10 New Albums to Stream Today
Featuring Lana Del Rey, Middle Kids, Chad VanGaalen and more
Photos by Lana Del Rey, Ellen Virgona, Sebastian Buzzalino Music Lists New Albums
Here on the weekend’s precipice, we’re sending you off into Saturday and Sunday with 10 new albums to stream (or purchase!), our top picks of this fine New Music Friday. Lana Del Rey’s much-anticipated seventh record is here, as are notable new releases from Middle Kids, Chad VanGaalen, Loretta Lynn and more. Get into it all below, both this weekend and beyond.
Alice Phoebe Lou: Glow
Alice Phoebe Lou’s latest album Glow is breathlessly captivating, a vaguely beachy and peaceful exploration of the Berlin-based artist’s most personal feelings. Lou said in a statement that she “used to feel quite self-conscious about writing love songs,” but it’s hard to imagine so with masterfully sweet tracks like “Heavy / / Light as Air.” Light piano and subtly warped guitars work in perfect harmony with Lou’s angelic, haunting vocal delivery on tracks like “Mother’s Eyes,” punched up by a simple drum beat. The 12-track album consistently offers a gorgeous crooning performance from Lou, and is enchanting throughout. —Carli Scolforo
Chad VanGaalen: World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener
Chad VanGaalen’s World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener follows his 2017 album Light Information. His newest work is a collage of heavy, Eastern-influenced sounds, serene instrumental works and witty, fantastical folk. On an album written in a time of unease and stagnation, tracks “Where Is It All Going?” and “Golden Pear” embody VanGaalen’s impeccable balance of addressing more difficult feelings with a delightful escapism. While VanGaalen acknowledged in a statement that the album went through some drastically different forms before its release—beginning as a flute record, then morphing into an electronic record, before becoming what it is today—it manages to escape feeling like a mess of warring ideas, and is instead a dynamic journey of feel-good music. —Carli Scolforo
dad sports: I AM JUST A BOY LEAVE ME ALONE !!! EP
Ottawa, Ontario trio dad sports have released their debut EP via Grand Jury Music, a six-track collection of ebullient bedroom pop. The EP features previously released singles “out 4 a breather,” “name & place” and “gf haircut,” which we described as “an irresistibly upbeat blend of emo, indie-pop and guitar rock” upon its release. Singer and guitarist Miguel Plante, bassist Alex Keyes and drummer Keith McDonald tap into early-2000s emo nostalgia with ease, oozing youthful vulnerability and self-consciousness with lyrics like “Aren’t you tired of my voice?” and “I really hope that I’m not driving you crazy,” but their knack for melodies that zip here and there like hummingbirds is the main attraction. As the EP’s title suggests, dad sports still have room to grow—their debut album is currently in the works—and that possibility is part of what makes youth so thrilling. —Scott Russell
Jane Inc.: Number One
Jane Inc., the solo project of Carlyn Bezic, made her ‘80s-infused debut on her new album Number One. The LP offers eight tracks of synth-heavy and experimental indie pop. Standout moments range from the dreamy, fuzzy textures of “Gem” and “Obliterated” to the harder edges of “Steel,” on which dissonant harmonies give a slightly eerie coloring to the track. While Bezic is no stranger to the music business, lending her talents to projects like Ice Cream, Darlene Shrugg and the touring lineup of U.S. Girls, Number One is a standout showing of the artist’s promise as a solo act. —Carli Scolforo
Lana Del Rey: Chemtrails Over the Country Club
Lana Del Rey’s creative vision has always been dangerously insular. Musicians are known for their abilities to tell stories, and Del Rey has demonstrated an affinity for making hers as dramatic as possible. Her 2012 breakthrough sophomore album, Born To Die, placed the singer directly in front of the sweltering and unrelenting spotlight where the artist’s authenticity was torn asunder. She was pioneering this moody, billowy pop sound, yet her Lolita persona stood at the epicenter of the hype. Figuring out who Del Rey is—as primarily shown through her discography—can be as mystifying as the songs themselves. With the release of Chemtrails Over the Country Club, the focus is placed back to the limitations of her universe. This is when the singer is begrudgingly at her best, as she spins tales of heartbreak, misfortune and loneliness. Chemtrails Over the Country Club is a record full of euphoric highs and baffling lows. It’s an enjoyable listen that cinematically celebrates Del Rey’s vocal prowess. But perhaps most importantly, it places her front and center as the scrappy protagonist no one expects to win. Victory is irrelevant, however, since she is exactly where she belongs. —Candace McDuffie
Landlady: Landlady
