Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 04 April (2025)

Forever Howlong is Black Country, New Road’s first studio release since 2022's UK #3 album Ants From Up There, which gave the band their second Top 5 UK album in 12 months alongside their Mercury Prize shortlisted debut For the first time, and follows 2023's Live at Bush Hall, an album The Guardian claimed was a “magical resurgence” in a triumphant five-star review. Now, on studio album three, the band are once again building from the ground up in yet another miraculous musical transformation. The long-awaited new record was produced by James Ford (Fontaines D.C., Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Blur) and sees Black Country, New Road settled into a new shape in which vocal duties – and most of the song writing – is split between Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw. “It created a real through line for the album, having three girls singing," says Ellery. "It's definitely very different to Ants From Up There, because of the female perspective - and the music we've made also compliments that." Forever Howlong is an ambitious, meticulously detailed record that includes everything from folk to prog via baroque pop and touches of alt-rock – with nods to everything from Joanna Newsom to Randy Newman via Fiona Apple and Janis Ian – yet all the while retaining that unmistakably unique sound that only this combination of musicians can come up with. Although hugely varied and expansive, the album also feels deeply cohesive and focused, as it takes three distinct voices and styles and seamlessly intersperses them into a new collective sound.

Always Been is the sixth solo album from Craig Finn, produced by Finn’s long time friend Adam Granduciel, the principal of The War on Drugs. Always Been is direct both in both music and title. As Finn says, “I’ve always been Craig Finn.” From the opener “Bethany”, a moody piano-driven portrait with a distinctive Granduciel guitar solo, to the propulsion of the first single “People of Substance”, to the vivid storytelling and character development that has marked Finn’s career, this record feels at once familiar and fresh. Recorded throughout 2024 at One Cue Studio in Burbank, CA, Always Been features a host of musicians, including many of Granduciel’s bandmates in The War on Drugs. Kathleen Edwards and Sam Fender provide guest vocals. The musical result is distinctive, purposeful, and commanding. This is perhaps Finn’s most narrative record yet. It tells the story of a man who becomes a clergyman despite a lack of faith. The songs detail his rise, fall, and eventual redemption, while also shining a light to sharply reveal the other characters that populate the world he moves through. Always Been is Finn’s 6th solo record, standing alongside his nine albums with The Hold Steady. With his last solo release, A Legacy of Rentals, receiving year end accolades from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Aquarium Drunkard and more, Always Been arrives as an exciting next step for this prolific storyteller and songwriter.

Song of the Earth is performed by singer/songwriter/composer/multi-instrumentalist, David Longstreth with members of his band Dirty Projectors—Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell—and the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e. The album also features Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells. Longstreth wrote the first draft of Song of the Earth in six “manic” weeks for a commission arranged by s t a r g a z e, feeling disoriented, but also galvanized, by the moment he was in: the pandemic chaos, the “radical psychedelia” of new fatherhood, the novelty of writing for large ensemble. He then spent three years revising, rewriting, rearranging, and recording in studios and homes in the Netherlands, Los Angeles, and New York City. Song of the Earth marks Longstreth’s biggest-yet foray into the field of concert music. It received its US premiere in a March 2024 sold-out performance at Disney Hall in Los Angeles with the LA Philharmonic. Work-in-progress performances also took place between 2022 and 2024 at the Barbican in London, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, and Muziekgebouw Amsterdam.

Djo, the musical project of Joe Keery, returns with his third studio album, The Crux a deeply reflective and sonically adventurous body of work. Following the massive success of his single End of Beginning which topped the Global Spotify chart and amassed over 1.5 billion streams worldwide, The Crux was crafted at the legendary Electric Lady Studios in New York. Drawing inspiration from the turbulence and growth of navigating ones 20s, the album explores themes of self-discovery and connection, all wrapped in a narrative that serves as a love letter to those who matter most to Djo. Aptly titled The Crux, this album captures a moment suspended between the past and an undefined future.

Written and recorded over 20 days, `Who Believes In Angels?' is a collaborative studio album between Elton John and Brandi Carlile. It mixes Elton-led songs and Brandi-led songs, with long-term collaborator Bernie Taupin and Brandi both contributing lyrics, and producer and co-writer Andrew Watt acting as the producer, mediator and creative conduit. They are backed by a world-class band of musicians comprising of Chad Smith, Pino Palladino and Josh Klinghoffer. 

