In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on February 28, 2025:
Panda Bear, Sinister Grift
Panda Bear, aka Noah Lennox, made his sprawling, fantastically melodic new album, Sinister Grift, at his Estudio Campo in Lisbon, Portugal. He co-produced it with his Animal Collective bandmate Josh “Deakin” Dibb, and it features collaborations with Cindy Lee and Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede. “Working on this record felt like a sacred and warm return,” Deakin said in press materials. “Noah and I first started putting music down to multitrack cassette in 1991. 32 years later and working in the same fashion, two friends alone in a room searching for sounds and feelings that move us, I am very proud of what we created together. Sinister Grift feels like the songwriter I’ve known for over 30 years but also feels like some sort of new chapter for Noah. Couldn’t be more proud of the result.”
Ichiko Aoba, Luminescent Creatures
Ichiko Aoba‘s Luminescent Creatures picks up right where her previous album, the richly expansive Windswept Adan, left off. The girl who had been exiled to the island of Adan has vanished, so Aoba focuses on the vast richness of the environment itself. Inspired by her visits to Japan’s Ryukyu Archipelago, she augments her field research with vivid imagination and luscious orchestration, so that the immense can feel improbably immersive. “Inside each of us there is a place for our stars to sleep,” Aoba sings on ‘Luciférine’, diving beyond a place, beyond sleep, into dreams. Read our track-by-track review of the album.
Darkside, Nothing
The trio of Nicolás Jaar, Dave Harrington, and recently added drummer Tlacael Esparza are back with their third LP, Nothing. Darkside began recording the follow-up to 2021’s Spiral amidst their 2023 tour. Working out of a series of improvisational jam sessions, the band has a knack for relentlessly hammering in a group and simultaneously letting it dissolve like vapor, and the results on Nothing are tangled yet enchanting. The album was preceded by the singles ‘S.N.C.’, ‘Graucha Max’, and ‘Hell Suite (Part II)’.
Deep Sea Diver, Billboard Heart
Billboard Heart, the fourth studio LP from the Seattle band Deep Sea Diver, has arrived. The record was primarily written by project mastermind Jessica Dobson, alongside her partner, drummer and band co-writer Peter Mansen, and synth player Elliot Jackson It features a collaboration with Madison Cunningham, as well as Dobson’s former The Shins’ bandmate Yuuki Matthews, Caroline Rose, and Greg Leisz. After the title track opens the LP with sparkling beauty, it quickly charges up, sounding by turns groovy and theatrical, tender and urgent.
Miya Folick, Erotica Veronica
Miya Folick has returned with a new album called Erotica Veronica, which features contributions from Sam KS as co-producer and drummer, Meg Duffy, Waylon Rector, and Greg Uhlmann on guitar, and Pat Kelly on bass. It’s richly textured and moving, often to the point of catharsis: “I punch myself in the face with my only fist/ Then I collapse into you,” she sings on ‘Fist’. “The album is about being queer within a heteronormative relationship structure and within a heteronormative society, but it’s also just about desire and eroticism in general,” Folick explained. “I don’t think we give each other enough room to explore freely and figure out our own right paths.”
Cornelia Murr, Run to the Center
Produced by Luke Temple, Run to the Center follows Cornelia Murr’s 2022 EP Corridor. Speaking about the strikingly hypnotic LP, the singer-songwriter reflected: “As a young person you’re free to wander. There’s a lot of power in that. But there’s an incredible sense of urgency that has snuck up on me. All of a sudden it feels like I must define my life in some major ways. Am I going to be a mother or not? If so, who am I going to do that with? If so, where am I going to do that? How am I going to afford that? Meanwhile, this feels like the most important time to devote to my work. Life these days is seemingly asking for my commitment to what can feel like contradictory things.”
Other albums out today:
Everything Is Recorded, Temporary; LISA, Alter Ego; Hachiku, The Joys of Being Pure at Heart; The Men, Buyer Beware; Marie Davidson, City of Clowns; Mdou Moctar, Tears of Injustice; David Grubbs, Whistle From Above; Edith Frost, In Space; Cloakroom, Last Leg of the Human Table; Gunn-Truscinski Duo, Flam; Yves Jarvis, All Cylinders; serpentwithfeet, GRIP SEQUEL; Andy Bell, pinball wanderer; Koyal, breathe in. breathe out; Matilda Mann, Roxwell; Banks, Off With Her Head; Conrad Pack, Commandments.