Beautiful spring weather You know what that means. It’s officially “blast music from your car with the windows rolled down” season, and if you’ve got some wheels to blast music from, May offers plenty of options worth cranking up the volume: indie rock, experimental pop, underground rap, electronic, disco-house, and ambient classical. Get excited for the return of artists like Atmosphere, Jonas Brothers, and Tanlines and debut albums from the likes of Alison Goldfrapp, Jim Jarmusch’s drone-rock side project SQÜRL, and Mandy, Indiana.
Atmosphere, So Many Other Realities Exist Simultaneously [May 5]
Atmosphere, the Minneapolis underground hip-hop institution made up of rapper Slug and producer Ant, have been making music together for over 25 years. Their new album, So Many Other Realities Exist Simultaneously features guest appearances from Sa-Roc, Murkage Dave, Shepard Albertson, Bat Flower, and cover art from Michael Alan Alien. The project is being billed as “an almost unnerving excavation of paranoia inspired by the general malaise of a pandemic weary society full of civil unrest.” Judging from the songs we’ve heard so far, it’ll have plenty to offer longtime fans and newcomers alike. [Peter Helman]
SBTRKT, The Rat Road [May 5]
British electronic music producer SBTRKT is finally returning with The Rat Road, his first album in seven years. “This album has been my most sonically ambitious record to create, following my own musical path, which isn’t based on others’ perceptions of what SBTRKT should be,” he explains in a statement. “’The Rat Road’ is a play on the concept of ‘the rat race.’ It’s partly based on my own challenging experiences within the music industry and life generally, though I realized the idea is not isolated from a much wider feeling of exhaustion.” Every SBTRKT album is a star-studded affair, and although the full tracklist for this one hasn’t been announced yet, it will include collaborations with Toro Y Moi, Sampha, and more. [Peter Helman]
SQÜRL, Silver Haze [May 5]
Beloved independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch also moonlights as a musician, playing atmospheric drone-rock with movie producer Carter Logan in the band SQÜRL. Originally formed to score Jarmusch’s 2009 film The Limits Of Control, SQÜRL have since soundtracked several more movies, including Jarmusch’s great 2013 vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive, and released a string of EPs. But the upcoming Silver Haze, whose title is an apt description of their sound, will be the group’s first official full-length album. It’s produced by Sunn O)))/Boris/Earth/Zola Jesus/Marissa Nadler collaborator Randall Dunn and features Charlotte Gainsbourg, Anika, and Marc Ribot, which should give you some idea of the kind of heady sonic territory they’re treading here. [Peter Helman]
Westerman, An Inbuilt Fault [May 5]
Westerman’s buzzy 2020 debut Your Hero Is Not Dead was an immediately appealing art-pop record made with some help from London producer Bullion. For his sophomore effort, An Inbuilt Fault, he’s replacing Bullion with Big Thief’s James Krivchenia and shifting the radio dial from new wave to idiosyncratic folk-rock. Fortunately, with tracks like “Idol; RE-run,” “CSI: Petralona,” and “Take,” the results are just as impressive. [Peter Helman]
billy woods and Kenny Segal, Maps [May 5]
One of the sharpest voices in hip-hop right now, billy woods’ music comes from a place of astute and reverent observation. Whether he’s zooming in on a crowded Playboi Carti concert or his own mortality, the New York rapper weaves arcane, vulnerable musings into stories that make epics out of the everyday. On his next project, Maps, woods again collaborates with L.A. producer Kenny Segal—who set the strange and tense scene on the duo’s 2019 album Hidden Places. A first single, “FaceTime,” finds woods in full form over a laid-back, twinkling beat, philosophizing on tour life and long distance relationships around a smooth hook from Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring. Diving immediately into the meat of existence, woods opens the track with, “Ready to die, it’s no biggie/ no surprise, no pity.” When woods does eventually meet his maker, they’ll have plenty to discuss about the divine. [Hattie Lindert]
Alison Goldfrapp, The Love Invention [May 12]
