New Music Friday: The best albums you missed from December
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Happy Friday, everyone. It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining me is Nate Chenin from the wonderful public radio station WRTI in Philly. Hey, Stephen. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, too. What are we listening to? This is a terrific track by Salt. Yeah.

getting us into the groove with the 2025 vibe. Wonderful. Well, we're going to get to Salt a little bit later in this episode. We've got a terrific show for you today. Before we begin, I want to give a quick update on kind of how we're going to handle New Music Friday going forward. We're going to invite a guest from NPR's network of public radio stations across the country to join me in kind of a quick rundown of the week's best new albums.

I love this idea. You know, the people working across public radio really do have their ear to the ground. They know what's happening. And yeah, big ears. It's going to be great to welcome them in. Yeah. And we're going to sample as much new music as possible to kind of soundtrack your day and get you into the weekend. You can find streaming links to every album we talk about in the notes section for this episode in your podcast app.

So I want to acknowledge that the number one album in the country right now came out on December 20th, or at least part of it did. SZA put out a deluxe edition of her 2022 album S.O.S. It's called S.O.S. Deluxe Lana, and that deluxe edition with 15 new tracks is what just hit number one on the Billboard Albums Chart.

Now, it turns out that that deluxe edition is apparently still being expanded. SZA has posted on social media that more tracks are dropping in the next few days, so we're going to table it for discussion right now. But I wanted to acknowledge the existence of SOS Deluxe, Lana, and to briefly revel in the fact that we're about to get still more new SZA songs. So instead, we're going to kick off with one of the big commercial stories of late 2024.

It's a new album by the artist Rosé. She's a member of Blackpink, a K-pop superstar. She put out an album called Rosie in early December. Let's hear a little bit of the single, which is called Apaté. Game start! Apaté, Apaté. I'm trying to kiss your lips for real. Red hearts, red hearts. That's what I'm on, yeah. Come get me something I can... Don't you want to...

Okay, Stephen, so I have to ask, are you a fan of Cherry Coke Zero? You know, I quit Diet Coke late last year. I'm constantly falling on and off the soda wagon. Yeah. But I'm blessedly currently caffeine free. Oh, wow. Respect. I just have to say, that's what this track makes me feel like.

It's the sort of unnatural but undeniably pleasing, not quite cloying, but definitely sweet, fizzy,

But no calories. These chemicals are delicious. Yes. This is Rosé with Bruno Mars. Yeah. One of the most consistent and reliable hit makers of the last God knows how many years. And I love the way this track is relentlessly catchy but also a little weird. Because I'm coming to get you, get you, get you, oh.

So it has the Bruno like magic dust, right? Like for sure. But you know, the chorus and the title, I mean, it's a reference to a Korean drinking game. And so it's like coming out of a specific cultural context. And, you know, and yet it's completely like universal. I mean, I think it's kind of irresistible. Yeah.

What do you think of the rest of this record? Because I think a lot of people who've heard her, maybe they've heard some of Blackpink, maybe they've heard this particular single, which has been a radio hit, but the rest of the record is geared a little bit more toward Taylor Swift is a pretty clear influence going on here. Yeah.

What else are you hearing? I think that her execution is pretty flawless. She's like hitting all of her marks. She's got a good voice. You know, like all of those things are like the boxes are checked.

But I still feel throughout this album, like, I don't really know, like, where her center is. Like, you mentioned Taylor Swift. I mean, on a track like two years. Doesn't make sense that I can't move on. Yeah, I try, I try, I try, I try. But this love never dies.

It's like a pastiche. Like it is straight up Taylor Swift cosplay here, you know? I think Taylor Swift cosplay is exactly what's happening here. But I also think there are other songs besides Apaté that are...

in some ways splitting the difference, right? Like you have some of those influences of like major pop singer songwriters like Taylor Swift, but kind of crossed with the more robust pop feel of Apaté or Rosé's work in Blackpink. I was thinking of a song called Drinks or Coffee, which is kind of splitting the difference between those two sounds. ♪ Say what we mean ♪ ♪ I'm happy that you're here tonight ♪ ♪ I'm feeling so good ♪

All right, so that's Rosie. It's the new album by Rosé from Blackpink. That came out December 6th and is definitely a record we're going to be hearing more of throughout 2025. Next up is a new album by Lauren Mayberry. Lauren Mayberry is the singer from Churches. She's got a new solo record called Vicious Creature, and this is Crocodile to you.

