It was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned —for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.
This sense of privacy maintained throughout is helped by the various landscapes within which Reward took shape: Stinson Beach, LA, and Brooklyn via Cardiff and The Lakes. Recording at Panoramic House [Stinson Beach, CA], a residential studio on a mountain overlooking the ocean, afforded Le Bon the ability to preserve the remoteness she had captured during the writing of Reward in Staveley, Lake District.
Over this extended period a cast of trusted and loved musicians joined Le Bon, Khouja and fellow co-producer Josiah Steinbrick — Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) on drums and percussion; Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) on bass and saxophone and longtime collaborators Huw Evans (aka H.Hawkline) and Josh Klinghoffer on guitars — and were added to the album, “one by one, one on one”. The fact that these collaborators have appeared variously on Le Bon’s previous outputs no doubt goes some way to aid the preservation of a signature sound despite a relatively drastic change in approach.
Be it on her more minimalist, acoustic-leaning 2009 debut album Me Oh My or critically acclaimed, liquid-riffed 2013 LP Mug Museum as well as 2016s Crab Day, Cate Le Bon’s solo work — and indeed also her production work, such as that carried out on recent Deerhunter album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (4AD, January 2019) — has always resisted pigeonholing, walking the tightrope between krautrock aloofness and heartbreaking tenderness; deadpan served with a twinkle in the eye, a flick of the fringe and a lick of the Telecaster.
The multifaceted nature of Le Bon’s art — its ability to take on multiple meanings and hold motivations which are not immediately obvious — is evident right down to the album’s very name. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word” says Le Bon, “and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver. I feel like it’s really indicative of the times we’re living in where words are used as slogans, and everything is slowly losing its meaning.” The record, then, signals a scrambling to hold onto meaning; it is a warning against lazy comparisons and face values. It is a sentiment nicely summed up by the furniture-making musician as she advises: “Always keep your hand behind the chisel.”

Have You In My Wilderness is Julia Holter’s most intimate album yet, a collection of radiant ballads. Her follow-up to 2013’s widely celebrated Loud City Song explores love, trust, and power in human relationships. While love songs are familiar fodder in pop music, Holter manages to stay fascinatingly oblique and enigmatic on her new album.
Have You in My Wilderness is also Holter’s most sonically intimate album. Here, she and producer Cole Marsden Greif-Neill lift her voice out of the layers of smeared, hazy effects, putting her vocals front and center in the mix. The result is striking—it sounds as if Holter is singing right in your ear. It sounds clear and vivid, but also disarmingly personal. The focused warm sound and instrumentation — dense strings, subtle synth pads — adds to the effect.
Like Holter’s previous albums, Have You in My Wilderness is multi-layered and texturally rich, featuring an array of electronic and acoustic instruments played by an ensemble of gifted Los Angeles musicians.
Have You In My Wilderness deals with dark themes, but it also features some of the most sublime and transcendent music Holter has ever written. The ten songs on the album are shimmering and dreamlike, wandering the liminal space between the conscious and the subconscious.

A Seat At The Table, is the new album from Solange Knowles. The album will be available digitally on September 30th, released on CD November 18th, and on vinyl LP December 9th. Solange describes A Seat At The Table as "a project on identity, empowerment, independence, grief and healing."
A Seat At The Table was written by Solange, and features a host of guest artists including Q-Tip, Kelly Rowland, The Dream, BJ The Chicago Kid, Kelela, Tweet, Moses Sumney, Sampha, Sean Nicholas Savage, Nia Andrews, Devonte Hynes of Houston Texas and Lu of Carolina.

