Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 12 July (2024)

These days, every artist’s album needs to have a story. The music can’t speak for itself. But after 22 records, why can’t Ani DiFranco’s work speak for itself? Yes, her forthcoming album is shaped by stories — ones about reproductive freedom, the double-edged sword of the pandemic, identity and ever-evolving belief systems that have shaped each of its 11 songs. It was paramount to the folk-feminist hero that listeners not be saddled with preconceived notions while diving into her 23rd album Unprecedented Sh!t. “I believe there is a rhyme and a reason as to why these songs have come together in this way now and I want people to experience this album as a journey, a piece of art, without being influenced by a cacophony of surrounding narratives.” While many of DiFranco’s albums were made more insularly, she’s opened herself up to collaboration in recent years. For 21 of DiFranco’s 22 albums, she opted to self-produce. With Unprecedented Sh!t, she wanted to try working with a producer and tapped BJ Burton, who produced one of her favorite albums, Bon Iver’s 22, A Million. The title Unprecedented Sh!t is not only representative of how much of a sonic departure the 11-track album is from Ani’s other work, but also a political and social commentary on the current state of the world. “We find ourselves in unprecedented times in many ways, faced with unprecedented challenges. So, our responses to them and our discourse around them, need to rise to that level.” 

Since their debut as Brijean, the project ofpercussionist/singer-songwriter Brijean Murphy(the percussive heartbeat for live bands like Mitski,Poolside, and Toro y Moi) andmulti-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart hasmoved with ingenuity, fusing psych-popabstraction with dance floor sensibilities. Throughthe body and mind, rhythm and lyricism, theymake sense of the worlds around and within; 2021'sFeelings celebrated self-reflection; 2022's Angeloprocessed loss, coinciding with the duo's firstheadlining tour, which doubled down on thematerial's desire to move. Now, across the playfulexpanse of Macro, arriving in 2024 on GhostlyInternational, Brijean engages different sides ofthemselves, the paradox of being alive. They'veleveled up to meet the complexities and harmoniesof the human experience with their most dynamicsongwriting yet. Colorful, collaborative,sophisticated, and deeply fun, the album animatesa macrocosm with characters, moods, and points ofview rooted in the notion that no feeling is final andthe only way out is through.

Cassandra Jenkins is quite simply one of the best songwriter-storytellerscurrently making music. Hers is a specific and singular corner of the Great AmericanSongwriters, artists like David Berman, Adrianne Lenker, Jeff Tweedy and Sufjan Stevens.They're artists connected by a sense of immediacy, not just in the writing - which is precise,evocative, brutal at times, pitch-back funny right when you need it - but by their delivery, bythe way they sing with an immersive, total belief that carries you through their songs. Theseare the artists and songs that sneak up and really live with us forever, and on My Light, MyDestroyer, Jenkins joins their ranks.What's most remarkable about My Light, My Destroyer is it captures anartist at an exciting leap in her evolution. So much about the album feels of-a-kind with it'spredecessors; field recordings and found sound permeate, narrative songwriting crashesinto heady, swirling compositions. Jenkins sings with what can only be described as a powerwhisper (think Sufjan Stevens, Annie Lennox, Margo Timmins or YHF-era Tweedy), hervocals up close and intimate but subtly confrontational. But it all feels bigger here, morefinely honed, bolder and richer than her previous work and than her peers.Born and raised in New York City, Jenkins has been touring and performingsince she was a child, self-releasing her early recordings before releasing breakthrough AnOverview on Phenomenal Nature in 2021. On My Light, My Destroyer, many of the songs aredevoted to specific feelings, and to really getting inside those feelings as opposed to gettinginside a narrative arc. Lead single "Only one" is one example, as Jenkins's asserts that amoment, or a song, can be wholly myopic; it can embody a singular feeling, and provides noanswers.Songs like Devotion, Delphinium Blue, Clams Casino, Echo, and Only One,speak to the liberating quality of focused observation, even to the point of disillusionment."There's this idea about disillusionment that I've held onto," she says. "I really appreciatedisillusionment as a process to discover new, unexpected outcomes. We let go of expectationsthis way. Expectations hold us back. It's easy to focus on jadedness or disappointment but Iactually see it more as freedom."

Chris Cohen was always a quiet kid. In fact, this introversion was one reason he began playing music as a toddler-to communicate without speaking, to identify with others without the direct representation of words. It has worked, too, with Cohen's terrific stint in the mighty Deerhoof and his own captivating art-rock act The Curtains, preceding production and session work for the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile, Le Ren, and Marina Allen. Somewhere along that long way, Cohen started writing lyrics. He found that, though it didn't come naturally, the process offered a new sense of self-discovery and reckoning, a way to see himself and the world from unexpected angles. His three twilit albums of casually complicated pop during the last decade radiated these epiphanies: handling family strife, navigating advancing age, and understanding social woes. But Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on Paint a Room, his first album in five years and his debut for Hardly Art. If Cohen's meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real time. There is the endless miasma of state violence on the subversively melodious opener "Damage," the existential exhaustion of modernity on the horn-traced jangle "Laughing": this is Cohen communicating with friends not only through his deep understanding of groove, harmony, and hook but also with his listeners through songs that croon of our uneasy little era. On Paint a Room, Cohen's music feels like a warm spring breeze, easy to love and gentle to feel. But it's often carrying something heavy, as if blowing in from some unseen storm cloud. Paint a Room both reckons with reality and conjures an alternate one, where nighttime walks and a neighbor's wind chimes offer endless escapes for the imagination, space for the mind to roam. Sublime and sun-lit, these 10 songs consider dreamy new ways out of old predicaments, clearly stating the problem and dancing and singing their way somewhere new.Paint a Room features Jeff Parker contributing the fluttering horn arrangement on "Damage," and Parker collaborator Josh Johnson (who produced Meshell Ndegeocello's Grammy-Award-winning album The Omnichord Real Book) supplying flute, sax, and clarinet arrangements throughout the record.

