Once again, we’ve collected the finest album streams available online. Scroll down to find the latest releases from the Antlers, Sam Smith, ex-Walkman Peter Matthew Bauer, White Lung, Cerebral Ballzy, and more.
1) The Antlers, Familiars. “Burst Apart, from 2011, did its job surprisingly effectively, maintaining the swelling melancholy while letting its subject matter sprawl out beyond grief. Familiars is even better: Each of its deliberately paced songs sprawls to between five and eight minutes, and each takes a thoughtful journey in the process. Ever more sure-handed and ambitious in its arrangements, the band crafts gorgeous backdrops for [frontman Peter] Silberman, whose soaring falsetto periodically brings to mind Jeff Buckley.” (via NPR)
2) Peter Matthew Bauer, Liberation!. “Bauer is a founding member of both the Walkmen and the Recoys, but he says the new album is a collection of mostly autobiographical songs on the topic of belief and its various incarnations and phenomena. According to the press gumpf, the record touches on subjects such as growing up in a Hindu Yoga cult, Scientology, the city of Philadelphia, the God Shiva, the city of Varanasi, Richard Dawkins and Jorge Luis Borges, and was heavily influenced by the work of Roberto Bolaño and Elvis Presley.” (via Drowned in Sound)
3) White Lung, Deep Fantasy. “Due in part to vocalist Mish Way’s more restrained and relaxed melodies (and to the fresh polish applied by producer Jesse Gander), the heavy concerns of Deep Fantasy hit with the density they deserve. In the past, Way’s lyrics have meditated on the interpersonal power struggles that dominate modern society; those themes were once muddled by lyrical abstraction and sonic muddiness, but now they’re planted in the foreground.” — SPIN (via Pitchfork)
4) Cerebral Ballzy, Jaded and Faded. “Cerebral Ballzy have widened their range of influences by keeping albums by power-pop heroes the Nerves and the Exploding Hearts in steady rotation as they assembled their latest outing. The five-piece also opted for a change of scenery to record Jaded & Faded, leaving behind the chaos of New York City for southern Texas, where they worked at the Sonic Ranch with Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio.” — SPIN (via Pitchfork)
5) Sam Smith, The Lonely Hour. “British singer-songwriter Sam Smith isn’t shy. With a steady, well-trained swell of a voice and a knack for whipping in and out of his falsetto in a hairsbreadth, he doesn’t feel the need to hide — not by stifling his vocal abilities and not by ducking beneath distracting, colorful production. But on his full-length debut, In the Lonely Hour, he proves that he can play that game when he feels like it.” (via NPR)
6) Unicycle Loves You, The Dead Age. “For their fourth album, The Dead Age, Unicycle Loves You offer a deep-dive into noisiness, burying singer-guitarist Jim Carroll’s seductive pop hooks below several layers of distortion. The sound has come a long way from the clean cuts and pleasant riffs of the trio’s self-titled debut, and it seems like the way was littered with rusty nails.” (via SPIN)
7) Papertwin, Vox Humana EP. “Back in April, Papertwin unfurled ‘Alkaline,’ the opening track off of their forthcoming Vox Humana EP. Now, the Brooklyn trio have revealed the whole effort. Produced by Abe Seiferth (Yeasayer, Bear in Heaven) Vox Humana presents a smorgasbord of dreamy hooks, shimmering synths, and groove-friendly, electronic percussion. Still, dark undertones brood beneath the surface: The keys in ‘Sonar’ sputters ominously, and the vocal harmonies on ‘Whale’ are growled in a voice that’s distorted and guttural.” (via SPIN)
8) Lower, Seek Warmer Climes. “Several weeks back, Lower followed their Walk on Heads EP with the furious single ‘Another Life,’ heralding bigger things to come for the Copenhagen quartet. Now they’ve made good on that promise, signing to Matador to release their debut full-length Seek Warmer Climes. ‘Every song on the record deals in some way with personal development, be it emotional or cosmetic,’ frontman Adrian Toubro said.” — SPIN (via Pitchfork)
9) Boris, Noise. “Word has it that Boris considers its latest album, Noise, the one record in its catalog that touches on all corners of the band’s sound — and, true enough, the album goes a remarkable distance in bridging the gap between its members’ heads and listeners’ ears. On Noise, they don’t hold back at all, either as musicians or as consumers of music, and at long last an identity begins to form in their sound, exhilarating even in its familiarity.” (via NPR)
10) Afrolicious, California Dreaming Remixed. “The San Francisco-based collective began simply as a DJ night thrown by two brothers — Joe and Oz McGuire, a.k.a. Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz. But as their event gained popularity, it attracted other producers and players interested in exploring the intersections of live Afro-Latin music and contemporary electronic styles. Afrolicious soon became a dozen-strong band, their growth mimicking the diaspora of the very same culture they’re celebrating. The experiment yielded an album last year, and now the project spreads further as a dozen more artists rework those same songs for California Dreaming Remixed.” (via SPIN)
