September Music Preview: Andrew W.K., Joey Purp, and 25 more albums we can't wait to hear this month

Julien Baker’s Little Oblivions is , so it’s no surprise that her new EP of remixes should be of immediate interest. A five-song collection of tracks from the album, these numbers are reworked and transformed by artists as diverse as art-pop maestro Half Waif, ambient electronic musician Helios, folktronica artist Gordi, shoegaze-core titan Jesu, and Thao Nguyen from Thao And The Get Down Stay Down. Each approaches the task in their own unique way, leading to a bold new interpretation of music from one of our finest contemporary songwriters. [Alex McLevy]

It’s always exciting to hear a band come out swinging on its debut album, and Toronto’s Bad Waitress sounds like they’re already throwing haymakers left and right. The combination of old-school blues-punk, Stooges-esque swagger, and stuttering post-punk found on No Taste comes across like a thunderbolt on tracks like the retro-stomp of single “,” but it’s even better on grander, ambitious numbers like “Delusions Of Grandeur,” which suggest the group’s distorted skronk is going somewhere genuinely exciting. [Alex McLevy]

While his name may still inspire the odd “wait, what?” reactions, a decade-plus of aurally adventurous releases have made the hip-hop producer and multi-instrumentalist a vital force in the American jazz-rap underground. His latest record, Conversation Peace, looks to offer one of the most accessible ways into his music yet, a chance for newbies to marvel at his expert skills, fusing the best elements of old-school, jazz-laced beats and boom-bap production with a broad spectrum of contemporary MCs, from Blu to Nitty Scott. [Alex McLevy]

Post-rock royalty David Grubbs has made a career of upending the conventions of music, from his work in Gastr Del Sol to his voluminous solo output over the past two decades. His latest effort, a collaboration with celebrated Chicago guitar maestro Ryley Walker, should offer an exciting fusion of the pair’s respective talents for understated beauty and noisy, avant-psych experiments, respectively. Witness advance track “The Madman From Massachusetts In An Empty Bar,” with its nearly eight minutes of drone-filled darkness, as proof. [Alex McLevy]

The North London MC responsible for one of the (not to mention one of 2020’s ) returns with her fourth full-length, and if lead single “Introvert” is anything to go by, don’t expect any low-key half-measures. Unlike the raw, almost experimental intimacy of the Drop 6 EP, this looks to be a massively ambitious undertaking, 19 tracks full of the diverse array of sounds she conquered on GREY Area, only even more bombastic and hard-hitting. Yes, she has some guest stars and interludes, but the artistry and passion that animates one of our best contemporary rappers is the reason any new release from Simz is must-hear material. [Alex McLevy]

Say the name of Priya Ragu’s debut mixtape slowly aloud (“damn, she’s Tamil!”) and you’ll get a sense of where the singer-rapper is coming from with the musical and cultural influences enveloping her major-label release. The Swiss-Tamil artist combines retro and contemporary Western R&B with both Indian pop and old-school melodies, while bridging rhythmic fusions of South Asian drums and slinky dancefloor grooves in ways that hearken back to the bright international fusions of early Shakira and M.I.A. [Alex McLevy]

Be honest: The second you saw Andrew W.K.’s name, you already instinctively knew if this was something you’re going to want to hear. But there are some new reasons to give the party maestro’s latest “crank it past 11” magnum opus a listen. For starters, his fifth full-length features a six-minute opener, “Everybody Sins,” that possesses a metal-meets-industrial vibe far different from the “Party Hard” bombast for which he’s known—a darker tone that continues through the album, which features a broad range of musicality across its nine tracks. Even longtime fans will find a bevy of new styles and sounds at work here. [Alex McLevy]

Six years is a long time to wait in between releases. It’s especially lengthy when, as in Colleen Green’s case, your breakthrough album I Want To Grow Up (one of The A.V. Club’s ) stoked eager anticipation for whatever came next. (Give or take .) But finally, the wait is over, as the L.A.-based musician’s latest collection of jangly ’90s alterna-pop arrives replete with the sugary hooks and whip-smart vocals that are her stock in trade. Blending Liz Phair songcraft and Matthew Sweet wit, it’s a perfect end-of-summer record for keeping the good times going. [Alex McLevy]

Hawthorne Heights never truly went away, they just faded into the background after the Myspace emo craze died down. But with Meet Me @ The Altar, Machine Gun Kelly, and even Willow Smith recreating that sound (and the return of heavyweights like My Chemical Romance), we’re excited to see how Hawthorne Heights fit into this new era of the genre. Their latest single, the title track from The Rain Just Follows Me, hints at a poppier version of the band that’s more in line with bands like Yellowcard. It’ll be interesting to discover what a more mature, less gloomy version of Hawthorne Heights sounds like over a decade after their major hits. [Tatiana Tenreyro]

