New Music Friday: The best albums out Jan. 17
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All right, let's make some magic. ♪

It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm here with Cara Manning from WFUV in New York City. Hey, Cara. Hi, Stephen. Thank you so much. It is a pleasure to have you. Tell me about the show you do on WFUV. Well, I'm the host of UKNY on WFUV in New York. It airs Sunday nights from 11 p.m. to midnight. It is a free format, free for all, which focuses primarily on new releases from Britain and beyond all genres.

And has live sessions too with bands and artists over the last few years from English Teacher, Self Esteem, Hot Wax, Porridge, Little Sims, Dry Cleaning, many others.

And that's what I focus on. I'm sort of a little obsessed about what's happening on the UK side of things. Love it. Well, we're going to be talking about music from all over the world today. We've got a ton of great stuff, including new music from The Weather Station, Jasmine Forti, and more. But first up, we've got a new record called Balloonerism from the late rapper Mac Miller. Vibrations.

Okay, I went to sleep, faded, and I woke up invisible. I keep the ingredients, but I got the kitchen full. My thoughts are cynical, actions unpredictable. Supermodel bitches hold auditions in my swimming pool. This feeling is feeling pretty invincible. Pray this life reciprocal, and I'ma come back an eagle. Thirsty for evil, the wine chilled in hell. I gave my life to this shit, already killed myself. We ain't the same, homie. Not afraid of change, but it changed on me.

So for those who aren't aware, Mac Miller died in 2018. He was only 26. It's actually about a month after he performed a bunch of songs at the Tiny Desk. You know, he was putting out this record called Swimming, and shortly after it came out, he died from a drug overdose. You know, since his death, you know, his estate has released a couple of albums, has kind of completed a couple albums with his, you know, with the vocals that he had recorded, and

and kind of finished some of the projects that he was working on. And this one is his first posthumous album in five years. It follows a record called Circles, five years to the day. And it kind of completes a project that he had been working on in like 2013 and 2014.

And not only that, but poignantly, it's released two days before what would have been, I think, on Sunday, his 33rd birthday. And, you know, for people who've really grown, you know, attached to his voice over the years and attached to his storytelling and kind of the vulnerability of what he does, it's really beautiful and sad to kind of revisit him here. ♪

In many ways, this record kind of feels like a mixtape. You know, they're bringing in a couple of guests. You know, SZA pops up early on this record on a track called DJ's Chord Organ. ♪ Is you driving, is you driving cross country? ♪ ♪ You've been out for three days, oh, you miss the nighttime. ♪ ♪ I know you miss your lifetime. Tell me the truth about it. ♪

Tell me the truth about Tell us the truth about Cocaine is ruthless I know the truth about Cocaine is ruthless

And then late on this record, there's a song called "Transformations" that has a kind of quote-unquote "guest feature" from this character that Mac Miller had developed in like 2013 called Delusional Thomas, which is like kind of, it's kind of this horrorcore character that Mac Miller had been developing, you know, while he was really struggling with substance abuse. And so it's kind of bringing in a bunch of different ideas and there's, you know, kind of different production techniques at work here.

Okay, so...

Apparently that the recording of a lot of this happened over the course of a week and then his attention kind of sprawled to the Faces mixtape. So there's elements of this album that actually sort of appeared earlier on Faces.

The thing that I found so beautiful about this record, in addition to like it's sort of jazz flourishes and psychedelic roundabouts, was how it's just rich with so many ideas and so many sort of supple turns of phrase. Like I found myself jotting down things that he was saying throughout this album. I mean, there's a track on it.

here called Funny Papers.

Some of the phrases that he writes, "Don't you love silence, everything quiet but the music?"

Or My Mistake, I Misplaced All My Remembers. I mean, it's really beautiful. This Funny Papers in particular, which is accompanied by drums and sort of the skittering chords of piano. And I think, I believe, Thundercat on bass. There's one line, Two Smuggled Constellations in a Suitcase. I mean, he is such a gifted writer. And I think that that's what...

so blew me away about listening to this. It was a beautiful but a very painful listen.

