NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Aug. 16

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

NPR Music's Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Hazel Cills give you a quick rundown of the most notable albums out Friday, Aug. 16, including Post Malone's country project, F-1 Trillion, Tinashe's seventh LP Quantum Baby, and Charly Bliss's first new record in five years.Featured Albums:- Tinashe, Quantum Baby- Post Malone, F-1 Trillion- Charly Bliss, Forever- Morgan Wade, Obsessed- Starflyer 59, Lust For Gold- Palehound, Live at First Congregational ChurchVisit https://npr.org/music to see the longer list of Aug. 16 releases and stream our New Music Friday playlist.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Just a quick heads up, this podcast contains explicit language. Also, in last week's episode, we told you that Big Sean's new album, Better You Than Me, was set for release on August 9th. He has pushed that release back and now says the album will drop later in August. Okay, let's start the show. So the question I have for you is, did you watch any of Ray Gunn, the Australian break dancer, aka the best part of the Olympics? So I did not watch that dancer, but I somehow consumed what feels like a million reels slash TikTok videos of people impersonating that dancer.

And then I did see a few clips. I, you know what? Seems like that dancer was really trying her best. That's sort of how I feel. Anyway, with that, why don't we start the show? Let's do it. Hey, everybody. It's New Music from NPR Music.

Here to talk about the best and most discussion-worthy album's coming out today, August 16th. I'm Daud Tyler Rameen, here with NPR Music Editor and Dancing Queen, Hazel Sills. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I'm here. Coming up on today's show, the live album, What Is It For? What Can It Do? One of our album picks today is a live recording by an artist we've covered on NPR Music for a long time, who I don't know that we ever expected to release a live album, but it really got us thinking about the role of these things in the music environment that we live in today. But first, let's get right into some of the other new albums coming out today. Hazel, what do you got? Yeah, there's a new album out today by the

R&B artist Tanache, who is one of my faves. That album is called Quantum Baby, and this is the song Getting No Sleep. No, you'd be here two nights straight. Let yourself in at the gate. Big ass house got extra space. This is a bra, Saintoll, smells like cake All gold teeth and All gold ace This is different nights and vibe

Take you outside We'll be seen every time flick me up I'm fitted up So pretty no bad side Not a dog But it's in me Take a shot

Like I'm Lindsay We ain't getting no sleep nana We ain't getting no sleep nana This is Tanishi's seventh album And it's kind of a collection of what she really does best, you know, this kind of like cool, sexy, slinky R&B that's kind of, you know, indebted to artists like Aaliyah, but it's also indebted to her contemporaries like Kalela and FK Twigs, you know, artists who are kind of like towing the line between like classic R&B and more kind of

avant-garde electronica. So it's just, you know, she's been independent for a while now and she's, every time she puts out an album, it's very clearly on her own terms. So it's just another great collection of her kind of continuing her classic sound and what she does best. The fact that Nasty is she maybe didn't expect that song to blow up in quite the way that it did and didn't necessarily have like a follow-up plan for it. but what can you do? I think a Tanashi album is the nice thing about them is they never ask too much of you.

They're usually under 10 tracks. And, you know, they go easy on you in terms of your level of investment. You sort of get to choose how much you want to, how much freak you want to match, let's say. Yeah, there's many different flavors of freak on this album. just, I kind of wanted the nastiness to be the continuous thread through all of it. But I'll take what I can get. Well, that is Quantum Baby by Tenache. I am going to take us to what is undoubtedly the biggest album of the week,

but part of why we didn't put it at the top of the show is we haven't heard it. It is Post Malone and the album F1 trillion. Let's start off with Guy for That featuring Luke Combs. I'm pretty good at breaking down. So like I said, this is an album that was not given to critics in advance, at least not to us. So all we can talk about is the singles and the context. And the context is kind of a story in itself. This is a full country turn down to that truck positive title.

The features are, I mean, you've got Morgan Wallin, you've got Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, Chris Stapleton, Hank Jr., Miss Dolly Barton, and Luke Holmes, of course, on this song, who's been just sort of riding a real wave since 2023. The thing is, this is not some sudden swerve. He's been sort of keening in this direction for a while. We met Post Malone as White Iverson, right? He had the cornrows and the sunglasses and doors and, you know, all of that auto-tune.