"Jellywish" is the fifth record from NY based indie folk quartet Florist, out April 4th 2025 via Double Double Whammy. "Jellywish" sees a departure of Florist's former foray into meandering soundscapes and improvisational tendencies of their previous self-titled album, instead embracing shorter stripped back song structures and an emphasis on melody. The result is a succinct and focused 10 track album showcasing Florist's dynamic growth and Emily Sprague's gift of empathic songwriting.

L.A. Witch have always exuded an aura of effortless cool, whether it manifested as the Americana noir and laconic back-to-basics rock n' roll of their self-titled debut or the blistering austere adventurism of their sophomore album Play With Fire. The band-comprised of Sade Sanchez (guitar/vocals), Irita Pai (bass), and Ellie English (drums)-began as an informal affair, but the sultry and beguiling reverb-draped songs they created caught on with the public, moving the project beyond the insular space of the band's friends and peers in Southern California into the broader world. On their latest album, DOGGOD, the trio push their craft beyond their previous creative and geographical confines, opting to craft the material in Paris, recording the tracks at Motorbass Studio on the Rue de Martyrs. DOGGOD explores broader swaths of sonic terrain, employs a greater arsenal of tones, and probes larger existential and cosmic themes, all while retaining the band's signature sense of the forbidden, the forsaken, and the foreboding. DOGGOD is a way of tackling the universal riddle tangled in the spiritual nature of love and devotion. "I feel like I'm some sort of servant or slave to love," says Sanchez. "There's a willingness to die for love in the process of serving it or suffering for it or in search of it... just in the way a loyal, devoted servant dog would." The album title is a palindrome fusing together DOG and GOD-an exaltation of the submissive and a subversion of the divine. It's a nod to the purity of dogs and an acknowledgement of their unconditional love and protective nature that's at odds with the various pejoratives associated with the species. "There is this symbolic connection between women and dogs that expresses women's subordinate position in society," Sanchez explains. "And anything that embodies such divine characteristics never deserved to be a word used as an insult." These conflicted explorations of love and subservience manifest themselves in L.a. Witch's fusion of their trademark smooth and smoky garage alchemy with a newfound utilization of post-punk's disciplined reserve and icy instrumentation. Album opener "Icicle" captures the band journeying out of the proto-punk, psychedelia, and gritty riffage of the '70s into the chorus-drenched guitars and forlorn minimalism of Joy Division and early The Cure. A parallel is drawn between romantic suicide and martyrdom that carries over into the second song, "Kiss Me Deep." Here Sanchez describes a love so pure that it transcends time and carries over into multiple lifetimes. It's a song about passion delivered in the worldly and wounded stoicism of early goth pioneers. From there, the band segues into the lead single "777," a song about devotion to the point of death. A propulsive beat, a driving distorted riff, and Sanchez's ethereal vocals come together to create a song that's both dire in it's fatalism and sensual in it's faithful passion.

"Ko te reo Maori, he matapihi ki te ao Maori" goes the Maori whakatauki (proverb) that has guided Aotearoa singer/songwriter Marlon Williams'(Kai Tahu, Ngai Tai) fourth solo album, Te Whare Tiwekaweka. Translated, it means "The Maori language is a window to the Maori world" and expresses Marlon's motivation behind his first te reo Maori album. "Through the process of constructing these songs," Marlon says, "I've found a means of expressing my joys, sorrows and humour in a way that feels both distinctly new yet also connects me to my tipuna [ancestors] and my whenua [land, home]." Connection lies at the heart of Te Whare Tiwekaweka, the album's five-year process reconnecting Marlon to family, friends and his home town of Lyttelton after a globe-trotting decade establishing his career. The album signifies another step in Marlon's journey with his ancestral tongue, his ability in the language developing as the songs accumulated in the hours spent with close friend and co-writer, rapper KOMMI. The language unlocked both a newfound lyrical honesty and a grand sonic vision. Supported by long-time touring band The Yarra Benders, co-producer Mark Perkins (Te Whanau-a-Apanui), the He Waka Kotuia singers and featuring a collaboration with pop star Lorde, the album traverses Marlon's familiar folk-country-bluegrass territory, while continuing his exploration of poppier waters and the inherent rhythms of Maori music. The result is a collection at once ontemporary and timeless.

