In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on June 14, 2024:
Normani, Dopamine
Normani’s long-promised debut album, Dopamine, has arrived via RCA. The ex-Fifth Harmony member promoted the record with the singles ‘1:59’ and ‘Candy Paint’; it also includes 2021’s ‘Wild Side’ featuring Cardi B, as well as appearances from Gunna, Starrah, and James Blake. “The album feels like liberation, like a season of freedom,” Normani said in an interview with Who What Wear. “Not just because the record is finally coming out, but because it’s a celebration of everything I have been through to get to this moment. During this process, I heard God say to me, ‘Trust me. I know you’re afraid, but trust me anyway. Dare to trust me anyway. Now is the time.’”
This Is Lorelei, Box for Buddy, Box for Star
This is Lorelei, the solo project of Water From Your Eyes member Nate Amos, has released a new album, Box for Buddy, Box for Star, via Double Double Whammy. Though Amos has dropped dozens of EPs and hundreds of songs under the moniker, this is his first attempt at a traditional album. “I had just finished a tour with Water From Your Eyes, during which I laid on the ground at Stonehenge for 40 minutes and decided to stop smoking weed,” he explained. “Initially, this album was just a challenge to make music without getting high, and I was worried I wouldn’t come up with anything at all. I isolated myself from pretty much everyone and wrote songs all summer. I was pretty broke and significantly depressed, but also in a sort of healthy mental demolition mode, trying to reimagine how I wanted to move forward with my life. For better or worse, what I made ended up being a delayed recovery album, largely dealing with more significant addictions that I kicked a year earlier.”
John Cale, POPtical Illusion
John Cale has issued a new album titled POPtical Illusion. Out now via Double Six/Domino, the follow-up to last year’s MERCY was produced by Cale and longtime collaborator Nita Scott in his Los Angeles studio. In contrast to MERCY, which featured collaborations with Animal Collective, Weyes Blood, Sylvan Esso, Laurel Halo, and more, the new album finds him burrowing “mostly alone into mazes of synthesizers and samples, organs and pianos, with words that, as far as Cale goes, constitute a sort of swirling hope, a sage insistence that change is yet possible,” per a press release. The 13-track LP was preceded by the singles ‘Shark-Shark’ and ‘How We See the Light’.
The Decemberists, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again
The Decemberists are back with their first album in six years, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again. The follow-up to I’ll Be Your Girl is a double LP split into four thematic sides, and it was produced by lead singer Colin Meloy and Tucker Martine. Ahead of its release, the band unveiled the songs ‘Burial Ground’, the 19-minute ‘Joan in the Garden’, ‘All I Want Is You’, and ‘Oh No’. After a run of nearly two decades with Capitol, the new album also marks the band’s first on their own label YABB Records.
Martha Skye Murphy, Um
Martha Skye Murphy has put out her debut full-length, Um, via AD 93. The UK artist co-produced the LP with Ethan P. Flynn, with Marta Salogni and Heba Kadry handling the mixing and mastering, respectively. It features contributions from claire rousay, Roy Montgomeryca, caroline’s Alex McKenzie, Squid’s Laurie Nankivell, and more. “I wanted the album to feel like this constant tension between being in a very intimate domestic space, and then propelled into a far stranger environment that is difficult to situate,” Murphy explained in a statement. “I want people to feel disoriented, erotically charged by the intimacy of a bedroom, then catapulted into a desert.”
Cola, The Gloss
Cola – the project of former Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy and US Girls drummer Evan Cartwright – have put out their sophomore album, The Gloss, via Fire Talk. The follow-up to 2021’s Deep in View includes the previously unveiled tracks ‘Keys Down If You Stay’, ‘Bitter Melon’, ‘Pallor Tricks’, ‘Albatross’ and ‘Pulling Quotes’. The band decamped to NDG in the southwest of Montreal to track the album with their frequent collaborator Valentin Ignat (Helena Deland, Corridor).
Kneecap, Fine Art
Irish rap trio Kneecap have come through with their debut album, Fine Art, via Heavenly Recordings. The group made the 12-track effort with producer Toddla T, and it features contributions from Lankum’s Radie Peat, Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C., and Jelani Blackman. “When we got into the studio with Toddla T, we scrapped every song we had and started from complete scratch,” the group’s Mo Chara explained in a statement. “T’s idea was to tell the story of Kneecap. So the record was conceived as the listener stepping into Kneecap’s world. That’s where the idea came to set whole thing in a pub. You walk into a pub at the start, there’s someone offering you a drink, there’s a singsong… really, it’s us taking you by the hand and leading you into our world.”
Raveena, Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain
Raveena has released a new album, Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain, via Empire. Following 2022’s Asha’s Awakening, the record was preceded by the tracks ‘Pluto’, ‘Lucky’, and ‘Junebug’ featuring JPEGMAFIA. “Butterflies are so delicate that they have to hide in leaves and flowers until the rain passes so that their wings don’t get crushed in the rain,” Raveena said in press materials. “I felt like that was kind of a metaphor for where I was in my life. I needed to go back to comfort—to deep rest—and stop weathering storms.”
Mike Lindsay, supershapes volume 1
Mike Lindsay – Mercury Prize-winning producer, co-founder of the folk band Tunng, and one-half of LUMP with Laura Marling – has issued his debut solo album, supershapes volume 1. It’s the first installment in a series of albums that explore “the miraculous in the mundane,” according to Lindsay, diving into “everyday domestic objects, especially tables, coffee table books, and the daily rituals that shape us, heavily focusing on the majestic in the domestic.” Anna B Savage’s vocals are featured prominently through the record, which also includes contributions from multi-instrumentalist Ross Blake, saxophonist Robert Stillman (of the Smile’s live band), and drummer Adam Betts (Three Trapped Tigers, Squarepusher).
Bored at My Grandmas House, Show & Tell
Show & Tell is the debut LP by Bored at My Grandmas House, the project of Leeds-based singer-songwriter Amber Strawbridge. “The main overall theme of this album is connection,” Strawbridge said of the follow-up to 2021’s Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too EP. “Connection with myself, connection with the world and connection to the people around me who I love. This album is for me first and foremost and was a way for me to internally process. The origin of these tracks all stem from me wanting to understand these connections and process my emotions surrounding them. The album covers topics such as the power of queer love, humanity and its ‘delusions of grandeur’, reflection and purpose.”
Other albums out today:
Mike Lindsay, supershapes volume 1; Moby, always centered at night; Staples Jr. Singers, Searching; Sea Girls, Midnight Butterflies; John Grant, The Art of the Lie; Jess Cornelius, CARE/TAKING; KRM & KMRU, Disconnect; Florrie, The Lost Ones; Zsela, Big For You; James Vincent McMorrow, Wide Open, Horses; Walt Disco, The Warping; RJD2, Visions Out of Limelight; Carlos Niño & Friends, Placenta; REZN, Burden; Russian Baths, Mirror; Lindsey Stirling, Duality; Meghan Trainor, Timeless;