10 New Albums to Stream Now: U2, Neil Young and More Editors’ Picks
U2, Songs of Experience
“If Songs of Innocence was rock’s most persistently hopeful band looking back in wonder at their punk-rock origins and unlimited dreaming in late-Seventies Dublin,” writes David Fricke, “Songs of Experience is U2 in late middle age coming to grips with an inevitable reality: They no longer have all the time in the world.” The Irish foursome’s 14th album, which the band worked on with producers like Ryan Tedder and Steve Lillywhite, is Rolling Stone‘s Number Three album of 2017.
Read Our Interview With Bono: Bono on How U2’s Songs of Experience Evolved, Taking on Donald Trump
Read Our Interview With The Edge: The Edge on U2’s Songs of Experience, Bono’s “Brush With Mortality”
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Miguel, War & Leisure
“Psych-funk splendor coexists with deep anxiety” on the R&B explorer’s politically charged, yet sumptuous fourth album, writes Maura Johnston.
Read Our Feature: Inside Miguel’s Political Awakening
Read Our Review: Miguel Throws a Psychedelic-Funk Party for a World in Flames
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Chris Stapleton, From A Room: Volume 2
The second album this year from the country troubadour is “a nine-song brew of country, folk, blues, Southern rock and soul,” writes Will Hermes. “The songs feel like unearthed classics. … Stapleton is a master who’s hit his stride, and it’s something to behold.”
Read Our Feature: Chris Stapleton’s From A Room: Volume 2: Track-by-Track Guide
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Neil Young & Promise of the Real, The Visitor
“Cranky rage and ageless idealism are all over” the latest collaboration between Neil Young and Lukas Nelson’s band Promise of the Real, writes Jon Dolan, who notes that the album veers into blues, funk and “a ragefully didactic sing-along recorded with a 56-piece orchestra that sounds like a grunge anthem.”
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Van Morrison, Versatile
The 38th album – and second this year – from the Irish crooner contains covers of standards like “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “I Get a Kick Out of You” alongside originals like the loose-limbed “Broken Record” and his instrumental arrangement of the folk standard “Skye Boat Song.”
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Prurient, Rainbow Mirror
Celebrating 20 years as one of America’s most highly emotional, full-contact purveyors of the noise subgenre known as “power electronics,” Prurient releases a 4-CD/7-LP monster exploring a doomier, more hypnotic, more flattened type of harsh squall. Though minimal in movement, a trio format with the men behind fellow one-dude noise outlets Lusseria and Dual Action make it very rich. Christopher R. Weingarten
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Danielle Bradbery, I Don’t Believe We’ve Met
Shedding the expectations placed on her by winning the fourth season of The Voice, the Texan singer-songwriter decided to dig deep into her own vision on her second full-length. “Now that I’ve gotten to be more hands-on with my music, there’s some soul and R&B woven into it,” Bradbery told Rolling Stone. “Obviously, a lot of music is changing right now, but I didn’t want to do the whole pop-country thing. It kinda bugs me that I have to say that. I was like, ‘Let’s do R&B country!'”
Read Our Feature: Danielle Bradbery on Personal New Album, Shedding Voice Image
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Cindy Wilson, Change
As a member of the space-punk pioneers the B-52’s, Cindy Wilson is well-known for her high-energy belting. But on her first solo album, recorded with a mélange of musicians from her home base of Athens, Georgia, she channels her spacier side while electronics burble and percolate around her. “No One Can Tell You” glides on a Cardigans-style groove, a chorus of Wilsons swirling above it; “Sunrise” lounges in ‘Seventies soft-rock vibes. Wilson pays homage to her roots with a roaring cover of “Brother,” originally recorded by fellow Athens trailblazers Oh-OK, but the electro stomp of that track, like the rest of Change, shows how her gaze is fixed on the future. Maura Johnston
Listen: Cindy Wilson visits Rolling Stone‘s podcast, Walking the Floor
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Heron Oblivion, The Chapel
The San Francisco-based psych-rock supergroup (with members of Comets on Fire and Espers) offers a glimpse of their thundering live set with this 8-track recording of a January show at the converted San Francisco sanctuary the Chapel.
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Ovlov, Greatest Hits Vol. II
Rubbery guitar solos, fuzzed-out riffs and indelible hooks fill this single-disc collection of the Connecticut-born indie-rock true believers’ first three EPs.
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