FEATURE:
One for the Record Collection!
IN THIS PHOTO: Confidence Man
Essential October Releases
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SOME truly amazing albums…
IN THIS PHOTO: Laura Marling/PHOTO CREDIT: Tamsin Topolski
are due next month. I am going to recommend a few that you need to pre-order. Here is a list of the albums that are out next month. I am highlighting those that are especially worth getting. Beginning on 4th October. The first album I am recommending is Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn’s Quiet in a World Full of Noise. This is an album that you need to pre-order:
“Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn share a common collaborative ethos, a genuine sense of musical curiosity, and a cosmopolitan eagerness to escape the conventions of genre. That shared vision first brought them together on 2022’s Pigments — icy and warm, stripped-down and grand, familiar and otherworldly and now it has reunited them for Quiet in a World Full of Noise.
By turns intimate, soul-baring, spectral, and startling, Quiet in a World Full of Noise blends atmospheric and orchestral soundscapes with mellifluous soul, jazz, and journalistic vocalizing driving it all home with stark, confessional lyricism. The new album finds Richard at her most raw and exposed. This year, Richard’s musician father experienced mini strokes while being diagnosed with cancer; and last year, her cousin Cisco was fatally shot seven times in New Orleans. Richard channels the emotional impact of these traumatic experiences of loss into her lyrics and vocal performances, which are left bare and human here, raw and unprocessed across the album. Quiet expands the definitions of what constitutes progressive, avant-garde R&B by rewriting them altogether.
On paper, Richard and Zahn’s audacious, impressionistic musical collaborations feel like a surprising match. Richard, a New Orleans–reared visionary, has had an improbable journey from late 2000s reality television and mainstream pop with girl group Danity Kane to become one of the most prolific, experimental, and visible indie
R&B singer-songwriters of the last decade and a half, with seven solo albums under her belt. Zahn is an East Coast–raised multi-instrumentalist and composer working at the intersections of jazz, Americana, classical, and ambient pop. His growing solo discography includes People of the Dawn, Sunday Painter, Pale Horizon, and Statues I and II, as well as the duo’s first release, Pigments. “Pigments was one of the best projects I’ve ever made,” Richard says, “and the furthest I’ve ever been pushed as an artist.” The album was a critical hit, hailed as Best New Music by Pitchfork and receiving praise from Stereogum as Album of the Week, NPR Music, Bandcamp Daily, The Fader, Bitter Southerner, and Edition, among many other publications.
The making of its follow-up, Quiet in a World Full of Noise, began in 2023 in upstate New York. Fresh from a break-up, Zahn sat at his piano and poured himself into writing and recording instrumental compositions. “I wrote all these stream-of-consciousness pieces on piano, and they were eerie, spacious piano tracks,” he said.
He used a piano that had been unconventionally tuned to the room rather than to standard pitch. These oddly-tuned, eerie instrumental recordings were never intended to be an album. Six months later, he listened to the recordings again and sent them to Richard who immediately recognized their potential and said, “Oh, this is the next album.”
Richard went into the studio the next day and wrote and recorded melodies and lyrics to Zahn’s piano recordings. Zahn brought in gifted musicians like Bryan Senti on strings (violin, viola, and violoncello da spalla) and CJ Camerieri on brass (French horn, flugelhorn, and trumpet). In some cases, like on the track “Life in Numbers,” Zahn used only the original first-take piano recording and scratch vocal, resulting in an intimate close-up of both Richard and Zahn”.
The second album from 4th October that you need to pre-order is from Leon Bridges. The fourth album from the acclaimed American artist, Leon is going to be well worth getting. I am excited to see what comes from Leon. Whether you are a fan or not, I would urge people to go and pre-order the album. It is going to be among the best from this year. A truly tremendous artist that everyone should know about:
“Leon is the highly anticipated fourth album from Grammy Award-winning recording artist, songwriter, and producer Leon Bridges. With 13 tracks featuring Leon’s signature storytelling and a unique blend of organic genre alchemy, ‘Leon’ is his most poignant, powerful, and personal work to date. He takes fans on a trip through the heart of Ft. Worth he knows best, the things he holds dear, and the people and places that shaped him. Featuring production by Ian Fitchuk (Beyonce, Noah Kahan), Daniel Tashian (Kacey Musgraves), and Tyler Johnson (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus), Leon describes the album as “somewhat of a self-portrait… I’m excited to share these stories about my home, about nostalgia, about my upbringing, about where I’m from, with all of you. I hope this music brings you back to your roots and your journey”.
