Notable Releases of the Week (11/21)

Glitterer by Alex Szantos

Next week is Thanksgiving, the year is winding down, and this is definitely a slower week for new albums, but we’ve still got a handful of new records to talk about. It was also a busy week in the music world, with the returns of My Bloody Valentine and Converge, a handful of festival announcements, another big week for Geese, and more. You can hear us talk about all of that and more on this week’s episode of BV Weekly.

As for this week’s new albums, I highlight five below, and Bill talks about Sharp Pins (mem Lifeguard), Oneohtrix Point Never, Glyders, Geoff Barrow of Portishead’s GAME soundtrack, and more in Indie Basement. On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Tobias Jesso Jr, Twin Shadow, Ransom & Conductor Williams, Keaton Henson, SUDS, The Weak Days, Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover, Boreen, Dendrons, S.C.A.B., Terror Corpse, TWINS, Inertials, Factor Chandelier, Big Bill, Iona Zajac, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Laney Jones And The Spirits, Aya Nakamura, Fabiano do Nascimento, The Hellp, SoFaygo, Shordie Shordie, Stryper, Sub Focus (ft. Grimes, Fireboy DML, Katy B & more), the Spanish Love Songs EP (ft. Tigers Jaw, Kevin Devine, The Wonder Years & illuminati hotties), the Kelly Lee Owens EP, the Flesher (ex-Skeletonwitch) EP, the Aerosmith & Yungblud EP, the What You Will: Music From Free Shakespeare In The Park’s Twelfth Night EP ft. Moses Sumney & others, the Shygirl remix album, Max Richter’s Hamnet soundtrack, The Futureheads’ Christmas album, Rufus Wainwright & the Pacific Jazz Orchestra’s Kurt Weill tribute live album, Wreckless Eric’s England Screaming (which reworks songs from 1985’s A Roomful Of Monkeys), The Beatles’ Anthology Collection (2025 Edition) box, the Ray Charles comp, the 30th anniversary edition of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the 20th anniversary edition of Goldfrapp’s Supernature, and the physical release of John Nolan & Born Losers Records Music For Everyone Volume 2: A Compilation In Support of the ACLU (ft. Taking Back Sunday, Straylight Run, L.S. Dunes, Sparta, Jeff Rosenstock, Kevin Devine, Catbite & more) (that we have an exclusive red galaxy vinyl variant of).

Read on for my picks, and listen to the new episode of BV Weekly wherever you listen to podcasts for more of this week’s new music and music news. What’s your favorite release of the week?

Glitterer – erer (Purple Circle)
On his fourth album with Glitterer, the Title Fight vocalist/bassist turns his once-introspective songwriting style into something a little more macro.

erer is Glitterer’s fourth album, and as Ned Russin pointed out while making a list for us of his favorite ‘fourth albums’ by bands/artists he loves, Ned’s never released a fourth album by any of his other projects (and that includes his longest-running band, Title Fight). But erer is also sort of a second album. It’s the second album since turning Glitterer from a solo project into a full-time full band, which currently includes keyboardist Nicole Dao (who was also on last year’s Rationale), guitarist Colin Gorman, and drummer Robin Zeijlon. Ned told us last year how Rationale saw him reconnecting with music as a communal, collaborative art form, and also how it saw him embracing his most natural comfort zone: picking up his bass and rocking out. erer is fueled by that same mentality, and Glitterer’s second album in a 21-month span only finds them sounding even more natural. Like on Rationale, Ned’s songwriting style on erer will be familiar to those who still know him best as a member of Title Fight. His songs on this album are heavier than Title Fight’s last album Hyperview but softer and more atmospheric than the raucous melodic hardcore of that band’s earlier years. And just like it was in Title Fight, one of Ned’s greatest strengths is his lyricism. As an early twentysomething, Ned wrote deeply personal songs about the solipsism and depression that feels like a defining factor of quarter-life for so many young adults. Now in his mid 30s and navigating a world that’s felt increasingly hopeless, Ned’s concerns are a little more macro but the devastation in his delivery is the same. He’s become a songwriter that his fans can really grow with and not out of, as each new album feels like a snapshot of a new stage of life. The Ned Russin of Title Fight’s beloved Floral Green was, in his words, “terrified of growing up, passing away, and being completely forgotten,” but the Ned Russin of erer seems to feel much differently than that. He isn’t worried about what he left behind because, in the roughly-20 years he’s been making music, he’s never looked backwards.

