You heard it here first - it's the Gold Record we always knew Bill Callahan had in him! Last summer, he returned from a silence of years - now, he's raring to go with another new one already. The abiding humanity of latter-day Callahan is highlighted by dark plumes of caustic wit upending standards of our everyday life and the songs that celebrate it: the job, the wife, the TV, the neighbors. Bill slips easily into his characters, whether they're easy people or not - and the cross-hatch of their light and shadow is unpredictably entertaining in the manner that belongs only one singer in this whole wide world: we're still talking about Bill Callahan.

Though he invited in collaborators for this project, Parker is very much a solo artist on Suite for Max Brown. He constructs a digital bed of beats and samples; lays down tracks of his own on guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion, and occasionally voice; then invites musician friends to play and improvise over his melodies. But unlike a traditional jazz session, Parker doesn’t assemble a full band in the studio for a day or two of live takes. His accompanists are often working alone with Parker, reacting to what Parker has provided them, and then Parker uses those individual parts to layer and assemble into his final tracks. The process may be relatively solitary and cerebral, but the results feel like in-the-moment jams—warm-hearted, human, alive. Suite for Max Brown brims with personality, boasting the rhythmic flow of hip hop and the soulful swing of jazz.

The Ascension is the eighth studio album from singer, songwriter and composer Sufjan Stevens and is the long awaited follow-up to Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell. One of the most acclaimed albums of 2015, The New York Times praised Carrie & Lowell as “restrained and meticulous” while Pitchfork declared it “a masterpiece.”

In the time between Carrie & Lowell and the forthcoming The Ascension, Stevens also released Oscar-nominated music for the Luca Guadagnino film Call Me By Your Name; a collaborative album entitled Planetarium with Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner (The National) and James Mcalister; The Decalogue, a solo piano work performed by Timo Andres; and scored several works for ballet: Reflections (Houston Ballet) and Principia (NYCB).

The Ascension is musically expansive and sweeping in thematic scope.

Moses Sumney evades definition as an act of duty: technicolor videos and monochrome clothes; Art Rock and Black Classical; blowing into Fashion Week from a small town in North Carolina; seemingly infinite collaborators, but only one staggering voice. A young life spent betwixt Southern California and Accra, Ghana - not so much rootless as an epyphite, an air plant. The scale is cinematic but the moves are precise deeds of art and stewardship. Sumney's new, generous album, græ, is an assertion that the undefinable still exists and dwelling in it is an act of resistance. To try to pin Sumney down on a sound - and really, on any matter -  is to end up with a hand full of fog, but his genius is never allowing the set to sound like a hodgepodge. His forthcoming double album expands upon the sonic universe built in Sumney's critically-acclaimed debut LP Aromanticism and subsequent EP Black In Deep Red, 2014. The songs on græ may be divergent, like the visceral, Smashing Pumpkins drama of "Virile" and the intoxicated, outro jazz of "Gagarin." There's the kinky, ambiguous bop of "Cut Me" countered with the sweeping, amphitheater-ready "Bless Me." But there's that voice, always unknowable and penetrating, threading these pieces together: a heavenly rasp, a whale call, Miles' horn, a soulful snarl. It all works to create a paradox, keeping art and artist somewhere between any one sure thing - but surely something that demands your attention affixed and your breath bated. All of this is græ. There's probably a biblical analogy to be made about a person who just happens to be named Moses, who flees the binary, splits a massive body into two pieces, and leads us through the in-between - holy and wholly rebellious. By breaking up græ into two multifaceted, dynamic pieces, Sumney is quite literally creating a "grey" in-between space for listeners to absorb and consider the art. Not strictly singles, not strictly albums, never altogether songs or spoken word segments on their own. It's neither here nor there. Neither/Nor, if you will.

Big Thief's singer/guitarist/songwriter returns with an album of songs and an album of instrumentals.