As is so often the case with posthumous records, you get these strange echoes that feel like premonitions. Very much so, yeah. You know, at times. You know, Mac Miller rapped a lot about drugs, rapped a lot about his experience kind of battling substance abuse issues. I don't know if you've heard of Mac Miller's

There's a track called Mannequins that references drugs and his own death. ♪ Well, my good days are exactly like the bad ones ♪ ♪ My bitch say that I defy the laws of attraction ♪ ♪ I've always been terrified of ending up normal ♪ ♪ Normal ♪

Things that we all search for end up finding us. God is like the school bell, he gonna tell you when your time is up. Shit just end up working out, why do we wonder why it does? There's a track called Rick's Piano, which has this refrain of what does death feel like? What does death feel like? What does death feel like? What does death feel like? What does death feel like?

In addition to these poetic flourishes, there's also just some really blunt and plain spoken sorrow and worry and sense that his time on earth may be limited.

Deborah Downer, too, is another track where it's explicitly very much about drugs and about and then that segues into Stone so that you can almost feel that that struggle that he's constantly facing with his own addiction and that release of depression into the into the drug use, into alcohol.

And I can't read her mind, she wrote a different story Oh well, redemption is a funny bitch The devil always be right where the money is Somebody gotta be watching you, but no one is It's kinda crazy life could be this simple Nothing's coincidence My best friend packed his things, threw 'em in the car I haven't seen him since Guess I understand he always got the chills When he saw a room full of rolled up hundred dollar bills

Yeah.

So that's Balloonerism. That's the new posthumous album by the late rapper Mac Miller. Next up, we've got a new record by The Weather Station. The Weather Station has a new record called Humanhood. Baby, I'm with the warm-up ball. It's a hot day in the city. There's weeds and the breakers. There's kids throwing tantrums and circling teenagers. We're trying

It's Tamara Lindeman's seventh album, an extension of her longtime climate activism, but one that also feels particularly resonant at the start of 2025 as we reel from the Los Angeles wildfires and what lies ahead for U.S. climate policy. But also it's a very deeply personal album for her as the weather station because she's been very open about the fact that she has been dealing with some mental health struggles, as many of us have.

And she walked into the recording of this album with sort of half-finished ideas and compositions. The Weather Station really functioned as a full band in the construction and the evolution of humanhood. And you can very much hear it. It feels...

experimental in some ways and in other ways it made me really think in more ways than one how much she reminds me of Beth Gibbons and PJ Harvey or even Cassandra Jenkins. Sure. And how she constructs an overall mood like sort of a rapacious expressiveness about what she wants to say and how hard it is to say those things. Music

The weather station has such an interesting sound because there's this, there's this gentility to it. And these, these arrangements that are kind of constructed in this almost jazzy folk pop sound that can feel a little frictionless at first. And I,

you only have to listen to it for a few minutes before you really get this deep undercurrent of unease. And that's where kind of what you were talking about thematically, how much their songs are about kind of environmental devastation. And there's a track on here that I made note of where it has this kind of smooth quality to it, but I just kept getting that, like I

keep coming back to that word unease. And then I look and the track is called Irreversible Damage. The more time you spend there and the more you learn about the history of the land, you learn more about how completely devastated it is now. Completely destroyed. There's been such mass extinction there. No matter how much we try to restore it or protect it now, it'll never ever go away.

That's what you get with this band is the sense where it works as like

low-key, pretty music. But you don't have to listen very closely or for very long to really get a sense of chaos, to get a sense that all is not right with the world. And I think that tension really has kept this band super interesting over the course of seven records and has kind of kept me coming back. And at the same time, you can still find these moments of beauty

beauty that come through. There's a track on this record called "Sewing."

to name check another great Canadian singer-songwriter, has this kind of feist-like delicacy to it that I really, really loved and really connected with. Sewing, there's extraordinary lyric on this. I'm sewing together a year from boredom, from love, from fear, and magnolia petals on the ground, pink on brown on the street. Some people don't want to see the seams. I mean, my God, the

The writing is so... There's a lot going on in just those few lines, right? She's spilling forth this sort of emotional tide of what she's feeling, what she's struggling, and sort of presenting it in a way that is really full of vulnerability and traction. This blanket I seem to be making from pain

Sewing together a quilt Too late for perfection, a clean up Too late to take it all back, I guess

Lindemann got so much attention for Ignorance, which was really her breakthrough album in a lot of ways. For an album, not a state of... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For an album, Ignorance, I should say, yes. I often attract attention for Ignorance. Me too. But in many ways, I feel like Humanhood is the best thing that she's done to date.

because it's like she's thrown all caution to the wind, that she is just laying everything out quite frankly and brutally. And she has this exceptional band that sort of buoys her and her words and her ideas in a way that feels seamless. So that's Humanhood. It's the new album by The Weather Station. We've got some more really, truly terrific records we're going to be talking about that are out today. But first, let's take a quick break.

