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 Laura Marling, Soccer Mommy, Megan Thee Stallion, Akai Solo, the late Young Slo-Be, Two Shell, Anna McClellan, Elias Rønnenfelt, Pom Pom Squad, 2nd Grade, and Félicia Atkinson. 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.)
Laura Marling: Patterns in Repeat [Chrysalis/Partisan]
Laura Marling’s first album in four years is a trove of nocturnal ballads and introspective lullabies recorded in the room with her newborn daughter. Patterns in Repeat, the British singer-songwriter’s Song for Our Daughter follow-up, is filled with fingerpicked reflections on parenthood and family psychology—informed by her recent completion of a masters degree in psychoanalysis—as well as aging and romance, on songs like the Leonard Cohen–esque “Caroline” or the contemplative “Looking Back,” adapted from a song her father wrote, in his youth, about growing old.
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Soccer Mommy: Evergreen [Loma Vista]
In the early years of Soccer Mommy, Sophie Allison fleshed out her skills as a singer-songwriter by focusing on the core of her craft first and decorative instrumentation second. On Evergreen, her fourth studio album under the moniker, she returns to the heart of that early sound. While it’s stripped-down in comparison to 2022’s Sometimes, Forever, the new album is cinematic and tender, as big-hearted as singles like “Driver” and “Abigail” make it out to be. With a little help from producer Ben H. Allen III, Allison flits from soft indie-rock to acoustic guitar-led songs like “Lost” and “M” on Evergreen with ease.
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Megan Thee Stallion: Megan: Act II [Hot Girl Productions]
Megan: Act II is the expanded version of Megan Thee Stallion’s recent LP Megan. It features a second album’s worth of songs, including “Neva Play,” her collaboration with RM of BTS, and further collaborations with Flo Milli, Twice, and Spiritbox. The project arrives ahead of the new documentary, Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words.
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Akai Solo: DreamDropDragon [Break All]
Brooklyn rapper Akai Solo returns with DreamDropDragon less than a year after he dropped Verticality///Singularity and Only the Strong Remain. Roping together hip-hop, jazz, and electronica, he swats away barriers to present a raw version of himself and his past over the course of the record. DreamDropDragon was led by the Wavy Bagels–produced “Bleeding Black.”
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Young Slo-Be: Slo-Be Bryant 4 [KoldGreedy Entertainment/Thizzler on the Roof]
Slo-Be Bryant 4 is the first posthumous album from Stockton, California, rapper Young Slo-Be, who was shot dead, in 2022, at the age of 29. The new album features 13 songs, including the singles “Lonely” and “Are You Responsible,” the latter of which utilizes a pitched-up sample of Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody.” The new album follows 2022’s Southeast and 2021’s Slo-Be Bryant 3.
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Two Shell: Two Shell [Young]
Two Shell have spent the past few years playing with the dance-pop zeitgeist like Silly Putty, poking it with holes and lobbing it at the wall just to see what happens. Their self-titled debut album burrows further into the post–PC Music nexus with hyper-speed beats, earworm hooks, and sherbet synth pads, continuing their quest to see how bubbly and effervescent they can make dance music sound before it bursts open like a piñata.
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Anna McClellan: Electric Bouquet [Father/Daughter]
Though she’s now on her fourth album, Anna McClellan has lost none of her down-to-earth charm with Electric Bouquet. The Omaha, Nebraska, singer-songwriter always takes things at her own pace, strutting between contemplative indie-folk and uptempo art-pop with a fitting dose of retro flair, like if Karen Dalton or Daniel Johnston were in their twenties during the pandemic. Led by catchy singles “Paper Alley” and “Like a Painting,” McClellan catapults off standout records of her past, like 2018’s Yes and No, to come into her own and invite you to join. Electric Bouquet is McClellan’s most striking album yet, and the heart-tugging authenticity of piano ballad “Jam the Phones” alone places her alongside Frankie Cosmos or Jon Brion.
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Elias Rønnenfelt: Heavy Glory [Escho]
Heavy Glory is the solo debut of Iceage’s Elias Rønnenfelt, a bewildering, country-rock tour-de-force evoking titanic acts like Nick Cave, Van Morrison, Townes Van Zandt, and Spacemen 3—the latter two of whom he covers on the LP. Written in the post-lockdown period of 2022, the album meanders between yarns and contemplations that nonetheless retain the thump of his old band’s early hardcore classics. Joanne Robertson and Fauzia guest on the LP.
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Pom Pom Squad: Mirror Starts Moving Without Me [City Slang]
Before heading into the studio, Pom Pom Squad frontperson Mia Berrin asked her bandmates to make playlists of their favorite music from childhood to adulthood, before hosting listening sessions. That spirit of camaraderie shines through in the follow-up to their 2021 album, Death of a Cheerleader. Mirror Starts Moving Without Me is a record of singalong catharsis whose anxious hooks and eerie undertones belie a spirit of joyful, indie-pop abandon.
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2nd Grade: Scheduled Explosions [Double Double Whammy]
Scheduled Explosions presents another power-pop cornucopia from the Philadelphia songwriter and one-man joy machine Peter Gill. As is the 2nd Grade custom, the record is crammed with melodic delights that burn bright and die young, usually checking out in a state of distorted disrepair before the two-minute mark. Nine singles preceded the album—amounting to just over 15 minutes of music—and the remaining 14 promise similar fast thrills.
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Félicia Atkinson: Space as an Instrument [Shelter Press]
On Space as an Instrument, Félicia Atkinson uses piano improvisations recorded on her phone, field recordings, fragments of whispered poems, and glints of her trademark abstract electronics to convey the incomprehensibly vast beauty of the natural world. The French electro-acoustic composer is releasing the record on Shelter Press, the label she co-runs, which put out its predecessor Image Language, as well as her 2021 album with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Un Hiver en plein été.
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Source : Pitchfork
