NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Jan. 17

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

NPR Music's Stephen Thompson welcomes aboard Kara Manning of New York City public radio station WFUV to discuss the best new albums hitting streaming services on Friday, Jan. 17. Featured Albums• Mac Miller, 'Balloonerism'• The Weather Station, 'Humanhood'• jasmine.4.t, 'You are the Morning'• Victoria Canal, 'Slowly, It Dawns'• Blue Lake, 'Weft'Check out our long list of albums out today and stream our New Music Friday playlist at npr.org/music.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

A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language. All right, let's make some magic. It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm here with Kara Manning from WFUV in New York City. Hey, Kara. Hi, Stephen. Thank you so much. It is a pleasure to have you.

Tell me about the show you do on WFUV. Well, I'm the host of UK&Y on WFUV in New York. It airs Sunday nights from 11 p.m. to midnight. It is a free format. at Free For All, which focuses primarily on new releases from Britain and beyond, all genres, and has live sessions too with bands and artists over the last few years from English teacher, self-esteem, hot wax porridge, little Sims, dry cleaning, many others. And that's what I focus on. I'm sort of a little obsessed about what's happening on, the UK side of things.

Love it. Well, we're going to be talking about music from all over the world. Today, we've got a ton of great stuff, including new music from the Weather Station, Jasmine Forty, and more. But first up, we've got a new record called Balloonerism from the late rapper Mac Miller. Okay, I went to sleep faded and I woke up invisible. I keep the ingredients, but I got the kitchen full. Thoughts are cynical. Actions unpredictable. Supermodel bitches hold auditions in my swimming pool.

This feeling is feeling pretty invincible. Greatest life reciprocal. So, I'm a come back an eagle. So for evil, the wine chill to hell. I gave my life to this shit. Already kill myself. No, no, no, no.

We ain't the same, homie. The world afraid to change, what it changed on me. Always been the realest, keep the same homes. So for those who weren't aware, Mack Miller died in 2018. He was only 26. It's actually about a month after he performed a bunch of songs at the tiny desk. You know, he was putting out this record called Swimming.

And shortly after it came out, he died. from a drug overdose. You know, since his death, you know, his estate has released a couple of albums, has kind of completed a couple albums with his, you know, with the vocals that he had recorded and kind of finished some of the projects that he was working on. And this one is his first posthumous album in five years. It follows a record called Circles, five years to the day. And it kind of completes a project that he had been working on in like 2013 and 2014. And not only that, but Poignantly, it's released two days before what would have been, I think, on Sunday his 33rd birthday. And, you know, for people who've really grown, you know, attached to his voice over the years and attached to his storytelling and kind of the vulnerability of what he does,

it's really, it's really beautiful and sad to kind of revisit him here. In many ways, this record kind of feels like a mixtape. You know, they're bringing in a couple of guests, you know, Siza pops up early. on this record on a track called DJ's Chord Organ. And then late on this record, there's a song called Transformations that has a kind of quote-unquote guest feature from this character that Mac Miller had developed in like 2013 called Delusional Thomas, which is like kind of, it's kind of this horror core character that Mac Miller had been developing, you know, while he was really struggling with substance abuse.

And so it's kind of bringing in a bunch of different ideas and there's, you know, kind of different production techniques at work here during a phase of his career in which, you know, he's still developing his voice and still finding himself. And so it's very bittersweet to kind of revisit him. Okay, said All right, psychopathic thinker, hyperactive drinker Ooh my shit up with a thumb up like Henry Winkler My bitch like a cane cover

Put it in her spinker Apparently that the recording of a lot of this Happened over the course of a week And then his attention kind of sprawled to the faces mixtape So there's elements of this album that actually Sort of appeared earlier on the faces The thing that I found so beautiful about this record, in addition to like its sort of jazz flourishes and psychedelic roundabouts, was how it's just rich with so many ideas and so many sort of supple turns of phrase.