‘How To Be A Human Being’ is a scrapbook of the bands time spent on the road, gathering memories and perceptions of different types of people from all around the world.
Unveiled in mid May as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record, ‘Life Itself’, the first single from the album, has already elevated the band’s sonorous buzz to a whole new level. The track is an immersive, exotic and characteristically off-kilter earworm, reintroducing the band in the wake of their sensational ascent into a force to be reckoned with.
Glass Animals’ debut ‘Zaba’, released on Paul Epworth’s label Wolf Tone, has so far sold nearly half a million copies worldwide and amassed a staggering 200 million Spotify streams, obliterating all expectations simply by word of mouth. Their anomalous rise has gained the Oxford four-piece a legion of fans all over the world, including festival appearances at the likes of Falls in Australia, Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Glastonbury and has resulted in the band playing 2 sold out headline shows at LA’s 2000-capacity Wiltern and NYC’s 3000-capacity Terminal 5.
To those expecting another album like Zaba, this album may end up as a disappointment. Glass Animals found success on a rather unique and creative sound and continued to expand their inner-weirdness and creativity by not playing it safe, instead opting for more ambition. This approach has paid off admirably as How to Be a Human Being is more than just a collection of stories told through characters like the ones on the album’s art, but is also a showcase of the band’s talent. Taking this talent, expending as much creative energy and ridiculousness as possible while deviating from their beloved sound, the result is an album that one would be hard pressed to find a comparable output to; and that’s a fantastic dilemma.

A Moon Shaped Pool is the ninth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, produced by Nigel Godrich. It was released as a download on 8 May 2016. CD and LP editions will be released on 17 June 2016, followed by a "special edition" in September, containing two additional songs. Soon after its release the album was played in its entirety on BBC Radio 6 Music, presented by Tom Robinson.

★水星音乐奖得主暌违五年第三张专辑
★荒芜中执拗燃烧的浪漫
★都会喧嚣间最亲密的孤寂
来自伦敦的青年乐队The xx，2009年首张专辑《xx》以初生之犊的姿态，拿下欧洲指标性水星音乐奖，随后几年间，他们纵横各大音乐祭与颁奖典礼，第二张专辑《Coexist》挤下The Script、Bob Dylan、Pet Shop Boys空降英国流行专辑榜冠军，此等天之骄子般的惊人声势，以及身处譁众取宠的当代音乐潮流中，The xx徘徊午夜的极间低迴旋律铺陈起的黑灰色阶，似乎显得格格不入，然而吸纳著Siouxsie and the Banshees、The Cure、New Order、Cocteau Twins以至Aaliyah音乐养分而来的浪漫声响，却敲醒了层层冰雪底层的炙热，写尽了这时代人们藏得最深的孤寂。
2014年乐队灵魂人物Jamie xx首张创作专辑《In Colour》，在The xx失去时空标记的未来场域，投入大量多元声响取洋的缤纷色泽，让人预见了The xx的可能性，亦塑造出暌违五年新专辑《I See You》首支单曲〈On Hold〉的蜕变，与Hall & Oates 1981年冠军曲〈I Can’t Go For That〉交会之际一脚踩进舞池，让好似被时间消磨了的遗憾，不再那麽难以承受，冬阳洒落的和煦蔓延至〈I Dare You〉与〈Say Something Loving〉，依旧浪漫得执拗。
开场曲〈Dangerous〉强悍bassline与管乐驱策下，扬起了The xx至今最果抉、激昂的一回；〈Lips〉取洋自葛莱美提名挪威人声乐队Trio Mediæval的脱俗吟唱乘著Tribal Beat悠缓跃动的宜人风景，以及〈Performance〉凄薄弦乐于一片荒芜中拉扯出的张力，格外令人惊豔；即便〈A Violent Noise〉和〈Brave For You〉回到那个被喧嚣遗忘的街角，遇到我们熟悉的The xx，冰冷得暴戾的梦，也相对辽阔轻盈，美得令人屏息。
末曲〈Test Me〉绝望的最后恳求，在一片极间冰凝的苍白电气中持续坠落，一段Alessi Brothers〈Do You Feel It?〉的琴音乍现，对映著取洋了同一首歌的〈Say Something Loving〉，麻木了心，模糊了时空，即使在阳光洒落的地方，The xx依旧以近乎任性的执著，耽溺于怀疑与悔恨的结，最亲密的疏离，最炙热的冷冽，让人倚著冰牆试图取暖，距离心一步的位置，目光犹疑试探，却怎麽也踩不进去的怅然。

