You don’t need me to tell you the new Sigur Rós album is breathtaking and almost alien in its beauty. No matter how you found out about its existence – when a new record was confirmed a year ago, when the first single ‘Blóðberg’ arrived earlier this week, when it was formally announced just yesterday, or right about now – the simple fact that it’s here should be enough to invoke all those sonic signifiers. What I do feel compelled to remind you is that ÁTTA is the band’s first proper album in a decade. They’ve still made their presence felt over the years, gracing us with an array of mixtapes, singles, anniversary releases, a solo album from Jónsi, and majestic live performances, all of which occasionally felt like glimpses of what lay on the horizon. Perhaps it’s not until you press play on ÁTTA that you realize just how much you’d missed the gravity and world-building that comes with a full-length Sigur Rós record, so unlike the shot of nostalgia that wears off after catching a snippet of their music on some film. The singular effect of their graceful melodies and ineffably expressive vocals felt like something you could always rely on but, naturally, never fully emulate.
Is that, rather than any meaningful stylistic progression, the real promise of this kind of return? To make something vital in its familiarity, that still no band out there can even come close to producing? As they tell it, when multi-instrumentalist Kjartan Sveinsson – who left the group in 2012 and has since rejoined the lineup – visited Jónsi in LA, there was no plan to start laying down a new album; of course it kind of floated out of the ether. There were things on their mind, though. “We’re always thinking about climate change, doom-scrolling and going to hell,” Jonsí said in press materials, and “the world felt a bit bleak making this album.” Sveinsson added: “After COVID and everything, people just need something nice.” Words have always felt a little powerless when it comes to Sigur Rós’ music, so sure: nice.
If the album turned out to be anything other than stupendously pretty, fans could justifiably take it as a sign that we really are living in end times. Again, I don’t need to tell you that it is invariably pretty. Those craving the gnarled immediacy of 2013’s Kveikur, though, might be surprised that the band is back to being more patient and elusive with their grandeur. That’s not to say the songs on ÁTTA are formless or monotonous, but it’s best experienced as a single lush, malleable piece, one that’s subtly surprising for how it earns and dispenses with drama. After opener ‘Glóð’ unspools in glorious fashion, we get ‘Blóðberg’, the second longest track on the album, which plays out as an intimate dance between Jonsí’s tender vocals and the grand orchestration from the London Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Robert Ames. As reminiscent as it is of their classic albums, it feels like a daring choice.
With Sigur Rós having to retool their sound after the departure of drummer Orri Páll Dýrason, part of what makes ÁTTA stand out in their discography is its sparse fluidity. Following ‘Blóðberg’, you get the sense that the music is constantly trying to pull itself together from a desolate place. Yet it directs its attention inward more than it looks to the heavens, and the few times it does, it serves as a necessary glimmer of hope. The introduction of a pulse on ‘Klettur’ feels like a magnanimous gesture on an album that, on the whole, could use a little more heft; but it’s whenever the beat recedes that the track reaches its most soaring moments, with celestial strings that sway like they’re stretching out from opposite ends of the sky. On ‘Skel’, which Jonsí has described as “the emo song,” a pained intensity wells up and then just dissipates, taking the time to soak in the impact. But it’s ‘Gold’ that might go down as one of the band’s most emotional songs; the beat is even fainter and all I can really glean from the lyrics is an echo of the words “anyway,” “all,” maybe “dying”? It’s enough to tie your stomach into a knot.
In its first half, ÁTTA teases a sense of momentum that doesn’t really build back up until the very end, at which point you question whether that is really the music’s primary concern. When the group sounds so comfortable sitting with what might possibly be contentment on songs like ‘Ylur’, it’s hard to long for any sounds that could get in the way of it, even if the results are more often just gorgeous than ecstatic or volcanic, as they have been described in the past. And while it would be absurd to try to attach a narrative to any of it, there is a satisfying richness to the album’s conclusion that doesn’t arrive by means of a dynamic finale so much as the achievement of balance: Even on a track as seemingly downcast as ‘Fall’, all the elements align and glisten, tugged together and far less vaporous than ‘Blóðberg’. That’s when the record feels like a breath of fresh air, which is better than any hyperbolic praise you might, before even listening, be poised to throw at it.
Sigur Rós are back with their first new album in a decade. 