Like I found myself jotting down things that he was saying throughout this album. I mean, there's a track on here called Funny Papers. Some of the answer in the gibberish of an old drunk All he said was he's in no rush If I could just pay my rent by Tuesday I bet I'd be rich by April Fool's day The moon's wide awake with a smile on his face As a smuggle constellations in a suitcase

Don't you love silence Everything quiet but the music Some of the phrases that he writes Don't you love silence Everything quiet but the music or my mistake, I misplaced all my remembers. I mean, it's really beautiful. There's funny papers in particular,

which is accompanied by drums and sort of the skittering chords of piano. And I think, I believe, Thundercat on bass. There's one line to smuggled constellations in his suitcase. I mean, he is such a gifted writer. And I think that that's what so blew me away about listening to this. It was a beautiful, but a very painful, listen. But I fear that

Trouble soon is fire. As is so often the case, don't surrender. My mistake I misplaced all of my remembers. Baby there's a little vacation in the dresser.

Day one for depression and turn for your tapper. Just pay my rib by Tuesday. I bet I be a rich. As is so often the case with posthumous records, you get these strange echoes that feel like premonitions.

Very much so, yeah. You know, at times. You know, Mac Miller rapped a lot about drugs, rapped a lot about his experience, kind of battling substance abuse issues. There's, you know, a track called Manichens that references drugs and his own death. Well, my good days are exactly like the bad ones. My bitch say, a lot of fight of laws of attraction.

I've always been terrified of ending up normal. We all search for and end up finding us. God is like the school bell. He won't tell you when your time is up. Shit to end up working out. Why do we wonder why it does? There's a track called Rick's Piano, which has this refrain of what does death feel like.

Addition to these poetic flourishes, there's also just some really blunt and plain spoken sorrow and worry and sense that his time on earth may be limited. Deborah Downer, too, is another track where it's explicitly very much about drugs and about, and then that segues into stone, so that you can almost feel that, that struggle that he's constantly facing with his own addiction, and that release of depression into the drug use, into alcohol. And I can't read her mind.

She wrote a different story. Oh, well, redemption is a funny bitch. The devil always be right where the money is. Somebody got to be watching you, but no one is. It's kind of crazy life could be this. simple nothing's coincidence my best friend packed his things saw him in the car I haven't seen him since I guess I understand he always got the chills when he saw a room full of rolled up hundred dollar bills yeah even pills turn to powder babe

pills turn the powder pills turn to me and crush him down if pills can turn to powder then it's So that's balloonerism. That's the new posthumous album by the late rapper Mac Miller. Next up, we've got a new record by The Weather Station. The Weather Station has a new record called Humanhood. It's a hot day and shitty. There's weeds on the breakers. There's kids throwing tantrums and circling... It's Tamara Lindeman's seventh album. extension of her longtime climate activism, but one that also feels particularly resonant at the start of 2025 as we reel from the Los Angeles wildfires and what lies ahead for U.S. climate policy. But also, it's a very deeply personal album for her as the weather station because she's been

very open about the fact that she has been dealing with some mental health struggles, as many of us have. And she walked into the recording of this album with sort of half-finished ideas and compositions. The Weather Station really functioned as a full band in the construction and the evolution of humanhood. And you can very much hear it. It feels experimental in some ways. And in other ways, it made me really think in more ways than one, how much she reminds me of Beth Gibbons and PJ Harvey or even Cassandra Jenkins. Sure.

And how she constructs an overall mood, like sort of a rapacious expressiveness about what she wants to say and how hard it is to say those things. The weather station has such an interesting sound because there's this, there's this gentility to it. And these arrangements that are kind of constructed in this almost jazzy folk pop sound that can feel a little frictionless at first. And you only have to listen to it for a few minutes before you really get this deep undercurrent of unease.

