5 New Albums You Need: Oli XL, CMAT, Kacy Hill and more

Oli XL is alive. The Swedish electronic producer has struggled with writer’s block and label drama over the past six years – you’d be forgiven for assuming that, given the history, his follow-up to 2019’s revelatory Rogue Intruder, Soul Enhancer would take his glitchy sound to more despondent places. Instead his follow-up, Lick The Lens – Pt. 1, surprise-released this week, takes the Rogue Intruder energy to even more joyful places. That’s partially due to its freewheeling structure – part mixtape rife with drops, part fraying pirate radio transmission – but also the energy of the featured artists, batteries that Oli XL happily slaps into his back. Fans of james K will clock her influence even before the experimental pop artist breathes a note on “DRIFT REGALIA,” while Chanel Beads bring their mystical dream-pop melodies to “LOVE & POP.” It’s been a great month for adventurous, authoratative pop experiments (hello Dijon, RADA, and Corridos Ketamino) and Lick The Lens – Pt. 1 easily joins their ranks. That it marks the return of such an influential, vital musician is the cherry on top. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

An Irish musician born Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, CMAT since 2022 and her latest album is her boldest statement yet. The CMAT sound, witty and bright with an ability to render real life drama into oversized caricature without losing its punch, comes through clearest on songs like “Running/Planning” and the excellent title track. Lap steel guitar and banjo run through the album but CMAT isn’t chasing a vision of Nashville past, “Take A Sexy Picture Of Me” is about the sexist reaction her appearance has garnered online while “The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station” to truly test the Anglophiles in the crowd. Elsewhere, Euro-Country touches on disappointing men, the loss of friends, and even the devastating effect of the 2008 financial crash on Ireland, all delivered with a ritzy sense of glamor and a killer array of choruses. Only CMAT is doing it like that. – David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

Over the past two decades, Kacy Hill’s job has changed several times: she rose to fame in the 2010s as an American Apparel model, and later briefly signed to Ye (né Kanye West)’s G.O.O.D. Music where she released an R&B slanted debut album. Hill left the label in 2019 and has since been moving as an indie singer making delicate, experimental pop. Her latest is But Anyway, No Worries!, an EP that shows a further evolution of her sound broaching country and Americana and is her most singer-songwriter effort to date. Songs like “The Garden,” and “Please Don’t Cry” balance strummed guitar and wispy pedal steel with frank, open-hearted songwriting reconciling with the end of a longterm relationship, “My dad is sick, your brother too / I’ll try to be not to be there for you,” she tragically sings on the latter. “If you want to be a good songwriter, you need to listen to country music and folk music,” she told The FADER earlier this year. On But Anyway, No Worries!, it’s clear she listened to her own advice. —Steffanee Wang

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

On their fifth collaborative project, Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke blur the lines between the live album and the studio album, manipulating sounds captured during a two-week 2023 tour through France, Switzerland, Italy, and Ireland — the creative and life partners’ first joint performances outside of Japan — into a four-track LP. The concerts were cumulative, with the duo feeding live flute and harmonica back into their hard drives to create more sampleable material for the following shows. Without the benefit of witnessing O’Rourke and Ishibashi play Pareidolia live, the sources of the sounds are obscured, and so they seem to converge from everywhere at once. As slow and unassuming as the arrangement is at the start of the record, knotty textures and unsettling dissonances creep in until the waters beneath the surface have reached a rolling boil. Later, the album is less fluid, creaking forth with jagged steps from what sounds like intercepted alien chatter toward a lush crescendo that provides glorious release. Ishibashi and O’Rourke are both masters of subtlety, making these hard-won climactic moments all the more cathartic. — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp