New Music Releases
ABBA Release Voyage, First New Album in 40 Years: Stream
ABBA have officially returned with Voyage, their first new album in 40 years. Listen now via Apple Music or Spotify. Marking the disco pop icons’ first studio set since The Visitors in 1981, the release of Voyage coincides with a digital concert event taking place in London next spring. Work on the 10-track album began back in 2018, with recording taking place at Benny Anderson’s Riksmixningsverket studio in Stockholm. One of the album’s tracks, “Just a Notion,” was previously released in demo form on 1994’s Thank You for the Music box set. Taking place at a custom-built, 3,000-capacity arena in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the digital concert will feature holograms of the fabulous foursome backed onstage by a live, 10-piece band. Entitled Abba Voyage, it’s a production of G...
Post Malone and The Weeknd Drop Collaborative Single “One Right Now”: Stream
Post Malone and The Weeknd have teamed up for their new collaboration “One Right Now” via XO/Republic Records. Stream it below. Just two days before it hit streaming services, the two superstars teased the track with a social post hinting at the surprise. “PM&TW-ORN-Update.5.nonhyped.w1.mp3,” read the audio note, which contained a snippet of The Weeknd crooning, “You’re a stain on my legacy” over atmospheric production. The singer’s manager, Dre London, later confirmed the title of the mystery tune. “One Right Now” serves as the first single off Post Malone’s upcoming fourth album, according to a press release. The song was produced by Louis Bell, Brian Lee, and Andrew Bolooki. Advertisement Related Video The Weeknd is prepping his own new album, the follow-up to his hit 2020 album Aft...
Travis Scott Releases New Singles “Escape Plan” and “Mafia”: Stream
Ahead of this weekend’s Astroworld Festival, Travis Scott has shared two new singles: “Escape Plan” and “Mafia.” It marks his first new single since 2020’s “Franchise.” Scott teased the release just a few hours earlier with a spooky Instagram post: “FUCK IT LETS START IT UP NEW MUSIC AT MIDNIGHT,” he wrote. The graphic depicts him as a monster of sorts — with menacing eyes, pointed fangs, and oversized elven ears — on the cover of a satirical tabloid magazine called Weekly World Truths. “THE TRUE DYSTOPIA IS HERE!” reads the threatening headline, while the subhead forebodes: “When the end arrives it is really beginning.” Seems pleasant enough. Scott recently took the stage at a rain-soaked Rolling Loud NYC Halloween weekend. This weekend, he’ll be back in his Houston hometown for...
TNGHT Drop New Single “TUMS”: Stream
TNGHT have returned with their new single “TUMS,” as well as its accompanying music video. Stream the clip below. Arriving via Warp Records/LuckyMe, the visual for the largely instrumental EDM track features dozens of creepy male faces wearing off-putting, oversized grins as they distort, grow, and shapeshift into one another over a wobbling, minimalist beat and laugh track. Taking cues from Instagram, the Dan Streit-directed clip lampoons their identities by tagging a photo of 50 Cent and Al Pacino on the red carpet of 2008’s Righteous Kill, a stock image of two unnamed doctors, and more with their own social handles. “The curse is over it has finished,” reads the video description. Advertisement Related Video “TUMS” marks the first output from the production duo of Hudson Mohawke an...
Foals Return with “Wake Me Up” and Tease New Album: “It’s Back to a Sweaty, Late-Night Dance Floor”
One of Britain’s best rock exports are back: today (November 4th), Foals have released their new single, “Wake Me Up.” It’s their first release since the second part of their ambitious 2019 double album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 2, and also their first since the departure of Edwin Congreave, the band’s longtime keyboardist. “Wake Me Up,” is a fitting title, however, since it was written in a cold, bleak, lockdown winter in the UK. “We wanted to create a contrast between the outside world and the music that we’re writing inside this small room,” says frontman and guitarist Yannis Philippakis about their writing process. “We couldn’t help but reimagine ourselves on stage and how euphoric it will be once it returns.” Advertisement Indeed, it’s the band’s energetic and cathartic l...
Adrian Smith (Iron Maiden) and Richie Kotzen Announce Better Days EP, Share Title Track: Stream
Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden and veteran singer-guitarist Richie Kotzen have announced the Better Days EP as part of their ongoing Smith-Kotzen collaborative project. The duo shared the title track from the four-song release ahead of its release date on November 26th. Straying from Smith’s metal roots in Iron Maiden, the song again sees the accomplished guitarists embracing their love of groove-based blues rock. From the sound of it, the collaboration has come naturally for Smith and Kotzen, whose overlap in musical taste made it a seamless and productive partnership. Better Days will mark their second release of 2021, following March’s self-titled debut. Advertisement Related Video “When Adrian came over to Los Angeles earlier this year, we got together and started throwing ideas around an...
