Support for this podcast and the following message come from Lagunitas Brewing Company, challenging the status quo and crafting stories along the way. Featuring a wide range of innovative craft brews and non-alcoholic options, it's good to have friends. Learn more at lagunitas.com.
Look at us in the studio, not being remotely bothered by a citywide lockdown because of the inauguration. Did you all have trouble getting in at all? Not at all. No, I didn't. Yeah. One thing about D.C. in general is any time there's any warning about anything, everybody goes into...
like buying a hundred pound bags of flour. Right. Yeah. Everybody, everybody gets into this like prepper mindset. And so I remember I had to come into work one day when the Pope was in town and for like weeks it was like, it's the Pope apocalypse. Like the Pope is coming. Every street will be a complete madhouse. Whatever you do, do not even look out your window because
It will be so perilous. And then I got called in. All Things Considered was like, can you come in and do this two-way? An emergency two-way about music. You know what it was? It was an emergency two-way about Ryan Adams' album covering Taylor Swift's 1989. And it was like, whoa, breaking. Yeah, breaking. And so I'm like, well...
I got to come in. I got to do this. I'm going to budget, you know, two hours to commute. Right. Fastest commute of my life in D.C. Yeah. It took 20 minutes because nobody was on the road. Yeah. Now, it's a ghost town right now. Total breeze. It wasn't as easy for me to get in as I think it was. But I did make it here without incident. You know what I was thinking? If Marshall Allen can wait 100 years to
to put out his debut solo album, then we can wait a few weeks into January to do our 2025 preview, right? Absolutely. No big deal. I'm planning to wait until I'm 100 to release my album. It will be terrible. There's still time. Very little time left.
It'll be the sound of my death rap. We're going to talk about that Marshall Allen album and a whole bunch of other releases on this episode, Stephen Thompson and Sheldon Pierce. We were going to do this show at the top of January, the very first week of the show.
Talk about locking down the city. A snowstorm came that kind of threw us for a loop. I got sick. It just wasn't happening. But on the upside, we have been able to confirm a whole lot more releases for 2025, at least into late April, early May or so.
We all brought some of the albums that we're most excited about this year, and we're going to go around the room here, but I thought we'd start with Perfume Genius. Is that cool? Yeah. Mike Kadrius, he's back with a new album he just announced. It's called Glory. Not out until late March, but the first single from it I think is absolutely incredible. It's the opening track called It's a Mirror. What do you get from stretching your eyes and that you mean you spiral?
Perfume genius he is one of those artists I think that
His work just keeps getting better. It's just on this steady upward climb, right? I mean, there's no like, ah, you know, two steps forward, one step back, or a little hiccup along the way. It's just like consistently better with each race. I mean, it's insane because he's been good for so long. He's been good for so long. 15 years. 15 straight years of like almost unabashed excellence. He always has something to say. Yeah.
I think that's one of the hardest ruts to break out of creatively, especially when you're talking about this is his seventh album. You know, and he's put out singles and EPs and other projects and stuff along the way, but he's never run out of new things to say and new ways to say it. Well, I mean, this project is interesting because he created it with his partner, Alan Weifels, in addition to working with his longtime producer, The Great...
multi-talented Swiss Army Knife Blake Mills. And he has called this record the most directly confessional of his career, which is interesting. That's saying a lot. I find a lot of that music... This is not somebody who hides the ball. Right. This is confessional music through and through. An artist who is really...
into expressing intimate details as it pertains to self and the relationship with others. But I mean, I think you can hear that on a song like "It's a Mirror." This interrogation of self-isolation. It really is a look at yourself type of moment.
I feel like we're still getting some of the echoes and reverberations from the pandemic when a lot of artists were suddenly forced indoors and sort of forced to kind of steep in their own thoughts instead of kind of living this very external life where you're going out
it can still be very lonely, but you're out performing on stage every night. And when you suddenly can't do that anymore, I feel like a lot of artists, a lot of musicians have really been looking inward in the last few years. The great reemergence. People sort of trying to find ways to connect with others and connect with self after being isolated for so long. It takes a little bit of time to get reacclimated too. And I do think you're seeing that with a lot of artists sort of
on sort of second and third releases out of the pandemic break really sort of starting to refine their voice again. Exactly. One of these days, I'm going to make eye contact with them. It's coming. It's coming.
