3 new songs and 3 new albums to check out this weekend
Nineties rock is alive and well with new releases from The Lemonheads and The Dandy Warhols.
Images from left: Blonde Redhead, "Before (Choir Version)" (section1); yeule, Evangelic Girl Is A Gun (Ninja Tune Records); Aminé, 13 Months Of Sunshine (10K Projects)
Welcome to our weekly music post, where we spotlight our favorite new songs and albums. Hop in the comments and tell us: What new music are you listening to?
Blonde Redhead, “Before (Choir Version)”
Blonde Redhead’s upcoming album, The Shadow Of The Guest (out June 27), is a quasi-remix of their 2023 album Sit Down For Dinner. It’s not exactly a one-to-one comparison, though, given that The Shadow Of The Guest has only eight tracks compared to Sit Down For Dinner‘s 11. Four of the tracks on the new album are extended remixes that incorporate vocals from the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and the other four are ” a series of ambient ASMR reworks,” according to a press release. The first single, perhaps unsurprisingly, is one of the choir remixes. Vocalist Kazu Makino said of “Before (Choir Version)”: “‘Before’ was written with a choir in mind. I wrote it for kids and the POV of children and I said so when I met them for the first time. I don’t know if they took it literally by the time we recorded, but they truly owned the song as if they wrote it. That’s pretty remarkable.”
The Lemonheads, “Deep End”
Last month, Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando said the band would release a new album, Love Chant, in October, but the announcement was frustratingly lacking specifics. We’ve long since learned not to get our hopes up too high when it comes to new Lemonheads music, so we filed it away under “things to be cautiously optimistic about” and hoped it would actually come to fruition. “Deep End,” the band’s new single that was released this week, is compelling evidence that Love Chant might actually happen. It helps that it’s a solidly fun tune, too, reminiscent of the band’s early work without feeling stuck in the past. It’s even got J Mascis on guitar and Juliana Hatfield on backing vocals.