With X’s, Cigarettes After Sex finally takes center stage as not just one of today’s preeminent indie bands, but as one of the most globally accomplished acts across any genre, whose often unconventional path to superstardom has helped reshape the very definition of success for artists in the modern era. Filled with raw, imagistic, sometimes smutty vignettes set to entrancing, slowburn pop songs, bandleader Greg Gonzalez captures every emotion a romantic arc inspires. But where previous albums have drawn from an amalgam of relationships, for the most part, X’s centralizes on just one relationship that spanned four years. “The record feels brutal,” admits Gonzalez. “I could sit and talk about this loss to someone, but that wouldn’t scratch the surface. I have to really write about it, sing about it, have the music, and then I can start to analyze and learn from it. Or just relive it—in a good way. I don’t have that Eternal Sunshine-thing of wanting to forget.” While continuing to observe classic pop song structures, Gonzalez has moved away from the prior sonic touchstones of the ‘50s and ‘60s, finding himself now drawn to a ‘70s/’80s slow dance. While (in typical Cigarettes style) these changes may be subtle, the overall resulting energy is akin to disco ball-refracted tears on the dance floor.

American indie-pop luminary Clairo returns with third album, Charm, co-produced by Clairo and Leon Michels (of The Dap-Kings and El Michels Affair). Evoking balmy summer evenings and tête-à-têtes in plush conversation pits, Charm is a collection of warm, 70’s-inspired grooves that move lithely between jazz, psychedelic folk and soul. 

.Over the last decade, North Carolina’s Jake Xerxes Fussell has established himself as a devoted listener and contemplative interpreter of a vast array of lovingly sourced folk songs. On his fifth album, When I’m Called—his first LP for Fat Possum—Fussell returns to a well of music that holds lifelong sentimental meaning, contemplating the passage of time and the procession of life’s unexpected offerings.

Recognized for his compelling transliterations of traditional music, Fussell took an atypical approach to the material on When I’m Called, often constructing the music from the ground up, before considering what existing source material could be applied to the song. The core of the title track to When I’m Called is a passage that tumbled into Fussell’s life, picked up from a roadside scrap of paper that seemed to bear a child’s penitent writings. He borrowed his album’s sprightly opener, “Andy” from the eclectic multimedia artist Maestro Gaxiola, who penned it in the mid-1980s as an ode to his quixotic pseudo-rivalry with the pop-art icon Andy Warhol. He jumps next into “Cuckoo!”, a strings-swept update of a composition credited to the English composer Benjamin Britten and Jane Taylor, author of “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.” The remainder of When I’m Called, like so many of Fussell’s favorite numbers, have extensive and winding traditional pedigrees.

Harmonics is the brand-new album from Joe Goddard. It is a record rooted in warmth, instinct and empathy. Across 14 tracks of left-of-centre dance music – touching on UK garage, house, hip-hop, pop, and disco – Goddard opens the floor for a number of collaborators including Barrie, Fiorious, Tom McFarland (Jungle), Alabaster DePlume, Ibibio Sound Machine, Hayden Thorpe, Findia, Oranj, Falle Nioke, Alexis Taylor and Al Doyle (Hot Chip/LCD Soundsystem).

After promising to release only five studio albums under his own name, Simpson marks the beginning of a new era with Johnny Blue Skies and the release of Passage Du Desir. Out July 12 on his own independent label, High Top Mountain Records, the album includes eight songs produced by Johnny Blue Skies and David Ferguson and recorded at Clement House Recording Studio in Nashville, TN and Abbey Road Studios in London, England. Swamp of Sadness If The Sun Never Rises Again Scooter Blues Jupiter’s Faerie (Mourning Dawn) Who I Am Right Kind of Dream Mint Tea One for the Road

Sixth studio album from Grammy® nominated OneRepublic who is comprised of singer / songwriter and lead vocalist Ryan Tedder, guitarists Zach Filkins and Drew Brown, keys Brian Willett, bassist and cellist Brent Kutzle, and drummer Eddie Fisher. The album features breakout Platinum single "I Ain't Worried" which was synced to Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, breaking single "I Don't Wanna Wait (w/ David Guetta), and much-loved hits West Coast, Sunshine, and more. 

Recorded in the fall of 2023 at the band’s studio The Barn, Evolve (the 16th studio album by Phish) was produced by Vance Powell and Bryce Goggin with the 12 songs emerging from the band’s dynamic live performances. Some, like fan favorite “A Wave Of Hope,” have become springboards for Phish's most soaring improvisation. The songcraft and production are confident and taut, with Phish’s distinct musical language on vivid display; still pushing boundaries, still very much continuing to evolve.

After two long years living in a constant state of touring and transition, Remi Wolf returns with her most grounded and self-realized LP yet. Inspired by and struggling with how transient her life had become, Big Ideas is the combination of those complexities into a slick, ambitious new record that further solidifies her as one of the most exciting pop artists in a generation. LP Packaging: Standard black vinyl in gatefold jacket with 11x17" exclusive poster insert of Remi.

Glasgow’s multiple Brit and Ivor Novello-winning songwriting giants Travis return with L.A. Times, their tenth studio album. Produced by Tony Hoffer (Air, Beck, Phoenix), L.A. Times was written by Fran Healy in his studio on the edge of Skid Row, Los Angeles, the city he has called home for the last decade. He describes L.A. Times as Travis’ “most personal album since The Man Who”.