In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on January 24, 2025:
FKA twigs, EUSEXUA
FKA twigs has followed up 2019’s MAGDALENE and her 2022 mixtape CAPRISONGS with the much-hyped EUSEXUA. Preceded bythe singles ‘Drums of Death’, ‘Perfect Stranger’, and the title track (which we named one of the best songs of 2024), the record features production from Koreles as well as contributions from North West, Eartheater, Stargate, and Sasha. The sound is as clubby as it is industrial, as ethereal as it is preternaturally stirring. In an interview with Vogue, twigs explained: “You know that feeling of when you’ve been out all night and you lose 7 hours to music, and you look at your phone and you think, ‘Oh, my gosh, it’s 8:00 in the morning.’ And last time you looked, it was 1:00. It’s because you’ve been in a state of eusexua.”
Mogwai, The Bad Fire
Mogwai are back with their 11th album, The Bad Fire. Working with producer John Congleton, the post-rock legends deliver an album that conjures apocalyptic visions but remains eerily thrilling and even euphoric. “After the high of putting out As The Love Continues, the following years were personally hard for us,” the band stated in a press release. “We’ve dealt with a lot of loss and in Barry’s case a serious family illness with one his daughters. Getting back together to write and record this record felt like a refuge and with John Congleton we feel that we’ve made something special. We often hear from people that our music has helped them get through hard times in their lives and for once I think it applies to us as well.”
Kathryn Mohr, Waiting Room
Released by the Flenser, Waiting Room is the debut album by Oakland experimental musician Kathryn Mohr. It includes the previously unveiled singles ‘Driven’, ‘Elevator’, and ‘Take It’. Mohr wrote and self-recorded the LP during a month spent in the eastern Icelandic fishing village of Stöðvarfjörður, in a windowless concrete room lit with a string of multicolored light bulbs that are seen on the cover. “I also took a lot of walks in the unfinished areas of the factory,” she explained in our Artist Spotlight interview. “Some of the areas were left exactly as they were when the factory closed. There was a locker room, and some of the belongings of the people who worked there were left behind. No lights, lots of dust, old cans of asbestos; it was very haunting. I love abandoned spaces because I love to just stand in them and feel their energy, and there’s so much energy in there because that used to be the main hub of Stöðvarfjörður; it was the life of that town.”
Anna B Savage, You & i are Earth
You & i are Earth, according to Anna B Savage, serves as “a love letter to a man and to Ireland.” The follow-up to 2022’s in|FLUX is gorgeously delivered and arranged, with production by John ‘Spud’ Murphy and contributions from Kate Ellis and Caimin Gilmore of Crash Ensemble, Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum, and Mieke on vocals, strings, harmonium, bouzouki, taishōgoto, and clarinets. “When I was writing the first record, it felt difficult,” the London singer-songwriter explained. “I wanted to make sense of something I didn’t really understand. Then with the second record I had done some therapy, and was getting to grips with myself, but my old self was still pulling me back a bit, but with this one it was quite different.”
Rose City Band, Sol Y Sombra
Rose City Band – composed of guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson, pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker, keyboardist Paul Hasenberg, and drummer John Jeffrey – have released a new album, Sol Y Sombra. Even at this time of year, their shimmering country rock sounds incredibly summery and joyful. “With Rose City Band, I’m generally trying to make uplifting music, good time music,” Johnson commented in press materials. “This time I couldn’t avoid the shadow being more of a presence. There’s no getting away from it. The shadow is always there. So, I left it in.”
Tunng, Love You All Over Again
Tunng,
the duo of Mike Lindsay (who worked on Anna B Savage’s last album) and Sam Genders – have a new album out called Love You All Over Again. Following 2021’s Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs, the record is framed as a kind of return to the band’s roots, their pioneering marriage of folk guitars and synthesizers. “I went back to the first two albums to listen to how we fused genres – things like Davy Graham, Pentangle, the Expanding Records catalogue and the Wicker Man soundtrack,” the band’s Mike Lindsay explained. “Over the years, Tunng’s sound has varied and twisted, but at the root there is always a flavour of what Sam and I made on that first album. Rather than searching for a new avenue we went back to what we used to do, which, after all this time, felt like it was a new avenue.”
Central Cee, Can’t Rush Greatness
Central Cee’s official debut album, Can’t Rush Greatness, has arrived via Columbia. Following the English rapper’s mixtapes Wild West and 23,the 17-track effort features collaborations with Young Miko, 21 Savage, Dave, Lil Durk, Skepta, and Lil Baby. “With the mixtapes, I was living in [the same] house I grew up in,” Cee told Dazed. “Now we’ve elevated, we’re actually musicians. There were times it was hard to say man’s a musician. I was just a guy that [went into the] studio [sometimes]. Now, I’m an artist.”
Benjamin Booker, LOWER
The New Orleans soul-rocker Benjamin Booker has issued his first album in over seven years, LOWER. Helmed by producer Kenny Segal and blending lo-fi rap with indie rock and dream pop, the record was previewed by the singles ‘LWA IN THE TRAILER PARK’, ‘SAME KIND OF LONELY’, ‘SHOW AND TELL’, and ‘SLOW DANCE IN A GAY BAR’. “This album is for the freaks, the backsliders, the runaways, the queers, the poor, the antisocial, the dreamers and the fire breathers,” Booker said in a press release. “If there’s hell then there’s heaven. Free Luigi!”
Other albums out today:
Sam Amidon, Salt River; Matt Berry, Heard Noises; Cecilia Castleman, Cecilia Castleman; C Duncan, It’s Only A Love Song; Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta, Mapambazuko; Open Head, What Is Success; Larkin Poe, Bloom; Young Knives, Landfill; Edvard Graham Lewis, Alreet?; Kate Campbell Strauss & Emily Mikesell, Give Way.