Synth-pop queen Alison Goldfrapp, who fronts the long-running duo Goldfrapp with producer Will Gregory, is stepping out on her own for the first time. Her debut solo album The Love Invention, which features production from Richard X (Pet Shop Boys, M.I.A.), James Greenwood (Daniel Avery, Kelly Lee Owens), and Toby Scott (The Gossip, Annie), is all immaculate disco-house grooves and dance floor euphoria. [Peter Helman]
Eluvium, (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality [May 12]
Inspired by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Richard Brautigan’s All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace, Eluvium’s new album (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality is an exploration of humanity’s relationship with technology. Due to debilitating shoulder and arm pain during the writing process, Eluvium mastermind Matthew Cooper developed electronic automations and algorithms to aid with the composition. Conducted and recorded remotely featuring musicians from the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Golden Retriever, and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality is a staggeringly beautiful, all-too-human collection of ambient and contemporary classical. [Peter Helman]
lAMX, Fault Lines I [May 12]
After five years of musical endeavors involving acoustic reimaginings, modular experimentation, and a long-awaited project that lured him back to his Sneaker Pimp roots, IAMX mastermind Chris Corner returns to, once again, induce eargasms with Fault Lines I—the first lyrically driven IAMX album since 2018’s Alive In New Light. While the dark modular influence of 2021’s Machinate is still bubbling beneath the surface, Fault Lines evokes the icy and provocative electronica IAMX is best known for with Corner’s soaring vocals back in the forefront. “These songs have been parasites in my brain for years,” says Corner. “They were written before my experiments with modular tech, but they benefit from the addition of this production. In a sense this is a classic IAMX album from a songwriting point of view, but the sounds are a touch more fractured and fucked thanks to the modular beast now a part of my life.” To get an auditory taste of Fault Lines—as well as the face-melting visuals and gender-bending theatricality that have become synonymous with IAMX—check out the psychosexual new video for “The X ID.” [Gil Macias]
Jonas Brothers, The Album [May 12]
The Jonas Brothers first teased work on a new album back in the early end-times era of February 2020; three years later, The Album is finally arriving next month as a 12-track album heavily influenced by ’70s pop groups like The Bee Gees and The Doobie Brothers. Produced by singer-songwriter Jon Bellion, The Album’s first two singles, “Wings” and “Waffle House,” lean heavily into the Bee Gees of it all, opting for jaunty, retro instrumentals that skillfully highlight the yelpier tones in Nick and Joe’s voices. It’s been 15 years since 2008’s “Burnin’ Up,” but the bones are still good, and a May arrival for the breezy album is right on time. [Hattie Lindert]
Alex Lahey, The Answer Is Always Yes [May 19]
“Living in a world that wasn’t made for you makes you pretty strong and adaptive, and you find the fun in it. It also makes you realize how absurd everything is. With this record, I wanted to get weird because the world is weird, and it’s even weirder when you realize you don’t fit into it all the time,” says Melbourne rocker Alex Lahey while discussing her new album The Answer Is Always Yes. The LP finds Lahey inviting outside writers and producers like Jackknife Lee, John Mark Nelson, and Chris Collins into her creative process for the first time, and she sounds newly invigorated by the collaboration. [Peter Helman]
Mandy, Indiana, I’ve Seen A Way [May 19]
Triangulating the sweet spot between industrial noise, dance music, and post-punk, featuring lyrics sung with icy disaffection in Valentine Caulfield’s native French, Mandy, Indiana make songs fit for an underground rave in an abandoned factory. After generating some solid buzz with their elliptically titled late-2021 EP ..., they’re poised to break out in a big way with their pulse-pounding debut album I’ve Seen A Way, which was recorded in appropriately gloomy spaces like Gothic crypts, shopping malls, and industrial mills. [Peter Helman]
Tanlines, The Big Mess [May 19]