It was Beer Bonds and Bentley's. That was the name of an album, but also sort of an invitation to a lifestyle. And then over time, he started incorporating more guitar. He had kind of a goth rock turn. He made sort of a synth pop record. If you watch his tiny desk concert from last year, it's almost like an acoustic campfire. So here, now we've got the instrumentation. There's like mandolin and fiddle and banjo and pedal steel.

He's got all of those A-list Nashville features, and he's got the tropes. you listen to this song. The first verse, he says, I got a guy design in my rifle. My mama's new boyfriend rebinds Bibles. Ricky down the road, he re-soles Red Wings. That's God, guns, and gold, if you consider your favorite workboots equivalent to gold.

But the conceit is that he's got a guy for everything except to, you know, bring his baby back, which is such a, I mean, he's very, very in tune with contemporary Nashville and the sort of axis of humor that it rotates around. It's almost enough that you could think of it as sort of like a postmodern joke about country songwriting, except I don't think it is. I think it's what he's really doing. It's sincere.

Yeah, yeah. I think this kind of country turned for him, it totally isn't that big of a swerve. You know, he has been really clear from the beginning of his career that he doesn't think of himself as a rapper, even though he kind of got put in that box pretty early on. And I always think of him as kind of like a vocalist first. Like when I think about the different kind of spheres that he's been able to work in, like I feel like people come to him for his presence as like a vocalist and his ability to jump on all these different songs and do all these different genres. But I still feel like this is a statement.

Like I know that he's kind of selling this album as, you know, I've always been trying to get here. But I'm like, you look at that list of artists on the track list and you hear this song where, as you said, he's kind of running through these tropes. And I'm like, you are really, this is like country with a capital C. Like, this is not casual for you. This feels like a huge statement. So I understand how he got here, but it does feel like it still feels momentous to me or it still feels like a big move, like a left turn. Yeah. Anyway, our colleague Sheldon Piers.

just wrote an essay about this. He has been monitoring the evolution of Post Malone for some time and has some sharp thoughts about it. So go read Sheldon over at NPR.org. That is F1 trillion by Post Malone. Hazel, back to you. Yeah, there is a new album out today from the power pop band Charlie Bliss. It's called Forever. I really connected to a song on the album called I Don't Know Anything. staring up with the boys in their jeans on the stage. Now that we're here, I just feel sort of vacant. Come way too far to feel vaguely complacent.

I wish you were different, but it's true. Go into cardiac arrest before I make 20K. What does it mean to sell out? Shoot your mouth. It's insane. I should enjoy it. Shouldn't complain. I'm living a dream at the end of the day,

and it's hard to believe in, hard to explain. Nobody forced me to stay in the game. Someone would kill to do exactly the same. So something that I really like about this song and this album in general is, you know, Charlie Bliss is a band, you know, that I really kind of feel like I've grown up with, you know, when they arrived in 2017 with their debut album, Gupy. They were just like this incredibly fun rock band that kind of made this blend of like bubble gum pop-infused rock music.

It felt very like late 90s, early 2000s, like, reminded me of like letters to Cleo, Varucasal, dressy, Bessie, those kinds of bands. I don't think I had heard the term bubble grunge before that. Before this group. They originated a genre. But yeah, and I, and, you know, this is their first album in five years. And it really, it very much contains that same sound. but it feels like an album made by a band that has gone through a significant amount of growth.

That maybe when they started their band, they were in their 20s and now they're older. There are these songs on the album that are, you know, weighted by, you know, intense breakups and sort of like moments where, you know, Eva Hendrix, the lead singer, is kind of surveying her love life. And on this song, I don't know anything, she's kind of taking stock of. her career and like what it means to be an artist and like this is something I've always wanted and now that I'm here do I really want this and it just feels like a very adult track or just like an interest like I can just see that point where you're like I've built up this life doing this thing and like is it living up to my expectation so it's a wildly fun record but

there are these moments of deep introspection and maturity that I just love to see in a band that I've you know, followed throughout their career. It's sort of a perennial topic these days, but their last record came out in 2019, pre-pandemic. This feels like a very post-pandemic record in the sense of everything that I know got derailed for a long time. It took so much longer than I thought it did to get back on track, and I'm not totally sure that it is.

Yeah, and it's also like, I put on this album, and I was like, oh my God, this band is so good. They're just like a such a solidly good band. And I'm so glad that they're back with this album and that they're clearly, you know, this sound on this album feels like very much in tune with where they started, but so much bigger and like more cleanly produced. And it's just like I'm, I'm happy that they're back. Got some sequenced since in there that are really playing nice with the rhythm section.