Coke Bottle Clear Vinyl. Like so many coming-of-age stories that leave a long-lasting impact, Momma's new album Welcome to My Blue Sky takes place during a charmed and turbulent summer-a transformative moment in time that co-founders Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten sum up as a period of "parallel chaos." Over the course of 12 immaculately composed yet immediately potent songs, the Brooklyn-based band's fourth LP documents all the life-altering upheaval the two singer/songwriter/guitarists experienced during a whirlwind mid-2022 tour, infusing each track with both unsparing self-awareness and immense sensitivity. Equal parts shared memoir, communal outpouring, and infinitely riveting emotional travelogue, the result is a bold leap forward for one of the most creatively uncompromising and truly singular voices in indie-rock.Produced by their bandmate Aron Kobayashi Ritch (a multi-instrumentalist/engineer), Welcome to My Blue Sky marks the follow-up to Household Name-a 2022 release that earned acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, NPR Music, and Rolling Stone (including landing on Rob Sheffield's "Top 20 Albums of 2022" list). With the help of drummer Preston Fulks, Momma arrived at an album matching the raw urgency of rock with the exquisitely sticky melodies and taut arrangements of pop-a dynamic born from their deepened commitment to finding the most direct vessel for their emotional expression.Momma has generated over 50M catalog streams to date and has performed with seminal bands like Weezer, Death Cab For Cutie, Pavement, Alex G, and Wet Leg, as well as major festival appearances such as Coachella 2023.

Brighton-based Australian vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappes's fifth full-length album ‘A Requiem’. The LP collects ten haunting, ambient soundscapes - incantations of dreams and nightmares, of death and grief, as well as power and autonomy. Carnal, transcendent cello drones are used to exorcise historical and generational traumas in an evocative and macabre piece of gothic experimentalism. Seeking solitude for what she knew would be an intense and cathartic writing experience, Trappes travelled to Scotland and isolated completely. Amidst meditative and psychedelic states, she channeled demons and accessed parts of herself she’d long desired to cleanse. ‘A Requiem’ is a musical service in honour of the dead, a sanctuary Trappes built for herself to explore familial chaos and history. The album is a raw, spiritual journey. Astonishingly vulnerable, and a compelling examination of loss - the threat of it, the meaning of it, the coming to terms with it. Across an album of breathtaking compositions, we are asked to bear witness to a sacred personal experience like no other. 

Scowl is a band that sounds exactly like their name implies.Venomous, fierce, antagonistic. A sneer not to be crossed. Over the last fiveyears, the Santa Cruz, California, band has firmly planted their flag in thehardcore scene with their vicious sound and ripping live show, sharing stagesaround the world with Circle Jerks, Touché Amoré, and Limp Bizkit, and fillingslots at prominent festivals like Coachella, Sick New World, and Reading andLeeds. But with their new album, Are We All Angels (Dead Oceans), Scowl isaiming to funnel all that aggression through a more expansive version ofthemselves.Much of Are We All Angels grapples with Scowl's newfound place inthe hardcore scene, a community which has both embraced the band andmade them something of a lightning rod over the past few years. Standoutsingle "Not Hell, Not Heaven" outright rejects the narratives cast onto them byoutsiders. "It's about feeling victimized and being a victim, but not wanting toidentify with being a victim," explains vocalist Kat Moss. "It's trying to find gracein the fact that I have my power. I live in my reality. You have to deal withwhatever you're dealing with, and it ain't working for me." The band breaks froma sense of disassociation to seek deeper connections on "Fantasy." "It'sincredibly challenging to try to balance my love for the scene while also feeling,in some spaces, extremely alienated and hated," Moss says. "'Fantasy' is aboutfeeling like I don't know how to connect with these people anymore, because Ihave shelled myself away so hard."The album ends in a philosophical place on the closing, titular track,"Are We All Angels," asking questions like, "Is this all there is?" and ultimatelyputting it on the listener to decide. "It's about the personal struggle betweengood and evil. It doesn't matter how 'good' or 'bad' you are, there are systemsthat will try to rewrite your narrative no matter what you actually do," explainsMoss, noting that punctuation on "Are We All Angels" has been deliberatelyomitted in an attempt to leave the statement open-ended. Are We All Angels isthe highly anticipated follow-up to Scowl's debut, 2021's How Flowers Grow, a16-minute primal scream over punishing riffs. But amidst the pounding chaos, itwas the record's sonic outlier, a cleaner interlude called "Seeds to Sow," that,true to it's name, planted the seed for what was to come for the band. "It kind oflaid out this destiny for us, and I feel like now we're fulfilling that," says drummerCole Gilbert. The band continued to expand their sound on 2023's widelyacclaimed Psychic Dance Routine EP, incorporating more pop hooks andfavoring gentler singing over heavy screaming, paving the way for what wouldcome next.Scowl's growth got a huge boost from producer Will Yip (Turnstile,Title Fight, Code Orange, Balance and Composure), who broadened the band'sscope. "Will would say, 'Everything you have here is correct, but it's in the wrongplace,'" says Gilbert. Moss adds: "Will really helped restructure a lot of thematerial. Some songs he tore apart to make more space for the really goodhooks and choruses." But even through this more eclectic approach, Scowlloses none of their edge, and still manages to convey the anger and frustrationthat lies underneath. They are deeply committed to carrying the ethos of punkand it's sense of community. "Hardcore and punk have sculpted how weoperate, what we want to do as a band, and how we participate," says guitaristMalachi Greene. "At our core, we are a punk and a hardcore band, regardless ofhow the song shifts and changes."

