NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Oct. 25

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

NPR Music's Ann Powers and Hazel Cills are your guides to the week's most compelling new releases. Featured albums:• Amythyst Kiah, Still + Bright• Soccer Mommy, Evergreen• Laura Marling, Patterns in Repeat• Elmiene, Anyway I Can• Anna Butterss, Mighty VertebratePlus: A discussion of unconventional album release strategies.Check out the complete list of albums out Oct. 25 and stream our New Music Friday playlist at https://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

What happens when you walk out your door right now? Do you see like lots of giant skeletons everywhere you go? Because that's what's happening in my neighborhood. I do. Yeah, I live in New York and I live in a very suburban neighborhood of Brooklyn Dutmus Park. People have brought the Halloween decorations. They like witches, cobwebs, anything you can think of. It's out there. East Nashville definitely celebrates Halloween. This year it is about these giant skeletons that you can. can get at like Home Depot. They're massive. They're just like towering everywhere. I'm trying to read something into it like a cultural. Why are we so driven to purchase giant skeletons and put them in our yards? What does it say about our psyche? Death is here. It's bigger than ever. This isn't funny. This is quite dark. Death and candy. That's what it's all about this season.

It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm Ann Powers, critic and correspondent with NPR Music, and I am here with the brilliant and beautiful Hazel Sills to talk about the best and most discussion-worthy albums out today, October 25th. Later on today's show, we're going to talk about some of the unusual release strategies, even crazy ones, that artists are cooking up right now.

An album inside of a fake rock? like that actually happened. But before we get to that, let's focus on a few albums that you can listen to today in all the ways that you're used to doing. The first record we're going to talk about today is from Tennessee native Amethystquia.

It's called Still and Bright. And man, this is such a great combo of elements. You know, we just got to hear a little bit of it to set it up because this is very October music, I think. my skin. God damn, I'm so repressing. Still learning. My screams and my dreams are met with silence.

As I stare into the black mirror. That's someone. Give me spurt. Give me spade. Give me spank. This is Amethyst Kea's second album for Rounder Records. And it's produced by Butch Walker, who is a really popular producer with a lot of musicians I know here in Nashville. And in L.A., also, he's worked from tons of artists, ranging from Green Day to

Fall Out Boy to Bethany Cost to Best Coast and Jewel. Amethysts Kia is clearly making a jump on this record towards some kind of mainstream. Amethyst might be best known as a member of the all-black women banjo quartet, Our Native Daughters. Her solo work before this is this really, really interesting mix of American Roots music rooted in her banjo playing and what she loves best, which is like goth, indie, rock and roll. I mean, we're talking about someone who worked in a hot topic as a teenager. And I hear that in the music. It doesn't feel like the work of a singer-songwriter. It feels like the work of like a big band. Oh, that's so interesting. This album, like, I wasn't sure what I was expecting.

Maybe something like rootsier or like slightly more just focused on her playing as someone that people know as being like an incredible banjoist. But this is like a fantasy album. Like it's full of references to The Matrix and like Avatar The Last Airbender, which is so fascinating because I think she's built it as an album about her. inner world. But I felt like I should be listening to it, like, next to, like, an enormous bonfire in the middle of the woods somewhere. Like, very like, are you afraid of the dark? Like, we all come around this fire and I'm going to tell you stories about ghosts and devils and things like that. So that is the energy that's contained in this album for me. It's very clear on many of these songs, her and her life as a hot topic nerd, as a fantasy

loving nerd. Even the first track, which also features the great Southern singer songwriter S. G. Goodman, it's called Play God and Destroy the World. And it's basically a setup for the whole record because it's like when I was a kid, this is how I survived. This is how

I thrived was through my imagination and through these stories. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're both kind of like would you say they're like sort of outsiders to American music right now? I mean, it's a tricky thing. because yes, they're outsiders, but they're also very much insiders in the Nashville scene.

You know, I would consider them kind of young royals in Americana music, but they're bringing in outside perspectives. And, you know, this is a thing, I think, that's really important to understanding Amethystquia's music. And the music of artists like S.G. Goodman or Joya Lottokun, who we talked about last week on the show, which is that no matter how lauded they are here in Nashville, among other artists.

