NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Sept. 26

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Neko Case. Jeff Tweedy. Amanda Shires' divorce album. Evan Miller from member station WYSO in Ohio joins Lars Gotrich to talk about their favorite albums out Sept. 26.The Starting 5- Neko Case, 'Neon Grey Midnight Green'- Jeff Tweedy, 'Twilight Override'- Robert Plant, 'Saving Grace'- Amanda Shires, 'Nobody's Girl'- Cate Le Bon, 'Michelangelo Dying'The Lightning Round- Geese, 'Getting Killed'- Josie, 'A Life of Sweets Alone'- Bitchin Bajas, 'Inland See'- M. Sage, 'Tender / Wading' - Lady Wray, 'Cover Girl' CreditsHost: Lars GotrichGuest: Evan Miller, WYSOAudio Producer: Noah CaldwellDigital Producer: Elle MannionEditor: Otis HartProduction Assistant: Dora LeviteExecutive Producer: Suraya MohamedSee 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

Happy, Beepa, Bebigh, Bebigh, Bebh, Bebh, Behap To Show My Appreciation for Your So Happy. Happy Friday, everyone from MPR Music, it's New Music Friday. I'm Lars Gottrich Subbing in for an Under the Weather, Stephen Thompson, which means this is an old metal show now, so I apologize in face. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm here today with Evan Miller of WYSO in Ohio. Welcome to the show, Evan.

Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. So you're in Ohio. Has fall hit where you live yet? Yes. We came off a like a week of high temps like almost hitting 90 degrees after our fake fall period. Now it's in the 70s and raining about every day. So we've just crash landed directly into what fall looks like now. You know, I'm already thinking about what kind of music I want to be playing. Do you have a go-to fall record? Ooh, right now, maybe one of the earlier grizzly bear ones, which is great timing because

they're touring for the first time in six, seven years. I'm finally going to catch them after never seeing them in their original run. Wonderful. I love that for you. Mine is personally, love is overtaking me by Arthur Russell. Beautiful. Absolute, Fall Classic. So we're here for New Music Friday, and before we get into a lot of the music, we do want to mention two big pop records that we haven't heard this week. There's the new record by Doja Cat called V, and then there's a record by my queen, Mariah Carey. Here for it all, it's her 16th album.

I've enjoyed some of the singles. Are you part of the lamely, Evan? Part of the what? I guess that answers your question. The lamelie. I be part of the lamelie. That's what Mariah Carea fans are called. I suppose not, but the name is very convincing.

I think I maybe should hop aboard. Okay, all right. I'll give you a playlist after this, and you can join us. But we are going to cook off with that album. We did get to hear early. Nico Case, her new album is called Neon Gray, Midnight Green. Hello, Stranger. I'm someone, a jangling lust, panting on a sliver of a dusty pool of light. It fires hue. Is a merichino cherry.

Room temperature I Back lit by the bar Your tongue it should strike You're all buried blood And sound check blue Nico Case, this is her first album In eight years. Her first album This decade, she's put out

albums within pornographers, the indie rock band that she's been with basically for the last 20-some years and she has this incredible discography full of records that span country, Americana, Andy Pop, Duwop, kind of whatever is her will. And this is a record that I think has made me not reconsider her, but re-appreciate her talents as a singer, as a songwriter, and for the first time, a record that she's produced entirely herself.

What are your initial impressions of this record at him? For a first time producing her own album, knocked it out of the park. It sounds unbelievable. I saw in press when the album was announced. She wanted it to sound like people. People are all over the record, like brushing of sleeves and chairs moving and that sort of thing.

It has this very kind of earthy, lived in sound that I really like. The second track, tomboy gold sounds like. almost like Scott Walker to me. It's just like her and saxes. I didn't know that she was cool like that. I mean, she's only one of the coolest persons alive. Yeah, she does a lot on this record and really stretches in a lot of directions. It's brilliant.

Where is not? By the highway and the exit and the overpassed in the triangle, made by the highway and the exit and the overpassed. In the triangle made by the highway and the exit. The thing that, like, I think has always really floored me about Nico Kay's is not only the way that she approaches her lyrics, but the way that she delivers them. My favorite one is, I'm a meteor shattering around you, and I'm sorry I've become a solar system. This is a really fun one to sit with the lyric sheet and read along and just listen to. how she delivers everything, try to pick apart all the things she's like rapping into some of these lyrics.

