Don’t Miss New Albums Out Today From American Aquarium, MonoNeon, Ice Spice & More
Charlie Overbey, Mustard, Cults, Porter Robinson, The Red Clay Strays, Bill Callahan, Wand and Wild Rivers also have new releases out today.
By Team JamBase Jul 26, 2024 • 6:19 am PDT
Each week Release Day Picks profiles new LPs and EPs Team JamBase will be checking out on release day Friday. This week we highlight new albums by American Aquarium, MonoNeon, Ice Spice, Charlie Overbey, , Cults, Porter Robinson, The Red Clay Strays, Bill Callahan, Wand and Wild Rivers. Read on for more insight into the records we have ready to spin.
American Aquarium – The Fear of Standing Still
American Aquarium released The Fear of Standing Still, their new Shooter Jennings-produced album available today through Losing Side Records/Thirty Tigers. American Aquarium choose to again work with Jennings who also helmed the band’s 2020 record, Lamentations. The new LP sees the North Carolina alt-country outfit — frontman BJ Barham, guitarist Shane Boeker, pedal-steel guitarist Neil Jones, keyboardist Rhett Huffman, drummer Ryan Van Fleet and bassist Alden Hedges — leaning more into their rock side.
“For us the sweet spot is when you’ve got a rock band that makes you scream along to every word, and it’s not until you’re coming down at three a.m. that you realize those words are saying something real about your life,” Barham stated. “That’s what made us fall in love with music in the first place, and that’s the goal in everything we do. In our live show the band’s like a freight train that never lets up, and for this record I really wanted to showcase how big and anthemic we can be.”
MonoNeon – Quilted Stereo
MonoNeon released a new album entitled Quilted Stereo. The prolific, Memphis-based bassist whose credits include working with Prince, Nas, Mac Miller and others, MonoNeon co-produced and co-wrote Quilted Stereo with longtime collaborator Davy Nathan. The nine-track album sees contributions from a pair of legendary musicians. Parliament-Funkadelic’s George Clinton appears on “Quilted!” and The Staples Singers vocalist Mavis Staples appears on the track “Full Circle.” Describing his even-handed approach to incorporating a vast array of influences, MonoNeon stated:
“I think that balance came from early on with me wanting to combine a John Cage mentality to an Albert King mentality … or a Frank Zappa mentality to a Gangsta Boo thing. I’ve always been incorporating things that are pretty much not really related to each other… I find a lot of joy and fun in thinking like this. I want to play and create music like that … even with fashion. Just those kinda ideas alone are inspiration for me. The foundation with everything I do is the ‘Blues’ … so with me knowing that … I can superimpose so much shiet with that thang.
“It’s a fun album for me, but there is some heartache and sadness on this junt too that I’ve recently been fully accepting of letting people hear in my music. The songs ‘Church Of Your Heart’ and ‘Stereo’ be having me teary-eyed like a mug. So yea this album got a fun, melancholic thang on it… cry and dance at the same time.”
Ice Spice – Y2K!
Hip-hop sensation Ice Spice released her highly-anticipated debut album, Y2K!, via 10K Projects/Capitol Records. The Bronx-based rapper came onto the scene in 2022 by sharing the hit “Munch (Feelin’ U).” The Grammy-nominated artist went on to put out her Like…? EP during a massively successful 2023 and teased her debut full-length effort ever since. Y2K!’s title is a reference to Ice Spice’s birthday of January 1, 2000. The 24-year-old artist previewed the album with the successful singles, “Think U the Shit (Fart),” “Gimmie a Light,” “Phat Butt” and “Did It First.” The 10-track LP sees guest spots by fellow rappers Travis Scott, Gunna and Central Cee.
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Charlie Overbey – In Good Company
New Mexico-based singer-songwriter Charlie Overbey released a new career-spanning album, In Good Company. The aptly named, star-studded In Good Company sees guest turns from Marcus King & Jaime Wyatt, Nils Lofgren, Charlie Starr, Rami Jaffee, Jimmy Vivino, Duane Betts, Corey McCormick, Eddie Spaghetti, Taime Downe, Chris Masterson, Stuart Mathis, Danny B Harvey, Courtney Santana, Jon Graboff, Sarah Gayle Meech and more.
“God forbid if this happened to be my last record,” Overbey said of In Good Company. “It would be a record that told my story. A record that I could be proud of that would be a legacy record for me.
“I wanted to release an album of material that meant a lot to me spiritually and emotionally using some old and some new unreleased material. I wanted to take a stab at producing it myself and picking just the right friends and players to perform on each song, which I think worked out perfectly! I couldn’t stray too far from the genius of friend and producer Ted Hutt, though, who still mixed the album.”
Mustard – Faith of a Mustard Seed
Faith of a Mustard Seed is multi-hyphenate producer ‘s first album in five years. The 14-track project follows Mustard’s 2019 album, Perfect Ten and boasts an impressive lineup of features. The album, released today by 10 Summers/BMG, includes collaborations with Travis Scott, Kirk Franklin, Ty Dolla Sign, Charlie Wilson, Lil Yachty, Lil Durk, Kodak Black, Young Thug, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Roddy Ricch, Future, BlueBucksClan, 42 Dugg, Quavo, Rob49, Masego, Blxst, Ella Mai and BlueBucksClan.
