FEATURE:
One for the Record Collection!
IN THIS PHOTO: Big Joanie/PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Keeler
Essential November Releases
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THERE are some great albums…
IN THIS IMAGE: Suki Waterhouse
out next month that people need to check out. I am going to dive right in with those due on 4th November. One of my favourite groups, Big Joanie, release Back Home that week. Make sure you pre-order a copy. The London trio (Stephanie Phillips, Estella Adeyeri, and Chardine Taylor-Stone) will put out, in my view, one of the best and most important albums of this year:
“Black feminist punk band Big Joanie release their second album Back Home on Daydream Library Series in the UK and Kill Rock Stars in the US. The brand new album Back Home follows on from last month's one-off single 'Happier Still', and the release of their 2020 single 'Cranes in the Sky', a cover of Solange Knowles released on Jack White's Third Man Records. Recorded at Hermitage Works Studios in North London, Back Home was produced and mixed by Margo Broom (Goat Girl, Fat White Family) and features violin courtesy of Charlotte Valentine of the experimental art rock project No Home, who recently collaborated with the LA-based artist SASAMI.
Back Home is a dramatic leap forward for the band; the band build on their tightly knit, lo-fi punk formula to bring forth a collage of blazing guitars, down tempo dance punk, and melancholic strings that evoke the full depth of the band's expansive art punk vision. The album title references a search for a place to call home, whether real or metaphysical. "We were really ruminating on the idea of a home and what it means," explains Stephanie. "It's about the different ideas of home, whether that's here in the UK, back in Africa or the Caribbean, or a place that doesn't really exist; it's neither here nor there."
The band worked with multidisciplinary artist Angelica Ellis to design the striking embroidered cover art, which is a depiction of Chardine's nephew at the barbers. The artwork is a reference to the embroidered wall hangings popular in Caribbean homes post-Windrush that were a callback to the homes they left behind. The album's strength lies in the band's bold and varied new sound. Album opener 'Cactus Tree' is an eerie, gothic folk tale that tells the story of a woman waiting for her lover while a wall of euphoric harmonies and screaming feedback roll in the background. Lead single 'Happier Still' is a driving, Nirvana-influenced track that grapples with the idea of wanting to push through a depressive episode. Inspired equally by the melodic rock of Hüsker Dü and the mystical sensibilities of Stevie Nicks, closer 'Sainted' brings the club-ready sentiment of the 2018 single 'Fall Asleep' to its natural conclusion”.
Go and pre-order Connie Constance’s Miss Power. You may not have heard of this tremendous artist, but you really need to listen to her music! I have been a fan of Constance’s for a little while now, and I am excited to hear what Miss Power promises. A superb artist who has caught the ear of stations like BBC Radio 1, this is going to be an album that you will not want to miss. The past couple of years have been pretty productive and successful for the Watford artist. Her upcoming album arrives on 4th November:
“Watford born indie-rock goddess Connie Constance releases her new album, Miss Power, a bold collection of songsimbued with high voltage drums, snarling guitar riffs, and anthemic feminist rage. On Miss Power, Connie takes us on a joyride through dramatic, passionate and empowering scenes with hooks aplenty and lyrics that excitedly unpick heartbreak, Connie’s strained relationship with her father and her struggles with mental health. Connie’s titular and much-acclaimed first single from her new album, Miss Power earned itself a spot on the BBC Radio 1 C-list as well as being named Hottest Record by Radio 1’s Clara Amfo”.
Another album due on 4th November, I am looking out for is First Aid Kit’s Palomino. With one of the best album covers of the year in my mind (it is simple but looks amazing), you need to order this amazing album. Four-and-a-half years after the acclaimed Ruins, Johanna and Klara Söderberg follow it up with Palomino. There is not a lot of information available about the album in terms of its stories and background. You will have to keep your eyes peeled. As it is a First Aid Kit album, it is going to be well worth getting. A terrific and must-hear duo, they are among my favourite acts. November promises diversity in terms of the sound available. A very strong month with some phenomenal albums due, First Aid Kit’s upcoming album is going to be among the very best. Let’s hope that some interviews appear online in promotion of Palomino, as it is an album that deserves to be heard and do well. First Aid Kit are a tremendous act, so they deserve all the success they get!