Queens of the Stone Age have released their eighth LP, 
Killer Mike has returned with 
Home Is Where have dropped a new record, 
French Bath is the second LP by May Sembera, the NYC artist who performs as May Rio. The follow-up to 2021’s Easy Bammer was co-produced with Tony 1 of the eclectic duo Tony or Tony and includes contributions from Brooklyn singer-songwriter Dougie Poole, Tredici Bacci’s Simon Hanes, Greg Rutkin of Customer, and Syl DuBenion of Standing on the Corner. The tracks ‘Need You Like’, ‘Aspartame’, and ‘NYC UMTs’ were unveiled ahead of the LP’s release. “I don’t have a built-in way that music should be in my head,” May remarked in press materials. “I follow my ear.”
Sacred Bones
Deer Tick have put out a new LP,
Bonny Doon – the Detroit trio composed of Bill Lennox, Bobby Colombo, and Jake Kmiecik – have come out with Let There Be Music, their first LP for 
When he started working on his new album, Andy Shauf thought the songs might not even be connected this time; it would be a more conventional collection – normal, even; thus, Norm. It ended up having a lot more in common with his previous albums, sketching out scenes for his characters to figure out how their feelings relate to one another. Partly because of how the songs were conceived, however, and partly due to the influences that he was exposed to, Shauf also found himself exploring new and interesting ideas, both musically and conceptually. Some things are immediately obvious, others take time to sink in. On the surface, the songs are pleasant and hazy, but there’s something much darker lurking underneath. Follow along and you’ll be rewarded with an intimate collection where each storyline ultimately comes together while still leaving things eerily open, like a dream. 
You’d figure the intense longing at the core of Caroline Polachek’s debut album, Pang, could only have deepened in the years since – and you wouldn’t be wrong – but Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is framed as somewhat a departure from that record: looser, dirtier, and more bizarre, its metaphors hewing closer to the earth. It’s not any less cohesive than its predecessor, but the boundaries here are more porous and abstract, with sounds darting in all sorts of different directions. But the fact that she allows herself to venture off the beaten path does nothing to detract from the emotions at play, though, which is the real miracle of Desire. There is a physicality and vulnerability to the record as much as there is humour and surrealism – they’re all part of her “twisted, manic, cornucopeiac” vision. 
Paranoïa, Angels, True Love might be the fullest – or, more to the point, truest – expression of what the Christine and the Queens project has been hinting at for years. Directly inspired by Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America, the record’s title seems to present the framework for each of its three acts, but the thematic focus is really down there in the middle – Angels – with Paranoïa and True Love acting as opposing energies that drift in and out of the main stage. Chris’ last record was heady and impenetrable, most thrilling for offering clear glimpses of what lay on the horizon. The follow-up meanders but never gets lost or blinded by its own poetic glory and performance, creating a potent, immersive, and rewarding experience that doesn’t require you to know anything about Chris or Angels in America in advance. You’re engaged simply by standing before him. 
Co-produced with Graham Walsh of Holy Fuck, Debby Friday’s debut album exudes fiery confidence at every turn, but if Friday’s intensity is the first thing that strikes you about her music, what’s most impressive is her versatility in channeling it – from the brashness of the title track to the soft vulnerability of ‘SO HARD TO TELL’ to the religious fervor of ‘PLUTO BABY’. Even as it plays as a sort of personal exorcism, GOOD LUCK showcases an artist capable of fluidly jumping between perspectives, who approaches sound, narrative, and character – in this case, a portal to her younger self – as forms both malleable and hybrid. What feels like a shadow of emotion, then, can come into the light. 
Deerhoof’s music has been celebrated for its mystical sense of adventure and whimsy, for ignoring the boundaries of genre, but it’s also grounded in real-world problems and keeps seeking new ways of tackling them. Their 19th LP, Miracle-Level, is their first to be recorded entirely in a proper studio and their first to be sung in Satomi Matsuzaki’s native Japanese. Yet it’s also a bold and significant entry in their catalog for carving a different path toward optimism than any of their previous albums, including 2021’s Actually, You Can, expanding its scope to the miraculous. The shift in Miracle-Level is as much about embracing a different model of enlightenment as it is about working within new creative parameters, and the possibilities they open up. The results are at once ferocious, approachable, revitalizing. 