They're still black and or queer artists living in and around a state that's not welcoming, at least on some levels, to people who are not, you know, cis, het, white, straight people. I mean, I think the thing that I felt most listening to this record was a real sense of, like, for all of its darkness,

there's a real sense of, like, play. It just sounded like an album where someone was like, okay, I'm really just going to go for it. and have fun with this. Even in a love song, like Dark Matter, she's weaving these images in there that are not what you would expect,

especially in a kind of a countryish-rootsy love song. It still has the astral imagery. This is like Octavia Butlerland that she's creating, and it just really works. Let's just notice that that song, is a great example, how Amethus is using her banjo in these songs. It never sounds traditional. And that is so important, I think, on this record. She's really expanding the vocabulary of the banjo. That's Amethus Kea with her album Still and Bright.

Let's stay in Nashville for a little while longer for another artist working kind of in the singer-songwriter realm, but really such a different sound. And this is Sophie Allison who records as Soccer Mommy. Her new record is called Evergreen. So Hazel, are you a soccer mommy fan? Have you been following Sophie's career? When I heard these songs, they definitely reminded me of what her music sounded like on her debut album, Clean. And I think there were many moments listening to this album where I heard a song and I was like, I can picture the bigger version of this song.

So I definitely hear the restraint, but it's a beautiful restraint. Like I think she really wanted to focus on her songwriting for this album, and I think the album really does zoom in on that. Here we're still dealing with loss, and there's a lot of pain expressed on this record, but there's a kind of a tempered quality to her lyrics, and I feel that's reflected in the production and the way the songs are put together as well.

She's really processing on this record. You know, a song like Salt and Wound, which is probably the heaviest song in some ways on the record, there's still like a kind of a philosophical aspect to it. I don't know. It feels a little more. I know, she's getting older. Maybe it's just that.

I know. It definitely feels like I'm in my late 20s. I'm getting older. album. I mean, even that song changes. So much of that song is about realizing that everything in your life is just going to fade into a memory. I think this is a wonderful fall listen also. I think she released it at exactly the right moment. It definitely has that kind of like leaves are, you know, crunching underfoot. You're wearing a sweater. You're walking toward a bonfire where you'll meet Amethus Kea and go on an adventure.

Yeah, the seasons are changing. Your life is changing. This is the album for that. It's not like Sophie doesn't have any fun on this record, connecting it back to Amethus Kea. There is that song, Abigail, which I read is about her imaginary wife that she created in the game Stardue Ballet.

I love that so much. That's so good. Somebody needs to write a huge piece on all of them. the avatar relationships that are now being explored in pop songs. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. That's Sophie Allison, otherwise known as Soccer Mommy, and her album Evergreen. Well, I have another album about changes. Huge changes.

Laura Marling has a new album out called Patterns in Repeat. It is her first album in four years, and she wrote, recorded, produced it all at home, in her studio in the months after giving birth to her first child, her daughter. And the album is basically like a catalog or almost sort of like a diaristic container of the feelings and the things that she was singing to her daughter, who was like right in front of her when she was making this music. You and your dad are dancing in the kitchen. Life is slowing down, but it's still bitching. I got myself a ride, but I could break it.

It's a really beautiful record, and she has said that, like, you know, after she gave birth, she had fully expected to, like, take time off for making music and, like, take time off from songwriting to, like, raise her child. And she found the space to make music. And it feels like an album almost of the things that she was saying to her daughter. She sort of blew up those moments. into these big, beautiful folk songs. I have to say I'm also glad it's not a full-on album only of, like, lullabies or, you know,

Bob Dylan Forever Young style songs. Today with age, my body is bent, and against my will, I must relent. It also really beautifully captures what it's like to be a new mother and have all this weird time. and space that is very full of urgent needs, you know, that you have to feed your child, you have to clothe your child, you have to change their diaper, all of these things, but also is very empty of what made your life,

what structured your life before you became a parent. And I just feel that that's how these stories arose for her. I mean, I'm completely projecting on her, but there are songs on this record where she's considering past relationships, like the song, Your Girl, for example, which I can't quite figure out. It's about a lover or a parent, I'm not sure.

And so you turned your life wound. It's funny how those things I work out somehow for the clown. You know, sometimes you let me down. So no one cares. if off I will walk alone into this world Please be your girl There's even one, Caroline, that I think is kind of almost like a parody of a folk song Which I could totally imagine her just sitting around on any given afternoon,

feeling a little isolated, plunking around on her guitar. What a way to change an evening Was my number hard to find? It's a very spare record. It really has that spontaneous feel, and that's what I love about it. And I don't necessarily think of Laura Marling as a very spontaneous artist. No, no, a very sort of... Structured.