2014’s Too Bright showcased Mike Hadreas stepping out saucily onto a bigger stage, expressing, with the production help of Portishead’s Adrian Utley, emotions arranged all along the slippery continuum from rage to irony to love. Here in 13 new ferocious and sophisticated tracks, Mike Hadreas and his collaborators blow through church music, makeout music, an array of the gothier radio popular formats, rhythm and blues, art pop, krautrock, queer soul, the RCA Studio B sound, and then also collect some of the sounds that only exist inside Freddy Krueger. Tremolo on the electric keys. Nightclubbing. Daywalking. Kate Bushing, Peter Greenawaying, Springsteening, Syreetaing. No Shape was produced by Blake Mills, the man behind Alabama Shakes’ Grammy Award winning album. He added precision and expansion. Some things are pretty and some are blasted beyond recongition. Records like this, records that make you feel like you’re 15 and just seeing the truth for the first time, are excessively rare. They’re here to remind you that you’re divine.

Every record I make has an archetype,” says Clark. “‘Strange Mercy’ was Housewives on Pills. ‘St. Vincent’ was Near-Future Cult Leader. ‘MASSEDUCTION’ is different, it’s pretty first person. You can’t fact-check it, but if you want to know about my life, listen to this record.” ‘MASSEDUCTION’ is the culmination of years of writing, with songs crafted from voice memos, text messages, and snippets of melodies that came to Clark while traveling the globe. Special guests on the album include Thomas Bartlett on piano, Kamasi Washington on saxophone, Jenny Lewis on vocals, and beat production from Sounwave. Greg Leisz and Rich Hinman add pedal steel, and Tuck and Patti Andress contribute guitar and vocals respectively on select tracks.

国际巨星“Lana Del Rey”
2座 格莱美提名
2座 全英奖BRIT Awards
2座 EMA 最佳另类艺人
2016 ELLE年度女艺人
GQ奖项 年度女艺人
Q award “Best New Thing”
Lana Del Rey，本名：Elizabeth Woolridge Grant，2005年正式从纽约出道，并且借着EP【Kill Kill】闯出名号之后，瞬间爆红的"Video Games"、电影《大亨小传》主题曲" Young and Beautiful"、"Summertime Sadness"，让正式成为了乐坛新星，并在接下来的【Lana Del Ray】、【Born to Die】、【Ultraviolence】、【Honeymoon】四张专辑中，缔造了超过三千万张销售纪录。她独特的“好莱坞悲核式”嗓音，受到50年代到60年代流行音乐的文化，其音乐流露出的“悲情浪漫”与“忧郁感”让Lana Del Rey在这个超时代的音乐疆域中“独树一帜”。发片至今，lana Del Rey已经横扫16座奖杯，入围54项提名，包括格莱美、公告牌、全英奖、Echo，MTV等多项音乐大奖。
2015年10月，Lana宣布她将筹划全新专辑的计划，区别于前两张专辑中的“加利福尼亚式之音”lana自述道要将“纽约式”味道增加到新作品中，用轻快，乐观的节奏“削弱”梦幻的感觉。自上一张空降公告牌专辑榜第二位的《Honeymoon》发行仅仅几个月之后，2016年初，Lana及其经纪人公开了她筹备第五张个人专辑的消息。期待着能够在新作中突破自我的框架与限制， 超过400个日子的淬炼， Lana交出了全新专辑【Lust For Life】。
【Lust For Life】除了Lana Del Rey本人担任制作之外，还请到了旧金山传奇制作人Rick Nowels(Madonna、Adele、Sia)、超级制作人 Max Martin（Taylor Swift、Maroon5、Britney Spears）、热单制造机Benny Blanco ( Justin Bieber、Katy Perry、Rihanna )等多组人马，共同注入时代之下的前卫声响。主打同名单曲"Lust For Life"，由格莱美奖新生代天王The Weeknd入阵献声，以两人绝对的合作默契，并结合R&B和Dream Pop为基底，唯美唱出了流行乐未来的雏形。空降公告牌摇滚榜亚军的"Love"，全球串流突破7000万人点听，与略带复古韵味的Baroque Pop风格，被滚石杂志盛赞“音乐上的赞美诗”。已故音乐传奇John Lennon之子Sean Ono Lennon，在"Tomorrow Never Came"中以前卫摇滚的声响，替如梦似幻的节奏，增添了更为超凡入圣的气息。

