The first month of 2024 is already just about behind us, and it’s been a pretty eventful year for music already. This is another big week, with Radiohead offshoot The Smile and some other heavy hitters, seven of which I highlight below. Bill tackles more in Bill’s Indie Basement, including Gruff Rhys, Ty Segall, Finnoguns Wake (Royal Headache), The Umbrellas, and more.

On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Future Islands, Cheekface, Angry Blackmen, Dissimulator, Eye Flys, Knoll, O-D-EX (The Marked Men), Dry Socket, Kota the Friend, Lyrical Lemonade (ft. Kid Cudi, Eminem, Denzel Curry, Joey Bada$$ & more), Craig Wedren, Masta Ace & Marco Polo, Philip Glass, Sarah Jarosz, Chicano Batman, Office Dog (Kane Strang), Vic Spencer, Price, Vipassi, Mountain Caller, Duncecap, The Oldest House, Lucifer, Kevin Gates, Brad Stank, Brion Gysin, Astrid Sonne, Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes, Courting, Tapir!, Chatham County Line, Nasti, Tom Odell, Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel, nehan, Jim Kweskin, Dermabrasion, Kula Shaker, Quarters of Change, William Elliott Whitmore, Dead Poet Society, Evilgiane, Madder Mortem, Slayer tribute supergroup Slower, the Yussef Dayes live album, the Kaonashi EP, the Matt Pond PA EP, the Corpse Pile EP, the They Hate Change EP, the Che Noir EP, the Bib EP, the Militarie Gun EP of reworkings (ft. Manchester Orchestra, Mannequin Pussy & Bully), the Emily Yacina 7″, the Cross of Disbelief EP, and Anna Calvi’s Peaky Blinders scores.

Read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?

The Smile – Wall of Eyes
XL

Less than two years after Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s band The Smile released their excellent debut album A Light for Attracting Attention, they’re already back with another one–it’s the first time that the two of them together have released albums in such close succession since Radiohead in the early 2000s. I wasn’t alone in wondering why A Light for Attracting Attention wasn’t just a Radiohead album–it sounded strong and adventurous and Radiohead-like enough to be one–but I think I know why Wall of Eyes isn’t. This one feels a lot more like a side project, and that’s not a negative thing. It was produced by Sam Petts-Davies, who also worked with Thom Yorke on his Suspiria soundtrack and his songs for Peaky Blinders, rather than Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, who helmed A Light for Attracting Attention, and it feels more improvisational, more focused on the journey than the destination. And it’s a treat to hear music that doesn’t sound so obsessed over from people who just exude talent like Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood.

The songs on Wall of Eyes are still proper songs, they still have grand string arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra, but Thom, Jonny, and drummer Tom Skinner (ex-Sons of Kemet) often sound more like they’re jamming than writing tight little nuggets like “You Will Never Work In Television Again”–most of these tracks hover around the five or six minute mark. They also sound like they’re having fun with some new ideas that may not have made the cut on a Radiohead album. “Read the Room” sounds like The Smile’s take on woozy, whimsical, ’60s psych-pop, and the eight-minute “Bending Hectic” builds to a ten-ton sludge metal coda. Those are the moments that sound the most freeing, and they’re also the moments that stick out the most. As much as the more moody, ethereal songs sound like Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood at their finest, it’s even more thrilling to hear the ways Wall of Eyes push them out of their usual comfort zones.

Torres – What An Enormous Room
Merge

Torres is always changing up the sonic vibes of her albums, but the spirit of her bold, commanding songwriting remains the same. On the surface, the electronics-infused art rock of What An Enormous Room shares some traits with her 2017 album Three Futures. It fuses drum machines with acoustic drums, synthesizers and synth bass with guitars and bass guitar, and Torres and co-producer Sarah Jaffe would sample parts of the songs’ original demos to use in the album versions. “There was a real focus on combining synthesized, electronic instruments with warmer, more acoustic ones,” Torres told writer Mia Hughes. The album isn’t grungy in the traditional sense, like a lot of Torres’ music has been in the past, but her songwriting is very grungy–it feels ragged and aggressive and unpolished, even when the songs have a synthetic shine. Torres has described the album as a “big rollercoaster of emotions: anger, love, fear, and whatnot,” and you can feel all of that swirling around at once throughout these songs. It’s an album that sounds born out of those times when you just feel everything, and it’s so cathartic for that reason.

Katy Kirby – Blue Raspberry
ANTI-

When it comes to country love songs, Katy Kirby says in the bio for Blue Raspberry that she “likes the male yearning songs better, usually,” and she started writing the album’s title track with the thought process of, “If I was in love with a woman, what would I love about her?” Those thoughts turned into the start and eventual end of Katy’s first queer relationship, and much of Blue Raspberry was inspired by the feelings and experiences from throughout that journey. She conveys all of that over a backdrop that bridges the gap between Americana-friendly indie and ’70s folk rock, sitting as nicely next to past tourmate Waxahatchee as she would next to a classic Linda Ronstadt record. Like so much of the best folk music, there’s a real lived-in feeling to Katy’s words and melodies, and a welcoming plainspokenness that invites you to live with them too.

