FEATURE:
One for the Record Collection!
IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz
Essential May Releases
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MAY is a busy one…
IN THIS PHOTO: Skunk Anansie
for new albums, so there are quite a few that I want to get through. I am going to start out with the best coming out on 2nd May. There are five albums out this week that I want to highlight. Let’s start with Blondshell’s If You Asked for a Picture. You can find a more comprehensive list of May-due albums here. You can pre-order Blondshell’s upcoming album here. Following her acclaimed and hugely successful eponymous debut of 2023, this is another terrific work that you will want to check out. There is not a lot of information available about it. However, here is a little taster of what to expect:
“If You Asked For A Picture, the 2nd album from Sabrina Teitelbaum, aka Blondshell, is a no-skips, triumphant record that captures the unresolved process of figuring out who you are, too wise to suggest that it has a definitive answer.
The album brims with an urgency, ambition, and devastating potency hinted at on 2023’s self-titled debut–the specificity, self-examination, and nonchalant humor of which turned her into one of the most lauded new artists in recent memory”.
An interesting concept album from Car Seat Headrest, The Scholars, arrives on 2nd May. Even though I really do not like the album cover, the music on it is first-rate. This is a band I am familiar with but have not explored in too much depth. You can pre-order their new album here:
“Set at the fictional college campus Parnassus University, the songs on The Scholars are populated with students and staff whose travails illuminate a loose narrative of life, death, and rebirth. Inspired by an apocryphal poem by "Archbishop Guillermo Guadalupe del Toledo," and featuring character designs from Toledo’s friend, the cartoonist Cate Wurtz, the first half of the album focuses on the deep yearning and spiritual crisis of the titular Scholars. They range from the tortured and doubt-filled young playwright Beolco to Devereaux, a person born to religious conservatives who finds themselves desperate for higher guidance. The second part features a series of epics detailing the clash between the defenders of the classic texts “and the young person who doesn't care about the canon, who is going to tear all of that up, basically,” Toledo says. “And so within this one campus, there becomes a war.” From Shakespeare to Mozart to classical opera, Toledo pulled from the classics when devising the lyrics and story arc of The Scholars, while the music draws, carefully, from classic rock story song cycles such as The Who’s Tommy and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. “One thing that can be a struggle with rock operas is that the individual songs kind of get sacrificed for the flow of the plot,” Toledo notes. “I didn't want to sacrifice that to make a very fluid narrative. And so this is sort of a middle ground where each song can be a character and it's like each one is coming out on center stage and they have their song and dance.” Self-produced by Toledo and recorded, for a change, mostly in analog, The Scholars is “definitely the most bottom up of any project that we've done,” says Ives, who was urged by Toledo to take ownership of the guitar work and sound design for the album. “I've started nerding out a lot more in the last couple of years about designing sounds more deliberately, rather than just using your lucky gear and hoping for the best. It was really rewarding, being able to sculpt things a lot more specifically, and being able to layer things in more of a dense way and have more of an active design role in how things come across more than any previous album.”
While The Scholars has some of the most expansive Car Seat Headrest songs to date, including the nearly 19-minute long ‘Planet Desperation’, and opener ‘CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)’, they know how to make each part of the journey compelling, filling the runtimes with unexpected turns and enervating hooks. And moments like the jaunty ‘The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That Man)’ show they haven’t lost their ability to write a short-and-sweet single that chimes like classic ‘60s folk pop, updated for the present. Having gone through their trials, Car Seat Headrest are now ready for the next chapter in their career. It will astonish both longtime supporters and new fans”.