Yeah, it sounds great. That is Forever by Charlie Bliss. We've got to take a quick break, but we've got tons more new music to share with you right after this. It's New Music Friday for August 16th, 2024. Our next album today is by an artist who has never been afraid to put her neuroses front and center. Morgan Wade, the 29-year-old country singer-songwriter who named her major label debut Reckless, and who just last year gave us Psychopath, should be detecting a theme by now, returns today with a new album called Obsessed.

Let's listen to the song Total Conveal. controls. Here's what I love about this. This is love songs in the language of codependency. I might not have clocked it right away if not for the title. Of course, if you look at the visuals, which I later did, it's kind of unmistakable. The cover of this album is her in a white room with the album title scrawled on every inch of the walls and what appears to be a straight jacket next to her that she's wriggled

out of. So hard to take that the wrong way. But the thing that I dig about it is that, I don't know, it sort of highlights the extreme hyperbolic language that people use when they really are head over heels for somebody. Even if a relationship is, like, quote-unquote, healthy, when you're in that honeymoon phase, I think, you know, people do use words like obsessed, and they do catch themselves thinking very compulsively about the person they're with. She's dancing on that thin line, which I think is a really fun provocation. Yeah, I, you know, I hadn't really listened to her music before until this album. And there's something about her songwriting where I like, it feels bruised. Like, it feels like there's a real, like, she just goes to places in her songwriting that is so dark.

Yeah. In a way that really speaks. To me, I mean, she sings on that song, total control of, like, wanting to get so close to someone she could crush their bones. Yeah. And yeah, it's interesting, like, to compare, you know, this music to Post Malone, who, you know, as you said, felt like he was playing with these, like, country tropes. And I feel like Morgan Wade, like, is clearly, you know, digging into these very dark and deep places to write these love songs for, for an album that kind of, you know, as you said, like kind of almost feels like a concept album. Yeah. About being obsessed with someone, like, but yeah, so many moments on this album where.

she is just writing about wanting to be close to someone in a way that is like kind of frightening. But I love it. I'm so into it. Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is that there are more explicitly, sort of undeniably problematic habits highlighted from time to time in the lyrics. There are references to problem drinking and sort of wanderlust as a substitute for a stable home life. and the way that if you're a touring person who just, you know, spends a lot of time on the road, that you can get a little bit wrapped up in that and sort of forget about, you know, keeping your home life safe and comfortable. But all of the language about love and relationships and desire is sort of placed in this other category

where if you weren't listening that hard, you wouldn't really think that much of it. It's just the sort of steady repetition and presentation that makes you aware of this strange tension that she is working with. She also toured with Alanis Morissette, which I love because that is definitely somebody who is skilled at channeling unhealthy relationship dynamics into great songwriting. Yeah, a rawness, the raw emotion. Yeah. That's obsessed by Morgan Wade. Hazel, what do you got? There is a new album from the band Star Flyer 59 called Lust for Gold, and I want to play the title track.

So Starflyer 59 is the musician Jason Martin, and he started this project in the 1990s as kind of like a slow core shoe gaze band. And over the years, the sound of Star Flyer 59 has changed pretty significantly. It hasn't really kind of been confined to any one genre. But this album, Lest For Gold, is a return to the sound that they began with, you know, from their self-titled debut album back in 1994. This kind of like intense, howling, wall of sound, lots of reword, like what you'd think of when you think of, you know, a Shugay's album. And, you know, I was thinking, listening to this album about, you know, other Shugay's groups that have sort of returned in recent years. like ride or slow dive, you know, it's interesting. It's they are bands who they are still making shoegays music like they did when they were

in their heyday in the 90s, but it feels much more atmospheric and like polished. Like it carries the intensity of that early sound, but in a way that feels a lot more grown up and modern. And that's certainly how I felt like listening to this album Lust for Gold. Yeah. Is it fair to say that a prerequisite for Shugay's fandom is an appetite for punishment? Yeah. I mean, I think about just the way that the classic Shugate's records that you think of, they prioritize obviously volume, but also a certain kind of, I would almost say, like, lacerating repetition,

where it's not just about creating a groove, it's about, like bludgeoning you with it. It's, you know, I have plenty of friends who went to see my bloody Valentine when they reunited and talked about feeling, you know, their teeth rattling and, you know, showing up with earplugs and headphones and it barely being enough. So, yeah, but it's interesting now to consider the returns of these classic bands alongside this younger wave of kind of like TikTok shoegaze, which is. just when I say it like that, it sounds kind of derogatory, which I don't mean it to be.