The self-titled fourth album from songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam Schatz’s (Man Man, Father Figures) Landlady is the art-pop project’s first since 2017’s The World Is a Loud Place. Back in 2014, in the run-up to the band’s second effort Upright Behavior, Schatz (half-jokingly) described Landlady’s sound to us as “adventure pop,” and seven years later, he puts Landlady in similar terms. “It’s almost a choose your own adventure,” he says in the album bio, “Not in terms of what songs people listen to, but what your ears focus on.” There’s plenty for your ears to choose from: Schatz handles lead vocals, keys, saxophone and vibraphone, while Will Graefe, Ryan Dugre and Ian Chang contribute guitar, bass and drums, respectively, with all three also chipping in backing vocals—the result exists somewhere adjacent to Animal Collective and Tune-Yards. Landlady is a generous record that delights in music’s ability to refract life’s pain and pleasure back at us in unexpected ways, and equips its listeners to do the same. —Scott Russell
Loretta Lynn: Still Woman Enough
The 50th studio album from a living country music legend, Still Woman Enough finds Loretta Lynn marking Women’s History Month with an album-length celebration of women in country that features contributions from Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, Margo Price and Tanya Tucker, as well as producers Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash. McEntire and Underwood join Lynn on her new album’s spirited opening title track, while Price and Tucker duet with the country queen on “One’s On The Way” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough” (a reimagining of the title track from her 1966 album of the same name), respectively. Though the album finds Lynn celebrating some of her genre’s foremost new and established stars, Still Woman Enough is, more than anything, a look back at Lynn’s decades-long career—from a new interpretation of her first-ever single, “I’m A Honky Tonk Girl,” as well as a recitation of the title track from her signature 1971 album Coal Miner’s Daughter, which turned 50 in January, Still Woman Enough speaks for itself, as does Lynn’s legacy. —Scott Russell
Middle Kids: Today We’re the Greatest
Early on, it was clear the Australian trio Middle Kids had the sound, the skills and the ambition to become the kind of band that pumps out big, emotionally charged indie-rock anthems on a regular basis. You could hear it in the Mumford & Sons-ish arena-ready stomp of “Never Star” from the band’s 2017 self-titled debut, in the never-ending crescendo of “Edge of Town” from 2018’s Lost Friends, and in the visceral, nursery rhyme-like appeal of “Beliefs and Prayers,” from the 2019 EP New Songs for Old Problems. On their new album Today We’re the Greatest, Middle Kids fully embrace their destiny as anthem-rock prodigies, powered by lead singer/songwriter Hannah Joy’s most personal set of lyrics and the benefits of working in a real studio for the first time. From front to back, the band’s sophomore full-length just sounds great, and whatever it lacks in the element of surprise, it makes up for with consistency. —Ben Salmon
New Pagans: The Seed, The Vessel, The Roots and All
The Seed, The Vessel, The Roots And All, the highly anticipated full-length debut by New Pagans, has finally arrived. The Belfast band’s biting, noisy and raw brand of post-punk is inspired, striking an impressive balance between biting wit and an understated sweetness. This symmetry can be marked in single “Yellow Room,” as frontwoman Lyndsey McDougall effortlessly flows from pleasant verses into powerful, anthemic choruses and a snarling breakdown. The song lyrically takes inspiration from the iconic feminist novella The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and pulls from McDougall’s experiences feeling silenced as a new mother, advocating for an increase in parent-and-baby mental health programs in Northern Ireland. —Carli Scolforo
William Doyle: Great Spans of Muddy Time
Great Spans of Muddy Time is the fourth proper album from art-pop prodigy William Doyle, whose releases as East India Youth earned him a Mercury Music Prize nomination in only his early 20s. Written, produced and mixed by Doyle at his Hackney, London home, the album takes its name from Monty and Sarah Don’s book The Jewel Garden, in which Monty wrote, “Then I was hit by a bout of depression that kept me to my bed for a number of weeks. If nothing else—and one of the points about depression is that there is nothing else for great spans of muddy time—it gave me time to think.” Doyle has embraced the nebulous shape of messy imperfection on this record, a byproduct of the hard drive failure that was more a breakthrough than a setback: “Instead of feeling a loss that I could no longer craft these pieces into flawless ‘Works of Art,’ I felt intensely liberated that they had been set free from my ceaseless tinkering,” Doyle recalls in his album bio. Great Spans of Muddy Time is replete with ideas, the bounty of a tireless musical mind. —Scott Russell