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Albums Out Today: Lady Gaga, Alan Sparhawk, Christian Lee Hutson, Merce Lemon, and More

by Konstantinos Pappis

In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on September 27, 2024:

Lady Gaga, Harlequin

Lady Gaga has dropped Harlequin, her companion album to Joker: Folie à Deux, which hits theaters next week. Announced just days ago, the album is billed as “LG 6.5.” rather than the proper follow-up to 2020’s Chromatica. It mostly features covers of standards that soundtrack the new film, as well as some brand new songs, including ‘Happy Mistake’ and ‘Folie à Deux’. “I kind of had this deep experience with the character and she just didn’t really leave me creatively and I decided I wanted to make a whole album inspired by her,” Gaga told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “She’s a really complex woman and I think, particularly as a woman in music and a female producer, it was really fun to go, ‘This album will be and I will be what I want, when I decide, whenever I feel like it. If I want it to be blues, it’ll be blues. If I want it to be funk, it’ll be funk. If I want it to be soul, it’ll be soul.'”

Alan Sparhawk, White Roses, My God

Low’s Alan Sparhawk has issued a new album under his own name. White Roses, My God marks his first release since the death of his wife and bandmate Mimi Parker in 2022, and was recorded at 20 Below Studios in Duluth, Minnesota. The 11-track LP was co-produced and engineered by Alan Sparhawk and Nat Harvie, mixed by Nat Harvie, and mastered by Heba Kadry; his and Parker’s son, Cyrus, plays bass on several of its songs, while their daughter, Hollis, contributes backing vocals. The singles ‘Can U Hear’, ‘Get Still’, and ‘Heaven’ preceded the release.

Christian Lee Hutson, Paradise Pop. 10

Christian Lee Hutson has released a new album, Paradise Pop. 10, via ANTI- Records. The follow-up to 2022’s Quitters was co-produced by frequent collaborators Phoebe Bridgers, Marshall Vore, and Joseph Lorge, and also features guest vocals from Bridgers, Katy Kirby and Maya Hawke. The record takes its name from a real location deep in the woods of Parke County, Indiana, near where Hutson spent part of his childhood. “It occurred to me while making this record, that most of our lives we spend waiting to ‘be the people we were always meant to be,'” Hutson explained. “I wanted to name this record after that town because it always symbolized an arrival to me. It was the ‘when’ that I looked forward to as a child. ‘When’ it all made sense and I was finally who I was meant to be.”

Merce Lemon, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild

Merce Lemon has released a new album called Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. The Pittsburgh-based singer-songwriter previewed the 9-song effort – her first since 2020’s Moonth – with ‘Backyard Lover’ and the title track. “I had this idea that I wanted to make more music, but it just wasn’t coming naturally,” Lemon explained in our Artist Spotlight interview. “So by taking some space, it was almost like it called back to me. I needed that feeling to be very genuine, without the pressure of anything around me, even my own brain telling me I had to make something. I think it came out of necessity, of just needing to get feelings out more than wanting to make an album or something.”

Xiu Xiu, 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips

Xiu Xiu have followed up last year’s Ignore Grief with a new LP, 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips. The record was preceded by the singles ‘Arp Omni’,  ‘Veneficium’, and ‘Common Tool’. “With the last several records, we always have – this is a horrible word to use – talismans that guide us in ways we don’t understand or necessarily want to,” the band’s Jamie Stewart said in our inspirations interview about the album. “These objects sit around the studio or at our desks or whatever. Switchblades were some of those. That’s why we titled the record after a specific one.”

Naima Bock, Below a Massive Dark Land

Naima Bock has returned with a new record, Below a Massive Dark Land, following up 2022’s Giant Palm. The album primarily produced by Jack Ogborne (Bingo Fury) and Joe Jones, with additional production and arrangement by Oliver Hamilton (caroline, Shovel Dance Collective) and Bock herself. Unlike Giant Palm, which was arranged with collaborator Joel Burton, the writing of the new LP was mostly a solitary affair. “After me and Joel stopped working together, it was an impossibility to even fathom doing arrangements myself, but then I started learning violin,” Bock explained. “Playing it isn’t easy but writing melodies on it is. I think I needed it, to be able to feel proud of something. Like, that’s me! That feels good.” The singles ‘Kaley’, ‘Further Away’, ‘Gentle’, ‘Feed My Release’, and ‘Moving’ were previously released.

fantasy of a broken heart, Feats of Engineering 

Feats of Engineering is the debut full-length by fantasy of a broken heart, the project of Al Nardo and Bailley Wollowitz, who have played in bands including Sloppy Jane, Water From Your Eyes, and This is Lorelei. It features contributions from Nate Amos and Jordana, as well as the previously released singles ‘AFV’, ‘Ur Heart Stops’, and ‘Loss’. “Heart is a reflection on the never-ending engine of day and night, separation and reconciliation, and the collective depression felt while marching to the coffee pot,” Wollowitz said in a statement about ‘Ur Heart Stops’. “While it started as a more personal dialogue between Al and I, I think the song ultimately became an anthem of perseverance for anyone who struggles to get out of bed every morning. We still do.”

