Brand-new music by Spoon, Land of Talk, Foals, Smokey Brights, Cat Dowling

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Spoon: The Hardest Cut

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Photo by Oliver Halfin

The Austin-based band says the tenth album in its 25-year career will be its "purest rock 'n' roll record to date." Vulture writes that this first single "makes good on that promise ... pairing heavy detuned guitars and a jaunty solo (inspired by ZZ Top, per lead singer-songwriter Britt Daniel) with another of the band’s expectedly catchy choruses." The LP, spookily titled Lucifer on the Sofa, is scheduled for release in February.

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Land of Talk: Moment Feed

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Elizabeth Powell recorded her new EP on a Canadian pandemic-assistance grant that required her and her Land of Talk bandmates (Mark “Bucky” Wheaton on drums, Pietro Amato on keyboards and Amato, Chris McCarron and Erik Hove on brass) to record five songs in ten days. “I thought this was just going to be a secret release that the band never shared," says Powell. But four of the songs are being released under the title Calming Night Partner. During the making of this song, Powell says, "I kept envisioning a time when we’d finally get to play live shows again. A room full of bodies swaying, heads bopping, eyes smiling. All of us together. Together again. I believe this song was made to warm up the room in all senses.”

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Foals: Wake Me Up

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Photo by Edward Cooke

Here's another song written during lockdown while dreaming of live shows. “We wanted to create a contrast between the outside world and the music that we’re writing inside this small room,” frontman and guitarist Yannis Philippakis tells Consequence of Sound. “We couldn’t help but reimagine ourselves on stage and how euphoric it will be once it returns.” The band is prepping an album for next year, the first since 2019's Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 2 -- and the first since the departure of keyboardist Edwin Congreave. Philippakis describes it as a “dance/disco record ... For this one, it’s back to a sweaty, late-night dance floor -- a going-out record.” Both the sound and the title remind us of Parquet Floors' "Wide Awake" -- we'll have to play them together now and then! 

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Smokey Brights: Unity

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Photo by Jake Hanson

The story goes that Ryan Devlin and Kim West bonded over pizza and music. They met while slinging pies at a south Seattle restaurant, soon began writing and recording songs together, and self-released their first album in 2014. Along the way they got married. Drummer Nick Krivchenia and bassist Luke Logan round out the band, which just released a pair of singles following up last year's LP I Love You But Damn. This track, West tells American Songwriter, “is a rally cry against division; an anthem against apathy."

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Cat Dowling: Animals

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This Dublin-based indie-pop artist has fronted bands, released a solo album in 2013 and worked on various collaborative projects. Now signed to FIFA Records, she has released a few singles this year leading up to this week's release of her LP, Animals. This title track, Dowling says, "starts as minor and ends up major. It's about the major and minor of life and of love and the constant pull in everything between major and minor and the light and the dark. It's a song ultimately of passion, wildness, sensuality and love."