Big Thinker. Very structured, big thinker. What's fascinating is that her last studio album, the one she put out in 2020, called Song for Our Daughter, was a collection of songs that she imagined writing to her few years. daughter. She's a planner, clearly. She's only 34. Like I knew that she started her career as a teenager, but I was like crazy. She's always stood out for me, you know, as a very special artist, not just her voice and her intonation, but the structures of her songs, it feels very different

than most singer-songwriters. It's certainly different than most American singer-songwriters. It's certainly different the most American singer-songwriters. And I'm not sure if it's because I know she grew up with parents who were involved in the folk world. And she probably must have grown up listening to Sandy Denny and other English folk artists. And that's definitely something she carries through in her work. But there's also this beautiful, it's like a poeticism to what she does. It's highly structured.

And I think on this record, it feels like the structure isn't falling away. but it's just loosening. That's Laura Marling's album. It's called Patterns and Repeat. We're going to take a quick break. We'll have more new albums out today, October 25th, coming right up. Well, Hazel, as you know, this is the year I discovered TikTok. Did I know that? I've discovered some amazing artists, and the next artist I want to talk about is one that I found on TikTok just totally randomly. I think it was this song, Crystal Tears, that blew me away when I heard it from El Mien.

I imagine crystal play. In my corner, I can visualize. Crystal Tears is one of the best songs on El Mien's new EP that's called Any Way I Can. El Mien is a 22-year-old Sudanese English R&B sensation. I don't feel weird using that word sensation because he's making a huge impact. His given name is Abdallah Elamine and he is just a natural talent who wrote his first hit Golden in 2021, only three months after he started making music at all. He went from not making music at all to writing these songs that ended up on fashion runways. A friend of Elmines

was working with Louis Vuitton and picked up one of his songs. Next thing Elmine knows his music is in Virgil Ablo's final runway show for Louis Vuitton. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy? Can you imagine? It's crazy, but it just, you know, that's like the TikTok story. It's kind of the TikTok story completely. I mean, and there's something about El Mien's music, and you really hear it on this EP anyway I can, that has that incredible ease of natural talent.

This is his first for Def Jam. And I think it captures that sense of him as just a talent who didn't need a lot of A&R work, you know, who was just ready to go from the get-go. You say natural. I think there's something very classic about this EP and his talent. And I know that he kind of grew up listening to a lot of R&B and is very inspired by like mid to late 2000s R&B. The interesting thing about this song, Crystal Tears, which I also really love from this EP, is that it feels not like it's from the mid-2000s,

but that it's from like the 70s. Like I'm getting like the spinners from this song. Oh, I love that. The kind of like chime that happens in it. I don't know. I just get the sense from this EP that he's like a student of these references and of that genre. And it's like really modernizing it, but not in such a way where it feels like he's doing something crazy or experimental.

Well, when you point out that, you know, he came up listening to kind of mid-2000s R&B, like Craig David or Usher, or Anthony Hamilton, he's covered Anthony Hamilton, you know, I think about the way in which that music itself often connected back to music of the 70s. Yeah. This does not, to me, sound like retro music. It doesn't sound, it doesn't sound like he's putting on a vintage suit. It's not Leon Bridges. Completely 2024 to me. But at the same time, as you're saying, it has a traditionalist bent. There's a song on here until it's dust.

Let's just, you know, just listen to his, just the pure singing on it. You know that I am like a complete junkie for great vocals. Like that is my number one thing in life, really. And just listening to his voice unfold on a song like until it's dust. It just blows me away. Don't let me give up on you sooner. Hope honesty can save it. Oh, tear drums in the stains and writing cry for you in your arms.

I'm fearless. Hope that I am in your trust. I definitely feel like we're going to be paying attention to El Mien a lot more in the future. Absolutely. That's El Mien any way I can. Well, I have another album that I wanted to talk about today by the bassist Anna Butters. They are this Australian, originally from Australia, L.A. bassist who has worked with countless artists like Jason Isbell, Phoebe Bridgers, Mackay McCraven, like, basically like one of these go-to musicians that artists love to work with. And they have a new album out today called Mighty Vertebrate, which has a really kind of interesting story.

Anna Butters put out an album, a solo album a few years ago, called Activities, which I loved. Very playful, very experimental, very improvisational. But for this album, Mighty Vertebrate, Anna Butters took a completely different approach and really wanted to, like, sit down. make a prompt for every song on the album and then make a song based on that prompt. You know, I'm going to make a song where the bass doesn't function in the role of the bass, or I'm going to make a song that's going to start with a drum machine.