Like sometimes with Nico Case, I don't really know what she's singing about, but I get the feeling of it, that idea of it sounds first and it feels later. She's always been such a master of evocation where these unconscious images that anyone can understand, but they don't get spelled out. So the title track from Neon Gray, she says, You taste exactly like disbelief, because who am I, that I don't die when you kill me. I'm like, what? Yeah.

What this album has really also motivated me to do is, I recall that she has a memoir that came out earlier this year. Reading her lyrics while listening to this, I really would like to see how she writes a book now. I think that would be just as compelling as what she puts. to music. I'm going to find out. That is Nico Case. Her new album is called Neon Gray, Midnight Green.

Next up, an album from Jeff Tweety. The Wilco Frontman's new album is called Twilight Override. The gas is growing. cracks in the sidewalks where the shops shut down. Tiny flower, I'm jumping.

Tiny flower, I'm jumping over. This is approximately the one millionth album from Jeff Tweedy. I think we're at the point where we don't talk about how many songs Jeff Tweedy has written, but how many songs Jeff Tweedy hasn't written? The number is getting smaller and smaller every day. Anyway, Jeff Tweedy, the front man of Wilco, the great Chicago rock band. He's had

tons of other different projects over the last three decades of music, including several solo albums. And this one is, this one's a triple record, Evan. There are three of them, and there are 30 songs, and it is nearly two hours long.

And I am wondering, did you manage to get through it more than twice in our time in our prep? Or were you just skipping around and hoping to find the gems? I think twice was about as much as I could do. I enjoy it, and there's a lot to dig into, but in one sitting for two hours, it's a little easier to chop it up. I, you know, I love Wilcoe.

Me too. I have rode hard for them for many years. But, you know, at a certain point, if you're not obsessed with the band, you're not keeping up with every single thing that every member does over the years. And Wilco is one of them. So they're a band that I kind of like drop in and out when I feel like it's time. And so it's been a while. It's been a while since I've spent, like, I've actually sat down with a Wilco or a Jeff Tweedy solo record. You know what?

I'm actually glad that I ran through this record twice because I found these little spots that I wasn't expecting because I never know the difference. What's the difference between a Wilco song and a Jeff Tweedy song? I don't know. That line with his solo stuff seems to blur pretty quickly. Like, this is a Jeff Tweedy solo record because he says it is. I think where I've sort of landed, and there are a few songs that do this for me. There's a song called Mirror.

I flagged that one also. The structure of the song feels a little too inside for Wilco, where the textures are more on the stranger side of what they might have done in the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot era, which Wilco doesn't really do much anymore, at least as far as I can tell. And so it's nice to hear him explore those textures and ideas. This is a song that loves to expand, but it likes to creep into itself.

And I thought, well, maybe that's the way into understanding what makes a Jeff Tweety song a solo Jeff Tweety song. One thing that he does multiple times on this record that I really appreciated, there are a few songs that are, they're in a kind of very meta about writing songs, how he's doing it, and what he's doing. It's like halfway through the record, a throwaway lines. It's like very spare. It's a love song, but it's also about writing a love song.

I don't want to write about all the things I'm still working out. Terrible things you wouldn't believe So I'll just leave you with these And there's another song that caught me by surprise And it caught my colleague Robin Hilton by surprise So if you scroll up in your all songs considered feed You'll see an interview that he did with Jeff Tweedy About Twilight Override

And he specifically pointed out the song New Orleans It's a song where you don't really know what it's about And I don't think you have to, but the guitar sort of does the speaking for it. And Jeff Tweedy tells this beautiful story in that interview with Robin. He was working on this song during the day, and then at night, he went to go see Steve Albini, and he died that night. And it's just like, the song almost feels like a premonition because it's a lyrics. I trade all four limbs for a parade in New Orleans. And so, you know, New Orleans famously likes to celebrate those who have passed on to another

life. And that's just some cosmic stuff, man. I don't know. There's no better way to put it. That is Jeff Tweedy. His new album is called Twilight Override. We've got three more exciting records that we want to dig into, plus a lightning round of recommendations.

But first, we're going to take a quick break. From NPR Music, it's New Music Friday. I'm Lars Gottrich, sitting in for Stephen Thompson. I'm here with Evan Miller of WYSO in Southwest Ohio. Evan, WISO is not a full-time music station, but you still seem to have your hands full over there. Tell our audience a little bit about what you do. Absolutely. I'm the assistant music director and host of our midday music program at WISO, as well as our sister music channel, Novaponic. FM that we launched last November, so it's almost a year old. WISO is a mixed format station. We've been that way since we were founded in 1958.

