Five Albums You Have To Listen To This Month: February 2023
Stop what you’re doing and check out these albums.
February brought an incredible selection of new and exciting music to our ears, with some of the biggest artists of the year releasing some of their best works yet. Tennis delivered their masterful sixth studio album Pollen, blending dreamy indie with exquisite pop; Caroline Polachek dropped her stunningly surreal art pop sophomore Desire, I want to Turn Into You, Glüme released the grand and powerful Main Character, Shame delivered the emotionally charged yet ultimately uplifting Food for Worms, and Baby Cool showed us the beautiful path to self-love. Read on to find out more about these fantastic albums and why they deserve your ears.
Baby Cool - Earthling On The Road To Self Love
Baby Cool’s debut album softly begins with a combination of 60s psychedelia and country influenced introspection. Shuffling drums, tambourine and meditative guitar combine with Baby Cool’s apathetic vocals as they effortlessly glide across the swirling instruments of ‘The Sea’. Deep bass plummets below the sparkling percussion, creating an irresistible rhythmic bed that is further strengthened before magical harp trickles into the chorus. These "deeply sentimental" songs sparkle and shine, seamlessly flowing into each other to create a cosmic soundscape that accompanies the interstellar narrative. Hearkening back to the stylings of Jefferson Airplane or Joni Mitchel, ‘Earthling on the Road to Self Love’ is the latest side project by Nice Biscuit co-frontwoman Grace Cuell, and it accompanies her recent journey of self-affirmation.
shame - Food for Worms
The arrival of shame’s newest album stems from a run of intimate live shows, playing new material out on the road before entering the recording process. At their most collaborative, we find the group of good ole boys pushing the post punk elements of their music even further from the gloom that attached itself to their previous album. I’d say that this is their best album to date, elevating their production and storytelling to achieve a 43-minute cohesive selection of songs. At a point where putting a genre label on bands becomes somewhat of an exhausting task (let’s just call it some type of rock and be done with it, surely), shame have found their own lane to expand and evolve within.
Glüme - Main Character
Glüme consistently shows her listeners her virtuosity by blending elements of the synth-wave and synth-pop genres with the sensual and celestial orchestral arrangements we’d expect to hear in a classical Hollywood motion picture- therefore opening the door to a wide range of listeners. Throughout both her debut and her new album ‘Main Character’, Glüme displays a clear cohesion with her motives for making music and her key lyrical themes are present and poignant in each and every track. From subjects surrounding feminine rage and power, sexuality, and religion, Glüme writes her lyrics with a conversational yet cerebral literary voice.
Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
After a four-year excursion filled to the brim with multiple singles and collaborative work, NYC born Caroline Polachek gifts fans with a diverse second studio album: Desire, I Want To Turn Into You.With multiple themes from violence and sexuality to femininity and religion, one main inspiration shines throughout not only all tracks: escapism. Thematically, Polachek constructs an argument about longing for connection with nature despite all of us being trapped in a capitalistic, selfish, uncaring society.
Tennis - Pollen
Tennis serve another hit with ‘Pollen’, a delightful mix of dreamy indie-pop and exquisite pop. The production is masterful, blending clean guitars, punchy drums, and airy synths with the warmest of bass. Vocalist Alaina Moore’s unique style is an essential part of this album’s charm. Tracks such as ‘Pillow For a Cloud’, ‘Pollen Song’, and ‘Forbidden Doors’ are outstanding examples of their power to create captivating and inescapble hooks, Overall, ‘Pollen’ is an album filled with the sweetest of melodies and sophisticated arrangements that show Tennis to be at the peak of their song writing capabilities.