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It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm here with Cara Manning from WFUV talking about the best new albums out today. Next up, a wonderful record by the artist Jasmine Forti. The album is called You Are the Morning. Things that I do just to stand close to you in the morning.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

I know the thoughts that drive your lips to curve The thoughts I know well, but sure as hell don't deserve Who even made you this way? How could you do this? Is this broken girl full of love with no capacity for romance? Who let you in? How can you be so wild?

So I know we're dropping this episode on January 17th, so it's a little early to be talking about our favorite albums of the year. But I am so smitten with this record. I think it is so beautiful. It's just built around such...

kind of uncommon delicacy and vulnerability, but there's this bare-knuckle strength to this record. Jasmine Crickshank is the first UK signing to Phoebe Bridgers' label. And Phoebe Bridgers has a label called Satisfactory Records, which is a phenomenal name. And Phoebe Bridgers signed Jasmine for tea. Jasmine Crickshank is a trans woman, put together a band entirely of trans women, and...

wrote a record in part about the queer community that lifted her up through her transition. And so this is a record about the love of her community, the love of her people, and a romantic love at the center of her life. And so it's not to say there isn't darkness on this record, and it's not to say that there aren't moments of tension and mourning and conflict,

But there's also just such generosity and beauty to this record. The story behind how Jasmine found herself, not only on Satisfactory Records, but having the whole of Boy Genius on the album and also producing the album is extraordinary. Jasmine, who was originally from Bristol, is now based in Manchester, was opening for Lucy Dacus.

handed Lucy demos, which then made their way to Phoebe, who signed her. But what is extraordinary throughout this album is hearing Julian Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers on backing vocals, Julian playing just this absolutely extraordinary guitar on a song like Breaking in Reverse. And I told you right in the beginning No one's like it's about to

Ask me why I'm smiling.

That arrangement really feels like a Phoebe Bridgers or Boy Genius song. Completely, completely. So, yeah, I mean, and not only that, but like Jasmine's voice is just so emotive. And you really sense what she went through, which was not easy. I mean, she left Bristol because it was too hard for her after she came out as trans to really be there. She was rejected by a lot of her friends. In my best friend's house.

Songs like Best Friend's House, where you hear this glorious chorus of Boy Genius behind her, or New Shoes, which is a much older song that predated her coming out. And you hear the emotion of Jasmine going through that song as a woman now. It's an extraordinary record. You say you want it so

When it's been hard, you say you just don't want it no more. You wanna live while you got the chance. You wanna chase and reveal. But now that I'm here, you tremble with fear and say, is this what I want? Is that what I want?

Finding a community of people who care about you and love you and support you is so vital in a world that feels so chaotic. And so for me, this record is just coming out at just the right time, at a time when I think a lot of us are kind of looking at the world and feeling like things are kind of spinning out of control. And it's like, well, what keeps me tethered

to feeling okay is the people around me. And that's what this record is about. And just even the title, "You Are the Morning," as a way of celebrating the people who are giving you this sense of renewal. To me, it feels like an extension of this boy genius story that I love so much and an extension of that music that I love so much with a new artist who I will follow wherever she goes.

The title track, You Are the Morning. Oh, such a beautiful song. Such a beautiful, and you know, Phoebe Bridgers loves Elliot Smith. You can very much hear that Elliot Smith touch in that particular song, You Are the Morning. And the video kind of encompasses what you just said, Stephen, about that sense of being buoyed by friends and finding your own community that will look after you no matter what. We're in the trees when the wind, our lips touched fire.

first time pressing yours down what a joy to wake in the morning just a friend who stayed the night you're the most cool you're the most fun tangled in dark worlds the open

Well, that's You Are the Morning by Jasmine Forti. Very highly recommended. Speaking of very highly recommended, Cara, you brought this one to my attention. So I'm here to thank you for the next record, which is fantastic. It's called Slowly It Dawns by Victoria Canal. Staying with Alice, she's doing fantastic again.