So I'm a huge Church's fan. Church's just makes some of the best synth pop music.

you're going to hear in this century. Every church's record has some banger on it that I wind up playing for years. And Lauren Mayberry is this wonderful presence at the center of it. I'm so sad to say

She's kind of this effervescent but also acerbic presence in that band. And it's really interesting listening to her solo record. You can tell listening to these songs why she felt a need to perform these separately from Churches. Because Churches has a very distinct and pretty consistent kind of hard-driving synth-pop sound. And this record is trying a lot of different things. You're also hearing kind of

punkier, spikier rock songs like Sorry, etc. You get kind of different angles on what she's trying to do. There's a track on this record called Change Shapes. And the title of that song sounds like a mission statement for what's going on in this record. She's constantly changing shapes. I change shapes for you. I change shapes till I get

It makes me nauseous.

I'm so glad that you mentioned that song because it plays on this idea, like on the one hand, right? It's like, oh, I'll be anything you want me to be, right? But she twists it and she's like, I change shapes till I get what I want from you, you know? And I feel like there's a position she takes throughout this album where she's kind of like always one step ahead and she's very kind of wry and like sardonic.

Sonically, it pairs for me with, and I don't know, Stephen, tell me if I'm wrong. I'm getting a strong, like, 90s alternative vibe. Like, late 90s alternative. It's coming out of this, like, alt-rock situation, but there's a little bit of, like, electronic element there. There's something sort of pleasingly throwback to the sonic mix of this album. Crashed into a man on a

♪♪♪

She's always been so clever and so self-aware and always so careful about kind of what she does and doesn't reveal in her songs. She just strikes me as an artist who has stayed in command of what she wants to be doing at all times. And so I'm excited to hear her explore more of her solo sound and kind of finding new depth in what she does. With you, so I will run

My daughters are 14 and 11 and I will say that the Lauren Mayberry record is a big hit with my 14 year old. I turned her on to it. She was like, oh yeah.

This is the stuff. They both raised, they cocked an eyebrow at the, um, at the wrote the Rosé record. My, my daughter's, my daughter's 20. And if it's, if it's not corn or insane, she wants no part of it. Vicious creature from Lauren Mayberry that came out December 6th. We got some more records that we're going to get to in this episode of new music Friday, but first let's take a quick break.

It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Nate Chenin, rounding up some of the best albums of late 2024, the ones we didn't get to last year while we were too busy listening to, I don't know, rocking around the Christmas tree for the 900,000th time. Nate, why don't you kick us off with our next record? Yeah, I had to bring this one in. This is by a supergroup called MTB, and that's an acronym for

for the last names of its three principals: pianist Brad Meldow, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, and guitarist Peter Bernstein. And they released an album called Solid Jackson. And it's a reunion of sorts because these guys put out an album

30 years ago, they recorded The Day After Christmas and have not, as a unit, been back together since, I think. So this album is titled Solid Jackson. It's after an original song by Brad Meldow. Let's hear a bit of that.

so

I love the way the sound of this song is. It's hard driving, but it's also subtle. There's flashiness in some... Obviously, these are incredible players, so they're able to play in these really flashy ways, but it's just so confident and balanced. One thing that...

these three musicians have in common is like a really deep reverence for the, you know, the solid, like, you know, terra firma jazz tradition. And at the same time, a, a conviction around like,

living in our own time, you know, and making our own innovations. And Meldau, Turner, and Bernstein, they've all done their own things over the last 30 years, but they share this kind of sensibility, you know, and this like peer... I don't know, there's something about the feeling of a peer group that has kind of like been on the scene together, and they really articulate that on this album. It's like...

I don't think you could ever recreate it. I think this is like really a lived experience sort of thing. And I hear it on the compositions that they play that are jazz standards. This album includes songs by Wayne Shorter and Hank Mobley and Harold Land. But it's especially clear on the pieces that they wrote themselves. Here's one by Mark Turner called 1946.

