For years now, people have been talking about the fading relevance of the full-length album as a delivery vehicle for recorded music. With the internet giving artists the ability to release music whenever the hell they want, why bother waiting until they have a dozen songs ready to go? We get it. And we really do enjoy waking up to find that our favorite band has released new music no one saw coming.
But we also find ourselves clinging to the idea of the album as an event — as something we can experience together, as a culture or a sub-culture, at roughly the same time and on the same day. Call us old-school. Or just call us old. But when these 20 albums come out later this year, you know what we’ll be doing. We hope you’ll be doing the same thing.
Rick Kern/Getty
Solange
Untitled
Spring
In an interview with the Times Magazine back in October, Solange stated that the follow-up to 2016’s A Seat at the Table, a virtuosic meditation on blackness and womanhood in contemporary America, was set for a fall release. Obviously the window for that has come and gone, but if she’s anything like her sister and brother-in-law — who have elevated the “surprise album” to trope status in recent years — new music could be arriving any day now. — Walker Loetscher
Vampire Weekend
Untitled
Release Date TBD
If we thought there was any real chance they were actually feeling it, we’d put forth that the pressure is very much on for Vampire Weekend and their forthcoming fourth album. It’s their first in nearly five years and, even more importantly, their first without producter/multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij. Frontman Ezra Koenig, who recently had a child with actress Rashida Jones, has stated that the album is finished, but precious few details have been made public. The band’s booked for a handful of festivals this summer, so you can count on new music before then. Oh, and you can probably expect it to be very, very good, too. (Three damn near perfect albums, each growing in lyrical and musical sophistication, earn you the benefit of the doubt.) — Mike Conklin
The Raconteurs
Untitled
Release Date TBD
If you’re still holding your breath for new White Stripes’ music, don’t. But another Jack White project is, in fact, getting a revival: The Raconteurs, who released two new songs in December, shortly after declaring via press release that a new LP would be out not long after a special reissue of the band’s 2009 debut, Consolers of the Lonely. If the new tracks are any indication, don’t expect any sweeping overhauls — rather, they seem to be right at home in their preferred blues-rock schemata, with the sort of fuzzy guitars and uncomplicated hooks that will live comfortably on classic-rock radio 20 years from now. — WL
Panda Bear
Buoys
February 8
Buoys is the first proper full-length from Noah Lenox’s Panda Bear since 2015’s Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, and its first single, “Dolphin,” sounds a little bit like water torture. As in, like, there is a metromic dripping of water that occurs throughout the entire track. It would be irritating as all get-out if it weren’t for the way it plays against the taut little acoustic guitar pattern and Lenox’s hypnotic, half-auto-tuned vocals. It can be difficult to predict where he’s going to take his sound from album to album, but if this is indicative of what we’re in for with Buoys, you’re going to be seeing this album pop up on a lot more lists come later this year, if you know what we mean. — MC
Burak Cingi/Getty
Tame Impala
Untitled
Release Date TBD
How long can a band successfully tour behind a single album? That’s the question Aussie psych-rock outfit Tame Impala seem to be taking to its absolute extreme, having been announced as a headliner at Coachella 2019 despite the fact that their last album, Currents, came out in 2015. So, will they have new material in the desert? Signs point to yes, with frontman Kevin Parker having taken to Instagram to cryptically post “New year. New shows. New sounds.” last week. As for what to expect? Given that Parker’s collaborators in recent years have included Mark Ronson and electro producer Zhu, probably a continued reliance on the booming bass and synth melodies that propelled them to headliner status on Currents. — WL
White Lies
Five
February 1
White Lies have earned favorable comparisons to Interpol and The Killers over the last decade with a sound that is distinctly more British (as well they should — they hail from London). We like to think of them as a higher-octane Joy Division or Echo and the Bunnymen, with rollicking, unsubtle riffs that rankle music critics but play well live. Their new single, “Believe It,” is full of them. — WL
Danny Brown
Persona 5