I've been aware of her two EPs that she had released, Well Well and Elegy, but I saw her for the first time at South by Southwest in March, then again at Mercury Lounge, and then most recently in October at London's Earth in Hackney. And I am so impressed by her as a songwriter and also as a band leader, um,

This album is exquisite. It has two of the songs that really kind of broke her, Swan Song and Black Swan. Black Swan that I am, I'm sick of the damn change. I'm saving the dance for feelings I can't.

Mama told me blonde, black swan, black swan. But more significantly, it's an album that has really both aspects of what she's trying to do. Explore her own sexuality in sort of like pure pop, like June Baby and California Sober and Cake and Talk. Is it?

But then the second half of the album becomes more sort of what she's known for, these sort of grand

wistful ballads that sort of explore her own identity as both a queer woman who has a limb differentiation as well as exploring grief. If I were you, I couldn't

There's just a real candor that she offers forth in her life, lyrically, on this album, and all with this beautiful guitar work and piano, and I just think that she is really someone to keep an eye on because I think she's going to be a very big deal in the years to come. I would visit your mama If I were you I would ask about her life

She's so musically versatile and so sure-footed in the different styles that she's exploring on this record. My initial take as I listen to this track, you mentioned June Baby. Gorgeous, gorgeous song. Manages to feel kind of breezy and gloomy at the same time. And we mentioned Phoebe Bridgers and Boy Genius. It's hitting a little bit of that sweet spot, which is a very, very good thing if you know my musical tastes. Honest to God

♪ Can't take the half of it ♪ - But then, you know, you also mentioned "California Sober," which fits a similar vibe, but with more of kind of deploying her pop instincts really effectively. ♪ You're coming over, California sober ♪ ♪ Counting down the minutes like the meter's running over ♪ ♪ But it's all kosher, you know I'm a stoner ♪ ♪ You can bring the vibe, maybe I can bring the closure ♪

Bye.

It's really interesting just watching the arc of her career because as I was Googling around, I'm listening to this record. I'm like, I love this. Where's this person been all my life? And realized she entered the Tiny Desk Contest in 2020. We should note that we just opened entries for the 2025 Tiny Desk Contest. Please tell your musical friends. But I went back and watched her Tiny Desk Contest entry and it is gorgeous. ♪

Kiss my neck.

She's been embraced by some kind of big name artists. You know, Chris Martin kind of helped her get signed to her label. She's toured with people like Hozier and Teddy Swims. It feels to me like there is a huge audience just on the other end of a tipping point that is coming very soon. And

And I would be remiss not to mention that she's won two Ivers, which is a songwriting award in the UK, which is a very big deal. Won for Black Swan last year. Just being surrounded by her fans at some of the gigs that I've been in, she has that same sort of ardent following that you would find with Biba Doobie or Boy Genius. That you feel like this is a woman who is very much speaking to a core group.

that understand your frailties are filled with some self-deprecation and wit, who've also struggled mightily with things. She touches on all of that. She's very active on Instagram and other social media platforms.

I just think that she has so much to say and says it so eloquently and with such a depth and sort of prescience about who she is and who she wants to be. You really hear that on Slowly It Dawns. It is without question, I think, one of the most remarkable debuts I've heard in a long time. I'm sick of the damn chance

I'm saving the dance for feelings I can't place Mama, turn me blonde, take my final form Black swan, black swan Lost where I belong, all the signs are wrong Black swan, black swan

I'm so competitive, tired of feeling it. That's Slowly It Dawns by Victoria Canal. We've got one more album and a lightning round to get to, but first let's take a quick break.

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It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Cara Manning from WFUV. We've got a lightning round of some of the other records that are out today, but first we've got one more record we wanted to get to, a really beautiful little record called Weft from the artist Blue Lake. ♪

So I'm just going to put it out there. I don't want to assume anything about anybody listening to this show, but I'm just going to speculate that if you're listening to this, you might need a little bit of gentility and grace in your life.

