New Album Cycle for July 11th, 2025
Full album list with Apple Music and Spotify Playlist and my thoughts on some of the albums
Happy Sunday! We are back with the album list after taking 4th of July off. Typically, nothing comes out the week of 4th of July, and that was basically the case this year also, but there were a few things—so I have added those here. You will find some deeper reviews on a couple things down below, but other artists with new albums out on the playlist include Indiana hip-hop group 81355 (Bless) with their new album Bad Dogs. If you want to take a listen to hip-hop without a lot of the current clichés and one that will appeal to more old-school or adult tastes, this is a good one to dig into. There is a new Africa Express album from the African music collective. You will find Damon Albarn of Blur on there, Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, Moonchild Sanelly, Joan As Policewoman, and much more.
UK/Australian indie band Allo Darlin’ are back after a decade with a new album called Bright Nights. One of the biggest dance artists out there is Barry Can’t Swim, and Joshua (his actual name) is back with his second album Loner on Ninja Tune. This is very much a dance album that both young people and older persons can enjoy. If you enjoy Fred Again and Four Tet and the like, this should appeal to you. Fans of Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, and Daft Punk would probably dig the track “About to Begin.” There is a new Jazz Is Dead from Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. This one features Dom Salvador, a 90-year-old Brazilian pianist. It has a very 60’s and 70’s vibe. Two older artists who seem to be having the best time are Gina Birch and Half Japanese. They both put out new albums this week. Birch was in post-punk band The Raincoats and put out a fun, but also pretty artistically interesting and relevant solo album (her first, I think) in 2023 called I Play My Bass Loud. The title track from that album was one of my favorite songs of that year. This album continues both the fun vibe, but also Birch experimenting and doing things differently as she begins her 70’s. Jad Fair is back with a new Half Japanese album 50 years into the group’s history and seems to be still enjoying it. Dreamy-indie-pop shoegaze band Goon is here and their new album is very nice. They just announced an Omaha show also. Old 97’s member Murry Hammond has a solo album out. Wet Leg are back with their second album. It’s pretty solid! The Reds, Pinks and Purples put out four albums last year, only one so far this year and there is a song from it on the playlist.
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HERE IS THE APPLE MUSIC PLAYLIST!
N8NOFACE-As of Right Now-I always enjoyed N8NOFACE, but he was always hard to keep up with. He puts out so many albums. They are short and easy to digest, but it’s a lot. I saw him perform live a couple of months ago in California, and kind of became obsessed after that. I have really been digging into all of his albums, and his music has been a big soundtrack to the last couple of months. Something about his performance just felt so genuine, especially since the music is so synthetic. It really struck me. When he dedicated a song to the FBI who was monitoring his family, I was like, fuck, that is probably real. N8NOFACE, as he states on his publicity, sings about police brutality, toxic relationships, narcos and drug deals, and jackings going horribly wrong. He does synth punk, darkwave, minimal wave music with elements of rock and hip-hop at times. This is his second album so far of 2025 and is just seven songs and 24 minutes. This album is more about relationships than the FBI. It has probably one of his most appealing and addictive songs I have heard—the repetitive and relatable “Waiting to Wait for You.” The album is dark musically, but not always lyrically; it’s actually quite sweet on songs like "I’m All Yours All the Time” and “It’s Happening Again.” The album ends with the upbeat but lo-fi “You Dance Alone,” which, if I was still dancing in dark clubs, I would request from the DJ.
Kae Tempest – Self-Titled
Tempest is a spoken word artist, playwright, author, and rapper. Tempest has made some amazing albums that have been nominated not once, but twice for the UK’s Mercury Music Prize. The spoken word/rap hybrid, with the thick accent and social commentary mostly on culture and politics in the UK, would leave only a small window of American listeners, I would guess. This is Tempest’s first album since coming out as a trans man. This album is more personal, and he turns his prose and sharp wit towards himself. It’s a thrilling album musically, with cinematic scapes, menacing hip-hop, joyful chillout. The audience will still be very limited, but if you are open to a UK hip-hop/spoken word hybrid, you will probably find more to relate to here than on previous albums, and it could prove to be a nice intro to Kae’s catalog, which is worth digging into.
