Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 4 October 2024.
The Smile have revealed their new album Cutouts. The trio – Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner – debuted several songs from Cutouts during The Smile’s UK tour in March. Cutouts features 10 new-tracks, produced by Sam Petts-Davies, and is the band’s third studio album following Wall of Eyes, released in January, and the trio’s 2022 debut album A Light For Attracting Attention. Cutouts was recorded in Oxford and at Abbey Road Studios during the same period of time as Wall Of Eyes. The album features string arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra and the album art was painted during the recording process by Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke.
The Hard Quartet have released their eponymous debut album. Emmett Kelly, Stephen Malkmus, Matt Sweeney and Jim White formed The Hard Quartet in May 2023. They recorded a 15 song album in NYC and Malibu California without telling anyone except their families and friends – ideal times spent in idyllic locales. The Hard Quartet starts touring in October and will play in Australia, USA, Europe and everywhere else possible through 2025 and beyond. It’s a full-on rocking band. All four band members write, sing, play musical instruments and produce The Hard Quartet’s songs. The band is the natural result of decades of friendship and playing music in each other’s presence.
Composer and guitarist Yasmin Williams’ new album, Acadia, is out now. The album, her Nonesuch Records debut and her most sonically expansive work to date, comprises nine original, mostly instrumental, tracks written and produced by Williams, and features her on various guitars, banjo, calabash drum, tap shoes, and kora. Williams is joined on the album by an eclectic cast of collaborators—including Immanuel Wilkins on saxophone, Dom Flemons on rhythm bones, Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, William Tyler on guitar, and many others—creating a folk music that reflects the wide range of musical influences that have inspired her throughout her life.
Pianist Charlotte Hu (formerly known as Ching-Yun Hu) presents Liszt: Metamorphosis, her debut album for Pentatone Records. On it, Charlotte explores Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt’s chameleonic and evolving approach to composing – the metamorphosis of his music spanning from his early works inspired by Beethoven to the abstract tonality of his later works, as well as his incredible ability to transcribe and transform the music of other composers he admired.
As a composer and bandleader, trumpeter David Weiss is dedicated to the proposition that there are still new stories to be told from within the bebop tradition. The several collaborative bands he’s spearheaded over the last three decades — including the superband, The Cookers — are towering examples, but none more personal to his voice than this ongoing Sextet. With longtime collaborators saxophonist Myron Walden and drummer EJ Strickland, and newer musical partners such as tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover and pianist David Bryant, Weiss creates expansive harmonic and rhythmic frameworks for the group to explore and summit on their new album, Auteur. Intriguing melodies and virtuosic solos highlight this set of five originals, along with compositions from Freddie Hubbard and Slide Hampton.
Memorial Waterslides is the debut album from MEMORIALS, the duo consisting of Verity Susman and Matthew Simms (previously of Electrelane and Wire). This is an otherworldly, surrealist pop record that is both timeless and timely, displaying a rare mix of classic songwriting and avant-garde attitudes. MEMORIALS create panoramic pop that draws on both the familiar and the strange, while also treading new ground. With their playful and experimental style, combined with a love of good tunes, they sit comfortably alongside Broadcast, Portishead, Arthur Russell, The Velvet Underground, Yo La Tengo and Tortoise.
The highly anticipated follow-up to Thee Sacred Souls’ breakout 2022 self-titled debut, Got A Story To Tell, features 12 all original new songs, a soaring statement of exquisite craftsmanship from this young band from San Diego whose story grows bigger by the day. Recorded and produced by Gabriel Roth at Penrose Recorders, in Daptone’s Riverside, CA studio, and written in the throes of supporting their 2022 album – which was met with significant excitement and major touring that brought them across the world. What swirls together on Got A Story To Tell is an appreciation of decades of soul music, and beyond – a sound and feel that is timeless, lived in, and very much in the now.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 10 November 2023)
- New music round-up (for w/e 2 February 2024)
- New music round-up (for w/e 18 August 2023)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television