The oddball Detroit rapper — possibly the only person in hip-hop who’d cite Joy Division as a major influence — has been keeping busy since his excellent 2016 release, Atrocity Exhibition, via collaborations with The Avalanches and Gorillaz, though he missed a deadline to debut a new album last year (as promised) on the live streaming platform Twitch. He says he’s aiming for 2019, and while we don’t have any confirmed songs yet, we’re pretty sure he won’t be using samples but he will be working with an unidentified yet legendary hip-hop producer. Tour dates start in late May, so expect some new music by then. — Kirk Miller
The Chemical Brothers
No Geography
Now pushing 50 years old, Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands show no signs of slowing, with a world tour and their ninth studio album in the works later this spring. The just-debuted second single from that album — “MAH (Mad as Hell)” — suggests that the Manchester-based duo are still more than capable of blowing the top off the biggest venues on earth, with a vintage electro breakdown and the towering visuals to match. — WL
Daniel Boczarski/Getty
HEALTH
VOL. 4 :: SLAVES OF FEAR
February 8
Wait, is industrial finally making a comeback? Bands like The Soft Moon and LA’s HEALTH are successfully mixing noise, electronics and pop into gloomy, synth-laden anthems … minus the metal guitars that marred the tail end of the rivethead scene (not everybody can be Ministry, ok?) The approachability of HEALTH arrives via vocalist Jake Duzsik, whose spacey vibe makes harsh electro-bangers like “Slaves of Fear” (the first single on HEALTH’s first studio album in three years) go down easy. — KM
Sharon Van Etten
Remind Me Tomorrow
January 18
As the story goes, Sharon Van Etten put her music career on hold in 2015 to go back to school and study psychology, but then wound up having a baby, taking on her first acting roles, and working on a film score — all of which led to her changing course and instead putting her college career on hold. At some point along the way, she began working on the songs that would become Remind Me Tomorrow, an album that sees the songwriter turn in her quietly strummed guitars for big, plodding synthesizers and surprisingly heavy beats. The first few tracks to hit the internet have been excellent, clearly the work of an artist who’s newly re-energized. — MC
The Cactus Blossoms
Easy Way
March 1
This sibling duo is the kind of band you’d expect to hear in some smoky northeast roadhouse, where country music fans ogle at the second coming of the Everly Brothers and everyone else is too busy slow dancing. And that’s not just our opinion. David Lynch enlisted them to play a song off their debut album at the Bang Bang Bar in the rebooted Twin Peaks. From the sound of their new single “Please Don’t Call Me Crazy” they’ll be kicking it up a notch for their second album, Easy Way. — Alex Lauer
Lana Del Rey
Norman Fucking Rockwell
Release Date TBD
So here’s the thing about Lana Del Rey: What’s most impressive about her is that, whether it appeals to you or not, she has the most precisely defined and exhaustively adhered to aesthetic of any artist working today. The hyper-millennial, conversational tone of the lyrics; the woozy production that somehow straddles the line between, like, The Weeknd and Dusty Springfield — the aural equivalent of the perfect instagram filter. At times, she’s seemed to be winking at us, in on the joke if there even is one; at others, she’s come off deadly serious. On “Venice Bitch,” the gloriously named first single from the gloriously titled Norman Fucking Rockwell, she drops a the lines “You write, I tour, we make it work / You’re beautiful, and I’m insane / We’re American-made,” and you realize what a devastating talent she is when she’s at her best, serving up plainspoken truths that bring a smile to your face moments before you realize just how dark things have gotten. — MC
Vivien Killilea/Getty
Run The Jewels
Run The Jewels 4
Release Date TBD
Another great collaboration that’s lasted four albums and the better part of a decade. When producer El-P and oft overlooked rapper Killer Mike first came together they took the hip-hop world by storm with their fast-paced, unapologetic beats and lyrics. You know in cheesy movies where someone tells someone else to make love to them like it’s their last night on earth? Well it feels like RTJ takes this approach to every track they put out, because after listening to their music you don’t understand how they can have anything left in them (passion, breath, anger), but they do, and they keep bringing more. — Eli London
Karen O and Danger Mouse
Untitled
Release Date TBD
