Skip to content
New Music

10 Albums to Stream: Eric Church, Cibo Matto, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and More

eric church, the outsiders, stream

SPIN is happy to present your weekly roundup of album streams. Scroll down to find new material from SPIN cover star Eric Church, Cibo Matto, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Temples, Noah Gundersen, and more.

1) Eric Church, The Outsiders. “The greatest thing about The Outsiders is its range, both in sound and in the stories [Eric Church] tells. People call Church an outlaw, but that’s too tight a frame for someone who can craft nostalgic Top 40 ear candy like ‘Give Me Back My Hometown,’ with its immortal line about wooing and losing his girl at the Pizza Hut, next to novelty numbers like the boy-loses-beer lament ‘Cold One’ and nearly psychedelic jams like ‘Devil, Devil (Prelude: Princess of Darkness).'” (via NPR)

2) Cibo Matto, Hotel Valentine. “Cibo Matto has always been skilled at Trojan-horsing weird art within glossy, goofy songs (often about food), but the new Hotel Valentine isn’t so concerned with disguising its intentions. Though inventive in sound and frequently light in tone, it runs deeper conceptually, as Honda and Hatori build a collection of songs around the nebulous idea of a haunted hotel… Food isn’t entirely absent from these strange and colorful songs… but the creative palette is bigger and bolder, if not always brighter.” (via NPR)

3) Hurray for the Riff Raff, Small Town Heroes. “Small Town Heroes, Hurray for the Riff Raff’s sixth album, is about New Orleans. But it’s not about the Crescent City of yore. It’s about Alynda Lee Segarra, the band’s founder and sometimes sole member, missing the bar where she can play her guitar quietly in the corner. It’s about the place where she eats dinner on Monday nights. Segarra’s clear-eyed, street-level portrait of her city demonstrates exactly what’s most valuable and remarkable about Hurray for the Riff Raff’s music: its commitment to truth-telling.” (via NPR)

4) Temples, Sun Structures. “Like many young bands before it, the four-piece from Kettering in Northhamptonshire embraces — and proudly plays up — the influence of the Beatles and other ’60s legends, notably the Byrds. But Temples’ music claims its own place, weaving these inspirations into crazy-beautiful and richly idiosyncratic music.” (via NPR)

5) Noah Gundersen, Ledges. “Ledges spans 11 tender tracks and weaves together tales of faith, temptation, redemption, death, and doubt, offering the kind of perspective usually found in much older singer-songwriters.” (via SPIN)

6) The Fleshtones, Wheel of Talent. “Perennial garage rockers the Fleshtones don’t care to slow down. Over the course of five decades together, the group has pumped out 21 full-length albums, and on February 11 comes No. 22, Wheel of Talent. Contemporaries of Devo, the New York Dolls, and New York City’s 1970s punk scene, the Fleshtones stay true to their signature style on Wheel of Talent: a fusion of roots-rock with copious amounts of fuzz.” (via SPIN)

7) Speedy Ortiz, Real Hair EP. “Speedy Ortiz’s Real Hair EP moves beyond the knotty guitar-rock heard on the Major Arcana LP, drawing inspiration from Top 40 and R&B radio… The other songs on Real Hairmay in fact pull from the airwaves, but aptly named lead single ‘Everything’s Bigger’ amplifies the band’s signature blend of close-up vocals and chunky riffs.” — SPIN (via Pitchfork)

8) Katy B, Little Red. “Katy B hasn’t released a proper album since 2011’s excellent dubstep-pop salvo On a Mission, but her output since then has been well-rounded enough to raise hopes for an even better follow-up — one without such subgenre prefixes. And judging from newly released track ‘Crying for No Reason,’ the big-voiced U.K. singer is ready for her Girls end-credits close-up.” — SPIN (via iTunes)

9) Tinariwen, Emmaar. “How do you build on the reputation that has made your band the most visible ambassador of an entire people? For its seventh international album, Emmaar, Tinariwen has some striking ideas that were born out of both creativity and absolute necessity… While Tinariwen’s signature sound remains — with all those loping rhythms, low-rolling guitars and lyrics that slip between piercing political observations and elliptical poetry — a certain Americana seeps into the crevices of the album, with appearances by guests like Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and Nashville musician Fats Kaplin.” (via NPR)

10) Majestico, When Kingdom Come. “Majestico is the awesome-sounding moniker of Nashville’s Graham Fitzpenn, who’s spent the last several years carving out a local niche with a rambunctious blend of psych, garage, country, and folk… Though there’s a certain sense of gimmickery to Majestico and the record, there’s no denying the sheer raucousness, the kind of energy that grabs you by the collarbone and shakes you stupid for each and every glorious second.”(via Consequence of Sound)