Single LP on black vinyl in single jacket with 12” x 12” insert. Includes coupon for full download

Dan Bejar initially conceived of Have We Met, his 13th album as Destroyer, as a Y2K album. He was already active during the era but not heard overhead in a cafe or salon, which is perhaps what the idea of the Y2K sound evokes nearly two decades later. Bejar assigned frequent producer and bandmate John Collins the role of layering synth and rhythm sections over demos with the period-specific Bjork, Air, and Massive Attack in mind, but he soon realized the sonic template was too removed from Destroyer’s own, and the idea of a concept was silly anyway. So he abandoned it and gave Collins the most timeless instruction of all: “Make it sound cool.”

The result is not a startling departure from 2017’s new-wavey, Thatcher-era yearning ken, but unlike that more bandoriented approach, the only actual instruments that appear here are bass and electric guitar. MIDI instrumentation will of course invite Your Blues and Kaputt nostalgia, the two other John Collins-heavy affairs, and to some degree that’s valid. Each contrasts cavernous empty space and synthetic sounds, but rather than whimsical theatrics or sleazy orchestral pop, Have We Met is buoyed by precise, plasticky guitar shredding three-dimensionally across massive percussion—the loudest and dirtiest drums on a Destroyer record to date. 

A person whose words are so potent that they cause the people and beings around them to vibrate is said to have a "silver tongue." It's apt, then, that Mackenzie Scott-who has spent the 2010s making boundary-pushing pop music under her Torres moniker-has chosen to call her fourth album, and first on Merge, just that. Recorded at O'Deer in Brooklyn, New York, Silver Tongue is a full-scale realization of the world Scott has created over Torres' last few albums. Even when singing in more subdued tones, Scott's voice is fervent, her lyrics stirring and unyielding as she draws from both the divine and the everyday

How do you describe an album out of time, concerned with the disappearance of culture, of humanity, of nature, of logic and emotion? Why make this album in an era when attention spans have been reduced to next to nothing, and the tactile grains of making music have been further reduced to algorithms and projected playlist placement. Why wake up in the morning? Why hasn’t everything already disappeared? Deerhunter’s eighth LP forgets the questions and makes up unrelated answers. It gets up, walks around, it records itself in several strategic geographic points across north america. It comes home, restructures itself and goes back to bed to avoid the bad news. From the opening harpsichord and piano figures of Death in Midsummer, it is impossible to tell where the record came from. Is No One’s Sleeping an outtake of an aborted Kinks recording session in 1977 Berlin with Eno producing? No. That is nostalgia. If there is one thing Deerhunter are making clear it is that they have exhausted themselves with that toxic concept. What they spend their time doing instead is reinventing their approach to microphones, the drum kit, the harpsichord, the electromechanical and synthetic sounds of keyboards. Whatever guitars are left are pure chrome, plugged straight into the mixing desk with no amplifier or vintage warmth. The result is as thrilling, haunting, and unpredictable as anything in their roughly 15 year career. Deerhunter have made a science fiction album about the present. Is it needed right now? Is it relevant? Perhaps only to a small audience. DADA was a reaction to the horrors of war. Punk was a reaction to the slow and vacant 70’s. Hip Hop was a liberated musical culture that challenged the notions presented wholesale about the African-American experience. What is popular music today a reaction to?

Bonnie Prince Billy is the man who is destined to sing a darkness for the rest of time - but not now. Not today. For I Made a Place, his first album of new songs since 2011, he is bringing the lightness to new- and next-generations as well as his longtime friends and fans. It's a message we dearly need. With a hometown band supplying him the space to be as spare or as expansive as he needs to be, Bonny draws inspiration from a world-spanning set of musics, aiming to lift us up with songs meant to inspire, inform, lend confidence and bring warmth to assailed tribes everywhere. A depth of musical joy as only the Prince can deliver!