The penultimate album from 4th October that you need to seek out is Orla Gartland’s Everybody Needs a Hero. With an incredible album cover, I am instantly attracted to this album. If you have not heard of Orla Gartland, then I would urge people to go and investigate. Make sure that you go and pre-order the latest album from a sensational rising artist. Someone who should be on everyone’s radar:
“Everybody Needs A Hero is the second studio album by Dublin-born Orla Gartland, released via her own label New Friends. Everybody Needs A Hero explores how Gartland shapeshifts through the currents of a long term relationship and works out how to take up space in a postfeminist world. Throughout the record Orla explores the idea of a ‘hero’: someone to look up to, someone to rescue us from ourselves, someone we use to deflect from our own shadow self. A testament to her artistic growth, burgeoning confidence and proud sense of independence, this record is the latest milestone in this self-made talent’s journey. With her career streams nudging towards a quarter of a billion, sold-out tours and festival appearances at Glastonbury and Latitude; to her debut album Woman On The Internet reaching the UK and Irish Top 10 Orla is ready to boldly step into this next chapter of her career”.
Among the most anticipated albums of this year is The Smile’s Cutouts. It sounds like it is going to be another amazing release from the trio. I would advise people check out this album and pre-order it. Their second album of 2024, Rough Trade provide some more details about an album that everybody needs to get. It is going to be another that will be among the best of the year. I am curious to see what comes from Cutouts:
“The Smile release a new album titled Cutouts, via XL Recordings.
The trio - Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner - debuted several songs from Cutouts during The Smile’s UK tour in March. Cutouts features 10 new-tracks and is produced by Sam Petts-Davies. It’s the band’s third studio album following Wall of Eyes, released in January, and the trio’s 2022 debut album A Light For Attracting Attention. Cutouts was recorded in Oxford and at Abbey Road Studios during the same period of time as Wall Of Eyes. The album features string arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra and the album art was painted during the recording process by Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke.
This is the second studio album release from The Smile in under a year. In January, Wall Of Eyes charted at #3 on the UK album charts, receiving “Best Album of the Year so far” praise from Pitchfork, The Needle Drop, Consequence, Brooklyn Vegan, Treblezine and Spin.
Outside The Smile, Thom Yorke released the original score for Daniele Luchetti’s film Confidenza and announced solo tour dates in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Japan, Jonny Greenwood debuted a new work, ‘X Years of Reverb’ at the 268 year old Octagon Chapel in Norwich, and is writing the score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film, The Battle of Baktan Cross. Tom Skinner released Voices of Bishara Live at “mu” and is touring the jazz summer festival circuit to perform his own solo music”.
There are a couple of albums due on 11th October that I want to recommend. October is quite a busy month and there is a lot of variety in terms of albums. One album that I am very keen to explore is Samara Joy’s Portrait. Go and pre-order the album. This award-winning artist from The Bronx, Samara Joy released her self-titled debut album in 2021. She was named Best New Artist by JazzTimes:
“Born from of a relentless global tour schedule, Samara Joy took her touring band, made up of other rising young jazz musicians, into the legendary Van Gelder Studios (the venerable studio from which A Love Supreme and so many of the great catalog records from Impulse and Blue Note were recorded) in February of 2024. Recorded across three days, Samara and her musicians were able to capture an incredible snapshot of who she is today and the promise of tomorrow. It’s a collection of standards, as well as one original and some of her first forays into lyric writing and features her singular voice, alongside arrangements and playing from this tight knit young group. The recording is this story of the community she’s created with a new generation of young players and serves as a studio rendering that delivers on the promise of the live show so many fans have seen them perform over the last year”.
No Obligation is the new album form The Linda Lindas. This is another great album that you need to pre-order. This American Rock band consists of Bela Salazar, Eloise Wong, and sisters Lucia and Mila de la Garza. I am a big fan of their work and am really eager to explore their new album. Below are some more details. If you do not know who The Linda Lindas are, then you seriously need to listen to their music:
“Here comes No Obligation, the second full-length release from THE LINDA LINDAS further advances their unironic, joyful, and exciting trajectory of mashing up LA punk with alt-rock, garage rock, power pop, new wave, rock en espanol.
No Obligation was written and recorded by the band during spring breaks, winter breaks, and long weekends (Lucia and Eloise are still in high school, Mila just finished middle school, and Bela is patiently waiting for them to get done with it already) and was produced by Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, Best Coast, Bleached).
