The follow-up to last year’s how i’m feeling now is set to arrive on March 18, 2022. The record features contributions from Rina Sawayama, Oneohtrix Point Never, A. G. Cook, the 1975’s George Daniel, Justin Raisen, and more. ‘New Shapes’ follows her September single ‘Good Ones’, as well as collaborations with Saweetie, Joel Corry, and Jax Jones (‘Out Out’), the 1975 and No Rome (‘Spinning’), and ELIO (the ‘Charger’ remix).
In addition to the album news, Charli XCX has also announced a North American and European tour; find the full list of dates here.
Christian Lee Hutson has shared a new song called ‘Strawberry Lemonade’, which was produced by frequent collaborator Phoebe Bridgers and her Better Oblivion Community Center bandmate Conor Oberst. The track also features Bright Eyes’ Nate Walcott on piano and trumpet, Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy on electric guitar, and Oberst and Sharon Silva on backup vocals. It arrives with an accompanying music video directed by Waley Wang. Watch and listen below.
“‘Strawberry Lemonade’ is a series of vignettes about memory, letting go and holding on,” Hutson explained in a statement. “I remember talking to a friend, around the time that I wrote it, about the relentless repackaging of 1960’s culture; so some of that ended up in there. The laugh at the beginning of the song is my friend Harry who plays bass on the song.”
Hutson’s debut album, Beginners, arrived in 2020. Earlier this year, Hutson released a series of coversEPs.
The Belgium-based duo of Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul have announced their debut album, Topical Dancer, which is out March 4, 2022. It will be released via Deewee, the label run by Soulwax, who co-wrote and co-produced the LP. Along with the announcement, they’ve shared a new song called ‘Blenda’, the follow-up to September’s ‘Thank You’. Check out its accompanying video below.
‘Blenda’ was partly inspired by Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book Why I’m Not Longer Talking To White People About Race. In a press release, Adigéry explains that the song references how “I am a product of colonialism and I feel guilty for taking up space in a white country,” continuing: “It talks about the colonial past and post-colonial present in the UK, but that isn’t merely a British or American problem, Belgium is part of that as well.” Her home country, she said, is similarly “oblivious to a big part of its history,” resulting “in general ignorance and a lack of understanding and empathy towards Belgian inhabitants of immigrant descent.”
Of the album, Adigéry added: “I don’t want to feel this heaviness on me. These aren’t my crosses to bear. Topical Dancer is my way of freeing myself of these issues. And of having fun.”
Topical Dancer Cover Artwork:
Topical Dancer Tracklist:
1. Bel DEEWEE
2. Esperanto
3. Blenda
4. Hey
5. It Hit Me
6. Ich Mwen (with Christiane Adigéry)
7. Reappropriate
8. Ceci n’est pas un cliché
9. Huile Smisse
10. Mantra
11. Making Sense Stop
12. HAHA
13. Thank You
“I’ve been a big follower of Bert Jansch’s work since I was a teenager, and of that whole Irish, Scottish, English folk style that has a different lilt and different lyrical perspective,” Plant said of his and Krauss’ cover in a statement. “I was very keen to bring some of that into the picture.”
Raise the Roof, the follow-up to 2007’s Grammy-winning Raising Sand, is due for release on November 19 via Rounder Records. It includes the duo’s previously released take on Lucinda Williams’ ‘Can’t Let Go’, as well as the original ‘High and Lonesome’.
Nils Frahm has announced a new double album titled Old Friends New Friends. It’s set for release on December 3 via Leiter, the label he formed with his manager, Felix Grimm. Hear the new single ‘All Numbers End’ below, and scroll down for the LP’s cover art and tracklist.
Old Friends New Friends is a collection of 23 solo piano tracks recorded between 2009 and 2021, which Frahm pieced together during the pandemic. According to Frahm, it offers “an anatomy of all my ways of thinking musically and playing” as well as “a different spectrum of freedom for me.” He continued:
I forgot that some tracks are ten years old, some two, and they’re all played on different pianos. Instead I remembered how, as a fan, I love albums like this. With a lot of my records there’s a point where you feel, ‘This is the centrepiece,’ but here I wasn’t really worrying about that. It still feels like my universe, though, and I’m proud that all these things which I never found a way to unite before now work together. It’s like I tossed flowers indiscriminately into a vase and then realised it looked exactly right.
Nils Frahm’s last release was a collaborative album with F.S. Blumm, 2X1=4, which came out in September.
