4 days ago
10 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: Amaarae, Gunna, No Joy, and More
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Amaarae, photo by Jenna Marsh
With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week's batch includes new albums from Amaarae, Gunna, No Joy, Ada Lea, Osees, Charley Crockett, Big Freedia, Anamanaguchi, Mechatok, and Field Medic. Subscribe to Pitchfork's New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Amaarae: Black Star [Interscope]
Two years after Fountain Baby propelled her into the stratosphere, Amaarae burrows deep into the dance underground on follow-up Black Star. The Ghanaian American singer alternates between gruff monologues and featherlight twirls on songs like rap-forward opener 'Stuck Up,' presenting the club as a site of transgression and intimidation. Single and centerpiece 'Girlie-Pop!' interjects with a perpetually bursting bubble of pop that turns a plosive bombardment—'pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!'—into the sound of joy itself.
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Gunna: The Last Wun [Young Stoner Life/300 Entertainment]
Gunna's relationship with longtime label home Young Stoner Life Records has grown fraught since the Atlanta rapper agreed to take an Alford plea in the since-closed racketeering case against the Young Thug–led collective. His new album, The Last Wun, nevertheless arrives via the label, but Young Thug—a regular on Gunna projects until the musicians were indicted in 2022—is absent from the tracklist. Instead, Offset, and Afrobeats favorites Burna Boy, Asake, and Wizkid are the marquee guests of the One of Wun follow-up. Gunna shared two singles ahead of his album's release, 'Him All Along' and 'Won't Stop.'
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No Joy: Bugland [Hand Drawn Dracula]
Jasamine White-Gluz enlisted maximalist producer and vaporwave mystic Fire-Toolz for Bugland, her first No Joy album since 2020's Motherhood. If their union promises grand scale and anything-goes abandon, the results are at once more sweeping and more focused than you might expect. Fire-Toolz's hyperbaric production fills watertight songs with astral space that helps White-Gluz's guitars and vocals levitate, as disparate fragments of indie-pop melody, My Bloody Valentine spangle, and a few Paul Oakenfold action beats conspire in spectacular fashion.
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Ada Lea: When I Paint My Masterpiece [Saddle Creek]
Ada Lea follows 2021's One Hand on the Steering Wheel the Other Sewing a Garden with When I Paint My Masterpiece, an album 'of breezy, folk-indebted songs that marvel at everyday realities and find joy in humility,' as Marissa Lorusso says in her review. Lea worked on the 16-track record with producer Luke Temple. 'Much of the record was recorded in a single room with a small band, live and loose in rural Ontario,' Lorusso writes. 'That intimacy translates into some transcendent moments, as when a gently distorted guitar riff wonderfully steals the spotlight partway through 'Something in the Wind,' or in the masterful control of tension on 'Down Under the Van Horne Overpass.''
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Osees: Abomination Revealed at Last [Deathgod]
On their whopping 29th album, Osees finally rope some of their garage-rock origins back into the ring after veering off toward synth-punk and heady psych-rock on Intercepted Message and Protean Threat. The new Abomination Revealed at Last charges out the gate with its double-drummer fury on 'Abomination' and rarely slows down. When it does, however, like on the standout 'Sneaker' or the post-punk groove of 'Glitter-Shot,' Osees don't lose any of their focus. If anything, Abomination Revealed at Last is a slight return to form without abandoning what the band has become in recent years.
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Charley Crockett: Dollar a Day [Island]
An antidote to the overproduced and polished side of Nashville's country output, Charley Crockett has the drive of old-school country stars with the modern charm to scoop up a Grammy nomination, too. For his latest LP and follow-up to Lonesome Drifter, Crockett reunited with producer Shooter Jennings to flesh out his ongoing Sagebrush Trilogy. The new album, Dollar a Day, lets the warmth of the sun's rays reflect off its slide guitar rambling in 'All Around Cowboy' and the earnest vocal harmonies of 'Crucified Son,' positioning Crockett's latest as an easygoing summer listen.
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Big Freedia: Pressing Onward [Queen Diva Music]
Bounce queen Big Freedia is staying true to her New Orleans roots by bringing her rousing spirit straight to the pews. Named after her local Baptist church, Pressing Onward fuses her high-energy bounce beats with gospel music to reignite her religious faith and desire to bring communities together. With refrains like, 'We don't need a preacher just to go to church,' and, 'Drive the enemy out/Shake that submarine, Big Freedia uses her album to spread party-starting messages of love, acceptance, and perseverance rather than exclude fans based on their faith.
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Anamanaguchi: Anyway [Polyvinyl]
Everything you know about Anamanaguchi has shifted on Anyway, their third album and follow-up to 2019's [USA]. The feel-good band turned from chiptune pop toward full-on fuzz rock, writing in a living room–turned–practice space and recording live to tape at Tarbox Road Studios, where Dave Fridmann produced the LP. Though Anamanaguchi's music has long summoned visions of late-night video game console parties and back-of-the-bus GameBoy sessions, the New York quartet now sounds closer to Ovlov or Angel Du$t playing a sweaty dive bar. Yet, as much as Anyway is a pivot, it's still got the heart of Anamanaguchi's longtime sound, as heard on singles 'Buckwild' or 'Rage (Kitchen Sink).'
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Mechatok: Wide Awake [Young]
Through his work with both Drain Gang and PC Music, Emir Timur Tokdemir has quietly set up camp at the vanguard of pop music. On Wide Awake, his first formal solo LP, the producer, better known as Mechatok, enlists Isabella Lovestory, Tohji, and—on the club-pop bunker buster 'Expression on Your Face'—Bladee and Ecco2k to showcase his moreish spin on bubblegum synth-pop.
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Field Medic: Surrender Instead [self-released]
Billed as a rebirth for Field Medic mastermind Kevin Patrick Sullivan, Surrender Instead is a refresh for the genre-hopping artist following years pursuing sobriety and regular therapy to separate himself from his art. On his ninth LP, he flits from bedroom pop with 'Simply Obsessed' to an acoustic confessional like 'Castle Peaks' in the search for a healthy balance of life versus work. As Sullivan puts it over alt-country twang with a sparkle of romance on 'Melancholy,' he's 'holdin' on while tornadoes tear apart the fabric of [his] mind.' At least he finds a way to make the ride sound scenic.
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