But the interesting thing is that it feels like younger folks who are coming to this music, understanding it a little bit secondhand, are in tune with some of those things that it's doing, but also are sort of naturally drawn to this kind of vibeer, more atmospheric and ambient quality that you seem to be describing these older bands finding their way to now that they're back. Yeah, totally. It's interesting. It's like, you know, on the earlier Starflyer 59 stuff, like you could barely kind of hear Martin's voice. Like it was just subsumed by the music. And now it's like you really hear him front and center. And I know that he's talked about, you know, when he was younger, kind of wanting to hide his voice, hide his vocal ability. So it's just, it's not just like a, it's not just like a growth in terms of like what the production sounds like. But, also just like him as an artist and a front person who's doing this project. But yeah, it definitely feels like a lot of those bands have mellowed out a bit. And you're right, are kind of meeting the mellower tones of this kind of new class of, quote, shoegaze, quote, artists who have come up in

the past few years. All right. That is Starflyer 59 and the album Lust for Gold. I am going to take us to a much quieter place, a record by Palehound called Live at First Congregational Church. This is the songwriter, El Kempner, the leader of Pale Hound, playing solo, opening for Adrian Linker in a church in L.A. back in 2021. And for a sample of the vibe, why don't we listen a little bit to Aaron? Here in this track, these sort of moments of gathering intensity, there's a big range to it dynamically.

the voice kind of shredding and then the dynamic really shrinking back down. And alongside that, you get this sense of the audience kind of being played like an instrument. And the performer sort of discovering textures in the song that maybe they didn't know about. There's a real sort of, I mean, there's a sense of opportunity here that I really dig

because you can hear El Kempner stretching out certain lines and inserting dramatic pauses, kind of reading the room, gauging the lines maybe that this specific audience on this specific night is going to respond to. And then we get to hear those moments connect. We hear giggles, we hear gasps, and it just feels really alive. Yeah, discovering different textures to this music is definitely how I would put it as well. This album really just kind of illuminated, or I feel like I can hear El Kempner, like, figuring out those moments in real time or sort of expansions of their

songs on record because, you know, the song, Aaron, that song is a complete, it feels so different as it existed in its non-live, you know, first recording. You know, you can kind of barely hear Kempner's voice on the original song. It's very whispery. You know, but live, it's like there's such a newfound, you know, force to, to Kemptor's vocals, and it just gives the song a completely different energy, which, you know, obviously performing it live would, but I just felt so many times listening to this album that something truly new. And as you said, like, collaborative was happening. Like, I love all the

moments on this album where you do hear those audience giggles or there's like moments of banter. And it's a really wonderfully contained live album. I have to admit that during the, I promise this is going somewhere, during the big Drake-Kendrick feud this year, I found myself watching a lot of reaction videos on YouTube, which as a habit, I don't recommend it. It's a, it's like you'll goof up your algorithm forever, and it's a really strange, often ill-informed corner of YouTube to find yourself in. But there was something, just because that whole thing was moving so quickly where it was just song after song for a whole week. There is something about witnessing other people's reactions in real time that can feel really, really compelling and addictive. And that is all over this record. Yeah.

You feel like you're in the audience. That is live at First Congregational Church by Palehound. We have some more thoughts on that record and other records like it that we'll get to in just a bit. But first, some other albums out today. A Firmer Hand by Hamish Hock. Long Way Home by Ray LaMontaine. Dirty Disco by Nick Acosta. Paradise State of Mind.

