With the Fourth of July Week behind us, the music world really picked back up this week with tons of announcements and over 100 new songs, though it’s actually still a relatively quieter week for new albums. I highlight five below, and Bill tackles Sn​õ​õ​per, Freak Heat Waves, Lindstrøm, and Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog in Indie Basement.

On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Disclosure, Blake Mills, Shapednoise (ft. Armand Hammer, Moor Mother, ZelooperZ & more), Haviah Mighty, Kool & the Gang, End Reign (All Out War, Integrity, Pig Destroyer, etc), Claud, Natural Wonder Beauty Concept (Ana Roxane & DJ Python), Jaye Jayle, Far Caspian, Temple of Angels, Alaska Reid, King Von, Dave East, Rx Papi, Lo Village, glaive, Mahalia, Lil Tjay, DDG, Lavalove, Calligram, Night Beats, Current Affairs, Ascendency, Rusty Santos (ft. Panda Bear), Barebones, Steve Salett, Nuclear Remains, Being Dead, Anish Kumar, Peace Flag Ensemble, Lukas Nelson + P.O.T.R., Duane Betts, Rita Ora, PVRIS, Greta Van Fleet, the Devon Kay & the Solutions EP, the 454 & Surf Gang EP, the Mariposa EP, EST Gee’s Young Shiners comp, Tune-Yards’ soundtrack for Boots Riley’s I’m A Virgo, and the Soundgarden Superunknown tribute LP (ft. Marissa Nadler, Spotlights, Somnuri, Ufomammut & more).

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

J Hus – Beautiful and Brutal Yard
Black Butter

J Hus has become one of the biggest and best rappers in the UK, and he really seems like the type of artist who just puts his head down and gets to work. Since releasing his great sophomore album Big Conspiracy in January of 2020, he took a hiatus from touring (even after lockdown ended), and he only surfaced in the public eye to make one guest appearance: on Burna Boy’s 2022 album Love, Damini. Then, in May of this year, he announced his return with the explosive new single “It’s Crazy,” followed it with the Drake collab “Who Told You” in June, and then revealed that both songs would appear on his third album Beautiful and Brutal Yard, announced just two weeks before its release. From just one listen to this album, you can tell that J Hus spent his time away from the spotlight putting detail and care into this entire LP. It’s 19 songs and over an hour in length, and it covers so much ground. J Hus has been credited with helping to pioneer Afroswing–a fusion of rap, Afrobeats, dancehalll, and R&B–and that wide range of music is all over Beautiful and Brutal Yard. The song with Drake is one of the most addictive Afrobeats-style singles of the summer, and Hus creates more of that magic with African artists Burna Boy and Naira Marley on “Masculine” and “Militerian,” respectively. The breezy vibes of those songs are offset by some of Hus’ hardest rap songs like the aforementioned “It’s Crazy” and his foray into drill, “Cream,” which features CB, the self-crowned king of drill. Soulful powerhouse Jorja Smith aids Hus on the laid-back “Nice Body,” and dancehall icon Popcaan aids him on the more aggressive “Killy.” Even on the songs that don’t feature guests, J Hus is such a chameleon that he sometimes sounds like three different artists in one. The album title is named after the patois-influenced slang term for “home” (and it’s intentionally an acronym for “BABY”), but it’s also a reference to the two extremes in J Hus’ music, and that comes through loudly and clearly on this album; Hus is a master at swinging from beautiful to brutal.

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Various Artists – Balladeers, Redefined
Secret Voice

The current wave of underground, DIY screamo has been thriving for a while, and Touché Amoré vocalist Jeremy Bolm’s just-released comp Balladeers, Redefined already feels like it’ll go down as a defining document of this era. It’s got 31 of the best screamo and screamo-adjacent bands around, including Soul Glo, Record Setter, For Your Health, Infant Island, Closer, Massa Nera, Thirdface, Gillian Carter, Lord Snow, Zeta, Frail Hands, Boneflower, Joliette, Crowning, Slow Fire Pistol, and so many more, as well as veterans who continue to make urgent music that doesn’t rest on the laurels of their past work, like the reunited Jeromes Dream, Majority Rule offshoot NØ MAN, Hundreds of AU (ex-You and I, The Assistant, etc), Coma Regalia (ex-kaki.o.badi, ache​/​emelie, etc), and Terminal Bliss (ex-pg.99, City of Caterpillar). Every band involved came to the comp with a genuinely great song that isn’t available anywhere else, making Balladeers, Redefined not just great curation but also a record that stands tall on its own. In the streaming era, it feels harder and harder to put out a comp that will leave a real impact, and Balladeers, Redefined overcomes that hurdle. It serves as a near-perfect entry point into today’s screamo scene, and it’s just as valuable for anyone who’s already completely immersed in this world.

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Palehound – Eye On The Bat
Polyvinyl

El Kempner started writing the songs that make up Eye On The Bat wondering if anyone else would ever hear them. It was March of 2020, and Covid had emerged in the US, causing the tour Palehound had been on to get cancelled. “I was pretty discouraged and really unsure if I’d ever have a music career ever again, as a lot of people were,” El told Larry Fitzmaurice in an interview for his Last Donut of the Night newsletter, continuing, “It was terrifying, but as a songwriter it was also weirdly liberating, because I wrote only for me for the first time in a while.” The resulting material is some of their strongest yet, starting with the darkly funny “Good Sex” and its vivd tale of a planned seduction gone wrong. “Independence Day” and “The Clutch” are a one-two punch of propulsive indie rock that grabs you by the throat, and “U Want It U Got It” expands on their guitar-centric sound with synths. Later, “Route 22” and “My Evil” hint at Elliott Smith’s vulnerable folk while remaining firmly in Palehound’s sonic universe. [Amanda Hatfield]

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Colter Wall – Little Songs
La Honda Records / RCA Records

“You got to fill the big empty with little songs,” Colter Wall sings on the title track of his new album, Little Songs. It could be a mission statement for the whole collection: mostly unadorned originals with the trail-worn feel of country classics, and a couple of well-chosen covers that he’s previously played live. There are touches of fiddle and pedal steel but Colter’s voice, a little gruff and a little rough around the edges, is the star of the show here as he narrates tales of barrooms and dance halls, prairies and plains, evoking his native rural Canada with a nostalgic sadness and breaking into the occasional yodel. [Amanda Hatfield]

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Chamber – A Love To Kill For
Pure Noise

“After putting out the last album, we realized no one needs us to be the pretty band,” guitarist Gabe Manuel of Nashville metalcore band Chamber jokes in the new bio for their sophomore LP A Love To Kill For. “We’d rather be the fucked up band.” Not that their 2020 debut LP Cost of Sacrifice was an album that the average person would call “pretty,” but it did have some prettier moments and those are just about all gone on A Love To Kill For. This is angry, aggressive, chaotic metalcore at its most antagonizing. The production (by past collaborator Randy LeBoeuf) is crystal clear, but the riffs and screams are ugly as hell and the sonic clarity only makes Chamber hit even harder.

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Sn​õ​õ​per, Freak Heat Waves, Lindstrøm, and Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog.

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 the latest episodes of The BrooklynVegan Show.