Today is Friday, the most wonderful day of the week for music lovers because it’s the day when new albums are released. Let’s celebrate by highlighting some of today’s new records.
Field Report
Summertime Songs (Verve)
Though frontman Christopher Porterfield has called Summertime Songs Field Report’s version of summer record, replete with pop hooks, its general vibe is very not summery. Written amidst the 2016 presidential campaign, Summertime Songs takes that darkening atmosphere and adds in mixes of myriad discontents, from failed relationships to health scares. It’s a record emotionally at odds with itself, much like the time that bore it. Lead single “Never Look Back” is about jumping into history’s deep and embracing the future, or as Porterfield explained to Stereogum, “a celebration of self-preservation.” After all, winter is always coming.
Listen on: Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Lissie
Castles (Cooking Vinyl/Lionboy)
The last time we saw Lissie, she was onstage at the Roadhouse in last summer’s Twin Peaks: The Return. She performed a song called “Wild West,” a tune that more than a little resembles Stevie Nicks. And in some ways, Lissie is very much a modern update of Nicks, combining elements of dreamy pop with folk rock, like the soundtrack to a Laurel Canyon acid trip. On Castles, this sound is in full effect with Lissie as its assured purveyor. It rocks and twinkles in equal part, and she does it all with an assured grace.
Listen on: Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Jack White
Boarding House Reach (Third Man)
It’s amazing to consider how famous Jack White is when you take into account how aggressively strange he is. After all, his career began in a band in which his then-wife pretended to be his sister. But White remains one of the defining artists of his generation, and Boarding House Reach is a testament to this. The album is propelled by an unpredictability that sees White incorporating everything from rap, blues and country to, uh, hamboning (as he does on “What’s Done is Done”). It’s a far cry from the tight blues-punk of The White Stripes or even the funk-tinged blues of 2014’s Lazaretto, White’s last solo effort, but it wouldn’t be Jack White if it didn’t come straight out of left field.
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