Anyone expecting Low to return to familiar sonic territory after the ambitious experimentalism of 2018’s superlative may want to brace themselves. If that record was a fiercely uncompromising push into new, electronically art-damaged sounds, Hey What looks to take those tendencies and add new layers of bombast and brute intensity. Look no further than singles “Days Like These,” “Disappearing,” and “More” to get a sense of the overdriven, distorted grandiosity that finds a raw and unexpectedly potent catharsis in this latest release from the ever-evolving band, one of America’s finest. [Alex McLevy]

It’s been more than a decade since Martina Topley-Bird’s last album of original material, Some Place Simple (though even that was largely comprised of stripped-down versions of songs from her previous two records), but the intervening years seem to have been fruitful ones for the British musician, as she explains: “I had to recalibrate/reconfigure my way of relating to music and the music industry in order to make the record I wanted to make.…and that took time.” Judging by the understated electronic thrum of single “Pure Heart,” it will have been worth the wait. [Alex McLevy]

Trying to explain the sheer scope of The Metallica Blacklist—a collection of covers of the long-running heavy metal act’s biggest record—makes it sound a bit intimidating. The details: 53(!) tracks, with sometimes up to 12 versions of a single song, from a huge array of artists, from St. Vincent to Weezer to PUP to Rina Sawayama to Miley Cyrus to My Morning Jacket, to name just a few. Some sound more promising than others (we’ll take Phoebe Bridgers’ version of “Nothing Else Matters” over Darius Rucker’s, thanks), but it still adds up to a massively intriguing project. [Alex McLevy]

She’s been collaborating with other artists for awhile now (Blood Orange and Nosaj Thing, among others), but on her debut album, singer-rapper-producer-who-knows-what-else talent Park Hye Jin gets the chance to put her skills front and center. Early singles like “Whatchu Doin Later” and “Let’s Sing Let’s Dance” offered hypnotic, trancelike demonstrations of her rapping and house-groove skills, respectively, but “I Need You” showcases her knack for low-key jams as well, making a case for her as a multi-hyphenate master of mood music. [Alex McLevy]

If all the many genre labels we assign to bands are ways of designating shorthand signifiers for their sounds, there’s also something reassuring in just saying the simplest version: Sincere Engineer is a great fucking rock band. Sure, the requisite subgenre titles are here—a combination of pop-punk, post-hardcore indie, emo, even some bubblegrunge in the mix—but it’s all in service of a collection of raw, catchy anthems that should well serve anyone looking to pogo, pump their fist in the air, or blast their speakers on a warm Midwestern summer night. [Alex McLevy]

The Vaccines haven’t released an album since 2018’s Combat Sports, but 2021 feels like the right time for the band to make a bigger comeback, now that the conversations focused on … well, the vaccines. With bands like Modest Mouse and Foxing recently emulating the “blogrock” sound of the early 2010s, we’re eager to see what The Vaccines have up their sleeves this time around with Back In Love City. [Tatiana Tenreyro]

While each album from Scottish indie-rock outfit We Were Promised Jetpacks has progressively pushed a little further at the edges of the band’s signature Big Country-esque guitar rock, the fundamental formula remained the same: driving beats, big choruses, hooks for days. The group’s fifth album goes a little further afield, incorporating some new elements and finding beauty in some stately, restrained grandeur, as on single “Fat Chance.” But the changes are still in service of the noble goal of synthesizing the best elements of Scot-rock into a singular whole. [Alex McLevy]

Like a Southern soul fusion of Amy Winehouse and Adele, Rudie Edwards has a grain to her voice that immediately pulls the music up with her, making it transcend its genre trappings and achieve a sort of timeless quality. The singer’s upcoming Worst Ways EP showcases the various stylings of her sound, from pulsing soul-pop (“Forgetting”) to rich, bluesy Americana (the title track) and more, it all serves as a wonderful calling card for the British artist, once again demonstrating that sometimes it takes someone from across the pond to show us how to best embrace our musical lineage. [Alex McLevy]

From the opening strains of “Magnolia Soul,” the first single from Adia Victoria’s upcoming album A Southern Gothic, it’s clear the musician is taking influence from the rich history of Southern Black storytelling, and using it to push her rich folk-blues fusion somewhere powerfully new and vital, yet steeped in tradition. Recorded with T Bone Burnett and featuring guests like Jason Isbell, Margo Price, and The National’s Matt Berninger, Victoria’s third record promises to serve as a compelling bridge between sounds of the past and present. [Alex McLevy]

