In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on August 29, 2025:
Sabrina Carpenter, Man’s Best Friend
One year after the breakthrough success of Short n’ Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter has returned with Man’s Best Friend. Produced by Jack Antonoff’, the record was led by the single ‘Manchild’, an early contender for Song of the Summer. “The album is not for any pearl clutchers,” Carpenter told CBS Mornings of the project. “But I also think that even pearl clutchers can listen to an album like that in their own solitude and find something that makes them smirk and chuckle to themselves.” It’s not so much the lyrics themselves that might cause such a reaction, but the elegant ballads they’re often packaged in; on the swooning ‘We Almost Broke Up Again’, for example, she sings, “Gave him his whole heart, and I gave him head.” She’s never sounded more relaxed in her comedic chops.
Blood Orange, Essex Honey
Dev Hynes has released Essex Honey, the first Blood Orange album in seven years. Revolving around his childhood growing up outside of the Essex region in England, it’s billed as a “soundtrack created from a dreamscape of his journey working through grief.” It’s also a perfectly hazy, gorgeous, and evocative album to get lost in, especially at the end of summer. Previewed by the singles ‘Mind Loaded’, ‘Somewhere In Between’, ‘The Field’, and ‘Countryside’, the record features contributions from Lorde, Caroline Polachek, Daniel Caesar, Mustafa, Liam Benzvi, Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, Wet’s Kelly Zutrau, Tariq Al-Sabir, author Zadie Smith, actors Naomi Scott and Amandala Stenberg, and more.
The Beths, Straight Line Was a Lie
Linear progression is generally a myth, yet one often projected onto artists, who must continually level up their sound without straying from their original vision. The Beths have indeed tightened, coloured, and expanded their approach since their 2018 breakout Future Me Hates Me, and while they’re not quite making a statement about their own trajectory with Straight Line Was a Lie, their fourth album, the titular realization extends to the way they handle both lyrics and instrumentation: careening between the immediacy, anxiety, and tenderness of their previous albums, but leaving space for different shades of weariness and anhedonia, a void that doesn’t dull so much as activate a new side of New Zealand quartet’s sound. Read the full review.
Hayley Williams, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party
Earlier this summer, Hayley Williams of Paramore put out an album’s worth of songs on a password-protected website, then officially released them as 17 separate singles. Now, these songs have been packaged into an album called Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, with a bonus track, ‘Parachute’, tucked at the end of the tracklist. Williams and Daniel James wrote, played, and recorded most instruments on the record, with assistance from longtime collaborators Brian Robert Jones and Joey Howard. Physical releases will follow on November.
CMAT, EURO-COUNTRY
Irish songwriter Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson has released her latest album as CMAT, the audacious, witty, and soulful EURO-COUNTRY. In press materials, she described the follow-up to Crazymad, For Me as, “I think, the best thing I have ever made. I felt halfway through recording it was the most important record I’ve made for myself… mainly because it was making me go crazy.” Thompson added: “I’m always going to make the work I want to make, because there is a little gremlin in my head that tells me if it’s shit. More than success, there’s a bigger gremlin that wants me to make music that’s really good. She’s brutal and has ruined my life at times, but she is the keeper of my life and she’s always right.”
The Berries, The Berries
Matthew Berry, who has been a member of Happy Diving and Big Bite as well as Hotline TNT’s live band, has released his self-titled album as The Berries. Co-produced by Jimmy Dixon, The Berries features contributions from Narrow Head’s Kora Puckett, studio drummer Bryan De Leon (The Drums, Ethel Cain), Color Green’s Corey Madden, and poet/musician Julia Lans Nowak. “This record came out of a need to break from my old self, to break from a lifestyle that I could no longer bear waking up to everyday,” Berry explained. “It’s equally fueled by remorse and relief — I can rejoice a bit in having found a renewed purpose, but I had to finally stare down everything that was standing in the way of that sense of dignity first.”
Other albums out today:
Margo Price, Hard Headed Woman; Ganser, Animal Hospital; Runnner, A Welcome Kind of Weakness; The Beaches, No Hard Feelings; The Hives, The Hives Forever Forever the Hives; Lathe of Heaven, Aurora; Erykah Badu & The Alchemist, Abi & Alan; Google Earth, Mac OS X 10.11; Nova Twins, Parasites & Butterflies; End It, Wrong Side of Heaven; Jehnny Beth, You Heartbreaker You; Zach Top, Ain’t in It for My Health; Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin, Ghosted III; Belinda Carlisle, Once Upon A Time in California; Pinkshift, Earthkeeper; Pearly Drops, The Voices Are Coming Back; Slow Crush, Thirst; Shannon, Krgovich, Tenniscoats, Wao; Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O’Rourke, Pareidolia; Tim Carr, Pleasure Drives; quinnie, paper doll; The Technicolors, Heavy Pulp; Modern Nature, The Heat Warps; myah, i don’t know what i’m feeling; Christian Wallumrod, Percolation.
