10 New Albums to Stream Today
Photos by David McClister, Jackie Lee Young & Denée Segall Music Lists New Albums
Sweating and sunburned, we’re finally on the other side of July, the best month of summer and music’s annual dry-spell. Things slow down in July—artists tour, everyone leaves town on the weekends and fans chill out to summer bop playlists and split for festivals. Releases are sparse. But now it’s August—August! The summer is breathing its last breath, the school year is imminent and the music release calendar is glowing once again. This month’s first Friday is an especially packed one. We’ve got big new releases from buzzy bedroom pop star Clairo, country singer Tyler Childers and Aussie rock exports The Teskey Brothers, as well as records from smaller names (who are just as big on sound) like Atlanta’s floral print, Austin’s Molly Burch and L.A.’s Tennis System. Check out all the best stuff out on Aug. 2 below.
1. Clairo: Immunity
It would be easy to write off a singer/songwriter who first rose to prominence on YouTube as just a flash in the pan, but 20-year-old Claire Cottrill (aka Clairo) appears to have some staying power. Cottrill has a saintly intrigue and cool confidence, and slick, yearning pop songs to match. Songs like “4EVER,” “Pretty Girl” (which currently boasts 34 million YouTube views) and her best track yet “Bags” are expectedly moving, but what’s most surprising is her magnetic stage presence—she gracefully glides across the stage like a veteran. Her debut album, Immunity, which she co-produced with Rostam, is finally here. —Lizzie Manno
2. floral print: floral print
Pay attention, because guitar pop experimenters floral print are poised to hit your radar any day now. This is the band’s self-titled EP and second Tiny Engines release (behind 2017’s Mirror Stages), and it’s packed with more dynamic sounds than anything the trio have released before. Bassist Joshua Pittman joins the band on this record, adding warmth to their already melodic sound. —Ellen Johnson
3. Molly Burch: Ballads EP
The follow-up to her 2018 sophomore release First Flower, the breathy, romantic “Only One” serves as the A-side to Molly Burch’s new 7” Ballads, out now on Captured Tracks. “I decided to call the 7” Ballads as an homage to the powerful female vocalists I idolized growing up,” Burch said. “Seems sort of classic. Both songs really embody what I love to do—sing with emotion, and drama, and romance, taking as much time as I need.” —Savannah Sicurella
4. Penny and Sparrow: Finch
If Bon Iver had grown up around Waffle Houses and the kind of humidity so ruthless it makes oxygen feel tangible, he might have written “Eloise,” the first single from Finch. While “Eloise” feels comfortably nostalgic for anyone who’s grown up to the sound of cicada chatter, Penny and Sparrow’s new album, Finch ultimately delves into something more vulnerable and less romantic: reckoning. A relatable process for many, Finch offers up a perspective shift on everything from masculinity and sex to religion and divorce. “Almost everything changed for us in these last two years,” says Andy Baxter, one half of the folk duo. “It was a painful experience in a lot of ways, but it was also a joyful one.” —Lindsay Thomaston
5. Slaughter Beach, Dog: Safe And Also No Fear
The brain-child of Jake Ewald of Modern Baseball, Slaughter Beach, Dog’s Safe And Also No Fear marks Ewald’s first venture into full-fledged collaboration. Unlike 2017’s Birdie, where Ewald played every instrument, he spent a full year collaborating with bassist Ian Farmer (Modern Baseball), Nick Harris (All Dogs) and Zach Robbins (Superheaven) to construct the project’s unique sound, a blend of pop music, indie rock and folk unlike anything he’d ever produced before. Safe And Also No Fear is rooted in vague sketches of anxieties and confusion, and Ewald stands at its center questioning everything he knows about himself. “Well, since when can an honest man get high after a day of honest work?” he asks on “Good Ones,” crying out as the good ones “aren’t quite as good as you had recalled.” —Savannah Sicurella
6. Tennis System: Lovesick
“Turn, ” drenched in distortion, fervent electric guitar solos and existential lyricism, appears on Lovesick, Tennis System’s third full-length LP. The L.A.-based shoegaze band is made up of Matty Taylor (guitar/vocals), Sam Glassberg (bass) and Garren Orr (drums). They previously released Technicolour Build in 2014 and Teenagers in 2011. Regarding their forthcoming record, said to feature themes of self-doubt and frustration, Taylor said in a statement, “Everyone finds something they fall in love with, for me it was music. I’m always searching for that feeling I had as a child discovering it for the first time. Even though so much of this album is about frustration, at the end of the day it’s really about having a passion for something.” —Marissa Matozzo
7. The Teskey Brothers: Run Home Slow
When you hear The Teskey Brothers’ singer John Teskey flawlessly making his way through the band’s soul and blues rock songs, with Joe Cocker-like rasp, you’d never guess this is a band from Melbourne, Australia. But if you’re a fan of Nathaniel Rateliff’s style of Americana, or have latched on to a group like Durand Jones & The Indications the way we have this year, then The Teskey Brothers are no doubt your next stop. With jams like “So Caught Up” and “Hold On,” The Teskeys masterfully gravitate to everything from jazz and dixieland to delta blues and gospel. And the Glassnote Records-released Run Home Slow showcases the force this group is becoming on their sophomore album. —Adrian Spinelli
8. Ty Segall: First Taste
If First Taste is your, well, first taste of Ty Segall, it might be easy to brush him off as self-indulgent noise rock. The album is overly-produced and as gaudy as a paisley shirt, sure, but it’s also immensely compelling, inventive and fascinatingly unhinged, all while still maintaining a tight control and an understanding of how to reign it all in to create an actual song from the mire of noise. —Libby Cudmore
9. Tyler Childers: Country Squire
It’s a big week for country singer/songwriter Tyler Childers. Not only is he playing two sets at Pickathon this weekend, but he’s also dropping his new album at the fest. The Kentucky native’s third LP and first for RCA Records is a letter to the folks back home in Lawrence County: “I hope that people in the area that I grew up in find something they can relate to,” he said in the album announcement. “I hope that I’m doing my people justice and I hope that maybe someone from somewhere else can get a glimpse of the life of a Kentucky boy.” Produced by fellow Kentuckian Sturgill Simpson and studio ace David Ferguson, and recorded at The Butcher Shoppe in Nashville, Country Squire features nine new songs written by Childers. If lead single “House Fire” is any indication, it’ll sound something like a space-age square dance, one we’d absolutely attend. —Ellen Johnson
10. Young Guv: GUV I
On “Patterns Prevail,” Young Guv singer Ben Cook suggests that maybe we should just relinquish ourselves to the poetry of the universe. “I can hear the whispers baby / All these secrets drive me crazy / Colours shift between the shading / I can see patterns prevailing,” he whispers during the song’s vibrant and warped conclusion. It’s the first cut from Young Guv’s just-announced new record GUV I. The first volume of a two-part LP series, the album is described as “a collection of staggeringly poignant and infectious pop tunes” that Cook asserts is just like “people-watching in a foreign country in the morning, trying not to cry from the overwhelming feeling of sadness and happiness.” —Harry Todd