11 New Albums Out Now From Modest Mouse, Death Cab For Cutie, Bedouine & More

Modest Mouse released their first album in five years, An Eraser And A Maze. The record is also their first issued through frontman Isaac Brock’s label Glacial Pace Recordings, following their +20-year tenure at Epic Records. Brock produced the album, with additional production provided by Jackknife Lee, Suzy Shinn and Justin Raisen. Speaking about the follow-up to 2021’s The Golden Casket, Brock explained his approach to An Eraser And A Maze:

“For this one, I turned off my filter and just let it all happen. Even though every goddamn musician says that when they put out a record. I mean, go ahead and listen to the three-minute mark of any interview between a musician and Terry Gross …

“Thoughts, emotions, feelings, all that stuff … you’re like the soup, and it’s not always easy to pick out the ingredients. I don’t dwell on things much. I don’t grieve much. I’m not sure I’m a person. I feel like I should have more feelings than I do. But then, you know, I’ll sing stuff. And I’m like, Oh, there it is. Oh — it’s in there.”

Death Cab for Cutie issued their 11th studio album, I Built You A Tower, which is the band’s first for ANTI- Records after two decades on Atlantic Records. DCFC — Ben Gibbard, Nicholas Harmer, Jason McGerr, Dave Depper and Zac Rae — recorded I Built You A Tower during sessions held over three weeks at Animal Rites in Los Angeles as well as at the band members’ homes in Seattle, Bellingham, Los Angeles and Portland. The 11-track effort found the band reuniting with producer and engineer John Congleton after celebrating the 20th anniversary of seminal albums Transatlanticism and Plans.

I Built You A Tower gets its title from the proverbial tower Ben Gibbard built as a way to protect himself after straining to front both Death Cab and The Postal Service on an arena tour while still reeling from struggles and deep personal loss in his his personal life.

“There’s this need to find a place in ourselves to put loss and grief,” Gibbard noted. “A place that can hold it so we can move on with our lives. But there are these moments where the trauma breaks out of that shell we created for it.”

Singer-songwriter Azniv Korkejian put out a new Bedouine album, Neon Summer Skin, through Thirty Tigers. Korkejian co-produced the bulk of the LP with frequent cohort Gus Seyffert. Additional production came from Jonathan Rado and The Lemon Twigs’ Michael D’Addario and Brian D’Addario. The 11-track Neon Summer Skin, which sees Korkejian returning to the trumpet and other valved brass instruments, was informed by her journey to Saudi Arabia to visit family members. In a statement regarding the album, Bedouine revealed:

“For my 20s and much of my 30s, I couldn’t sit still. I was so curious about my own independence that it just didn’t occur to me for the longest time to mourn the past. But after that trip to Saudi Arabia, I came home and was so devastated. I couldn’t place the feeling immediately, but as I started writing, I realized I was processing that I wasn’t ready to stop being somebody’s kid.

“I felt so frustrated about the places that I’m from becoming war torn or difficult to return to. My family has been split apart time and time again, immigrating between Armenia, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. I wanted to document and honor my family’s stories.”

Old Crow Medicine Show released Union Made, today via Hartland Records/Firebird Music. OCMS convened at their East Nashville studio to cut Union Made with longtime bandmember Morgan Jahnig in the producer role. The album sees assists from OCMS frontman Ketch Secor’s wife-to-be Molly Tuttle, along with Del McCoury, Ronnie McCoury Maggie Rose, Turnpike Troubadours member Evan Felker, Jesse Welles, John Carter Cash and Ana Cristina Cash. Additionally, Luke Combs earned songwriting credit.

“This is a fascinating time in our short history as a nation,” Secor stated. “We wanted to meet that moment by collecting a bunch of songs that speak to the joys and potentials, the rights and the wrongs of where we are today, where we’re going, and what can embolden us to have a more perfect union in the future. There are wonderful, ghostly American sounds that only bands steeped in folk music traditions know how to conjure, and it seems like an important time for those voices to be heard.”

Grammy and Emmy Award-winning singer, songwriter and rapper Lizzo released her third studio album, Bitch, via Nice Life Recording Company/Atlantic Records. The follow-up to 2022’s Special was produced by Ricky Reed, Blake Slatkin, Zack Sekoff and Cheche Alara, among others. The title track interpolates Meredith Brooks’ 1997 hit of the same name. “Sexy Ladies” features UCB.

“Reclaiming the word ‘bitch’ is power,” Lizzo said in a statement. “It’s taking a label once used to diminish women and turning it into a declaration of confidence and unapologetic self-love. So many incredible women in music have used the word for positivity like Meredith Brooks and Missy Elliott. It was only fitting to name my album Bitch because it has become my favorite word when using it on my own terms, and because I am 100% that bitch!”

Deer Tick details gritty Rhode Island stories on their album, Coin-O-Matic, out now via ATO Records. The Providence rockers’ ninth studio album, marks the first self-produced album in the band’s +20-year history. The quartet recorded the 11-track project at their home studio. Deer Tick recruited guest musicians including Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin on baritone saxophone and former member Rob Crowell on organ to contribute to the LP. Deer Tick — John McCauley, guitarist/singer Ian O’Neil, drummer/singer Dennis Ryan and bassist Christopher Ryan — took inspiration from growing up Irish-Catholic in Rhode Island to write the material featured on the follow-up to 2023’s Emotional Contracts. The LP is named after a cigarette-vending-machine company that doubled as the headquarters of ruthless mobster Raymond Patriarca.

“If you grew up in Rhode Island years ago, you’d see all these mobsters on the news and then run into them at a restaurant on Federal Hill,” explained McCauley about a Providence neighborhood akin to Little Italy. “They were criminals but also very colorful characters, and I wanted the album to partly reflect a certain nostalgia for that kind of seediness.”

“We’ve never been so comfortable making a record, and I think you can feel that in the performances,” noted Dennis Ryan, who engineered the LP. “We weren’t beholden to anyone else’s idea of what Deer Tick sounds like, and because of that this album feels like an unfettered capturing of who we are as a band.”

of Montreal’s released a new album, aethermead, through Polyvinyl. The 13-track LP is the milestone 20th album released by the project led by Kevin Barnes. To create aethermead, Barnes convened with of Montreal touring members drummer Clayton Rychlik, keyboardist Jojo Glidewell and bassist Ross Brand at Brooklyn recording facility the Honey Jar along with engineer Drew Vandenberg. aethermead expresses a transitional period in Barnes’ life. Press materials further detailed the new of Montreal record:

Barnes refers to aethermead as personal and confessional “to an embarrassing degree” – a descriptor that says less about its contents than what it took to lay them bare. Following a dual split with both his then-fiancé and isolated surroundings of Vermont, Barnes relocated to Brooklyn, effectively falling in love with his new environment while rebuilding his mental state: “I’ve always had a romantic fascination with New York, but for forever I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. The timing was perfect this time around.”

The title “aethermead” itself draws direct inspiration from the sources of healing that Barnes has since embraced in his Brooklyn era; the Nethermead area within Prospect Park where he takes his dog for daily walks and his newfound meditation practice. Barnes also has an added benefit of having family nearby, serving as a balm for this current phase in his life.

Long Beach rapper Vince Staples released his seventh studio album, Cry Baby, via his own Section Eight Arthouse imprint in partnership with Loma Vista Recordings. The follow-up to 2024’s Dark Times, his final release under Def Jam, marks a significant sonic shift for Staples, built entirely around live instrumentation as he processes what a press release describes as “the endlessly repeating cycles of American tumult.”

“As the world burns, I have decided to release this album,” Staples said. “Thanks for listening.”

The Red Clay Strays shared their third studio album, Grateful, via HBYCO Records/RCA Records. For the Mobile, Alabama roots group’s follow-up to their 2022 debut album Moment Of Truth and 2024 breakout LP Made By These Moments, the band teamed back up with nine-time Grammy-winner Dave Cobb for Grateful. Splitting time between Cobb’s Savannah, Georgia studio and Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, Red Clay Strays sought a new sound while cutting Grateful. The album’s title sees the band reflecting on their career.

“Moment of Truth was a big album about having faith in dark times, looking to a higher power,” frontman Brandon Coleman stated, “and Made By These Moments focused on realizing those dark times that you were having to have faith through, which made you who you are. You made it through when you didn’t think you would. And now we’re at a point where we’re grateful. Looking to God in whatever situation you’re in is a denominator in all of the albums.”

“The title of the album’s a literal meaning to us at this moment in our careers,” bassist Andrew Bishop added. “We’re grateful for how we came out of Made By These Moments and what we have now.”

Futurebirds began rolling out their first double album, Far Out Country, with the full double LP arriving on vinyl today via Dualtone Records. Far Out Country I also arrived digitally today, while Far Out Country II will stream at a later date. Far Out Country saw the Athens, Georgia-born band teaming back up with Grammy-winning producer Brad Cook, who produced the band’s previous record, Easy Company.

“We wanted to complete the story with Brad,” the band’s Carter King stated. “There was unfinished business, so it felt right to work with him again. It was a continuation of what we’d been doing, and a bit of starting from scratch, too.”

King went on to further detail the new album as a whole:

“We’re really excited to be releasing our first double record in the truest sense. Far Out Country I & II are the two different lenses of the 3D movie glasses. Our three different songwriting perspectives speaking with each other about a shared life, experienced unbelievably close together, and also far apart. It’s a daytime talk, and another one deeper in the night. Far Out Country is a place, not a sound. It’s a place outside ourselves that hopefully helps us see inside the house a little more clearly. New terrain is always best explored with friends. Always use the buddy system, and be safe out there. The full double album will be available on vinyl out of the gates, but digitally, I & II will live and breathe on their own, unfolding one-at-a-time. Come on out and find us.”

New York City-based band Widowspeak — the group led by Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas — issued a new album, Roses, through Captured Tracks. Roses marks Widowspeak’s first studio album since 2022’s The Jacket. Hamilton and Thomas captured the new LP at the Old Carpet Factory studio on the Greek island of Hydra along with Widowspeak touring members Willy Muse, John Andrews and Noah Bond.

Founded 16 years ago, Hamilton and Thomas are now a married couple who, along with music, also work day jobs. Thomas is a carpenter while Hamilton is a waitress. Press materials described how the daily routines of life, including work, seeped into the new record:

Roses is populated not with dramatic overtures but with the backdrop of the minutiae and repetition of daily acts. Small observations before, during, and after work: the ritual of pouring water for customers, catching a cold on your day off. Daydreaming about winning the lottery, or maybe realizing you already won.