10 New Albums to Stream Now: Migos, Ty Segall and More Rolling Stone Editors’ Picks
Migos, Culture II
The Atlanta hip-hop innovators follow up last year’s Culture with a follow-up recorded largely on the road – a shift from “Bad and Boujee” and other early tracks, which the trio mostly recorded in their home studios. “We were just writing in the middle of, like, the jungle – our backyard was, like, the trees,” Migos’ Takeoff told Rolling Stone. “[Quavo] saying ‘straight out the jungle, straight out the jungle’ [on the low-end-heavy ‘Narcos’], like on a Bob Marley kind of like Jamaican tip. We wouldn’t have said that if we wasn’t in the environment we was in.” Metro Boomin, Zaytoven and Mike Dean (with assistance from Kanye West) join Migos’ Quavo on production duties, while Gucci Mane and 2 Chainz join “MotorSport” guests Nicki Minaj and Cardi B on the guest-MC roster.
Read Our Feature: High Times and Heartache With the Three Kings of Hip-Hop
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Ty Segall, Freedom’s Goblin
Prolific shredder Ty Segall’s tenth solo album was recorded in five studios, including one that he constructed in the garage of his Eagle Rock home. “Ty likes to chop wood, as we say,” rock architect Steve Albini – who co-engineered the album – told Rolling Stone. “He doesn’t need candles lit or to wait for the muse to alight. He just spits on his hands and makes the record.”
Read Our Feature: Underground Rock King Ty Segall on the Weirdness of Semi-Fame, Defining Success
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Mary Gauthier, Rifles & Rosary Beads
Over the past four and a half years, this Americana singer-songwriter has immersed herself in writing workshops with veterans, turning their stories into detailed portraits of military life. Rifles & Rosary Beads is the result of those sessions, an 11-song collection of warm, string-accented folk in which Gauthier’s world-weary voice gives extra depth to the sometimes-wrenching, always-compelling lyrics. “We’re in an empathy crisis; each side is really entrenched in their own opinions, and we’re not listening to each other,” Gauthier told Rolling Stone. “For the three-and-a-half minutes of a song, you become that wife whose husband came back different, you become that kid whose father has missed your birthday year after year. My hope with this project is to try to step back from politics and try to get people to see what those who have served or are serving are going through.”
Read Our Feature: How Mary Gauthier Is Giving U.S. Veterans an Outlet on New Album
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Chris Dave and the Drumhedz, Chris Dave and the Drumhedz
The in-demand drummer – whose recent credits include Adele’s 21 and D’Angelo’s Black Messiah – strikes out on his own with an expansive, soulful album on which his intricate backbeats blossom into slick jazz-soul (like the languorous “Cosmic Intercourse,” which has Mint Condition’s Stokley Williams up front), sprawling R&B (the stunning Bilal-Tweet duet “Spread Her Wings”) and tense funk (“Black Hole,” one of two tracks featuring the genre-bending Anderson .Paak). “The project was to show that drummers can write, produce and arrange,” Dave told Rolling Stone. “It’s for all the unsung musicians: You can do whatever the fuck you want to.”