I find it deeply threatening when you do. Please don't. That's the thing. Even before the pandemic, people were always like, can you not look at me in my eyes? It's very unnerving. Well, the Perfume Genius album, Glory, is out March 28th. Have you all heard the whole thing? I have. It's absolutely breathtaking. It maybe seems silly to say this so early in the year, but I 100% think that this will end up on a lot of favorite lists and best of the year lists when we get to the end of the year.
Sheldon, what do you got? Yeah. I mean, speaking of this kind of singer songwritery emergence, there is a new album from the band florist called jelly wish. And the single is called have heaven. Took a long of a town, found myself body. There was a long fragment of colors coming from the
♪ Baby's eye ♪ ♪ From the mother's side ♪ ♪ From my eye turning blind ♪ ♪ Took a long place I came to hide ♪ ♪ From it was uncomfortable ♪ ♪ Can you hear ♪ ♪ I think there's a song singing ♪ ♪ Through the particle field ♪ ♪ Could have a heaven too ♪ ♪ Could have a heaven three ♪
we could have
I'm wondering if you all had the same moment I did, which is the moment Emily Sprague's voice comes in at the top of the song, where just everything in your body just sort of goes limp. Just like, relax. It's just like, I mean, in the best way, you're just like, I give over completely. It is just like so beautiful. Oh my God. I feel like this is such, like I'm trying to do some sort of play on words or something, and I'm really, really not. But what happened to me when she started singing was I just imagined...
blooming. But I'm like, it's not like, oh, because they're called florists, I think of florists. There really is this quality to it of tendrils extending out. And it's very soothing. You're immediately in touch with nature hearing her voice. Nature is very clearly important to them. I mean, florist is...
indie folk band from New York. A lot of their music has these soft, sort of delicate flourishes. All of it centering Emily's voice. She has said that this record is purposely complicated, though. Like, it's...
The gentle delivery of a chaotic and confusing, almost like fantastical view of the world. Thinking about imagination before reality. Trying to escape the world that we live through fantasy elements. I think something that you can hear on this song that plays out across the album is...
It's like conjuring this dreamscape. Part of that is her voice. But you know the thing that works so well for me, though, is it's not too precious. It's not cloying. Yeah, and it so could be, though, right? It so easily could be. There's nothing saccharine about it. It's not overly sentimental. There is also this rootedness. It's firm. It's grounded. And I think that is the quality that...
as it sort of spirals off into heady ideas on this record that keeps it grounded. So the album again from Florist is called Jelly Wish, and that is out April 4th. Stephen, you're up. Well, my first pick is by the great singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus.
This feels like a star turn, this record. I agree. And Lucy Dacus obviously is one third of the super group Boy Genius. She's also put out a string of really brilliant solo records in her own right, has been championing other wonderful kind of up and coming artists, kind of pulling as many people up with her as possible along the way. But when you start to dip into her new record, which is called Forever is a Feeling, which comes out March 28th, you get a sense of somebody who is
not only continuing, it's saying leveling up as if she hasn't been great all along is kind of silly, but it's clearly about to reach kind of a new batch of audience in a big way. This is going to be a big record. The first single from the record is called Ankles and it is fantastic. What if we don't touch? What if we only talk about what we want?
And can I have And I'll throw a fit If it's all I can do If it's the thought that counts Let's think it through So bite me on the shoulder
And let me touch you where I want to There, there, there, there, there Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed And take me doing your dreams I'm not gonna stop you, I'm not gonna stop you this time I want you to show me what you mean
There's just such an
an easygoing confidence to what she's doing right now where she, she, I think realizes at this point that she can just kind of breathe out these words and she knows that you're hanging on everything she's saying. She's such a gifted artist. And like you look, you look over this record and you kind of scan who she's working with. Obviously like any boy genius adjacent project,
Julian Baker's on this record. Phoebe Bridgers is on this record. Blake Mills, who produced the Perfume Genius record, is on this. Hozier. Hozier's on this record. Hozier, Bartice Strange. You know, like you just see these people. So much of their music in the last few years has been, whether directly or indirectly, about community and about working with people
people you love, working with people who feed your soul and feed your art and make your work better. And the second I just started dipping a toe into this record, I felt that community come to life.
This is her first record on Geffen after being on Matador for many years. There are a lot of times where that first record is supposed to be the big one, you know? And a lot of times that means scaling up sonically, making your sound bigger in some way, taking it to radio. Like that is the idea in a lot of cases. That's not what is happening here.