You can see other albums that are due out on 4th November. Among them is a reissue of Steely Dan’s wonderful 1972 debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill. Not an album, but I did want to alert people to Suki Waterhouse’s forthcoming E.P., Milk Teeth. Go and pre-order this wonderful work. I Can’t Let Go, one of my favourite albums of the year, came out in May. Waterhouse follows that with a hugely important E.P. A remarkable songwriter and artist who is always growing and building, Waterhouse is someone that people need on their radar:
“The Milk Teeth EP compiles singer-songwriter Suki Waterhouse’s various non-album singles onto a physical release for the first time. It includes the song “Good Looking,” which, in mid-2022, exploded on Tik Tok and hit #1 on the global viral chart.
Suki Waterhouse catalogs the most intimate, formative, and significant moments of her life through songs. You might recognize her name or her work as an actress and model, but you’ll really get to know the multi-faceted artist through her music. Growing up in London, Suki gravitated towards music’s magnetic pull. She listened to the likes of Alanis Morissette and caught Missy Elliott live as her first concert. Meanwhile, Oasis held a particularly special place in her heart. She initially teased out this facet of her creativity with a series of singles, generating nearly 20 million total streams independently. Nylon hailed her debut “Brutally” as “what a Lana Del Rey deep cut mixed with Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides, Now’ would sound like.” In addition to raves from Garage by Vice and Lemonade Magazine, DUJOR put it best, “Suki Waterhouse’s music has swagger.” Constantly consuming artists of all stripes, she listened to the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Valerie June, Garbage, Frazey Ford, Lou Doillon, and Lucinda Williams. In late 2020, she finally dove into making what would become her full-length debut album, I Can’t Let Go [Sub Pop Records] with producer Brad Cook [Snail Mail, Waxahatchee]. Now, she introduces this chapter with “Moves” and “My Mind.”
Her first album for Sub Pop, I Can’t Let Go, produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, War On Drugs, Snail Mail, Waxahatchee) and released in May of 2022, is a testament to her powers as a singer and songwriter. The Milk Teeth EP rightly shines a spotlight on her pre-album material, giving these six songs their first physical release”.
There aren’t too many big albums out on 11th November. One that is going to get a of positive press is Christine and the Queens Presents Redcar’s Redcar les adorables étoiles. Definitely go and pre-order this album. This is going to be among the best albums of this year I feel. Christine and the Queens always deliver such brilliant and compelling albums. This is not going to be any different. Redcar les adorables étoiles sound quite enigmatic, mysterious, and grand in equal measures. It is sure to be a very interesting listen that is immersive and memorable. Again, there is not too much available when it comes to the album in terms of the songs and sounds. Here is what we know about what Redcar les adorables étoiles is offering:
“Redcar is only the beginning. This is all an opera. It will take some time to unveil, the same way it is unveiling to Redcar, as he acknowledges his crazy freedom. Angels and stars, the sovereign verb, the heart at its centre. Redcar is not really there to affirm anything but the need to say who we are and what we pray for every day”.
Before moving onto 18th November and a few great albums that you need to seek out, there is another due on 11th that is well worth some pennies. Larkin Poe’s Blood Harmony is an album that I would recommend people pre-order. If you have not heard of them – and quoting from their official website -, they are an amazing duo creating such interesting music. A really great blend of sounds (“Rebecca & Megan Lovell of Larkin Poe are singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist sisters creating their own brand of Roots Rock 'n' Roll: gritty, soulful, and flavored by their southern heritage. Originally from Atlanta and currently living in Nashville, they are descendants of tortured artist and creative genius Edgar Allan Poe”), you will want to own Blood Harmony, as it is promising to be a really rich album that will offer layers and treats with each new listen:
“The latest full-length from Larkin Poe, Blood Harmony is a whole-hearted invitation into a world they know intimately, a Southern landscape so precisely conjured you can feel the sticky humidity of the warm summer air. In bringing their homeland to such rich and dazzling life, Georgia-bred multi-instrumentalist sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell fortify their storytelling with a rock and blues-heavy sound that hits right in the heart, at turns stormy and sorrowful and wildly exhilarating”.
There are some tremendous albums due on 18th November. Caitlin Rose’s CAZIMI is the first I would point people in the direction of. I am really looking ahead to the release of CAZIMI, as it promises to be something truly special and essential. Do make sure that you go and pre-order it:
“In February of 2020, singer-songwriter Caitlin Rose settled in at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios for a week of tracking with William Tyler, Brian Kotzur, Jack Lawrence, and Luke Schneider. After a seven year absence following the release of her sophomore LP, The Stand-In—a self-described Sisyphean nightmare of false starts and career blocks—Rose was ready, with the encouragement of close friend and producer Jordan Lehning, to give the rock a final push. “It happened so fast that there was no time to worry about what could go wrong; all I walked in with was the excitement,” she says. When she and Lehning planned to return for overdubs in early March, neither expected that the world would turn on its head in little more than a week, that a tornado would soon wipe half of east Nashville off the map, or a global pandemic would, as it has for so many others’ projects, further delay completion.
