Paste is the place to kick off each and every New Music Friday. We follow our regular roundups of the best new songs by highlighting the most compelling new records you need to hear. Find the best new albums of the week below.
Brown Horse: Total Dive
There are clouds in the sky and dust on the ground. Vultures circle a grayed-out factory, diving through smog pumped into the air. The silence is total, and the road is forever. This is the atmospheric, haunted alt-country path Brown Horse’s third LP Total Dive takes for 45 minutes. It may surprise you to learn that the band is from Norwich, a quaint city in northeast England, not middle America; each of the album’s ten songs do a convincing job of placing the group in cowboy towns, ones inhabited primarily by past lives and ones missed altogether. Rough, jagged guitars—the band doesn’t skimp on reverb—buoy Patrick Turner’s vocals, which do a mean job at imitating the sort of world-weary cowboy role he inhabits, forward. The result is visceral and raw, twangy and lucid. The album crackles with anticipation, all no-frills guitar runs, and dramatic lyrical flashes (with songs written by each of the band’s four members). On “Twisters,” an early highlight, Turner moans, “I hope a whip of lightning cuts me right in two,” as backing singer Neve Cariad’s delicate soprano hovers above; on the title track, which also acts as the record’s inflection point, Turner sighs the slogan of an endless postindustrial life stretching out ahead: “Don’t wanna work so hard anymore.” Total Dive is an album that weighs you down, as tumbling words, sticky guitars, roiling basslines, and militaristic drums march forward while you sink to your knees. It’s part-Jason Molina, part-Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and entirely self-possessed. —Miranda Wollen [Loose Music]
Cactus Lee: Lee’s Dream
I quote John Updike’s paean to the beer can: “It was beautiful—as beautiful as the clothespin, as inevitable as the wine bottle, as dignified and reassuring as the fire hydrant.” Kevin Dehan, who runs around as Cactus Lee, makes music like that. He’s taller than he sings, and his leads don’t twang like a Texan’s should. No, his voice is purer, with a tone closer to Gordon Lightfoot’s. You see, Dehan can swing between baritone and tenor, but there’s no unsettling jolt to his versatility. It’s the type of singing you can poke a hole through. I’ve been returning to his new album, Lee’s Dream, since a copy of it landed on my doorstep two months ago. According to my Apple Music stats, I’ve only listened to three songs more than “By Sunday” this year. That checks out, it’s a real sun-dappled stunner. But I’m most obsessed with “Lone Star,” a tribute to a beer whose logo has never changed, even when cans switched from the church key to the zip-top. “Lone Star” chases a nighttime buzz. Brushed snares, sock-hop guitar curls, and ooh-oohs plug in and plug along. It’s a sticky Country & Western chugger that can mend any old hippie heart with a grainy, hoppy exit strategy. “What we need is progress with an escape hatch,” Updike wrote, and Dehan sees the author’s plan through: “Once the night begins, I’ll have Lone Star. I might have one, I might have ten.” —Matt Mitchell [Western Vinyl]
Ella Langley: Dandelion
It was the week of Valentine’s Day when Ella Langley’s undeniable “Choosin’ Texas” crested the Billboard Hot 100, a result of the song’s sturdy, confident earworm, country music’s post-pandemic imperial phase, and, of course, a TikTok push. Millions of people around the globe have surrendered to Langley’s disappointed warning that a “cowboy always finds a way to leave” over the glowing guitars worthy of Steve Winwood’s ‘80s output. She settles in that slick, ethereal pop country for her sophomore album, Dandelion, a shift in sound that’s genuine enough to be performed at both a county fair and at any of her upcoming arena dates. Across the album, Langley’s chief lyrical concern is staying in touch with her roots. An opening rendition of “Froggy Went a Courtin’,” a folk song which Langley used to sing with her grandpa, puts the concept in bold: You can take the woman out of Alabama, but you can’t take the Alabama out of the woman. Sort of. Can you really be the same girl playing acoustic guitar at church if you’re one of the biggest up-and-coming stars in country music? Dandelion soars when Langley insists she’s the same person she’s always been—and then quickly undermines that idea. Her growth is almost immediately apparent when she takes a page out of Kacey Musgraves’ book, luxuriating in shimmering, spacy arrangements that support unquestionable hooks. The progress manifests in dreamy guitar parts, occasional doo-wop chord progressions, and blocky, thumping percussion. That push-and-pull is just as easily located in storytelling here. —Ethan Beck [Columbia/SAWGOD]
gentle boxer: my heart is a gentle boxer
On Monday, NYC singer-songwriter and Paste favorite Allegra Krieger dropped a solo instrumental album under an oxymoronic pseudonym: gentle boxer. Krieger made my heart is a gentle boxer all by herself this winter, with canteenkilla on occasional vox and synths. “It’s some of my noisy/instrumental music,” she wrote in the Bandcamp alert. She’s right about that. The tape is loud and glitchy, fusing electronic instruments with the acoustic guitar that textures the work she makes under her own name, especially her 2023 album, I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane. She sings here and there, but it’s mostly wordless and often very exciting. There’s a vocal sample from Anne Carson’s “Essay on Threat” in “from a different place,” which I was floored by. If you couldn’t tell that Krieger is a great instrumentalist from her folk music, then let my heart is a gentle boxer guide you there. —Matt Mitchell [Self-Released]
Holly Humbertsone: Cruel World
It’s been great following Holly Humberstone’s career, as she’s graduated from Olivia Rodrigo’s opening act to a pop songwriter on the verge of world stardom. There’s something really visceral about how her songs interact with growing up, mental illness, and lonesomeness as a creative person who’s always on the move. That driving force and eye for vulnerability has turned Humberstone into, quite frankly, one of the most interesting artists in the world—and she’s still getting her feet off the ground. Her new album, Cruel World, pulls no punches. Confidently, she says “kiss me like you fucking mean it” on “Red Chevy.” A well-done crescendo brightens “Make It All Better” while the acoustic “Lucy” is a stirring commentary on femininity. The wonderful “Blue Dream” proves that not only has Humberstone taken cues from the likes of Rodrigo and Taylor Swift, but that her originality is just as exciting as theirs. Cruel World builds on Paint My Bedroom Black’s promise, and we’re left with a soothing, oft-beautiful sophomore project that demands many revisits. —Matt Mitchell Polydor
Mei Semones: Kurage EP
We really enjoyed the jazzy indie pop of Best of What’s Next alumna Mei Semones’ debut Animaru last year, and there’s more where that came from on her collaborative EP Kurage (meaning jellyfish) released this week. Semones’ guitar work remains impressive as ever, and her voice flits across each tumbling melody, light and airy. With only three songs to its name—the sugar-spun melodies of ”Koneko” ft. British-Brazilian musician Liana Flores, the rippling bossa nova of “Tooth Fairy” ft. singer and guitarist John Roseboro, and the playful rhythms of the title track ft. her own father, Don Semones, on euphonium—Kurage is the definition of short but sweet. —Casey Epstein-Gross [Bayonet]
My New Band Believe: My New Band Believe
Much of My New Band Believe feels like a leveling-up of what Cameron Picton was inching toward on his black midi songs. “In The Blink Of An Eye” barrels in with all the rickety pomp of a fantasy call-to-action, eventually morphing into a full-on jig. The following eight-and-a-half-minute “Heart of Darkness” boasts early Kate Bush levels of precise theatricality and showcases the subtle malleability of Picton’s vocal deliveries, hacking up some of his consonant sounds and letting others snake around themselves on a show-stopping verse: “It’s such a long, long, long, long way to go / Through fields of hope / Forget the whisper trees / You’ll miss the hissing rope.” By the time “Heart of Darkness” arrives at its yawning, tinkering, wordless outro, all the story beats the song’s cycled through have rendered it almost unrecognizable, leaving the listener lost in the woods far from where they started the journey. Just as easily as Picton and co. can rise to colossal heights of fantasy and Song Cycle levels of conceptuality, they can contrast them with the