狂 • 16岁出道狂扫告示牌葛莱美各大奖项，20岁全新大碟改变全世界
想 • 亲自担纲专辑发想监制，并力邀王牌制作人Jack Antonoff联手打造
曲 • 收录Spotify点播破亿单曲"Green Light"及最新冠军主打" Perfect Places"
「首张专辑【Pure Heroine】纪录了我青少年的辉煌时刻，而接下来，我要用这张专辑，带给大家前所未见的新世界。」- 萝儿 Lorde
16岁出道，就以首张大碟【天生英雌Pure Heroine】狂扫告示牌、葛莱美奖等各大奖项，20岁推出的这张全新大碟，Lorde说她想要改变全世界！年仅20岁却拥有轻柔灵幻的嗓音，同时带有稚嫩与成熟的双重灵魂，她的歌词意境深远，但又贴近新世代自处的矛盾与挣扎；Lorde的创作，总让人从中感受到最真切的情感，也使听众彷彿在诗篇的文字与音乐美学里，亲耳见识了她独一无二的音乐风格，一听就深深为她着迷。
本名Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O`Connor的Lorde，13岁就以惊人天份被环球音乐挖掘并签下一纸合约正式出道，17岁时以一曲"Royals"轰动全球，不仅摘下英美两地冠军，更在全球卖出千万张销量，最后夺下荣获葛莱美「年度歌曲」与「最佳流行歌手」两项大奖；2013年首张专辑【天生英雌】，一发行便空降了纽澳冠军，全美累积三白金认证，一连串令人仰望的排行纪录，接连获颁时代杂志册封「最具影响力青少年」、富比士杂志「30岁以下未来之星」头衔。挥别了青少年时期的萝儿，准备踏入人生另一阶段的她，不仅在心境上因为恋情告终而有所转变，音乐上更是出现了巨大提升；Lorde说：「新专辑在探讨当代的人们-该如何品尝孤独?这不是一张描写心碎或失恋的作品，是试图去解构这些情绪背后所带来的效应，并学会如何与"他们"相处，无论好还是坏，我们都要学着去体会」；同时，萝儿还将所谓的色彩联觉(Chromesthesia)带入到专辑中，让所有聆听者可以透过听觉上的接收，在脑海中产生出相应的颜色视觉画面。经历超过500个日子倾力打造之后，终于交出了备受注目的第二张专辑【狂想曲Melodrama】。
【狂想曲】除了由Lorde自己担任制作外，更请来了拥有三座葛莱美奖的Jack Antonoff(泰勒丝、赞恩)，以及加拿大DJ Frank Dukes(蕾哈娜、德瑞克)等共同打造；开场曲同时也是首支主打"Green Light"，描写过去经历的疯狂人生与心得，而「Green Light」意象，代表着人生能够有往前迈进的动力，兼容了ElectroPop与Dance-Pop的脉动，快速在Spotify突破1亿次点播及告示牌热门榜Top 20；受到蕾哈娜的"Higher"启发而写出"Liability"，展现了曲风上的多元，以柔软舒适又带点阴郁气息的钢琴声，铺陈了整首歌曲，娓娓诉说心中的寂寞；"Writer in the Dark"则是面对孤独的最佳写照，毫无保留地在世人面前摊开来呈现。
【天生英雌】塑造了一个全新的天才少女，而【狂想曲】的出现，将会把萝儿推向下一位乐坛巨星之路。

“Before, I thought I ran on a chaos engine,” Florence Welch told the Guardian in June 2018, shortly ahead of the release of High as Hope. “But the more peaceful I am, the more I can give to the work. I can address things I wasn’t capable of doing before.” This newfound openness gives her band’s fourth LP an unvarnished vulnerability. “Hunger” opens with a startling admission of Welch’s teenage eating disorder, while “South London Forever” and “Grace” both make peace with the excesses that decorated her rise to fame. Such lyrical heft affords the Londoners a chance to explore a more delicate, restrained sound, but there’s still space for Welch to blow the roof off. A fiery confessional that majestically takes to the skies and forms the album’s centrepiece, “100 Years” uncorks some vintage Florence. No one, we’re reminded, chronicles sadness quite so exquisitely, or explosively.