by Foster the People, and Horse Jumper of Love, a Boston indie band who definitely knows their way around a gain knob. Their new album is called Disaster Trick. Coming up, live albums, they're not just for gargantuan arena rock acts and smoky little jazz clubs. We'll talk about a few recent live recordings that have fiddled with the formula right after this. Welcome back to New Music Friday for August 16th. I'm Daiute Tyler Amin, here with Hazel Sills. Hazel, before the break, we were talking about this new Palehound recording live at First Congregational Church, I want to play a moment from this record that I think might justify its whole existence. Near the end of the very first

track, El Kempner sings the closing lines of the song Good Sex, and this is how it goes over in the room. Bad sex makes a good joke that anyone can get. But good sex makes a bad joke that's only funny if you were there. Hi. That moment of sort of gathering recognition at the end of this pretty vulnerable song about the artist's body and sexuality where a roomful of people are sort of clicking

into the punchline, a split second apart, and then breaking into applause once enough of them get it. It's a great argument for what only a live album can do and maybe only one captured in this kind of setting. So because of this album, You and I started talking about other albums like it from recent years, live recordings that don't really fit the classic mold, ones by smaller artists or ones in unusual settings. So what do you think of this album as far as its utility to a fan of an artist like Palehound? Yeah, I mean, I think for an artist like Palehound, El Kempner is a rock artist, a singer-songwriter, you know, a strong vocalist.

And I think that doing a live album in this setting, which feels so intimate and is so very stripped down, you know, just Kepner and their guitar, it feels to me like a way to kind of like emboldened the more intimate aspects of Kepner's, you know, songwriting in music. And, you know, I think for rock artists or singer-songwriters who maybe thrive, the most in a live setting. Maybe I think of Kempner as an artist who like is a great live performer. I mean, clearly this album speaks to that as well. Like it's a way to kind of bottle that energy and bottle that experience for your fans because, you know, all of the Pale Hound albums are incredible on their own. But there's something really unique and beautiful that happens when, you know, Kepner just like strips all of that back and gets to present these songs almost as if like they are like demo form or something like that. But I think like the giggling, the giggling is great because it's a

moment where the music, the meaning sort of changes or it's like the audience has an opportunity to sort of like not just be a listener, but like be a participant in that. I don't want to say song writing because the song's been written, but sort of like how that song makes meaning or finds meaning in that shared space, if that makes any sense. I think it does. I mean, the other thing, it's almost too obvious, but a smaller or mid-sized artist who has a real passionate fan base like Palehound does, but is maybe never going to be a household name, that's, you know, people in that category don't necessarily have the resources to tour really widely. You know, they do the best they can, but they're going to be areas of the country or the world that they never get to. So if you're a fan who doesn't live near one of the major markets that your favorite artist can. can afford to get to, something like this might be kind of a godsend. Getting to experience even vicariously what it's like to, you know, to participate in the creation of those moments is like, yeah, I have to imagine that it feels really special. Yeah, it's like live music, you know, the pandemic has changed so much in the last few years, but obviously it's still raging on and like live music is happening, but it's still kind of a weird.

space, you know, it's still a fraught space for artists and fans. And so I think like an opportunity to get to experience a show as much as you can through an album is I understand why smaller artists might do it. And it's also like to the point about, you know, live albums sort of like emboldening different parts of an artist sound like I was thinking about M.J. Lenderman, who's a guitarist in the band Wednesday and also a solo singer-songwriter in his own right. He put out a live album last year called And the Wind Live and Loose. And, you know, he is an artist that's incredible live, really incredible. And live goes to much noisier, kind of crazier places than I feel like his sound is on record. And so it's so nice to have that sound that he can kind of only make live

with his band, like, recorded in addition to, you know, the music that he releases and, you know, records and produces in a studio in a much fancier setting. Yeah, if you listen to MJ Lenderman's solo albums or even his parts on the Waxahatchie record that came out this year, which he's all over, you wouldn't necessarily think that he can scream like this. It just wouldn't occur to you that he has it in him. It's not clear to me what it is about the live setting that sort of unlocks that in. him, but it does seem like it's a, it's a special place for him.

Speaking of something that you said a little earlier about the audience's role in sort of creating this experience in collaboration with the artist, I want to look at a record from last year that is maybe that idea taken to an extreme, which is Cat Powers record covering Bob Dylan's entire concert from 1966, the Royal Albert Hall. This is a sort of mass act of, do I want to say, reenactment, cosplay, creative anachronism. I mean, she is doing the entire concert and the audience. I mean, there are moments where people, you know, you might hear a little yelp or a shout of recognition or something like that. But for the most part, people are really, really quiet and respectful.