Arrested Development-Adult Contemporary Hip-Hop
This is the twelfth (though there are actually more if you include mixtapes) Arrested Development album. Yup. Some years ago, I went up to Sioux City to see Jason Isbell, with the bonus of Arrested Development on the side stage. I figured it would be leader Speech and new people doing a fun but tired nostalgia set. Instead, it was Speech and new people doing one of the most energetic, relevant, and invigorating sets I had seen that year. Instead of Jason Isbell, my mind was racing about that AD set on the way home. So, I went and started digging into their current music, which at the time in 2018 was an album called Craft & Optics. That has its moments, but it would be the albums that followed—2020’s Don’t Fight Your Demons, For The FKN Love, and especially 2024’s Bullets In The Chamber—that really set up the second (well, probably third) act for Speech and the group. One year after Bullets, we already have Adult Contemporary Hip-hop. Bullets was over an hour long, but honestly felt like it had to be. It was just that solid all the way through. The new album is also over an hour long, and it is very good, but I am not sure they needed another hour-long album—and this doesn’t quite come in as strong as Bullets, but it is still a very strong album. I feel that Speech and AD are doing some of the best hip-hop out there, especially if you are into more old-school hip-hop. It’s not fluff; they are talking about very real topics, and Speech has never been one to mince words or not back them up. I don’t think anyone has ever doubted he knows what he is talking about. The music is varied and appealing, and Speech’s delivery is relaxed—always was—but full of inflection and emotion, and he drives it all home. He is surrounded by a group of younger artists that help give the sound fresh life, but thankfully we are spared much of the modern hip-hop clichés. I highly recommend digging into some of the later AD works going back the last five years.
The Album List
Kate Tempest – Kate Tempest
Kesha – .
Rival Consoles – Landscape from Memory
81355 – Bad Dogs
Africa Express (feat. Damon Albarn) – Africa Express Presents… Bahidorá
Allo Darlin’ – Bright Nights
Amy Macdonald – Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For?
Backstreet Boys – Millennium 2.0
Barry Can’t Swim – Loner
Boldy James-Late To My Own Funeral
Born of Osiris – Through Shadows
Brent Cobb & The Fixin’ – Ain’t Rocked in a While
Brutus VIII – Do It For the Money EP
Burna Boy – No Sign of Weakness
Dom Salvador, Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad – Dom Salvador JID024
Chris Stamey (of The dB’s) – Anything Is Possible
Cian Ducrot – Little Dreaming
Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out
Fuubutsushi – Columbia Deluxe
Gina Birch (of Raincoats) – Trouble
GIVĒON – Beloved
Gwenno – Utopia
Half Japanese – Adventure
Impureza – Alcázares
Jessica Winter-My First Album
Joey Waronker and Pete Min – King King
Justin Bieber-Swag
The Kinks – The Journey – Part 3
Kokoroko – Tuff Times Never Last
Loe Shimmy – Rockstar Junkie
Mal Blum – The Villain
Mark Stewart – The Fateful Symmetry
MF Tomlinson – Die to Wake Up From a Dream
Midnight Rodeo – Chaos Era
Molly Joyce – State Change
Murry Hammond – Trail Songs of the Deep
N8NOFACE – As Of Right Now
Nate Mercereau, Josh Johnson, and Carlos Niño – Openness Trio
Noah Cyrus – I WANT MY LOVED ONES TO GO WITH ME
Ólafur Arnalds and Talos – A Dawning
Open Mike Eagle-Neighborhood Gods Unlimited
Petey USA – The Yips
Qur’an Shaheed – Pulse
Split Chain – motionblur
sunking – I DON’T LIKE MY TELEPHONE
The Swell Season – Forward
Tony Njoku – All Our Knives Are Always Sharp
Touquoisedeath-Guardian
Twice-This Is For
Vylet Pony-Love & Ponystep
Wet Leg – moisturizer