In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on October 25, 2024:
Soccer Mommy, Evergreen
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Soccer Mommy is back with a new album, Evergreen, out via Loma Vista. The follow-up to 2022’s Sometimes, Forever was previewed by the singles ‘Lost’, ‘M’, and ‘Driver’. Sophie Allison made the album in Atlanta with producer Ben H. Allen III (Deerhunter, Animal Collective, Youth Lagoon, Belle and Sebastian), foregoing synthesizers and electronic flourishes in favour of acoustic guitars, rich percussion, strings, and flutes. Read our review of Evergreen.
Laura Marling, Patterns in Repeat
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Laura Marling has returned with a new album, Patterns in Repeat, released via Chrysalis/Partisan Records. The follow-up to 2020’s Song for Our Daughter was recorded primarily at Marling’s home studio and co-produced by Dom Monks, with assistance from Rob Moose. The songs are directly inspired by the birth of her daughter: “This banal constellation seems to have dominated the writing of Patterns in Repeat – the drama of the domestic sphere, the frail threads that bind a family together, the good intentions we hold onto for our progeny and the many and various ways they get lost in time,” she explained in press materials. “So much complexity in the banal, the caged, the everyday.”
Fashion Club, A Love You Cannot Shake
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Fashion Club – the moniker of Los Angeles-based artist Pascal Stevenson – has dropped her sophomore album, A Love You Cannot Shake. The follow-up to 2022’s Scrunity was preceded by the Perfume Genius-assisted ‘Forget’, ‘Rotten Mind’ featuring Julie Byrne, ‘Confusion’, and the Jay Som collaboration ‘Ghost’. “Anger, acceptance; depression, acceptance; love, hate: all of this stuff is very cyclical, and accepting that one of them is part of the other is, to me, really an uncomfortable truth,” Stevenson said in our Artist Spotlight interview. “I think that’s a big part of what I wanted to get at with a lot of these songs, that uncomfortable feeling of trying to work through hate, trying to work through anger, but knowing that it’s shaping the love that you have and the acceptance that you have – it’s shaping who you are just as much as those other, more positive feelings are.”
Pom Pom Squad, Mirror Starts Moving Without Me
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Pom Pom Squad have followed up 2021’s Death of a Cheerleader with a new LP, Mirror Starts Moving Without Me, out now on City Slang Records. The singles ‘Downhill’, ‘Spinning’, and ‘Street Fighter’ arrived ahead of the release. “I took a lot of inspiration from my younger self on this album. I wanted to get back in touch with my creative roots,” frontperson Mia Berrin explained. “After hitting a particularly rough bout of writer’s block, I challenged myself to make a playlist of my all-time favorite songs from childhood to adulthood. It was healing in a way I didn’t expect! Before we went into the studio I made my bandmates and Cody do the same, then we all listened to each other’s and had a long conversation about them. Through the sessions for Mirror we were all pulling references from our collective playlists more than anything else.”
Amyl and the Sniffers, Cartoon Darkness
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Amyl & the Sniffers have put out their third LP, Cartoon Darkness, through Rough Trade Records. The band recorded the follow-up to 2021’s Comfort to Me with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles in early 2024. “Cartoon Darkness is about climate crisis, war, AI, tiptoeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they’re helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern-day god,” Amy Taylor explained. “It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.”
2nd Grade, Scheduled Explosions
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2nd Grade, the Philadelphia power-pop project led by Peter Gill, is back with a new album. Out now on Double Double Whammy, Scheduled Explosions follows 2022’s Easy Listening and has been previewed in threes, with Gill having already shared nine of the LP’s 23 tracks. The album was home-recorded with engineer Lucas Knapp and is described as “an odyssey of 60s-inspired dream logic driven by melody, charted through an environment of ambient violence and existential dread, and touching down in a pantheon of prolific pop weirdos like Robert Pollard, Alex Chilton, Lily Konigsberg, Chris Weisman, and Nate Amos.”
Two Shell, Two Shell
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Two Shell’s long-awaited self-titled debut album has arrived via Young. The enigmatic London duo offered an early taste of the record with the singles ‘gimmi it’ and ‘Everybody Worldwide’. It follows their 2023 EP lil spirits. In a rare interview with Mixmag, Two Shell said: “You can either be a leader or a follower. Start eating or get chewed. If you come out on the front foot the rights holder they will respek it. They’re probably, like, damn. These lads have got spunk and that’s how we felt when we wrote the damn lyrics.”