and the only moments where they sort of like erupt are the moments where, you know, because of their familiarity with these songs, with this artist, with this initial recording, they can sort of hear the beginning of something turning into a moment that they recognize. The beginning of Desolation Row is a lot like that. People really, really get into that. The painting the passports brown. The beauty parlors filled with sailors. The circuses in town. You have an artist playing a character kind of doing a voice. It goes away a little as it goes on. But when the record started, I was like,

oh, she's kind of doing like Kate Blanchett and I'm not there, where she's sort of deepening and rasping her voice a little bit. in order to get there. But I don't know. It's such a surprising thing. I mean, Cat Power's always been kind of, you know, a lovable weirdo. But a live album from her, it doesn't feel like a given. Because with total respect to an artist that I enjoy,

she's had a reputation in the past as, let's say, an unpredictable live performer. Yes. She seemed in a lot of people's eyes to be sort of uncomfortable in her own skin. in that setting, which is why I guess maybe it makes sense that she'd sound so in the pocket with a live project where she kind of gets to embody somebody else for the night. Yeah, because Cat Power is like, that's what makes that album so brilliant to me. It's like Cap Power, you know, clearly loves a cover. Yes.

Like has released albums of covers, like loves to cover other people's songs. Her version of, I found a reason by The Velvet Underground is like the version in my mind. Yeah, she's a master at covering. And then, but she's not a master at live performance necessarily. I mean, I think she's gotten, you know, more confident in recent years. She's just like, in the past has been a nervous performer, as you said. And so it's just like, yeah, live album is not a given. But a live album that's technically a cover album of a lot, like, a live cover album of someone else's live performance just feels like so her.

Like, of course, that would be the thing that she does. And I think, like, it ups her cover mastery to the next level. Like, it's like, I'm going to create this. I'm going to do it in full. I'm going to, as you say, like, reenact it almost like a cosplay. Yeah. And in the process, like, really shows us a different side of her, even if she is, you know, like, sort of inhabiting Bob Dylan or trying to. Yeah.

No, there's not a lot of banter. There's not a lot of, like, stopping and saying, like, oh, you know, I really wanted to put this project together. and it's, you know, it's so important and special to me. Like, she's very in, she's Bobby Z. Bobby D., whatever, as soon as she walks out on that stage. An album that I've been thinking about as we've started talking about this is, it's wild to think about this now, but it was, I think, 10 years ago, the screaming females put out a record called Live at the Hideout

that they're recorded in Chicago. And the thing that I love about that record, apart from their incredible playing on it, is they got Steve Albini to record that. And it's not the craziest thing in the world. He had worked with them in the studio. And, you know, it's Steve Albini, so it's going to sound good. You sort of know who you're hiring. But the thing about Steve Albini as a recording engineer is that his trademark is all about capturing the sound of the room. The thing that, you know, was so revelatory to people about the albums that he made with, you know, Nirvana and PJ Harvey and the Pixies is that he really wanted to lean into the sort of natural ambience and reflections of the space rather than the sort of kind of tightly laminated, you know, pop production that that kind of pretends that there isn't really a real space that, you know, all of his recordings sort of take place in a specific place in his specific place in his specific moment in time. And it seems like, you know, they hired him for that reason. Yeah. And I think that's like, like that's sort of like, I'm going to place not just the band in this space and time, but also the listener in this space and time. Like that is something

that the live album does that's very special because I know that we were talking about before the show kind of the idea of like a live album kind of forces close listening or it forces you to like listen to, you know, the entirety of the set or now we're in this moment where it's like people don't really listen to full albums. People are like listening to lead back music. It's like music is just kind of this thing that you put on in the background. It's very malleable. And for an artist to be like, you know, I recorded this set and it's very meaningful to me that like we presented in its entirety with the banter, with the sounds of the room, with the audience, like that feels like an incredibly special.

request for an artist to make in 2024, when people are not sitting down with artists albums and bodies of work, maybe the way that they intended to. So it's really, it's like the live album really asks you to like time travel a bit and be in the space, which is like nice. I mean, I guess every album is asking you to time travel. They do, but but shape shift. I don't know. No, but I think you're onto something because the thing that I kept thinking listening to the palehound record. was this feels sort of playlist proof, not in the sense that I wouldn't want to playlist any of these songs, but if I ran across one of them in isolation, I would feel very compelled to click through and see where it came from. Because it carries with it the imprint of a larger experience, and I feel like I wouldn't want to miss out on that. Hazel, to close us out, I wonder if we can be a little disclosing and share a live album that's meant a lot to us, Does that sound okay? Yeah, it sounds good to me.

Okay. I think we can zoom out a little here. We don't have to keep the scope small, the artist small. Let's just say a 21st century live album, so excluding, you know, whatever, the classic monoliths, your Brampton comes alive or, you know, Simon and Garfunkel's Concret in Central Park, all of these things that are sort of, they're going to make a Rolling Stone list every year. But a 21st century live album that's stuck with us, and I'm going to go first because mine is a little controversial. So I am on record as somebody who really enjoys the early albums by Fallout Boy.

I think that working within the conventions of like Warped Tour Emo or whatever you want to call it, they made these really inventive, fun, power pop records that were just immaculately constructed. In 2008, they released a live album called Live in Phoenix, and the consensus among Fallout Boy fans is that this album is pretty bad. And honestly, I generally agree. The mix is rough. The guitar tones are kind of goofy. Even the crowd noise feels weirdly unbalanced.

Like, everything is just kind of flat and underwhelming and off. It really seems like they didn't totally know how this was going to go. And yet, as a document, I find it really fascinating because I think it demonstrated that what these guys were doing is actually really hard. I mean, they were plenty popular at the time, but they were also something of a cultural punchline slash punching bag. I think Patrick Stump is an incredible singer. He's somebody who grew up really loving soul and pop and emulating them in his singing, happened to make friends in Chicago hardcore, and somehow he made all of that work together.

And you can tell on this album, he is having a tough time singing. He is constantly out of breath. He's using, like, tricks and kind of bending his voice to be able to hit. notes instead of coming at them confidently. It's hard to listen to in some ways, but it's also a reminder that bringing a really sophisticated pop sensibility to a situation where you have these loud distorted guitars and Pete Wentz screaming in your ear is kind of a tall order and it kind of underlines the specialness of the music. So that's my pick. They did learn from that. If you watch live follow-out boy videos from after that point, they're much more polished and put together.

But I think if you follow somebody for a long time, having a misfire like this, on record can be really valuable because it sort of helps you understand what drew you to them in the first place. Yeah. Okay, that was a weird one. I hope you have something a little easier to love. I have a very controversial pick. No, it's not controversial at all.

It might be even a little basic, but mine is Homecoming, which is Beyonce's live album. It kind of functions as her, like, greatest hits album. It's the live album version of Baychella, you know, her performances at Coachella. that were also a Netflix live film as well, so it's kind of cheating. It's like a movie and an album. But I just like I listen to that album constantly in full. I feel like I have to listen to it in full because there are just so many moments of masterful mixing and transitioning. I got so sidetracked preparing for this podcast because I had to keep listening to.

the moment on that album where she does hold up and then it transitions so perfectly into countdown. You let this good love always keep the top tier five star, becksy loving in the car like make their war, make they woole like highly like the boulevard. And I can hear the audience at Coachella raging behind the song and I feel like I'm raging with them like I'm so excited. That transition is just like blows my mind and yeah, it's just like all the best. best Beyonce songs mixed to perfection. And, you know, she, she's not messing up. Yeah. She's doing it like crazy perfect.

But yeah, it's just, it's a really great document of that performance. And every time I put it on, I feel, I feel the energy of that crowd, like in my body as I listen to it. Sing it time. Well, we'll have to end our discussion there. but listeners, if you have a favorite live recording, particularly one that's a little bit off the beaten path, we want to hear about it. There's plenty of representation out there for, you know,

cheap trick at Buda Khan or whatever. But if you love a live album that probably wouldn't make it into a Rolling Stone best-of list, write us at all songs at npr.org and let us know. That is it for today's new music Friday. Next week, back to school is coming in hot, sorry kids, and Sabrina Carpenter, who quanted, quietly took command of the summer of 2024 with her song, Espresso, will soft launch the fall

album season with her sixth LP short and sweet. Also coming next week, new albums from Sophie Tucker, Fontaine's DC, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. We can't wait to share those with you. In the meantime, you can send your feedback on today's episode to all songs at npr.org. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash music newsletter. And remember, you can get this show sponsor free and support our work by joining NPR Music Plus. Go to plus.npr.org slash NPR Music or search for NPR Music in Apple Podcasts to sign up. Today's episode was produced by Karen Zemora. Our editor is Jacob Gans. I'm Dauid Tyler Amin. And I'm Hazel Sills. Join us next week for more new music Friday. Until then, happy listening.