Another terrific album that comes out on 2nd May is Jenny Hvals’s Iris Silver Mist. With a pretty decent album cover, I am excited to hear what she produces on this album. One I would encourage people to pre-order and add to their collection. If you need some more information about Hval and her upcoming album, then this should definitely provoke some intrigue and interest:
“Norwegian musician, artist and novelist Jenny Hval releases her new album, Iris Silver Mist. Iris Silver Mist is named after a fragrance made by the nose Maurice Roucel for the French perfume house Serge Lutens. It’s described as smelling more like steel than silver. It is cold and prickly, soft and shimmering, like stepping outside on an early, misty morning, your body still warm from sleep. A perfume, with its heart notes and scented accords, shares its language with music. Both travel through air, simultaneously invisible and distinct.
Rather than begin with music, Iris Silver Mist began with the absence of it. As the pandemic led to no live music, the smell of cigarettes, soap, and the sweat from warm stage lights and shared bathrooms was replaced by unphysical, algorithmic listening at home. Suddenly, and for the first time since she was a teenager, Hval found herself growing interested in perfumes. Smelling, reading, collecting, writing—she immersed herself with scent while her music was put on hold. It took her a year to understand what was happening, until she did: she was seeking another way of sensing physical intimacy. Where music had turned into a void, she filled it with fragrance”.
One album I am particularly interested in is Model/Actriz’s Pirouette. This is a band that have been on my radar for a while and they have an incredible sound. I am looking forward to their album and what we can expect. It is shaping up to be their year. You can pre-order the album here:
“Following the release of their critically acclaimed debut, Dogsbody, (Pitchfork Best New Music, Rolling Stone Future 25, NME The Cover), Brooklyn-based quartet Model/Actriz’s sophomore album Pirouette lands sexually commanding and righteously diva-esque. Pirouette takes inspiration everywhere from Lady Gaga and Grace Jones to classical ballet and dissonant dance music. Like a well-oiled machine, Model/Actriz’s punk aggression surrenders to queer pop, arriving at stunning new ways to be free.
Model/Actriz’s sophomore album Pirouette, which was co-produced and mixed by Seth Manchester and mastered by Matt Colton, their collaborators on Dogsbody, swerves out of the maze and directly into the spotlight. Pirouette is both a natural progression and a calculated reset, a move toward reasserting their command as artists by peeling away the smoke and mirrors to become brighter, heavier, and more direct. The pop thread running throughout the album allows the crowd to witness thumping club music in the spirit of cabaret and manifest the catharsis that comes with hitting the dancefloor”.
Before moving to a few albums from 9th May you need to order, I want to recommend Samantha Crain’s Gumshoe. This is an artist I have heard a bit from but am definitely invested in. I think this new album is going to be one that deserves a lot of attention. You can pre-order a copy of Gumshoe here:
“When multiple car wrecks rendered Samantha Crain injured and bed-ridden for a year and a half -- an experience that was explored within her last full- length album A Small Death in 2020 -- followed by the pandemic immediately afterward, the Oklahoman singer-songwriter finally slowed down.
Having lived within something of a nomadic, solitary existence for as long as she can remember, she's sprinted from city to city on tour while leaving love, consequences and tough conversations behind for the past two decades. Coming off the road has given her more time to reflect, more time to connect with the people in her life, and more time to let her curiosity blossom -- as revealing and challenging as it has been.
The experience has been a crash course in humanism, as she continues to question what it means to be a friend, a partner, a piece of a community. It's explored throughout the entirety of Gumshoe -- her forthcoming seventh studio album and first in half a decade, with an apt title that evokes the sense of mystery-solving she's welcomed these last several years of staying put in Oklahoma.
As a loner for almost her entire life, Samantha's recently come face-to-face with major life events, social interactions, and consequences that she was never exposed to before. The questions of being human that offer clarity, as much as they do a fog of uncertainty with what comes next. How will things play out? Who am I when I'm not onstage? How will I pay my bills? What am I willing to do for my family?”.
