6 albums you need to hear this week
With music from The Streets, Boygenius, Holly Humberstone, Creeper, CMAT and Ren.
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 by The Streets, Boygenius, Holly Humberstone, Creeper, CMAT and Ren.
The Streets – The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light
After 12 years away, Mike Skinner and The Streets have finally followed up 2011’s Computers And Blues with new album The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light. The new project, which incorporates a full-length album and accompanying film, is The Streets’ most ambitious project yet, an audio-visual spectacle filled with rhymes that are quintessentially Skinner, and beckons the band into an exciting new era.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Boygenius – The Rest EP
Arriving just months after their acclaimed debut album, the latest EP from Julian Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus feels like the perfect way to end a huge year for the supergroup. There’s frank discussions of mortality on ‘Afraid Of Heights’ and, as a whole, some of their most united displays of musicianship to date. Fans will lap it up.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Holly Humberstone – Paint My Bedroom Black
After an exciting series of EPs and BRITs Rising Star award in 2022, Holly Humberstone has landed with her debut LP Paint My Bedroom Black. On it, she sifts through her teenage years with the dexterity and openness of a songwriter way beyond her years, mixing pop music with indie-rock and a distinctive lyrical style. “Finally I’m living, not surviving,” she sings on its title track, and Paint My Bedroom Black is an ode to moving forwards while honouring your past. It’s the birth of a special new songwriter.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Creeper – Sanguivore
On their third album, Creeper take their love of fantastical horror-filled worlds to the extreme. This time, we enter the story of an old man falling in love with a deceptively innocent but violent vampire with a lust for blood. It sounds like hifalutin stuff, but with a love of Jim Steinman tucked up their sleeves, this feels like the overblown and brilliantly ridiculous rock opera that Creeper were always destined to make.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
CMAT – Crazymad, For Me
CMAT’s debut album If My Wife New I’d Be Dead introduced Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson as a distinctive and intriguing new voice in pop country, with heart-wrenching moments rubbing up against devastating sincerity. Its follow-up Crazymad, For Me, featuring a stunning John Grant collaboration (‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight?’), expands her world while maintaining the same signature personality.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Ren – Sick Boi
Welsh musical polymath Ren is a master at weaving different genres and musical styles together to deliver hard-hitting tunes that chronicle his own story. It’s hard to find beauty in bleakness, but here is a record where the star honestly chronicles his own experiences of treatment for Lyme disease, losing friends to suicide and the constant battle with voices inside his own head. A constantly surprising and engaging listen from a vital voice.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music