Notable Releases of the Week (1/16)

This week has been a whirlwind, musically at least. We got hit with approximately 867,954 album announcements and/or new songs (a good thing), including but not limited to Mitski, Kim Gordon, Poison The Well, ELUCID, WU LYF, Flea, Deathcrash, Shabaka, Sunn O))), Robber Robber, Fcukers, Holy Fuck, Tanya Tagaq, By Storm, and still more. Go check out all of those and more if you haven’t already. We also got some sad news this week: the shocking, untimely death of black midi guitarist Matthew Kwasniewski-Kelvin at 26 years old and the passing of the legendary Grateful Dead co-leader Bob Weir at 78 years old. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo was kind enough to join us in paying tribute to Bobby on the new episode of BV Weekly, which is streaming everywhere now.

We also got plenty of new albums this week. I highlight 10 below, and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement, including Sleaford Mods, Crooked Man, Shaking Hand, and Barry Adamson. The Sleaford Mods album features Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings, who also announced their first show in 24 years this week. So much exciting stuff.

On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Sassy 009, Peaer, Imarhan, Evilgiane, Ya Tseen, Arcángel, Langhorne Slim, DZ Deathrays , Together Pangea , Ov Sulfur, Keep Shelly in Athens, Madison Beer, Tyler Ramsey & Carl Broemel, The James Hunter Six, Craig Taborn/Tomeka Reid/Ches Smith, Richard Marx, Oxis, Soen, Cavetown, Greywind, Lexa Gates, Marianas Rest, Mike Mattison, Wormy, Alev Lenz, Wilson Tanner Smith, Gluecifer, Xiu Xiu’s covers album, Daniel Blumberg’s The Testament of Ann Lee score, the They Might Be Giants EP, the Al Green EP, the Skrillex EP, the Pacificist EP, the Tigra and SPNCR EP, the Westside Cowboy EP, the Aliyah’s Interlude EP, the Gylt EP, and the Vienna Vienna EP.

Read on for my picks, and listen to the new episode of BV Weekly for more of this week’s new music and music news. What’s your favorite release of the week?

Jana Horn – Jana Horn (No Quarter)
With a move to NYC and a new backing band in place, the Texas-bred bare-bones folk singer delivers her strongest and most attention-grabbing album yet.

Having already released two of the most underrated folk albums in recent memory with 2022’s Optimism and 2023’s The Window Is The Dream, Jana Horn is giving her third LP the self-titled treatment. Self-titling a release multiple albums into your career is usually perceived as a statement, and if Jana meant it as one, she earned it. Without changing up her formula much, she’s crafted her strongest and most attention-grabbing album yet.

Jana grew up in Texas and then lived in Virginia, but this is her first album since making the move to New York City, and life in The Big Apple shows up in various ways throughout these songs. It’s there in the lyrics, and it was made with the trio lineup that Jana formed after moving to NYC, with drummer Adam Jones and bassist Jade Guterman. (Jana says that Jade tends to play bass like a lead guitar, while Jana plays guitar like a bass.) Lyrically, this album sets urban scenes in subway cars and hospital waiting rooms, and it’s interesting that it does, because the somber, earthy, slow-paced folk music that fills this album still feels like it lives miles away from the big city. Like on her first two albums, comparisons to the bare-bones delicacy of artists like Sibylle Baier and Jessica Pratt are easy to make, but more than ever Jana Horn stands out from whoever you might think to compare her to. These are the kinds of songs that could seem unassuming until you realize Jana silenced the room and everyone around her is drawn in.

Jana Horn by Jana Horn

A$AP Rocky – Don’t Be Dumb (ASAP Worldwide/Polo Grounds/RCA)
Rocky makes his first album in 8 years feel like an event, with help from Doechii, Jessica Pratt, Gorillaz, Westside Gunn, Tyler the Creator, and more.

After an eight-year gap that followed the most divisive album of his career, A$AP Rocky’s new album had to feel like a comeback. After all these years away from the spotlight, it needed to make the bold statement that Rocky is still a force to be reckoned with. And it only takes one listen to Don’t Be Dumb to realize that’s exactly what it does.