We like to say we have like four pillars, news, storytelling, preservation, and of course, music. We have over 20 local hosts making 17 locally hosted shows, a little bit of everything. blues, hip-hop, jazz, funk, and R&B. We have a Cajun music show. We have folks in our Haitian community next door in Springfield hosting a Caribbean music show now. We like to get as much of anything as we can to serve our community.

All right, we're all right for to do. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy this first music. And right after this one, we're going to have PDX on the mic. Let's go. Okay, next up, we've got a new album by a man who needs no introduction, Robert Plant. So, obviously I said no introduction, but if you need something to go on, Robert Plant, he is the former lead singer of Led Zeppelin, and in 2007, he put out this album that basically re-sculpted his entire career,

raising sand, the record that he did with Alison Kreuzzi. where Robert Plant really dug into his heels about the history of American music. And ever since then, Robert Plant has been digging into that area for more gold. And he's had a lot of different bands that he's worked with. The name of this record is Saving Grace, but the band is also called Saving Grace. And this record is doing a lot of what he does best, where he is looking at the history of American Blues music. So I'm curious of him, what was your big takeaway from this record? One of the things that I like about these later career Robert Plant records is especially the

way he's become like an interpreter and a curator of like old American music and traditional music. I think the low cover, which is obviously not a blues tune or a traditional song, but not his first time doing a low song either. the direction they take that song is fascinating. I have to talk about Lowe for just like a minute because Lowe is one of my three favorite bands of all times. So I still remember when Robert Plant, he covered Silver Rider and Monkey on the Band of Joy record.

I liked that record, but I think those songs by boat challenged him. And so I'm hearing that again with this version of everybody's song where they keep the melodies, they keep the guitars, they add a quattro, and they add a lot of Persian instruments, so it has a very Persian flavor to the whole song. And there is another song where I thought, oh, they're stretching out what that traditional song is all about. So as I roved out, was another highlight on this record for me.

I think the way this record is built is really fascinating because it's just built as a Robert Platt solo record, which I guess that's not untrue. But it really is a full group effort. Songs where other members of the band take a lead vocal for extended periods of time. There are several instances where Robert Plant takes the backseat or essentially almost disappears. When he is there, he is such a defining presence. And it's interesting as he's gotten older and gone through his career, he seems more willing to step back and be in the shadows of the song. He's the spiritual guide. He's the conductor. He's the band leader. It's a good look on him. That is Robert Plant. His new album is called Saving Grace. Evan, we're about to tackle two records about

heartbreak that go at it from very different ends. This first one from Amanda Shire's is called Nobody's Girl. I could show you how he left picture. Going flowers for nobody. But I'd rather you see me thriving. Way back up. Hanging around the whole place haunting. For those who don't know Amanda Shire, she got her start very early, playing fiddle.

Eventually, she made her way into Billy Joe Shaver's band, the country music legend. And it was actually Billy Joe Shaver who convinced her not to be a side man to step out on her own and make her own music. She started making her own music in 2005. And very quickly, she started to make records with Jason Isbell, who at that point, had been away from the drive-by truckers for some years, and they put out a slew of critically adored fan-loved records together, both solo, and they played on each other's records, and also in the band The 400 Unit.

Amanda Shires is also in the High Women, who needs to put out another record. I'll just say it. And then she put out a record called Take It Like a Man. I remember thinking at the time, this is probably one of the boldest records I think I've ever heard. It was a record about the difficulties and the struggles of marriage. Very specifically, her marriage with Jason Isbell. They had gotten married while they were making records and making music together.

And just a year later, 23, Jason Isbell filed for a divorce. The fans felt very much a certain way. And earlier this year in March, Jason Isbell put out his record, Foxes in the Snow, which touched on the divorce, sort of. But he spent most of his time talking about the divorce in interviews, basically. This record does not shy away from the divorce in any particular way. I'm not going to lie, this is a tough listen. Evan, I'm curious where you came down after your first listen through this record.

Yeah, it just hit me like a brick. Yes. Unsparing in its detail of how the divorce went, how she was feeling, how she processed the time during and after the split. It was tough. There's one song in particular, literally called The Details, that... Oh, that one. I was driving, listening to that, and I almost had to pull over for a second. I was like, wow.

A storm come on in the rosy dawn. I was sitting on the front porch watching a pale rain. The wind got late. My mind went a lot of ways. Forget me not. Niagara Falls. I never had my ring or wrong. Even if you call, how might a respond.

