Gold Soundz: January 17, 2025

This week's suggested new music, curated by omg!nyc

Jan 17, 2025

We’re slowly rolling into the year and while it feels like everything is spiraling out of control and the impending doom on next week’s inauguration, sometimes being able to focus on music is the escape from reality we all need. Wishing everyone the best in an already rocky 2025.

Tamara Lindeman, the mastermind behind The Weather Station is back with her latest album today and it follows 2021’s Ignorance and its companion, 2022’s How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars. We’ve already been gifted four tracks from the album and her take on sophisticated pop with elegant touches of synths and other textures makes it a glowing record full of rich sounds and elevated melodies.

Recorded around the same time as his mixtape Faces, Balloonerism is the second posthumous album from rapper Mac Miller and comes five years after his last posthumous record. This one features an appearance from SZA and Thundercat. An underground hit in his fanbase, it’s been a long sought-for project that finally sees the light of day.

Making music from unique and homemade instruments, Blue Lake crafts brilliant jazz-adjacent tunes that don’t quite fit neatly into any one genre, but rather culls together sounds that make something all his own and this mini-LP follows 2023’s excellent Sun Arcs and provides something equally tranquil as it is riveting.

After delaying its release due to her time spent in Broadway’s Hadestown, soulful crooner Yola is finally dropping her new EP, My Way. Even at its short runtime, the collection of songs furthers her sound into deeper rooted rock and funk while still letting her vocal work shine.

It’s been four years since Lucy Dacus’ last solo album Home Video and since then she, alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, went on a world conquering tour as their supergroup boygenius, but now she’s ready to once again embark on her own with a new record. This week she announced her fourth album and shared the two singles “Ankles” and “Limerence” which offer sweeping orchestral movements and her striking lyrics per usual.

At 100 years old, Marshall Allen is proving you’re never too old and it’s never too late as he announces his debut solo album New Dawn. After decades in the Sun Ra Arkestra, he’s been a visionary figure in the jazz world and his latest single features vocal work from Neneh Cherry. It’s a divine tune that incorporates bluesy New Orleans jazz over a soft and gentle groove. A remarkable thing in and of itself.

The last album from My Morning Jacket was their self-titled record in 2021, but now the band have announced their tenth studio album. It’s called Is and features the lovely new single “Time Waited,” a sparkling piano ballad that feels immediately nostalgic and ready to soundtrack a moving montage scene.

Synthy, neo-soul funksters Jungle dropped a new single this week and it’s their usual glitzy dance number that captures the essence of disco with a shiny neon flair. Readying his third record, early in the week Bartees Strange delivered another single that hits with a killer urgency and brings back a solid element of Strange’s vibrant and electric guitar-driven rock that surges with roaring energy.

It’s a little funny that “debut album” keeps getting applied to the upcoming record by Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory since it’s simply the first time that Sharon was included her backing band in the writing process, but nevertheless the third single from this “new” group is another glistening gem that falls along the same trajectory Van Etten has been perfecting over her career and really just confirms the talents that have surrounded her in the past.

At this point, it’s starting to feel like Neil Young releases a “lost” album pretty frequently, so it’s easy to forget he’s still dropping new music as well. After having to cancel the remaining tour dates with Crazy Horse last spring, Neil played a few shows this fall with a newly assembled band called the Chrome Hearts. Now, he’s set to release a whole new record with this group and today we’re getting the first taste, a loud, heavy, rocking new tune called “big change is coming” that sounds like vintage Neil.

Former Orange Juice frontman Edwyn Collins announced his tenth studio solo album and it’s his first since 2019. The opening track and lead single “Knowledge” is a pleasurable jam that fits squarely into the rock cannon and less so the notable new wave which his old band helped to cement.

As you all know, Los Angeles has been devastated by the ongoing wildfires and many musicians and artists have lost their homes and livelihoods. This spreadsheet includes some of the folks who are in need of help and many have likely been featured in this newsletter. If you can, please help those who’ve been impacted by this disastrous situation.

And finally, it's not too often an artist can become their own adjective, but if you say something is Lynchian, it's rather well known as to what that means. Hard to be more iconic than that. Here’s to a legend and the epitome of an artist. RIP David Lynch.

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If you’re a Spotify user, you can listen to these songs (and more from 2025) here!

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