And that's, you know, where kind of what you were talking about thematically, how much their songs are about kind of environmental devastation. And, you know, there's a track on here that I made note of, you know, where it has this kind of smooth quality to it, but I just kept getting that, like, I keep coming back to that word, knees. And then I look, and the track is called irreversible damage. That's what you get with this band is this sense where it works as like vibey, low key, pretty music. But you don't have to listen very closely or for very long to really get a sense of chaos,

to get a sense that all is not right with the world. And I think that tension really has kept this band super interesting over the course of seven records and has kind of kept me coming back. And at the same time, you can still find these moments of beauty that come through. There's a track on this record called Sowing. To name check another great Canadian singer-songwriter, has this kind of feist-like delicacy to it that I really, really loved and really, really connected with. sewing this extraordinary lyric on this. I'm sewing together a year from boredom, from love, from fear and magnolia petals on the ground, pink on brown, on the street. Some people don't want to see the seams.

I mean, my God, the writing is so... There's a lot going on in just those few lines, right? She's spilling forth this sort of emotional tide of what she's feeling, what she's struggling. and sort of presenting it in a way that is really full of vulnerability and traction. Lindemann got so much attention for ignorance, which was really her breakthrough album in a lot of ways. For an album, not a state of... Oh, yeah, yeah, for not, yeah, our album ignorance, I should say, yes.

I'm off, I often attract attention for ignorance. Me too. But in many ways, I feel like humanhood is, the best thing that she's done to date because it's like she's thrown all caution to the wind that she is just laying everything out quite frankly and brutally. And she

has this exceptional band that sort of boys her and her words and her ideas in a way that feels seamless. So that's Humanhood. It's the new album by The Weather Station. We've got some more really, truly terrific records we're going to be

talking about that are out today. But first, let's take a quick break. It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm here with Kara Manning from WFUV talking about the best new albums out today. Next up, a wonderful record by the artist Jasmine 4T. The album is called You Are the Morning. Things that I do just to stand close to you in the morning light don't even need to hold you tight. Here I listen up Because you see

Me run by the kitchen Sing Because you Brew the tea Through the songs That I've played More than memories Made by that silent

Smile Because meanwhile I know the thoughts To drag your lips To carve The thoughts I know well I'm sure as hell

Don't deserve Who even made you this way? So I know we're dropping this episode on January 17th, so it's a little early to be talking about our favorite albums of the year. But I am so smitten with this record. I think it is so beautiful. It's just built around such kind of uncommon delicacy and vulnerability, but there's this like bare-knuckle strength to this record. Jasmine Crickshank is the first UK signing to Phoebe Bridgers label. Phoebe Bridgers has a label called Satisfactory Records, which is a phenomenal name.

And Phoebe Bridgers signed Jasmine 14. Jasmine Crickshank is a trans woman, put together a band entirely of trans women, and wrote a record in part about the queer community that lifted her up through her transition. And so this is a record about the love of her community, the love of her people, and a romantic love at the center of her life. And so it's not to say there isn't darkness on this record. And it's not to say that there aren't moments of tension and mourning and conflict. But there's also just such generosity and beauty to this record. The story behind how Jasmine found herself,

not only on satisfactory records, but having the whole of void genius on the album and also producing the album is extraordinary. Jasmine, who was originally from Bristol, is now based in Manchester, was opening for Lucy Dacus, handed Lucy demos, which then made their way to Phoebe,

who signed her. But what is extraordinary throughout this album is hearing Julian Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers. On backing vocals, Julian playing just this absolutely extraordinary guitar on a song like Breaking in Reverse. That arrangement really feels like a Phoebe Bridgers or Boy Genius song. Completely, completely. So, yeah, I mean, and not only that, but, like, Jasmine's voice is just so emotive. and you really sense what she went through, which was not easy. I mean, she left Bristol because it was too hard for her after she came out as trans to really be there.