The Los Angeles musician’s fifth studio album is the most joyous, daring realization of her experimental tendencies yet: a sprawling, 90-minute search for meaning in a dehumanizing age.

Mitski Miyawaki has always been wary of being turned a symbol, knowing we’re quick to put women on pedestals and even quicker to knock them down. Nonetheless, after the breakout success of 2016’s 'Puberty 2', she was hailed as the new vanguard of indie rock, the one who would save the genre from the white dudes who’ve historically dominated it. Her carefully crafted songs have often been portrayed as emotionally raw, overflowing confessionals from a fevered chosen girl, but in her fifth album, 'Be The Cowboy', Mitski introduces a persona who has been teased but never so fully present until now—a woman in control. “It’s not like it just pours out,” she says about her songwriting, “it’s not like I’m a vessel. For this new record, I experimented in narrative and fiction.” Though she hesitates to go so far as to say she created full-on characters, she reveals she had in mind “a very controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. Because women have so little power and showing emotion is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount of control she can get. Still, there is something very primordial in her that is trying to find a way to get out.”
Since 'Puberty 2' was released to widespread acclaim, ultimately being named one of the best albums of 2016 by Rolling Stone, TIME, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, NPR, and SPIN, Mitski has been touring nonstop. She’s circled the globe as the headliner, as well as opening for The Pixies, and most recently, Lorde. The less glamorous, often overlooked aspect of being a rising star is the sheer amount of work that goes into it. “I had been on the road for a long time, which is so isolating, and had to run my own business at the same time,” Mitski explains, “a lot of this record was me not having any feelings, being completely spent but then trying to rally myself and wake up and get back to Mitski. I was feeling really nihilistic and trying to make pop songs.”
We want our artists to be strong but we also expect them to be vulnerable. Rather than avoiding this dilemma, Mitski addresses directly the power that comes from appearing impenetrable and loneliness that follows. In 'Be The Cowboy', Mitski delves into the loneliness of being a symbol and the loneliness of being someone, and how it can feel so much like being no one. The opening song, “Geyser,” introduces us to a woman who can no longer hold it in. She’s about to burst, unleashing a torrent of desire and passion that has been building up inside.
While recording the album with her long-time producer Patrick Hyland - “little by little in multiple studios between tours” - the pair kept returning to “the image of someone alone on a stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room. For most of the tracks, we didn’t layer the vocals with doubles or harmonies, to achieve that campy ‘person singing alone on stage’ atmosphere. We also made the music swell louder than the main vocals and left in vocal errors like when my voice breaks in “Nobody,” right when the band goes quiet, all for a similar effect.” Not a departure so much as an evolution forward from previous albums, Mitski was careful this time to not include much distorted guitar because “that became something people recognized me for, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t repeat myself or unintentionally create a signature sound.”
The title of the album “is a kind of joke,” Mitski says. “There was this artist I really loved who used to have such a cowboy swagger. They were so electric live. With a lot of the romantic infatuations I’ve had, when I look back, I wonder, Did I want them or did I want to be them? Did I love them or did I want to absorb whatever power they had? I decided I could just be my own cowboy.” There is plenty of buoyant swagger to the album, but just as much interrogation into self-mythology. The music swerves from the cheerful to the plaintive. Mournful piano ballads lead into deceptively up-tempo songs like “Nobody” where our cowboy admits, “I know no one will save me/ I just need someone to kiss”.
The self-abasement of desire is strewn across these 14 songs as our heroine seeks out old lovers for secret trysts that end in disappointment, and cannot help but indulge in the masochistic pleasure of blowing up the stability of long-term partnership. In “A Pearl” Mitski sings of how intoxicating it is to hold onto pain. “I wrote so many songs about being in love and being hurt by love. You think your life is horrible when you’re heartbroken, but when you no longer have love or heartbreak in your life, you think, wasn’t it nice when things still hurt? There’s a nostalgia for blind love, a wonderful heady kind of love.”
Infused with a pink glow and mysterious blue light, the performer in Be The Cowboy makes a pact with her audience that the show must go on, but as we draw nearer to the end, a charming ditty recedes into ghostly, faded melancholia, as an angelic voice breaks through to make direct communication. “Two Slow Dancers” closes out the album in a school gymnasium, though we’re no longer in the territory of adolescence. Instead, we’re projected into the future where a pair of old lovers reunite. “They used have something together that is no longer there and they’re trying to relive it in a dance, knowing that they’ll have to go home and go back to their lives.” It’s funny how only the very old and the very young are permitted to indulge openly in dreams, encouraged to reflect and dwell in poetry. In making an record that is about growing old while Mitski herself is still young, a soft truth emerges: sometimes we feel oldest when we are still young and sometimes who we were when we were young never goes away, leaving behind a glowing pearl that we roll around endlessly in the dark.
--Jenny Zhang

Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides (stylised in all caps) is the debut studio album by Scottish recording artist and producer Sophie, released on 15 June 2018, through Transgressive, Future Classic and her own label, MSMSMSM.

After two concept albums and a string of roles in Hollywood blockbusters, one of music’s fiercest visionaries sheds her alter egos and steps out as herself. Buckle up: Human Monáe wields twice the power of any sci-fi character. In this confessional, far-reaching triumph, she dreams of a world in which love wins (“Pynk") and women of color have agency (“Django Jane”). Featuring guest appearances from Brian Wilson, Grimes, and Pharrell—and bearing the clear influence of Prince, Monae’s late mentor—Dirty Computer is as uncompromising and mighty as it is graceful and fun. “I’m the venom and the antidote,” she wails in “I Like That,” a song about embracing these very contradictions. “Take a different type of girl to keep the whole world afloat.”

Sharon Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow comes four years after Are We There, and reckons with the life that gets lived when you put off the small and inevitable maintenance in favor of something more present. Throughout Remind Me Tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten veers towards the driving, dark glimmer moods that have illuminated the edges of her music and pursues them full force. With curling low vocals and brave intimacy, Remind Me Tomorrow is an ambitious album that provokes our most sensitive impulses: reckless affections, spirited nurturing, and tender courage.
"I wrote this record while going to school, pregnant, after taking the OA audition,” says Van Etten. "I met Katherine Dieckmann while I was in school and writing for her film. She’s a true New Yorker who has lived in her rent controlled west village apartment for over 30 years. Her husband lives across the hall. They raised two kids this way. When I expressed concern about raising a child as an artist in New York City, she said ‘you're going to be fine. Your kids are going to be fucking fine. If you have the right partner, you’ll figure it out together.'” Van Etten goes on, “I want to be a mom, a singer, an actress, go to school, but yeah, I have a stain on my shirt, oatmeal in my hair and I feel like a mess, but I'm here. Doing it. This record is about pursuing your passions." The reality is Remind Me Tomorrow was written in stolen time: in scraps of hours wedged between myriad endeavors — Van Etten guest-starred in The OA, and brought her music onstage in David Lynch’s revival of Twin Peaks. Off-screen, she wrote her first score for Katherine Dieckmann’s movie Strange Weather and the closing title song for Tig Notaro’s show Tig. She goes on, “The album title makes me giggle. It occurred to me one night when I, on auto-pilot, clicked 'remind me tomorrow' on the update window that pops up all the time on my computer. I hadn't updated in months! And it's the simplest of tasks!”
The songs on Remind Me Tomorrow have been transported from Van Etten’s original demos through John Congleton’s arrangement. Congleton helped flip the signature Sharon Van Etten ratio, making the album more energetic-upbeat than minimal-meditative. “I was feeling overwhelmed. I couldn't let go of my recordings - I needed to step back and work with a producer.” She continues, “I tracked two songs as a trial run with John [Jupiter 4 and Memorial Day]. I gave him Suicide, Portishead, and Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree as references and he got excited. I knew we had to work together. It gave me the perspective I needed. It’s going to be challenging for people in a good way." The songs are as resonating as ever, the themes are still an honest and subtle approach to love and longing, but Congleton has plucked out new idiosyncrasies from Van Etten’s sound.
For Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten put down the guitar. When she was writing the score for Strange Weather her reference was Ry Cooder, so she was playing her guitar constantly and getting either bored or getting writer's block. At the time, she was sharing a studio space with someone who had a synthesizer and an organ, and she wrote on piano at home, so she naturally gravitated to keys when not working on the score - to clear her mind. Remind Me Tomorrow shows this magnetism towards new instruments: piano keys that churn, deep drones, distinctive sharp drums. It was “reverb universe” she says of the writing. There are intense synths, a propulsive organ, a distorted harmonium.
The demo version of “Comeback Kid” was originally a piano ballad, but driven by Van Etten’s assertion that she “didn’t want it to be pretty”, it evolved into a menacing anthem. Cavernous drones pull the freight for “Memorial Day,” which fleshes out an introvert in warrior mode. The spangled “Seventeen” began as a Lucinda Williams-esque dirge but wound up more of a nod to Bruce Springsteen, exploring gentrification and generational patience. Van Etten shows the chain reaction, of moving to a city bright-eyed and hearing the elders complain about the city changing, and then being around long enough to know what they were talking about. She wrote the song semi-inter-generationally with Kate Davis, who sang on a demo version when the song was in its infancy.
Since her last album, Van Etten has had a young son, and family life is joyful. Preparing and finishing these songs, she found herself expressing deep doubts about the world around him, and a complicated need to present a bright future for him. “There is a tear welling up in the back of my eye as I’m singing these love songs,” she says, “I am trying to be positive. There is strength to them. It’s— I wouldn’t say it’s a mask, but it’s what the parents have to do to make their kid feel safe.”
Alongside working on Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten has been exploring her talents (musical, emotional, otherwise) down other paths. She’s continuing to act, to write scores and soundtrack contributions, and she’s returning to school for psychology. The breadth of these passions, of new careers and projects and lifelong roles, have inflected Remind Me Tomorrow with a wise sense of a warped-time perspective. This is the tension that arches over the album, fusing a pained attentive realism and radiant lightness about new love.

