Every Friday, 88Nine music director Erin Wolf and Lilliput Records co-owner Tanner Musgrove tell you about the new albums you can’t miss on a new episode of On Vinyl. Listen to their full conversation using the player on this page or on the 88Nine airwaves at 1 p.m. every Friday.
This week, we’ve got a mixed bag: fizzy noise pop championed by Stephen Malkmus, reworked hip-hop classics by an ear-bending modern jazz producer and drummer, a beloved reissue and a fantastical journey into twee pop with a book to boot.
The overall theme? Maybe that it’s okay to dream and that it’s okay to be weird. Also, it’s okay to really nudge those boundaries in the name of fun. And-and it’s okay to go back to those classics, because those are what make the heart happy. Dig into all the wild and wooly weirdness with us.
This week’s best new albums
Guerilla Toss, You’re Weird Now
Boston-born, NYC-based noise-pop crew Guerilla Toss have prog-y tendencies on their fifth and latest record, You’re Weird Now, and their newest batch of songs are a fun and fizzy listen. That quality attracted Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement fame) after seeing them perform in 2019, leading to an invite to open for Pavement’s 2022 reunion tour and an offer for Malkmus to helm the production of You’re Weird Now.
The album was tracked and born at Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio’s recording studio The Barn, which feels appropriate for this release for musical-noodle lovers.
Kassa Overall, CREAM
Grammy-nominated drummer-slash-producer Kassa Overall has always been one to marry genres: funk, jazz, R&B and hip-hop. He’s also always been one to collab (Danny Brown, Shabazz Palaces, Vijay Iyer and Nick Hakim to name a few), so it’s no surprise he’s digging into a hefty covers album that takes on the challenge of interpreting eight hip-hop classics.
Overall tangles with Wu Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest and Digable Planets, adding liner notes from Dan Charnas, who wrote hip-hop-centric books The Big Payback and Dilla Time.
Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit [reissue]
Gotta love a good reissue, and Courtney Barnett’s 2015 album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit gets a 10-year celebration version of a really great album Pitchfork crowned “Best New Music” when it was first released.
The outlet offered the following, which still holds up 10 years later: “A young writer with a working sense of humor and no apparent agenda, Courtney Barnett feels like a refreshing anomaly in 2015: smart but not intellectual, humble but not wimpy, into the past but not theatrical about it.”
If that first LP version sailed by you, find the new one on yellow and red splatter wax.
Jens Lekman, Songs For Other People’s Weddings
Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman returns with his first solo project in eight years, which has a companion book written alongside bestselling author David Levithan that chronicles Lekman’s world as a wedding singer. To quote Queen, “Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy?” A good question, but survey seems to say that it’s a bit of both, here. Lekman is great at weaving a fantastical story and bringing things down to earth in his most twee ways.
More of our picks
- John Prine, Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings (Deluxe Edition)
- King Princess, Girl Violence
- Parcels, Loved
- Paul Cebar, Paul Cebar
- Peggy Gou, D.A.N.C.E.
- Ruston Kelly, Pale, Through the Window
The full list of albums out Sept. 12
Indie/rock/alternative
- Acopia, Blush Response
- Adam Buxton, Buckle Up
- Alex Bloom, Across the Country
- Aug Stone, Stone Soup
- Bass Drum of Death, SIX
- Baxter Dury, Allbarone
- Between the Buried and Me, The Blue Nowhere
- Boyish, Gun
- Cafuné, Bite Reality
- Chloe Stroll, Bloom in the Break
- Dancer, More or Less
- Dazzling Killmen, Dig Out The Switch
- Devendra Banhart, Cripple Crow (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
- Djo, The Crux Deluxe
- Grateful Dead, Blues for Allah (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
- Gruff Rhys, Dim Probs
- hannah bahng, The Misunderstood EP
- In The Pines, Sunbeam Dream
- Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell, Making Good Time EP
- jasmine.4.t, You Are The Morning (YBT Deluxe)
- Jens Lekman, Songs For Other People's Weddings
- Joviale, Mount Crystal
- Julia, Julia, Sugaring a Strawberry
- Karate, If You Can Hold Your Breath (5 LPs)
- Kyle Hollingsworth, All We Are
- Laveda, Love, Darla
- Legss, Unreal
- Liquid Mike, Hell Is an Airport
- Margaret Glaspy, The Golden Heart Protector
- Maruja, Pain to Power
- Matt Bachmann, Compost Karaoke
- Matt Maeson, A Quiet & Harmless Living
- mei ehara, All About McGuffin
- Mitch Rowland, Whistling Pie
- Nevertel, Start Again
- Paul Muldoon & Rogue Oliphant, Visible From Space
- Robin Kester, Dark Sky Reserve
- Silver Gore, Dogs in Heaven
- snuggle, Goodbyehouse
- Swell Maps, The John Peel Sessions
- Sydney Minsky Sargeant, Lunga
- Tedeschi Trucks Band & Leon Russell, Tedeschi Trucks Band and Leon Russell Present: Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited Live at LOCKN'
- Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Beethoven's Last Night (25th Anniversary)
- Twenty One Pilots, Breach
- Umphrey's McGee, Blueprints
- Whitney K, Bubble
- Will Paquin, Hahaha
- Your Smith, The Rub
- Warren Haynes, The Whisper Sessions