Well, I was reluctant to say anything about how it felt like a leveling up or whatever we want to call it when I listened to it because I've never been a massive Lucy Dacus fan. I like her work just fine, but I've never been completely blown away or completely, you know, all the way in on her previous releases. And then I heard this one and I just thought, holy moly, what is this? This is incredible. A whole record. And, you know, and it made me want to go back and re-listen to some of them. But for
Which I recommend because you're missing out. But for me personally, anyway, best I've ever heard from her, hands down. Does it feel bigger to you? To me, it feels more fine-tuned in very specific ways. I don't know. I feel like melodically, the production, just the choices she's making along the way in these songs all just feel... It feels confident. Yeah, I think that's a good word to go with. You mentioned that earlier, and I thought, yeah, that's it. There's just something very assured about...
Not that that was necessarily lacking, but maybe just a little bit more sense of adventure in these songs, too. I think to me, Boy Genius really did a world of good for her because it's like coming out of those sessions, working with those other two brilliant songwriters. That's a lot more about the we, right? And I feel like coming out of that process, she now understands exactly what she wants her songs to do.
She wants that. She knows how they should function, how they best suit her in particular in her vision. I have always said the one, the first piece of advice that I always give anybody when anybody asks me for career advice is,
Professional musicians coming up to you. Not usually professional musicians. Professional musicians are not necessarily coming to me saying, how do I make good music? What do we do next year, Steve? That would be foolish. But the one piece of all-purpose advice that I can give to basically anybody in any context is surround yourself with the kind of people that you want to emulate. If you want to be...
smart hang out with other hang out with smart people if you want to be funny hang out with funny people if you want to be ethical hang out with ethical people well you just wrote yourself off the show this this this is the missing thing i because it hasn't been working and i i'm not getting any better and now i realize robin's like why have i been stagnating since 2006 just it's just not happening
Well, that album from Lucy Dacus, again, Forever is a Feeling, is out again on March 28th. This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices, like full-service wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on Thinkorswim. Visit Schwab.com to learn more.
Support for NPR and the following message come from LinkedIn Ads. It's 2025. If your B2B marketing strategy for the new year doesn't include improving your ad targeting, your ads can get lost in the noise. LinkedIn Ads can help by ensuring your message makes it to the right audience. Start converting your B2B audience into high-quality leads today. We'll even give you $100 credit on your next campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash all songs to claim your credit.
Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. This message comes from Intuit TurboTax. Now, taxes is matching with an expert backed by tech to get you the most money back at TurboTax.com. Experts only available with TurboTax Live. See guarantee details at TurboTax.com slash guarantees.
This is Renee Montgomery, host of Montgomery & Company, your home for sports, culture, and family business. Every week, I bring my experience as a two-time WNBA champion and a love for the culture into exciting interviews and captivating conversations with people moving the needle. Listen to Montgomery & Company on WABE, part of the NPR Podcast Network.
So I was talking about the Perfume Genius record and how he as an artist, as someone who just seems to keep getting better with every record, I would say the same thing about Serpent With Feet. We had Serpent With Feet on last year's preview show, Sheldon, you played on the 2024 preview show because he was putting out an album called Grip. And now he's back with a follow-up called Grip Sequel. Are you sure that's not just the alt text? Yeah.
Is it just the old text? Maybe I should double check this. It would not be the first time I've gotten something like that wrong. No, it is grip sequel. Grip sequel. Sequel, yeah. And this is the first single we're getting from it. It's called Writhing in the Wind. Oh, I'm in good heart Writhing in the wind Let me mend it Let me mend it I'm not who I was then
Can you give me a chance?
You know Sheldon, when we had Serpent with Feet on this time last year,
You noted how he was on that record, Grip, how he's really leaning into not necessarily more conventional R&B, but maybe at least more accessible stuff for him, not maybe as wildly experimental. I'm curious what you think about this sequel to Grip, because it sounds to me like he's found that perfect balance between those two worlds, the wildly experimental and
Yeah, yeah. I think this record is really interesting because it feels all of these songs feel like they're on the fringes of the songs of the original Grip record. They move in very disorienting ways, but they still have that same kind of pop structure that was sort of missing from his earlier records. They're
very focused, even on this record. I mean, it's got that steady, quiet club beat at its center. Right. The piano's like, it's kind of gospel-y. Right. But then there's this... It's like propulsive. It's
you can really sort of feel yourself in it, but it's still got those little like quirky, like serpent with feet charms. It's, it's not all the way a move to the center, which is what always makes his music so interesting. It's funny because I must say, like I generally find the deluxe album phenomenon of the last few years where an artist will essentially release an entirely new album as an
Sure, like SZA just did. Yeah, I think it's generally really annoying. It's usually an effort to game the Billboard charts. Absolutely. In a lot of those cases, the songs, they feel like throwaways, like just feeding the streaming trough, right? It's like, we know the people are out there to receive them, so give them to them. Who cares what they are?
