With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from the Smile, the Hard Quartet, Yasmin Williams, Caribou, Geordie Greep, Blood Incantation, Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tony Vaz, and Wild Pink. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
The Smile: Cutouts [XL]
The Smile’s second album of 2024 is the already eclectic project’s most bombastic yet, ranging from homespun folk to orchestral ballads, indie-rock whirlwinds, electronic elegies, and slow-burning, Can-inspired freakouts. It also has a little something for fans of pretty much anything Thom Yorke has released since OK Computer. There’s the Atoms for Peace jitters of “No Words,” the Moon Shaped Pool reflection “Bodies Laughing,” the Smile-ishly Afrobeat-driven “Eyes & Mouth,” and plenty more—all backed by Tom Skinner’s delightfully vexing drum patterns and performed, in Yorke and Greenwood’s reliable way, with an uncanny twist of the unfamiliar.
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade
The Hard Quartet: The Hard Quartet [Matador]
