Bliss N Eso head to the moon, Flume & JPEGMAFIA team up and more: What to listen to in May
Have you recovered from the election? Wondering how else to obsessively spend your time? How about diving into some new music.
Here are five new releases worth investigating, ranging from Aussie rap and electronic royalty to a tender country collaboration and satirical Swedish post-punk.
Bliss N Eso — The Moon (The Light Side)
The Moon (The Light Side) is Bliss N Eso's fourth ARIA #1 album, following on from Running On Air (2010), Circus In The Sky (2013) and Off the Grid (2017).
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Supplied: Mushroom Music
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If you'd told the young Jonathan 'MC Bliss' Notley, Max 'Eso' MacKinnon, and Tarik 'DJ Izm' Ejjamai their
Bliss N Eso's eighth studio album, The Moon (The Light Side), has already topped the Australian album charts. So, is it just fan loyalty that's put them on top? Not quite.
The record is stronger and more consistent than its 2021 predecessor, The Sun, balancing some nostalgic joints with chart-friendly fare and, running at a tight 38 minutes over 11 tracks, it doesn't overstay its welcome either.
Following a cinematic scene-setter that samples a
'Party On The Moon' comes next, with Bliss N Eso granted permission from the legendary DJ Premier to rework 'Full Clip', by 90s boom-bap favourites Gang Starr, with a modern flavour. Similarly, 'The Ultimate' is a barrage of tongue-twisting rhymes paying homage to genre greats. The chorus nods to A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie Smalls, and the iconic '
Elsewhere, 'Hoops' flips The Rubens' Hottest-100-topping hit of the same name to creative effect, while 'Vacation' samples Dirty Heads' viral TikTok hit, complete with gen Z lines like "f**k around and find out is my 9 to 5."
Having recently toured behind the 15th anniversary of their breakout 2008 album, Flying Colours, there's energetic cuts written for the stage, just in time for a 30-plus-date national tour kicking off later this month. That includes 'Feeling Fly', which successfully injects some gritty funk into the group's sound, and the call-and-response hooks of 'Money Money'.
'Been Through Hell' is a posse cut that complements a feature from viral rapping sensation Masked Wolf with a candid verse from 360 waxing about persevering in a business where it's easy to fall off. It's demonstrative of how The Moon (The Light Side) bridges past and present.
The album is unlikely to expand the group's fanbase but proves consistency is key and, decades after helping transform homegrown hip hop from an underground concern into a mainstream phenomenon, Bliss N Eso are still putting in the work to keep things fresh.
For fans of:
Hilltop Hoods, Drapht, Illy
Al Newstead
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Flume & JPEGMAFIA — We Live In A Society
Flume and JPEGMAFIA have teamed up before, on 2019 track 'How To Build A Relationship' and 2024's 'New Black History' and 'Cult Status'.
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Supplied: Future Classic
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Flume's latest project — a four-track collaborative EP with US rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA — begs to not be taken too seriously.
The title and album cover are both meme references, the track list includes 'The Ocean is Fake' and 'AI Girlfriend', while 'Track #1' is an exercise in aural trolling. Set up as a raw file from a studio session, we hear Peggy mercilessly shred the
"I'm going to have to call Fred Again.., bro, I don't know about this one," he says, before one groove finally takes his fancy four minutes in. "Now we're getting somewhere, you must've had your Vegemite this morning!"
It's funny, but it's hard to imagine listening more than once or twice — especially since the complaining will annoy Flume fans enjoying the beats.
Feeling more like a throwaway experiment, We Live In A Society is a fun and fascinating listen, but it's just not the most exciting work we've heard from either artist. That said, there are glimmers of genius in here, such as the digitised bird whistles at the end of 'Track #1' or the submerged vocals on 'The Ocean Is Fake'.
The exception is 'Is It Real', which has potential to be a breakout single thanks to Ravyn Lenae's feature via a crystalline Mariah-Carey-esque melody – a delightful tension against Peggy's hard bars and Flume's glitchy, dystopian production.