But it's this kind of thing that sort of makes me backtrack on the process itself not being there. You mean this release? This kind of release. Because it's like, you see this and it's like, oh, this is an extension of the original album in a very purposeful way. It kind of ties into what we were saying earlier in this conversation about florists and perfume genius and artists who've been around for a long time and how it's easy to lose track of them. You know, music just comes out of this giant fire hydrant. Right.
And you're constantly like dipping your teacup in the fire hydrant and trying to... It's being blown out of your hand. It's being blown out of your hand by just the sheer glut of, I almost said product. And then I threw up in my own mouth. I mean, that's how the streamers are thinking about it. So many room full of people in suits, business suits who are using that exactly. That's exactly how they're thinking. And so not only is it easy to lose track of an artist you like...
It's easy to wake up and be like four albums later. Oh yeah, I remember. I like that band. And Serpent With Feet put out this record and like just being reminded, it only came out a year ago. And so it's being reminded like, oh, if you didn't check that out or if you listened once and then dipped your teacup back into the fire hydrant, it's like, oh, yeah, I remember.
Come back and revisit these songs. And as you said, Sheldon, kind of hear how his vision and his idea is continuing to take shape. He's so inventive. You can spot, I love artists where I could hear a five second excerpt from any song and know who it is.
And he fits that description to a T while never really staying in the same place at the same time. And that's one of the hardest things to do is to be distinct at the same time you are ever changing. So this follow-up Grip sequel, it is six new songs and then reworked or completely reimagined versions of three other tracks talk about the music constantly evolving. That is out on February 28th. Grip sequel is out on February 28th.
Sheldon, we've come back around to you. I'm going to bring in one of my favorite bands of the moment, the Brighton post-punk unit, Squid. They've got a new album out. It's called Cowards. Great name. Cowards! And the latest single from that album is called Building 650. Show me around, show me around, show me around.
♪ All the noble cast just powers the town ♪ ♪ Frank's my friend, he's my friend ♪ ♪ We are friends, there's murder sometime ♪ ♪ But it's a real nice guy, well Frank's my friend ♪ ♪ We tie them up ♪
I am so in love with the general strangeness of Squid's music. General strangeness is a good way to sum up everything in this. Everything good in the world. The music is always a bit fidgety and weird. It's very heady and a sort of...
in an unexplainable way. This might be their weirdest and most fidgety music. As I said, Cowards, they say it's an album about evil that has nine stories whose protagonists reckon with cults, charisma, and apathy. I mean, sign me up for a Squid record about that. It's a very interesting record. I love the way the songs...
Never quite settle in one place. Sometimes you will think you have a song pegged and then in its third act, it explodes into something else. Sometimes as on this one, it's like right in the middle. There's an entire different song stuck in the middle. And then it goes back to what you were hearing before. It's music that really rewards active listening. Yes. When I listened to this record, my first thought was, where's the lyric sheet?
Because this is going to be, this is one of those records that you want to spend, you mentioned active listening, right? Like I want to spend a little time studying it. I want to, there's a point of view and that's so important to kind of transcending some of the strictures of the genre that could be limiting, but here are not.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you talk about the lyric, there's nothing on the nose about any of this stuff, right? I mean, like you dig into the narratives here and there are stories that seem to be emerging, but it's like they're writing around whatever is really at the heart of it. And all these little things, the details that they're giving you hint at what's happening in the center of the story. But you like on this cut building six 50, he says like, Frank's my friend. He's my friend. We're friends. He says, Frank,
There's murder sometimes. But he's a real nice guy. Frank's my friend.