When you think of musicians with a knack for great collaborations, Danger Mouse has got to be at the top of the list — Gnarls Barkley with Cee-Lo Green, Broken Bells with James Mercer, along with countless other one-offs. And now Karen O, the rock-queen of New York City’s early-aughts movement, is the latest to join the list. Karen O and Danger Mouse (unfortunately they’ve not come up with a catchier name as of press time) have already released a single; a nine-minute psychedelic journey with Danger Mouse’s signature production and Karen O’s sultry punk vocals. If the single is any indication, we’re in for quite a treat when the album drops. — EL
Tool
Untitled
Release date TBD
Spring will mark thirteen years since Tool’s last album release, an exceptionally long period of time even for a band as mysterious and reclusive as singer Maynard James Keenan & Co. And while promises of new material go back at least as far as 2013, it appears that the band’s fifth studio effort is finally on the horizon (Keenan stated in a recent tweet that his final vocals were tracked “months ago” and that the band is in the “long process of mixing now”), and, if the teaser released to coincide with the Tool’s recent series of music clinics is any indication, we’re in for another progressive metal opus of elephant-heavy atmospheric riffs layered over drummer Danny Cary’s formidable polyrhythmic prowess. Not to mention what the notoriously political Keenan’s lyrics may have to say regarding recent events. Tool kicks off American festival dates in May, so (hopefully) safe to say we’ll see a release before then. — Danny Agnew
Hootie & the Blowfish
Untitled
Release Date TBD
Honestly? We’re kinda curious. They’re embarking on a 44-city tour with fellow ’90s dorks Barenaked Ladies, and they’re said to have a new album coming this summer. If we had to bet money, we’d say it’s gonna be garbage. But goddamn if that Darius Rucker doesn’t know his way around a hook. — MC
Lorne Thomson/Getty
Jenny Lewis
On the Line
Release Date TBD (Spring)
The former Rilo Kiley singer is set to release her fourth solo record this spring… so we can probably stop calling her “former Rilo Kiley singer,” come to think of it. Especially now that she’s fronting a band that includes the likes of Ryan Adams, Beck, Don Was and, uh, Ringo Starr. We don’t know. No music has been released just yet, but considering her esteemed playing partners, one can at least rest assured she hasn’t, like, gone electronic or anything. — MC
Steve Gunn
The Unseen in Between
January 18
We last heard from Brooklyn singer-songwriter Steve Gunn on 2016’s outstanding Eyes on the Lines, an album that expertly mixed soft-rock vibes with slick, textured guitar work and airy vocals. Gunn’s back this year with The Unseen in Between, the first single from which was released back in October. “New Moon” isn’t exactly a huge departure or anything, but it’s interesting how it sees Gunn expand his palate in two opposite directions, employing both more clean, straightforward acoustic guitar and more meandering electric guitar as well. He’s a versatile songwriter whose talent is so pure it’ll shine through regardless of the accompanying arrangements, so the prospect of him continuing to push himself to new places is a welcome one. — MC
The 1975
Notes on a Conditional Form
May 31
Phase two of the Manchester band’s “Music for Cars” era, Notes on a Conditional Form, drops May 31, 2019. It comes exactly a year after they released their lead single for A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. Talk about a 12 months. Frontman Matt Healy must be having some productive showers. Expect new singles in the next few months, possibly even including “Frail State of Mind,” a rumored UK garage-inspired ode to the crushing social anxiety one feels en route to a party, (though not at the function itself). The 1975 are true genre chameleons, content to shift from gospel to punk to Coltrane-style ballads with little warning, so be prepared for a menagerie of moods, and possibly even a couple summer surf bangers, considering the release date. — Tanner Garrity
Sleater Kinney
Untitled
Release Date TBD
When it was announced earlier this week that not only is there a new Sleater Kinney record being released this year, but that it was produced by none other than Annie Clark of St. Vincent fame, it was a veritable break-the-internet moment for, well, a relatively small group of likeminded music fans, pretty much our entire office among them. Virtually nothing about the album is known, but SK guitarist Carrie Brownstein did tell NPR, “If there’s an overarching principle to this album, it’s that the tools on which we were relying proved inadequate. So we sought new ones, both metaphorically and literally.” So help us god, if that means she so much as touches anything other than her signature Gibson SG, we’re going to be royally pissed off. — MC
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