For fans of:
SOPHIE, Death Grips, Denzel Curry
Jared Richards
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Viagra Boys — viagr aboys
Viagra Boys' fourth studio album, viagr boys comes 10 years after the Swedish band's formation.
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Supplied: Shrimptech Enterprises
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Your mum's OnlyFans, an Italian greyhound's story of visiting the vet, smoking cryptocurrency and being jealous of a pretty corpse: Welcome to Viagra Boys' fourth album, as wild and wonderful as ever.
viagr aboys — no, that's not a typo — sees the Swedish post-punk band rescind from the raucous political satire of 2022's Cave World: There are no songs about conspiracy theorists or anti-vaxxers here. But frontman Sebastian Murphy is no less volcanic, instead focusing on the ridiculousness of everything in 2025, tearing through the nonsense with nonsense.
'Man Made of Meat' starts us off strong, with Murphy burping halfway through a lyric about goblins working in a factory, as the song builds to instant-classic lyrics in the chorus. ("If it was 1970, I'd have a job at a factory/I am a man that's made of meat/You're on the internet looking at feet").
From there, we have an Auto-Tuned Reddit preacher ('Best in Show Pt. IV'), gooning ('Store Policy') and men so gross they're born out of mud ('Dirty Boyz', which features a synth line reminiscent of Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love', of all things).
It's a wild ride that inspires double-checking the lyric sheet, but it would all be null if not for the musicianship. The six-person band, now a decade strong, are sounding better than ever, having honed their skills touring relentlessly over the past two years, delivering a fun, frenetic and, at times, surprisingly introspective listen.
For fans of:
IDLES, Amyl & The Sniffers, Parquet Courts
Jared Richards
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Press Club — To All The Ones That I Love
Press Club will be taking their newest album on the road around the country through July and August.
Debuting in 2017 with explosive single 'Headwreck', Press Club established themselves as one of Australia's most exciting punk acts, led by vocalist Natalie Foster — a powerful presence who holds her own against a wall of propulsive drums and glorious guitars.
To All The Ones I Love, the band's fourth album (and follow-up to 2022's
Take the energetic title track's expert melodies and moving, sweet lyrics: "To all the ones that I love/I don't say it enough." Other highlights include the all-in thrash-around 'No Pressure', energetic ode to angst and joy 'Wasted Days' and the teetering breakdown of 'Tightrope'.
On 'Vacate', Foster channels her feelings about friends becoming parents while she has no urge to join them down that path, set to riffs and arpeggios inspired by New Order and LCD Soundsystem.
"All my friends are heading in the same way/I just wanna vacate, feel it in my belly," Foster bellows, capturing the lonely confidence of going your own way. On To All The Ones That I Love, Press Club make it sound easy.
For fans of:
Royal Headache, Bad//Dreems, Teen Jesus & The Jean Teasers
Jared Richards
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Julien Baker & TORRES — Send A Prayer My Way
The Tennessee twosome began writing their collaborative country record before the likes of Beyoncé and Post Malone dug into the genre.
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Supplied: Matador Records
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After meeting backstage at a gig a decade ago, solo indie-rock musicians Julien Baker and TORRES (Mackenzie Scott) began working on a collaboration back in 2020, after realising they both grew up in the South on a steady diet of country.
Then, Baker's other project —
Across its dozen tracks, Send A Prayer My Way alternates between light country touches and all-in honky tonk, as evident from the album's first two tracks. Opener 'Dirt', led by Baker singing about sobriety and ending off the wagon, is only turned country by a pedal steel; 'The Only Marble I've Got Left' is silly strums and affected twang.
Where the album's more effective is when the duo offers their own perspective more clearly as two queer women making country music.
'Goodbye Baby' is a sweet ode to how much both love their partners; 'Sugar in the Tank' is a passionate and sweet ballad backed by banjo and a Hammond organ.
At a time when many artists are turning to country, with cynical takes on the genre, Julien Baker and TORRES clearly have a lot of reverence for the genre's unique storytelling more than sound.
Jared Richards
If you like:
Lucinda Williams, Linda Ronstadt, boygenius
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