And then he says, we tie them up. And you're like, what? Oh my God. You know, it's not the first thing I reached for, but you had me at twitchy and strange. You know, those are two things that I'm always going to go for. Yeah. I think even for folks who maybe don't like post-punk traditionally, there is something about this record in particular. I mean, in addition to being cold and calculating in spots can be
unfold into something that is really beautiful and intricate and interesting. But there is also something very eerie about it. Very sinister. Yeah, just out of the corner of your eye, you can feel it pressing down on you. So that album from Squid, Cowards. Cowards! Is out February 7th.
Thompson, what deeply unsettling thing do you have for us? I'm going to go in the exact opposite direction. I'm going to go in the exact opposite direction and talk about the gorgeous solo acoustic singer-songwriter record coming out March 7th. It's by the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell. It's called Foxes in the Snow, and it opens with this
beautiful song called Bury Me. Bury me where the wind don't blow Where the dust won't cover me Where the tall grass grow Or bury me right where I fall Tokyo to Tennessee I love them all See the windmills turn up 55 Still got so much to learn
♪ Still feel alive ♪ ♪ And one lonely girl is all I need ♪ ♪ To tie me to this world ♪ ♪ Make me believe ♪ ♪ Well I ain't no cowboy that I can ride ♪ ♪ And I ain't no animal that I've been inside ♪ ♪ And there were bars of steel, boys ♪ ♪ And there were bars to sing ♪ ♪ And there were bars with swinging doors ♪ ♪ For all the time between ♪
Harrowingly Beautiful is not what I would have thought to use to describe this song, but that it's so perfect. It's sort of like, it's like a murder ballad. Right. This record is so well-timed.
in his career. He's making the exact right record for this moment in the world and for where he is in his life and in his career. You know, Jason Isbell has become this huge Americana star, right? You know, he came up with the Drive-By Truckers. He wrote some of the best Drive-By Truckers songs. I mean, he wrote Outfit, which is one of my favorite songs of the 21st century. And he's
But then, for the last 20 or so years, he's been putting out these solo records. Most of them have been with his band, The 400 Unit. Some of these records, to me, feel like these are stadium fillers. He's becoming this big rock star. And you lose sight of what is beautiful in his songwriting.
this record just strips him down to himself and a guitar from 1940. Yeah. And just situates him in the studio for a few days. And he's just churning out these beautiful raw boned songs. And, you know, the guy's been through a lot. You know, he, he,
came out the other side of substance abuse. He had this, you know, wonderful marriage to Amanda Shires that people really had this kind of parasocial connection. As they often do. As they so often do. Well, that marriage ended. And...
I really root for the people who make my favorite music. I do not subscribe to the notion that great art has to come from suffering. I think that's BS. I want my favorite artists to walk through the world on a cloud because they've given me a gift. I'm sorry, I always think of Barton Fink when he runs into his favorite writer. He's like, a writer suffers and he writes from the gut. And the other writer says, I just like making stuff up.
Yeah. But like music, you know, music is this incredible act of empathy. Yeah. You really get the sense that this is something that he had to get off his chest and that it had to happen right now. He needed to make this right. A lot of the best music is like that. Right now. I mean, this is his first entirely solo acoustic album of his career as deep in as he is. Yeah.
where he is at his level of fame, it's a very interesting choice to make and not the choice that most people would have made. So that tells you that this is something that he had to do. I mean, one of the hallmarks of his songwriting career is Jason Isbell writes songs about wanting to be a better person. And that's the best thing about being human is trying to be better each day. Yeah.
I don't need to weigh in on any of that. You guys have literally nothing to contribute to this. I mean, all I kept thinking is when you were saying like, he just, he wants to be better. Like he's...
I'm like, not me, man. I'm as good as, this is as good as it's ever been. Big year to it now. I've been coasting at the pinnacle for 30 years. I peaked at 22 years old. I've just been dribbling the ball at half court. That's right. Running out the clock. Not me, man. Oh, man. So Foxes in the Snow from Jason Isbell. Again, that is out on March 7th.
This message comes from CarMax. Searching for your next car? Don't settle, thrive! At CarMax, it's easy to shop online or in person. With upfront pricing and tools designed to help, finding a car you love has never been easier. Plus, you can sell or trade in your current vehicle with an online offer in minutes, no strings attached. Start shopping now to find a car you'll love at CarMax.com. CarMax, the way it should be.
So there's an album coming out this year that I didn't realize how excited I was about it until I heard it. And it's from the singer Sia Gray. Oh, this is such a good record. So good. You know, I have been aware of Sia Gray's work and have always liked what I've heard. But, you know, I haven't followed super closely, but man...