A huge return in these parts from one of our most favourite voices.
The descent into darkness is a trope we find time again across history, literature and film. But there’s also an abyss above. There’s a winding white staircase that goes ever upward into the great unknown — each step, each turn, requiring a greater boldness and confidence than the one before. This is the journey on which we find Angel Olsen.
+ Available whilst stocks last on a limited crystal clear vinyl edition.
Olsen’s artistic beginnings as a collaborator shifted seamlessly to her magnificent, cryptic-to-cosmic solo work, and then she formed bands to play her songs, and her stages and audiences grew exponentially. But all along, Olsen was more concerned with a different kind of path, and on her vulnerable, Big Mood new album, All Mirrors, we can see her taking an introspective deep dive towards internal destinations and revelations. In the process of making this album, she found a new sound and voice, a blast of fury mixed with hard won self-acceptance.
“In every way —from the making of it, to the words, to how I feel moving forward— this record is about owning up to your darkest side,” Olsen said. “Finding the capacity for new love and trusting change, even when you feel like a stranger. This is a record about facing yourself and learning to forgive what you see. It is about losing empathy, trust, love for destructive people. It is about walking away from the noise and realizing that you can have solitude and peace in your own thoughts, that your thoughts alone can be just as valid, if not more.”

FKA twigs ends months of speculation by announcing details of her highly anticipated second album. Titled MAGDALENE, the album will be released on 25th October 2019 and is the follow up to FKA twigs’ critically acclaimed Brit Award and Mercury Prize nominated debut LP1.
Indie edition is pressed on Red Vinyl.
Created in a period where her confidence was knocked following heartbreak and laparoscopic surgery, MAGDALENE is the sound of twigs reconfiguring, emotionally and physically. As she sings on ‘Mary Magdalene’, the MAGDALENE album track that opened her highly-praised, sold-out live shows earlier in the year, “A woman’s time / A woman’s work / A woman’s time to embrace / She must put herself first”.
MAGDALENE is produced by FKA twigs and, as with LP1, the recording process has been directed by her at every stage. It was recorded between London, New York and Los Angeles over the last three years and features major contributions from Nicolas Jaar alongside a host of other collaborators. MAGDALENE sees FKA twigs creating a whole new artistic universe and it is, without doubt, her most masterful, innovative work to date.