I happen to think the psychedelic, genre-defying Testing is a much better album than it often gets credit for being, but if you’ve been itching to hear A$AP Rocky return to making earth-shaking rap songs, the first half or so of Don’t Be Dumb gives you exactly what you’re looking for. By the time you hear Rocky talking his shit on “Stole Ya Flow” (which is being perceived as a Drake diss), you know he’s out for blood. There are a lot of big, booming trap songs on this album, and because Rocky rarely settles for anything that sounds too regular, those songs push the boundaries of what you might expect “big, booming trap songs” to sound like.

Outside of the soul/R&B-leaning Brent Faiyaz collab “Stay Here 4 Life,” Don’t Be Dumb spends most of its first half re-entering the rap game with a vengeance, and then it gets weird. Speaker-busting electronics fuel “STFU” and “Air Force (Black Demarco)”; the former almost sounds like The Prodigy, and the latter starts out just as abrasively before making a 180 towards airy soul. “Whiskey (Release Me)” is a collaboration with both Gorillaz and Westside Gunn that delightfully doubles down on the psychedelic vibes of Testing. “Robbery” finds Rocky sharing the spotlight with Doechii over a bustling, vintage jazz instrumental. Final track “The End” opens with a will.i.am verse and closes with the alluring Jessica Pratt, who steals the show in a way her 2024 A$AP Rocky collaboration “Highjack” only hinted at. As she sends the album off with her refrain of “Look at the way the world ends,” the ’60s-loving folk singer makes the end of Don’t Be Dumb sound like one of her own albums, and it works.

Don’t Be Dumb also has two bonus tracks, including the very appealing Tyler, the Creator collab “Fish N Steak (What It Is),” but I almost wish the album just ended with “The End.” It concludes the wild ride of Don’t Be Dumb in a way that leaves you speechless.

Don’t Be Dumb is available on double black & white vinyl in the BV shop.

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore – Tragic Magic (InFiné)
This collaborative effort from analog synthesist/vocalist Julianna Barwick and harpist Mary Lattimore is an ambient album like few others.

After collaborating a handful of times over the years, Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have come together for an ambient album like few others. To make it, Mary Lattimore chose three harps that ranged from roughly 150 to 300 years old each, while Julianna Barwick selected a handful of ’70s/’80s-era analog synths, including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5. Julianna’s voice comes through in a way that’s just as ambient as the instrumentals, and there’s some vocoder and a vintage drum machine in the mix too. Of the seven songs on Tragic Magic, one was written for the duo by Brian Eno’s younger brother Roger (“Temple Of The Winds”), and another is a cover of Vangelis’ “Rachel’s Song” from Blade Runner. It’s an album in which the lines between the synthetic and the acoustic are blurred, and an album in which “ambient music” never means “background music.” It’s also devastatingly gorgeous. Like the painting on the album cover, it’s bright, uplifting beauty with just a hint of darkness lurking in the background.

Tragic Magic by Mary Lattimore & Julianna Barwick

Rifle – Rifle (Year0001)
The London punks fuse together street punk, proto-punk, pub rock, and hardcore on their angry, revved-up debut LP, with an assist from The Chisel.

The London punk scene that’s recently given us bands like Chubby and the Gang, Big Cheese, and The Chisel has also given us Rifle, who roll up a mix of street punk, proto-punk, pub rock, and hardcore on their self-titled debut LP. They recently toured with The Chisel, who also make an appearance on the new album’s song “Worthless,” and the LP was produced by Fucked Up’s Jonah Falco, the UK-via-Toronto musician who’s behind a whole lot of records coming out of the UK punk scene. (Fucked Up also featured Rifle vocalist Max Williams on their 2024 album Someday.) Rifle are clearly in good company, and it’s easy to see why. This whole LP is the kind of angry, rippin’, revved-up punk music that never goes out of style, and Rifle make it sound as fresh in 2026 as it would have at any other point in the past 50 years. It’s the kind of record that reminds me why I fell in love with punk in the first place, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it makes someone else fall in love with punk for the very first time.

Rifle by Rifle

Violent Way – A Need For Something More (VWS)
The Buffalo Oi! revivalists deliver another LP of tough, gritty punk songs with big emotion and even bigger melodies.

