8 albums you need to hear this week

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 Mumford & Sons, Lucy Dacus, Perfume Genius, The Darkness, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Medium Build, Will Smith and Deafheaven.

Mumford & Sons – RUSHMERE

There’s little reinvention of the (wagon) wheel to be found on Mumford & Sons’ latest, but you sense that fans of the arena conquering band will have few quibbles. With the steady hand of Dave Cobb on board, they instead lean into the twanging, banjo-laden Americana that made them such a unique prospect at the turn of the noughties. ‘Malibu’ – which builds from subtle foundations to become a blasting epic – is what they do best, while ‘Truth’ shows off a more tender, restrained side. There’s little to win over new fans, but you sense that the many who kneel at this twanging altar will lap it up.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Lucy Dacus – Forever Is a Feeling

Lucy Dacus’ fourth album, Forever Is a Feeling, arrives as the first full-length from a boygenius member after the overwhelming success of their album the record. The album, Dacus’ first on a major label, sees her ruminate on a period of upheaval in her life. “I got kicked in the head with emotions,” she says. “Falling in love, falling out of love. You have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life.” The new life, built around a now-public relationship with boygenius bandmate Julien Baker, is laid out across an album full of feeling and a beefed-up, mature evolution of her indie-rock sound.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Perfume Genius – Glory

Mike Hadreas describes his latest album as Perfume Genius as being his “most directly confessional” yet. Glory sees him confront growing older as a gay man, with the roadmap after the initial period of coming out and coming to terms with yourself as one that’s far less certain and rarely documented. On the album, he repositions this ageing process as a beautiful one as well as a fraught one, with the soaring music at its back proving the perfect landscape for the story.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

The Darkness – Dreams on Toast

On their eighth album, The Darkness know only too well that there’s no point in fixing something that very much ain’t broke. Ridiculous rock and roll that puts a grin on your face is what the Lowestoft stalwarts have consistently done so well, and that’s very much the case here. There’s Rock And Roll Cowboy with the unforgettable lyric “I’m a rock’n’roll party cowboy / And I ain’t gonna read no Tolstoy” and the stomping ‘Hot On My Tail’ is a genuinely great balls-out rock epic. But there’s surprise moments of introspection too. The glam-rock stomp of ‘I Hate Myself’ feels, in a way, like a just-turned-50 Justin Hawkins looking back on his early years as an all out hell-raiser. Either way, it’s the kind of record that firmly cements their place as alternative national treasures.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – IC-02 Bogotá

IC-02 Bogotá is the second album of Ruben Nielsen’s IC series, 2018’s IC-01 Hanoi. It’s named after the city it was recorded in, and sees him experiment and collaborate outside of the traditional structures seen on his ‘regular’ albums as Unknown Mortal Orchestra, most recently 2013’s V. Nielsen describes the new album as “possible background music for some strange parties and night drives in your future,” and is a beautifully immersive and exploratory sidestep.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Medium Build – Takeaways

This latest EP from Nick Carpenter sees him breathe new life into songs from his independently released albums softboy and roughboy (2018) and Wild (2019). He was a cult proposition in his native Anchorage at the time, but this fresh reimagining of the songs reflects the burgeoning audience he’s developed since then.

Nick says: “For years, people have asked me to release live or solo recordings. I used to think it meant they didn’t like my production style, but I now realize they just really loved hearing my raw material. So, I’ve captured a few of my all-time favorite songs from the past and stripped them down to their most basic form—just guitar and voice. Exactly how I started, all those years ago in my room.”

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Will Smith – Based on a True Story

Three years ago, Will Smith delivered the slap heard around the world, transforming Hollywood’s former golden boy into one of tinseltown’s most controversial figures. Now, he’s claiming that this album is the latest step in his extensive programme of post-slap personal reckoning.

“I’ve taken the last couple of years to really do a deep dive on the parts of me that may or may not been in that level of certainty and asking those deep scary internal questions,” Smith told AP of his first album in 20 years.

“It really is the result of my initial self-examination,” he said. “Every song is about some part of myself that I discovered or wanted to explore, something I wanted to share. It’s the most full musical offering that I’ve ever created.”

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music

Deafheaven – Lonely People with Power

After becoming pioneers and scene-leaders of the ‘blackgaze’ sound – mixing pummelling black metal with shoegaze – on 2013 modern classic Sunbather and two subsequent albums, Deafheaven left their signature piercing screamed vocals to the side on the softer 2021 album Infinite Granite. Follow-up record Lonely People with Power sees them return to the previous sound with a new sense of momentum and purpose.

Listen on: Spotify | ‎Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music