Last weekend was Pitchfork Festival, and this weekend’s big fests include Newport Folk Festival and Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival. And if you’re nowhere near the latter, you’re in luck; it’s streaming live.

It’s also a very good week for new albums. I review seven below, and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement, including Wand, Clothing, Crack Cloud, Robber Robber, and Blur’s Live at Wembley Stadium. On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Rakim, Modern Color, Ogbert the Nerd, Wormwitch, Indisposed, Klein, Cults, MAITA, Fuerza Regida, Empire of the Sun, Nathan Bowles Trio, Laceration, Shonali (Ultrababyfat), Mustard, Pat Metheny, Fancy Gap (The Love Language), Painted Shield (Pearl Jam), Alex Izenberg & The Exiles, Humanist, KMRU, Porter Robinson, Grafh & 38 Spesh, DJ Muggs & Raz Fresco, Colleen Dow, Iress, Vic Spencer, Gordo, Quin NFN, C Stunna & DJ Drama, the Show Me The Body EP, the Common Sage EP, the Kaonashi EP, the Kississippi EP, the JakoJako EP, the live Bill Callahan album, the live Pete Townshend box set, and Ghost’s soundtrack for their Rite Here Rite Now film (which is currently on demand on Veeps).

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

State Faults – Children of the Moon
Deathwish Inc/Dog Knights

The Santa Rosa screamo band’s first album in five years is their most transcendent album to date, in more ways than one

State Faults often take long breaks between albums, and they don’t tend to tour very extensively either, but it’s quality over quantity when it comes to this band, and Children of the Moon just might be their best album yet. (And that’s saying something!) Having made one of their heaviest albums with 2019’s Clairvoyant, State Faults really open up their sound and deliver their most musically-varied with Children of the Moon. It’s an album that entirely transcends the niche screamo scene that State Faults have called home for many years without abandoning it. Without toning down an ounce of their usual harsh fury, the band incorporate more clean vocals, more post-rock, more black metal, more experimentation, longer songs (one’s over 10 minutes and one’s over nine), and just more everything into their music on this album. Having recorded their last two albums with the great Jack Shirley, they made this one with producer Chris Teti (of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die), and I’d imagine they connected with Chris over a shared love of pushing yourself past your own limits. Beyond whatever specific subgenre it is, this is music for people who love big ideas, fearless ambition, emotional sincerity, and overwhelming intensity. If you turn it up loud and let it wash over you, it’s gonna leave an impact.

Respire – Hiraeth
Dine Alone

The Toronto collective take on the immigrant experience with this uplifting, orchestral, post-screamo album

Any week with a new top-tier, boundary-pushing screamo album is a good week, but a week with two of those? This is something special. Toronto’s Respire are a “screamo band” inasmuch as Converge are a “metalcore” band. Like, yeah, but… you know? They’re as much a guitar/bass/drums band as they are an orchestral act, as likely to dish out throat-shredding shrieks and guttural growls as they are to engage in uplifting, communal singalongs that feel like religious experiences. Maybe I’m just influenced by the Canada connection, but they’ve always struck me as the Godspeed You! Black Emperor of screamo and that rings truer than ever to me on Hiraeth. Not only do many of their arrangements sound closer to Godspeed than to Orchid, they also operate with a similar ethos–a many-membered collective with a knack for ornate instrumentation and punk spirit. (On this album, the core seven-piece lineup is joined by three “extended family” members, it was engineered by Sean Pearson, and the aforementioned Jack Shirley mixed and mastered it.) The band have referred to the album as “a manifesto of the immigrant experience; a call for all of us to embrace our shared humanity, awaken to the fragility of our existence, and confront the crises we face collectively before it’s too late,” and though Hiraeth very much has the sense of urgency that “too late” is in the near future, it’s also shimmering with a sense of hope. Not just with the lyrics but with the tone of the music itself, Hiraeth forces you to picture a better world.

Omnigone – Feral
Bad Time Records

The Link 80 offshoot’s current lineup is basically a ska-punk supergroup, newly solidified for their third and hardest album yet

In Bad Time Records’ new This Is New Tone documentary/concert film, former Link 80 guitarist Adam Davis talks about how that now-defunct band was always too punk for the ska kids and too ska for the punk kids during their initial ’90s run, and how it left them in a relatively lonely lane of their own. Today, though, both of those scenes are a lot more accepting than they were back then, which has made it a very opportune time for Adam and former Link 80 bassist Barry Krippene to pick up where they left off with their new band Omnigone, which they were inspired to form after surviving Link 80 members reunited to play the Asian Man Records 20th anniversary shows in 2016. Feral is the band’s third album in five years, and it’s their first since Adam and Barry solidified a permanent lineup for Omnigone, which is now basically a ska-punk supergroup, with Brent Friedman (ex-We Are The Union) on drums, Russ “Ike” Wood (Eichlers) on guitar, and Nick Tournie (Noise Complaint) on guitar. Picking right up where last year’s great Against the Rest left off, Feral could be your new favorite ska album or your new favorite hardcore punk album, depending on which way you squint (or both). Recorded once again by past collaborator Jack Shirley (who’s now been namedropped for the third consecutive time in this week’s Notable Releases), it’s a fast, raw, and gritty album by just about any punk band’s standards (including a cover of NJ hardcore band School Drugs’ “Modern Medicine”), and the songs hit even harder as Adam funnels his aggression into exploring grief, sexism, the broken political/economic system, and other meaningful topics that hit close to home for so many.