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If you know the music of Mark Turner, you will recognize this, the sound of this track. He plays tenor sax. He's the tenor saxophonist. Yeah. And he has this long relationship with another guitarist named Kurt Rosenwinkel. And there's a little bit of this like slipstream harmonic sophistication, you know, this feeling of like.

all this erudition, but it's carried lightly, you know? So the feeling you get is just of this, like, really, like, pleasant forward pull. You know, you just feel like you're in good hands. ♪

I should also mention that on this album, they're joined by bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Bill Stewart, two of the greatest jazz musicians of their generation, and people who have, you know, there's a whole network of relationships among these musicians. This is a really full-bodied sound, and the name of the group and kind of having these three headliners implies that you're going to be hearing a jazz trio, but you are really hearing five musicians together.

kind of, you know, each carrying a lot of weight here. I kind of feel like it doesn't get any better than this for this kind of modern jazz. You know, these, I think all five of these guys are among our masters today. ♪

That's Solid Jackson from the group MTB that came out November 29th. Next up, a sentimental favorite of mine, The Innocence Mission, a band I first fell in love with in college, and I'm old, has a new record out called Midwinter Swimmers. Let's just a

give people a sense of this record. Let's just go right into it. Let's hear a little bit of the title track. ♪

So this is Innocence Mission's 13th record. They started all the way back in 1989, and they were part of this kind of gentle indie folk revival of the late 80s and early 90s. And Innocence Mission has stayed wonderful and active ever since. Innocence Mission is based around this couple, the singer-guitarist Karen Paris and her husband Don, who plays guitar.

And they're both wonderful guitarists. Their guitar sound is so, so lovely, and she's got this kind of gentle, childlike voice, but their songs are really deeply...

I don't know. I just, I love that they've just continued, you know, on all these different labels, kind of in all these different kind of music marketplaces or whatever. They've just continued to churn out this soft, gentle, smart, beautiful music for now more than 35 years. Will you be here soon, maybe?

I feel like there's such a timeless character to this. The production feels so precious, but also there's a really sturdy core, and maybe that core is the relationship and the history there.

It's interesting too, there are lyrical references in some of these songs that feel kind of self-knowingly evocative. On a song called "Cloud to Cloud" there's a reference to like, you know, flowers and guitars, like this kind of like nod in the direction of like hippie, like you know, like late 60s hippie culture, but like it never goes there. And at every moment I feel like the details are just exactly right.

is

If you've kind of lost track of this band over the years, it's really easy to just kind of go back and dip into their discography and just because their music is so timeless. And Don and Karen Paris have both put out lovely solo records that are worth tracking down. They've made children's music together. They've made religious music together. All of it is just so lovely. So this one comes really, really highly recommended. ♪

So that's Midwinter Swimmers from the group The Innocence Mission. We are going to talk about one more album and do a lightning round, but first we're going to take a quick break.

It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Nate Chenin. One more album that we were really excited to talk about at a little bit of length before we hit our lightning round. The group Salt has a new record called Acts of Faith that finally came out on streaming services on Christmas Day. Let's hear the song Someone to Love. Get someone to love, get someone to love.

Get someone to love you Get someone who's only for you Shatter, shatter, black to white

It feels really appropriate that this album dropped on Christmas Day because this feels like a gift of sorts. It's such a...

It's just a feel-good groove throughout this album. And this track in particular, it's funky but silky. It's relaxing, but it's not so chilled out that you tune out. Yeah, it's that kind of easy vibe where you can't see how much work goes into it. The equivalent of seeing the duck kind of still on the pond, but the little feet are paddling like crazy under the surface. Totally.

Yeah, so this is Salt's 11th album since 2019. Salt has been certainly an NPR music favorite in the last five or six years. Their music is kind of bringing together elements of R&B and gospel and soul and contemporary classical music.

But there's also this mystery kind of swirling around this group. They only started performing live in late 2023. They don't really do interviews. Their albums drop at unexpected times. Like, for example, this one that dropped on Christmas Day. In late 2022, they released five albums simultaneously with no warning as a free download. Yeah.

You know, they're always zigging when you think they're going to zag, but then you just get the actual piece of music itself and it just feels like it's always been there.

This year, I think we were both at the ACL Music Festival. And I wonder, did you see Krungbin? Did you see their set at ACL? I saw a little bit of Krungbin's set, yeah. And it's funny because they're so vibey, and yet they play stadiums. Right, right. You know, something about this Salt record in particular reminded me of, like, it hits the Krungbin nerves, right? Like the groove that just, like, sits, right? So why?