And the result is an album that is so still very playful, and I feel like sort of still feels a little improvisational, but like goes in so many crazy directions. I definitely feel like there's a little bit of it. there's a freedom in Anna Butter's music and there always is and the way they move between jazz and I guess experimental rock, you know, that they inhabit this kind of third space as a player and as a band leader. But I love that they impose the structures on these songs. And it's not like as a listener I can tell what they are. So I don't, you know, I don't necessarily hear some of the

musical instructions that have been laid down on these tracks. And each one, kind of tells a story or conjures a place. It really reminds me of, you know, of albums by Calexico, for example, or of Rikudor's soundtrack for Paris, Texas. It really conjures that, that dusty Western landscape for me. There isn't a lot of repetition across this album. It's very texturally, you know, diverse. There are parts that are, like, quite funky.

Like, there's that, like, bread rich. There are some moments that are a lot more, electronic, like there's that song, Pokeymans. It's fun music. It's like, you know, people are saying, oh, it's, Anna's connected to post-rock, I guess because Anna plays a lot with Jeff Parker, who, of course, was in Tortoise, and there's a kind of a kingpin of post-rock or whatever. I'm thinking of, like, the Adrian Ballou era of King Crimson, or bands like Henry Cow, English experimental musicians like Fred Frith, back in the 70s and 80s, where it was like rock music, blending with jazz music,

but always there's a comical side to it. It makes me smile. This record makes me smile. That's Anna Butters. Their new record is called Mighty Vertebrate. But that is hardly it for new releases this week. So let's take a quick spin through some of the other records coming today. Also out of Nashville, the country singer Fancy Haygood is releasing American Spirit.

it. This is the album that this amazing vocalist first came to Nashville to make when they were 17 years old and had dreams of being an out queer country star and making it to the top of the country charts. It has a lot of amazing guests on it. Michelle Branch, Nickel Creek's Sean and Sarah Watkins. There's co-writes with Caitlin Smith and Mary Steenbergin actually co-wrote a song on here. Okay. And lots of great producers worked on this. album. It's really great. Fancy Haygood, American Spirit. There's a new project featuring one of my favorite musicians of all time, Tricky. It's called Thies Thaws. It's called 15 days. On this record, Tricky combines forces with Parisian producer Mike Thies, and they recorded it, I think, in 15 days.

And it's a really interesting mix of dancey, electronic music and Tricky's signature, kind of like dark spirit on it. It's really cool. There's a new one from Bad, Bad, Not Good. It's called Mid Spiral, and it combines three previous releases from this undefinable band, now compiled in one release. I wanted to mention a new one from the Bay Area singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet. He got together with the Cumbia band, Kianzave, to make a record called Wake the Dead. And finally, back in Nashville, the excellent and always provocative country singer Kelsey Ballerini

has her fifth album out. It's called Patterns. The Pixies have a new album out today. It's called The Night the Zombies Came. The Australian rock band Amel and the Sniffers also has an album out today called Cartoon Darkness. Lots of spooky albums out today. The 2023 Tiny Desk Contest Winners, Little Moon, have an album out today called Dear Divine. And there is a new release from Katie Gavin, who a lot of people might know is the lead singer of Moona. out today called What a Relief. It is an excellent record. It's so beautiful. It's very Lilith Faircore. And if you haven't heard it yet, you would love it. And there's a song on it called Aftertaste that I would love to single out. And those are a bunch of the albums out,

October 25th, tip of the iceberg, but those are some of our favorites. After the break, we're going to talk about artists breaking the rules of album release strategy here in the streaming age. So something about the Anna Butters album that we didn't talk about that is interesting is that Anna Butters put that album out, Mighty Vertebrate, on a really great Chicago-based label called International Anthem. What International Anthem does is they release their albums physically first or on Band Camp, the full album. So if you want to hear the album, the full album, you need to buy it physically or buy it through a service like Band Camp. You can't just buy individual. tracks. And then they will put their releases out on DSPs or streaming services weeks later.

