With huge new albums dropping this week from Killer Mike, Tenacious D, Beach House, Best Coast, and more, it seems a little blasphemous to be looking ahead to the next crop of discs. That said, the mp3s we have for you this week are good enough to take up a solid portion of your listening time. Between a peek into a video game soundtrack from HEALTH, the return of sludge metal heroes Baroness, and a NEW TRACK from indie-psychers Yeasayer, this ten-pack should whet your appetite for another crop of stellar album releases sprouting up in the near future.
-Adam Kivel
Senior Editor
Baroness – “Take My Bones Away”
Savannah, Georgia sludge monsters Baroness return with “Take My Bones Away”, the first cut from their upcoming third LP, Yellow & Green (a thematic title after the Red Album and Blue Record). The aggression and noise are cooled down just a little under some studio mastery, but the track still rocks damn hard, particularly the sky-cracking guitar riffs two and a half minutes in. Vocalist John Baizley’s notes about “picking up visceral tendons and broken remains” prelude the emotional haunting of the album’s title, the five minute epic boding well for the July 17th album drop date. -Adam Kivel
Curren$y feat. 2 Chainz – “Capitol”
Songs like these are why Curren$y’s brand of rap is consistently described as “breezy,” “fluid,” “effortless,” etc. Over a beat highlighted by wiggling bass and freewheeling flute, Spitta lets us in on what makes him the freshest coming out of NOLA: “My reputation precedes me, they already know/I keep it capital ‘G,’ apostrophe ‘D’.” (It works better in the song than on paper, obviously.) On the other hand, the ATL’s 2 Chainz, following other guest verses on the likes of G.O.O.D. Music’s “Mercy” and Drake’s “No Lie”, offers a pretty-forgettable 16 about Rick Ross and photography and having a criminal mind and stuff. Still, there’s nothing here that can’t be relished to some extent. Curren$y’s The Stoned Immaculate, from which “Capitol” comes, arrives June 5th. -Mike Madden
Family Band – “Night Song”
The shuddering, heavily reverbed percussion, arpeggiated guitar plinks, and Kim Krans’ full-throated enchantress vocals on “Night Song” are a perfect first taste of upstate New Yorkers Family Band’s sophomore LP (Grace & Lies , due July 24th from No Quarter). The cinematic, haunting, gothy soundscape quietly seeps into the subconscious. The bassy piano rumbles that begin to percussively shade the last bit of the track are seriously deep, intoning the final nails in the eerie coffin. -Adam Kivel
HEALTH – “Tears”
When it was announced that HEALTH would be soundtracking the new video game Max Payne 3, there was some uncertainty about what the results would sound like. Would it be electronic soundscapes for simmering in the background of the action? The gritty electronic bursts, feedback howls, and haunting vocals dominating “Tears” (the first released cut from the full soundtrack to be released on May 23rd), though, sound just like the HEALTH we’ve come to know and love. The strength of this song without the accompanying game bodes well for fans of the band who don’t get into gaming, as well as providing some amazing tunes for gamers new to these noise rockers. -Adam Kivel
Holograms – “Chasing My Mind”
The first single from Stockholm punks Holograms’ self-titled debut, “Chasing My Mind” is two and a half minutes of punk’s immediacy fused with adventurous synth riffs and sneering (but not too sneering) vocals. It’s the kind of song whose influences could be attributed to anybody from late-’70s CBGB faves to the band’s reunited Swedish brethren Refused, but let’s just call it an inviting taste of what should be, at the very least, an above-average LP. Holograms shows up July 10th via Captured Tracks. –Mike Madden
Island Twins – “Creepaway”
After the adorable wonder that was “The Wolf’s Lair”, “Creepaway” is the second taste of Queens trio Island Twins’ self-titled debut LP, out June 1st. With jangly guitar, skipping drums, and call and response vocals, the Unicorns hang pretty heavily as an influence. As drummer Tony del Cid and Erik Brauer’s guitar wash into a shimmery stumble, sister Meagan Brauer forcefully repeats the line “don’t call me back.” If you’re looking for an under-the-radar indie summer album, this track should point in the right direction. -Adam Kivel
Kanye West feat. Bon Iver — “Lost in the World” (Tiësto Remix)
It’s got to be pretty unlikely that Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon knew that his “Woods” would one day be sampled by Kanye West, and it’s got to be even more unlikely that one day that same sample would make it into a Tiësto remix. So, yeah, this remix of “Lost in the World”, the penultimate track from West’s prog-rap masterwork, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, is pretty confounding — yet also enjoyable, if you go in understanding that it’s of the same gargantuan dance fare the Dutch super-DJ has for years used to fill gazillion-capacity venues. Over the course of seven minutes, we hear snippets of West’s verses from the original, Vernon’s auto-tuned vocals, and some of the poem the late Gil Scott-Heron contributed to MBDTF’s “Who Will Survive in America?”. Rave on? -Mike Madden
Stagnant Pools – “Dead Sailor”
I can’t describe this one any better than CoS’ own Michael Roffman did in our original post of “Dead Sailor”, the second song on Stagnant Pools’ debut full-length, Temporary Room: “Scrapping together the best parts of Joy Division, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Mark Lanegan, the Enas brothers [Bryan and Douglass] kick up enough aural dust to make up for the lack of, well, having any other support.” However, I will add that those best parts, at least as they’re reflected here, include the first act’s shadowed vocals, the second’s taste for fuzz, and the third’s gloomy-imagery-inciting lyrics – which is to say this cut is excellent. Temporary Room drops August 7th via Polyvinyl. -Mike Madden
Stagnant Pools – “Dead Sailor”
The Tallest Man on Earth – “1904”
The third LP from Swedish folk singer Kristian Matsson (aka The Tallest Man on Earth), There’s No Leaving Now, drops June 12th via Dead Oceans, and album track”1904″ is the umpteenth showing of Matsson’s seemingly instinctive sense of how beautifully less can be more. Though driven by steady acoustic strums, the track also has a second, clean, and electric guitar that adds effortless melody (think of how the six-strings work in, say, “Wild Horses”). And Matsson, ever the inspired lyricist, sings of the sun being a friend, robbers made to go through his window, and, of course, the early 20th century, all with that familiar croak of a voice working the way only those of the best folk singers know how. -Mike Madden
The Tallest Man on Earth – “1904”
Yeasayer – “Henrietta”
When they announced “NEW SONGS?” and tour dates a couple of weeks ago, it was unclear whether Yeasayer meant a new album, an EP, a single, or even just some odds and ends. For now, that uncertainty remains, but with a dash of new material in the spacey, dubby “Henrietta”. Featuring softly cooed repetitions of “Oh Henrietta, we can lay around forever,” the tune drips with lovestruck, sugary goodness. Chris Keating’s effected vocals and the twinkly synth trilling work pretty similarly to their last disc, but there’s something a little sweeter, less psychedelic. -Adam Kivel
