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Fresh Music Friday | May 24th

This week brings lots of new synth pop, indie rock, and anticipated new albums from Cate le Bon and Faye Webster.

Fresh Music Friday is here to give you a breakdown of new singles, EPs, and albums to check out as you make your way into the weekend. Get ready to jam out with some of our favorite up-and-coming artists, plus celebrate new releases from those you already know and love.

Singles:

1. - HÅN - "gymnasion"

Hailing from a small, lakeside town in Italy, singer/songwriter HÅN crafts spacious synth pop that's as magical as the Italian countryside. 2017 saw the release of HÅN's cinematic debut EP, today she delivers another enchanting new track called "gymnasion." This time around, HÅN employs much of the same intricate songwriting skills––pairing delicate synth work with warm, wistful vocals to a gorgeous effect.

2. micki maverick - "HE/ART"

Los Angeles-based musician micki maverick (real name: Dylan Neil) is sharing her debut single, "HE/ART" today. Her new song provides a glimpse of what's to come in the future from the 22-year-old California native. "HE/ART" has a laid-back vibe; Neil puts a bedroom-pop spin on R&B to create a sound equal parts chilled out and compelling, influenced by Kehlani.

Here's what Neil had to say on the track: "'HE/ART' is really a complete look into my life, my past, and my insecurities. Society expects perfection, but that standard is completely unattainable. Not everything in life can be fixed, some things remain broken. And that's what I believe should be the new standard: broken pieces that form something new, something more beautiful."

3. Cassidy King - "I Can't"

Cassidy King's infectious pop is the perfect accompaniment to the recent spring sunshine. Her new single, "I Can't," melds crisp production with the 21-year-old's dazzling vocals in a sound that's reminiscent of E•MO•TION-era Carly Rae Jepsen. She explains that the release is "about going along with the warm summer feeling, that same feeling of warmth represents the honeymoon stage of a relationship to me. This song captures that stage where you just became intrigued by that certain someone and you're doing absolutely anything to get their attention."

4. Sorcha Richardson - "Don't Talk About It"

Dublin-born, Brooklyn-raised singer/songwriter Sorcha Richardson shares the first single, "Don't Talk About It," from her debut album, First Prize Bravery, due out in the fall. The song starts off with a grooving guitar line under Sorcha's evocative vocals before building beautifully into a bright, full-bodied chorus that's hard not to sing along to: "Hey, okay, we don't have to talk about it / It's only love, I guess we'll live without it."

5. Alien Tango - "Friends!"

The zany, technicolor world of London-based band Alien Tango is extra vibrant on their new single, "Friends." There are layered modulated vocals that zig-zag over playful, upbeat instrumentation, and from the first second of listening it feels like you've entered a surreal funhouse. "Friends" is the perfect kind of chaos that sounds like an intersection of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion and an 8-bit video game soundtrack; plus, there's a trippy video to match.

6. Calboy - "Unjudge Me" featuring Moneybagg Yo

Chicago rapper Calboy shows how much he's grown as a rapper, singer, and storyteller on his forthcoming project, Wildflower. He recently tapped Moneybagg Yo for his reflective cut, "Unjudge Me." Here, Calboy flexes his dexterous bars and off-kilter melodies, and he continues to dip between songs that feel loose and hard at the same time.

EPs

7. Middle Kids - New Songs For Old Problems EP

The Australian rock trio has been sharing a slew of excellent singles like "Real Thing" and "Beliefs and Prayers" in anticipation of their mini-album. Now their new EP, New Songs For Old Problems, is full of anthemic, indie rock gems. This is the follow-up to their critically acclaimed LP, Lost Friends.

Albums

8. Faye Webster – Atlanta Millionaires Club

Faye Webster finds harmony in the juxtaposing textures of country, R&B, and folk. Her sound is fully-realized on her new album, Atlanta Millionaires Club, the follow-up to her 2017 self-titled record. On the new LP, Webster's wistful vocals nestle perfectly in between woozy steel guitars and swanky horn parts, as she sings of heartbreak and lovesickness.

9. Honeyblood – In Plain Sight

On Honeyblood's new record, singer/guitarist Stina Tweeddale takes the Glasgow-band-turned solo-project in a new, grittier direction. There's still the same fuzzy post-punk guitar lines that defined Honeyblood's sound on their earlier albums, but this time around, with the help of producer John Congleton, In Plain Sight takes on a spookier, more futuristic territory. It's exciting to see Tweeddale expand her artistic vision, signaling the mark of a new era in Honeyblood's story.

10. Cate Le Bon - Reward

Cate Le Bon's fifth full-length album, Reward, is a revelation. Recorded while Le Bon stayed in a remote house in Cumbria and took furniture classes by day and played piano by night, Reward is a minimalist meditation on the isolation that unfolds slowly and softly, becoming one of Le Bon's most conventionally accessible--and rewarding--listens.

The Beta Machine Roars to Life on Debut Album

Intruder blends epic rock with an electronica pulse, and the result is an invigorating and exciting soundscape.