SOPHIE, SOPHIE

SOPHIE’s self-titled posthumous album has arrived via Transgressive and Future Classic. Spanning 16 songs, the project features collaborations from artists such as Nina Kraviz, Kim Petras, Juliana Huxtable, Jozzy, BIG SISTER, BC KINGDOM, Popstar, Evita Manji, and more. “This album has always told the story of Sophie’s musical journey, a cacophony of skill and creative vision eclipsing time and genre,” the late producer’s family wrote. “Her unique sound world moves at an emotional level, encouraging the listener to intuitively embrace the ever-evolving landscape of light and dark, soft and hard, to the end of self-love and joyful self-acceptance. Emphasising contradictions of sound and material, Sophie’s work supersedes the pure aural to create the dimension she dreamed of.”

Trace Mountains, Into the Burning Blue

Trace Mountains, the project of LVL UP’s Dave Benton, has a new album out called Into the Burning Blue. Benton worked with Craig Hendrix (Japanese Breakfast) on the new LP, which follows 2021’s HOUSE OF CONFUSION includes the advance tracks ‘In a Dream’, ‘Friend’, and ‘Hard to Accept’. The album features contributions from Jim Hill (Slight Of), Josh Marré (Blue Ranger), and Meg Duffy on guitar, Logan Roth (Slaughter Beach, Dog) on synths and piano, and Jill Ryan on vocals, flute, and saxophone.

Efterklang, Things We Have In Common

Efterklang have returned with a new record, Things We Have In Common, which completes the trilogy that began with 2019’s Altid Sammen and continued with 2021’s Windflowers. The album features collaborations with Beirut, Mabe Fratti, and Sønderjysk Pigekor, as well as the return of Rune Mølgaard, who left the band in 2007 and co-wrote seven of the nine songs on the album. During his absence, Rune fell in love with a woman who had grown up in the Mormon Church before cutting ties with the religion. “It became a completely therapeutic process for me,” Mølgaard shared. “When we write music together, it happens from a genuinely curious place, in a shared experience of the moment.”

Adeline Hotel, Whodunnit

Dan Knishkowy has issued a new album under the Adeline Hotel moniker, Whodunnit, through Ruination. Exploring the dissolution of a marriage, the follow-up to October 2023’s Hot Fruit was preceded by the songs ‘Grief’, ‘I Will Let Your Flowers Grow’, and the title track. Katie Von Schleicher produced the album, which features drummer Sean Mullins (Moon Mullins, Sam Evian), keyboardist Winston Cook-Wilson (Office Culture), bassist Carmen Quill (Scree, Tilt), and vocalist Jackie West. “Even though I was going through something that was objectively hard, I didn’t feel lonely,” Knishkowy explained. “I was being freed to find myself, to build my own connection with the world that had been lost.”

Origami Angel, Feeling Not Found

Washington, D.C. duo Origami Angel have come out with a new album, titled Feeling Not Found, through Counter Intuitive Records. The follow-up to the duo’s 2023 mixtape The Brightest Days was recorded with Will Yip and includes the previously unveiled tracks ‘Dirty Mirror Selfie’, ‘Where Blue Light Blooms’, and ‘Fruit Wine’. “I was looking at America as this digital silicon hellscape,” Ryland Heagy explained. “What came to me was, in this amalgamation, this sea of randomness, I felt not found, you know? It speaks to where we were as a band, and where I was as a person. For about three years until we finished this album, I was in a very, very lost place in my life, and everything felt very random and unstable.”

Rahim Redcar, HOPECORE

Rahim Redcar, the artist formerly known as Christine and the Queens, has announced a new album called HOPECORE. It follows 2023’s PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE and 2022’s Redcar les adorables étoiles. “Hopecore was made with tears, blood, and mostly an unwavering faith in the raw, pure expression of the soul,” Redcar explained in a press release. “Music took here its full prophetic vastness, got wilder, and called for an absolute quest where no one else came in to tamper with intentions. A call of the flesh, a prayer for justice and freedom.”

Kate Bollinger, Songs From a Thousand Frames of Mind

Kate Bollinger has unveiled her debut LP, Songs From a Thousand Frames of Mind, via Ghostly International. Collaborators on the album include Jacob Grissom, Adam Brisbin, Matthew E. White, and Sam Evian. Tthe LA-via-Richmond musician previewed it with a series of the singles: ‘To Your Own Devices’, ‘Any Day Now’, ‘What’s This About (La La La La)’, ‘Lonely’, and ‘Sweet Devil’. “Songwriting is kind of like dreaming,” Bollinger explained. “They both tend to reveal to me what I don’t yet consciously know. I thought of the album title before most of the songs were written, but it became a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way that tends to happen in a lot of my music.

Other albums out today:

allie, Every Dog; Mustafa, Dunya; Being Dead, Eels; Neva Dinova, Canary; Ezra Collective, Dance, No One’s Watching; Ben Böhmer, Bloom; Hildur Guðnadóttir, Joker: Folie à Deux (Score From the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack); William Basinksi, September 23rd; Tommy Richman, COYOTE; MICHELLE, Songs About You Specifically; Creed Bratton, Tao Pop; Hayden Thorpe, Ness; Maxïmo Park, Stream of Life; Sløtface, Film Buff; Crows, Reason Enough; Kimbra, Idols & Vices, Vol. 1; Jill Fraser, Earthly Pleasures; Eli & Fur, Dreamscapes.

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