Driving The Car To The Blue Dunes For Midnight Burial On Halloween; 10.21.22 New Albums

5 New Albums You Need To Hear

Strong music day today. Of course Midnights, the feverishly anticipated new album from Taylor Swift despite it only being announced a couple of months ago, is eating up the majority of today’s music headlines. It’s definitely the first one i dropped the needle on after midnight, after returning home from an improvised music festival. It’s one of those rare cases in pop culture where it seems worthy of the hype, maybe worthy of more.

Of all of the surprised to emerge from the pandemic, becoming an avowed Swifty may be the most unlikely.

If you’re just wanting to dip a pedicured toe in, give “Anti-Hero” a spin, in which our hero compares herself to a Grendel-like creature preying on sexy babies.

That’s just the start, though. Burial, that otherworldly bass angel, dropped a surprise new EP last night, as well. The Streetlands EP, released on Hyperdub, continues Burial’s recent ambient strain but makes it even more pronounced and aggressive.

Burial has never sounded so ethereal, so barely there, which is saying something about someone who sounds like a living shadow, or a specter who haunts public transit given a recording contract.

Surprisingly, Burial’s EP isn’t the most ambient fare released today. The Blue Dunes from the always exception Deepspace is so spare it’s barely there. It’s like the sound of soft winds leaving calligraphic furrows in the sand beneath azure skies. It’s gorgeous stuff.

If you need a palate cleanser after so much atmosphere, might i suggest the surprisingly, delightfully strange new one from the Arctic Monkeys, The Car, where they ditch their brit pop Strokes aspirations to become an arty Scott Walker modern opera.

Lead single “There Better Be A Mirrorball” remains a hoot, one of the most beautifully strange singles this side of Radiohead or David Bowie.

Finally, let’s close out with some rap shit. Lil Wop’s “Halloween” is raw as fuck, chilled as a morgue, bloody as uncooked beef. We’re just 10 days away from The Big Day, so better start getting in the mood now.

And does Halloween hint that maybe, possibly, that horrorcore might not yet be totally dead? That we might pump some volts into that desiccated corpse and spur some spooky new life? A witch can dream.

So happy almost Halloween! Hope you’ve been enjoying your spooky season, wherever you may be.

If you’re looking for a cross-section and a sampling of what I’ve been listening to, you can follow my October 2022 new music playlist on Spotify, which is always being updated.

What are you all listening to today? This weekend? Got anything else interesting going on? Hope you’re good, wherever you are.

Want More New Music?

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