If you dig the Rifle LP and you’ve got, uh, a need for something more, then you should turn your attention towards the new Violent Way album. The Buffalo band have been a crucial part of the current Oi! revival for years, and they just keep bringing it. In classic Oi! fashion, Violent Way sound like a band who will kick your ass and stomp you down but they’re also big softies, with big emotion and even bigger melodies running through every song on this LP. Every song is a singalong, and they’ve got two great guest vocalists to sing along too as well: Wattie Sharp (Lion’s Law, Rixe) and Greg Huff (Bishops Green, First Attack).

A Need for Something More by VIOLENT WAY

Courtney Marie Andrews – Valentine (Loose Future/Thirty Tigers)
The Phoenix, AZ indie folk singer navigates uneasy life waters on her hauntingly beautiful new LP.

Valentine was written at a time when Courtney Marie Andrews was dealing with the near-death of a loved one, as well as the start of a new romantic relationship, and the unease of those two things happening at once reveals itself all throughout this album. It’s neither as somber as 2020’s Old Flowers nor as bright as 2022’s Loose Future; it’s somewhere in the unpredictable middle. Courtney co-produced the album with Jerry Bernhardt and the two of them fleshed out the album’s indie folk rock base with embellishments from all kinds of different instruments, including flute, drone piano, various synths and organs, and more. And holding it down is one of the most creative drummers in indie rock, Grizzly Bear’s Chris Bear, reprising his role from Loose Future. Courtney says that she and Jerry looked to records like Big Star’s Third and Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk while making this one, and you can feel the influence. Those albums were rooted in unease too, and they found the beauty in it. Valentine does the same.

I Promised the World – I Promised the World EP (Rise)
The early 2000s white-belt era is alive and well on rising post-hardcore band I Promised the World’s first EP for Rise Records.

When post-hardcore / metalcore bands like Poison The Well, Hopesfall, and Alexisonfire were popping off, none of the members of I Promised the World were even born. But from their fashion sense to their album artwork to the sound of their self-titled Rise Records debut, they’ve clearly devoured everything about that era. They’re obviously not shy about who their influences are, but they play this stuff like they invented it and their passion is undeniable. It’s an EP that feels built to unite those who lived through the swoopy-haired, studded-belt era with those who didn’t. It’s familiar, it’s fresh, and it doesn’t feel like a gimmick.

Youth Novel – I Went Through This Experience Smiling (Larry Records)

Michigan screamo band Youth Novel returned from hiatus with their excellent self-titled album in 2021, but then members turned their focus towards Heavenly Blue (now known as Heaven’s Blinding Hue), who released their debut album We Have the Answer in 2024. But now, Youth Novel are back once again with their new album I Went Through This Experience Smiling. Picking right up where the band left off, it’s an intense listen, as pulverizingly heavy as it is deeply beautiful.

I Went Through This Experience Smiling by Youth Novel

Serpent Column – Aion of Strife (self-released)

Serpent Column is the one-man black metal project of Jimmy Hamzy, but for new album Aion of Strife, he brought in an outside vocalist, Mike Tibbits. The slight lineup change hasn’t messed much with the formula though; like on Serpent Column’s last album Tassel of Ares (2023), Aion of Strife is lo-fi black metal in which the harsh vocals and very raw production are contrasted by JH’s onslaught of brightly melodic riffage.

Aion of Strife by Serpent Column

Kreator – Krushers of the World (Nuclear Blast)

We’re coming off a great year for new albums from veteran thrash bands (Coroner, Testament, and Sodom included), and the new music from thrash veterans continues with the 16th Kreator album, Krushers of the World, the followup to 2022’s Hate Über Alles. Produced by Jens Bogren, who also produced 2012’s Phantom Antichrist and 2017’s Gods of Violence, it finds Kreator doing what they do best, churning out a perfectly balanced diet of devil-horn-raising riffs, whiplash-inducing rhythms, and Miland “Mille” Petrozza’s beastly roars.

Krushers Of The World by Kreator

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Sleaford Mods, Crooked Man, Shaking Hand, and Barry Adamson.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases and Indie Basement archives.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out the latest episodes of our weekly music news podcast BV Weekly and BV interviews.

Pick up the BrooklynVegan x Alexisonfire special edition 80-page magazine, which tells the career-spanning story of Alexisonfire and comes on its own or paired with our new exclusive AOF box set and/or individual reissues, in the BV shop. Also pick up the new Glassjaw box set & book, created in part with BrooklynVegan, and browse the BrooklynVegan shop for more exclusive vinyl.