Johnny Buzzerio

From the first second the opening track to Intruder, "Embers," reverberates to life, it's clear that The Beta Machine's arrival means something different.

Founded by keyboardist Matt McJunkins and drummer Jeff Friedl, of A Perfect Circle, and rounded out by vocalist Claire Acey and guitarist/keyboardist Nicholas Perez, The Beta Machine's debut album expertly balances a metallic heart with achingly genuine verses, sustaining a surging dance floor rhythm underneath raw anthemic emotion. It's an intoxicating blend.

On "Embers" especially, Friedl's masterful control of percussion battens down the hatches for the storm of electronica and rock above it, stretching and compressing tempo to heighten the album's sense of drama. Intruder seems most interested in creating a soundscape, an aural world demanding rumination as easily as a frenzied dance, and it succeeds. McJunkins and Acey make a reliably powerful duet, with most of the songs featuring both their voices trading lyrics and vocalizations within The Beta Machine's futuristic harmonies. "Someday" is shot through with a cinematic want, "The Fall" questions the nature of power as it plays out like Led Zeppelin melded with house music, and album standout, "Bones," slows the album down for just a few minutes, allowing room for the most painful love song on the album to grow sky-high with an electrifying presence.

The Beta Machine is a band of artists at their peak creativity feeding off of each other, and Intruder is the logical conclusion of such a band forming: an album that prizes the extremes of human emotion—longing, doubt, love, fear—and celebrates them with a sound both ethereal and arresting.

Before the album's release, Popdust was able to speak with Matt McJunkins, The Beta Machine's frontman, to give context to the band's sound, the themes on Intruder, and the work that led to this album at this moment in time:

Considering Intruder is a debut album, what context would you want to give for fans listening to rock in this day and age? Where do you locate yourselves as a rock band?

Well, we started a bit of context with our EP All This Time back in 2017. So this new album is an extension of that but also growing away from it. Moving forward and creating a new sound for ourselves and always evolving. And we'd rather let people take away what they'd like from it, rather than tell them what it's going to be or how they should listen to it. We write songs that excite us and are influenced by our own experiences or whatever we might be listening to at the time.

Do you imagine Intruder as a discrete set of tracks, or is there a concept or narrative tying them together as a unit? What would you like listeners to learn from this?

It's a snapshot in time – not a concept album at all. But there is a loose theme that tends to show itself in most of the material. All of it stems from personal tragedy, conflict, or some kind of inner turmoil usually. Most of the songs are maybe our own way of trying to come to grips with something or to try and address some kind of problem. Not trying to provide a definitive solution or answers for anybody including ourselves.

How do you think the fact that so many of you have worked in or with other bands informs The Beta Machine's sensibility? Is Intruder the product of years of learning, or is it more of a fresh start?

We're always learning. This album is a sum of its parts and a great deal of those parts is made up of our previous work with other artists. So, of course, there is an influence there. But we also listen to a lot of music that exists outside of that world and that really shows through on this album. This is us putting our stick in the mud and claiming our own sound. We started that process in 2017 and this is a way of solidifying it once and for all.

Check out the video for their lead single, "Embers."

The Beta Machine - Emberswww.youtube.com

Matthew Apadula is a writer and music critic from New York. His work has previously appeared on GIGsoup Music and in Drunk in a Midnight Choir. Find him on Twitter @imdoingmybest.

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Jenny Lewis Plays With Nostalgia on "Wasted Youth"

The new song is the third single from her upcoming album, On The Line.

Jenny Lewis

The arrival of Jenny Lewis' fourth solo album, On The Line, is imminent.

And if "Wasted Youth" is any indication, the new record promises to be a wrenching and gorgeous trip. The third single released from On The Line bounces with a deceptively easy-going twang while meditating on addiction and lost time. It's a sound that lives somewhere between Dolly Parton and Carole King, sowing a saccharine sadness under its nostalgic pulse, but Lewis still effortlessly stakes her ground.

Beginning with a jaunty piano trill, the song's foreground is Lewis' voice lilting around a beautifully-echoing guitar lick, giving depth and vigor to the act of memory. But her lyrics are resigned and somewhat barbed in their look back: "Why you lyin'? / The bourbon's gone," she sings exasperatedly at one point; "Mercury hasn't been in retrograde for that long." The song rings with the sound of regret, but "Wasted Youth" makes a point of not wallowing in the pain of what's past. Instead, Lewis seems more interested in remembering as an act of survival, taking the days lazed away with drink and drugs "just because," as just more stories she alone gets to tell.

There's a lot to be said for a nostalgic artist playing with a walk down memory lane like this, recasting youth as something lost while not letting that loss consume her. Jenny Lewis makes "Wasted Youth" as an affecting experiment in memory while surrounding it safely in a wistful melody. The remorse of hindsight rarely sounds this self-aware, but Lewis has whole-heartedly nailed it.

Jenny Lewis - Wasted Youth (Audio Video)youtu.be

Matthew Apadula is a writer and music critic from New York. His work has previously appeared on GIGsoup Music and in Drunk in a Midnight Choir.

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