She has been avoiding it so long. You've the detailed history. No matter how clear I keep the memory so you could sleep. She has that line, what was it all for putting your dreams over mine? And much of the record is about this idea that Amanda Shire's wanted to, to make great music with her partner, her musical partner, with her romantic partner, and in service of that,

she put herself to the side. There was this great interview in Texas Monthly that published this week, where when she was living with Isbell, she said she was in the habit of writing songs in a closet. Oh. Which, that's brutal. and like heartbreaking.

And there are so many reasons why a person would feel the need to do that. And it's not my place to say why they had that dynamic. But it's, that's a tough thing to hear. That's a tough thing to say. I can't imagine performing this group of songs. I have so much respect for people like her that makes something that's so emotionally raw. and bear and then take this out on the road as their new thing and have to relive it while they play these songs, have to communicate all of it to the audience and not just to themselves

in a studio. I do not have the wherewithal to do such a thing. My hats off to the folks that are willing to be that artistically, creatively vulnerable in such a public way. And I'll say this too. For a record, this painful, I will say that musically, it's quite restrained in a way that I wasn't. Yes. I wasn't expecting. It's a lot of ballots. So if you need a quiet cry, this is probably the album for you.

But then there are two songs that break with the ballad mold, a piece of mind, which There's a big rocker. It sounds like a Stevieoenix song hating on Lindsay Buckingham, which is a great energy. But my favorite of the songs that kind of break with the ballad mold is a song called Lose It for a while. I'd like to lose it for a while, which starts out acoustic. Then about halfway through, there's this big pink Floyd, psychedelic, like, exorcism. And maybe the only time of the record she actually does lose it. Like, she is like literally screaming the lyrics toward the end of that song. That is Amanda Shires.

Her new album is called Nobody's Girl. We've got one more record to discuss, plus our lightning round of recommendations. But first, we're going to take a quick break. From NPR Music, it's New Music Friday. I'm Lars Gottrich here with Evan Miller of WYS.S. in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Our final topic today is the new album by Kate Le Bonn. Kate LeBond's new album is called Michelangelo Dye.

So Evan, we just heard a very direct and unsparing portrait of Heartbreak from Amanda Shire's. But Kate LeBond's record does something very different with Heartbreak. What were your initial impressions of this record? In comparison to the Amanda Shire's record, it's a lot more oblique. It's less right on the surface of how it presents heartbreak. If you're listening to it, you might catch it in lines here or there. She's a lot more, I don't know how to say it other than Kate LeBond-like. She has a certain way about her lyricism that is a little less direct than others.

And I think that's just as on display here, talking about. even such a universal thing like heartbreak. I feel like I need to back up because you set the Kate LeBond of it all, the Kate LeBondisms, but who is Kate LeBond? So Kate LeBond, this is her seventh album. She's from Wales. She made these kind of like abstract, strange post-punk records when she kind of first came on the scene.

And she has a very specific sound. And it's one that I'm familiar with, but when I approached Michelangelo dying, I felt like I was getting a whole new shade of Kate Lebon, because this one was dealing with something very personal in a way that I don't think she necessarily does. And a lot of her songwriting, she kind of likes to keep things not an arm's length, but kind of like a dripping clock's length. I don't know. It's very Salvador dolly.

Very Salvador Dali what she does. An abstract distance away. Yeah, yeah. But this is one where she had been in a relationship, I think, for almost a decade. And she originally intended Michelangelo dying to be a completely different record. But every time she went to go to write it, didn't feel right. And so she was like, it's like, well, damn it, I have to write an album about love. There's a song in here called Love Unrehearsed.

that feels like a cocktoe twin song that's been flipped upside down, which I didn't know was possible. And it's got this gorgeous saxophone work. Basically throughout their record, the saxophone actually acts as another voice for her when I don't think she wants to sing. Yeah, and the saxophoneist in her band has been a collaborator for a number of years, if I'm not mistaken.

So I feel like in that way, you could have this way to intuit what your musical partner is looking for when they can't quite say the thing and they pass it to you to say instead. Then there's also moments where she is direct. And there's a song in here called Is It Worth It, Parentheses, Happy Birthday, which might be one of the saddest happy birthday songs I've ever heard. And there's a line on here that I, you know, I am a happy late married man. I had been with my partner for 14 years, but I still remember this feeling that she captures when she says, I thought about your mother. I hope she knew I've loved her. It's like, oh, I remember that. That hurts. Yeah, your relationship is not just with the one person. It's with the people around them. So when you lose that, you lose so many other kinds of relationships simultaneously.