Known for their incredible musicianship and live performances, the band who has shared stages with and opened for Paramore, Japanese Breakfast, Jawbreaker, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, are about to embark on a massive two-month tour across America with Green Day.
No Obligations. No expectations. No limits for THE LINDA LINDAS”.
There are four albums from 18th October that you will want to consider pre-ordering. The first that I want to recommend is The Blessed Madonna’s Godspeed. Go and pre-order this amazing album from the one and only The Blessed Madonna. It sounds like it is going to be a fascinating and compelling album that you need to check out. I love what The Blessed Madonna does and her upcoming album is one that you need to pre-order and hear. It is going to be incredible:
“The Blessed Madonna began with three magic words, scrawled in shoe polish on a broken - down box and hung on the wall at a small sweaty party: We Still Believe. “I think you have to give up completely to really understand what hope is. It was like 2011? I had spectacularly, monumentally failed. I left the label. I wasn’t DJing. I wasn’t putting out records. I was divorced and living on my Dad’s couch so naturally my friends and I decided to throw an illegal rave. We didn’t have any decorations, so I took a box and wrote, ‘We Still Believe’ on it. I needed to believe that something better was possible and that’s how it all started.” After years of $50 gigs, strung together by gas money and surfed couches, The Blessed Madonna cemented her reputation as a sublime technician behind the decks with a legacy of fluent and dynamic sets, spanning from disco to techno to house and back. One room sweatboxes, circus tents, theatres, massive festival stages and entire city blocks have all served as the canvas for her shows. After a jam packed 2023, from Glastonbury to Sonar to Boiler Room Bali, The Blessed Madonna has been filling the dance floor everywhere she goes and is now releasing her debut album”.
The next album that I want to bring to your attention is Confidence Man’s 3AM (LA LA LA). With an interesting album cover and title, the new release from this Australian duo should be on your radar. You can pre-order the album here. 3AM (LA LA LA) is going to be a predictably phenomenal work from the Brisbane duo of Janet Planet (Grace Stephenson) and Sugar Bones (Aidan Moore):
“Confidence Man’s third studio album, 3AM (LA LA LA) released via Chaos / Polydor Records/ I Oh You Records, sees the delinquent party starters popify 90's UK rave sounds like no one before. Inspired by a recent move to London, meeting their idols KLF, and becoming immersed in the queer club scene, Confidence Man have taken the ideas of hedonism, ecstasy and losing yourself to the music and distilled them into pure a-grade euphoria. The record spans the electronic spectrum from breakbeat and trance, to left-field Underworld size techno and the “let’s 'ave it” punk energy of legacy artists like The Prodigy. 3AM (LA LA LA) follows their hugely successful second album Tilt, which featured breakout single and festival crowd favourite ‘Holiday’. Staunchly defying trends and bringing Janet, Sugar, Reggie and Clarence along for a helluva good time, 3AM (LA LA LA) feels bigger, bolder and in some ways brutal, but like, in a hot way. 3AM (LA LA LA) is a welcome escape from the dull wasteland of modern mediocrity, bringing the weird and wonderful world of Confidence Man to the masses”.
Two more albums from 18th October that are definitely worth considering. I think that Kelly Lee Owens’s Dreamstate is another that will be among the finest of 2024. Do go and pre-order this album. Kelly Lee Owens is a tremendous Welsh Electronic musician and producer. Owens released her self-titled first album in 2017. If you are unfamiliar with her music then do go and listen back. This is an album that you will want to add to your collection:
“Dreamstate is Kelly Lee Owens fourth studio album. The new album will be her first released at new label home dh2 - a brand new electronic music imprint at renowned independent label Dirty Hit being spearheaded by George Daniel of The 1975. There’s an incredible feeling of freedom and escapism found throughout Kelly’s album Dreamstate, born from the experience of inner evolution in the aftermath of a break-up. It’s the sound of a person letting loose and letting go while encouraging everyone else to do the same. Dreamstate is built on the foundations of collaboration, with producer-writer credits from Bicep, Tom Rowlands from The Chemical Brothers and George Daniel”.
The final album form 18th October that I want to spotlight is Porridge Radio’s Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me. If you are interested in pre-ordering the album then you can do so here. I really like the band and their new album sounds like it is really going to be worth your time. Below is some further detail about Porridge Radio’s forthcoming album. One that you need to embrace:
“All the songs started out as poems,” says Margolin of the work that became Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me , “I wanted to challenge myself.” In a song, Dana argues, the writer can always hide behind the tricks of the music and well-worn techniques such as repetition. “In a poem, though,” says Dana, “it’s just words and that’s it.” Recorded in the Somerset countryside in early 2024 by longtime Big Thief and Laura Marling engineer Dom Monks, Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me is Porridge Radio’s new album and first new music in two years. The UK band’s new album is a coming-of-age moment inspired by burnout, the music industry, the brutal collapse of a relationship and - crucially - Dana’s own increasing immersion in her craft as an artist.
