The 10 Albums We’re Most Excited About in November

It’s the first day of November, which means the holiday season is finally upon us—depending on who you ask. There is still plenty to do before the Christmas season arrives, so don’t roast chestnuts while listening to Frank Sinatra classics just yet—we’ve got an entire month to go. To make the wait worth your while, we’ve got 10 new presents to get excited for—our most anticipated albums of November. This month, we’re awaiting new records from pop trailblazer FKA twigs, rock veterans Coldplay, indie-folk mainstay Mount Eerie and more. Before you begrudgingly visit your relatives, get excited for this month’s most essential albums, according to the Paste music staff and listed below by release date.

November 1

Omni: Networker
Sub Pop

Atlanta post-punk outfit Omni have unleashed their third album and first since signing with Sub Pop Records. Networker was written on tour and across four studio sessions, and it was recorded in a cabin in Vienna, Ga. with their longtime collaborator Nathaniel Higgins. Although Networker isn’t a drastic stylistic departure from 2016’s Deluxe and 2017’s Multi-task, the production is slightly cleaner this time around, lending room for their arrangements to shine. Omni excel at both simple, catchy riffs and unconventional melodic passages, so Networker rests on a sound guitar framework. They shift between moody pouts and funky late-night dance moves, never quite succumbing to existential paranoia or carefree ecstasy. Networker is a reference to social media, and the album contains social commentary on a number of topics including the digital age, which is addressed on songs like “Skeleton Key” and the title track. —Lizzie Manno

Miranda Lambert: Wildcard
Sony Music

Miranda Lambert is consistently involved with the best projects in country music, year after year. In 2016, her album The Weight of These Wings proved yet again that her power as a solo artist is nearly unmatched in her genre. Last year, as one-third of beloved country supergroup Pistol Annies, she left her mark on Interstate Gospel, the story of three heart-broken (and world-wearied) women and their resilience despite it all. This year, she has a songwriting credit on one of the most moving songs on the year’s best country release, The Highwomen’s “My Only Child.” Now for the most recent piece of the puzzle, Lambert is back with another Wildcard, her seventh solo LP. She’s as sassy, smart and vengeful as ever. One minute she’s hiring a bounty hunter on “Way Too Pretty For Prison”; the next, she’s sneaking off for some canoodling on the “Fire Escape.” Somewhere along the way, she’s buying bleach and Tide sticks and telling her friends to buck up on “It All Comes Out In the Wash” and reckoning with dating (or not) in her mid-30s on “Bluebird.” She’s a storyteller and outlaw, a singer of love songs and an ex-boyfriend’s worst nightmare. I’m just glad she keeps taking us along for the ride down this bumpy, red-dirt road. —Ellen Johnson

A Winged Victory For the Sullen: The Undivided Five
Ninja Tune

I dare you to find a more beautiful album than A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s 2011 self-titled debut. It’s as cinematic of a release as you’ll ever hear—ambient, occasionally droning, but always jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Made up of composers Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie, A Winged Victory… is gearing up to release their third album, The Undivided Five, which is meant to be listened to in a grand concert hall, covered in gold plates and velvet seats. With its references to Debussy (track one is actually called “Our Lord Debussy”) and abstract artist Hilma af Klint, it’s as beautiful and complex as anything they’ve released to date. Like a vocal-less Sigur Rós with more classically-indebted influences, they make the most pitch-perfect ambient music imaginable, chock full of sweeping strings that will pull at your heartstrings so hard that they may be ripped off in one fell swoop. —Steven Edelstone

More notable November 1 releases: Earl Sweatshirt: Feet of Clay, Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox: Myths 004, Sudan Archives: Athena, Sean Henry: A Jump From The High Dive, Turnover: Altogether

November 6

Rexx Life Raj: Father Figure 3: Somewhere Out There
Rexx Life/Empire

Rexx Life Raj, one of the brightest young names in the Bay Area hip-hop scene, pairs a larger-than-life personality with a melodic delivery and relatable lyrics that endear you to his stories. Stylistically, he’s a counterpoint to the hyphy beats and extravagance the Bay has been known for, but he’s clearly schooled in the classics with a rhythmic bounce and a penchant for R&B vocals that align the Berkeley rapper as much with the passion of Tony! Toni! Toné! as with the the fashionable swagger of E-40. His third LP features tracks with it-producer Kenny Beats, heat-seeker Russ, singer Kehlani and the Malkovichian video for “No Permission Needed” with Dreamville rapper Bas. The force is strong with this one, pay attention. —Adrian Spinelli

November 8

Kamaal Williams: DJ Kicks
!K7 Records

If you’re not in the know, the iconic DJ Kicks series features a prominent artist putting together a mix of the music that’s been most influential to them in their careers, and it’s always a fascinating exercise in new musical discoveries. Acts like Hot Chip, Kruder & Dorfmeister, DJ Koze and Moodymann have logged notable volumes in the series and now for the 70th release of !K7 Records’ DJ Kicks, multifaceted London keyboardist and producer Kamaal Williams takes a turn. One half of jazz fusion duo Yussef Kamaal, Williams has quickly become a figurehead in the London nu-jazz movement and is revered around the world for his stylistic permutations. His DJ Kicks release promises to be a combination of both his original music along with the dance, jazz and world music that has built the foundation of one of today’s most exciting modern creators. A sampler of the mix has already been released, so peep “Strings (ATL)” for a taste. —Adrian Spinelli

