A lot’s going on in the music world this weekend. It’s Coachella Weekend Two, and it’s also Record Store Day on Saturday (4/20). In celebration of the latter, we’ve got a special RSD edition of the free BrooklynVegan digital magazine, including a cover story with this year’s RSD ambassadors, Paramore, and a guide of exclusive RSD releases that the BV staff recommends picking up this Saturday. Check that out HERE. It’s entirely free to read, in exchange for your email address.

There’s also a lot of new music out this week, including the new album from the biggest artist in the world. I don’t have a review of that one (but I’m sure there’s no lack of things you can read about it, and I think it’s pretty good), but I do highlight 12 other albums below. Bill tackles A Certain Ratio, Kid Congo Powers, Dog Park, Population II, and Death Songbook (members of Suede, Portishead, etc) in Indie Basement.

On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Taylor Swift, Pearl Jam, High On Fire, My Dying Bride, Melvins, Local Natives, Whores., claire rousay, Tei Shi, Gangrene (The Alchemist & Oh No), T Bone Burnett, Chanel Beads, Eyedress (ft. Rico Nasty, Wild Nothing, Dent May, N8NOFACE, Buddy, Homeshake & more), Billy Morrisson (ft. Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol, DMC, Linda Perry & more), Cadence Weapon, Mozzy, Blunt Chunks, Bill Frisell, Lord Spikeheart, Pillow Queens, Valley Lodge (Dave Hill), Stephanie Lambring, Rocky Sullivan, Psy.D., Atræ Bilis, Engulfed, G Perico, Iamsu!, YNW Melly, Berner, Hus Kingpin, Brainstory, LUCI, Seafood Sam, Jhariah, Jeff Larson, Michael Feuerstack, Knavery, Satanic North, Antichrist Siege Machine, The Ghost Inside, the NOFX EP, the Fresh EP, the Life’s Question EP, the Hot Joy EP, the Sons of Ra EP, the Choices Made EP, the Mez EP, the Put P​ù​rana/Tromblon split, the Devo comp, the Bruce Cockburn tribute LP, the live Oh Boy Records comp (ft. Wilco, Lucinda Williams, Margo Price, John Prine, Jason Isbell & more), the Musicians for a Free Palestine comp (ft. Mannequin Pussy, Cassandra Jenkins, Deerhoof, Frankie Cosmos, Slow Pulp, Ted Leo & over 60 others), and the Glen Campbell duets album (ft. Hope Sandoval, Brian Wilson, Sting & more).

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

SeeYouSpaceCowboy – Coup De Grâce
Pure Noise

Coup De Grâce sounds like a version of the mid 2000s that never happened, one where just about every then-prevalent style of alternative rock exists in unison. Fueled by Ramen’s pop-emo theatrics? Check. Bloc Party/Yeah Yeah Yeah-style dance-punk? Also check. Underoath and Every Time I Die’s bone-crushing metalcore? It’s got that. Some Blood Brothers/Fear Before-style sassy hardcore? That’s here too. It’s no coincidence that Coup De Grâce was produced by Matt Squire, who most famously produced Panic! at the Disco’s world-conquering debut A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, and SeeYouSpaceCowboy sound intent on winning over that band’s lovers and haters alike. They blend the fashionable with the unfashionable, the abrasive with the poppy, and they do it in a way that I don’t remember any actual mid 2000s band doing it. There’s plenty on Coup De Grâce for aging millennials to get nostalgic about, but mostly, this album pushes this music forward in a way that so many other Myspace-era revivalists do not. It’s a clear step up for SeeYouSpaceCowboy and I already feel confident calling it their best yet.

We’ve got an exclusive neon pink vinyl variant of the SYSC LP available in the BV shop.

Cloud Nothings – Final Summer
Pure Noise

The same day that Pure Noise releases the SeeYouSpaceCowboy album, they release the latest album by Cloud Nothings. Following six albums for Carpark, it’s the band’s first album for a “punk label,” and it’s probably old news how much sense that makes. Cloud Nothings caught that last wind in the late 2000s of the Pitchfork-led hype machine plucking bands from obscurity and turning them into overnight successes, and after that happened, Cloud Nothings turned into a forceful, lifer punk band before our eyes. It makes sense that they’ve been touring with bands like PUP and The Menzingers, and that they’re playing Here and Nowhere Else in full at The Fest this year alongside other class of 2014 full-album plays like Joyce Manor’s Never Hungover Again and You Blew It!’s Keep Doing What You’re Doing. But all of this is really just to say that genre/scene labels are perception-based and also just kinda dumb. On Final Summer, Cloud Nothings aren’t doing anything different than they’ve done in the past. It’s the work of a punk band who knows how to stir crowds up into a frenzy. It’s also the work of a band who knows how to impress artsy record-collecting tastemakers. It’s just Cloud Nothings being Cloud Nothings, and they’re hitting pretty damn hard on this one.

