10 New Albums to Stream Today
by Lizzie Manno & Paste StaffValentine’s Day might be a needless holiday filled with overblown expectations, expensive gifts and heightened loneliness, but it does give you an excuse to be extra happy or sad for a day, so what better occasion for some great music? Today’s new selections include the highly-anticipated new album from psych-pop behemoth Tame Impala, the catchy pop-punk debut from Beach Bunny and the Southern Gothic-influenced new punk LP from Bambara. Other suitably sweet options include Boniface’s indie-pop debut, the new album from husband and wife pop duo Tennis and the second album from the Norah Jones side project Puss N Boots. Throw these albums on while your getting dolled up for dinner or while you’re blissfully defying the pressures of this holiday.
1. Bambara: Stray
Narrative-based songs may be completely out of step with what’s happening in music right now, but that leaves plenty of room for New York outfit Bambara to shine. Their gothic rock is gripping and shadowy, and Reid Bateh unfurls lines about characters who are much the same. Their new album, Stray, follows 2018’s Shadow on Everything. —Lizzie Manno
2. Beach Bunny: Honeymoon
Sometimes the simplest feelings are the most universal. When Beach Bunny lead singer Lili Trifilio sings, “You love me / I love you / You don’t love me anymore, I still do / I’m sorry / I’m trying / I hate it when you catch me crying” on “Rearview,” a slow pop-punk ballad that builds to a thrilling, hands-in-the-air finish, it’s hard not to think back to some time where you, too, have felt the exact same way. It’s a cliché to say that this record’s lyrics read like a diary entry, but Honeymoon truly does: With the same raw energy as Camp Cope’s Georgia Maq or Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, Trifilio sings—and occasionally screams—of her innermost desires and heartbreaks over some of the smartest and catchiest pop-punk songwriting in quite some time. It’s easily the most fun album I’ve heard so far this year, a record that’s just begging to be played at parties once winter finally ends. —Steven Edelstone
3. Boniface: Boniface
For all the stuff Micah Visser sings about on their self-titled debut as Boniface, Visser is really focused on just one thing: the amplified emotions of early adulthood. It’s that time of life when every stolen kiss, intimate connection, earnest confession, late-night conversation, missed phone call or unrequited crush comes freighted with extra meaning, as if nothing could be so vital or consequential ever again. That’s exactly right, in a way, and Boniface captures the essence of that feeling on a dozen songs that practically tremble with fervor. —Eric R. Danton
4. Cindy Lee: What’s Tonight To Eternity
Karen Carpenter is an unlikely punk icon. During her heyday, The Carpenters specialized in easy-listening pop schmaltz: squeaky-clean songs served on a platter for future Reagan voters. Now, 37 years past her death, Carpenter’s influence has trickled down to Patrick Flegel, former singer of the bracing and undersung Canadian noise-rock band Women. In the near-decade since Women’s messy collapse, several of Flegel’s bandmates resurfaced as the post-punk band Preoccupations. Flegel has pursued a more unusual path: dressing up in drag and performing what they have termed “confrontation pop” under the name Cindy Lee. What’s Tonight To Eternity, Cindy Lee’s fifth and undoubtedly best album to date, is the culmination of this project, a haunting and surreal exploration of gender dysphoria and expression set to spectral pop textures. —Zach Schonfeld
5. Katie Gately: Loom
Grief is so common a subject in music that to write about it, as harrowing an experience and uniting an emotion as it may be, is to risk treading down paths that other artists have already traveled. On Loom, Katie Gately’s haunting follow-up to her playfully chaotic 2016 album Color, the electronic artist avoids this potential trap by taking a completely novel approach to documenting grief. Throughout the LP, Gately (best known for remixing Björk and co-producing serpentwithfeet) processes her mother’s ultimately fatal battle with cancer through not just her own perspective, but through narrators including the disease, its medicine and its victim. As if the angles Gately takes aren’t unorthodox enough, her bleak soundscapes eschew linear, melodic structures in favor of atmosphere, sound design and samples. —Max Freedman
6. Mush: 3D Routine
U.K. art-punk band Mush have unveiled their debut album, 3D Routine, today via Memphis Industries. The album follows their 2019 debut EP Induction Party, one of the best post-punk releases of last year. 3D Routine, which was produced by Andy Savours (My Bloody Valentine, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Dream Wife), is a funky, snotty post-punk romp. Their surreal humor, socio-political commentary, winding guitar riffs and over-exaggerated vocal delivery culminate in a danceable, antsy punk record whose current weapons of choice against chaos are boogeying and dry amusement. —Lizzie Manno
7. Nathaniel Rateliff: And It’s Still Alright
The softer tunes on Nathaniel Rateliff’s new solo release, And It’s Still Alright (out now on Stax Records), may sound like a bit of a left turn, harkening back to his beginnings as a touring singer/songwriter (back when Paste hailed him The Best of What’s Next). This is a purposeful shift, as Rateliff told us: “For years before the Night Sweats I toured around as a singer/songwriter, and so that sort of writing style I really enjoy and am really familiar with. But I want it to be a slight departure from those days as well, and just look at it as a slightly different way of approaching the writing.” —Ellen Johnson
8. Puss N Boots: Sister
Art, it’s said, should always please the artist first. But every once in a while—either by design or mere happenstance—an artist produces exactly what the audience is needing at that particular moment. Take Sister for instance, the new sophomore set from nine-time Grammy winner Norah Jones and her playful side project with Sasha Dobson and Catherine Popper, Puss N Boots. It’s a perfect feel-good panacea that blends Jones’ dusky murmur with Dobson’s airier warble and Popper’s warm, bluesy rumble somewhere in the middle, on loping, comfortably-paced folk/R&B/country originals like “Lucky,” “Sister,” “You and Me,” and “It’s Not Easy,” augmented by smartly-chosen covers by Tom Petty (“Angel Dream”), Johnette Napolitano (“Joey”), Dolly Parton (“The Grass is Blue”), Paul Westerberg (“It’s a Wonderful Lie”), and Dobson’s aunt, Helen Rogers (”Same Old Bullshit”). —Tom Lanham
9. Tame Impala: The Slow Rush
After years of waiting and speculation (we thought for sure 2019 was the year!), a new Tame Impala album is finally here. Kevin Parker’s fourth studio album The Slow Rush promises just as much swirling apprehension and raging progressive psychedelia as the last three. This release has been nearly five years in the making, following 2015’s Currents, which we named one of the best albums of the 2010s. —Ellen Johnson
10. Tennis: Swimmer
Indie-pop duo Tennis—made up of husband and wife team Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore—are based in Denver, Colo., but “based” is a relative term when it comes to these two musicians, who split their time between land and sea. They wrote the majority of both their 2011 debut album Cape Dory and 2017’s Yours Conditionally whilst on sailing excursions. Then, a four-month sailing trip in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, resulted in their next project, Tennis’ fifth album Swimmer, which is appropriately out today, on Valentine’s Day 2020. —Ellen Johnson