There may be more artistically adventurous bands in the world, but there might not be one more charming than Bad Bad Hats, the Minneapolis three-piece who have dedicated themselves to perfecting the art of jangly Americana, the kind full of sunny melodies and appealing rhythms. There’s no reinventing the wheel here, just a sure-footed mastery of the type of music perfect for driving with the windows down, an infectiously ebullient combination of country, rock, and pop. It would feel lightweight in lesser hands, but with the ace vocals of Kerry Alexander and her airtight rhythm section (the new album focuses on classic guitar-bass-drums arrangements), it’s deep as an ocean. [Alex McLevy]

Will there be a more unpredictable fusion of the avant garde and accessible this year than the new album from Camae Ayewa, a.k.a. Moor Mother? The poet-producer laureate of seething, complex works like Fetish Bones and Analog Fluids Of Sonic Black Holes returns for an innovative synthesis of beats, cacophony, and lyricism dealing with Afrofuturism, collective memory, spiritual journeys, and a hundred other deep-cut influences and sources of creative inspiration. For every approachable way in to her work, like “Shekere,” there’s an in-your-face challenge like “.” Don’t miss this one. [Alex McLevy]

Amon Tobin has been so good, and for so long, that he’s become one of those presences in music it’s too easy to take for granted—someone who’s always around, continually pushing the boundaries of electronic music in ever more unexpected ways. How Do You Live is being released during the 25th anniversary of his first album, way back in 1996, but as single “Rise To Ashes” demonstrates, the Brazilian electronic composer has lost none of the restless creative muse that is forever pushing him forward, another instrumental that feels more human than a hundred voices. [Alex McLevy]

Look, actors releasing albums is almost never a good thing, so we were as surprised as anyone when Caleb Landry Jones’ turned out to be an engaging affair of warped, carnivalesque psychedelia. And Gadzooks Vol. 1 looks to continue mining that vein of Floyd-meets-King Crimson oddities wrapped in Beatlesque melodies—meaning, while we will still turn to Jones onscreen for magnetic portrayals of outcasts and oddballs, his musical artistry is actually worth it, too. (And yes, as the title implies, another volume is on the way.) [Alex McLevy]

Joey Purp’s been laying low these past few years, at least when it comes to releases: We haven’t heard from the Chicago rapper since 2018’s superb , a synthesis of styles held together by his fierce minimalist delivery. Now, he’s returning with UpLate, a new mixtape that reportedly ditches the broader array of beats he employed previously in favor of a laser-sharp focus on Chicago House, expanded and explored in all its ever-evolving permutations. In other words, get ready for a party. [Alex McLevy]

It’s always a wonderful thing when Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan is back with a new release, whether in his main band, side project Portastatic, or a self-titled solo release, of which this is (shockingly) only the second, following 2015’s Non-Believers (read ). As with that album, this looks to be a rich and engaging collection of indie pop, ranging from the Portastatic-like sweetness of “” to the pulsing hook of “Circling Around,” which almost sounds like a lovely, long-lost Superchunk B-side. Welcome back, Mac. (Cues up “.”) [Alex McLevy]

We’re well aware that Quicksand’s second record since their 2013 reunion came out last month digitally. But here at The A.V. Club, physical media still reigns supreme. The seminal post-hardcore band is back with 11 tracks that sound closer to their mid-’90s zenith, , than 2017’s , which grooved like a trippier version of singer/guitarist Walter Schreifels’ other seminal post-hardcore band, Rival Schools. (Schreifels is nothing if not seminal.) If you missed the classic version of the band, Distant Populations will scratch that itch and secure its place on fall record player rotations once the vinyl version hits stores this month. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Exactly one year to the day following the release of Sufjan Stevens’ restlessly inventive  and only four months after the conclusion of his massive instrumental project, , the musician is back with a new collaborative project. This time, he’s teaming up with his Asthmatic Kitty labelmate Angelo De Augustine, for another of those concept albums of which the artist is so fond. The pair used film as inspiration, with each song loosely inspired by a different movie. If single “Reach Out” is indicative of the whole, it’ll be a harmony-heavy throwback to the ’70s singer-songwriter folk genre, music to be nestled snugly between Joan Baez and James Taylor. [Alex McLevy]

Fans of The Body and Big|Brave individually might be a little startled to hear what the two sound like together on this collaborative project. Rather than the intensely heavy noise and drone listeners have come to expect, this group of songs dives headfirst into Americana, from The Band to Appalachian and traditional North American folk music. Admittedly, it’s still coming from The Body and Big|Brave, so it’s fair to expect a more… intense version of that style and sound, shall we say. And single “Oh Sinner” certainly delivers on that promise; rarely does such genteel-based songcraft threaten to shiv you in the ears quite so forcefully. [Alex McLevy]