In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on January 17, 2025:
Mac Miller, Balloonerism
Balloonerism is Mac Miller’s second posthumous album since his death in September 2018. It was recorded between 2013 and 2014, around the release of the rapper’s mixtape Faces, and features collaborations with SZA and Ashley All Day. “Many of Malcolm’s fans are aware of Balloonerism, a full length album that Malcolm created around the time of the release of Faces in 2014,” Miller’s family wrote in a statement. “It is a project that was of great importance to Malcolm — to the extent that he commissioned artwork for it and discussions concerning when it should be released were had regularly, though ultimately [2015’s] GO:OD AM and subsequent albums ended up taking precedence.” Like 2020’s Circles, it is a poignant, experimental, and occasionally existential listen, and it’s accompanied by a short film from director Samuel Jerome Mason.
The Weather Station, Humanhood
The Weather Station is back with a new album, Humanhood. Following 2021’s Ignorance and its companion, 2022’s How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars, the record was preceded by the singles ‘Neon Signs’, ‘Window’, ‘Body Moves’, and ‘Mirror’. “These things I was experiencing; this alienation, this dissociation, this loss of narrative coherence, this loss of innocence or trust – these things felt totally related to what I saw around me,” Tamara Lindeman said in press materials, referring to a long period of chronic depersonalization she experienced against the constant backdrop of climate catastrophe. Co-produced with Marcus Paquin, it contains some of her most intricate and full-bodied songs to date.
jasmine.4.t., You Are the Morning
Manchester singer-songwriter jasmine.4.t. has come through with her debut full-length, You Are the Morning, via Phoebe Bridgers’ label, Saddest Factory Records. The record was produced entirely by Julien Baker, Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus at Los Angeles’ Sound City Studios, and the boygenius members, along with the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, also contributed backing vocals. By turns gentle and defiant, the record features the previously released singles ‘Skin on Skin’, ‘Elephant’, and the title track.
Ela Minus, DÍA
Ela Minus has followed up 2020’s acts of rebellion with a new LP titled DÍA. Punchy, exuberant, and meticulously crafted, the 10-track effort finds the Colombian electronic artist opening up her typically claustrophobic sound, as heard on the singles ‘Combat’, ‘Broken’, ‘Upwards’, and ‘QQQQ’. The record was mixed by Marta Salogni and mastered by Heba Kadry. According to press materials, “the settings kept changing—an outpost in California’s Mojave Desert, a month-long hotel stay and small studio in Los Angeles, a foray back in New York, that sound-side vista near Seattle, a return to Mexico City (where Minus sang those rewritten songs), and a final two-month foray to London to finish at last. These were all places where time seemed to move at different speeds, not only inspiring the music to move with wide dynamic swings but also prompting her to consider what she had to play and say about her life so far.”
lots of hands, into a pretty room
lots of hands, the duo of Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden, have dropped their fourth record and first for Fire Talk, into a pretty room. It includes the previously released singles ‘rosie’, ‘game of zeroes’, ‘backseat 30’, ‘masquerade’, and ‘barnyard’. “This record, at the end of the day, is a lot of borrowed songs – songs that Elliot had written years ago that we brought back and reimagined,” Woodhouse said in our Artist Spotlight interview. “And I think just that sense of looking back was vulnerable enough. I went through a pretty crazy period of grief while writing it, and just living in a different city – I felt like was losing my brain a little bit.”
Kele, The Singing Winds Pt. 3
Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke is continuing his Elements album series with the third installment, The Singing Winds pt. 3. It follows 2021’s The Waves Pt. 1 and 2023’s The Flames Pt. 2. “I started ‘The Elements’ project with The Waves in lockdown,” Kele explained. “It started as a test really, I had become so accustomed to working with other people for my solo records that the thought of making a record solely of my playing was something that I saw as a challenge to be conquered.” He added: “Apart from the vocals, every sound you hear on these records is made by my guitar. The very limitations of the project have become part of the aesthetic, so I’m excited to be able to finally bring these songs to a stage and bring an audience into the process. I am looking forward to finally being able to perform this music in the way it was written and intended to be heard.”
Blue Lake, Weft
Weft is a new mini-album from American-born, Denmark-based instrumentalist Jason Dungan, aka Blue Lake. Incorporating acoustic guitars, viola, homemade zither, cello, clarinet, and other instruments, the follow-up 2023’s Sun Arcs was inspired by the weaving practice of his partner, Danish visual artist Maria Zahle. “There’s a not so subtle visual relation between the masses of strings on the instrument and the masses of thread on a loom,” Dungan explained in a statement. “Weaving allows you to have an intimate relationship between the many individual parts of a piece, as well as the finished whole.”
Sophie Jamieson, I still want to share
Out now via Bella Union, Sophie Jamieson’s new album, I still want to share, follows her 2022 debut Choosing. She co-produced it with Guy Massey and previewed it with a series of singles, including ‘I don’t know what to save’, ‘Camera’, and ‘Vista’. Though as stunningly introspective as her debut, it widens her palette, weaving in string arrangements courtesy of Josephine Stephenson (Daughter, Ex:Re, Lisa Hannigan). “There’s a lot of warm autumnal colors, and then more glittery, dark, starry skies,” the London singer-songwriter remarked. “Something about it all has really come together to illustrate some things that I didn’t know I needed to articulate in this way.”
Other albums out today:
Rose Gray, Louder, Please; Ex-Vöid, In Love Again; ZORA, BELLAdonna; Prism Shores, Out From Underneath; Benjamin Lackner, Spindrift; Flora Hibberd, Swirl; Victoria Canal, Slowly, It Dawns; David Gray, Dear Life; Songhoy Blues, Héritage; Echos, QUIET, IN YOUR SERVICE.