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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 projects from Ariana Grande; Kim Gordon; MIKE & Tony Seltzer; Kahil El’Zabar & Ethnic Heritage Ensemble; Moor Mother; Bolis Pupul; Haux; Meatbodies; and Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe & Patrick Shiroishi. 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.)
Ariana Grande: Eternal Sunshine [Republic]
Ariana Grande released just one single ahead of her seventh album, the bright and bubbly “Yes, And?” She made the song with longtime collaborators Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh, who contribute across Eternal Sunshine. The pop star’s grandmother, Marjorie Grande aka Nonna, is on the album’s closing track, “Ordinary Things.”
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Kim Gordon: The Collective [Matador]
If The Collective is reduced to “the album where Kim Gordon went trap,” so be it: The Sonic Youth co-founder wears the designation on her sleeve throughout the adventurous follow-up to No Home Record, working with pop and rap producer Justin Raisen on songs like “Bye Bye,” which was originally meant for Playboi Carti. Unsurprisingly, Gordon shreds plenty of avant-rock noise into the mix, along with nebulous, shoegazey textures and an arresting, disaffected vocal that is equal parts Migos and, well, Kim Gordon. As Shaad D’Souza puts it in his 8.5 review, “It sounds how TikTok brain feels.” In this case, that’s a good thing.
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MIKE & Tony Seltzer: Pinball [10k]
The prolific New York rapper MIKE reunites with producer Tony Seltzer—a collaborator on 2017’s beloved May God Bless Your Hustle—for the new full-length Pinball. The musicians previewed the trap-infused project with “R&B,” and guests include Earl Sweatshirt, Tony Shhnow, Niontay, and Jay Critch.
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Kahil El’Zabar & Ethnic Heritage Ensemble: Open Me, a Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit [Spiritmuse]
Kahil El’Zabar, a onetime collaborator of Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder, is now leading the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble into its 50th anniversary. Mixing original compositions with versions of classics by the likes of Miles Davis, Open Me, a Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit continues the percussionist, composer, and fashion designer’s venture into what he calls “Great Black Music”: “a strong rhythmic foundation, innovative harmonics and counterpoint, well-balanced interplay and cacophony amongst the players, strong individual soloist, highly developed and studied ensemble dynamics, an in-depth grasp of music history, originality, fearlessness, and deep spirituality.”
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Moor Mother: The Great Bailout [Anti-]
Moor Mother, the ever-mesmerizing jazz singer, musician, and poet, probes the hidden history of the British slave trade on her ninth album, The Great Bailout, enlisting collaborators including Mary Lattimore, Lonnie Holley, Vijay Iyer, and Angel Bat Dawid. “Displacement and its effects are not discussed enough,” Moor Mother said in press materials. “The PTSD of displacement should be a focus, and as we have the opportunity to learn about things happening in the world, we also have the opportunity to learn about ourselves.”
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Bolis Pupul: Letter to Yu [Deewee]
Bolis Pupul turns his playful, pick-and-mix production style to his own ancestry on Letter to Yu, a tribute to his late mother that draws on her native Hong Kong as well as his house and techno hallmarks. In the songwriting process, he learned to speak Chinese and visited Hong Kong for the first time, making tracks on a laptop as he explored the city and coast. “When I started to think about my roots, instead of being ashamed of them, I started to become proud of them,” he said in press materials. “And so it became more and more important for me to get in touch with them.”
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Haux: Blue Angeles [Ultra]
Woodson Black has been releasing music as Haux since 2016, and Blue Angeles is his second studio album, following 2020 debut Violence in a Quiet Mind. The Massachusetts-raised singer-songwriter and producer worked on his new album with Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman), Maxwell Byrne, and Aug E. Rose, crafting adult-contemporary-adjacent indie-pop that calls to mind Sufjan Stevens, Kacy Hill, Westerman, and Conner Youngblood.
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Meatbodies: Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom [In the Red]
Meatbodies shoot for the stars on Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom, a five-years-in-the-making rock album themed around frontperson Chad Ubovich’s recovery from various mental, physical, and chemical torments. “I was living like a ’90s vampire out of a comic book,” he said in press materials. “Stumbling around L.A. with the socialites, partying away my sorrows, trying to forget.” Euphorically heavy hooks, psychedelic chants, and shoegazy smears exorcise the demons in grandiose fashion. Concluded Ubovich, “I guess the juice was worth the squeeze?”
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Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe & Patrick Shiroishi: Speak, Moment [AKP]
Jazz guitarist Dave Harrington, saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, and percussionist Max Jaffe met for the first time in October 2021, and they spent their first afternoon together in Los Angeles recording an album, released now, via AKP, as Speak, Moment. “Sometimes a ‘band’ kind of forms by itself, by whim of circumstance and spirit rather than force of will,” Harrington explained in press materials. “This feels like one of those times. Sometimes when you play with amazing improvisers in the same configuration, you start to develop a language and a set of constructs. This doesn’t feel like one of those times.”
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