If you’re like us, April felt like a blur, even though in several parts of the country it seemed to pack in multiple false-starts to spring—it was in the 40s in Atlanta this morning. It was another solid month for new music, as well, especially toward the end. Here are the 10 best new albums from April 2023:
Blondshell: Blondshell
Three months ago, I thought it was obvious that Sabrina Teitelbaum—better known by her stage name Blondshell—was going to be a big deal by April. However, I might have undersold Blondshell’s starpower potential at the time, as she just performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon before her self-titled, debut album was even officially out. Most of Blondshell was written at the genesis of COVID in 2020, as a result of, as Blondshell puts it, “not a lot going on and having a lot of big feelings that I need to talk about.” She sings like a classically trained vocalist while injecting her charisma with the bravado of Courtney Love and the pop likability of Avril Lavigne. As a songwriter, she instills a complexity throughout the record that perfectly mirrors her own humanity. She is vulnerable, funny, painfully honest and doesn’t hide behind vague language. Her work is a true foil to that of folks who love metaphors. No two songs sound alike, yet Blondshell is not a collage of subgenres. Instead, it’s Blondshell tinkering with her own renditions of sonic palettes previously mastered by the artists she got really stoked on during the pandemic, like Hole, Nirvana and Patti Smith. It’s indie pop fused with grunge, but it also, thoroughly, rebuffs getting lost among other ’90s alternative imitations. That’s all thanks, in most part, to Blondshell’s songwriting and compositional finesse, both of which allow her to attach a glaze of bubbly acoustic guitar and synths atop the heavy lyrical shit that might necessitate a litany of spell-binding distortion. Blondshell is a triumphant debut from the next indie superstar. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a project that’s more confessional, urgent or needed than this one. —Matt Mitchell
Fenne Lily: Big Picture
It isn’t easy to traffic in subtleties. Where many of today’s best indie-adjacent projects thrive in minimalism—in the style of Florist—or in hooky maximalism—a la Phoebe Bridgers—Fenne Lily seeks a Goldilocks-esque, happy medium, balancing delicate instrumental layers with pensive vocal delivery. On Big Picture, she handles her emotions with caution, as if she writes while wearing oven mitts, and her restraint makes her sharpest lines pierce even deeper. Take the first lyric of opener “Map of Japan”: “I never asked you to change and you’re treating me like I did / The more I’m thinking about it, maybe I should’ve started.” Delivered plainly over sauntering percussion and splendorous guitar, the hard pill she administers goes down sweetly. Big Picture is an exercise in excavating Lily’s last couple of years: A tumultuous period marked by transitions accelerated through 2020’s unending calamities. As she unpacks her memories, there are undeniable pangs of sadness and longing—but there are also moments of tender revelation that betray the soothing quality of memory. Across the album’s 10 tracks, Lily displays her memories with care, inviting listeners to occupy her vantage point, encouraging them to sit in the discomfort she endured and through which she found new possibilities. Big Picture is a successful meditation on tension, an act of sitting in the discomfort. Fenne Lily has become a veritable expert on the subject, and her approach to narrating that process is engaging and novel. One can only hope that these contradicting feelings meet resolution sometime soon, but, for now, the music is thoroughly appealing. —Devon Chodzin
Indigo De Souza: All of This Will End
Indigo De Souza’s music can be funny, sad, sweet or unsettling—sometimes all at once. In touch with her feelings and attentive to those of others, De Souza’s work presents a genuine openness that, while oft-imitated, is truly singular. If Any Shape You Take is notable for the empathetic way it conveyed insecurity, her new album All of This Will End is marked by its presentation of anger and anxiety. Though it pulls from many of the same sonic places, it’s messier—less concerned with traditional structures and genre constraints. The opener “Time Back” is done up with autotune in a way that recalls “17” from two years ago, though it only poses as a pop song for a moment. Despite its sub-two-minute run time, “Time Back” undergoes three separate movements, as De Souza vents about mistreatment—proclaiming that she’s reclaiming the pieces of precious life that were taken from her. Closing out All of This Will End is one of De Souza’s most divine pieces of work. “Younger & Dumber” is an easy song to label “devastating,” because it’s sad, but its power is more restorative than destructive. Yes, she’s singing about pain and about a relationship that took so much from her, but she isn’t just mining or exploiting that pain; she’s reflecting on her past trauma while affording herself grace. —Eric Bennett
Jana Horn: The Window Is the Dream
The tracks on The Window Is The Dream are still as dainty and minimal as ever, but, now, there’s a new edge to all of them. Horn doesn’t get too personal in her storytelling, but she doesn’t need to. The songs evoke visceral emotion through the architecture of her sonic vision. It doesn’t hurt that she has an incredible ecosystem of musicians around her, including Jared Samuel Elioseff, Adam Jones, Jonathan Horne, Daniel Francis Doyle and Sarah La Puerta Gautier. The Window Is The Dream is a bit more electric than Optimism was, thanks to Horne’s splendid guitar work. That aural upgrade pairs well with Horn’s hypnotizing soprano vocals, which are sharper than ever. Though it’s only been a year since Optimism was put back on all of our radars, Horn has grown exponentially between records, making The Window Is The Dream a small triumph at the beginning of—what will likely be—a long, winding career. —Matt Mitchell
JFDR: Museum
