The Tubs rattle through a suite of anarchic jangle-pop in a brisk half hour on second album Cotton Crown. The Welsh quartet’s Dead Meat follow-up takes DNA from the Smiths’ melancholy exuberance, the Go-Betweens’ windswept gusto, and gung-ho London punk fervor to formulate a disempowered power-pop that spins insecurity and grief into bundles of melodic joy.
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Sasami: Blood on the Silver Screen [Domino]
Sasami is the conservatory-trained singer, songwriter, composer, and producer who came to prominence with a shoegaze-indebted, synth-and-guitar powerhouse of a debut in 2019. Her third album, by contrast, is an avowed pop turn, taking cues from Britney Spears’ Femme Fatale and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way; the single “In Love With a Memory,” featuring Clairo, integrates the chart chops of latter-day Muse and the Strokes. “I was always a weirdo outsider and I didn’t feel like pop music spoke to me,” she said in press materials. “Being a woman of color, I’ve always felt this pressure or need to make something that’s mysterious or innovative, and always shied away from lightheartedness.” Blood on the Silver Screen corrects the record.
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Tobacco City: Horses [Scissor Tail]
On their second album, Horses, Chicago cosmic-country band Tobacco City dash wit and levity into the swamp of small-town life. Vocalists Chris Coleslaw and Lexi Goddard duet across an album depicting a version of America that, writes Linnie Greene in Pitchfork’s review, “smells like diner grease and cheap weed, and it sounds like hope on minimum wage.”
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https://pitchfork.com/news/8-new-albums-you-should-listen-to-now-lady-gaga