Jack White – No Name
Third Man

Jack White’s surprise vinyl-only new album is his most White Stripes-y LP since The White Stripes

After leading The White Stripes for over a decade, Jack White abandoned his beloved, stripped-down guitar/drums setup in favor of a solo career that’s found him fleshing out his albums and live shows with a much fuller-sounding, multi-member approach. Reviews have been mixed for most of his solo career–though he’s got some great moments in there and remains a firecracker live act–but critics have been calling his new album his best since The White Stripes and it’s easy to see why. Whether or not it is in fact his best, it’s undeniably his most White Stripes-y album since The White Stripes. These are raw, blistering garage rock/punk/blues hybrids that sound more like the Jack White who made “Fell In Love With A Girl” than the Jack White who made “Lazaretto.” And if you’re wondering if Jack White can still fuck shit up like he did when The White Stripes played Letterman, all signs point to yes. Adding to the instant lore that this isn’t just a regular old Jack White album, Jack only made it available as a surprise, one-day-only vinyl release on July 19 that was included with any purchases made at the Detroit, London, and Nashville locations of his Third Man Records store. It came in an unmarked white sleeve with no song titles, and it just says “NO NAME” on the record’s white label. (It still hasn’t gotten a wider release, but bootleg digital versions are aplenty.) The release itself stirred up a new kind of buzz for circa-2024 Jack White, but in our all-too-fast-moving music world, that buzz would’ve already died off if the music wasn’t hitting the way it is. Jack White wasn’t in desperate need of a return-to-form album or anything, but it sure as hell is fun to get one.

Ice Spice – Y2K!
10K Projects/Capitol

Ice Spice keeps the momentum going with her quick, no-frills official debut album, featuring Travis Scott, Gunna, and Central Cee

Young rappers with viral, breakthrough songs seem to pop up all the time, but it’s rare that one of them turns into a cultural phenomenon as quickly as Ice Spice did after releasing her 2022 single “Munch (Feelin’ U).” Her magnetic charisma had a lot to do with it, and it was also because she had so much more where “Munch” came from. Almost every song she dropped in its wake became at least as big as “Munch”–at this point, it’s almost hard to remember a time when that was her biggest song. Most of those songs ended up on her excellent 2023 debut EP Like..? (and its deluxe edition), and now she keeps the momentum going just one year later with Y2K!. Y2K! is billed as her official full-length debut album, though at 10 songs in 23 minutes, it’s actually a little bit shorter than the deluxe edition of Like..?, but semantics aside, the brevity suits her. She brings a unique perspective and a widespread appeal to the two-minute Bronx drill songs that have been soundtracking her hometown for the past few years, and she generally keeps the same vibe going from one song to the next. It’s an approach that’s closer to a punk band than to the A-list rap stars and pop stars that have quickly become her peers. Y2K! gets in and gets out without wasting anyone’s time or doing anything fancy. It probably won’t sway anyone who wasn’t a fan of Like..?, but it’s quick, solid, and filler-less enough to keep the buzz going for the many people who were.

Ben Seretan – Allora
Tiny Engines

The New York singer/songwriter takes a psychedelic leap forward with his first vocal-led album in over four years

Since releasing his breakthrough 2020 album Youth Pastoral, Ben Seretan has put out a handful of ambient/drone albums, and he’s now signed to the back-in-action Tiny Engines for his first vocal-led album since Youth Pastoral, Allora. It’s also a pretty significant step up from Youth Pastoral and it finds Ben seamlessly working his drone/ambient tendencies into his singer/songwriter material in a way that makes for some of his most suspenseful music yet. On Allora, Ben is just as likely to deliver a gentle folk song as he is to break out into a psychedelic head-trip, and he sometimes does both on the same song. He touches on everything from hypnotic krautrock to jammy blues rock to Midwest math rock, and like on Youth Pastoral, there’s a religious hymn-like element too. (The only lyrics on the droney closing track, for example, are “Every morning is a glory hallelujah.”) Allora makes for a good double feature with the new Strand of Oaks album; both are great examples of what can happen when folk music, psychedelia, meditation, and spirituality collide.

Sinai Vessel – I SING
Keeled Scales

Sinai Vessel’s folky Keeled Scales debut explores the impact of capitalism on our personal lives

Sinai Vessel has transformed over the years from a full rock band into Caleb Cordes’ folky solo project, and he’s now linked up with one of the most reliable record labels for current indie folk, Keeled Scales. (Fun fact: Caleb and Ben Seretan wrote each other’s bios for their new albums, and Ben’s new label home of Tiny Engines is also Sinai Vessel’s former label home.) Sinai Vessel’s Keeled Scales debut I SING is calm and breezy sounding, but the lyrical content isn’t nearly as relaxing. Caleb’s said that the album is “very much haunted by capitalism, and how survival under it touches everything,” and he explores not just the obvious things but also the ways it impacts our personal lives and relationships. It’s an album that feels intimate and introspective, even when Caleb’s observing the world around him.

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Wand, Clothing, Crack Cloud, Robber Robber, and Blur‘s Live at Wembley Stadium.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episode with The Get Up Kids about Something To Write Home About for its 25th anniversary.

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