10 albums you need to hear this week
With music from Obongjayar, Miley Cyrus, Jacob Alon, caroline, Matt Berninger, Cliffords, MRCY, Garbage, Shura and Yeule
In the age of streaming, it’s never been easier to listen to new music — but with over 60,000 new songs added to Spotify every day, it’s also never been harder to know what to put on. Every week, the team at Rolling Stone UK will run down some of the best new releases that have been added to streaming services.
This week we’ve highlighted records from Obongjayar, Miley Cyrus, Jacob Alon, caroline, Matt Berninger, Cliffords, MRCY, Garbage, Shura and Yeule.
Obongjayar – Paradise Now
Obongjayar’s second album is the strongest and purest distillation of the London-based singer’s appeal yet. On it, he raps furiously, sings in a sweet and honeyed falsetto and goes from a hopeless romantic to a furious mess and back again. His voice is one of the strongest and most dextrous around at the moment, and the new record showcases it perfectly.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Miley Cyrus – Something Beautiful
Big words and big concepts swirl freely around this latest offering from Miley Cyrus. The singer has boldly claimed it features “healing sound properties”, while also likening it to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. No biggie then. There’s little here to back up any of those hifalutin claims, but it does at least offer solid pop, as shown on the 80s flecked ‘End Of The World’.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Jacob Alon – In Limerence
“I’m making music that explores the fantasies of imagined love and putting your heart in a world of dreams and the fallout that can come from always striving for something you can never have,” Scottish singer Jacob Alon told Rolling Stone UK last year of their early music. Debut album In Limerence is a glistening collection coloured by sadness and trauma but always striving for connection and hope. It’s knitted together by spellbinding guitar playing and a singular voice.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
caroline – caroline 2
“If the record is about anything, it’s about different worlds happening at once,” caroline’s Jasper Llewellyn told Rolling Stone UK of caroline 2, the London-based eight piece band’s remarkable second record. On it, the band make beautiful deconstructed post-rock songs that bring two or more disparate ideas together in an unusual but deeply satisfying sense of harmony. More than studio trickery, it’s songs with fundamentally strange compositions that are pieced together and made to work by a band doing things totally differently.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Matt Berninger – Get Sunk
In his second solo foray, the vocalist of The National employs producer Sean O’Brien and reunites with Booker T. Jones, who helped him on much of solo debut Serpentine Prison. Berninger’s baritone voice – one of the most distinctive of 21st century American music – is as affecting as ever here, and finds new ranges and moods when taken away from the distinctive music it’s paired with on National records by the Dessner brothers.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Cliffords – Salt of the Lee EP
We recently spotlighted them in our PlayNext section, but ‘Salt Of The Lee’ offers the strongest sense of what Cliffords are entirely about. Named after the river that runs through their native Cork, it’s an incredible offering that flits between soaring alt-rock soundscapes and inventive tender moments too. It’s the sound of a band on the cusp of greatness.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
MRCY – VOLUME 2
Fresh off a PlayNext award nomination at last year’s Rolling Stone UK Awards, the latest from MRCY continues to show why they’re one of the UK’s brightest and best soul acts. The affirming ‘Flicker’ is a powerful ode to not giving your energy to those who don’t deserve it, while the sheer eclectic nature of other influences – including everything from Michael Kiwanuka to The Clash – is subtly weaved throughout.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Garbage – Let All That We Imagine Be the Light
Ever since their emergence as alt-rock staples of the 1990s, Garbage have always reliably kicked back against the fuckers, with Shirley Manson – a powerhouse of a leader – dishing out two fingers to those who exactly need them. This latest record is no difference. As the the title suggests, it dares to dream of a utopia at a time when demagogue leaders are steering us in a different path entirely. On the soaring opener ‘There’s No Future In Optimism’, Manson offers a soaring rock epic that cleverly twists the title on its head. “There is no future that can’t be designed / With imagination and a beautiful mind,” she offers. Similarly, the pounding ‘Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty’ is an epic riposte to prejudice. It’s the sound of a band emerging as powerful as ever, right at the time when we need them to.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Shura – I Got Too Sad for My Friends
In the six years since her last album, Shura has become a top online video game streamer as well as recalibrating herself as a recording artist. Moving to New York and being isolated from friends and family, she rebuilt herself from the ground up, and new album I Got Too Sad for My Friends is a portrait of this journey, one of sadness and pain but also the glow of new beginnings.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
yeule – Evangelical Girl is a Gun
This latest project from Singaporean star Yeule sees them on typically kaleidoscopic form, combining hypnotic melodies and darker themes with beats that offer, by their own admission, a “cyborgian” spin on trip-hop and ’90s gothic. It’s ethereal, otherworldly and brilliantly unpredictable at every turn.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music