“A lot of this album is about a more frenetic and desperate kind of love,” says Dana, “it is about completely losing my sense of self in a relationship, and the deep residue of insecurity and pain that lingered and clouded a new relationship.” Songs that were written as love songs - like In A Dream I’m A Painting - took on new meanings as Margolin viewed the songs with a new distance. “There was a lot of love and confusion, all interspersed with exhaustion and pain.”
The Clouds sessions took place in Frome as Winter melted into early Spring at the beginning of 2024. “There were a few breakdowns,” grins Dana, in a fair assessment of recording such intimate and personal songs, “after some takes I would just collapse on the floor, so upset.” An environment was fostered where Dana could express herself and be nurtured. “We would have these big communal meals every night,” she says, “it felt very close knit and caring and warm and special.”“Our little house looked over a big hill,” remembers Dana, “there was a river running through it, it was big and bright and beautiful.” The studio itself was bright - full of beaming natural light from the large windows, a blessing for musicians used to the sealed tomb world of most recording studios, and for once the band were all able to record in the same room as the producer.
Today, Dana reflects on Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me with the enthusiasm of a real creative breakthrough. “It feels like the first time we’ve made something,” she explains, audibly delighted at the album, “it captured something about our friendship and the way that we have learnt to play together. I love the songs, I love playing them, they haven’t gotten old and it feels like it’s a special thing.” A pause. “It’s taught me so much. Following your gut to the nth point, trusting your friends and their loyalty, trusting to be able to fight with people properly. How I want to live is how I want to make records, because making records is my life because my work is my play is my job is my life. It all ties together in this thing, and there are ways to do this that might not kill me”.
There are four albums from 25th October that you need to check out. The first come from another amazing Australian act. Amyl and the Sniffers’s Cartoon Darkness sound incredible. If you want to pre-order the album then you can do here:
“In the eight years since Amyl and The Sniffers came together in Melbourne’s sticky pub-rock scene, Amyl and the Sniffers have become masters of balancing power and playfulness. With two critically acclaimed albums under their belt - 2019’s self-titled debut and 2021’s visceral Comfort To Me - vocalist Amy Taylor, guitarist Declan Mehrtens, bassist Gus Romer and drummer Bryce Wilson have achieved something unique and remarkable.
Since the release of Comfort to Me, the band has seen their horizons broaden exponentially in every way. And it’s this attitude - bigger, brighter, smarter, sharper - that’s fuelling their third album, Cartoon Darkness. Recorded with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles, on the same desk that captured Nirvana’s Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the latest Amyl offering is full of surprises. Musically, Mehrtens, Romer and Wilson have written The Sniffers’ most diverse album yet. It stretches from classic punk to the glammy strut of recent single ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ to the stormy balladry of ‘Big Dreams’ (which is a sonic gear shift worthy of the title).
Cartoon Darkness is about climate crisis, war, AI, tip-toeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they're helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern day god. It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.
Everything is such hard work, everything is heartbreaking, but everything is beautiful. I want to celebrate. I want to put my phone down and see someone's facial expression change with what they say. I want to people-watch. I want to see if there are bugs where I walk, but I don't see them. I also want the fantasy and the escapism. I want to lean into hedonism, I want to feel alive, while acknowledging the dystopia and chaos unfolding around me.
Cartoon Darkness is driving head first into the unknown, into this looming sketch of the future that feels terrible, but doesn’t even exist yet. A childlike darkness. I don’t want to meet the devil half-way and mourn what we have right now. The future is cartoon, the prescription is dark, but it's novelty. It's just a joke. It's fun”.
Three more albums from 25th October that are going to be worth your time and money. The first is Laura Marling’s Patterns In Repeat. This is one of the albums I am looking forward to more than anything. I have been following Marling’s work for many years now and love everything that she does. Her latest album is one that I will definitely check out. You can pre-order it here:
“Grammy nominated Laura Marling is back with her eighth studio album Patterns in Repeat. Now eight albums and 15 years into her career as one of the most acclaimed, prolific and respected songwriters of her generation (Grammy and Mercury Nominated and Brit award winning) Patterns in Repeat was written following the birth of her daughter in 2023 and finds Laura reflecting on her motherhood experience as well as more broadly diving deeper into her reckoning with the ideas and behaviours we pass down through family over generations.