She was rejected by a lot of her friends. Songs like Best Friends House, where you hear of this glorious chorus of Boy Genius behind her, or new shoes, which is a much older song that predated. her coming out. And you hear the emotion of Jasmine going through that song as a woman now. It's an extraordinary record. You say you want it so bad and hide. You say you just don't want it no more. You while you got the chance, you want to chase under with fear and say. Is this what I want?

Is that what I want? Finding a community of people who care about you and love you and support you is so vital in a world that feels so chaotic. And so for me, this record is just coming out at just the right time at a time when I think a lot of us are kind of looking at the world and feeling like things are kind of spinning out of control. And it's like, well, what keeps me tethered to feeling okay is the people around me.

And that's what this record is about. And just even the title, You Are the Morning, as a way of celebrating the people who are giving you this sense of renewal. To me, it feels like an extension of this boy genius story that I love so much and an extension of that music that I love so much

with a new artist who I will follow wherever she goes. The title track, You Are the Morning. You might, such a beautiful. And, you know, Phoebe Bridgers loves Elliot Smith. You can very much hear that Elliott Smith touch in that particular song. You Are the Morning. And the video kind of encompasses what you just said, Stephen, about that sense of being buoyed by friends and finding your own community that will look after you no matter what. Well, that's You Are the Morning by Jasmine 14. very highly recommended. Speaking of very highly recommended, Kara, you brought this one to my attention, so I'm here to thank you for the next record,

which is fantastic. It's called Slowly It Dawns by Victoria Canal. I've been aware of her two EPs that she had released, Well, Well, and Elegie, but I saw her for the first time at South by Southwest in March, then again at Mercury Lounge,

and then most recently in October at London's Earth and Hackney. And I am so impressed by her as a songwriter and also as a bandleader. This album is exquisite. It has two of the songs that really kind of broke her, Swan Song and Black Swan. But more significantly, it's an album that has really both aspects of what she's trying to do, explore her own sexuality in sort of like pure pop

like June Baby and California sober and cake and talk But then the second half of the album becomes more sort of what she's known for these sort of grand wistful ballots that sort of explore her own identity as both a queer woman who has

a limb differentiation as well as exploring grief. There's just a real candor that she offers forth in her life, lyrically on this album, and all with this beautiful guitar work and piano, and I just think that she is really someone to keep an eye on because I think she's going to be a very big deal in the years to come. She's so musically versatile and so sure-footed in the different styles that she's exploring on this record.

My initial take is, you know, I listened to this track. You mentioned June Baby. Gorgeous, gorgeous song. Manages to feel kind of breezy and gloomy at the same time. And, you know, we mentioned Phoebe Bridgers and Boy Genius. It's hitting a little bit of that sweet spot, which is a very, very good thing, if you know my musical tastes. But then, you know, you also mentioned. California Sober, which fits a similar vibe, but with more of kind of deploying her pop instincts

really effectively. You're coming over. California sober. Counting down the minutes like the me kosher. You know I'm a stoner. It's really interesting just watching the arc of her career because as I was Googling around, I'm listening to this record. I'm like, I love this.

Where's this person been all my life? And realized she entered the... Tiny Desk Contest in 2020. We should note that we just opened entries for the 2025 Tiny Desk Contest. Please tell your musical friends. But I went back and watched her Tiny Desk Contest entry. And it is gorgeous. Sit pretty.

Put your faith in me. I can be a muse. Our Olympus in the city need that higher power. Worship in the shower. She's been embraced She's been She's been loud Kiss my neck

Bip my lip Holding my tongue But you're letting this love She's been embraced by some Kind of big name artists You know Chris Martin Kind of helped her get signed to her label She's toured with people like

Hozier and Teddy Swims It feels to me like there is a huge audience Just on the other end of a tipping point That is coming very soon And I would be remiss not to mention that she's won two Ivers, which is a songwriting award in the UK, which is a very big deal. One for Black Swan last year. Just being surrounded by her fans at some of the gigs that I've been in. If she has that same sort of ardent following that you would find with Bibadubi or Boy Genius,

that you feel like this is a woman who is very much speaking to a core group that understand, you know, your frailties are filled with some, self-deprecation and wit, who've also struggled mightily with things. She touches on all of that. She's very much, you know, very active on Instagram and other social media platforms. I just think that she has so much to say and says it so eloquently and with such a depth and sort of prescience about who she is and who she wants to be. You really hear that on slowly at dawns. It is without question, I think, one of the most remarkable debuts I've heard in a long time. That's slowly it dawns by Victoria Canal. We've got one more album and a lightning round to get to, but first let's take a quick break.