This new album is just incredible. It's called Sia. We can talk more about it and her work after we hear a little bit of the album. This is one of the singles from it. It's called Shell of a Man. ♪ I'm invited to guess ♪ ♪ I wanna call you, call you out ♪ ♪ Call me rude and I'll show you ♪
Oh my God, the little harmonies in her voice there just absolutely kill me. You know, one of the things I love about Sia Gray's work is
You know, all the shape-shifting she does, you know, and sometimes these sudden change-ups in her music and everything. This song, Shell of a Man, I think is a little more subtle. There are hints of those kinds of shifts in it, like some unexpected sounds like at the top of the song.
but almost like a jangle pop hoedown for her. But she's someone... But she can get so experimental and really go deep on electronica. There's some noisy guitars. Oh my God, this record is incredible. Yeah, I mean, I feel like a lot of her previous stuff was very radical. I didn't even know where...
where one idea about genre rubbed up against another, especially the stuff on the QWERTY EPs that she released. This to me seems, I mean, no less experimental, but definitely a bit more focused. And I think this song, I mean, it's so propulsive. It's moving straight on, right? In a way that previous music maybe wasn't. But as a result of that,
You really get to appreciate the quality of her voice, her ability to harmonize. It's a microcosm of this record as a whole that she is able to really sort of solidify who she is as an artist on this record. So I got hearing aids a few months ago. And one, if you've been thinking about getting hearing aids, I recommend it. Suddenly being able to participate in conversations in my home has really been a plus.
Well, for everyone else, it's been like, oh, no. Yeah, I know. Now you can participate. I've been amazed at the things that people say about me. We used to just speak freely all the time. I was amazed. Like, oh, that's what they're saying in my kitchen. That's cruel. But this record for me immediately conjured that thought of like, glad I've addressed my hearing. Went to a few too many concerts.
And I'm glad I have really good headphones. Because this is, and headphones on top of hearing aids can be a trip. But there are so many little delights in the margins of these songs. That's it. It's everything I ever want in music. You know, it's unexpected. It's consistently surprising. I love how she uses her voice. And yeah, there's all this little ear candy along the way.
You know, Sheldon, you were talking about, well, we've been actually talking about this a lot with a lot of the music we've played about how much more potent it can be when it's experimental but doesn't go off the rails, right? Or completely leave you behind and you're scratching your head and wondering what's happening.
My son made the mistake recently of getting me to talk about what I like in lyrics. Oh, God. He's like, why? He's young. We all make mistakes. He's like, what makes a really great lyric? It's important to know what not to ask your parents.
But I, of course, I immediately picked up the question and I said, you know, the trick, I think, and this is true with all this art that we're considering is you don't come at anything too directly. You kind of ride around it. You can get a little weird, but you anchor it with at least one little idea or something that is just enough for people to sort of set their feet on and get you wondering about everything else.
And as an example, I used the Wilco line, I'm an American aquarium drinker. I assassined down the avenue. I'm hiding out in the big city blinking. And then the foundation that you can stand on, what was I thinking when I let go of you? And that's just enough to hold you so that you can then start considering all the other stuff that's more out there, right? And that is this true of this Sia Gray. I think it's true of a lot of the stuff, the Serpent with Feet, the Perfume Genius,
It's like, wow, they really know how to finesse this stuff beautifully. We should do an episode of this show that is just us dorking out about our favorite lyrics. That would be mine. Last night, I listened to Iron and Wine's The Trapeze Swinger three times back to back to back. And I could- What was the line that you keep coming back to? Please remember me as in the dream we had as rug burned babies. Oh, wow. That is a good one. Sheldon, what's yours?
Oh, man. Do you have one just off the top? Like, man, I have one. I don't even have to think about it. You ask me like, oh, I'm an American aquarium drinker. No, I don't think so. You don't have one? Anything else anyone wanted to say about the Sia Gray? I recommend people listen to it. Okay. That is really good, Stephen. That is... We're going to just close the show on that. I will say, like, the ear candy is sort of what draws you in. But, I mean, there is a lyric on there that...
On the song Shell of a Man, where she's like, this will be the last song about you and your voodoo doll fetish. There's a difference in visiting a memory and living in the past. And it's like, whoa, that's a real balance of ideas right there. One part zinger, but then one part like very serious self-reflection. Sia is the name of the album, S-A-Y-A, and that is out February 21st.
