Best New Albums: This Week’s Records to Stream

Paste is the place to kick off each and every New Music Friday. We follow our regular roundups of the best new songs by highlighting the most compelling new records you need to hear. Find the best new albums of the week below, from priority picks to honorable mentions.

Annahstasia: Tether

“And I don’t mind / A little waiting.” That quiet declaration captures the environment that shaped rising folk artist Annahstasia’s full-length debut. She carried the songs that would become Tether for three years of life’s twists, letting them evolve into a stirring meditation on love, loss, and human connection. The record’s minimalist atmosphere leaves space for gut punches that feel both blatant and subdued, with unexpected, paradoxical elements evoking a haunted intimacy. On “Unrest,” her vocals swirl with gentle woodwinds and plucked acoustics, creating an understated tension. Annahstasia collaborated with artists like aja monet and Obongjayar, recording exclusively in live takes, a choice that adds to the album’s lived-in world. Her voice sits at the heart of Tether, the force from which everything else blooms. The stirring vibrato in “Be Kind” and raw delivery of “Villain” hit with the visceral power of early Florence + the Machine. Tether sounds like it was recorded in an empty warehouse, as each track echoes through stacked layers of reverb and delicate instrumentation. At some points, it builds to an overwhelming crescendo (“Take Care of Me”), the effect so gradual you barely notice until you’re submerged. The standout moment comes on “Overflow,” where shimmering acoustics lay the groundwork as Annahstasia’s vocals ring through the track with striking clarity. The song’s poeticism shines in the pre-chorus, where first lines mirror ritualistic weight: “I lay my brain on the hook,” “I lay my head in the grass,” “I lay my heart on the line.” That same poetic spirit carries through to “All Is. Will Be. As It Was,” as spoken-word verses alternate with spare acoustic guitar and piano, stripping the composition down to pure language and tone. —Cassidy Sollazzo [drink sum wtr]

Common Holly: Anything glass

There’s something eerily weightless about “Terrible Hands,” a striking offering from Common Holly’s new record, Anything glass. It seems to hover just above the ground, its bare feet never quite touching soil. The song doesn’t so much begin as it unfurls, like a feeling you can’t quite put language to but can’t shake either, its intangible heft swirling around in your mind for days. Over a trembling piano line and breath-on-glass harmonies, Brigitte Naggar constructs something deceptively fragile: a song about planetary decay, personal complicity, and the quiet, relentless shame of being a human with a footprint. “Are we made of plastic or of stone?” she repeats, the line looping like a prayer, or a bad memory. Naggar has said she thinks of Lady Macbeth’s bloodstained hands when she plays it. You can hear that ghost in the way the track circles itself, haunted by its own refrain: “I’ve got these terrible hands.” It’s plaintive, deliberate, almost childlike in its simplicity, but the emotional weight is geological. Guilt sedimented into song. The arrangement is so spare it nearly vanishes—guitar, flute, piano, each arriving like a breath, or like something you’re trying not to say out loud. By the time the harmonies bloom into full chorus, it feels like a benediction from a world that knows it’s already ending—a eulogy that takes the form of the lost beauty it’s here to mourn. —Casey Epstein-Gross [Keeled Scales]

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Phantom Island

Australia’s busiest psych-rock band is back with their 27th (!!) album, Phantom Island. The record, which comes less than a year after Flight b741, takes leftovers from those sessions and reimagines them through an orchestral fever dream. Where b741 brought listeners high in the sky, Phantom Island shoots them through the stratosphere, with each song chronicling a different tale of adventure. Whether a solo astronaut zipping through the galaxy (“Lonely Cosmos”), or a sailor lost at sea (“Aerodynamic”), the tracklist’s narratives take an introspective turn—pondering loneliness, existentialism, and the healing power of friendship. The pocket symphonies, arranged by Chad Kelly and overdubbed on top of existing jam fragments, provide a sonic contrast that enhances the record’s emotional depth, raising the stakes on even their brightest, most hopeful tracks. It’s all very cinematic; close your eyes for even a few seconds, and you can see the Phantom Island universe start to form around you. (The opening bars of “Spacesick,” a song literally about being nauseous while flying through space, sound like something out of a 1950s Hollywood melodrama.) And King Gizzard does all of this without sacrificing their innate commitment to experimentation. Big-band, Chicago-style rockers are followed by cosmic jazz-funk grooves; sweeping violins weave through fuzzy electric guitar before opening up into a sax-forward blues jam. Where the songs ping-pong between styles, the epicness pulls everything into focus, serving as the thread through the long, strange trip that is Phantom Island. —Cassidy Sollazzo [p(doom)]

