Skip to content
New Music

10 Albums You Can Hear Now: Toro y Moi, Christopher Owens, Camper Van Beethoven, More

toro y moi, christopher owens

It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time to hole up with some headphones and sample the 10 new albums below.

1) Camper Van Beethoven, La Costa Perdida. “For 30 years and counting, Camper Van Beethoven have existed in a parallel-universe borderland, coming across like a punk band perpetually on a Balkan bluegrass bender. But they finally bring it all back home to their native California on their 10th album… recalling ’60s-vintage West Coast pop filtered through their timeless, idiosyncratic prism.” (via SPIN)

2) Four Tet, 0181. “The 38-minute mini-album contains previously unreleased material produced between 1997 and 2001… Throughout, [Kieran] Hebden’s long-time obsessions are everywhere — harps, African percussion, jazz drumming, bird song, the chiming timbres of Rhodes keys and Metheny-style guitars — reinforcing a sense of continuity across his entire career.” (via SPIN)

3) California X, California X. “Not a whiner or a wailer, the Happy Valley trio’s frontman is, like his band’s self-titled debut full-length, direct in a way that recalls Bob Mould and Steve Brooks of Torche… California X are gifted popsmiths, never allowing the sludge to obscure their many hooks.” (via SPIN)

4) Renny Wilson, Sugarglider. “Opening with gaudy saxophones and ornamented with Chic-informed bass lines, the Edmonton artist’s upcoming album is synth-soaked, falsetto-filled, and dream-like… it ought to appeal to fans not only of Russell, but also of recent records by Toro y Moi, El Perro Del Mar, and even Caribou.” (via SPIN)

5) Christopher Owens, Lysandre. “Lysandre, by turns, mirrors Donovan, Gordon Lightfoot, Jackson Browne, Big Star, the db’s, Elephant 6, Elliott Smith, and a whole other army of wounded Anglo-Saxon dudes who took what they imagined to be the universal goals of pop music and spun them into experiences that were idiosyncratic and strange.” — SPIN (via Spinner)

6) Hilly Eye, Reasons to Live. “Hilly Eye is the collaboration of guitarist and vocalist Amy Klein and drummer and vocalist Catherine Tung… to create something noisey and primitive while maintaining elements of psychedelia… It’s an effort that makes use of soft sounds as well as violent, loud ones.” (via Paste)

7) Widowspeak, Almanac. “[Almanac] takes the spare, droning simplicity of Widowspeak’s self-titled debut and fleshes it out, thickening it with added layers of guitars and organs. But [it] isn’t just a bundle of blearily impeccable atmospherics; the closer you listen, the more it snaps into a focus as a richly textured portrait of aching melancholy and momentous change.” (via NPR)

8) Toro y Moi, Anything in Return. On “So Many Details,” the first single: “[It’s] as if he’s confidently reclaiming — and refining, and advancing — the hazy, intimate-feeling electro-R&B sound that made the Toro y Moi name… Timbaland-like shouts and Nicolas Jaar’s spacey abstraction meet with splashes of horns, jagged guitar snippets, and Bundick’s central, falsetto-confessional storytelling.” — SPIN (via Pitchfork)

9) Foxygen, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic. On “No Destruction,” the LP’s second track: “[We] have “No Destruction…” with its easy-rambling beat, Dylanesque phrasing and warm poetry about smoking pot on the subway and sipping milkshakes in hotel parlors… [Sam France] and Jonathan Rado bundle up their faded influences and toss the crumpled thing over their shoulder, letting it sprawl out on its own accord.”— SPIN (via Pitchfork)

10) Esben and the Witch, Wash the Sins Not Only the Face. “Moody, frenzied, claustrophobic and yet hugely melodic guitar music is a heady and inviting brew… slowly retreats from a grandiose, wall of sound opening… designed to represent a journey deep into the dark of night.” — Clash (via Pitchfork)