The January Album Round-Up
Nyron Higor by Nyron Higor
Bossa nova standards accentuated by spacey downtempo instrumentation that envelopes the listener in the swaddled universal love and yearnings only previously experienced by dropping late-night needle to Getz/Gilberto.
All The Artists by Sun Kil Moon
While a step back in terms of mainstream accessibility and general musical sheen, Kozelek brings another decently curated collection of stories and vignettes to reminisce on and croon to over piano. There are tracks that have Kozelek pushing himself towards new levels of vulnerability and transparency with himself, his family, and his ever-consolidating fanbase, but then other moments which feel as surface level as his detractors characterize his output to be.
I Still Want to Share by Sophie Jamieson
A slow-burn of an album that makes the most of its stripped back and vulnerable sound. It’s easy to find similar artists to pair and compare Jamieson to with the likes of Angel Olsen, Myriam Gendron, and Juliana Daugherty, though I Still Want to Share blossoms with such delicate intention you feel this additional layer of experience that comes from being at just the right place at the right time to take in the most intricate of pleasantries – like winning over the trust of a stray cat or seeing a bird too beautiful to simply exist on your standard walk.
Humanhood by The Weather Station
Humanhood cements The Weather Station as so much more than another lush project of folk and femininity. Stated to be shaped by the improvisation of form, arrangement, mood, and feeling, you feel Tamara Lindeman pushing against the well-established sound she could’ve easily found a constricting comfort in similarly to the likes of other greats such as Joni Mitchell. Luckily for us all, this isn’t a scorched earth approach but rather an artist building and experimenting upwardly and creating a professional and singular new standard. Humanhood stands taller, sounds bigger, and etched with more dynamics without losing a single fingerprint of the albums and efforts that led up to it.
Crazy Arms by Pigeon Pit
If you got swept up into the folk punk movement of the early 2010s thanks to a random reblog of Johnny Hobo & The Freight Trains to tumblr or someone quoting Andrew Jackson Jihad while relaying their life-changing experience at Plan-It X Fest, Pigeon Pit feels like a breath of nostalgic fresh air. While the scene has been shattered top-down and bottom-up from id-pol poisoning and the general predatory nature that comes from any micro-turned-macro genre, the album itself revels in its rebellion and jangling confessional stylings without getting bogged down on performative interjections of “being a good fucking person.”
Weft by Blue Lake
Serene stillness captured without the loss of any of its array of sparkling radiance.
Hometown Girl by U.e.
If Weft by Blue Lake is the musical mediation on serenity, Hometown Girl acts as the literal counterpart. Not to say there are no moments of lyricisms, just that they are layered between thick blankets of warm ambient hums and loops.
Remembrance by In The Country
By far the most independent outfit on this list as made obvious by the band members’ suit, tie, and top hat attire (perhaps it’s a Norwegian thing lost in translation)– but nevertheless worth your time. In the Country have threaded the needle of adapting the poetic works of Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Dickinson without muddying the message or limply leeching from the respective poets’ artistry for the sake of easy access to the most tender of lyricisms.
Freckle by Freckle
Taking the understated self-titled album at face value, there is plenty of fun and funky acoustic rock songs that wear their influences of Marc Bolan and early David Bowie both proudly and stylishly. It doesn’t tend to deviate to far from the path, but such expectations of variety are corrected once you realize you are dealing with a new Ty Segall project.
The Purple Bird by Bonnie "Prince" Billy
The recodification of country music across the greater music landscape has left a mostly bitter taste to even the most earnest efforts to be subversive with tried-and-true themes of americana. Given the timing of the release, the album has the potential to be some rally cry or the soundtrack to empathetic doom-scrolling for the aging culturally literate indie-sphere types that replaced Jon Stewart with Tim Heidecker.
Honerable mentions: Songs Of Beginning And Belonging by Will Samson, Le piano et le torrent by Viviane Audet, A Shaw Deal by Geologist and D.S., Pond Life by Tara Cunningham and Jack Cooper, Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds by Lawrence English, Seismic Heart by Bobby Hawk, On a Tuesday and a Wednesday by Pierre Bastien & Casper Van De Velde, and Out From Underneath by Prism Shores.