They do that because they, one, they want you to really engage with an album in its full form, which is not something people do anymore because everyone's listening to playlists or single songs. That's right. And then they also want people to buy music, like own music, whether it's going to a record store and picking up the album or buying it through band camp and owning the files and to me it's just a really interesting and sort of heartwarming strategy in the streaming age. Do you feel like there's like an aesthetic connection between international anthem style, the way the label presents to the world and kind of loosely their roster and how their roster presents to the world and this decision to release physically? Because even though international

anthem releases some of the most future thinking music that's being made today. It also has this, I don't know, the whole vibe of the label is like, it could be 1972, we could be like hanging out with Alice Coltrane. Do you feel like there's a way in which this works for them because the people drawn to their music are already oriented toward these vintage objects that we call albums? So I actually reached out to Anna Butters in International Anthem and sort of asked them about this. And they kind of got back to me and they were like, you know, we don't know quite yet like what the strategy has done for our sales overall. But like it basically sort of just leans into the label and so many of the artists' preferences for, you know, building community around the music that release. And, you know, Anna Butters specifically in a statement that they sent to us,

said that, like, I made this album with the idea in mind that someone was going to listen to it in full. Right. Someone was going to really sit down and engage with it. And so that is one of the reasons that I was drawn to releasing this album on this label and releasing it this way. I think, like, there's a real sort of connection and support from International Anthem for record stores and wanting to support those spaces. and, you know, International Anthem actually published a list of record stores around the world who were stocking mighty vertebrate and sort of directing people to those places. And that's what I'm talking about because, like, the people who want an international anthem release are also probably crate diggers, or a lot of them, you know. They're looking for that, that pristine mini-ripperton record, you know, that they can find in the bins

alongside their Anna Butter's record that they're going to walk out with. But there's also a way in which sometimes these alternative. I can't, okay, I have to just stop myself. I just am calling vinyl albums alternative means of release. Like what dystopia am I? Amethystopia, I need you to come and rescue me from this horrible dystopia I'm living in. Rescue me. You'll only be able to listen to an album via like hologram next year.

Right, chip in my brain. No, but there's a tricksterish aspect sometimes to the way artists do this. and I'm thinking about my fellow Nashvilleian Jack White. His solo album that he released not long ago, he released a final first, and it was only sold at the third man retail stores in Chicago and in Nashville. And actually, Justin Barney,

a friend who works for WNXP down here, texted me a picture of his bicycle basket as he was driving away from the store, having rushed down there on his bicycle, which is the perfect way to buy a Jack White's. album on your bicycle and then put it in your basket. So, you know, there's a playfulness to that, just as there's a playfulness to everything Jack White does and to the way that third man is always referring back to the past. There's like almost, it's, I want to say the word fetishization.

Stop me now. Is that right? I don't know. There are a few other artists this year who have released music in, I guess, quote, alternative, quote, or ways that really sort of emphasize the need to own music physically, buy music. And I'm thinking especially of this very funny kind of trolley UK duo named Two Shell. They are an electronic music duo very much in the vein of like the Chemical Brothers or Disclosure. They have an album out today. Their official debut album called Two Shell as well. And the album's excellent.

So it's so fun and weird. I want to hear a little tushel before we talk about the release strategy. What's interesting about their debut album is that it's technically, it was technically already out, but it was out in the weirdest of ways. Like they had put that album on USB drives and like left USB drives in London clubs for people to find. And they put it inside of like a fake rock. Like I said at the top of the show, they actually, I read this account of one fan getting this fake rock in the mail. and then it was like mushy and you could dig into it and you could pull the USB out of it?

Yes. So they are a duo who is very famous for like putting songs on bandcamp for a few hours or a day and then like if you don't buy it then you'll never hear that song and they'll just take it off bandcamp or they have a whole website where there's like 75 different passwords you can put in to like access unreleased music. So, you know, they gave an interview to the face a few years ago where they said, that, you know, we really wanted to do this to make people feel excited about owning music. Right.

They wanted to kind of change the perceived value of, like, music files, which is not something that, you know, people purchase anymore. But at the same time, I think Two Shells, pranksterism, the fun they have with it is also about, like, critiquing the idea of music as a commodity, you know. there's a kind of secret history to music releases that that connects to that idea. I mean, I go right back to the obvious comparison, which is to the rave era pranksters, the KLF, whose first album, when they released their first album back in 1987, they didn't bother to clear very, very obvious samples, like, for example, Dancing Queen by Abba. And then they actually, like, went to Sweden, I guess, in Toronto. tried to like find Abba and guess what?

Then they got sued and they had to like, you know, pull the album. But instead of just pulling it in an undramatic way, they were supposedly like throwing it over the side of a, of a boat in the middle of the North Sea and setting fire to copies of it. And of course, their most famous prank was, of course, setting fire to a million pounds allegedly. This is what the KLF is all about. I mean, they're always doing crazy things.

