Two of the bigger releases this week came as a surprise and dropped on Monday, but even so, it’s another packed week of great new things to discover. The first big surprise came from The National who curated a festival in their hometown of Cinncinati this past weekend and on night one of the fest announced their second album of the year would drop on Monday. Laugh Track, the follow-up to this spring’s The First Two Pages of Frankenstein follows the album’s predictable somber mood and contains the killer new singles the band dropped last month.
The second surprise came from rising pop star Kim Petras who also released an album earlier this year. Problematique is billed as Kim’s original debut album that she claimed to have scrapped and deleted from existence, but this week she posted it for the masses and it’s a stronger performance than we heard earlier in the year and calls back to her radiant early glory and even comes with a guest spot from Paris Hilton.
Post-punk trio Patio have been teasing their long-awaited sophomore record through the release of some great singles and today we get the whole collection (see what I did there?). It’s a solid, confident release that puts the trio on par with so many other bands recalling the stark, dry, and raw sound that has infiltrated the indie community through the years, clearly highlighting their influences while also retaining something fresh, creative, and uniquely their own.
After dropping the (unofficial) Song of the Summer way back in the spring, Kylie Minogue returns with her resounding new album, Tension. It’s a wonderful culmination of so many sounds that Kylie has explored throughout her illustrious career and dabbles in techno, house, electronics, and synth-pop to create a lush and serene dance album that could come from no one else.
It’s been a few years of steady singles, but today is finally release day for Chappell Roan’s full-length debut record, Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess. It’s an album that has been a long-time coming and while we’ve heard so much through the singles, the record is full of some big pop energy.
Producer extraordinaire The Alchemist has been on quite the tear as of late and this week he’s back with a new album with rappers Wiki and MIKE that features the classic dusty groove beats you’d expect along with quality verses from the rappers on hand. Will Butler makes his first outing since leaving his long-time post in Arcade Fire and has teamed up with Sister Squares for a new album of his standard indie sound.
Dropping two albums seems to be a big theme emerging this year and Bar Italia are the latest to join the club. Following their great debut, Tracey Denim, from earlier this year, the band have already announced their sophomore record will be here before the year’s out and shared its first single, the enriching “my little tony.” The song slightly expands their sound, but ultimately sounds like more of the same from a band who’ve already found their solid groove.
Noisey punks Model/Actriz gave us their killer debut record earlier this year as well and while they haven’t joined the two-album club in a single year (yet?), they did share another new song this week. While “Winnipesaukee” shares a name with an infamous New Hampshire lake, according to the band, “the place I’m describing in this song is not based in New Hampshire, but instead is a snowy place I was daydreaming about walking across alone.”
Dua Saleh is perhaps best known for their role as Cal on Sex Education (for which the fourth and final season just dropped on Netflix), but they’re also a musician who takes on a new and inventive approach to R&B. Their latest single, “daylight falls,” is a subdued tune that still finds a groove of delightful pleasure.
After re-emgering this summer with the electro-pop banger “Rush,” Troye Sivan’s latest is a bit more of a breezy pop tune that feels more radio-friendly and less like a raging club track.
Earlier this week, hardcore punk legends Scream (a band that featured a pre-Nirvana Dave Grohl on drummers at one point) announced a new album this week, their first in decades, and it came with the lead single, “DC Special Sha La La.” Sadly, the following day it was announced that the band’s drummer had passed away from cancer. An unbelievable blow made even more tragic given the recent news from the day prior that feels emphasized by the new track’s lyric “as long as we’re together, the only thing that matters.”
Albums:
Doja Cat | Scarlet
The National | Laugh Track
Kylie Minogue | Tension
Patio | Collection
Kim Petras | Problematique
Chappell Roan | Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess
The Alchemist / Wiki / MIKE | Faith Is A Rock
Laurel Halo | Atlas
Devendra Banhart | Flying Wig
CHAI | CHAI
Will Butler + Sister Squares | Will Butler + Sister Squares
Grails | Anches En Maat
Samantha Urbani | Showing Up
The Reds, Pinks and Purples | Build Love
Songs:
Bar Italia | “my little tony”
Model/Actriz | “Winnipesaukee”
Dua Saleh | “daylight falls”
Troye Sivan | “Got Me Started”
Faye Webster | “Lifetime”
Chelsea Wolf | “Dusk”
Johnny Marr | “Somewhere”
Scream | “DC Special Sha La La”
The Breeders | “Divine Mascis” (ft J Mascis)
If you’re a Spotify user, you can listen to these songs (and more from 2023) here!