It says something about the state of the world that both of those bands have really resonated with audiences in the last few years. I think people are looking for music that transports them and calms their nerves at the same time. And I think both of those acts are people who are really sincere about their craft. There's such an open quality to this music. And it's just music that is clearly made with love and care and reverence. People better feel something now

And you mentioned sort of the need for this. I think it's worth pointing out that there's a stretch on this album where there's a song titled God Will Help You Heal, and it leads into heal, heal, heal.

followed by soul clean followed by the lesson is over and the postscript you are now healed mission accomplished that's acts of faith by the group salt uh nate let's hit him with a little bit of a of a lightning round you want me to you want me to kick it off we kind of we're kind of grouping these into category because we've got so much to go over

I got to start because my younger daughter asked for a Dua Lipa album for Christmas after seeing her at ACL. So Dua put out a live album called "Live from Royal Albert Hall" and from what I've heard of it, it's a really fun orchestral treatment of her music.

And she like fully jumps in and embraces the format of that. I just want to say that you are raising your child right. If what she wants for Christmas is purchased music. Yes. She also got a tour T-shirt.

Nice. The Dua Lipa is one of a bunch of live records that have dropped in the last month, month and a half. Natalia La Forcata put out live at Carnegie Hall. The National has one called Rome. Tori Amos has one called Diving Deep Live. Interpol has live at Third Man Records. And though it's not a live record, Aphex Twin has a

a collection called Music from the Merch Desk. It's a collection of vinyl that was sold at his live shows over the past eight years. And so now you can finally acquire it without having to actually leave the house. So Lucinda Williams put out Sings the Beatles from Abbey Road. Angel Olsen has Cosmic Waves Volume 1, which is partly a covers album and partly curated by Angel Olsen. And

And it's funny, when we're talking about covers, do we include the Bob Dylan biopic soundtrack? Yes, we absolutely do. A complete unknown. Which I have yet to see, but I've actually been hearing good things. I have seen it, and for a music biopic, I think Timothee Chalamet really captures the essence of Bob Dylan without doing one of those note-for-note...

kind of biopic imitation of performances and lovely performances of the actors who play Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. So I do, if you're interested in Dylan at all, I do recommend that movie. And the soundtrack is all those actors performing those songs, which is better than you think it's going to be.

I wanted to mention a couple of ambient records. You know, we mentioned the Innocence Mission earlier in this show. Another group that's been making beautiful music for decades is Saint Etienne. And Saint Etienne has an ambient record now called The Night.

Also, Roixop has a record with a very self-explanatory title. It's Nebulous Nights, parentheses, an ambient excursion into profound mysteries and true electric.

Again, in the spirit of salt, if you're looking for music to kind of ease you gently into what promises to be a stressful year, you can't go wrong with either of those. Take two Roixops and see me in the morning. Exactly. There's also some material from the sort of global pop zone. Karin Leone has an album titled Palabra de Toz.

And the K-pop group TWICE released an album called "Strategy." Yeah, and you mentioned K-pop. I mean, there's also Stray Kids put out a record called "Hop."

That became their sixth album to debut at number one on the Billboard charts. So K-pop has been creeping up. I mean, spent 2024, a bunch of different K-pop groups landed, you know, chart topper after chart topper after chart topper. And you know what? We might get BTS back in 2025. So we'll be hearing a lot more K-pop in the coming year. Yeah.

In the world of hip-hop, there are a couple of new records worth mentioning. Smino has a new record called "Maybe in Nirvana," and Rock Marciano and The Alchemist have a record together. The wonderful producer, The Alchemist, they've got a record called "The Skeleton Key." And from the sort of experimental zone, Fenez released an album titled "Mosaic."

And in the sort of ambient soundtrack space, the queer soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Man, what a year those two have had. You know, they did that Challengers score. Oh, yeah, yeah. Which is just one of the most memorable movie scores that I've heard in a long time. So I've not checked out this queer soundtrack yet, but I'm excited. Can the bug run?

All right, well, that's going to bring us to a close. Nate, thanks so much for being here. My pleasure. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, too. This episode was produced by Simon Rentner and edited by Otis Hart. The executive producer of NPR Music is Soraya Mohamed, and her boss is Keith Jenkins, NPR's vice president of music and visuals. We'll be back next week with new albums from Ringo Starr, Franz Ferdinand, and more with KCRW DJ Travis Holcomb. Until then, thanks so much for listening.

Be well, have a great weekend, and treat yourself to lots of great music.