I think it's interesting to the whole breakup documentation to keep that in mind. It adds wrinkles to it, that it's not just this direct one-on-one situation. That is the album, Michelangelo dying by Kate Labon. Now, Evan, it could not possibly get to every album out today, September 26th. September is, as you probably know, a very, very busy month for a new. music. So we wanted to hit y'all with a particularly stacked lightning round of some other notable releases out today. I'm going to kick us off. If a two-hour triple album from Jeff Tweedy is too much, may I suggest 11 songs in 24 minutes. Josie is a Danish teap band very much in the

Tolula gosh and Tiger Trap vein. The songs are short, sweet, and raucous. They whizz by with a but chaotically, Joe's new album is titled appropriately, A Life of Sweets Alone. My first lightning round pick is one I think you might be interested in to Lars. We'll bring the Chicago, crowdy trio Bich and Bahas in here. Oh, yeah.

This record is exactly what you would expect from this trio. Weirdly, like three shorter tracks, and then they save kind of all the juice for this long, like nearly 20-minute track at the end of the record where they really kind of settle into this more driving thing. It's great. It's fantastic American crowd-rocky music, and you may have already heard some work from some of the members of this band already on the new Stereo Lab record earlier this year. So if you like that and you have not heard Bich and Bahas yet, you should go listen to Inland Sea.

Menick's pick comes from Matthew Sage. He is a multi-instrumentalist who records under the name M. Sage. His music inhabits several worlds, ambient jazz, and minimalist music. And he kind of creates his own world that floats like a well-tended garden. He told me that his new album was inspired by parenthood. And there is a very cozy and domestic quality underpinned by the uncertainty that comes with caring for new life. M.D.Sage's new album is called Tender Waiting. My last lightning round pick is the new album from Geese. I saw Geese earlier this month at the Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh, in North Carolina,

and I was very excited to finally have a chance to see them. And I was not the only one because the crowd was packed. The excitement was palpable. They played one of the songs on this record for the first time, ever, I think it was a hundred horses. The first time I listened to this record, I felt like I was trying to understand a new language. Cameron Winter's voice is such a unique instrument in young rock bands right now.

If you're not on the geese train yet, get on now. It's a good time. And this is different than goose, right? Yes, goose and geese are two different bands. They should do a dual tour and just get the confusion out of the way, maybe. The new album from Geese is called Getting Killed. I tend to follow whatever the R&B singer Lady Ray is doing. She first made her name on a Missy Elliott track many years ago on the record Super Dupa Fly.

Lady Ray's voice is just so piercing and powerful. Like she knows things, like you feel the frequency of her knowledge in her voice. She's got a new album out today called Cover Girl. She leans into her gospel roots on this one a little bit more. but she can also get really funky. So, Evan, you listen to a lot of albums out today, September 26th. This is the part of the show where we put each other on the spot and ask, what is the one song you discovered during your prep that you're holding closest to your heart?

I really am stuck on one we didn't actually talk about from the Robert Plant record. Tell me. Their take on the low anthem's ticket taker. And I don't really know the low anthem really at all, actually. And I went back and listened to the original, and it's almost like a Leonard Cohen, like very spare voice and guitar thing. And the way Robert Plant and the Saving Grace group rearranged that is really captivating. It's a standout track from the Robert Plant record. Tonight's the night when the waters rise, you're grope in the dark.

The ticket takers count the man who can afford. the ticket takers will not board for the ticket takers are time. The song that I think is going to stick with me, I already talked about. It was New Orleans from the Jeff Tweedy record. There's something about the way that the guitars take on their own voice in the middle of the song that gave a meaning that I can't explain to, and that's usually a place that I like to habit in music. Sometimes I don't want to know exactly what a song is about. I just need to be able to feel it. And so that song did it for me. And that is our show this week. Thank you, Evan Miller,

for taking time out of your week at WYSO in Ohio. Thank you so much for having me. This was a joy. If you enjoyed this week's show, we always appreciate a positive review wherever you listen to your podcasts. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and edited by Otis Hart, The executive producer of NPR Music is Siraya Muhammad. We will be back next week to discuss new music with Skylar Rochelle from 90.9, The Bridge in Kansas City. Until then, take a moment to be well. Join Mariah Carey's Lamley and treat yourself to lots of great music.