This New Music Friday is filled with hits. There are new records from Mercury Prize winners, iconic DJs, rock cult favorites and more. First, here’s a closer look at an album many people are talking about this week.
The Best of New Music Friday:
SOPHIE – SOPHIE
SOPHIE’s final album delivers an hour of dreamy industrial pop collabs. The album was nearly complete before SOPHIE’s tragic death in January 2021. The remaining bits that needed mastering and editing were carefully assembled over the last few years. Now SOPHIE’s posthumous curtain call is out in the world for everyone to hear.
Hardcore SOPHIE fans might know that many of these tracks have been performed for years. Snippets of tracks like “Gallop” have been on SoundCloud and spun by dark club dwellers and DJs for a while. SOPHIE and her partner Evita Manji once played the track during a boiler room set. The two also produced the track “Berlin Nightmare” together pre-pandemic.
Lead single “Reason Why” featuring Kim Petras and BC Kingdom was leaked online in 2019 and SOPHIE played it live on several occasions. Now listeners have an “official” version of several tracks they may have already listened to for five years. These new versions are much more polished. There’s a sense that this record has been vacuum-sealed to take home with you, without the club atmosphere of the ripped version.
There’s a unique weight placed on a posthumous release. This is an album that almost certainly wasn’t supposed to be SOPHIE’s final project. Though the record was mostly complete in 2021, it is also packed with decisions made without her input. Don’t get it twisted: SOPHIE doesn’t feel exploitative. The album was completed with care by SOPHIE’s brother and close collaborator Benny Long. But, there is a flattening to the music that can make it feel more like a somber flashback than an invitation to the dancefloor.
New Music Friday Top Picks:
Alan Sparhawk: White Roses, My God [Sub Pop]
Being Dead – Eels [Bayonet]
Ben Böhmer – Bloom [Ninja Tune]
Christian Lee Hutson – Paradise Pop. 10 [Anti-]
Contour – “(re)Turn,” “Mercy,” and “Entry 10-4 (Mood Recipe)” [Mexican Summer]
Doodie Lo – What Made Me [Empire]
Ezra Collective – Dance, No One’s Watching [Partisan]
Kate Bollinger – Songs From a Thousand Frames of Mind [Ghostly International]
Lady Gaga – Harlequin [Interscope]
Mickey Guyton – House on Fire [Capitol Nashville]
Monaleo – Throwing Bows EP [Stomp Down]
Mustafa – Dunya [Jagjaguwar]
Neva Dinova – Canary [Saddle Creek]
Show Me the Body – Corpus II [Corpus]
Sunflower Bean – Shake EP [Lucky Number]
Xiu Xiu – 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn Grips [Polyvinyl]
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!
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