cutting immediacy of a track like “Opposite Teacher,” a quivering folk song about a child saddled with a secondhand shame that predates them, at once afraid of falling short of their parent’s expectations and repeating their parent’s mistakes without realizing. “I dream I’m running from a picture / of me in the twilight / I ask time, time knows not the answer / It follows and crushes,” Picton sings atop a steep slide of bowed strings, caught in the push and pull between the unknowns of a parent’s past and one’s own future. The following “Actress” is a harrowing dissection of celebrity and, more broadly, how destructive it can be to finally get what you want. “I envy you / You never tell the truth,” Picton sings, full of fascination and bitterness, admiration and indictment. —Grace Robins-Somerville [Rough Trade]
Parlor Greens: Emeralds
Parlor Greens is a band that was concocted for me, specifically. Ohio-bred and a modernized take on Booker T. and the MG’s? Hell, they had me at the name. Tim Carman, Jimmy James, and Adam Scone are a couple of soul veterans locked into each other. Emeralds is a damn fine tape, full of instrumental jams that float between R&B, funk, country, and blues. “Red Dog” is a scorcher, thanks to James’ licks. He wrote “Queen of My Heart” for his recently-deceased mother, and Scone’s organ gives her a memorable eulogy. “Eat Your Greens” and “Mustard Sauce” could have been the backing piece to any soul hit 60 years ago. But, in a feat that would be impossible for most musicians, Parlor Greens make them sound just as catchy without a vocal. It’s not every day that we get a record this terrific, in which every hand involved in making it belongs to a maestro. Emeralds is expert music. Every second is seasoned just right. —Matt Mitchell [Colemine Records]
Paul Bergmann: Connecticut Cowboy
I have a playlist titled “favorite songs of all time,” and it’s over 500 songs long. Give me a year or two and it will be a thousand songs long. But, gun to my head, my true favorite song of all time is “Old Dream” by Paul Bergmann. That is a perfect tune that, according to Apple Music, I’ve listened to more than anything else since 2015. You can see that I am very endeared to Bergmann’s sound, which he’s been tinkering with for more than a decade. 2019’s Make Yourself at Home is a personal highlight. His new record, Connecticut Cowboy, came alive at InnerSpaceSoundLabs in Durham, Connecticut, last summer and features Scott Lawrence, Cameron Brown, Stephen Heath, and Scott Amore. The band compliments Bergmann’s songwriting expertly. Images of bloodroot, sacred ginseng, Ansonia skies, a horse farm in Bethany, bending, aching weeds, apparition smoke, pariahs, ghosts, and perfumed strangers fill out his portrait of America, which is brand new when he sings about it. Throttled, western guitars pool beneath Bergmann’s low, drawling baritone. How lucky we are that he’s remained this fascinating. —Matt Mitchell Self-Released
WU LYF: A Wave That Will Never Break
Want to listen to WU LYF’s first album in 15 years? Well, get the fuck off Spotify, since you won’t find it there. Become a L Y F member instead. The Manchester four-piece are playing their “own (infinite) game outside the narrow parameters of the machine that renders life absurd,” because of course they are. WU LYF have never been ones to follow the typical industry playbook, after all. The “heavy pop” outfit that burst onto the scene in 2008 only to disappear shortly after their acclaimed 2011 debut Go Tell Fire to the Mountain has finally reunited and, dare I say, it’s been worth the wait. A Wave That Will Never Break is simply big: in sound, in feeling, in ambition. The centerpiece of the record, “Tib St. Tabernacle,” is over ten minutes long, and every moment feels like its own eruption. “Wave,” though, slows things down into a sparse acoustic-and-piano ballad, while “Robe of Glory” counts off into feverish riffs and hoarse-throated drawls: “Can you feel it? Can you feel something?” There’s an irresistible sense of conviction in every single line spat out by singer Ellery James Roberts, and he’s only buoyed by the cathartic build-and-release output from guitarist Evans Kati, bassist Tom McClung, and drummer Joe Manning. WU LYF are back, baby, and hopefully they’re here for the long run. —Casey Epstein-Gross [L Y F]
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