But embedded in that is this idea that even by calling music a thing or calling music a commodity, we are kind of veering away from the fundamental quality of music. The music wants to be free. I don't know how that relates, though, to what Anna Butters is saying, where they're basically saying, I also want people to value my output and I want to get paid. So I don't know if those things are in tension. Like it's Two Shell's kind of blazing path through cyberspace where they're discarding things as they go.

I imagine it like space junk falling off their spaceship or something. Is that about valuing music or is that about saying we got to get away from this whole commodification of music? Yeah, I think it is the latter. I think like Two Shell as well, nobody really knows who they are. They release a new press photo of two different people like every few weeks. Like, no one actually knows. I love that.

Who is Too Shell? That's so great. Maybe it's you and me, Hazel. Are we Too Shell? We're announcing on the podcast. We are famed UK Club, UK's Two Shell. I didn't go to Berkeley College of Music, but I am in a famed UK club duo. Yeah, and I also think, like, Too Shell creates this kind of, like, hyper-scarcity.

or like, you know, you talked about, you know, crate, we talked about crate, you talked about, like, people going to third man records to get the album, like, two shell is like, there is a, they have created a world in which you might never be a two shell completest. Right. Because it's too hard. And I do wonder sometimes when artists do this kind of, like, I'm only releasing my album in this very specific way if sometimes it is for stylistic

reasons, like I'm thinking of the artist Cindy Lee, who put out, you know, a. massive, basically a double album this year. Cindy Lee is the project of Canadian musician Patrick Flagell, and the album is called Diamond Jubilee. And the only way you could hear this album was on YouTube or you could buy the album via Cindy Lee's website, which is this very kind of janky GeoCities style website. And it's funny, too, because just this week, Cindy Lee finally, finally put the album on bandcamp and also announced a physical release for next year. But that kind of like initial release strategy of only offering it in a very specific way only kind of added to the mystique

of the record. Don't you remember when it first came out and all these music writers, they were all like, oh, this is the album of the year. And that just took me right back to like, you know, indie rock elitism. But that's, I mean, it is a really interesting and immersive experience. It was kind of hard for me to hear it, I have to say, though, after that hyped release. And the nature of the release of that album actually challenged me, because I felt like there was so much noise around it that was created by this weird release strategy that I couldn't have a pure experience of that record. So I guess that raises a question of can these efforts backfire and absurd. the music, the very music they're trying to promote. I don't know.

I mean, I think in the case of Cindy Lee, it definitely Flagell benefited from it. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Patrick Flago was very clear about why that album was released the way it was, you know, had given interviews about wanting a raise and like people basically begging for pennies on Spotify. And it seemed like there were real kind of economic concerns. I mean, on some of it all comes down to the money, right? It's like it is about artists and their labels, their representatives,

trying to figure out not only how to make money, but what role should money play in the decisions artists make? Like this is a fundamental question that has been with us, I don't know, since lootinists were playing in the courts of kings back in the days, you know? I mean, this has always been a very, very basic question around, the value of music, the ethereal quality of music, which has always posed a challenge in terms of figuring out its economic, or its value as a commodity rather, it's now just so overdetermined because of streaming. And so the desire for like an object that we feel as consumers is mirrored

by the desire for a sense of permanence around what you create, you know, which the artist feels. and that's why we have these weird-ass things happening. I remember a few years ago when everybody started putting their QR codes on all kinds of weird things. I mean, most deaf put his QR code on a T-shirt and that's how you got his album. There was a guy who released an album

by putting a QR code on a soup can. Some people were, you know, handing out toys with QR codes. I got all kinds of weird things in the mail back in those wild days. I also think a lot of them are asking for you to have an experience with the music. Not necessarily the same thing as listening to it. What was that 9-inch Nell's record that Trent Rezner had a larping game? Do you remember he did like a larp?

Oh, here it is. It was called Year Zero. It was an alternative reality game that was designed by a gaming studio called 42 Entertainment that was based on this concept album. that Trent released in 2007. And I remember people were going all around and like trying to find the things, you know, to unlock the different song. So as usual, Trent Resner, everybody's favorite hot dad, you know, onto it before everybody else.

Well, that's it for this week's New Music Friday. Come back next week for new albums by Haley Hendrix, Mount Erie, and drum roll please, The Cure. send your feedback on today's episode to all songs at npr.org. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts and 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 and Apple Podcasts to sign up. Today's episode was produced by Simon Rentner.

Our editor is Jacob Gans. I'm Ann Powers. And I'm Hazel Sills. Come back next week for more new music Friday. Till then, see you out there in the LARPing Circuit. Happy listening.