#8 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: The Weather Station, Hayley Williams, and More

The Weather Station: Ignorance [Fat Possum]

With Ignorance, her fifth album as Weather Station, singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman addresses the far-reaching emotional effects of the climate crisis. In an interview with Pitchfork she wondered, “What would happen if you lived life as yourself? There are times where that means that you actually go against some social conventions. Trying to lead a more honest life is an emotionally complicated prospect.”

Read Pitchfork’s track reviews of “Robber” and “Atlantic,” as well as the interview “The Weather Station Battles Climate-Change Anxiety, One Song at a Time.”

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Hayley Williams: FLOWERS for VASES / descansos [Atlantic]

Hayley Williams hinted at her new solo album, FLOWERS for VASES / descansos, with a cryptic photo before formally announcing the project just a few hours ahead of its arrival. She wrote and recorded the album by herself at home. The Paramore singer released her solo debut, Petals for Armor, last May.

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Sarah Mary Chadwick: Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby [Ba Da Bing]

Melbourne-based musician Sarah Mary Chadwick follows last year’s Please Daddy with Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby. All 12 songs on the new record find Chadwick singing alongside solo piano arrangements, and she uses them to explore an occasion in 2019 when she tried to take her own life.

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Ryan Sambol: Gestalt [Perpetual Doom]

Former Strange Boys frontman Ryan Sambol wrote and performed the nine songs that comprise the 22-minute Gestalt. The album is dedicated in part to late Strange Boys guitarist Greg Enlow, who died in 2019. In her review of the album, Madison Bloom writes, “Gestalt is a small record in the best sense…. It’s one-way intimacy, the kind that comes with peeking in on someone’s most vulnerable moments.”

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Pooh Shiesty: Shiesty Season [The New 1017/Atlantic]

Shiesty Season is the debut mixtape from rapper Pooh Shiesty. Guests on the Memphis rapper’s tape include Tay Keith, 21 Savage, his label boss Gucci Mane, and Lil Durk, who features on the single “Back in Blood.”

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Miss Grit: Impostor EP [self-released]

Miss Grit is the project of Korean-American musician Margaret Sohn. Her new EP Impostor follows 2019’s four-track Talk Talk. On Impostor, Sohn addresses her experiences growing up in the white space of the Michigan suburbs, as well as a pervasive feeling of imposter syndrome.

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Black Country, New Road: For the first time [Ninja Tune]

For the first time is the debut album from London’s Black Country, New Road, a seven-person ensemble that knits together rock, pop, jazz, and more into a wooly mix. They recorded it with Andy Savours, who mixed My Bloody Valentine’s m b v.

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Nana Yamato: Before Sunrise [Dull Tools]

Before Sunrise is the debut album from Tokyo-based artist Nana Yamato. Yamato splits her life between music, school, work, and record collecting—a hobby she stuck with after purchasing an Iceage album at Tokyo shop Big Love Records. “Everything in my life started there,” she said in press materials.

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