With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from FKA twigs; Colter Wall; Summer Walker; Navy Blue; Austra; Sword II; Quinn & FearDorian; K-Lone; Boldy James & Nicholas Craven; and JJJJJerome Ellis. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Last week, FKA twigs earned a Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic album thanks to Eusexua. Today, she’s releasing its follow-up, Eusexua Afterglow. Originally conceived as a deluxe album, the record has since evolved into a body of work that expands the trippy haze of that LP. Led by the singles “Cheap Hotel” and “Predictable Girl,” the 11-track album lifts techno in the palms of her hands and then dismantles it piece by piece, letting FKA twigs play with its fractured parts using fuzz, echo, and metallic synths. If Eusexua brought listeners to the rave, Eusexua Afterglow hides trinkets in their pockets for discovering on the subway ride back home.
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Colter Wall: Memories and Empties [La Honda/RCA]
Fans of grizzled country vignettes would be hard-pressed to find a safer pair of hands than Colter Wall, the Saskatchewan-raised singer-songwriter whose traditional approach to the song form has alienated him from the modern country establishment, but, ironically, won a loyal underground following. As the title suggests, his Little Songs follow-up, Memories and Empties, treads lightly into the big questions with a series of drinking songs and musings of plainspoken existentialism. Longtime collaborator Pat Lyons co-produces with Wall, and the Scary Prairie Boys assist.
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Summer Walker: Finally Over It [LVRN/Interscope]
Summer Walker is hosting a cordial party and everyone’s invited—at the very least to balk. Finally Over It, the R&B singer’s third studio album, is split into two parts, paying homage to the crucial words of a wedding ceremony: For Better and For Worse. As she wades through the trials and tribulations of love, Walker turns to the evening’s guests of honor—Mariah the Scientist, Chris Brown, Anderson .Paak, Latto, Bryson Tiller, 21 Savage, Brent Faiyaz, Glorilla, Sexyy Red, Teddy Swims, and Monaleo—for toasts, words of advice, and helping hands to make it through.
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Navy Blue: The Sword & the Soaring [Freedom Sounds]
No wonder rapper Navy Blue’s flow is so smooth: The professional skateboarder knows the importance of balancing your weight and using seamless push-offs. On The Sword & the Soaring, he rolls forward with grace—from the opening cut, “The Bloodletter,” on through the rest of its 16-song tracklist, including the Earl Sweatshirt collaboration “24 Gospel”—while musing what it means to overcome hardships and stumble at the sight of others. “This album honors who I have become, as I grieve who I have lost,” Navy Blue said in a press release. “The sword is the tool, and the soaring is the heavenly council. Angel Michael, defend me in battle.”
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Austra: Chin Up Buttercup [Domino]
Austra’s first album in five years triangulates ABBA, Madonna, and The X Files into an album of heartbroken synthpop that plays like a Greek tragedy. So says Katie Stelmanis, anyway—the Toronto singer, songwriter, and producer who made Chin Up Buttercup about the breakup that “completely blindsided” her, as she said in press materials. “The person I loved woke up one day, told me she wasn’t happy, and I never saw her again.” On the evidence of the album (and that disarming cover artwork) the episode and attendant grief hit her like a religious revelation—one best explored, like so many things, through the medium of Eurodance.
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Sword II: Electric Hour [Section1]
Born out of a run-down house in Atlanta, Sword II make rock music as cozy as slowcore but as nifty and volatile as post-hardcore. Produced by Feeble Little Horse’s Sebastian Kinsler, the trio’s new album, Electric Hour, rallies against social injustice while exuding tight-knit, locked-in camaraderie. They envisaged the title as a challenge and provocation, the Electric Hour representing “one hour to make your point to the audience, to make sense of the situation facing humanity,” they explained in press materials. “One hour to bring into the physical world the music that resonates with people facing repression, increasing alienation, and violence. Basically, one shot to make the revolution.”
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Quinn & FearDorian: Before You Press Play [3500]
As proud figures of the East Coast underground, Atlanta rapper Quinn and Baltimore producer FearDorian are always looking to stay busy. On Before You Press Play, their new collaborative album, the longtime friends hone in on their unique synergy to bring the best out of each other. The 12-track album loops rumbling basslines, crash sound effects, and flitting falsettos until its initially hectic beats turn mellow in both of their hands.
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K-Lone: Sorry I Thought You Were Someone Else [Incienso]
Equally meditative and body-moving, Sorry I Thought You Were Someone Else is a uniquely enveloping and deeply felt entry in the catalog of Brighton producer K-Lone. Dedicated to his late father, the Swells follow-up wraps hypnotic club beats in shrouds of brooding house ambiance, with melodies and lullaby fragments bubbling under the surface. It is his debut release for Anthony Naples and Jenny Slattery’s label, Incienso.
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Boldy James & Nicholas Craven: Criminally Attached [Roc Nation Distribution]
Backed by the musical landscapes of Canadian producer Nicholas Craven, Detroit rapper Boldy James gets confessional about fatherhood difficulties and attention-induced paranoia on Criminally Attached, the pair’s fourth collaborative project, following Fair Exchange No Robbery, Penalty of Leadership, and Late to My Own Funeral. The new one finds James dialed in amid Craven’s relaxed production, affording him space for honest lines about juggling responsibilities in a family dynamic, sorting through old memories, and figuring out what makes the everyday so noteworthy. Sure, it’s Boldy James’ ninth full-length of this year alone, but, cradled by the soulful samples of Craven’s choosing, his verses feel particularly refreshed this go-around.
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JJJJJerome Ellis: Vesper Sparrow [Shelter Press]
JJJJJerome Ellis opens his new album, Vesper Sparrow, with a declaration: “The stutter can be a musical instrument.” That song, “Evensong, Part 1 (For and After June Kramer),” is the first in a four-part composition that bookends the LP as a conceptual framework. Hammered dulcimer, flutes, and piano sparkle repetitively as Ellis, a lifelong stutterer, begins to explain the audio technique of granular synthesis, setting up what’s to follow on Vesper Sparrow: the bending of time using sound and music. By the end of the record’s six songs, the Virginia-based experimental artist leaves you wondering what other methods we regularly use to warp the clock, and how trip-ups might make for a smoother path overall.
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