Old Friends New Friends Cover Artwork:
Old Friends New Friends Tracklist:
1. 4:33 (A Tribute to John Cage)
2. Late
3. Berduxa
4. Rain Take
5. Todo Nada
6. Weddinger Walzer
7. In the Making
8. Further in the Making
9. All the Numbers
10. The Idea Machine
11. Then Patterns
12. Corn
13. New Friend
14. Nilds Has a New Piano
15. Acting
16. As a Reminder
17. Iced Wood
18. Strickleiter
19. The Chords
20. The Chords Broken Down
21. Forgetmenot
22. Restive
23. Old Friend
IDLES performed their recent single ‘The Beachland Ballroom’ on Jimmy Kimmel Live, marking the band’s US late night TV debut. The track, which is named for the Cleveland, Ohio venue, is taken from their upcoming album CRAWLER. Watch the performance below.
Yesterday (November 3), IDLES offered another preview of the album with the song ‘CAR CRASH’, which arrived alongside a Matthew Cusick-directed video. CRAWLER is slated for release on November 12 via Partisan.
Thundercat appeared on last night’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he was joined by Jon Batiste for a performance of ‘Dragonball Durag’. Watch it below.
Thundercut is currently on tour in support of his Grammy-winning album It Is What It Is. Earlier this year, he collaborated with Flying Lotus on a single for the soundtrack to the Netflix anime series Yasuke and joined Ace Hashimoto on his track ‘VAPORWAVES’.
Chastity Belt have announced a limited 7″, ‘Fake / Fear’, which is out on December 3. Along with the news, they’ve shared a video for the new track ‘Fear’. Check out the Eleanor Petry-directed visual below.
Chastity Belt’s Lydia Lund said of the new song in a statement:
I wrote the song a few summers ago based around a dream I had. At one point in the dream, I was opening door after door, noticing the fear build, then dissipate upon opening, then build again when I realized there was yet another door. It felt like my dream was giving me practice in noticing my fear as something separate from the thing causing the fear, as something potentially more harmful and unbearable.
About a year later I was recording vocals out at my parents’ place. My mom knocked on the door – ‘is there anything you want to talk to me about? Is there something you’re afraid of?’ At that point I’d become so detached from the lyrics of the song it took me a minute to realize she thought I was doing some kind of primal scream therapy. And I guess in a way I am.
Eleanor Petry commented on the video: “The Chastity Belt girls are some of my dearest friends, and working on these videos with them felt like the culmination of so many years of growing together. Cheryl Waters (of KEXP) connected us with her friend Holly Taylor, who has a film background and does Equestrian Therapy. Through her we were able to shoot with a whole herd of horses on this amazing property on Vashon Island.”
The upcoming collection features outtakes and alternate tracks from Jenkins’ latest LP An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, which she recorded with Josh Kaufman. Talking about the story behind the new track, Jenkins said in a statement:
I woke up one morning with a voicemail from an unknown number while I was on tour in 2018. The area code was from the Texas border, and I had a sinking feeling my friend had gotten arrested on his way to come see us play in Joshua Tree. I’m fortunate to be close to someone who can speak so candidly about their incarceration and how the prison system has continuously affected their life. When we spoke recently about the voicemail in this recording, I asked him what he was feeling in that moment. He said, “I was really scared. So I called you, and I called a lawyer.”
I cherished this voicemail for years because, even in that difficult moment, I could hear a tenderness in his voice as he confessed, as well as avoided, reporting that he had spent the night in jail. What resulted is the poetic ambiguity that can arise from the struggle of searching for the words to tell someone we love exactly what has happened.
(An Overview On) An Overview On Phenomenal Nature arrives November 19 via Ba Da Bing Records. Check out our Artist Spotlight interview with Cassandra Jenkins here.
TNGHT, the collaborative project of Hudson Mohawke and Lunice, have returned with a new single called ‘Tums’. Dan Streit directed the video for the track, which arrives ahead of the duo’s show this Saturday (November 6) at the Catwalk in Los Angeles. Check it out below.
“‘TUMS’ was made from that collective feeling of, ‘OMG maybe there actually ARE going to be parties again,’” Lunice said of the new song in a press release. “That feeling seemed to inspire the first principles of the TNGHT project: Keep it really fun. Dumb. Hard-hitting. Don’t overwork it.”
Hudson Mohawke added: “This one really showcases our two distinct styles and how well they still work together despite their sonic differences.”
