Music

REWIND Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2024 Benji & Fede

Hotel esistenza Album ∙ Rock ∙ 2024 Fast Animals and Slow Kids

GOAT Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Ninho  &  Niska The French rappers go back to the lab to reassert their greatness.

Patterns in Repeat Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 Laura Marling Unadorned, piercingly beautiful songs written in the wake of new motherhood.

Cartoon Darkness Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 Amyl and The Sniffers “I wanted the album to feel really fun,” Amyl and The Sniffers vocalist Amy Taylor tells Apple Music of   Cartoon Darkness , the Australian quartet’s third full-length. That goal does, however, come with a caveat: “I wanted it to feel fun without putting up the blinkers and being like, everything’s sweet, all good. Things are really weird and things are pretty bad and there’s a lot of things to be stressed about, but there’s the balance of it. Not to encourage people to ignore the bad, but to try and find more of a balance.” So while   Cartoon Darkness   finds Taylor confronting issues such as body positivity, the ills of social media, the climate crisis, and capitalism’s impact on society and people’s wellbeing, she does so with an unrelenting lust for life and an indefatigable spirit that, on songs such as “Jerkin’” and “Motorbike Song,” adheres to the adage that life is for the living. Recorded with Nick...

Strawberry Hotel Album ∙ Electronic ∙ 2024 Underworld Decades in, the duo continues to reset electronic music’s boundaries.

Songs For A Nervous Planet Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 Tears for Fears A live set of classic tunes, plus new studio songs, from the ’80s icons.

Symphony of Lungs - BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 Florence + the Machine  &  Jules Buckley

The Night the Zombies Came Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 Pixies Druids. Headless chickens. Drinking. These are just some of the topics fearless Pixies leader Black Francis sings about on the band’s ninth album (and fifth since re-forming sans Kim Deal). But the overarching theme, if there is one, is right there in the title: zombies. Both the   Night of the Living Dead   variety (“Jane [The Night the Zombies Came]”) and the   Dawn of the Dead   shopping mall variety (“You’re So Impatient”) make an appearance, as do zombie movies themselves (“Chicken”). Not that it’s a concept album or anything—the driving punk of “Oyster Beds” references Black Francis’ painting hobby, while “Johnny Good Man,” “Ernest Evans,” and “Kings of the Prairie” offer snapshots of life on the road. Elsewhere, guitarist Joey Santiago takes a lyrical bow with “Hypnotised,” a clever pop tune written in a Middle Ages poetic form called the sestina, and new bassist Emma Richardson (ex-Band of Skulls) l...

PATTERNS Album ∙ Country ∙ 2024 Kelsea Ballerini With 2023’s   Rolling Up the Welcome Mat , Kelsea Ballerini signaled the start of a new era. Then four studio albums into her career, the country singer-songwriter had long since proven herself, and took a chance on rawer, more personal material in the wake of her 2022 divorce. As this follow-up attests, that heightened vulnerability unlocked new creative depths for Ballerini. Her most sonically diverse release yet,   PATTERNS   is also the fullest embodiment of Ballerini’s capabilities. Ballerini co-produced the album alongside previous collaborator Alysa Vanderheym, a songwriter and producer who has worked with a bevy of Nashville artists, including Jelly Roll, Little Big Town, and The Cadillac Three. The record opens with its title track, a gauzy, pleading midtempo ballad that makes use of more traditional country instruments like mandolin and dobro alongside prominent synthesizers, for production that’s reminiscent of K...

Big Swerv 2.0 Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 G Herbo A decade after   Welcome to Fazoland   introduced G Herbo as a serious contender in the drill scene, the Chicago rapper now maintains an impressive ubiquity in hip-hop at large. The 2020s have been especially good to him, with hits like “PTSD” and features opposite Gunna and Nardo Wick and an ambitious yet well-received double album,   Survivor’s Remorse . On the comparatively leaner   Big Swerv , he quickly calls back to his beginnings on “Strike You,” an anti-nostalgic opener that demonstrates how the past informs his present. Frequent production partners Oz on the Track and Southside cast long shadows over the project, the former wielding bass frequencies on the soulful “Yup” and the gnarly Sexyy Red team-up “Ten” and the latter present on potent trap variants “Spend That Bag” and “Trim.” With such reliable beatmakers behind the boards, Herbo pops out and shows off for “Drunk AF” and the evocative “Splat.” Reuniting...

The Great Impersonator Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 Halsey When she emerged from obscurity as a 19-year-old vagabond turned overnight SoundCloud star, Halsey was something of a cipher: You knew her voice (one of the 2010s’ prime examples of “cursive singing”), but very little else. “I think there is a little bit of a grand narrative about me that’s like, ‘I don’t know what she looks like. I couldn’t recognize her on the street because she looks different every time I see her,’” the singer tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “Some people get into a creative medium and have a very specific style: ‘This is what works for me, this is who I am and what I’m comfortable with.’ And for me, I just don’t know that it’s fun unless I’m reinventing. I think a lot of people see that and get the sense that I don’t have a very secure sense of self.” In one sense, the lead single from her fifth studio album shows she’s as hard to pin down as ever: For one, she was beginning with “The End.” An unplugged folk b...

MEGAN: ACT II Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Megan Thee Stallion Looking at the stats, you’d think Megan Thee Stallion was on top of the world: “HISS,” the second single from her third studio album, was her first solo chart-topper. But as the silver-tongued Houston native has risen from cult-favorite Instagram freestyler to full-fledged cultural force after breaking through with 2019’s “Hot Girl Summer,” the rapper’s been weighed down by grief and betrayal, all highly public and intensely scrutinized. On 2022’s   Traumazine , Megan began to let down her guard and open up about her pain. She teased its follow-up in late 2023 with a statement: “Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past, over and over again.” On   MEGAN , she’s still going through it, but she’s not going down without a fight. The motif of the snake, coiled and waiting to strike, winds its way through   MEGAN ’s 18 tracks with cool, collected menace. “Still going hard with the odds against me,” she sp...

Hustle Muzik Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Payroll Giovanni

ALL LIFE Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2024 Olly & JVLI Pop-rap that is strikingly freeing and fragile from the singer-producer pair.

No Pressure, No Diamonds Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Faneto

Diverse Album ∙ Singer/Songwriter ∙ 2024 Ornella Vanoni

From Zero Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 LINKIN PARK Pre-add their first album in seven years and first with singer Emily Armstrong.

Pyramide 2 Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Werenoi

Koke no ichinen Kaiba ni takusu - EP Album ∙ Rock ∙ 2024 ZUTOMAYO

HOCUS POCUS 4 Album ∙ J-Pop ∙ 2024 Nissy

Re:ERA Album ∙ J-Pop ∙ 2024 King & Prince