neil young and the chrome hearts: Talkin to the Trees

Neil Young once said that all of his music is just one song. At one point, it was a clever rebuttal to a heckler’s criticisms. By now, it’s just a matter of fact. I won’t relegate him to AC/DC status, nor will I misconstrue his consistency as lacking innovation. Talkin to the Trees makes great use of Young’s toolbox and is kind to his history: There are acoustic sparks reminiscent of Comes a Time (“Family Life”); baffling compositional choices not unlike Everybody’s Rockin’ (“Lets Roll Again”); Hawks & Doves-style juke guitar (“Movin’ Ahead”). The gentle melody of “Talkin to the Trees” reminds me of Young’s Unplugged rendition of “Transformer Man,” while the rustic, Oldham-affected country flavor of “Thankful” could close out Harvest Moon. And Young’s 48th album, just like many of the 47 albums that came before it, is marked by contrasts. Folk songs are succeeded by rowdy, muddy guitar storms. One moment, he’s railing against capitalism (“Lets Roll Again”); with his next breath, he’s singing to his wife and children (“Family Life”). When he’s not paying tribute to his tour bus (“Silver Eagle”), he’s debunking rumors that he and his daughter aren’t on speaking terms after his divorce from Pegi Morton in 2014 (“Dark Mirage”). Talkin to the Trees offers some of Neil Young’s strongest writing in years, maybe decades. “First Fire of Winter” sounds like a modern interpretation of “Helpless,” with sobs of drifting pedal steel and puffs of bruised harmonica pulling the melody into a mood you’d swear might have colored any of his recently unvaulted ‘70s albums, especially Chrome Dreams. “Breathe deep now, baby, ‘cause your dreams are your friends,” Young coos. “I will always be here with you, and the nightmares will end.” The vibraphone-wielding “Bottle of Love” sprawls with the same raw-hemmed might as “Danger Bird,” albeit without the head-splitting, chunky guitar solo. Young basks in the mundane on the title track, singing about shopping at farmer’s markets, dreaming dogs, Bob Dylan’s songs, and “waiting around for the world to change.” Its pastoral builds into Young’s finest lyrical conclusion in recent memory: “Might be time, time to get up. Today again, today again, today again.” —Matt Mitchell [Reprise]

Read: “Talkin to the Trees Shows Off Neil Young’s Many Moods”

The Bug Club: Very Human Features

The Bug Club’s fourth studio album in less than three years, and the band’s second effort for Sub Pop Records, is called Very Human Features, and it finds Tilly Harris (bass, vocals) and Sam Willmett (guitar, vocals) mellowing out just a bit—sonically, at least. The band still pulls from a range of energetic influences—rubbery post-punk, serrated indie-pop, DIY garage-rock—but they also take the opportunity to stretch themselves into new, more nuanced directions, basically swinging the pendulum back from last year’s heavier On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System. Don’t misunderstand: Very Human Features still has more than its share of perfectly toe-tapping bangers built from bouncy bass lines, crunchy guitars, and relentless propulsion. “Twirling in the Middle” follows that recipe and mixes in 12 seconds of rocksteady beat, Bug Club-style. The band struts convincingly on “Young Reader” and fuses surf-rock with new wave in “Beep Boop Computers.” Later, “How To Be A Confidante” sounds like Courtney Barnett fronting the Modern Lovers, while “Living in the Future” tumbles and zigzags as Willmett succinctly sums up some of the bleaker aspects of our tired-and-wired modern life. After four albums and a raft of odds and ends, one thing is for sure: The Bug Club knows how to write and perform and record a good, punky pop-rock song. —Ben Salmon [Sub Pop]

Read: “The Bug Club Keep Pace With Themselves on Very Human Features”

Other Notable New Album Releases This Week: Brandee Younger: Gadabout Season; Brittany Davis: Black Thunder; Buscabulla: Se Amaba Así; FearDorian: Out the Past With a Window; Goya: In the Dawn of November; Graham Hunt: Timeless World Forever; James Holden & Waclaw Zimpel: The Universe Will Take Care of You; Lyra Pramuk: Hymnal; Maiya Blaney: A Room With a Door That Closes; Murder by Death: Egg & Dart; Skaiwater: PinkPrint 3 EP; Van Morrison: Remembering Now