Paradoxically, though, sitting with her songs a little longer turned out to be exactly what Rose needed. “I had all the pieces,” she says. “It just took a while to make them fit. The initial charge of going into the studio with people I trusted and seeing it through was so inspiring, and then the world just stopped. It was a terrifying shift, but Jordan set the path for us and figured out how to utilize this new uncomfortable freedom of time. It led to a process more joyful than any I’ve experienced making music.”
The resulting record, CAZIMI, on Names, finds itself released into the world at the exact right time. We’re not quite post-pandemic but we’re certainly post-vibe shift. Things are falling apart, systems are failing in front of us; chaos and danger await us the moment we step out our front doors. The perpetual mood is that of a constant hum of anxiety as we try to cope, with varying degrees of success, with the collective trauma that has consumed us unrelentingly for the past few years.
Taking its title from the astrological term for when a planet is in such close, specific proximity to the sun that it’s considered to be in the heart of it, CAZIMI finds the listener at the moment with its examination of trauma, chronicling “the slow motion unraveling of somebody’s life” in the aftermath. The thing about cazimi is that it’s fleeting, accidental, even—a moment of exaltation that goes just as fast as it comes. It’s a phenomenon that Rose could relate to: “I was never prepared to take on everything that happened to me in my early twenties. Being all of a sudden thrust into spotlights that I had little business being under was rarely empowering, often more so debilitating, and being in the rush of it all, I never could quite catch up,” she explains. “I was living that ‘combust to the sun’ narrative and the burnout was inevitable”.
A D.J. and artist I recently spotlighted, Honey Dijon’s sophomore album, Black Girl Magic, is shaping up to be a real classic. Someone who has recently worked alongside Madonna and Beyoncé, she is preparing to step back into the spotlight with a stunning album that you will definitely want to pre-order:
“Classic Music Company are proud to present Black Girl Magic, the highly anticipated sophomore album from the inimitable Honey Dijon. An artist in every sense of the word, across 15 tracks of attitude, energy, heart and community, Honey demonstrates a broad range of disciplines and influences, enlisting A-List collaborators such as Channel Tres, Eve, Pablo Vittar, Josh Caffe, Mike Dunn and more for an unmissable, boundary-pushing LP.
Redefining what it is to be a DJ in 2022, this year Honey’s production capabilities have been enlisted by the upper echelon of musicians. Producing two records for Beyonce’s chart-topping album Renaissance and remixing lead single ‘Break My Soul’, as well as working in the studio with Madonna on new material. Now unapologetically expressing her own sound on Black Girl Magic, she unveils the next chapter of her development as a producer and songwriter.
Since the first teaser of the album, the BBC Radio 1 playlisted collaboration with Atlanta singer-songwriter Hadiya George ‘Not About You’, to the most recent single ‘Show Me Some Love’ featuring Compton royalty Channel Tres, the Black Girl Magic project has consistently illustrated Honey’s dedication to profiling diverse vocal talent. Shining a spotlight on a new generation of queer people and people of colour, Honey’s intentions to “keep this culture in the conversation,” are demonstrated with the featured artists on the LP.
Behind the scenes Honey has worked closely with Classic Music Company founder and close friend Luke Solomon, as well as regular collaborator Chris Penny on the production of the album. Her most adventurous and explorative output yet with a diverse range of influences, Honey’s Chicago musical upbringing is a driving force behind the LP, with her sights set on demonstrating how she first experienced the music of her hometown felt deeply across the record.
Working with British sculptor Jam Sutton, an artist who explores the relationship between technology and antiquity, 3D sculptural digital renderings of Honey have formed the artwork for all preceding singles leading into Black Girl Magic. Exploring identity, form, technology and classical portraiture, the artwork for the album comes as the final piece in the series of bespoke displays of Honey.
From her stratospheric DJ career, to her fashion line with COMME des GARÇONS: Honey Fucking Dijon, to soundtracking some of the most iconic fashion shows of the 21st century, Honey’s influence is felt far and wide across the worlds of music, fashion and art, with Black Girl Magic a powerful physical statement of her interdisciplinary artistic impact”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Neil Krug
I am particularly keen to hear Weyes Blood’s And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. That arrives on 18th November. Promising another stunning and eye-catching album cover and truly amazing music, Natalie Laura Mering’s fifth studio album follows the mighty Titanic Rising. Released in 2019, it was one of the best albums of the 2010s. This is a simply wonderful artist who delivers music of the very highest order. As such, you will want to pre-order And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow.
“Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow.
The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019’s best.) While Titanic Rising was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. “We’re in a fully functional shit show,” Mering says. “My heart is a glow stick that’s been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness.”
And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome “It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody,” a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. “I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up,” Mering says. “Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal.”
Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like “Grapevine” chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge “God Turn Me into a Flower” serves as allegory about our collective hubris. “The Worst Is Done” is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody.
“Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order,” she says. “These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment”.
Not a new album, but Michael Jackson’s Thriller is forty next month. There is a vinyl edition, plus a C.D. edition. There are various different sites where you can order the fortieth anniversary edition, but it is well worth investigating. Thriller is one of the best-selling and important albums of all time. There are extras that come with the fortieth anniversary edition. A fascinating insight into a classic album:
“Instead of utilizing the industry-standard threestep lacquer process, UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss and thereby revealing extra musical detail and dynamics otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. Every UD1S pressing serves as an immaculate replica of the lacquer sourced directly from the original master tape.
Putting into perspective the incalculable impact and pioneering significance of the best-selling album of all time has never been
easy. Though Michael Jackson’s Thriller lays claim to mind-boggling statistics – for starters, it netted a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards and sold upwards of 70 million copies globally – that serve as reminders of how pervasive and indispensable it remains to music snobs and casual listeners alike, its essence always traces back to the greatness, power, and scope of the songs. Now, as it celebrates its 40th anniversary, the blockbuster that reconceptualized music via a genre- and color-blind blend of fleet pop, funk, disco, soul, and rock sent up with cinematic panache and dynamic energy; united audiences; made strides towards achieving racial equality; and taught the world how to dance sounds even more invigorating than it did during the advent of the Walkman.
Mastered from the original analog master tapes, pressed at RTI, housed in a slipcase, and strictly limited to 40,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP set does for Thriller what Jackson’s unforgettable appearance on the “Motown 25” TV special in 1983 did for his career: It makes the music personal, human, desirable, relatable, imaginative – the definition of cool. This extraordinary reissue does so by presenting the songs in lifelike fashion, zeroing in on the fundamentals with laser focus, and magnifying the brilliance of the production, arrangements, and vocals in ways that let everyone experience Thriller as if hearing the album for the first time. “It’s close to midnight…".
I will end this feature with an album that is due on 25th November. Stormzy’s This Is What I Mean is one to pre-order. Stormzy has said in interview how his new album is inspired by Soul. Not Grime or Hip-Hop, this sees the London legend taking a slightly different direction. This is what Pitchfork wrote about a highlight anticipated album:
“Stormzy has announced that his third studio album will arrive later this year. This Is What I Mean is due out November 25 (via 0207 Def Jam/Interscope). The 12-track release, according to a press release, was mostly written during a retreat to Osea Island, a small island in the Blackwater Estuary that’s accessible by car for only a few hours each day due to the rising tide. In a statement describing the recording process, Stormzy said:
When you hear about music camps, they always sound intense and somber. People saying, “We need to make an album.” “We need to make some hit records.” But this felt beautifully free. We’re all musicians, but we weren’t always doing music. Some days we played football or walked around taking pictures. And the byproduct to that was very beautiful music. Because when you marry that ethos with world-class musicians and the best producers, writers, and artists in the world, and we’re in one space, that’s a recipe for something that no one can really imagine. You can’t even calculate what that’s going to come up with. And it came up with a big chunk of this album.
This Is What I Mean follows 2019’s Heavy Is the Head and 2017’s Gang Signs & Prayers. Stormzy has continued to release new music in the interim, most recently dropping the song “Mel Made Me Do It” with a nearly 11-minute video featuring guest appearances from Usain Bolt, Louis Theroux, José Mourinho, and more”.
Not quite as busy a month as others this year, there is still a huge amount of choice and quality available. From Stormzy to Honey Dijon, through to Michael Jackson, First Aid Kit, and Suki Waterhouse, November is offering up a lot of treats and promise. I am especially looking forward to work from Waterhouse, First Aid Kit, and Big Joanie. Keep your eyes peeled and, if you can afford it, put some money aside from the best that next month has to offer. Judging by the albums I have listed above, it is a month that…
WILL not disappoint.