Three months ago, I—admittedly—had no idea who or what JFDR was, and that was my first mistake. After spending countless hours consuming six years of work, it became clear that the solo project of Icelandic singer/songwriter Jófríður Ákadóttir is mystifying, and everyone should be ensconcing themselves in a blanket of her sublime, experimental electro-folk. Her sophomore album New Dreams suggests that her approach to creative projects would never reside in the stratosphere of contemporary or traditional musical foundations. At one moment, she is fiddling with Eno-esque ambience; the next, she is conjuring Bon Iver resplendents atop dainty, plucky acoustic guitars. Upon cracking open her beautiful new LP, Museum, I found myself immediately entranced by Ákadóttir’s seamless command of harmonious transgressions. She does not bend to the expectations of vocal arrangements, opting to instead forge her own curve. Lyrically, Ákadóttir pursues the avant-garde, tumbling through evocative imagery, snippets of fear and alienation and reliquaries of romances both new and old. Across nine songs, she deftly hypothesizes what emotional boundaries exist in and beyond her world. It’s an individualistic, tender sermon on healing that arrives as not just a collection of songs, but a full-bodied movement. —Matt Mitchell
Josh Ritter: Spectral Lines
Josh Ritter is like a more open-hearted version of Leonard Cohen. His lyrics draw on the divine but he seems to see a little heaven in all the people around him. The Idaho native’s 11th album Spectral Lines is his most contemplative and ethereal, examining human connection with all its beauty and pain. “What is love anyway but the prettiest bird singing such a bitter song,” he sings on “Horse No Rider,” as woodwinds get caught up in electronic swirls. Things don’t get amped up until the fourth song on the album, “For Your Soul,” a rollicking challenge that demands, “Will you be righteous and strong / By saying when you are wrong / And put aside your own fear / for your soul.” But the 10 tracks here are mostly quiet and slow, giving space to Ritter’s hard-won wisdom. —Josh Jackson
Joy Oladokun: Proof of Life
Joy Oladokun has long been an artist’s artist, collaborating with folks like of Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris and Jason Isbell. With Proof of Life, she’s made a good plea to be an everyone’s artist. The catchy melodies and direct, hopeful songwriting has the kind of broad appeal of the aforementioned artists. With tasty production and guests that range from Christ Stapleton to Maxo Kream to Manchester Orchestra to Noah Kahan, the music lives in that middle space in between pop, country, folk, rock and R&B. This is American music, distilled for this very moment. —Josh Jackson
Kara Jackson: Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love
What the Chicago-based interdisciplinary writer and musician Kara Jackson accomplishes on her debut LP Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love is not “raw,” at least not in the sense that the writing is unrefined or off-the-cuff. Instead, that distinction comes through how the listener is made to feel listening to Jackson’s cosmic country jams. Lines like “Some people take lives to be recognized” are delivered with nonchalance, and the way she belts “don’t you bother me” over swirling harp notes elicits chills. Jackson is communicating her message with precise orchestration for optimal impact. As a listener, you may feel exposed, maybe even singled out. Jackson starts the album with “recognized,” a lo-fi exercise contemplating what people do for validation and why. As she and her piano arpeggiate, she raises the stakes. It contrasts with the lush “no fun/party,” where her theatrical voice balances with a racing guitar and reclining strings. She reckons with men who won’t rise to the occasion and take that out on her and, as much as she laments the loss of companionship, she remembers that the other person is just as liable to miss her, too. Across the album, Jackson’s expert guitar work and lyricism reveals an extensive archive of her relationships with peers, partners and more who she’s entrusted with her love. Many of those people are men who’ve mishandled that love. When Jackson is solo, she is a force. With her friends’ help, the result is divine. —Devon Chodzin
The National: First Two Pages of Frankenstein
For the first time in four years, Brooklyn rock band The National have returned with new music. First Two Pages of Frankenstein, the follow-up to the band’s critically acclaimed 2019 record I Am Easy To Find, will arrive on April 28 via 4AD. The record will be the National’s ninth studio album since their self-titled debut in 2001 and will feature guest appearances from Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift. First Two Pages of Frankenstein serves as the band’s first new music since their 2021 single “Weird Goodbyes,” which featured vocals from Bon Iver. The first single teased from First Two Pages of Frankenstein, “Tropic Morning News,” points to the National taking an upbeat direction akin to their 2013 project Trouble Will Find Me. With glittering guitars, atmospheric synths and Matt Berninger’s sprawling vocals, “Tropic Morning News” is an amalgamation of everything that makes a perfect National song work: fine-tuned arrangements, contemplative yet vulnerable lyrics from Berninger and a great, soul-awakening Aaron Dessner guitar part. —Matt Mitchell
Wednesday: Rat Saw God
There’s something about the South that’s sort of impossible to explain. It has this je ne sais quoi that hovers like the sticky humidity-you can’t pinpoint it, but you can feel it in the air. It comes in flashes, the machine guns, crushed Four Loko cans, stock car races, Bible verse bumper stickers and awkward glances around the classroom when you get abstinence-only sex education, feel like heat lightning. It’s sacrilegious and sacred, it’s pregaming in a church parking lot before heading to the high-school football game. Wednesday, get it. They lived it. On their latest album, Rat Saw God, they capture the off-kilter magic of one of the most confusing places. Lyrical precision is what makes the record shine, the fact that singer Karly Hartzman can recall the exact video game, in this case, Mortal Kombat, that someone was playing when her nose started bleeding at a New Year’s Eve party she didn’t even want to be at. There’s something striking in how sentimental the details feel, how she can weave these intimate narratives out of “piss-colored bright yellow Fanta,” and a Planet Fitness parking lot that makes their country-gaze so alluring. There are moments on the album where Hartzman’s one-liners serve as a knock-out punch. Whether they express it through private symbolism or get straight to the point, it doesn’t matter. Wednesday is the woman who thinks “America” is “a spoiled little child” but still gives out king-sized candy bars on Halloween. They’re the kids with crew cuts and the rest stop on the way to Dollywood. They’re the exhilaration of sneaking into the neighborhood pool and only going to school three days a week. They’re everything they document on Rat Saw God and more. —Samantha Sullivan