Album review
In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on December 6, 2024:
Lauren Mayberry, Vicious Creature
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Chvrches frontwoman Lauren Mayberry’s debut solo album, Vicious Creature, has arrived. It includes the previously shared tracks ‘Are You Awake?’, ‘Shame’, ‘Change Shapes’, ‘Something in the Air’, and ‘Crocodile Tears’. “So much of this process has been an exercise in empowering myself to listen to my own intuition – something I really trained myself out of,” explained Mayberry, who worked with producers including Greg Kurstin, Matthew Korma, Tobias Jesso Jr., Gruska, and Dan McDougall on the LP. “That’s ultimately why you start making things – because you felt a feeling, and you wanted to articulate that somehow. I think it was important for me to relearn that kind of independence, and recognize what I bring to any table I choose to sit at.”
Advance Base, Horrible Occurrences
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Advance Base, the long-running project led by Owen Ashworth, has a new album out today called Horrible Occurrences. Following 2018’s Animal Companionship and Ashworth’s 2021 covers album Wall of Tears & Other Songs I Didn’t Write, the record was previewed by the singles ‘The Year I Lived in Richmond’, ‘Brian’s Golden Hour’, and ‘The Tooth Fairy’. Speaking about the songs, which were tracked in his home studio, and their preoccupation with memory, Ashworth told Paste Magazine: “I just cannot rely on my memory as I’ve gotten older. I really am trying to tap into the subconscious and draw out the stories that I do remember, and try to figure out what about these stories has continued to haunt me.”
Angel Olsen, Cosmic Waves Volume 1
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Cosmic Waves Volume 1, a new compilation that marks the second release on somethingscosmic, Angel Olsen‘s own Jagjaguwar imprint, is split into two halves. The first features original songs personally curated by Olsen, while Side B sees Olsen covering other songs from those artists. “As someone that emerged into the music scene through a small tape label, I’ve wanted to continue the spirit of discovery and of my debut release, Strange Cacti, while supporting and collaborating with artists and friends whose music I have been moved by,” Olsen explained. “I feel there is something unique and special about covering another artist’s song. We all make it our own, or we try to, but I personally always learn something new about the process when I’m engaging someone else’s words and melodies in such a close way. It’s fun to write and make my own stuff, but listening to and putting myself into various different styles of songs can lead to new ways of thinking and creating.”
Cameron Winter, Heavy Metal
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Cameron Winter, frontman of NYC-based band Geese, has released his debut solo album, Heavy Metal, via Partisan. He recorded it mostly in a series of Guitar Centers across New York, assembling what a press release calls “hastily performed improvisations” using in-store equipment. “A year ago, I was inspired to make an album outside of my band Geese; unfortunately for Geese fans, I thought it would take four months and it took a year and a half,” Winter explained. “I got a lot of advice that it was too early to ‘go solo’, probably because most people feel that ‘solo albums’ come once a band is basically over the hill and that they’re usually uninspired cash grabs, but rest assured, my solo album is unique, because barely anybody knows who my band is, I’m young and not afraid of living with my parents and I’m free to chase whatever ideas I want.”
Fennesz, Mosaic
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Christian Fennesz has released a new solo album, Mosaic. It follows 2019’s Agora as well as his 2022 Ozmotic collaboration Senzatempo. The Australian ambient maestro recorded the LP by setting himself a 9 to 5 schedule, building tracks by improvising and honing them out. Mosaic was composed and recorded at the end of 2023 and completed in the summer of 2024, with Denis Blackham handling the mastering. The title, according to press materials, “mirrored this process of putting an element into place one at a time to build the full picture, an ancient technique of making an image, before pixels did it in a flash.”
Smino, Maybe in Nirvana
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St. Louis rapper Smino is back with a new record, Maybe in Nirvana. A tribute to his late grandmother and cousin, the project features production from Groove, Monte Booker, Kenny Beats, and Phoelix, as well as guest appearances by Ravyn Lenae, Thundercat, Bun B, and BJ The Chicago Kid, among others. “This project is me exploring my own nirvana – my peace, my chaos, and everything in between,” Smino explained in a press release. “Every song is a piece of me that ties into the bigger picture. I wanted to make something that feels limitless, like it could live outside of time.”
Other albums out today:
ROSÉ, rosie; Nettspend, Bad Ass F*cking Kid; Siete7x, Stucc in the Hole; Bubble Love, Bubble Love; Roddy Ricch, The Navy Album; felicita, Spælarkle; Suso Saiz, Distorted Clamor.