Gold Past Life marks both an end and a beginning for Fruit Bats. It's the end of an unintentional thematic trilogy of records that began with 2014's EDJ (a solo record by name, but a Fruit Bats release in spirit) and hit an emotional peak with 2016's Absolute Loser. They encompassed years of loss, displacement, and the persistent, low-level anxiety of the current political climate. They were written in the wake of friends who left these earthly confines and families that could have been. But these salves, these songs on Gold Past Life, also represent new beginnings-the journeys that await after making it through troubled times. Gold Past Life is about rejecting notions of idealized nostalgia ("Gold Past Life") and the process of grounding oneself in the present, both geographically ("A Lingering Love," "Ocean") and spiritually ("Drawn Away"). With Gold Past Life, Eric Johnson of Fruit B hopes to bring more immediacy to the music and share positivity, hope, and motivation to keep on keepin' on with a wider audience.

Following the ever-emotive Boo Boo, Toro Y Moi’s new album Outer Peace is a time capsule that captures our relationship to contemporary culture into one comprehensive, sonic package. As both a producer and designer, Bear utilizes abstract sound pairings with recognizable samples for his most pop influenced record to date, including features from ABRA, WET, and Instupendo. This is no departure from his funk and disco roots, which can be heard on “Ordinary Pleasure”, later fusing into variations of house with tracks like “Freelance” and “Laws of the Universe.” Smooth interludes melt into fast paced beats, paralleling the feeling of driving through the Bay Area, where Bear spent most of his time writing the album. Outer Peace is duality. It embodies whatever form you choose to inhabit in the moment. Listen and let your imagination become the universe.

As you listen to Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest, a feeling of totality, of completeness, steals over you, like a thief in broad daylight. Of course it does – you’re listening to a new Bill Callahan record! The first one in almost six years! What more do you need to complete you?

Or perhaps, after all the time, the obvious needs to be made just a little more explicit?

First, it’s a different kind of record. Bill’s now writing from somewhere beyond his Eagle-Apocalypse-River headspace, and Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest is very much its own beast. The songs are, by and large, shorter, and there are more of them. It took almost all of the previous three albums to add up to that many. Plus, twenty’s a lot of songs! But again, it goes a lot deeper than that.

The Mystery Lights's sophomore album on Daptone's rock subsidiary, Wick Records, finds the group digging deeper into their well of eclectic influences, enriching their sound without echoing the past. It mixes the eerie, insistent synth sounds of groups like The Normal and Suicide, the energy and swagger of punks golden age, the pop sensibility of The Kinks, and the stark, deliberate execution of Television. The Mystery Lights are taking their idiosyncratic brand of rock and roll to dizzying new heights.

On House of Sugar, his third full-length for Domino and ninth overall, (Sandy) Alex G inhabits a diverse range of musical and emotional points-of-view (often simultaneously), in turn illuminating the tension that hides in the shadow of desire. Giannascoli began writing these songs in the fall of 2017, having just finished a tour for House of Sugar’s acclaimed predecessor, Rocket, and moved into a new apartment in Philadelphia. Whereas with earlier efforts, such as 2011’s self-released Winner or the landmark 2014 release DSU, he’d write numerous songs fairly quickly, with House of Sugar Giannascoli worked at a steadier pace, concentrating on fewer songs and laboring over each one more than before. Throughout the process Giannascoli worked closely with Jacob Portrait, who mixed both Rocket and its predecessor, 2015’s Beach Music, and here helped to balance each of House of Sugar’s dense, multi-faceted tracks. As the product of extended focus and planning, House of Sugar emerges as Giannascoli’s most meticulous, cohesive album yet: a statement of artistic purpose, showing off his ear for both persistent earworms and shifting textures.

It was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned — for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.

Fourth studio album by the Australian singer-songwriter Tame Impala (Kevin Parker). 'The Slow Rush' was recorded between Los Angeles and Parker's studio in his hometown of Fremantle, Australia. The album is Parker's deep dive into the oceans of time, conjuring the feeling of a lifetime in a lightning bolt, of major milestones whizzing by while you're looking at your phone, it's a paean to creation and destruction and the unending cycle of life.

