6 albums you need to hear this week
With music from Floating Points, London Grammar, Nilüfer Yanya, Suki Waterhouse, Gia Ford and Gurriers.
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 Floating Points, London Grammar, Nilüfer Yanya, Suki Waterhouse, Gia Ford and Gurriers.
Floating Points – Cascade
After soundtracking a ballet and composing the critically adored and Mercury-nominated Promises alongside the late jazz legend Pharoah Sanders, Floating Points returns to the dancefloor on the ecstatic Cascade. Sam Shepherd is an artist of many guises and moods, but here he goes harder than ever on an album of impeccable precision and intensity. Led by the thunderous single ‘Birth4000’, Cascade is Shepherd’s best dance album yet and a raucous thrill ride.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
London Grammar – The Greatest Love
This fourth album from London Grammar solidifies their low but steady transformation from purveyors of sombre and swaying indie towards something brasher and more geared towards the dancefloor. The Greatest Love still has its quieter moments, but thrives best when the band loosen the shackles and head towards dancefloor euphoria, best shown on single ‘Into Gold’.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Nilüfer Yanya – My Method Actor
Of the title of third album My Method Actor, Nilüfer Yanya said: “The reason why some people find method acting kind of traumatic and maybe not safe, mentally is because you’re always going back to this moment, it can be good or bad. And you’re always feeding off it. It’s something that’s defined you.” On the record, the London-based singer inhabits characters and navigates a transitional period in her life through crunchy, catchy and inventive indie-rock songs.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Suki Waterhouse – Memoir of a Sparklemuffin
Suki Waterhouse’s new album is named after the Sparklemuffin spider, of which she says: “I came across the Sparklemuffin—which is wildly coloured, does this razzle-dazzle dance, and its mate will cannibalise it if she doesn’t approve of the dance. It’s a metaphor for the dance of life we’re all in. The title felt hilarious, ridiculous, and wonderful to me.” Across an 18-track double album, she reflects the splendour and terror of these creatures on songs that traverse Americana, pop and beyond.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Gia Ford – Transparent Things
“A lot of the stories that I’m drawn to require a big open sky and big open space,” Gia Ford told Rolling Stone UK recently of her new Americana-led sound. “It’s hard to describe, but it’s that vastness of sound that I like.” This sense of expansiveness and space permeates the whole of debut album Transparent Things, which feels like the true arrival of a British songwriter seizing her moment.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Gurriers – Come and See
Gurriers vocalist Dan Hoff told Rolling Stone UK of the band’s debut album, Come and See: “There’s an anger and disappointment and disillusionment with the world, and the Catholic Church, and nightclubs. Then the last song (the album’s title track) is a dreamscape about people reading books and watching movies to forget the shit that’s going on around them.” This balance of anger and catharsis drives Come and See, a punk record fizzing with energy and discontentment but determined to break on through.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music