bbymutha – sleep paralysis
True Panther

bbymutha was born in Chattanooga and she now lives in Atlanta, but the rapper’s True Panther debut sleep paralysis was inspired by a trip to London, where she was able to experience the UK electronic/club scene firsthand. The result is an album that marries bbymutha’s boisterous dirty south bars to a backdrop of underground dance beats, and it’s a very rewarding blend. Even with an influx of songs coming out lately that combine hip hop and dance music, sleep paralysis stands out as bbymutha’s own wild, weird ride. She recently lamented that people have a tendency to box her in, but I think it’d be pretty hard to hear sleep paralysis in comparison to any of her previous releases and do that.

Ekko Astral – pink balloons
Topshelf

DC band Ekko Astral formed in 2020, put out their debut EP QUARTZ in 2022, and this week they released their debut album pink balloons via Topshelf. The album puts the “punk” in post-punk, it treasures noise as much as it treasures pop, it’s got an orchestral spoken word track called “somewhere at the bottom of the river between l’enfant and eastern market” (La Dispute reference confirmed), it dips its toes into twee pop (“make me young”), and it saves the most epic song for last: a nearly-nine-minute collaboration with Josaleigh Pollett called “i90” that clashes between post-rock build-ups and anthemic singalongs.

Thematically, pink balloons is an apocalypse party. It’s a record inspired by the myriad reasons that it feels like the world is ending, and Ekko Astral remember to have fun with it. Singer Jael Holzman’s lyrics can be scathing and blunt, or full of pop culture references to Bon Iver and Molly Shannon, or delivered in a witty, observational style that she says was largely inspired by Arctic Monkeys. Jael’s experiences as a trans woman are inextricable from her songwriting, but she told Stereogum that she’s wary of the ways people might pigeonhole Ekko Astral because of her queerness and identity. “A lot of people have typecasted us around my trans identity without really listening to the messages in pink ballons when we send it to them,” she said. “This is an album for everybody about universal struggles that should not be put into a box.”

For more on this album, read about 5 albums that influenced it.

Riley! – Keep Your Cool
Counter Intuitive

Keep Your Cool is Texas band Riley!’s third album but first for Counter Intuitive, and it sounds bigger and better than anything they’ve done prior. The band’s earliest material has a scrappy, Midwest-y emo vibe, and some of that remains on Keep Your Cool, but mostly this record finds them churning out anthemic, firecracker pop punk songs injected with roaring post-hardcore power. The most immediate comparison I can think of is the last Hot Mulligan album, in that it’s insanely catchy but vocalist/guitarist Ryan Bluhmm is always kinda half-screaming. It also pairs well with the new Carpool album, and those two bands will be on tour together soon, opening for Prince Daddy. Or, for something slightly less recent, it’s also kinda like a cross between PUP and The Wonder Years. It’s a record that sounds like it’s jumping out of your speakers at every second, and if you’re an emo/pop punk fan of any variety, I think it’d be pretty hard to deny this one.

BIG|BRAVE – A Chaos Of Flowers
Thrill Jockey

Just one year after releasing Nature Morte, BIG|BRAVE are back with another new album that finds the Montreal trio sounding as towering as ever. Over a decade into their career, BIG|BRAVE still have a sound like no other band, and they continue to deliver nothing but sheer intensity. The trio create a sludgy wall of sound that’s heavy but not “metal,” and guitarist/vocalist Robin Wattie soars over it with a haunting, ethereal, powerhouse wail. On this album, her lyrical inspiration came from going on a search for poetry that deals with womanhood and the female experience. “It is a feeling of relatability and even astonishment really, with how these writers of different standings and eras and all being female-presenting, each expressing these seemingly similar intense moments of individual experiences, of intimacy and madness,” she says. “We’re alone, and yet, not.”

Couch Slut – You Could Do It Tonight
Brutal Panda

Four albums in, NYC’s Couch Slut are as venomous as ever. Recorded with Uniform’s Ben Greenberg and featuring members of fellow NYC bands Imperial Triumphant and Pyrrhon, You Could Do It Tonight is a truly caustic blend of noise rock, post-hardcore, and sludge, topped off with both real-life and exaggerated social commentary that’s more horrific than a slasher flick. It’s an album of armed robbery, assault, self-harm, and a lengthy closing track inspired by an urban legend about an abandoned juvenile detention facility. In an era where NYC’s rock scene has less of an identity than ever, Couch Slut bring the kind of filth that only this city can inspire. The heyday of Unsane, Swans, and Cop Shoot Cop is alive and well on this LP.

