6 albums you need to hear this week
With music from Taylor Swift, Pearl Jam, Lucy Rose, Brian Eno, Pillow Queens and Claire Rousay.
In the age of streaming, it’s never been easier to listen to new music — but with over 60,000 new songs added to Spotify every day, it’s also never been harder to know what to put on. Every week, the team at Rolling Stone UK will run down some of the best new releases that have been added to streaming services.
This week, we’ve highlighted records by Taylor Swift, Pearl Jam, Lucy Rose, Brian Eno, Pillow Queens and Claire Rousay.
Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department
Including her ongoing re-recording project, The Tortured Poets Department is the seventh album Taylor Swift has released in the less-than-four years since her lockdown masterpiece Folklore in the summer of 2020. While she’s the most omnipresent and successful musician – and arguably public figure full stop – alive at the moment, the new album sees her lashing out at everyone in sight, be it exes, detractors or fans. Its initial 16-song tracklist was bloated to a remarkable 31 in the surprise drop of an ‘anthology’ edition of the album, stretching out this reactionary new era even further.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Pearl Jam – Dark Matter
Twelve albums into their career, Seattle’s grunge survivors prove why they continue to be the genre’s enduring standard-bearers par excellence. The crunching riffs of Mike McCready continue to beautifully complimented by Eddie Vedder’s all-time vocals, but there are moments of contemporary experimentalism and, as shown on stand-out ‘Setting Sun’, powerful soul-searching too. 34 years in, these Washington boys still have something to say.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Lucy Rose – This Ain’t the Way You Go Out
The story of Lucy Rose’s new album is defined by the terrifying health scare that preceded it, where the singer was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of pregnancy-related osteoporosis, leaving her with eight broken vertebrae. As she told Rolling Stone UK recently, the joyous music that sits on the new album was created as a reaction to this trauma. “It was about playing things that felt good, and wanting to be able to entertain a baby,” she said, and the album – produced by Kwes – is an upbeat and jazzy antidote to a bad time.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Brian Eno – Eno
On the plainest of paper, Eno is the soundtrack to a new documentary about the legendary producer’s incredibly varied and pioneering career. But this conveniently dispenses with the fact that director Gary Hustwit’s film is a curious beast that uses generative software to reorder itself at each viewing. In a nutshell: no viewing will ever be the same. It’s a perfect reflection of the ambient music legend’s eclectic career, and this soundtrack – which spans the whole gamut of early solo outings such as 1974’s ‘Taking Tiger Mountain all the way through to a 2021 appearance at the Acropolis – is the ideal companion piece.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Pillow Queens – Name Your Sorrow
On album opener ‘February 8’, Pillow Queens offer up the simplest of mantras: Let’s just play some rock and roll music“. Across twelve tracks, this excellent third album from the Dublin band does everything it can to live up to that mantra. ‘Blew Up The World’ feels fit to explode from the force of its guitar line, while ‘Gone’ is more on the softly introspective side of things. It’s a brilliantly exciting record from the Irish rockers.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Claire Rousay – sentiment
Claire Rousay has, until now, been best known for her experimental ambient work, but stunning new album sentiment sees her move towards traditional song structures which prove even more potent. “I have been on a quest to communicate my feelings and ideas as clearly as possible lately,” she said. “Pop seemed like the way to do that this time.” Rousay has coined the term ’emo ambient’ to describe her new music, and both sides are served here well – the tracks ‘head’ and ‘it could be anything’ lay her heavily auto-tuned vocals over simple and affecting notes of electric guitar, while ambient pieces sit in between the album’s emotional centre and flesh out the world. It’s a striking left turn from a fascinating artist.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music