I say this, I speculate this, because I think this is true of all of us. I think all of us need a little bit of calm and a little bit of beauty. And this record kind of came along and just entered my ear holes and went straight to my blood pressure and just lowered it about 10 points. ♪

Blue Lake is led by a guy named Jason Dungan. He's American-born, based in Copenhagen, and this record is entirely instrumental. It's kind of a mini album, like five tracks in 32 minutes, and he uses a lot of acoustic instrumentation, a lot of guitars and zithers, homemade implements that he uses to create these kind of drones and hypnotic songs that really kind of breathe and ripple in ways that are very soothing.

It felt for me like it was this Scandinavian concept of Hygge, kind of warmth to weft, you know, kind of being tucked under a duvet. And we all want an album or a mini album to soothe frayed nerves and this really did it for me. I did not want to peel myself away from the atmosphere that Jason creates here.

Tracts like the forest and oceans and Tatara which is named after a volcano in the Andes that apparently Jason's father who was a geologist studied for many many many years.

This sort of takes you along a wooded path, you know, looking for slants of sun between the trees. I mean, you very much get lost in where he's taking you. It might be a mini album, but it really does feel like an excursion that is of great length and care. Take that excursion. We're heading into the weekend. It's going to make you feel so much better. That is Weft by the artist Blue Lake.

Obviously, we could not get to every...

worthy piece of music that is out today. So we thought we'd do a quick lightning round just to kind of run through some of the other titles that are out there that we also recommend. I want to start with a wonderful Malian band called Songhoi Blues. They're back with their fourth album. It's called Heritage, and it shows kind of a softer side of Songhoi Blues' desert blues sound while still mixing in a lot of old and new sounds. It's a beautiful record. ♪

me

I really love Ella Minus's new album, Dia. Ella Minus is Colombian-born Gabriela Jimeno. She released her debut in 2020 called Acts of Rebellion, but I do think that this follow-up is really even more interesting. It has her really flexing her chops as a producer on this album, and I just find her really an exhilarating producer, very much in line for me of like Daniel Avery and Kelly Lee Owens, and I just love this new album. ♪

♪ I guess you know ♪

The written book shall be brought in which all is contained, whereby the world is judged. Rufus Wainwright is one of the most versatile musicians on earth. He has released gorgeous singer-songwriter records like his perfect debut record back in 1998. He's written operas. He's performed a series of concerts singing Judy Garland songs. He even recorded an album of Shakespeare sonnets set to music. His latest is an ambitious opera called Dream Requiem that features, among others, Meryl Streep.

Travail must not be in vain. Righteous judge of vengeance, award the gift of forgiveness before the day of reckoning. I will be killed when my face blushes with guilt. It ain't cause I don't want you. It ain't cause I...

Wafia has released her debut album, Promised Land. She is of Dutch and Iraqi Syrian descent. She's spent much of her life in Australia. She's in LA now. And like Victoria Canal, she really puts her heart and soul and her most innermost personal travails into this record. And you can really hear it with songs like House Down and Say It to the Moon, which was written for her sister. I just love this record. It was really delicate.

and beautiful and thoughtful. Rebecca Black is most famous for her song Friday, which went viral in a very bad and destructive way all the way back in 2011 when Rebecca Black was only 13. Incredibly, after becoming a punchline and a punching bag at 13 years old, if you can imagine what that would be like, she's handled her kind of online influence

infamy brilliantly and with great humor she's also kept releasing music now she's well into her 20s and she's continued to improve as a really fun pop singer her new record is called Salvation and it's full of kind of Charlie XCX style club bangers so that's Rebecca Black to close us out

That brings us to the end of our show. This episode was produced by Simon Rentner and edited by Otis Hart. The executive producer of NPR Music is Saraya Mohamed, and her boss is Keith Jenkins, NPR's vice president of music and visuals. We'll be back next week to talk about new albums from FKA Twigs and others. I'll be joined by Desiree Moses from Virginia member station WNRN. Until then, take a moment, be well, and treat yourself to lots of great music.

Thank you.

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