In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on May 2, 2025:
Car Seat Headrest, The Scholars
Car Seat Headrest are back with The Scholars, their first album in five years. The follow-up to 2020’s Making a Door Less Open is a self-described rock opera, which is at the fictional college campus Parnassus University. Brimming with literary references, the record is dense and insular without sacrificing the band’s knack for electrifying hooks. Inspirations cited for the album include, naturally, The Who’s Tommy and David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. “It didn’t really feel to me like things got in sync in an inner feeling way until this record, with that internal communal energy,” Will Toledo explained. “That’s been a big journey.”
Jenny Hval, Iris Silver Mist
Norwegian musician, artist, and novelist Jenny Hval has issued her ninth album, Iris Silver Mist. The follow-up to 2022’s Classic Objects was inspired by Hval’s love of perfume, taking its name from a fragrance made by Maurice Roucel. It informs the imagery but also seeps into the sonic structures of the album, which are vaporous and shapeshifting. “We enter the album through lying down in our own grave, under the earth, just like the root, which is the part of the iris that has a scent,” Hval said of the album opener ‘Lay down’. “It would be the very best time and place to listen to music, wouldn’t it? The fetus can smell and taste their mother’s food as well as hear voices outside the mother’s body in the final months of a pregnancy. Can a ghost in the coffin still hear the birds singing above?”
PUP, Who Will Look After the Dogs?
PUP have returned with a new LP, Who Will Look After the Dogs?. The Toronto band recorded their brutally honest, invigorating fifth album with producer John Congleton, previewing it with the singles ‘Paranoid’, ‘Hallways’, ‘Get Dumber’, and ‘Olive Garden’. “The title of our new record, Who Will Look After the Dogs?, is what I wrote at the top of the page, the very first thing written for this album,” singer Stefan Babcock explained. “I think it’s devastating, but in a ‘holy shit this is overdramatic’ kinda way. At least in context of the line that comes before it. That’s what makes it funny to us. That overblown stuff we all say in our dark moments can be hilarious once you’ve cooled off a bit. I don’t know if anyone else thinks it’s funny, but sometimes you gotta laugh at yourself. It’s the only way out of the abyss. Trust me.”
Model/Actriz, Pirouette
Brooklyn-based four-piece Model/Actriz have followed up their 2023 debut, Dogsbody, with a new album called Pirouette. The 11-track effort was co-produced and mixed by Seth Manchester, mastered by Matt Colton, and recorded at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, RI. It finds vocalist Cole Haden channeling childhood idols like Britney Spears and Mariah Carey, as evidenced by its club-ready, industrial pop sound. “If Dogsbody, sheepishly lurks in the dim corners and questionable bathrooms of gay clubs, Pirouette is the infallible star everyone clamors to see,” Giliann Karon wrote in her Our Culture review. Read it here.
Mei Semones, Animaru
Animaru is the debut LP from Mei Semones, who caught our attention with her impressive blend of jazz, bossa, and indie rock on last year’s Kabutomushi EP. The Brooklyn-based songwriter and guitarist’s newfound confidence shines through on the 10-track effort, which marries her musical dexterity with lyrical introspection and playful simplicity. “No second-guessing, no overthinking,” Semones said of her approach. “The way I want to live my life is by doing the things that are important to me, and I think everyone should live that way.”
Blondshell, If You Asked For a Picture
Blondshell has released her sophomore album, If You Asked For a Picture, via Partisan Records. It finds Sabrina Teitelbaum once again working with producer Yves Rothman, who also helmed her self-titled debut. Digging through her past with greater nuance and compassion for others, the record lifts its title from a 1986 poem by Mary Oliver called ‘Dogfish’. “There’s a part of the poem that says: I don’t need to tell you everything I’ve been through. It’s just another story of somebody trying to survive,” Teitelbaum explained. “Something I love about songs is that you’re showing a snapshot of a person or a relationship, and showing a glimpse into a story can be just as important as trying to capture the entire thing. Sometimes it’s even truer to the entire picture than if you tried to write everything down.”
Lael Neale, Altogether Stranger
As low-key in its optimism as it is lo-fi in its sound, Lael Neale’s latest album, Altogether Stranger, was made after three years of moving between rural and urban environments. “On returning to Los Angeles I felt like an extraterrestrial landing on a dystopian planet so I’m writing from the perspective of a being from another realm witnessing the peculiarities of humanity,” the singer-songwriter explained in press materials. Across the LP, that point of view feels oddly comforting, emerging as its own form of rebellion. “I love doing things the wrong way,” she said. “It’s so rare that we get to do that in life. Even as artists, I notice a slow and steady conformity set in as musicians become legitimate. I do it too. How else would we fit into the font, size & waveform of streaming services. I rebel in minute ways—like refusing to follow a recipe. In the end, I’m just like everyone else: I want to belong.”
Lucius, Lucius
Lucius’ self-titled album has arrived via Fantasy. Holly Laessig, Jess Wolfe, Dan Molad, and Peter Lalish recorded the Second Nature follow-up at Los Angeles’ Altamira Sound and Molad’s home studio, Sounds Like a Fire. “Our fourth studio album is the four of us, just as we first started recording together as a band,” Lucius said collectively. “It’s raw and honest and feels like coming home; something that resonates deeply in this moment of our lives. We are home in so many senses of the word; in the last couple of years we’ve started setting roots, finding life partners, building families, growing gardens. We got dogs, (you can hear them in the background if you listen close). We wrote songs about life and relationships. We recorded them in our home studios. We saw the beginnings and endings of life cycles while making this record, the beauty and fragility of the human experience. So it’s only fitting that this album is self-titled, it’s our story, who we are now and how we got here. Welcome to our living room.”
Other albums out today:
Yung Lean, Jonatan; Eli Winter, A Trick of the Light; Sextile, yes, please.; Esther Rose, Want; Propagandhi, At Peace; Pyramids, Pythagoras; James Krivchenia, Performing Belief; Suzanne Vega, Flying With Angels; Pet Symmetry, Big Symmetry; Club Night, Joy Coming Down; Eli Keszler, Eli Keszler; Anthony Naples, Scanners; Sally Potter, ANATOMY; Boldy James & Real Bad Man, Conversational Pieces; Rainy Miller, Joseph, What Have You Done?; Key Glock, Glockaveli; Samantha Crain, Gumshoe; Melia Watras, The almond tree duos; Shine Grooves, Sequences for Fluttering; Acres, The Host; Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari, Journey to Nabta Playa; Loscil, Lake Fire; Celestial Trails, Observation of Transcendence.
