In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on October 24, 2025:
Lily Allen, West End Girl
Lily Allen’s first album in seven years, West End Girl, has arrived. It’s a bold, brutally honest dismantling of a picture-perfect marriage. In a statement, Allen said: “I’m nervous. The record is vulnerable in a way that my music perhaps hasn’t been before—certainly not over the course of a whole album. I’ve tried to document my life in a new city and the events that led me to where I am in my life now. At the same time, I’ve used shared experiences as the basis for songs which try to delve into why we humans behave as we do, so the record is a mixture of fact and fiction which I hope serves as a reminder of how stoic yet also how frail we humans can be. In that respect I think it’s very much an album about the complexities of relationships and how we all navigate them. It’s a story…”
Eliza McLamb, Good Story
Eliza McLamb reunited with illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tudzin to record her wry, incisive sophomore album, Good Story, at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios with guitarist Jacob Blizard, bassist Ryan Ficano, keyboardist Sarah Goldstone, and Death Cab For Cutie drummer Jason McGerr. “I was having a really hard time mentally and emotionally the year after Going Through It came out. I started having these questions and thoughts about narrativizing your life or presenting yourself as a person with a legible story – or even internally feeling that way,” McLamb explained in our Artist Spotlight interview. She found herself asking: “How helpful is it to have this narrative that you cling to so tightly? How helpful is it to constantly be constructing this version of yourself inside your own head?”
Tortoise, Touch
Tortoise keep subtly evolving their sound on first new album in nine years. Touch, the Chicago post-rock legends’ eighth album, is full of hypnotic grooves and textural experiments; Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, McEntire, and Jeff Parker wrote them all together but tracked them in the three cities where they now reside: Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. It was recorded and mixed by the band’s own John McEntire.
Rafael Toral, Traveling Light
The Portuguese guitarist and composer reimagines a series of jazz standards in his exploratory ambient style on Traveling Light, the follow-up to last year’s exquisite Spectral Evolution. It features clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado (whose playing is wonderfully spotlit on ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is), flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe, and flautist Clara Saleiro each appear on one track. The rendition of ‘My Funny Valentine’, more than just wistful, is woozy and almost downcast, distilling its essence into something bigger than a recognizable melody. It’s well worth immersing yourself in.
Spiritual Cramp, RUDE
As snarky as it is vibrant, RUDE is the latest LP from Bay Area band Spiritual Cramp, who broke through two years ago with their self-titled debut. Like Nasvhille punks Snooper, who recently released their sophomore album, it finds them working with legendary indie producer John Congleton, though these hook-filled songs have more in common with upcoming tourmates The Hives. “When you focus on yourself and the people around you, you can keep your side of the street clean,” vocalist Mike Bingham shared. “And when I see the opposite of that, I get kind of offended, which is what a lot of these songs are about.” Today’s focus track is the groovy Sharon Van Etten collaboration ‘You’ve Got My Number’.
Just Mustard, WE WERE JUST HERE
Dundalk quintet Just Mustard revel in fuzzed-out, anthemic noise on their latest effort, WE WERE JUST HERE. “I was trying to put myself in places of physical joy to try and get that euphoric feeling,” frontwoman Katie Ball explained in press materials. Featuring the early singles ‘POLLYANNA’, ‘ENDLESS DEATHLESS’, and the title track, the follow-up to 2022’s Heart Under was produced by the band, mixed by David Wrench (Frank Ocean, FKA Twigs), and recorded at Dundalk’s Black Mountain studio.
Hannah Jadagu, Describe
Hannah Jadagu expands her palette on her second album, Describe, which explores the personal tension between craving connection and needing space. Following the release of her 2023 debut album Aperture, the singer-songwriter’s career steered her away from her blossoming relationship in New York. “I was feeling love and gratitude, but also guilt about being away for my job,” she shared. “Being a musician requires sacrificing time – and one thing about me, I’m a quality time girlie.” Jadagu added: “A lot of this album is me trying to figure out how to express ideas that aren’t always so concrete. It’s just a flow of things that I’m feeling and going through and expressing.”
Machine Girl, Psycho Warrior (MG Ultra X)
Machine Girl expand the conceptual world of last year’s MG Ultra with Psycho Warrior (MG Ultra X). “I’d been reading analytical psychology and the writings of Joseph Campbell and Jung,” Matt Stephenson explained in a statement. “There’s a concept of the collective unconscious and these archetypes that we innately have. We adopt different personae in order to get through the day. In essence, you complete yourself by facing your shadow self. To do so, you must accept the less savoury aspects of who you are. There’s a lot of validity to these theories. Right now, we’re a very psychologically damaged culture and society. We’re being pushed over the edge with social media and technology. Any chance of resistance against these systems starts in the mind, so this was the genesis of Psycho Warrior (MG Ultra X).”
Ouri, Daisy Cutter
Montreal producer and multi-instrumentalist Ouri has unveiled a new album titled Daisy Cutter. She mixed, mastered, and engineered the record herself, enlisting contributions from Mobilegirl, Oli XL, Bby Eco, Charlotte Day Wilson, Bamo Yendé, Cecil Believe, Duncan Hood, Jonah Yano, Sea Oleena, and Cowboy Lansky. “All these trusting miles in the dark led me to these 13 songs,” Ouri explained. “Daisy Cutter is music but it’s also the leader of a militia, a part of me. Like a rotor, I started a practice that brought all this album to life and it’s gonna keep spinning even when I let go of the wheel.”
fanclubwallet, Living While Dying
fanclubwallet – the project led by Hannah Judge – has dropped her sophomore album, Living While Dying, via Lauren Records. The follow-up to 2022’s You Have Got to Be Kidding Me was written during a period of profound isolation while Judge was living with Crohn’s disease at its worst; a surgery briefly eased her pain, and the contradictions of illness and normalcy, despair and recovery, form the record’s emotional backbone. Still, the band’s process was more collaborative than ever. “We were actually sonically talking to each other,” Judge remarked. “It felt so beautiful and easy.”
Other albums out today:
Meric Long, Kablooey; Carrier, Rhythm Immortal; The Lemonheads, Love Chant; Jim White, Inner Day; Miguel, Caos; Bruiser Wolf & Harry Fraud, Made by Dope; Demi Lovato, It’s Not That Deep; Alice Phoebe Lou, Oblivion; Sigrid, There’s Always More That I Could Say; Adeline Hotel, Watch the Sunflowers; E.R. Visit, my children will ignore you, my children will type amen; Natural Information Society, Perseverance Flow; Joe Westerlund, Curiosities From the Shift; Daniel Caesar, Son of Spergy; Jennifer Walton, Daughters; DAVE, The Boy Who Played the Harp; Brandi Carlile, Returning To Myself; Buddy Ross, K We’re Here; Major Stars, More Colors of Sound; Daniel Caesar, Son of Spergy; Julianna Riolino, Echo in the Dust; Low Girl, Is It Too Late to Freak Out; Erika Dohi, Myth of Tomorrow; Jessica Moss, Unfolding;