Almost entirely acoustic with minimal overdubbing and elegantly placed orchestral accents, this is the most focused, subtle and sharpest collection of Laura's career”.
Two more albums that I want to bring in before rounding things off. Underworld’s Strawberry Hotel is going to be one you’ll want to pre-order. This legendary duo always produce amazing albums. Their latest is one fans will want to pick up. Make sure you do not pass it by. A really big and exciting album that will add something very special to October. Do go and check out Strawberry Hotel:
“Welcome to Strawberry Hotel. Here, gleaming tensile techno forms clean, straight lines while scratchy acoustic guitars scuff up edges to produce ghostly audio. Poetry is snatched from the overhead, removed from the overheard; words borrowed from the ether are spun into dizzying new shapes, sometimes reappearing in new settings, twisted back to front, side to side. Each track a very different room - some soundtracked by little more than metronomic kick drum and robotic voice, others deep in layer upon layer of melody and euphoric noise - and each room unmistakably, uniquely Underworld. The only advice from Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde upon entering: “Please don’t shuffle.” Strawberry Hotel features the singles and the colour red and denver luna, as well as new release Black Poppies - a celestial love song, a hymn to the universe and to boundless, positive change. Ambient and beatless, Black Poppies is a celebration of full dancefloors and the beauty of life itself”.
The final album that from October that is worth pre-ordering is Tess Parks’ Pomegranate. You may not know this artist, though I think that you will fall for her music pretty quickly. Go and pre-order Pomegranate. Rounding off an incredible month for music. This album sounds terrific.
“Longing. Heartbreak. Levity. Joy. Being filled with love for all things. All of these sensations flow at once through Canadian singer-songwriter Tess Parks’ new album, Pomegranate. Re-establishing Parks as the consummate artist-observer against a swirling nouveau-delic backdrop, her third solo album arrives via Fuzz Club and was produced by multi-instrumentalist and close collaborator Ruari Meehan, who shared mixing duties with Grammy-nominated engineer Mikko Gordon (The Smile, Gaz Coombes, Arcade Fire).
Though Tess Parks first became widely known for her string of collaborations with Brian Jonestown Massacre mastermind Anton Newcombe, her 2022 solo offering And Those Who Were Seen Dancing left an unforgettable impression with its signature blend of weight, whimsy, and open-heartedness. The New York Times would praise its “confident, enchanting presence”, whilst Exclaim! proclaimed it as a record that “demands to be heard and felt”. Where Dancing retained a fair measure of bedroom-demo charm, this time the canvas is bigger, with Meehan’s arrangements stretching all the way to the horizon. This is the most ambitious and cinematic Parks’ music has ever sounded. Drawing on psychedelic elements in a way that sounds decidedly fresh, the dreamlike atmospheres feel oddly nostalgic and modern at the same time.
The pair are backed on most tracks by band members Francesco ‘Pearz’ Perini – whose piano and organs shine through gloriously on ‘Koalas’ and ‘California’s Dreaming’ respectively – and Marco Ninni, who provides the solid backbone throughout on drums. From a vocal perspective, it feels like Parks pushes her voice to new heights on this album too. Her lyrics are sharp, ever-present, and imbued with strength, depth, and poetic purpose, which shine particularly bright on tracks like ‘Koalas’ and ‘Charlie Potato’. They weave through her flurries of beautiful melodic hooks, featuring sublime choruses and complex, multi-layered harmonic structures, as showcased on ‘Crown Shy’ and ‘Bagpipe Blues’ especially.
On Pomegranate there are also plenty of new experiments and guests introduced. ‘Koalas’, for example, features the spellbinding whistling of Molly Lewis, lending a bittersweet Morricone-esque charm. ‘Crown Shy’ features soaring strings (arranged by Ninni and played by Joe Butler), and ‘Bagpipe Blues’ and ‘Charlie Potato’ are elevated by Kira Krempova’s ethereal flute playing – the latter also accompanied with Wurlitzer piano played by Oscar ‘SHOLTO’ Robertson. The euphoric ‘Running Home To Sing’ and album-closer ‘Surround’ centre the synthesiser for the first time, whilst the piano features more prominently across many of the tracks”.
If you need to know which other albums are out next month, then here is where you can find them. I have selected the ones that I feel are especially worth pre-ordering. It is a wonderful month for new releases. A packed and diverse one where there should be an album for everyone. October is going to offer up…
PLENTY of gems.