Sunn O))) Announce Live Album Recorded at BBC, Share “Troubled Air”: Stream
Sunn O))) have announced Metta, Benevolence, a live album recorded in 2019 at the BBC Maida Vale studios while the band was on tour in the UK. The imitable drone-metal ensemble was invited on the behest BBC6 host Mary Anne Hobbs. The sessions saw Sunn performing two tracks from the cerebral Pyroclasts album and “Troubled Air” off Life Metal, the latter of which is now available to stream. Darkwave artist Anna von Hausswolff, who was supporting the band’s UK tour leg, sat in on the Pyroclasts pieces, adding soundscapes on a Nord C2D synthesizer as well as vocal accompaniment. Advertisement Related Video The session was tracked in Studio 4 at BBC Maida Vale and broadcast on Samhain — the Gaelic religious festival and celebration beginning the evening of October 31st through November 1st...
Arca Shares New Singles “Prada/Rakata”: Stream
Arca has released their new singles “Prada/Rakata” along with an accompanying music video. Watch it below. The avant-garde clip features the experimental artist in a series of futuristic scenes, including a factory with human bodies strung up by their feet and a dark room filled with dancing Arca clones. In a separate room, they’re surrounded by lasers etching words like “second puberty” into a platform as a team of spectral oxen keep the machinery running. “‘Prada’ is about celebrating psychosexual versatility; a song explicitly about transness and nonbinary modes of relating the sexual energy of the collective subconscious as a celebration of life,” the non-binary artist explained in a statement, adding, “‘Rakata’ is a song about seduction, about wanting to devour the entire world out of...
U2’s “Your Song Saved My Life” is Possibly the Worst Song of the Year
U2 have dropped “Your Song Saved My Life,” in the same sense that one might drop a fart. Stream it below. The treacly mess is destined for the soundtrack to Sing 2, where it will be ham-fisted even by the standards of a franchise where pigs cover Taylor Swift. Bono’s lyrics imagine a deeply-moved fan gushing to a songwriter about the immense power of Bono’s that artist’s work. Aren’t they heroes, these noble songwriters? You know a raspberry, when you stick out your tongue and blow? Bono’s lyrics deliver more raspberries than a British bake-off. “Yes your song saved my life,” he warbles, with a melody that makes AM adult contemporary sound like a nonstop thrill ride. “It’s what got me to the other side/ I was broken now I’m open, your love keeps me alive.” Advertisement Related Vide...
alt-J Share New Single “Get Better”: Stream
alt-J are back with “Get Better,” the second single from their forthcoming album The Dream. The plaintive song is essentially a two-hander, with dummer Thom Sonny Green sitting this one out. Instead, Joe Newman strums out gentle acoustic notes while Gus Unger-Hamilton joins in with harmonies and subtle piano. As Newman describes it, the track “is the union of two songs.” One was a little improvisation he sang to his partner, Darcy Wallace, back in 2018: “Get better, my Darcy/ I know you can.” The second was a chord progression written during lockdown while Newman thought of the thousands of bereaved around the world. “I felt nervous heat when writing ‘Get Better,” Newman said in a press statement. “The context of the Coronavirus pandemic lent my words a chilling weight and gave me a new se...
IDLES Share Hair-Raising New Single “Car Crash”: Stream
IDLES are days away from sharing their new album, CRAWLER, and the Bristol post-punks are offering another preview with the new single “Car Crash.” The slow-burning track arrives with an accompanying music video that splices together footage of collisions in cinema. As its title indicates, “Car Crash” was inspired by IDLES frontman Joe Talbot’s own brush with death behind the wheel. As he details in a press release: “It’s the horrific, comedown hangover — waking up in the morning and realizing the smashes, like, what the fuck am I doing with my life?” The track is defined by chugging, slipshod drums and abrasive guitars that stew until they explode into one chilling cacophony. “We wanted it to be as violent as possible to reflect that event,” guitarist and co-producer Mark Bowen adds. “We ...
Ought Break Up, Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy Form New Band Cola
Ought, the Montreal post-punk quartet that formed nine years ago, have announced their breakup. They leave behind a nine-year legacy that includes three Eps and three studio albums, the most recent of which was 2018’s Room Inside the World. The band — Tim Darcy, Matt May, Ben Stidworthy, and Tim Keen — issued a joint statement confirming the split: “We are no longer active as a band. When we started Ought in 2012 we had no greater aspirations than to play and write music together, and the fact that we were able to tour the world to such an extent and share so many rooms with so many of you has meant the world to us. We send lots of gratitude and love to all those we met and worked with along the way.” Fans ought not be totally devastated, however, as two of the band’s members have simultan...