Three from 9th May that I want to highlight. Including one that I think will be ranked alongside the best albums of this year. Again, with very little information about this album, it is hard to give it too much of a sell. Other than to say that this is an amazing artist whose music is among the best out there. I would urge people to pre-order Kali Uchis’s Sincerely:
“Kali’s artistry has always felt otherworldly, ethereal, and elusive. Sincerely, represents her most vulnerable and intimate work to date, offering an existential glimpse into the way she romanticizes life and her inner world. The album is a sanctuary, an escape from the chaos, a search for peace, and an act of catharsis. Sincerely, is a collection of letters to the world, allowing her fans to witness her at her most exposed as she invites them into her emotional journey”.
Another album I am looking forward to is Maren Morris’s D R E A M S I C L E. With an interesting and memorable album cover, it already has me interested. However, this is an artist I have been following for a while and know how good she. You can pre-order D R E A M S I C L E here:
“D R E A M S I C L E marks the highly anticipated 4th studio album from Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Maren Morris, via Columbia Records.
Featuring songs written by Morris with Julia Michaels and Tobias Jesso Jr, plus production by Jack Antonoff and Greg Kurstin, this album is a deeply personal exploration of transformation, resilience, and self-discovery. As Morris describes it, “D R E A M S I C L E takes place in the aftermath of loosening my grip on my personal and professional life. Sweeping through the pits of grief, but never staying too long, and finding the joy in knowing that at my core, I’m still who I am – and that’s pretty f-ing great. D R E A M S I C L E became less about the hard lessons and more about enjoying the bumpy ride and finding people who genuinely want to be on it with you because they love you. It’s about appreciating and respecting the beauty and nuances of life while it’s happening, not after it’s too late”.
One of our most acclaimed and finest artists, there are going to be a lot of eyes and ears on Little Simz’s Lotus. Make sure you pre-order your copy. Relying on very little information from Rough Trade on this one again, I would just say to let the music do the talking and buy this album regardless. Another masterpiece from one of the most compelling voices in modern British Rap. She is someone who is going to go down as one of the all-time greats - many consider her to be that right now:
“Little Simz is a boundary-breaking musician and cultural curator, recognised as one of the UK’s most captivating and visionary artists. A multi-award winner - collecting Brit Awards, Mobos, and an Ivor Novello - across mixtapes, EPs, and five critically acclaimed albums, Simz’s music documents her story, her journey, her becoming - and in turn, her generation.
Little Simz returns with her 6th Lotus.. The record marks an exciting new chapter in her artistic journey, drawing from an expansive palette of musical influences including punk, jazz, afrobeat and more. True to form, Simz continues to push boundaries and defy genre constraints, creating a sound that's both innovative and distinctly her own”.
About eight or so albums to go before I finish up. I am moving to 16th May. Billy Nomates’s Metalhorse is an album that you should get. Go and pre-order a copy now. An artist I have massive respect for, I am really pumped to see what comes out of her new album. Such a distinct musical voice, make sure you do not let this album pass you by:
“Metalhorse is Billy Nomates’ third studio release, following 2023’s critically acclaimed CACTI and her self-titled 2020 debut. A concept album revolving around the image of a dilapidated funfair, representing the tumultuousness of life—risk and pleasure, danger and exhilaration.
The 11 new songs here explore blues, folk, and piano-driven arrangements that take Billy Nomates’ stark punk sound in a more pastoral direction. Metalhorse is the first Billy Nomates album to be made in a studio and with a full band, the lineup including bass player Mandy Clarke (KT Tunstall, The Go! Team) and drummer Liam Chapman (Rozi Plain, BMX Bandits), plus a special feature from The Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell on "Dark Horse Friend".
Metalhorse is a balancing of extremes. Reckoning with loss, material insecurity, and trying to stay true to yourself against an increasingly unpredictable backdrop of global chaos, the scales could easily have tipped towards darkness. But the more Maries has had to weather, the more precious those smaller moments of happiness have become.
Metalhorse begs the listener to find their own funfair; there will always be things that feel perilous. At the same time, you have to marvel at the lights while they’re still on. Dancing with those feelings of uncertainty and joy, Metalhorse is awash with both pain and perseverance”.