Sheldon, I think you've got one more you want to play. Yeah, it's the record that we mentioned at the top of the show. There is a debut album from the Sun Ra Orchestra member and sax player Marshall Allen. It's called New Dawn, and this song is called African Sunset. ♪
I said at the top of the show he waited 100 years to put... I wasn't kidding. Marshall Allen is 100 years old. And I'm listening to this record and I'm like, yeah, this guy's pretty good. You know, I can't wait to hear where he goes from here. He's got a real career ahead of him, let me tell you. I mean...
If anybody could do it, if anybody could just add another hundred years to a career, it would be a member of the Sun Ra Orchestra, right? I mean, it always has seemed like they've been tapped into some idea of the infinite that the rest of us cannot fathom. I guess that's why he's made it this long. I'm just so in awe of this record. It seems like prime evidence that it's never too late to set out on a new adventure. That's right.
He recorded all of this two days after his 100th birthday in Philadelphia, and
Music is clearly informed by his years in the orchestra, but it also feels like someone stepping out from under a large shadow and into the light for the first time. And for him to do that at this point in his life, at this point in his career, it's such a bold step. Honestly, it's kind of insane to me that he can still rip that horn the way he does. The amount of control that he displays across these songs, it's just stunning.
so... I didn't have that breath control at age. That's what I'm like. I had to drop the sax when I was a kid because I couldn't do it. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, okay, it's astounding to make it to 100 at all. Period. Period. But to make it to 100 and still have a creative spirit and be able to make work of art, like, that's also something. But also, every
everything's still working for him, right? Like, I mean, like you said, his breath control and be able to play like this. I'm like, how many people, if you do make it to 100, like, you're just, like, barely getting around. Like, what a gift. What an absolute gift on so many levels.
I mean, I felt like I came away from this record with a new appreciation for his playing because if you didn't know he was 100 listening to it, you wouldn't. Well, I didn't. I didn't know it was that. I mean, I knew he'd been around for a while and obviously, but I didn't know he'd already hit 100. And then I totally did a double take when I was listening to this. You've got to be kidding me. Yeah.
I mean, in a way, it taps into kind of what we were talking about with a very different record with the Jason Isbell record. Of like, you never have to stop trying to get better. Yeah. And you never have to stop trying to make art. And we need to protect our elderly weirdos. You know, we just lost David Lynch. Yeah.
And, you know, somebody who was like, who was continuing to make art, who was continuing to be weird, who was continuing to adhere to his own deeply odd vision right through the end of his life. And one of the first thoughts I had when he died is like, please protect Werner Herzog.
at all costs. Like, keep our old weirdos in bubble wrap and protect them and help facilitate them continuing to make art in the world because it's a better place because they're here. We were saying cowards earlier. Do you know his quote about the Mandalorian when he was on the Mandalorian? Who's he? Werner Herzog. When Werner Herzog was on the Mandalorian, he insisted that, like, you've got to use a puppet for the little baby Yoda character, right? He's like, you can't, please don't use, I mean, go with CGI. CGI.
He said, cowards. I cannot do a good Werner Herzog. My colleague, Glenn Weldon, does the best Werner Herzog. I cannot try to duplicate it. But it's like, no, you must build an entire ship and then take it over a mountain. Yeah, you apparently called all the executives cowards for not going with the puppet. Um,
Well, the music specifically in this case for Marshall Allen, I will just say, you know, one of the things that I love that he does on this cut and across this record is how he constantly is sort of subverting all of your expectations in these really wonderful ways. You know, there are moments when I felt like listening to like African Sunset where it almost felt like, oh, this could become elevator music if he wasn't just getting so weird with it. Right.
When you're dealing with the orchestra in any sense, there's always going to be some sense of the great beyond there. It's impossible for it to be too on the ground, too tethered to earth. Like it's going to spiral out into space and out there anything can happen. I think across this record you hear just joy.
decades and decades of study coming to the fore, but also just a willing to continue to venture out further and further and further and never feel rooted to the past. Well, that album from Marshall Allen is called New Dawn, and it is out on Valentine's Day, February 14th.