It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Kara Manning from WFUV. We've got a lightning round of some of the other records that are out today. But first, we've got one more record we wanted to get to. really beautiful little record called Weft from the artist Blue Lake. So I'm just going to put it out there. I don't want to assume anything about anybody listening to this show, but I'm just going to speculate that if you're listening to this, you might need a little bit of gentility and grace in your life. I say this, I speculate this

because I think this is true of all of us. I think all of us need a little bit of calm and a little bit of beauty. And this record kind of came along and just, just entered my ear holes and went straight to my blood pressure and just lowered it about 10 points. Blue Lake is led by a guy named Jason Dungan. He's American-born based in Copenhagen. And this record is entirely instrumental. It's kind of a mini-album, like five tracks in 32 minutes. And he uses a lot of acoustic instrumentation, a lot of guitar. and zithers, homemade implements that he uses to create these kind of drones and hypnotic songs that really kind of breathe and ripple in ways that are very soothing. It felt for me like it was this Scandinavian concept of Hugo, kind of warmth to weft,

you know, kind of being tucked under a duvet. And we all won an album or a mini album to soothe frayed nerves. And this really did it for me. I did not want to peel myself a wave from the atmosphere that Jason creates here. Tracks like the forest and oceans and Tatara, which is named after a volcano in the Andes, that apparently Jason's father, who was a geologist studied for many, many, many years. This sort of takes you along a wooded path, you know, looking for slants of sun between the trees. I mean, you very much get lost in where he's taken.

you. It might be a mini album, but it really does feel like an excursion that is of great length and care. Take that excursion. We're heading into the weekend. It's going to make you feel so much better. That is weft by the artist Blue Lake. Obviously, we could not get to every worthy piece of music that is out today. So we thought we'd do a quick lightning round just to kind of run through some of the other titles that are out there that we also recommend. I want to start with a wonderful Malian band called Songhoi Blues. They're back with their fourth album. It's called Heritage.

And it shows kind of a softer side of Songhai Blues' desert blues sound while still mixing in a lot of old and new sounds. It's a beautiful record. I really love Ella Minus' new album, Dia. Ella Minus is Colombian-born Gabriella Jimeno. She released her debut in 2020 called Acts of Rebellion, but I do think that this follow-up is really even more interesting. It has her really flexing her chops as a producer on this album.

And I just find her really an exhilarating producer very much in line for me of like Daniel Avery and Kelly Lee Owens. And I just love this new album. Riffin book shall be brought in which all is contained whereby the world is judged. records like his perfect debut record back in 1998. He's written operas. He's performed a series of concerts singing Judy Garland songs. He even recorded an album of Shakespeare sonnets set to music. His latest is an ambitious opera called Dream Requiem that features, among others, Merrill Streep. Such travail must not be in vain. Righteous judge of vengeance award the gift of forgiveness before the day of reckoning. I've grown as one guilty. My face blushes with guilt.

That brings us to the end of our show. This episode was produced by Simon Rentner and edited by Otis Hart. The executive producer of NPR Music is Saraya Mohamed, and her boss is Keith Jenkins, NPR's vice president of music and visuals. We'll be back next week to talk about new albums from FCA Twigs and others. I'll be joined by Desiree Moses from Virginia member station, WNRN. Until then, take a moment, be well, and treat yourself to lots of great music.