I am moving onto Ezra Furman and her upcoming album, Goodbye Small Head. This is one that I can thoroughly recommend people pre-order. I am going to grab a bit of the statement/press release she put out regarding this album and what we can expect. It sounds like Goodbye Small Head is going to be a very revealing and powerful album. Such a remarkable artist that always leaves a big impression. Go and check out this amazing work:
“Hi my name is Ezra Furman this is the press release for my new record.
I don’t trust nobody and that’s why I had to write this myself.
Goodbye Small Head is the name of this record. Twelve songs, twelve variations on the experience of completely losing control, whether by weakness, illness, mysticism, BDSM, drugs, heartbreak or just living in a sick society with one’s eyes open. These songs are vivid with overwhelm. They’re not about someone going off the rails, they are inside that person’s heart. The songwriting here is a revision to William Wordsworth’s famous proclamation that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” I can agree with that, except for the tranquility part. This poetry, my poetry, arrived in the midst of the storm. It was written as I teetered toward the edge. (I did the edits once I was safe again.)
The band and I had had a run of records that were very communal, very first person plural. We, us, ours. I was trying to exist in and create a shared space with my audience, make anthems for taking care of one another in dark times. But there does come a time when a woman is left alone in a room to unravel. And you need anthems for those times too.
GSH also reflects a band reaching a new peak of our powers. If I were a music journalist, I would call this an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples. Thank goodness I’m not a music journalist! I think of this music as cinematic and intense. A friend of mine said it sounded like “the coolest movie soundtrack of 1997,” and I’m quite pleased with that description. We’ve incorporated a small string section into eight of the twelve tracks, and are using samples for the first time—nothing you’d recognize, just some uncredited singing that Sam found online, chopped into beautifully evocative bits. Other than that, this record features something that’s become nearly an anachronism: a band that’s been playing real instruments together for over a decade, intuitively in touch with each other as musicians. Four players in a room together who know exactly how to respond to one another.
We recorded in Chicago with Brian Deck producing; a return to both my city of origin and my producer of origin, since Deck produced my first rock’n’roll records many years ago (Banging Down the Doors (2007) and Inside the Human Body (2008) by Ezra Furman & the Harpoons). In some way I think I was trying to return to some much younger mindset, when all the intensity and fear and emotion of life was less mediated by adult coping mechanisms. When it was all brand new with no filter.
Though I wrote parts of it earlier, I think the making of this album really began on the morning of April 11th 2023, when I woke suddenly ill, limped into the bathroom and lost consciousness. At the hospital they gave me all the tests and told me that actually, I wasn’t sick, and I could go home now. (Thanks, fellas!) I stayed in bed for months, exhausted and in pain, no doctor offering any convincing explanation or cure”.
Prior to moving onto albums coming out on 23rd May, there is another from 16th May that definitely should get hype and focus. Rico Nasty’s LETHAL is going to be a supreme work from one of the best names in Hip-Hop and Rap. A U.S. modern queen who I would point people in the direction of, make sure you pre-order ETHAL:
“Rico Nasty returns with a new studio album, Lethal on Fueled by Ramen (Atlantic Music Group). Rico Nasty is known for her own particular brand of rage-rap and for her outrageous on-stage, online, volume-up persona. But as she grew up, she started to feel trapped by the character she created.
Lethal is a reckoning of who Rico is at 27 with the trap-pop teen persona she created more than a decade ago. Executive produced by Grammy nominated producer Imad Royal, the album still features all the hallmarks of a Rico Nasty record - female rage, heavy guitars, humor - but there are also notes of femininity, introspection and a more complex framing of all the angles of Rico - the performer, the mother, & adult”.