Multitudes, Feist’s sixth studio LP, doesn’t swing between extremes so much as it contains – well, it’s there in the title. Following her 2019 arena tour and before the start of the pandemic, Feist adopted her first child, Tihui, and when the world shut down, they lived with her father, the abstract painter Harold Feist, before he passed away a year later. Many of its songs started as lullabies sung to her daughter, and the project was first conceptualized as an immersive multimedia show alongside production designer Rob Sinclair. After workshopping the songs in a series of performances, she spent a few weeks tracking the album at a home studio near the California redwoods with frequent collaborators Robbie Lackritz and Mocky (Blake Mills also contributed production on a few tracks). Given the circumstances, it’s remarkable how effortlessly the collection itself tunes into the blurry space between new motherhood and new loss, between the self and the collective. 
Like 2020’s BREACH, Fenne Lily once again wrote her latest album, Big Picture, in isolation, this time in her Bristol flat – though real quietude was disrupted by the chaos and claustrophobia of the pandemic – but she set out to make the recording process her most collaborative yet, enlisting Brad Cook to co-produce the record at his Durham studio. Her first collection to be written over the course of a relationship, its ten songs reflect the transience of love, both basking in its delicate glow and acknowledging a growing disconnect. There’s frustration and uncertainty in that space, but Lily and her band have a beautifully subtle way of funneling some of it into tenderness and light. Even as she leaves things open-ended, the music somehow eases the weight of letting go. “Picture me whatever way you can,” she sings on ‘Red Deer Day’, “Remember me as a place.” 
The title of Indigo De Souza’s latest album is a pure statement of fact: All of This Will End. Depending on your frame of mind, it scans as either totally defeatist or life-affirming, and the Asheville, NC singer-songwriter doesn’t point in any one direction – simply gestures at the preciousness of everything and, in her music, traces how it moves through her body. De Souza wrote the follow-up to 2021’s Any Shape You Take during a transitional period while detaching herself from a toxic community, and by the time she went back into the studio, she was surrounded by safer, kinder, and more loving people who became a source of inspiration all their own. Like her previous albums, it’s driven by raw intensity and emotional dynamics that can get pretty messy, but it’s also filled with unwavering conviction for the things that matter, and for the importance of growing with them. 
Kali Uchis’ music conjures a world of fantastical intimacy, and she knows how to tease us in. While the intro to her triumphant 2018 debut, Isolation, extended over two minutes, carrying an air of mystery and escapism, the track that opens her third album, Red Moon in Venus, is shorter but just as efficient: “I just wanted to tell you, in case you forgot/ I love you,” she intones, enveloped by twinkling synths, chirping crickets, and birdsong. Across the next fourteen tracks, Uchis remains firmly committed to that proclamation of love, even as it pushes her in different directions. Though more conceptually focused than Isolation and building on the promise of its Spanish-language follow-up Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞, the way the album revels in different shades of devotion makes for a lavish, enchanting journey. 
Treading the line between the playful and violent, Mandy Indiana’s 2021 … EP balanced militaristic grooves with formless, visceral experimentation, paving the way for the band’s debut full-length, i’ve seen a way. They recorded parts of the album in bizarre, unconventional locales – screaming vocals in a shopping centre, live drums in a cave in the West Country. One session even took place in a Gothic crypt while a yoga class was underway just above them, a sort of literal manifestation of their disruptive, even combative approach to creating dissonance. But the real battle is happening within the music, as Caulfield, singing in her native French, infuses the amorphous chaos that buzzes through the record with fiery intent. Mandy, Indiana fashion a world of discomfort that pulls you further in the more you try to turn away, all while ensuring the view they project is no more grim than galvanizing. 
