, and it’s hard not to get the sense that there’s so much more where this came from.
Listen at Spotify
Buy at Rough Trade
The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis – The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis
The collaboration between The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis isn’t one that most of us would have expected to work as well as it does—pairing a veteran jazz saxophonist with an art-punk band featuring Fugazi’s rhythm section, Joe Lally and Brendan Canty—but it’s not necessarily that surprising in context. After all, Lally and Canty know their way around a groove better than most, and the blend of jazz and rock here isn’t far off from recent collaborations like the newly released Church Chords record, or Pharoah Sanders’ work with Sonny Sharrock, or The Ex’s collaboration with Getatchew Mekuria. There’s as much rock here as jazz, and as much bombast as nuance. But what they create here is fluid and infectious, a seamless meeting of two musical worlds that makes you wonder why this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often.
Listen at Spotify
Buy at Rough Trade
Lustmord – Much Unseen Is Also Here
For more than four decades, Welsh producer Lustmord has built a reputation as a master of dark ambient music, crafting eerie and unsettling soundscapes made for distant realms and hellish climes. Much Unseen Is Also Here is made of similarly harrowing stuff, an album of explorations into darkest space and menacing peers into the bleakest depths of the soul, with titles like “Entrails of the God Machine” to match its menacing sound. Yet there’s a subtlety about Lustmord’s latest that sets it apart from similarly caustic creators like Ben Frost, for instance, whose cliffs and peaks are far more jagged. Much Unseen Is Also Here carries more of an unspoken danger than a palpable sense of peril, a knowing expectation of what lies ahead rather than an explicit depiction of it.