I was going to mention Lana Del Rey’s The Right Person Will Stay. That is scheduled for release on 21st May but, at the time of writing this (18th April), there is no pre-order link anywhere - so you might have to wait until closer to the release date. That is a shame. The first album from 23rd May you need to check out Skunk Anansie’s The Painful Truth A mighty band led by the iconic Skin, the tracks already released from this are superb. I am expecting big things from their next album. One you can pore-order here:
“Skunk Anansie is a British rock band whose members include Skin (vocals), Cass (bass guitar), Ace (guitar), and Mark Richardson (drums). Over their career, the band has sold over five million records worldwide, a testament to their lasting impact and widespread appeal. Today, their influence remains strong, as they continue to sell out arenas and headline festivals across Europe and beyond.
Celebrated for their fearless approach to addressing political and social issues, Skunk Anansie has broken significant racial and gender barriers in rock, using their platform to advocate for identity, equality, and activism. Their influence extends beyond music, making them icons of both sound and social change.
Now, the legendary British rock band returns with their seventh studio album, The Painful Truth. Recorded in LA with renowned producer Dave Sitek (known for his work with Foals, Weezer, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs), this latest release sees the four-piece once again pushing creative boundaries and solidifying their place as modern pioneers in the music world”.
Prior to moving to albums due out on 30th May, there is one more from 23rd May that you need to consider. Sparks’ MAD! Is going to be another classic from the Mael brothers, Ron and Russell. There is not a lot of information about this one (again), but here is what is available:
“Sparks, brothers Ron and Russell Mael, are back with their 28th album MAD!, their first release with Transgressive Records
Most acts, by their seventh decade in the biz, would have slowed to a crawl, creakily playing their past hits on the heritage circuit and releasing nothing more than the occasional Greatest Hits collection. This is not the case for Sparks, who have triumphantly returned yet again, proving their resilience and relevance in a modern world with a fresh record and summer world tour to accompany it”.
I will finish with a few more albums. Into 30th May, we have a treat in the form of Garbage’s Let All That We Imagine Be the Light. I would urge everyone to pre-order this album. The legendary band, led by Shirley Manson, always delivery astonishing music. Their latest album sounds like it is up there with their very best:
“Let All That We Imagine Be The Light is the eighth studio record from Garbage and was recorded at Red Razor Sounds in Los Angeles, Butch Vig’s studio Grunge Is Dead, and Shirley Manson’s bedroom. The record was produced by the band and longtime engineer Billy Bush. The album is unmistakably Garbage. All the hallmarks and signatures for which they are known are present here. Big angular guitars, precise, propulsive beats and cinematic soundscapes all lurk beneath Shirley Manson’s expressive voice, her lyrics bristling with attitude. It is the sound of a group at the peak of their creative powers – characteristically harnessing sonic juxtapositions and moods to create an album that thrums equally with both light and shade”.
Out on 30th May, Miley Cyrus’s Something Beautiful is out. Go and pre-order it. Again, there is not a lot of new information about this album, so I am sourcing from this article from last year. A true pop icon, this is an album that I am definitely going to check out when it is released. I think that everyone needs to check this album out as it is among the most important of this year:
“At long last, fans will soon get to hear new music from Miley Cyrus, following the huge success of 2023's Endless Summer Vacation.
In a departure from her previous work, the Grammy-winning Disney alum has confirmed Something Beautiful is set to be a visual album.
“The visual component of this is driving the sound,” Cyrus teases in an interview for Harper’s Bazaar’s December 2024/January 2025 cover story. “It was important for me that every song has these healing sound properties.”
It will release in 2025
While an official release date has yet to be specified, Something Beautiful is slated for release some time next year.
Her boyfriend collaborated with her on the record
Cyrus’s longtime boyfriend, Maxx Morando, and the drummer for rock band Liily apparently played a role in the making of Something Beautiful. Cyrus reveals in her Bazaar. US cover story that Morando helped produce multiple tracks, and even helped her write the album’s title track.
Of mixing business with pleasure, she explained, “I worked with my dad forever. That’s how me and my ex-husband met each other. I’ve always worked with the people that I love. And Maxx just inspires me so much.”