2021’s To See the Next Part of the Dream turned out to be an unexpected breakthrough for Parannoul, who fused bedroom pop and shoegaze into an overwhelming, singular experience. The one-man project out of Seoul remains anonymous but has since opened up to collaboration, with last year’s Paraglow EP, a joint release with Asian Glow, topping our list of the 
There are two ambient albums I was most drawn to in the first half of 2023. One is Gia Margaret’s recently released Romantic Piano, a wistfully meditative, (mostly) instrumental collection I suspect will grow on me over time. The other is Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final album, 12, which came out in January, just two months before the composer’s death after a long battle with cancer. Conceived as an “audio diary,” with tracks titled and sequenced by the dates they were written, the music grapples with mortality in ways that are strikingly intimate, profoundly subtle, and altogether awe-inspiring. There’s a disquieting sense of ephemerality to some of the compositions, while others sound lush and fully-formed; some lean into the darkness, others are airy and delicate. Sakamoto’s presence is palpable in the mix; you can hear him breathing, perhaps shifting position on the piano. Across its one-hour runtime (double the length of Romantic Piano), the overall mood is one of graceful melancholy. It’s easy to slip into but rewards close listening, and the more you listen, the more you don’t want its resonance to fade away.
Rat Saw God, the follow-up to Twin Plagues and Wednesday’s Dead Oceans debut, is a triumph of razor-sharp focus, churning intensity, and natural ambition. By this point, the group is so in sync that it sounds like they’re carrying stimuli through the same nervous system while eliciting different responses. For all the darkness that the album digs into, what it drags along with it is never a lack of clarity. On the contrary, these mostly coming-of-age tales, lived or otherwise absorbed, seem to have sharpened so many other senses: Karly Hartzman is acutely aware of irony, especially as it pertains to religion, and, on songs like ‘Bull Believer’, fuses allegory and truth to striking effect. Her descriptions never feel overbearing or exaggerated, but heightened in their reality. It’s music that zones in on that blurry space between pain as an experience and tragedy as a story in ways that are immediate, glorious, and totally arresting. 
Westerman recorded his debut album, Your Hero Is Not Dead, in Portugal and London with his friend and producer Nathan Jenkins (aka Bullion), who helped move his intricate folk sound in a more textural direction. After spending much of the pandemic in Italy working on demos by himself, Westerman decided to go to Los Angeles to lay down his sophomore LP, An Inbuilt Fault. Co-produced alongside Big Thief’s James Krivchenia, the record sets his inquisitive and often ambiguous songwriting against vibrant and fluidly adventurous arrangements that place emphasis on both complex grooves and the primacy of the human voice. Even in the fragmented blur of a lot of these songs, a sense of hopeful sincerity and tenderness seeps through Westerman’s gorgeous, intimate music. 
With a Hammer slips into unknowable territory. Yaeji’s past work has done that too – the Korean-American artist’s 2020 mixtape What We Drew, her first for the storied UK label XL, veered away from the club-oriented dance music of previous releases and into something more ambient, introspective, and diffuse. Even as her musical instincts once again guide her in different directions, her debut album, like What We Drew, chronicles the push-and-pull between anxiety and confidence, community and solitude, weaving catharsis out of the most uncertain corners of that internalized space. Take the lead single ‘For Granted’, whose emotional core – fluctuating as it does between sincere gratitude and unease around the unexpected goodness of her life – feels like such a continuation of the reflections on What We Drew that it feels wrong to call the With a Hammer a departure. It’s only a different, more solidified kind of arrival, one that still stirs up more questions than it answers. 
Four decades into their career, Yo La Tengo have such a sprawling and versatile discography that it’s no surprise their most beloved records, from 1997’s I Can Feel The Heart Beating As One to 2013’s Fade, are ones that make an effort to streamline their sound while eloquently fusing different styles. Aside from it being their first album of wholly new material since 2018’s There’s a Riot Going On, that’s another reason why This Stupid World feels like another pivotal moment in a career full of them. On paper, a lot of This Stupid World sounds doomful, or at least weathered by the passage of time. But more often than not, it’s a record that’s thrilling in its aliveness: “This stupid world, it’s killing me,” goes its enveloping mantra. “This stupid world is all we have.” 
In October 2021, Trevor Powers suffered a severe reaction to an over-the-counter medication he took for a minor stomach ache that nearly cost him his voice. It was a chaotic and terrifying time in his life that, in addition to fostering a deeper appreciation for home, the people around him, and God, carried such spiritual weight that it pushed him to confront the fear that was choking up his creativity. On his first album under the Youth Lagoon moniker in eight years, Heaven Is a Junkyard, he applies this renewed perspective to peer into the haunted beauty of his small-town surroundings, blurring and melding with his own internal landscape in ways that feel not muddled or weightless, but revelatory and – once again, or rather still – comforting. 