On Believer", the sophomore effort by Sister Ray", the expansive folk project led by Toronto-based singer-songwriter Ella Coyes", they evaluate what it means to hold your center while continually reappraising how to make sense of the world around us. Conjuring the barbed alternative folk and sweeping Americana of Tom Waits", Smog", and Lucinda Williams", the album unfurls and claws towards a greater emotional precision.

Inspired entirely by the life and mythos of actor Dennis Hopper", Mike Scott and The Waterboys created this expansive album as tribute to one of American popular culture's most compelling public figures. Deeply conceptual", this album of all original songs brings together high-profile featured artists like Bruce Springsteen", Fiona Apple", and Steve Earle to musically weave through Hopper's life", including a song for each of Hopper's wives.

Stillness can imply either tranquility or stagnation. Walt McClements grappled with these opposing forces in the years it took to realize On a Painted Ocean: a suite of searching accordion and pipe organ-led pieces that travel a steady course, swelling and expanding with a tide of tender emotion. The composer and multi-instrumentalist takes the title of his second album from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous epic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and it's depiction of a boat that's stalled at sea-As idle as a painted ship/ Upon a painted ocean. It's an impression that mirrors both the process and the product of McClements's Western Vinyl release, from the gentle unfurling of a raw reed tone on opener "A Painted Ship" to the gritty ebb and flow of effects-laden drone on "Washed Up," and the closing flutter and signal interference that noisily builds toward triumphant euphoria on "Clattering." On a Painted Ocean emerges at a confluence of events and inspirations that have shifted and changed like the weather itself. It's initial sketches began with unexpected access to a Pasadena church organ in 2022, before being set aside to prepare for a busy year as a member of Weyes Blood's live band. Months on the tour bus with limited instruments led McClements to explore recreating the sound of his processed accordion on the synthesizer, layering it with the organ pieces. As that cycle came to end, McClements was eager to finish the record, but was unsure how to pick up the thread. Stuck in the doldrums of creative block, McClements took his traces of processed accordion and synthesizers, reversed pipe organ and melodica, reeds and pipes run through pedals and computers to his former home of New Orleans for Carnival. Having lived in the Louisiana city for a decade before moving to Los Angeles, McClements found renewed inspiration from his community during one of it's most ecstatic and meaningful times of year. It's ethic of art for community's sake and practices of care inspired him to take fellow musician and mentor Rachika Nayar's advice by including collaborators, including Nayar herself, who contributes additional production to "Sirens." Old friend and former bandmate Aurora Nealand would also answer the call, adding dramatic saxophone to the choppy waters of "Cloud Prints" and "Parade." The latter track stands out for it's sonic and conceptual culmination of McClements's journey toward realizing On a Painted Ocean, where a rising pitch and buffeting sails meet a field recording of community care, a training in how to use Narcan to reverse an overdose. A credit to strong relationships and mutual support, the album charts a personal pilgrimage - adapting to the tides and remembering your community can help when you feel stuck at sea.