Halsey, The Great Impersonator
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Halsey’s latest album, The Great Impersonator, is out today. The follow-up to 2021’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power was preceded by the singles ‘The End’, ‘Lucky’, ‘Lonely Is the Muse’, ‘Ego’, and ‘I Never Loved You’. “I made this record in the space between life and death,” Halsey wrote on X. “And it feels like I’ve waited an eternity for you to have it. I’ll wait a bit longer. I’ve waited a decade, already.” In a trailer for the album, she said, “I really thought this album might be the last one I ever made. When you get sick like that, you start thinking about ways it could’ve all been different. What if this isn’t how it all went down? 18-year-old Ashley becomes Halsey in 2014.”
Fievel Is Glaque, Rong Weicknes
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Fievel Is Glauque have unveiled their sophomore LP, Rong Weicknes, via Fat Possum. The follow-up to 2022’s Flaming Swords includes the previously released singles ‘As Above So Below’ and ‘Love Weapon’. To make the new LP, the duo of multi-instrumentalist Zach Phillips and Brussels-based singer and performer Ma Clément enlisted Thom Gill on guitar, Logan Kane on bass, Daniel Rossi on percussion, André Sacalxot on saxophone and flute, Gaspard Sicx on drums, and Chris Weisman on guitar and electric sitar. The musicians convened at the Outlier Inn, a farm and music studio in upstate New York, to record the album, with mixing and mastering engineer Steve Vealey.
Onsloow, Full Speed Anywhere Else
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Norway’s Onsloow have dropped their sophomore full-length, Full Speed Anywhere Else, via Tiny Engines. It follows the band’s self-titled debut, which came out in 2022, and features the early singles ‘Taxi’ and ‘Body Parts’. “In many ways, Full Speed Anywhere Else is a breakup album, rediscovering phases through different lenses and perspectives,” drummer Morten Samdal said in a statement about the latter track. “Not exclusively, though; we also address more existential themes, dwell on the costs of friendship, etc. But a bunch of the tracks are about love, and ‘Body Parts’ is one of them!”
Elias Rønnenfelt, Heavy Glory
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Iceage leader Elias Rønnenfelt has released his debut album, Heavy Glory, via Escho. Recorded in Copenhagen, the LP was co-produced by Rønnenfelt and Nis Bysted. Contributors to the album include Kjær Nielsen of Iceage, Peter Peter, Fauzia, and Joanne Robertson. “I’ve done this so many times, but capturing and crystallising an album remains a singular ritual, just with different circumstances,” Rønnenfelt remarked. “We are capturing something that is hard to hold down.” Ahead of its release, he dropped the singles ‘Worm Grew a Spine’, ‘Like Lovers Do’, ‘No One Else’, ‘Soldier Song’, and ‘Doomsday Childsplay’.
Katie Gavin, What a Relief
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Katie Gavin’s debut solo album, What a Relief, has arrived via Saddest Factory Records. The MUNA bandleader previewed the LP with the tracks ‘Casual Drug Use’ and ‘Inconsolable’, and a video for the Mitski collab ‘As Good As It Gets’ accompanied today’s release. “It’s been really special for me to return to the sound that was my first musical home – the realm of the singer/songwriter, and to give light to these songs that I’ve cared for for a long time,” Gavin said in a press release. “I’m going to love playing them for y’all. I hope you get some gentleness and hope out of them. “
trauma ray, Chameleon
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Out now via Dais, Chameleon is the debut full-length by Fort Worth-based shoegazers trauma ray. It follows their 2022 EP Transmissions. “The theme is death,” the band’s Uriel Avila explained in press materials. “And a chameleon, like death, can shape-shift in and out our lives in different forms.” The singles ‘Bishop’, ‘Spectre’, and ‘Bardo’ arrived ahead of the release.
Hey, ily, Hey, I Loathe You!
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Hey, ily! have come out with a new album called Hey, I Loathe You!. Arriving via Lonely Ghost Records, the 11-track LP follows their 2022 debut I Psychokinetic Love Songs and includes the previously released track ‘(Dis)Connected’. Other track titles on the emo band’s latest include ‘The Impending Dissolve of Hey, Ily!’ and ‘Pass the Body Dysmorphia, Please!’. In addition to lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Caleb Haynes is credited with “debilitating anxiety”; keyboardist Skyy Haman with “big burps”; lead guitarist Trevin Baker with “big words”; bassist Stephen Redmond contributed “silly faces”, while drummer Conner Haman was responsible for “dad jokes.”
Other albums out today:
Megan Thee Stallion, MEGAN: ACT II; Tess Parks, Pomegranate; Cali Bellow, Ciao Bella; Pixies, The Night the Zombies Came; Peach Pit, Magpie; Squint, Big Hand; Anna McClellan, Electric Bouquet; Ruthven, Rough & Ready; Félicia Atkinson, Space as an Instrument; Razorlight, Planet Nowhere; Rejjie Snow, Peace 2 Da World; Little Moon, Dear Divine; Tangerine, You’re Still the Only One; Shigeto, Cherry Blossom Baby.