All right, we're going to play one more before we go. It's one of your picks, Stephen. But because there are so many things coming out this year that we're already excited about, we should maybe just mention some of the others that we know about. Yeah, I'm excited for an album that we talked about briefly last year on All Songs, The Bardi Strange. It's called Horror. That's also coming out on Valentine's Day. It's coming out on Valentine's Day. There's a new Youth Lagoon record coming out.
Rarely Do I Dream that's out the week after. The Blonde Shell record, If You Asked for a Picture, comes out May 2nd. Really looking forward to that one. And one that I mentioned on last year's preview show that I'm still hoping comes out is Chance the Rapper. Right, yeah. Rumor of the last year. There are certain white whales. What I'm really looking forward to is Rihanna's R&B.
Oh, wow. Coming 2048. Yeah, might still add Sky Ferreira to the list. She at least dropped a song late last year. I went back and listened to what some of the sort of rumored ones. There was also My Bloody Valentine. That never happened.
That was always the longest of long shots. I mean, remember for years where it's like, what I'm looking forward to is Guns N' Roses, Chinese democracy. And then it eventually happened and everyone was kind of like, oh. Exactly the example I was going to reach for. What are some of the others you're excited about, Steven? I'm really excited about Tears of Injustice, this album by M.Doo Mokdar.
M.D. Mokhtar did one of my favorite Tiny Desk concerts of last year. This hypnotic Malian guitar music. Just gorgeous. This is going to be kind of like showcasing his acoustic side. I'm really excited about that record.
He just had one last year, too. He did. And this is kind of like a sequel counterpart to that record. A band that we talked about at the late 2024 Great Grandpa put out my favorite song of 2024. It's called Kid. They are finally putting out the first album in like five or six years, an album that contains that song. It's called Patience Moonbeam, which I like to think is their message to me.
Well, I'll mention the Panda Bear record that's coming out. It's called Sinister Grift. I think it's his best in years. There's some others that we had on the first couple episodes of the year so far, but I'll go ahead and mention again the Anna B. Savage, Japanese Breakfast just had on the show, Mia Folic, Ella Minus, FKA Twigs all have new ones coming this year. Super excited about them.
Also, there is a 20th anniversary edition of Wilco's A Ghost is Born. You just can't quit Wilco. I can't quit you, man. Love Wilco so much.
Tons of previously unreleased stuff. In fact, more than 80 tracks on this deluxe edition. Cannot wait to hear what they've got in store for that one. And we'll put a list up on the website of all the other albums that we've got our eyes and ears on for 2025 so far at npr.org slash all songs. But Stephen, what do you got? In keeping with what we've been talking about on this show, just a fantastic singer-songwriter named Samia. Yeah.
Her third album is coming out April 25th. It's called Bloodless. This song, like so many songs, is called Bovine Excision. Why like so many songs? You haven't heard all the other songs called Bovine Excision? Dude. Have you ever listened to music? How did you get this job? Diet Dr. Pepper, Raymond Carver Sit in a tub while they're knockin'
Sammy writes songs with such specific detail. Even this song, just the very first words of this song are Diet Dr. Pepper. Several product names come up. There's also a reference to flavored lays.
She name drops other musicians in her songs a lot. She'll mention Kesha or Moona or whatever in other song lyrics that she's put out in the past. She writes with such detail, but also she knows her way around a grand metaphor. And bovine excision is a way to bloodlessly kill cattle.
And she talked in an interview about kind of why she wrote a song about this. And she said, I was drawn to the phenomenon of bloodless cattle mutilation as a metaphor for self-extraction, this clinical pursuit of emptiness. I love a singer-songwriter who just can't turn off their ability to see the world in a way that the rest of us don't see it. She's a brilliant songwriter, and
I love the way she kind of finds for this song, Bovine Excision, and elsewhere on this record, she's finding a little bit of twang. She's tapping into, I don't know, almost like a Waxahachie place. Yeah. This song is just such a flex, but you listen to the record and there's so much more there. All right, Sheldon Pierce, Stephen Thompson, thanks so much to you both. Thanks for having me. And for NPR Music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered. ♪
This message comes from Warby Parker. Prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Glasses designed in-house from premium materials starting at just $95, including prescription lenses. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you.
This message comes from Warby Parker. Prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Glasses designed in-house from premium materials starting at just $95, including prescription lenses. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you.
This message comes from Bombas. Their socks are super plush, designed to support your arches and support people in need. One purchase equals one donated to those experiencing homelessness. Go to bombas.com slash NPR and use code NPR for 20% off your first order.