5 New Albums You Need: Nourished by Time, Earl Sweatshirt, Wolf Alice, and more

On the follow-up to 2023’s Erotic Probiotic 2, Marcus Brown deals with the change in status that breakthrough album handed him. “Look at what I made true, Little bit of fame too,” he sings on “Baby Baby.” Brown is too good of a writer to spend his time coasting on a victory lap, though. Sidestepping complacency, he switches to raising class consciousness and stressing the importance of industrial action. “If we all strike right now, the gravy train stops” he says, one of many lines on The Passionate Ones that would sound equally at home on a placard as they do in his soulful and scuzzy pop songs. The Passionate Ones offers up both personal memories and political rallying cries with a deft touch. Brown writes about his feelings of disillusionment, disgust at geopolitics, and raging against the machine on forward-looking songs that pull from R&B, funk, shoegaze, and post-punk without ever forgetting that the purpose of music’s past should be to guide its future. “Max Potential,” which leans into the spectral ’80s dreampop sound of Cocteau Twins to speak about mental health issues and a love that steadies the ship, is one stand out. “9 2 5” is the dizzying high point, though. Joyful piano house chords skip over a nagging melody as Brown recounts the story of a gig worker at the crossroads of creativity and economic reality, determined he “won’t let the dreamer die.” It’s a vintage sounding floor-filler that speaks to the very real concerns of life right now. That mixture of authenticity and escape makes The Passionate Ones essential.

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As is so often the case with great artists, Earl Sweatshirt’s most significant asset has been the tension between the superpowers he possesses in his medium and the often ugly humanity that undergirds it. The awe-inspiring technical talent behind excellent releases like I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, Some Rap Songs, and Feet of Clay didn’t exist simply as monuments to Thebe Kgositsile—they had the heart of an unapologetic eternal student. “You wanna chase instead of find,” shrieks a worked-up unc on “gsw vs sac,” the opening track on Earl’s new album Live Laugh Love. In previous projects that castigation would be directed inward as much as outward, but on Live Laugh Love, Earl Sweatshirt sounds more grounded than ever before. He righteously seeks his flowers on “Gamma (need the 3),” taking stock of his accomplishments with tenderness and pride, and throws his words like jabs on “INFATUATION” as he gives aggressive thanks for his children and the difficult lessons learned: “We on the cutting edge / Told you, we only doubling back to cover our tracks.” Longtime producers Black Noi$e and Navy Blue join Theravada and Child Actor to jump back into a familiar but compelling melange of obscure samples, anarchic drops, and dusty loops, still a provocative backdrop for Earl to reveal his new roots and ask eternal questions. The question of how to exist is a live one, even if what you stand for has long been settled. — Jordan Darville

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Spotify says I listened to Wolf Alice’s 2021 album Blue Weekend over 50 times that year. I’ll be surprised if I don’t exceed, or at least meet, that marker this year with the band’s new album The Clearing which mashes up two of my favorite things: Fleetwood Mac grit and big heart-anthems. It’s true that front woman Ellie Roswell and co. borrowed from the ‘70s for the opulent sound of their new album but at its core these are unmistakable Wolf Alice songs. “The Sofa” is enticingly melodramatic; “Leaning Against The Wall” swells into pure vocal euphoria in its outro; and “Play It Out” sounds like a grown-up version of “Don’t Delete The Kisses” as the now 33-year-old Roswell turns her soft gaze from romance to her worth as a woman if she’s still not yet a mother. Wolf Alice songs have always had this swelling, cinematic quality to them and now they’ve proven, no matter what era of influence they’re tapping, they’re timeless. —Steffanee Wang

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Notes With Attachments, the debut joint LP from bass legend Pino Palladino and prolific guitarist/producer/singer-songwriter Blake Mills, was a thing of intricacy, its texturally rich songs featuring layer upon complex layer of harmony. Its follow-up, That Wasn’t a Dream, is a subtler, more restrained work. This change of approach is most evident in the elegance of the album’s first two tracks, “Contour” and “I Laugh in the Mouth of the Lion,” and the first minute of the third track, “Somnambulista,” before it explodes into a wild convergence of all six of its players — a moment Mills calls a “cataclysm.” “Taka,” inspired by West African polyrhythms, puts Chris Dave’s unmatched pocket drumming to perfect use; “What Is Wrong With You” finds Mills experimenting, for the first time, with an unwieldy instrument called the fretless baritone sustainer guitar, which sounds like a woodwind from space; “Heat Sink” is a 14-minute behemoth, cooked up in a marathon studio session with Palladino’s son Rocco; and “That Was a Dream” circles back to the record’s subdued starting point. Such subtle dynamism is the stuff of true masters. Mills and Palladino are virtuosos of the highest order, but they play this hand only when absolutely necessary, and the extent of their chops is largely hidden. With That Wasn’t a Dream, they canonize themselves in the tradition of L.A. legends whose cool brilliance will endure for generations. — Raphael Helfand. Read our interview here.

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On their latest album, It’s A Beautiful Place, Nate Amos and Rachel Brown draw inspiration from sci-fi literature and cosmic existentialism to create what they say is their most optimistic work to date. Read our full interview here.

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp