Image: Tonje Thileson

Welcome to the new music review where we connect you with some of the best new music spinning on Breakfast, The Daily and Drive programs.

ALBUMS:
Liz Phair – Soberish (FEATURE ALBUM)
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Anchorsong – Mirage
Bachelor – Doomin’ Sun
Cannon – Connexion
Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee
Rostam – Changephobia
Spookyland – Adam Shivering
Stevie Jean – The Dark

SINGLES:
Anatomy Class – Welcome to the Ages
Aphir – Negative Space
Kyoshi – Reflections
LUMP – Climb Every Wall
Matthew E. White – Genuine Hesitation
Public Service Broadcasting – People, Let’s Dance (feat. EERA)

Bachelor, the new project from Melina Duterte (Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (Palehound), seems such a perfect pairing that it’s almost surprising it didn’t happen earlier. The two met on tour in 2017 and instantly connected, calling Bachelor more a friendship than a band. But their debut album together, Doomin’ Sun, makes it clear that calling Bachelor just a friendship undersells their work. Teaming with Buck Meek and James Krivchenia of Big Thief as their backing band, Duterte and Kempner channel the slacker spirit of ’90s grunge-pop acts like Breeders and Pavement for an album about hanging out with friends amidst the climate apocalypse.

Philadelphia dream-pop musician Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) has had a busy year: after publishing Crying in H Mart, her New York Times bestselling memoir about grief and Korean cuisine, she’s now released her third album, Jubilee. Where her first two works – 2016’s Psychopomp and 2017’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet – dealt explicitly with her mother’s death, Jubilee sees Zauner look towards her future with optimism. Eclectic ideas and sounds leap from this album – baroque pop horns, shoegaze guitar drones, ’80s synth beats, and country strings – as if Zauner can’t wait to explore everything life has to offer.

Tokyo-born, London-based electronica producer Masaaki Yoshida (Anchorsong) based his two previous albums around ideas of travel and geography, taking a city and culture as his sonic inspiration. Covid inevitably has forced Yoshida to change tact. Mirage, his fourth album, sees the producer imagine traveling the world while stuck in lockdown, sampling music and instruments from places as diverse as Brazil, Mongolia, and Nigeria. There’s both a deep joy and sadness in the work as we travel with Yoshida and imagine the parts of the world from which we’re temporarily disconnected.