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–Nina Corcoran
Lorde
TBA
Details are sparse, but Lorde has been teasing new music for half a year now, beginning with a December post captioned, “Listening to myself.” More recently, she shared a saliva-indebted carousel with a symbol-laden message, “Use the existing tools wherever possible ©𝑳ĿŁု⑷♶ If the tools do not exist you are spiritually obliged to create them © 𝑳ĿŁု⑷♶⚤✬✹❁✰㉗✬✹❁🀥⚭ 𓆝𓃹𓁙.” Make of that what you can!
–Matthew Strauss
Michael Kiwanuka: Small Changes
November 15
Michael Kiwanuka won the Mercury Prize, in 2020, for his album Kiwanuka. He made that record with Danger Mouse and Inflo, and he reunited with the producers for Small Changes.
–Matthew Strauss
Mount Eerie: Night Palace
November 1
After a Microphones album, the inimitable Microphones in 2020, and a collaboration with Julie Doiron, 2019’s Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2, Phil Elverum returns for the first time since 2018 with a Mount Eerie album that’s all his own. Titles on Night Palace, such as “Empty Paper Towel Roll,” “I Saw Another Bird,” and “I Spoke With a Fish,” should feel familiar to fans of Elverum’s poetic, stream-of-consciousness musings.
–Matthew Strauss
Oliver Coates: Throb, Shiver, Arrow of Time
October 18
Since his revelatory 2020 LP, Skins n Slime, Oliver Coates has kept busy as a film and TV composer, scoring Aftersun, The Stranger, Significant Other, Occupied City, and the recent historical drama series Mary & George. Now, he returns to his role as a master producer and drone cellist, using samples and effects pedals to develop the “viscous and melting” live approach debuted on Skins n Slime. Fragments of shoegaze and a serene sort of metal peek through, but Throb, Shiver, Arrow of Time feels less concerned with melody than mesmerizing us into a state of psychedelic meditation, helped along by guest vocalists Malibu, Chrysanthemum Bear, and Faten Kanaan.
–Jazz Monroe
Playboi Carti: Music
TBA
Playboi Carti’s album rollout has become so protracted that NBA teams are joining Opium stans in urging the rapper to drop Music. So far, all that’s arrived officially is the single “All Red.” Unofficially, Carti has also teased or previewed “Different Day,” “2024,” “H00dByAir,” “Backr00ms,” “EvilJ0rdan,” and “Ketamine.”
–Matthew Strauss
Porridge Radio: Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me
October 18
British quartet Porridge Radio are returning with their fourth studio album, Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me. The new record was produced by Big Thief and Laura Marling engineer Dom Monks, who captured the band’s 11 songs in the Somerset countryside earlier this year. More sprawling and subdued than their raw breakthrough LP, 2020’s Every Bad, Clouds finds frontperson Dana Margolin parsing creative exhaustion and crumbling relationships with ragged vulnerability. The album arrives two years after Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky, and features lead single “Sick of the Blues.”
