Our first pick of the best releases for the next two weeks comes from Morgan Wade, who was feeling the urge to simplify after a period of relentless touring and intense media scrutiny during the last couple of years. Every time she sat down with her guitar, new songs just started pouring out. “They were just coming to me left and right,” she says. The Virginia-born singer-songwriter made a choice to return to the basics for her new album, Obsessed (out on 16 August): a solo-written, stripped-down 14-track collection produced by her touring guitarist Clint Wells that showcases Wade at her rawest and most vulnerable. “I really wanted to get back to doing what I used to do,” she says. “Just make this whatever I wanted it to be.”
Sorcs 80 (9 Aug) was a self-imposed ambitious project for Osees. Something to kick in the creative flow. The last few years, having been a challenging time in general, felt like a good time for a pivot. The band’s last two albums were so guitar- and keyboard-centric, they wanted a weird and fun set of parameters to work with. They first demo’d everything at home on 4-track cassette using drum loops until the had a pile of “songs”, then chose one sound each using synths and created a range of 3 octaves of that sample, then loaded them into Roland SPD-SX samplers and learned the transcribed songs using drum sticks. The idea was to change the way they wrote and to have 4 people along the front of the stage essentially playing percussion. So no guitar, no keys.
Elles Bailey’s forthcoming album, Beneath the Neon Glow (9 Aug), is an exploration of love’s myriad forms. Through lyrically vulnerable and brutally honest songwriting, she delves into the depths of heartbreak, the resilience of friendship and the enduring power of love that spans a lifetime. With beautifully uplifting melodies and instrumentation, this record captures the essence of all the shades of love that have shaped Bailey’s life. From the fleeting moments to the love that withstands the test of time, she fearlessly navigates through the spectrum of human emotion, offering listeners an intimate glimpse into her journey.
HiFi Sean & David McAlmont are taking you on a journey for 2024. The twelve exhilarating songs on Daylight (16 Aug) celebrate, express and explore the colours and feel of summer. It will be the first of two albums from the duo in 2024 with the nocturnal sister album, Twilight, to be released on the first day of winter, 1st December.
For their 26th album, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard swap the widescreen concepts of their recent albums for the intimacy of six good friends collaborating on the most bonhomie-laden set they’ve yet committed to wax. For Flight b741 (9 Aug), bandleader Stu Mackenzie says that King Gizzard wanted to make something that was primal, instinctual, more ‘from the gut’ – just people in a room, doing what feels right. Tapping into the country-fied ’70s American rock on which they were all raised – along with the ornery garage-rock roots from which their mighty discography sprang – Flight b741 is lightning caught inside a bottle. Across its 10 ragged, glorious barnburners, King Gizzard flesh out rough skeletons of songs with their inspired improvisations, inimitable grooves and a unique pass-the-mic approach to vocals that saw every member of the band raise their voice and sing.
Our release of the week is Long Way Home (16 Aug), whose core reverberates deep into Ray LaMontagne’s youth – at 21 years old, he recalls seeing Townes Van Zandt perform live in a small club in Minneapolis. A line from Van Zandt’s song ‘To Live Is to Fly’ has stuck with him ever since: “When here you been is good and gone, all you keep is the getting there.” LaMontagne reflects: “Thirty years later it occurs to me that every song on Long Way Home is in one way or another honouring the journey. The languorous days of youth and innocence. The countless battles of adulthood: some won, more often lost. It’s been a long hard road, and I wouldn’t change a minute. It took me nine songs to express what Townes managed to say in one line. I guess I still got a lot to learn.”
Click on an image to order your copy.