Summer is in full swing, which means the race to decide 2023’s Song of Summer is on, and July is sure to bring plenty of contenders. This month, we’re getting the star-studded soundtrack to Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated Barbie movie, Taylor Swift’s re-recorded Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) featuring bonus track collaborations with Fall Out Boy and Paramore’s Hayley Williams, and new albums from reliable hitmaker Post Malone, Brit-pop legends Blur, PJ Harvey, and more.
Anonhi’s new album My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, recorded with producer Jimmy Hogarth and a full studio band, marks her return to the “And The Johnsons” moniker after over a decade. Accordingly, it moves past the electronic pop of 2016’s HOPELESSNESS to embrace British folk and American soul music. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. That was a really important touchstone in my mind,” Anonhi explains. “A couple of these songs are almost a response to the call of What’s Going On, from 2023. They are a kind of an echo from the future to that album from 50 years ago.” That influence is readily apparent on lead single and opening track “It Must Change,” a gorgeously groovy recording that captures Anonhi’s first and only vocal take.
“My hope for The Greater Wings is that it lives as a love letter to my chosen family and as an expression of the depth of my commitment to our shared future,” singer-songwriter Julie Byrne says of her new album. Byrne started recording The Greater Wings, her first LP in over six years and the follow-up to 2017’s excellent Not Even Happiness, with her longtime collaborator Eric Littman, who passed away in 2021, and finished it with producer Alex Somers. “Being reshaped by grief also has me more aware of what death does not take from me. I commit that to heart, to words, to sound,” Byrne says. Tracks like “Summer Glass” and “Moonless” augment her signature fingerpicked guitar with incandescent synths and piano, buoying her stunningly lovely folk ever skyward.
It’s been seven years since PJ Harvey’s last album, 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project. Her new one, I Inside The Old Year Dying, is “a resting space, a solace, a comfort, a balm—which feels timely for the times we’re in,” she says. Drawing inspiration from Harvey’s own book-length epic poem Orlam, the LP features improvisation with producers Flood and John Parish. “I think the album is about searching, looking—the intensity of first love, and seeking meaning,” Harvey says. “Not that there has to be a message, but the feeling I get from the record is one of love—it’s tinged with sadness and loss, but it’s loving. I think that’s what makes it feel so welcoming: so open.”
Following Fearless and Red, Taylor Swift is continuing her quest to rerecord her back catalog and regain control of her masters with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). The new edition of her 2010 album will feature six unreleased bonus tracks from the same era, including collaborations with Fall Out Boy and Paramore’s Hayley Williams. “Since Speak Now was all about my songwriting, I decided to go to the artists who I feel influenced me most powerfully as a lyricist at that time and ask them to sing on the album,” Swift explains. “They’re so cool and generous for agreeing to support my version of Speak Now.”
The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs Of Nick Drake is a tribute album dedicated to the legendary English folk singer-songwriter, whose work has become cultlishly beloved since his death in 1974. Featuring contributions from Liz Phair, Feist, Radiohead’s Philip Selway, Fontaines D.C., Bombay Bicycle Club, Let’s Eat Grandma, Aldous Harding, Ben Harper, and more, the project was shepherded by Cally Callomon, the manager of Nick Drake’s estate, and Jeremy Lascelles, co-founder of Blue Raincoat Music and CEO of Chrysalis Records. “Cally and I embarked on this venture with one simple brief to each of the artists—that they ignore the original recording of Nick’s, and reinvent the song in their own unique style,” Lascelles says. “It was really humbling to hear so many similar responses, with everyone saying how important Nick’s music was to them, and how much they wanted to be part of this project. As the results came in one by one, we were thrilled by the brilliance and invention that each artist had shown.”
Norwegian electronic producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, the undisputed king of space disco, is returning with Everyone Else Is A Stranger, his first solo album in four years. Named after the original title of John Cassavetes’ 1984 film Love Streams, Everyone Else Is A Stranger consists of four long tracks that begin squarely on the dancefloor and end up somewhere amongst the stars.
El Kempner’s band Palehound are keeping their Eye On The Bat on their new album of the same name. “In the past, I’ve taken myself really seriously in the studio, and I’ve ended up with really serious-sounding records,” Kempner says. “This one—it’s a break up record. I wanted it to sound raw. I wanted it to sound like I was feeling—very much in control, and out of control, at the same time.” That’s evident on lead single “The Clutch,” the first song that Kempner wrote for the album, a scorching guitar-driven barn-burner that captures the raw intensity of Palehound’s live performances.
Gorillaz just released a new album, and now we’re already getting a new album from Damon Albarn’s other band. Albarn describes The Ballad Of Darren, the first album from Brit-pop legends Blur since 2015’s reunion effort The Magic Whip, as “an aftershock record, reflection and comment on where we find ourselves now.”
Irrepressibly prolific power-pop institution Guided By Voices are celebrating their 40th anniversary as a band in September with a pair of shows in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio. And in June, we’re getting their second full-length album of the year, Welshpool Frillies, which the crew recorded live to tape in a Brooklyn basement with producer Travis Harrison.
Pure Music is just another step in Strange Ranger’s fascinatingly unpredictable evolution from scrappy ’90s-indebted indie-rockers to something weirder and more ambitious. Emerging from the same sessions that birthed the band’s bonkers genre-hopping 2021 mixtape No Light In Heaven, Pure Music’s shoegazey electronic pop promises to be more cohesive and focused but no less experimental.
Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated Barbie movie is hitting the world on July 21 alongside a star-studded soundtrack executive produced by Mark Ronson. Barbie: The Album features big names like Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj, Charli XCX, Ice Spice, HAIM, Tame Impala, Lizzo, Dominic Fike, Ava Max, PinkPantheress, Khalid, and Ken himself, Ryan Gosling.
Bethany Cosentino is putting Best Coast on hold and stepping out on her own with her debut solo album Natural Disaster. “My identity as a human being, and as an artist, has been so wrapped up in Best Coast for over a decade. The decision to pause the project indefinitely, and explore a new side of myself, was a very difficult one to make—but it felt necessary for me,” Cosentino says. “Life is too short to not give yourself what you feel you need and want. I am excited about being just Bethany Cosentino for a while and figuring out who I am outside of the ‘Bethany from Best Coast’ box I’ve lived in for such a long time.” If early singles “It’s Fine” and “Easy” are anything to go by, that new side of herself will include plenty of alt-country-inflected pop-rock a la Sheryl Crow.
Jessy Lanza’s first album since moving to Los Angeles, Love Hallucination is a sleek and sensual collection of electronic dance-pop songs. Assistance from outside producers like Jacques Greene, Paul White, David Kennedy, Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan, and Marco “Tensnake” Niermeski only serves to highlight Lanza’s auteurial vision.
Rapper/singer/pop star Austin Post, better known as Post Malone, is releasing his new album Austin at the end of July. Although it didn’t end up being an acoustic album as originally planned, Posty says he does play guitar on every song on the record (including catchy early singles “Chemical” and “Mourning”).
I Am Not There Anymore is the Clientele’s first album in seven years and also their most experimental, merging their reliably shimmering indie-pop melodies with contemporary classical, jazz, and electronic music. “We’d always been interested in music other than guitar music, like for donkey’s years,” frontman Alasdair MacLean explains. “None of those things had been able to find their way into our sound other than in the most passing way, in the faintest imprint ... What happened with this record was that we bought a computer.”