Cults – To The Ghosts
New York City-based alt-pop duo Cults release their fifth studio album, To The Ghosts, today through the Imperial label. The duo consisting of multi-instrumentalists Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion co-produced To The Ghosts with Shane Stoneback. Some of the 13 songs on the new album originated during the pandemic when the pair held weekday writing shifts between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Cults recorded the follow-up to 2020’s Host with Stoneback during sessions held in 2022.
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Porter Robinson – SMILE! 😀
EDM producer/songwriter Porter Robinson goes pop on SMILE! 😀. The 10-track SMILE! 😀 issued by Mom + Pop is Robinson’s third full length studio album and follows his 2021 LP, Nurture. Pop rock duo Frost Children contributed to the song “Mona Lisa.” Porter Robinson posted the message below regarding SMILE! 😀:
“the album that I was TRYING to write was this nonstop party — NO sincerity, ALL fun, an album that revels in absurdity for a world that rejects context. And that was the plan until I accidentally started confessing how I was really feeling, and … you’ll hear the rest.
“my most fun, and maybe my most heartbreaking album.
“i think it’s my most interesting work and I’m dying for you to hear it ….”
The Red Clay Strays – Made by These Moments
Country rockers The Red Clay Strays released a new album, Made by These Moments, produced by Grammy-winner Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell). The band from Mobile, Alabama consists of frontman Brandon Coleman, guitarist Drew Nix, bassist Andrew Bishop, drummer John Hall and guitarist Zach Rishel. — captured Made by These Moments at Cobb’s Georgia Mae studio in Savannah.
“Made by These Moments shines a light on overcoming the battles we face in life like loneliness, depression, and hopelessness,” Coleman stated. “We hope you listen and recognize that our pain has a purpose.”
Bill Callahan – Resuscitate!
Guitarist Bill Callahan recorded Resuscitate!, a new live album released today by Drag City, during a live concert held on March 6, 2023, at Chicago’s Thalia Hall. Performing in support of Callahan’s last album, YTI⅃AƎЯ, Callahan was backed by group consisting of ace musicians, guitarist Matt Kinsey, drummer Jim White and saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi. Special guests joined the performance, who are described by Callahan in the statement below:
“This is a live album that was taken from the tour for YTI⅃AƎЯ. Songs tend to mutate after they’ve been recorded. These songs were mutating faster than usual. Like whatever happened to Bruce Banner in the lab—I knew these songs were about to get superpowers. As far as I was concerned, this change needed to be documented.
“The best thing about documenting something is that it gives the creator permission to move on should they wish to move on. I usually prefer to move on. These songs were recorded in Chicago, America’s heart. And at one of the best clubs in the country — I try to only work with venues that are not entangled with LiveNation/Ticketmaster. Thalia Hall, baby. Stay free.
“The date was mid-point in the tour, so I knew we’d be as hot as we were going to get. Not too green, not too brown. There was the thought, ‘let’s take this op to make it something special.’ So we took advantage of Chicago’s easily accessible players — we got Nick Mazzarella to add alto sax to one song, and from the opening band, Pascal Kerong’A to sing on a song, and Nathaniel Ballinger on piano on one song — and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to invite [Natural Information Society’s] Joshua Abrams and Lisa Alvarado to play on ‘Natural Information.’
“The hardest part of making the record was cutting songs out—it could have been a triple album. But I don’t know, maybe the show should have been this short?.”
Wand – Vertigo
Vertigo is the new album from Wand, which was released today by Drag City. The record is the psych rockers’ first featuring the current four-piece configuration of the band which consists of Evan Burrows, Robbie Cody, Cory Hanson and newest member Evan Backer. Former members Lee Landey and Sofia Arreguin left in the interim since their last album, 2019’s Laughing Matter. The eight songs on Vertigo were born out of in-studio improvisations, which saw the quartet, “Pulling on segments of infinity, boiled down and resequenced, [devising] their own dream gear to drive the old moterik into wide open space, in atmospheric reverb, on perma-globular drift.”
Vertigo is the sound of feet lost, regained, lost again, equilibrium in soft focus, a swaying feeling, more automatic and associative: in time, direct.
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Wild Rivers- Never Better
Produced by Gabe Wax (Soccer Mommy, Adrienne Lenker), Never Better is the new album from Toronto-based folk trio Wild Rivers, out now via Nettwerk Music Group. The group — Khalid Yassein, Devan Glover and Andrew Oliver — recorded the follow-up to 2022’s Sidelines in Joshua Tree, California. The trio stated the following regarding Never Better:
“We approached this record with the mindset, ‘this is who we are.’ We aren’t pretending to be something we’re not, or trying to sound like anyone else. We wanted it to feel easy. We wanted the stories to be real. We wanted to show our true selves as best we could. We’re proud of who we’ve become as people and as a team. We truly feel like we’re having the most fun with music that we’ve ever had, and in the most exciting stage of our lives. We’re never better.”