Mount Eerie: Lost Wisdom pt. 2
P.W. Elverum & Sun

Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum has endured unimaginable grief. The former Microphones frontman released the beautifully morbid A Crow Looked at Me in 2017, not long before his wife Geneviève Castrée passed away. In the wake of her death, Elverum kept writing and releasing music, including another album, Now Only, in 2018. He later got engaged to actress Michelle Williams, but as he writes in the liner notes for his new album Lost Wisdom pt. 2, “It didn’t work out and I had to move again. Finding myself staring into another fire, disoriented by the changes, these songs came out.” So, here, we have a new collection of Mount Eerie music, directly inspired by the torrent of changes in Elverum’s own life, and it’s just as strikingly beautiful as anything he’s ever released. Eric’s Trip’s Julie Doiron sings on the record, following Doiron’s and Elverum’s first project together in 2008, the original Lost Wisdom. —Ellen Johnson

FKA twigs: Magdalene
Young Turks

When FKA twigs burst onto the scene in 2014 with LP1, she was widely seen as one of the most groundbreaking new artists in quite some time. The British act molded pop music into her own singular image, pumping out music that barely resembled anything anyone had heard before. Combine that with her extremely artsy and gorgeous music videos, and it seemed like FKA twigs was about to take over the world. After years of tinkering and failing health, the English singer finally returns with Magdalene, her sophomore full-length and first in five years. FKA twigs gave us the first taste with “Cellophane,” a stunning and devastating piano ballad co-written with Nicholas Jaar, but its follow-up, the Future-featuring single “holy terrain,” showcases an entirely different side of FKA twigs altogether. It’s a mainstream pop track that rivals the best of the chart-toppers at the moment. The rest of Magdalene falls somewhere in the middle, and it’s easily one of the best pop records of 2019. —Steven Edelstone

Matt Maltese: Krystal
7476

22-year-old British singer/songwriter is due to drop the follow-up to last year’s Jonathan Rado-produced debut album Bad Contestant. Paste praised the album’s “sultry, retro pop” and “songs of love and heartache, post-modern gripes and velvet-cloaked metaphors of apocalypse.” His forthcoming record, Krystal, takes a more lo-fi approach as it was largely recorded, produced and mixed by Maltese in his bedroom studio in Elephant & Castle. While Bad Contestant was a richly-produced album with dark humor and classic pop instrumentation, Krystal is a DIY-recorded breakup album full of floaty, modern bedroom pop. You’ll still uncover some of Maltese’s sharp wit, particularly in the comically harsh titled “Rom-Com Gone Wrong” and “Curl Up and Die.” —Lizzie Manno

More notable November 8 releases: Girl Ray: Girl, SebastiAn: Thirst, Russian Baths: Deepfake, Je Suis France: Back to the Basics of Love

November 15

Notable November 15 releases: TOY: Songs of Consumption, Bonnie “Prince” Billy: I Made a Place, Molly Burch: The Molly Burch Christmas Album, Helado Negro: Live at KCRW

November 22

Coldplay: Everyday Life
Parlophone

For the past decade, Coldplay have had a bumpy ride. Their first album during that period, Mylo Xyloto, didn’t top its predecessors, but it was their only saving grace with its neon rock and ascendant keyboard pop. The next LP, 2014’s Ghost Stories, was largely a snooze of a breakup record, and 2015’s A Headful of Dreams turned out to be a pop disaster and cheesy call to arms. If that wasn’t disheartening enough, the band also collaborated with The Chainsmokers on the 2017 single “Something Just Like This,” and if that doesn’t signal a bleak turn, I don’t know what does. But four years on from their latest album, Coldplay announced their first double LP, Everyday Life, which is split into two parts—”Sunrise” and “Sunset.” They’ve shared its first two singles—“Arabesque” and “Orphans”—after rumors swirled about the band going “experimental.” Though neither are the avant-garde Coldplay we were perhaps hoping for, “Arabesque” does venture into new arenas—namely saxophone and French vocals. Whether Everyday Life leans more into the stylistic intrigue of “Arabesque” or the tired child chorus refrains of “Orphans,” we’ll have to wait and see. —Lizzie Manno

More notable November 22 releases: Beck: Hyperspace, Leonard Cohen: Thanks for The Dance, Lapsley: These Elements EP

November 29

Jack Peñate: After You
XL Recordings

British singer/songwriter Jack Peñate released his breakthrough debut record in 2007, Matinée—a masterclass in twee-pop that rocketed to the top 10 on the British charts. A little over a year and a half later, he switched things up entirely, releasing one of the better synth-pop records of 2009 in Everything is New, a record with songs—and a collaboration with Adele—like “Tonight’s Today” and “Be the One” that sound as fresh today as the did then. But then, he disappeared, only resurfacing in 2012 with a black and white video of him performing a sparse song called “No One Lied.” So excuse my enthusiasm as I write the following sentence: Jack Peñate is back and he has a new album, his first in a decade. It’s synth-y, it’s dance-y, it’s fun as hell. But it’s also just mindblowing that it’s here at all after all of this time away. —Steven Edelstone

More notable November 29 releases: Felix White: The Edge, Ducks Unlimited: Get Bleak