4 albums you need to hear this week
With music by You Me at Six, Paramore, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Kelela
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 You Me at Six, Paramore, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Kelela.
You Me at Six – Truth Decay
Eight albums, nearly two decades and countless stylistic twists and turns into their career, is there an obvious answer to the question of what represents the quintessential You Me at Six sound? Truth Decay might provide it; inspired by seeing both contemporaries and a new generation of bands embracing an emo rock sound, the Surrey five-piece have gone back to their roots on a record that recalls their classic debut Take Off Your Colours and features collaborations with Cody Frost and Rou Reynolds of Enter Shikari. Lead single ‘Mixed Emotions (I Didn’t Know How to Tell You What I Was Going Through)’ plays like the album in microcosm – big guitars, and an anthemic chorus.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Paramore – This Is Why
Back in 2013, Paramore put the world on notice that they refused to be pigeonholed as pop-punk any longer, releasing a sprawling self-titled record the touched upon just about every different aspect of modern pop. In the decade since, they’ve dedicated themselves to refinement and maturation, first on the technicolor 80s charm of 2017’s After Laughter and now, with This Is Why, with an album replete with hooks and crunching guitars, that contains echoes of their early days, and that is ultimately defined by its defiance, with Hayley Williams carrying the songwriting nuances she displayed on her solo albums Petals for Armor and Flowers for Vases/Descansos into the Paramore fold.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Brian Jonestown Massacre – The Future Is Your Past
San Francisco’s premier purveyors of psychedelic rock have shown little in the way of slowing down as they enter into their fourth decade as a band, as they follow up the incendiary Fire Doesn’t Grow on Trees – only released last June – with their 20th studio album, The Future Is Your Past. With frontman and bandleader Anton Newcombe again taking on production duties, the record features a slimmed-down lineup of just Newcombe, guitarist Hakon Adalsteinsson and drummer Uli Rennert, and this appears to have elude to a boiling down of the Brian Jonestown Massacre formula to its essence; driving rhythms and walls of reverb combine to produce undulating soundscapes.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | Amazon Music
Kelela – Raven
In 2017, Kelela appeared to have struck upon a genuinely new R&B sound, deconstructing the genre and rebuilding it her own image on thrilling debut Take Me Apart; she then did a disappearing act. What might be surprising, then, is to discover that after six years away, this follow-up did not gestate slowly but was recorded across a fortnight in Berlin, and is very much in the same bold vein of its predecessor, weaving in 2-step, jungle, breakbeats and more as it both reflects stormily on the emotional tumult of failed relationships and taps into the euphoria of the club experience on the likes of ‘Contact’.
Listen on: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp | TIDAL | Amazon Music