Cavalier – Different Type Time
Backwoodz

New Orleans-via-Brooklyn rapper Cavalier has long been an underground rap staple, and now he teams up with billy woods’ Backwoodz label for his latest solo LP, Different Type Time. It follows December 2023’s collaborative album with longtime collaborator Quelle Chris, and Chris had a large role on Different Type Time too–he produced eight of its songs and served as associate producer/consigliere. Other producers on the album include Messiah Muzik, Ohbliv, Ahwlee, and Child Actor, and guests include Dominic Minix (who also sings in ska band Bad Operation), Lord Chilla, Billzegypt, and Eric Jaye. Different Type Time finds Cav doing what he does best, and if you’re new to him, this is a fine introduction. The lush production and in-the-pocket bars connect the dots between rap’s mid ’90s era and its current underground. It’s the kind of thing that never goes out of style, especially when it’s done this well.

Wyatt Flores – Half Life
Island

The 22-year-old Stillwater, Oklahoma-born country singer Wyatt Flores has a bare-bones, stripped-back style that’s been compared on multiple occasions to Zach Bryan, and he’s also cited Jason Isbell as an influence on the way he candidly sings about the toughest, most personal subject matter. The young, rising artist has already become a spokesperson for mental health, and that topic looms large over Half Life, his third release and longest yet. Death does too, particularly on the powerful title track. Half Life is a melancholic, down-to-earth, easily-likable record with seven original songs and a cover of The Fray’s “How to Save a Life” that Wyatt began playing at his shows last year after his grandfather took his own life, and he’d often use the song as an opportunity to talk to his crowds about mental health. On the last song, “Devil,” he drops any embellishments or production value and just sings over an acoustic guitar with so much raw intimacy that it feels like you’re right there in the room with him. Those are the kinds of moments when you know you’re dealing with a real-deal songwriter. and Wyatt is exactly that.

Half Past Two – Talk Is Killing Me
Bad Time Records

If you’re excited that No Doubt just reunited at Coachella, you should probably not sleep on the new Half Past Two album. Their Bad Time Records debut is as unabashedly poppy as they’ve always been, but they’re a little harder and punkier this time around, and the songwriting is some of their best yet. Just about any of these songs sound like they could’ve been radio singles in the Tragic Kingdom era, and with sugary ’90s punk as popular as ever (thanks in part to No Doubt’s Coachella guest Olivia Rodrigo), Talk Is Killing Me sounds totally of the moment too.

Menomena – The Insulation EP
Barsuk

Brent Knopf left Menomena in 2011, and then Justin Harris and Danny Seim released one more album without him (2012’s Moms) before breaking up, and this week, they surprise-released a new EP, Brent included. It’s just three songs, but it’s a hell of a return. Each song has lead vocals by a different member (the title track by Danny, “Copious” by Justin, and “Caravan” by Brent), and the trio’s artsy, baroque indie pop is as uniquely alluring and strangely catchy as ever. Each song feels like its own mini journey, and each shows off a different side of the band’s sound. Barsuk says the EP is “the tip of the iceberg for upcoming unreleased songs from the band,” and if the rest are on this level, that’s very good news.

Tyler Halverson – Western Amerijuana (Part 1) EP
Atlantic

Canton, South Dakota country singer Tyler Halverson has been on the rise thanks to a string of great singles and an impressive live show, and today he releases his debut EP, Western Amerijuana (Part 1). With three previously released songs and two new ones, this may technically be his first project but he’s got more than twice as many songs out in the world, and “Part 1” implies that more is on the way. In any case, this is a great place to start if you’re new to Tyler. As the title implies, he calls his music “Amerijuana,” a punny way to say psychedelic country. He also cites Boyz II Men, Taking Back Sunday, and The Used as influences, alongside the more identifiable ones like Garth Brooks, George Strait, and Hayes Carll. In other words, he’s a country singer who likes to push genre boundaries, and this EP is very worth hearing if you like when your country music doesn’t play by the rules.

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including A Certain Ratio, Kid Congo Powers, Dog Park, Population II, and Death Songbook.

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 VIAL.

Pick up the BrooklynVegan x Alexisonfire 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, in the BV shop. Also pick up the new Glassjaw box set & book, created in part with BrooklynVegan.

And, if you haven’t already, subscribe to the new BrooklynVegan digital magazine for free! Our new Record Store Day edition is out now with cover stars Paramore and a guide to RSD. The cover looks like this: