Don’t Miss New Albums From Brandi Carlile, Daniel Caesar, Bahamas, Lily Allen & Others

Brandi Carlile issued her first solo album in four years, Returning To Myself, through Interscope Records/Lost Highway. Carlile co-produced Returning To Myself with a trio of notable producers: Andrew Watt,
The National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Other contributors include Carlile’s longtime bandmates Phil Hanseroth and Tim Hanseroth, as well as SistaStrings, Josh Klinghoffer, Chad Smith, Matt Chamberlain, Dave Mackay, Rob Moose, Blake Mills, and others.

While Carlile has worked with music legends like Joni Mitchell and Elton John over the past few years, the aptly titled Returning to Myself is Brandi’s first solo record since releasing In These Silent Days in 2021. However, introspection isn’t necessarily Brandi’s favorite thing to do, as she explained:

“I’m not my favorite person to spend my time with. Returning to myself is not just a lonely, but a painfully boring thing to do. So much so that I’m actually not at all interested in doing it. I prefer to double, triple, and quadruple down on co-dependency, which I’ve come to learn that outside of 12-Step programs and junior high school relationships, isn’t really that unhealthy at all…

For me the key to learning to ‘be alone’ is not being alone at all. It’s being alone in a crowded room. It’s hearing an unexpected doorbell ring and wondering who has shown up to watch me read my book and bite my nails all day. That a guest can be a deep lean-in over a cheap bottle of wine or simply an eyebrow raise and a gesture toward the refrigerator while I play Zelda…where I totally choose myself with someone so close to me I can hear them relax.

People want to be together in silence more than we allow in our time. It’s falling deeply in love with the car wheels on a gravel road. The possibility of the visitor. The “not being alone-ness” of it all…

Togetherness has given me everything I love about being alive. Starting with my original family in a single wide mobile home, gathered around a wood stove all the way to living with my band, haunting my wife everywhere she goes, raising my children on a tour bus, learning at the feet of Joni Mitchell, to making music with my greatest hero of all time, Elton John.

Why is it heroic to untether, when the tense work of togetherness is so much more interesting?

…because I don’t want to do it. Because I don’t want to return to myself.

And that’s why I will.”

Son Of Spergy is Daniel Caesar’s new album, released today by Republic Records. The album’s 12-song tracklist includes guest appearances by Bon Iver, Sampha, Blood Orange, YEBBA and 646yf4t. Caesar’s father, Norwill Simmonds, who thematically influenced the album, also contributed.

Bahamas (Afie Jurvanen) released My Second Last Album, today via Brushfire Records. Jurvanen made his previous record, 2023’s country-tinged Bootcut, in Nashville. For My Second Last Album, the singer-songwriter “chose to stay home in Nova Scotia and casually record some songs with no agenda.” Bahamas recorded the album with co-producer and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Van Tassel at his DreamDate Studio, “a backyard shed barely big enough to house the equipment and the two musicians.” The album’s single, “The Bridge,” was co-written with Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor.

Announced on Monday and released today, Lily Allen returns with her fifth album, West End Girl. Allen’s first album in seven years was co-written with her musical director Blue May. Speaking about West End Girl, which was mostly recorded over 10 days in Los Angeles last December, Allen stated:

“The record is vulnerable in a way that my music perhaps hasn’t been before — certainly not over the course of a whole album. I’ve tried to document my life in a new city and the events that led me to where I am in my life now.

“At the same time, I’ve used shared experiences as the basis for songs which try to delve into why we humans behave as we do, so the record is a mixture of fact and fiction which I hope serves as a reminder of how stoic yet also how frail we humans can be.

“In that respect I think it’s very much an album about the complexities of relationships and how we all navigate them. It’s a story.”

Tortoise released Touch, their first new album since 2016, in physical and digital download formats (the album arrives on streaming platforms on November 11). The post-rock veterans — Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker — added Marta Sofia Honer on viola and Skip VonKuske on cello to the song “Promenade à deux.” Tortoise, who formed in Chicago in 1990, crafted their first album in nearly a decade during sessions held at Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, 64 Sound in Los Angeles and at Electrical Audio in Chicago.

“It’s the first record we’ve done where everything wasn’t based in Chicago,” says Parker. “Two of us are in Chicago. Two of us are here in Los Angeles and John [McEntire] is in Portland, OR. We recorded in several different places. But the strange thing is, in a way it’s kind of the most cohesive session that we’ve done.”

Bruce Springsteen released Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition, via Sony Music. Springsteen’s 1982 record Nebraska was largely a solo album. While Bruce convened E Street Band members for the sessions, he ultimately returned to his four-track, bedroom-recorded demos for what became the album. Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition presents the long-awaited “Electric Nebraska” sessions, featuring E Street Band members drummer Max Weinberg, bassist Garry Tallent, organist Danny Federici, pianist Roy Bittan and guitarist Stevie Van Zandt. The collection also contains solo outtakes of songs off the record including “Losin’ Kind,” “Child Bride,” “Downbound Train,” “Gun In Every Home,” “On the Prowl” and “Born in the U.S.A.”

Brooklyn-based Afrobeat collective Antibalas issued a new album, Hourglass, today through Daptone Records. The new record sees the group returning to their instrumental roots, forgoing vocals entirely. Dating back to writing sessions in late 2021, the songs on Hourglass were recorded in Brooklyn at Studio G in November 2023. The six tracks on Hourglass came from 13 that were recorded then, with the remaining others intended for a second forthcoming album.

North Carolina-via-Wisconsin percussionist Joe Westerlund released his latest solo album, Curiosities from the Shift, today through Sylvan Esso’s Psychic Hotline label. The bulk of the album was recorded at Sylvan Esso’s recording facility Betty’s near Durham, North Carolina. Califone guitarist Tim Rutili made significant contributions to the album. Westerland also enlisted horn players Trever Hagen, Sam Gendel and Skylar Gudasz and violinists Libby Rodenbough and Chris Jusell, plus electronics provided by Ryan Olson. The album features artwork by Robert Beatty.

JamBase’s own Nate Todd returns with his third full-length solo album, Tellus. The record completes a trilogy of cinematic LPs 10 years in the making following his band Whiskey Tango’s 2016 album Crystal Hotel and his 2024 solo effort Empty City. Whereas Crystal Hotel and Empty City were inspired by westerns and film noir respectively, the sci-fi concept on Tellus also completes an arc of past, present and future.

“Tellus is a trip through the solar system where the dark side of human nature prevails,” Nate said. “As the sci-fi genre often uses the future to comment on the present, the record is full of allegories for the ridiculous bullshit the world is facing, and tragically, manufacturing.”

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band shared the EP, Night After Night, marking the veteran rockers’ first original music since 2009. Longtime collaborator, Jerry Douglas produced and played lap steel guitar on the five-song set. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band includes co-founder Jeff Hanna, his son, guitarist Jaime Hanna, along with drummer Jimmie Fadden, Hammond organ player Bob Carpenter and mandolin player Ross Holmes. Night After Night was recorded at Ocean Way Studios in Nashville and The Tractor Shed Studio in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The last Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album of original material was 2009’s Speed Of Life.

L’amour à La Folie is the first Amadou & Mariam album released since the unexpected death of Amadou Bagayoko on April 4, 2025. Bagayoko and his wife Mariam Doumbia recorded the album over several years, with final mixing completed last winter. The 13-track album finds the blind couple from Mali joined by Fally Ipupa on the song “Sonfo.”