Vinyl LP pressing. After the breakout success of Jay Som's 2017 debut album, Everybody Works, the band's songwriter, producer, and creative force Melina Duterte spent the next few years taking advantage of all the opportunities her unexpected success suddenly offered her. She took Jay Som on the road, performing with the likes of Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, Paramore, Alvvays and more across multiple US and European tours. She made appearances at various high-profile festivals, including Primavera Sound, Bonnaroo, Sasquatch, and many more. She even found time to sneak in a collaborate EP, Nothing's Changed, with like-minded solo artist Justus Proffit. When it was time to make Jay Som's second album, Duterte relocated from her hometown roots in California's Bay Area to Los Angeles and started writing. The result, Anak Ko, is some of Duterte's strongest work to date. Translating to "my child" in English, Anak Ko, features sweeping, shoegazey guitars ("Superbike"), delicate string & pedal steel arrangements ("Nighttime Drive," "Get Well"), and incredible production that showcases Duterte's evolving skills in the studio ("Anak Ko"). Anak Ko presents an exciting glimpse into Duterte's creative process and solidifies her undeniable progression as one of 2019's strongest and gifted songwriters.

Minneapolis-based experimental R&B vocalist and songwriter Velvet Negroni has announced his forthcoming 4AD debut album NEON BROWN out August 30th. Velvet Negroni is the alter-ego of creative polymath Jeremy Nutzman. Raised in an outer suburb of the Twin Cities, Jeremy - a black kid adopted into a white evangelical Christian family - split his formative years between classical piano lessons and late night jam sessions. A duality that permeates every corner of his music, with forthcoming album NEON BROWN thriving in the borderlands between indie rock and R&B. Since touring with close friend Bon Iver, Nutzman notched writing credits for Kanye West and Kid Cudi ahead of his debut single releases on NYC label b4 in 2018. Now, alongside prolific co-producers Psymun (Young Thug, Juice WLRD, The Weeknd) and Tickle Torture, Nutzman’s new releases transcend the borders between his often polarised influences, bringing R&B slow jams and nods to hometown hero Prince with guitar licks and full band energy. “Lush in its atmosphere but brutally cold in its delivery, “CONFETTI” is a warped invitation into the gorgeous contradictions of Velvet Negroni.” - FADER

U.F.O.F., F standing for ‘Friend’, is the name of the highly anticipated third record by Big Thief, set to be released by 4AD on May 3rd. The New York-based band, featuring Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals), Buck Meek (guitar), Max Oleartchik (bass), and James Krivchenia (drums), has spent the last 4 years on an incessant world tour, winning the devotion of an enthusiastic and rapidly expanding audience. Their songs represent an emotional bravery and realness that weaves intimate relationships with the listener, a phenomenon that has made them one of the most widely-respected bands of the current era. Their first two back-to-back releases, Masterpiece (2016) and Capacity (2017), have been analysed, wept to, danced to, critically applauded, imitated, hummed idly, and shouted out loud. They have soundtracked crowded restaurants, difficult conversations, cowboy bars, yoga classes, night drives, and lonely bedrooms. U.F.O.F. was recorded in rural western Washington at Bear Creek Studios. In a large cabin-like room, the band set up their gear to track live with engineer Dom Monks and producer Andrew Sarlo, who was also behind their previous albums. Having already lived these songs on tour, they were relaxed and ready to experiment. The raw material came quickly. Some songs were written only hours before recording and stretched out instantly, first take, vocals and all. Others were explored in search of perfected moments of dynamic feedback and spiritual, rhythmic togetherness. A careful New Age sprinkle of mystical textures and stabs was added and kept in the mix only when all agreed that each element had become absolutely crucial to the tune. The completed palette feels classic, upfront and honest, with an occasional, welcome glimpse into the magic box.