It’s a visual album
“The visual component of this is driving the sound,” Cyrus teases in her Bazaar cover story. “It was important for me that every song has these healing sound properties. The songs, whether they’re about destruction or heartbreak or death, they’re presented in a way that is beautiful, because the nastiest times of our life do have a point of beauty. They are the shadow, they are the charcoal, they are the shading. You can’t have a painting without highlights and contrast.”
In terms of visuals, Cyrus has taken inspiration in everything from fashion to cinema. Key references include Thierry Mugler’s 1995 couture show, a seminal collection that includes the famous robot suit that Zendaya wore on the Dune: Part Two red carpet.
“She’ll want it to feel like this specific runway show or something,” music producer Shawn Everett tells Bazaar. “I love when she talks like that. For me, it opens up a whole world.”
Cyrus adds, “I can show [Everett] a painting or a dress, and I’ll tell him to convey those colours or that fabric with sound.”
Another key reference is 1982 surrealist musical drama, Pink Floyd: The Wall. Cyrus recalls watching the film as a teenager with her brother and a friend, during which the group rented a limo and got dressed up in ’70s-style fur coats. “We really leaned in. And so I have this heart-first attachment to it,” Cyrus says. “My idea was making The Wall, but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous and filled with pop culture.”
Something Beautiful is “more experimental” than any of her other albums.
In Cyrus’s Bazaar cover story, Everett teases, “[The album is] more experimental than anything she’s ever done, but in a pop way that I love.”
Cyrus herself describes the forthcoming record as “hypnotising and glamorous.” She continues: “It’s a concept album that’s an attempt to medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music”.
The final album I am highlighting is Shura’s I Got Too Sad for My Friends. An artist I have been following for years now, it is exciting that she has a new album coming out. A great way to end a busy May! Make sure that you pre-order an important work from a tremendous artist:
“Five years after her critically acclaimed album forevher, Shura is back with her highly anticipated third studio album I Got Too Sad For My Friends. A pastoral blend of chamber pop, sixties folk and campfire Americana, it builds Shura’s introspective songwriting out into a vast landscape – more tranquil than the soulful bounce of forevher, and more rustic than the brooding synth-pop of her 2016 debut Nothing’s Real.
That landscape is both sonically comforting and representative of her headspace during the writing process, which was one of sadness and isolation. The itinerant emotional state is mirrored in the artwork, which sees Shura perched on a Welsh mountainside in a baggy jumper, ripped jeans, Converse, and cobbled-together armour that covers everything except her vital organs – part Kurt Cobain, part Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo and Juliet. The image references the French novella The Little Prince, which follows a young boy who sets out to explore other planets to cure his loneliness.
Though it’s an album exploring themes of depression and loneliness, I Got Too Sad For My Friends is far from dejected it retains Shura’s usual crystalline sound and precision while introducing a different kind of warmth and earthiness.
Approached like an “old school record” that captures a performance rather than a production, much of the album was recorded live, with the keys, bass, guitar, and drums all tracked as a single performance. The vocals were done separately – with the exception of soft funk track Ringpull.
The decision to explore a wider breadth of instruments for the first time came from a sense of urgency that was, in part, prompted by the pandemic. “It made me think: this could be over at any minute. I could never get to make a record again. I could never tour again. So my approach to this record was like, if I never get to do this again, what do I want to make sure I've done? I want to record live. I want to work with textures I've never worked with before. I want to dress up as a gnome bard knight and climb a mountain in Wales, regret it, and have no one else to blame except for myself because I'm freezing,” she laughs. “So even though it’s not necessarily a maximalist record in terms of how it sounds, the approach was maximal joy for me making it… which is hilarious, because it's about being miserable!”.
There are plenty of other great albums due next month. It is packed with quality work from some amazing artist. From Skunk Anansie to Miley Cyrus to Little Simz and Rico Nasty, there is going to be something in there for everyone! I hope that my suggestions above have give you some inspiration. You have plenty of choice when it comes to…
TREMENDOUS albums.