Benny the Butcher – Everybody Can’t Go
Def Jam

Benny the Butcher’s been on a ‘one for the streets, one for the radio’ timeline. Following years of gritty boom bap revival projects, Benny cleaned up nice for 2020’s Hit-Boy-produced Burden of Proof and then dirties things up again for 2022’s Tana Talk 4. His first proper solo full-length since then, Everybody Can’t Go, sounds like a spiritual sequel to the former. It sounds like those early 2000s records by rappers like Jadakiss and Cam’ron that were lush and polished enough for the radio with bars that still went as hard as their underground tracks. By 2024’s standards, Everybody Can’t Go still sounds like an anti-commercial throwback, but there’s something to be said for hearing Benny weave his way through the kinds of gorgeous beats and immediate hooks that did once have a place at the top of the charts. Production on the album is split between Hit-Boy and The Alchemist, and some of the guests were around in the era that these songs tap into, including Jadakiss, Snoop Dogg, and Lil Wayne. He’s also got usual Griselda and Black Soprano Family suspects like Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, Stove God Cooks, Armani Caesar, and Rick Hyde; two Detroit rappers (Babyface Ray and Peezy); and young LA rapper Kyle Banks. Everybody Can’t Go is Benny’s Def Jam debut, and it seems like he figured throwing in a little mass appeal wouldn’t hurt given the massive label’s reach. If you want his old shit, buy his old albums–or just wait for his next BSF or Griselda Records mixtape–but I think the punchiness of Everybody Can’t Go is only adding even more fuel to his usual fire.

R.A.P. Ferreira & Fumitake Tamura – the First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap
Ruby Yacht / Alpha Pup

R.A.P. Ferreira is back with a new album, and this one was made entirely with Japanese producer Fumitake Tamura. Ferreira says that Tamura’s “compositions pushed me like nothing yet has, his conception of what my sound could be left me needing to actualize it,” and adds, “this album more than any other i’ve made encapsulates my vision of rap music. it is free. it is international. it is beloved. it is sharp and silly. it presents one way and participates another. it flexes and is flexible. there is study and there is the mystical. slices and crumbs.” It does sound like all of those things, and it’s as abstract as Ferreira’s description of it is. the First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap feels like one of R.A.P. Ferreira’s biggest head-trips yet, with both the production and the lyricism weaving in and out of various heightened mental states. This is rap music to lose yourself in, rap music that takes you to a different world, and even throughout all the haze, Ferreira and his guests (Hprizm, sha ray, Self Jupiter, ELDON) drop cutting one-liners that snap you right out of it.

Bad Gyal – La Joia
Universal Music Latino/Interscope

Spanish singer Bad Gyal has been rising to the forefront of reggaeton for the past few years now, and the tipping point came when she put out the 2023 remix of her song “Chulo” with Dominican rapper Tokischa and Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko. Together, the three rising stars turned the original’s already-infectious hook into one of the most world-conquering singles in recent memory. Riding high off the momentum of that song and some other slightly less big (but still big) singles, Bad Gyal releases her debut album La Joia, and it makes good on the promise of those lead-up tracks. With 15 songs in 42 minutes (including the “Chulo” remix and previously released colaborations with Myke Towers, Anitta, Quevedo, and more), La Joia is pop-reggaeton at its most modern, infused with bits of club, trap, and dancehall and topped off with a futuristic polish as sleek as the album artwork. Half the songs on the album are already hits, and the non-singles are just as immediate on first listen. I can’t predict the future, but La Joia already feels like it has staying power.

Alkaline Trio – Blood, Hair, And Eyeballs
Rise

Tom is back in blink-182 and Matt Skiba has returned his full focus to Alkaline Trio, who just released their first album in nearly six years. Order is restored! Just kidding, but, getting this album and One More Time in such close succession does remind you that there’s something to be said for the chemistry that exists within lifelong singer/songwriter duos. Since the late ’90s, Matt Skiba and Dan Andriano have had a way of making punk that’s supremely catchy but not “pop punk,” grim and noirish without being overly dramatic. And their similarly somber yet powerful voices sound great together. Blood, Hair, And Eyeballs marks a reunion of sorts (though Alkaline Trio never broke up and they also released a very solid EP in 2020), but it also marks a farewell. It’s the band’s final album with longtime drummer Derek Grant, who joined in 2001 after leaving The Suicide Machines and remained with Alkaline Trio until last year. (Alkaline Trio’s new drummer? Atom Willard, who, in addition to filling in with Alkaline Trio on tour in the early 2000s, was also the original drummer of Tom DeLonge’s post-blink-182 band Angels & Airwaves. Everything is connected.) For decades, Derek has been just as much a part of that classic Alkaline Trio sound as Matt and Dan, and it’s a treat to hear them tearing away at 11 new anthems that never attempt to fix what ain’t broke. It sounds like something that could’ve come out at any point during the past 25 or so years of Alkaline Trio’s career, and for a band that’s persevered as long as this one has, that’s not a bad thing at all.

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Gruff Rhys, Ty Segall, Finnoguns Wake (Royal Headache), The Umbrellas, and more.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive or scroll down for previous weeks.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episode with In Defense of Ska‘s Aaron Carnes.

Also, BrooklynVegan launched pre-orders for its first-ever special edition 80-page magazine, which tells the career-spanning story of Alexisonfire and comes on its own or paired with our new exclusive AOF box set and/or individual reissues. Pick up yours in the BV shop.