As someone who had Tanlines’ 2012 debut Mixed Emotions on heavy rotation in college, I am uniquely primed to be excited for their return. The Big Mess is the duo’s first album in eight years, and although plenty has changed in the interim—Eric Emm moved to rural Connecticut with his family and Jesse Cohen pursued a career in marketing—their music hasn’t lost a beat. “‘The Big Mess’ as an idea and album unifier represents not only the evolution of our lives and partnership but also stands for both our [Tanlines-branded] work and its core identity—a colorful and signature melange of influences and ideas,” Emm says. “Thoughtful, fun, serious, and sad all at the same time. A big mess.” [Peter Helman]
Clark, Sus Dog [May 26]
Sus Dog is the first Clark album to prominently feature the U.K. electronic producer singing. Chris Clark reached out to kindred spirit Thom Yorke for guidance, and Yorke ended up executive producing the entire album in addition to singing and playing bass on one track. “I kept on thinking ‘What would it sound like if The Beach Boys took MDMA and made a rave record’” Clark explains in a statement. That sounds pretty great to us, and so do the early singles we’ve heard from Sus Dog. [Peter Helman]
Matthew Herbert & London Contemporary Orchestra, The Horse [May 26]
Experimental producer and composer Matthew Herbert has made albums using sounds generated by everyday objects around the house, the human body, and the life cycle of a farmed pig from birth to consumption. His latest experiment is The Horse, which was recorded using instruments crafted out of a full-size horse skeleton: thigh-bone flutes, bows made from ribs and horse hair, etc. A collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra and U.K. jazz greats like Sons of Kemet’s Shabaka Hutchings and Theon Cross, Evan Parker, and Seb Rochford, The Horse also features some regular instruments. And reverb impulses recorded next to ancient cave paintings of horses in Northern Spain, field recording from the Epsom racecourse where suffragette Emily Davison was trampled by King George V’s racehorse in 1913, and over 6900 horse sounds pulled from the internet. You know, normal Matthew Herbert stuff. [Peter Helman]
Miya Folick, Roach [May 26]
It’s been nearly five years since Miya Folick’s impressive debut Premonitions. In that time, the Los Angeles musician went through a breakup, lost her father, and dealt with personal issues, all of which she confronts on her new album Roach. Because it includes all of the tracks from last year’s 2007 EP, over half of the tracks on Roach are already streaming. The good news is that that means we already know it’s going to be good. [Peter Helman]
Arlo Parks, My Soft Machine [May 26]
Arlo Parks is ready to evolve. After winning the 2021 Mercury Prize for her excellent debut album Collapsed In Sunbeams, the singer-songwriter returns with My Soft Machine. The first single, “Weightless,” already finds her eschewing some of the warmer jazz tones that defined Collapsed In Sunbeams in favor of diaphanous electronic production and spoken word breaks, flexing her growth while still rooting her lyrics in tender romanticism. As she toys with new production techniques and grander visuals, Parks’ voice—the sonic equivalent of having a loving female elder run their fingers through your hair—still defines the tone, proving the versatility of her increasingly expansive sound. [Hattie Lindert]
Sparks, The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte [May 26]
Fresh off the release of director Edgar Wright’s 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers and a wave of renewed interest in the band, Ron and Russell Mael are releasing a Sparks album on Island Records for the first time in nearly five decades. That album is titled, incredibly, The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, and the Mael brothers say that it’s “as bold and uncompromising as anything we did back then or, for that matter, anytime throughout our career.” [Peter Helman]
Water From Your Eyes, Everyone’s Crushed [May 26]
Water From Your Eyes, the experimental pop duo of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos, have signed to Matador Records to release the follow-up to their great 2021 breakthrough Structure. Everyone’s Crushed is simultaneously catchy and impossible to pin down, discordant and melodic, eschewing traditional song structures in favor of beautifully controlled chaos. [Peter Helman]