Read Our Feature: Superdrummer Chris Dave on Why He Needed to Make His Own Album
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Dream Wife, Dream Wife
The debut from this U.K. trio begins with glossy oohs and ahhs, but any pretense of it being a straightforward guitar-pop record is ripped to shreds when vocalist Rakel Mjöll yelps “Let’s make ouuuuttt! Let’s maaake outt!” in a way that recalls the alkali-coated pipes of Mark Arm or Axl Rose. This quick-change study is a fitting introduction to Dream Wife, who combine hard-candy hooks and shimmying beats with abstracted guitar lines and nervy lyrics to create unsettling-in-a-good-way post-punk-pop-punk. Mjöll’s hiccuping, giddy delivery makes her sound like she’s newly delighted by every lyric, channeling the curious ecstasy of Life Without Buildings’ Sue Tompkins and X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene. Maura Johnston
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Django Django, Marble Skies
These UK art-rockers’ first two albums updated Sixties psych and Seventies prog for this century. Their third LP takes a distinct turn towards an admittedly loopy version of pop – from the weightless dance music of “Surface to Air” to the speedy Eighties New Wave of the title track to the Beach Boys-in-orbit confection “Sundials.” The cleverly ahistorical music-referencing, distractedly chunky beats and swirling tunes can recall Beck at his most all-over-the-place, even if Django Django are better at tossing out interesting ideas than they are creating songs you’ll remember. Jon Dolan
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No Age, Snares Like a Haircut
No Age are probably bored of Sonic Youth comparisons, but their ability to create crisp little rock & roll shapes out of Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore’s example remains marvelous. On the L.A. band’s latest, the distortion feels almost breezy, and drummer-singer Dean Spunt’s taunting punk vocals come with a gentle searching touch, even when he’s singing about coming across needles in the park on “Drippy.” “Tidal” charges like the Ramones, while “Send Me” zones out like the best slow-dissolve Nineties indie-rock. The end of the record slows down with thorny indulgences like the drone-ballad “Squashed.” But even those moments are pretty, another side of a band that’s mastered the sting and elation of the two-minute thrash missile. Jon Dolan
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Portal, Ion
While plenty of extreme metal acts are content to hold down the center, offering reliable versions of sounds codified a quarter-century ago, a select group of bands continues to push – to the point that what they do comes across more like esoteric art music than anything conventionally headbang-able. Brisbane’s Portal are among the leaders of this murky avant-garde. Formed in 1994, the band has gradually honed its approach without losing sight of its core mission: using the basic tools and aesthetics of death metal in service of pure dread and disorientation. The group’s excellent fifth LP might be its clearest-sounding yet, and that relative sharpness only highlights the unrelenting weirdness of its approach. Whirring, blastbeat-driven riffs hurtle ahead with furious speed, then veer off at odd angles or stumble into brief, woozy pauses; meanwhile, vocalist the Curator declaims in a monstrous rasp. The nine tracks here are surprisingly diverse – from the breakneck, detail-crammed “Esp Ion Age” to the amorphous, ultra-distorted “Spores” – but the album plays like a single sonic event. Ion is a lurching, labyrinthine thrill ride that never lets up. Hank Shteamer
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Long Neck, Will This Do?
Lily Mastrodimos, formerly of the beautifully named Jawbreaker Reunion, proves herself an excellent indie-rock songwriter with her new band’s debut, going for a heft and depth her previous outfit didn’t have. Her voice is handsome enough for folk, and Will This Do? has some overly genteel acoustic moments. But Long Neck can rock too, with chiming guitar churn pushing against roundhouse drumming on songs like “Elisabeth” and “Mine / Yours” recalling Hop Along or Waxahatchee. The emo crusher “Milky Way” opens slow and gravelly, with Mastrodimos “feeling little,” and proceeds to gain confidence until she finds herself leading a group chorus of “I sat to watch the sunset and I just fucking lost it.” It isn’t often that becoming one with the firmament feels so down to earth. Jon Dolan
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The Spook School, Could It Be Different?
These Glasgow indie-poppers combine bubblegum hooks with efficient, bouncy basslines and crisp drumming – a combination that makes their forthright lyrics about alienation and self-awareness, sung by gently sneery guitarist-vocalist Nye Todd and honey-voiced bassist-vocalist Anna Cory, cut even deeper. While tracks like the breakneck “Less Than Perfect” and the crushed-out introvert’s anthem “I Only Dance When I Want To” are crafted for maximum bounce-along impact, the album opener “Still Alive” – a jangly, defiant survival anthem that crests on the chorus “Fuck you, I’m still alive!” – is a triumphant middle finger that should resonate far and wide. Maura Johnston
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