The Best of New Music Friday:
Childish Gambino – Bando Stone & the New World
When Childish Gambino is long gone, he’ll have got the whole crew to sing a swan song. On his fifth and final album Bando Stone & the New World, Donald Glover spends an hour putting a bow on his rap career. “It’s a big goodbye album,” Glover said on Zane Lowe’s Apple Music show this week. “All of it is made for us to get together.”
Glover has said that he geared the sound of Bando Stone towards his forthcoming stadium tour. “For this album, I really wanted to be able to play big rooms and have big, anthemic songs that fill those rooms,” he said. This is clear on tracks like the single “Lithonia,” a truly anthemic pop-rock ballad. Production on the album is sublime throughout, drawing from a roster of big-name technicians including Ludwig Goranson, Max Martin, Steve Lacy, and Glover himself. There is also a welcome smattering of featured artists. Yeat, Flo Milli and Glover’s son Legend Glover stop by. The younger Glover opens the album by asking his father, “Are we gonna die?” “Not tonight,” Donald responds.
Bando Stone & the New World is a soundtrack that demands attention. They’re not often as ceremonial or critical to a plot as this record is. A trailer for the film shows Glover taking on the role of Bando Stone, a singer stumbling into a post-apocalyptic world before teaming up with a woman and her son to fight prehistoric creatures and try to escape from an unexplained phenomenon that seems to delete “chunks” of the world.
So if this is the end, Glover finishes with the future-facing rallying cry “A Place Where Love Goes.” It’s another example of a lavish tune that will never quite match the radio or playlist hits of Childish Gambino’s past, though these are perhaps better songs than Because the Internet era ones. Now the “big goodbye” goes on the road for the “New World Tour” later in 2024. Then it’ll actually be a curtain call for Glover’s musical career. Probably.
New Music Friday Top Picks:
A Place To Bury Strangers – “Disgust” [Dedstrange]
Beachwood Sparks – Across the River of Stars [Curation]
Blk Odyssy –1-800 Fantasy [Earthchild/Empire]
Blusher – “Overglow” [Atlantic]
Blxst – I’ll Always Come Find You [Red Bull/Evgle]
Denzel Curry – King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 [Loma Vista]
GUM & Ambrose Kenny-Smith – Ill Times [(P)Doom]
JT – City Cinderella [Quality Control/Motown]
Lava La Rue – Starface [Dirty Hit]
Los Campesinos! – All Hell [Heart Swells]
Total Blue – Total Blue [Music From Memory]
Which of these tracks from New Music Friday will you add to your favorite playlists today? Any we missed? Let us know in the comments or on Instagram!
- New Music Friday – March 14, 2025 - March 13, 2025
- CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry Shares Re-Imagined Single With IDLES’ Joe Talbot: Listen - March 13, 2025
- Kaleah Lee Shares Self-Directed Lyric Video for New Single “Fever”: Watch - March 13, 2025
