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 the Weeknd, MIKE, Lilly Hiatt, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Joe McPhee, Ebo Taylor, Eddie Chacon, and Julia Hülsmann. 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.)
The Weeknd: Hurry Up Tomorrow [XO/Republic]
With Hurry Up Tomorrow, the Weeknd shutters his trilogy that began with 2020’s After Hours and the subsequent Dawn FM, from 2022. The new album might also be the final release from Abel Tesfaye’s the Weeknd alter ego as we know it—or at least, that’s what Tesfaye has been hinting at in interviews. The release of Hurry Up Tomorrow, originally slated for a January 24, was postponed out of respect for those affected by the Los Angeles wildfires, which also factored into the Weeknd canceling his album-release concert at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl. Hurry Up Tomorrow includes the singles “Timeless” and “São Paulo,” but not “Dancing in the Flames.” Guests on the new album include Playboi Carti, Anitta, Lana Del Rey, Justice, Giorgio Moroder, Future, Florence and the Machine, and Travis Scott.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Buy at Rough Trade
MIKE: Showbiz! [10k]
Showbiz! is the latest album from the prolific 26-year-old New York rapper and producer MIKE. In his review of the album, Dash Lewis writes, “Showbiz! feels like MIKE’s road trip album, its construction mirroring the tug-of-war inherent to a life of travel: You arrive in a new place and sink into its rhythm, but just as you get comfortable, it’s time to leave.” Read Pitchfork’s new interview with the artist, “MIKE Knows a Thing or Two About Showbiz.”
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Lilly Hiatt: Forever [New West]
Nashville singer and songwriter Lilly Hiatt returns with her new album Forever. Hiatt wrote and recorded Forever with her husband, Coley Hinson, who also produced the nine-song LP. Forever follows Hiatt’s 2020 studio album, Walking Proof, and arrives after a period of personal change in Hiatt’s life: getting married, buying a house, and adopting a dog. “After scrapping about 20 songs or so I had written the last few years, I wanted to get to the heart of things,” Hiatt said of the new record in press materials. Forever contains the singles “Shouldn’t Be,” “Kwik-E-Mart,” and “Thoughts.”
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Bonnie “Prince” Billy: The Purple Bird [No Quarter]
Will Oldham has looked—and acted—the part of a storied, rustic man for so long, it’s a surprise this is his first time putting the Bonnie “Prince” Billy spin on a country album. Enter The Purple Bird, a Nashville album in sound and origin, as Oldham traveled down to the city to record with David “Ferg” Ferguson, a longtime friend and engineer for stars like Sturgill Simpson and the late John Prine. Though writing a country album wasn’t the original plan, that’s what ended up happening, with rusty folk songs and rambling tracks like “Our Home” that showcase the prolific singer-songwriter’s commitment to seeing where the road can take him next.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Joe McPhee: I’m Just Say’n [Smalltown Supersound]
I’m Just Say’n is the new album from 85-year-old saxophonist, trumpeter, and poet Joe McPhee. McPhee honed his improvised pieces alongside producer, saxophonist, flautist and longtime collaborator Mats Gustaffson. Opening track “Short Pieces” is built upon spare, dissonant instrumentation and accented by his spoken word passages about jazz giants like Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy, and more. I’m Just Say’n follows McPhee’s 2024 poetry record Musings of a Bahamian Son.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Ebo Taylor, Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad: Ebo Taylor JID022 [Jazz Is Dead]
Within a month of his 89th birthday, Ghanian highlife legend Ebo Taylor has jumped aboard Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s Jazz Is Dead series for a new album. Working with Ghanaian vocalists and Taylor’s son Henry, the group set up at Linear Labs studio and channeled the Afrobeat energy of Taylor’s 1970s heyday. “For me,” said Younge in press materials, “it is the equivalent of working with musical genius Fela Kuti, because of how much I have studied both of their work and influence on the genre of Afrobeat… a dream I never thought could come to reality!”
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Eddie Chacon: Lay Low [Stones Throw]
On his new album, Lay Low, Los Angeles crooner Eddie Chacon digs into the difficult process of loving and letting go. Over eight songs, all of which were produced by Nick Hakim, Chacon taps into the soulful musings of someone seeking earnestness, truth, and something bigger than himself. Previewing the follow-up to 2023’s Sundown are singles “Good Sun,” “Let the Devil In,” “End of the World,” and the John Carroll Kirby collaboration “Empire.”
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
Julia Hülsmann: Under the Surface [ECM]
German jazz pianist and composer Julia Hülsmann returns with a new collection of originals brought to life by a quartet of likeminded individuals on Under the Surface. Tenor saxophonist Uli Kempendorff, double bassist Marc Muellbauer, drummer Heinrich Köbberling, and Norwegian newcomer on trumpet Hildegunn Øiseth move with grace around Hülsmann’s feathery piano runs. Together, they play off one another in a cautiously playful manner, articulating songs like “The Earth Below” and opener “They Stumble, They Walk” with jests and romance alike.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Source : Pitchfork