De La Soul – Cabin in the Sky (Mass Appeal)
The alternative hip hop legends do what they do best on their first album in 9 years, with posthumous Trugoy the Dove material plus contributions from Black Thought, Killer Mike, Nas, DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and more.

Nas’ Legend Has It series has coaxed a lot of veteran rappers out of hibernation and unearthed some posthumous material from deceased rappers, and the new De La Soul album fits both of those categories. It’s their first album in nine years (following 2016’s …and the Anonymous Nobody) and first since the 2023 death of group member Trugoy the Dove (aka Dave Jolicoeur), who has posthumous verses and production on the record and whose spirit looms large over the entire 70-minute LP. It’s got production from longtime De La collaborator Supa Dave West, boom bap legends DJ Premier and Pete Rock, and others, and it’s loaded with guests, including Black Thought, Killer Mike, Common, Slick Rick, Nas, Q-Tip, Yukimi from Little Dragon, and others, and an opening sketch where Giancarlo Esposito (aka Gus Fring from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) “takes attendance” of everyone involved with the making of the record. This LP was clearly a labor of love from De La’s surviving members Posdnuos and Maseo and a world class wrecking crew of hip hop icons who seem dedicated to preserving De La’s legacy, and the album stays true to what this group was all about. There’s no attempt being made on Cabin in the Sky to modernize or do anything out of character; it’s an album that’ll take you right back to the ’90s alternative hip hop era that De La Soul themselves helped pioneer.

Gasket – Gasket (Blue Grape)
The Baltimore metallic hardcore band’s debut LP offers up nine songs of dark, scary intensity.

Following two promising EPs (2023’s Dull the Needle and 2024’s Babylon), Baltimore metallic hardcore band Gasket offer up their self-titled debut full-length. From start to finish, the whole thing has a dark, scary intensity that kinda reminds me of Knocked Loose. No polished production, no clean choruses, no breakdowns for the sake of breakdowns–just nine kickass songs that find Gasket going as hard as they can.

Method of Doubt – Total Soul Ignition EP (Scheme)
After breaking up too soon, the Florida melodic hardcore band is back with a fiery new EP.

Florida melodic hardcore band Method of Doubt seemed like one of the most promising newer bands in their subgenre with their 2021 debut LP Staring at Patterns, but they but they cut their rise short by breaking up just a few months after its release. Thankfully, they decided to give it another go. They’ve been playing shows again and they just dropped this new four-song EP, Total Soul Ignition. Like on the LP, you can hear stuff like Dag Nasty, Embrace, Turning Point, etc, and it never comes off like idol worship. They make it their own, and their energy is magnetic.

Boys Life – Ordinary Wars EP (Spartan)
The Midwest emo veterans embrace slow-paced heartland rock and political critique on their first release in 29 years.

De La Soul aren’t the only ’90s group with a comeback record out this week, but unlike De La Soul, Kansas City emo veterans Boys Life’s new release sounds nothing like the music they made in the ’90s. These four songs are their first in 29 years, and it finds them going in a slow-paced heartland rock direction, one that very much matches the black-and-white American Midwest landscape montage that powers their “Ordinary War” video. Lyrically, these songs find Boys Life matching those montages of America with overtly political critiques of America, as vocalist Brandon Butler explains: “I see our world, especially our country, as a failed experiment. Things could be so wonderful and easy but we choose greed and ignorance over utopia. We are wasting time.”

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Sharp Pins, Oneohtrix Point Never, Glyders, Geoff Barrow of Portishead’s GAME soundtrack, and more.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out the latest episodes of our weekly music news podcast BV Weekly and the BV interviews podcast.

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