Every Friday, Consequence of Sound rounds up some of the week’s noteworthy new album releases. Today, August 21st, brings fresh music from Cut Copy, Guided By Voices, Awich, The Lemon Twigs, Bully, Duckwrth, The Front Bottoms, and Maya Hawke. Take a look to each of their new albums below.
Also check out new albums from Nas, The Killers, and Bright Eyes, and new singles from Deftones, BTS, and Jay-Z and Pharrell.
Cut Copy – Freeze, Melt
Cut Copy, photo by Tamar Levine
Electronic music outfit Cut Copy are back with a new album titled Freeze, Melt. Due out through Cutters Records/The Orchard, it marks their sixth full-length to date following 2017’s Haiku From Zero.
As an early preview, the Melbourne natives recently shared “Cold Water”, one of the first songs they’d penned for the LP. “I’d moved to Copenhagen and had been listening to a lot more ambient and instrumental electronic music and as a result ‘Cold Water’ felt quite different to songs we’d made in the past,” said Cut Copy’s Dan Whitford.
“It was less dance, but more atmospheric. Also the subject matter explores love in today’s context, where the climate and fate of the planet are becoming increasingly uncertain. Once we’d finished it, it felt like we’d placed a marker in the ground, guiding us in a new musical direction.”
Stream:
— Spotify
Guided by Voices – Mirrored Aztec
Guided by Voices
Prolific rockers Guided by Voices are at it again: another new album, Mirrored Aztec, has arrived. Out through Rockathon Records, the effort follows up on 2019’s Zeppelin Over China, Warp and Woof, Sweating the Plague, and 2020’s Surrender Your Poppy Field. (In case you were keeping a tally, frontman Robert Pollard has over 100 albums to his name.)
A press release described Mirrored Aztec as full of “clean, confident hooks,” something lead single “Haircut Sphinx” proved almost immediately.
Stream:
— Spotify
Awich – Partition EP
Awich
Rising hip-hop artist Awich has unveiled her new Partition EP. The effort serves as her major label debut for Universal Music Group and sees her continuing to make a name for herself outside of her home country of Japan.
Awich, short for “Asia Witch Child”, first previewed the EP with the head-turning “Shook Shook”. She also premiered the “Bad Bad” and its video on Consequence of Sound earlier this month.
Speaking about “Bad Bad” and its story of new love, she said, “Sometimes, it makes you unstable and confused… This person comes into your life and turn it upside down.” Added Awich, “But at the same time, when you feel you’re loved by him, it makes you strong. It feels like you can take over the world.”
For more on Awich, read our Artist of the Month profile on her here.
Stream:
— Spotify
The Lemon Twigs – Songs for the General Public
The Lemon Twigs, photo by Michael Hill
Songs for the General Public is the new album from The Lemon Twigs. Out via 4AD, it comes just months after the release of their surprise benefit album LIVE.
The Long Island-bred indie rockers offered an early look at the LP with singles “The One” and “Moon”. The latter track was premiered on Consequence of Sound in May and, according to band member Michael D’Addario, its Origins are rooted in positive thinking, Dr. Phil (really!), and the moon (duh).
Stream:
— Spotify
Bully – Sugaregg
Bully, photo by Angelina Castillo
CoSigned rock outfit Bully are back with their third studio album, Sugaregg. The follow-up to 2017’s Losing was mixed by John Congleton (St. Vincent, Cloud Nothings) and represents a shift in creative approach for leader Alicia Bognanno.
“There was a change that needed to happen and it happened on this record,” she told Rolling Stone of the Sub Pop-released LP. “Derailing my ego and insecurities allowed me to give these songs the attention they deserved.”
Compared to its predecessor, Sugaregg features “more songs about erratic, dysfunctional love in an upbeat way, like, ‘I’m going down and that’s the only way I want to go because the momentary joy is worth it.” One of those “dysfunctional yet upbeat” tunes was lead single “Where to Start”, which was inspired by Chumbawamba’s 1997 smash single “Tubthumping”.
Stream:
— Spotify
Duckwrth – SuperGood
Duckwrth, photo by Brian Ziff
Los Angeles rapper Duckwrth has dropped off his debut album, SuperGood. The Republic Records release comes just a little over a year after his Falling Man EP, but has actually been in development for much longer than that.
“I actually had the name for this album since 2013, and just the feeling of it…” Duckwrth said in a video interview with the Recording Academy. “But I was never in the right space with myself mentally and energy-wise to be able to present an album that felt like a celebration. An album that was made with nothing but love and joy.” He continued,
“Throughout the 2010s, it was banging, it was the Trap era. A lot of the tones of that whole decade were a bit darker. So I was just riding the wave, but now that COVID has happened and all the protesting — even though protesting has been going on for a long time — now that it’s happened and my album is coming out later this year, I feel like this album is a celebration of life, one, in general… but also, two, it’s an appreciation for Black music and Black rhythm.
Stream:
— Spotify
The Front Bottoms – In Sickness & In Flames
The Front Bottoms, photo by Mark Jaworski
The Front Bottoms have unleashed their new album In Sickness & In Flames through Fueled By Ramen. Their seventh full-length to date follows up on 2017’s Going Grey.
Helmed by veteran producer Mike Sapone (Taking Back Sunday, Oso Oso), the LP finds the folk punk outfit celebrating life, purging angst, and pushing forward with “positive energy and creative energy,” according to a statement.
Stream:
— Spotify
Maya Hawke – Blush
Maya Hawke, photo via artist’s Instagram
Indie artist and Stranger Things star Maya Hawke has let loose her full-length debut album, Blush, via Mom+Pop Music.
For the album, Hawke collaborated with Grammy-winning songwriter Jesse Harris, who wrote the music behind her lyrics. It all happened “accidentally”, though, as Hawke explained in a press release: “We kept writing, kept collecting songs because it brought joy into both of our lives. Collecting them into an album and releasing it comes from a crazy, if not pathological desire to share that joy with others. From my point of view, Blush is a collection of secret messages, hidden communications with the people in my life. ‘By Myself’ was a secret message to myself, that I hope I’ll receive someday soon.”
According to Hawke, that message is “about projecting ideas you have about yourself onto other people. She added. “You perceive yourself as being in these toxic relationships with others, and get all worked up about them, but sometimes it really just means you have a toxic relationship with yourself. Talking to the mirror. Self-obsession and self-victimization, all at the same time. But it also has a secret joy in it somewhere. It’s all still fun I guess, at least for a little while longer. I’m getting better.”
For more on Hawke, check out her appearance on This Must Be the Gig and tune into her interview on Kyle Meredith With… from earlier this week.
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Stream:
— Spotify
