New Music Variety: Future Islands, Dangermuffin, Golden Dimes, Lights, Suki Waterhouse

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Future Islands: Glimpse

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Samuel Herring and his band from Baltimore are back with a stand-along single, recorded during the sessions for the People Who Aren't There Anymore LP that came out earlier this year. Stereogum calls it a "zippy yet nostalgic tune." The lyrics make references to "memories lost" - a press release says they focus on a family home burning down - mixed with darker images of gallows and graves.

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Dangermuffin: New Sol

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A folky jam band from South Carolina, this foursome is best known for live shows there and in nearby states. They've released several albums since 2007, but their latest (self-titled) is the first one to reach our ears (sorry to say). The group says "this song embodies the Dangermuffin vibe - lighthearted, liberating music. Lyrically, we’re touching on how being in-the-moment in your life keeps you young and vibrant."

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Golden Dimes: Gotta Start Somewhere

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It seems fair to call this New Jersey band's music "dad rock" since they bill themselves as five suburban dads brought together by a love of making music. On their just-released third EP, Helicopter, they bring a classic adult-album-rock vibe and strong musicianship to their original songs. Along with our pick for the New Music bin, other highlight tracks are "Seafarer" and "You Don't Love Me Like You Used To."

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Lights: Damage

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This electro-pop singer-songwriter from Toronto has a new album coming next year, and this is the first taste. She posted that "this marks the beginning of new music that I am very excited to share with you," adding that "all of it is a very little machines/early lights coded" - referring to her music from a decade ago, including Little Machines, winner of the Juno for pop album of the year in 2014.

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Suki Waterhouse: Supersad

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The idea of a model-turned-actress releasing an album titled Memoir of a Sparklemuffin* might seem off-putting, but it's hard to deny that this single is a solid piece of pop-rock (hat tip to a SiriusXM DJ we heard making this point). Paste Magazine calls the 18-song LP "overstuffed," with "too many unadventurous tracks" - but some "bright and scrappy highlights" like this number that gives a "middle finger to depression." (*No relation to Dangermuffin)

Bright Eyes, Steve Forbert, The Heavy Heavy, Rubblebucket, Austin John: New music variety!

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Bright Eyes: Bells and Whistles

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"As depressive as Conor Oberst's songs often are," writes AllMusic, the sound of the new album with his Bright Eyes band, Five Dice, All Threes, "is largely bright and lively." So it is with this track, which "kicks off with a childlike melody played on xylophone and mirrored by a chorus of whistling." (The LP title refers to a game called Threes in which the lowest score wins and 3s count as zeros.)

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Steve Forbert: Purple Toyota

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On his 21st album, Daylight Savings Time, the Mississippi-born singer-songwriter, now based in Asbury Park, N.J., celebrates life's simple pleasures - such as that extra hour of evening sun, and having "a place to stay and ... a place to park." Even when he sings about how "the lowdown blues won't let you be," he offers hope: "You'll have to wait 'em out as best you can." We're featuring this lighthearted track that asks a question that's often on our mind when driving: Why do automakers churn out cars in boring colors "that look like rainy weather?"

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The Heavy Heavy: One of a Kind

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Here's the title track from the debut full-length album by multi-instrumentalist William Turner and vocalist Georgie Fuller, retro-pop-rockers from Brighton, UK. Glide Magazine calls the track "a winner with slapping drums, bubbling bass, and huge crescendos." 

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Rubblebucket: Stella The Begonia

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We can't get enough of the Brooklyn outfit's new album, Year of the Banana. So as "Moving Without Touching" rotates out of our New Music bin, we're popping in this track. A love song to a plant? Why not?

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Austin John: Survive Each Other

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This title song from the new album by Todd Austin John Elsliger's band is clearly based on pandemic claustrophobia - although it could apply to any couple for whom togetherness has gone a little too far. "Boxes of things that we ordered, left by the door / To a world that we don’t visit anymore ... Both working from home for the last 2 or 3 years ... If the TV goes down, we’ll have nothing left to say."

New Nada Surf, Dear Rouge, The Ramona Flowers, Valley, Magdalena Bay added to our big mix

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Nada Surf: The One You Want

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The New York band's new album, Moon Mirror, "represents a step forward for the band, with lush layered vocals and more melodic arrangements than on previous efforts," writes No Depression. "Lyrically, it’s familiar, with frontman Matthew Caws delivering the same literate musical poetry that has made the band popular for three decades."

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Dear Rouge: Garbage

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Danielle and Drew McTaggart and their band call this song "probably the most important track to us" on their just-released album, Lonesome High. It was inspired by the couple's struggle with infertility and the eventual birth of their son. But the lyric is more universal, about not giving up in the face of adversity: "I believe nothing is a waste / Don't go and throw it all away."

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Valley: Let It Rain

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On their latest album, Water the Flowers, Pray for a Garden, the Toronto group seems to be coming to grips with the fleeting nature of youth. Frontman Rob Laska says this song deals with "acceptance of growing old and learning to be ok with that." But he adds: "The whole album but specifically ‘Let It Rain,’ feels like us just playing a song in a room together like we did when we were teenagers."

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Magdalena Bay: Image

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The Los Angeles electro-pop duo that Rolling Stone calls "wonderfully strange" recently released its sophomore album, Imaginal Disk. Stereogum writes that this track "feels both futuristic and nostalgic. It begins as a mellower, vaporwave-meets-pop diva jam, until a delightfully blown-out bass crashes into the final chorus." The accompanying video has singer Mica Tenenbaum about to get a "brand-new image" installed via a disk drive in her forehead.

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The Ramona Flowers: Dangerous

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The band from Bristol, UK, says this song is about risky and addictive behavior - "about dancing with danger. There are times in life when you give into temptation. You know you shouldn’t do it, but you do it anyway.”

Amy Helm, Pete Yorn, Dawes, Sting, Linkin Park freshen up our New Music bin

➤Our music-pickers took a couple of weeks off for a well-earned vacation, but they're back with a new batch of carefully curated songs for our New Music bin.

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Amy Helm: Baby Come Back

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The ten songs on her fourth solo album, Silver City, are "conversations ... celebrating womanhood in all its complexities," says Helm. And while the title of this track might sound like a plea to a departed lover, instead it is a call to a female friend to take control of her life: "Baby, go on / Hand on your heart and your eyes on the road / Get yourself back home." It's also a standout track on this mostly acoustic album. Rock and Blues Muse writes: "A strangulated electric guitar grinds out the chords ... elevated by searing, yet touching gospel backing vocals. It’s the disc’s most propulsive moment and another example of Helm’s soaring voice." (Photo by Ebru Yildiz)

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Pete Yorn: It's Alright

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We've previously featured a couple of singles ahead of the New Jersey native's ninth studio album, The Hard Way. Now the full collection is out, and we're dropping Track 4 into our New Music bin. It's a gentle love song to someone who isn't always (or any longer?) nearby: "So I keep you in my heart / when you’re not here in my arms."

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Dawes: Still Strangers Sometimes

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This is the second single from Oh Brother, the upcoming album from Taylor Goldsmith and his band, of which the only other remaining original member is his brother Griffin. “It’s a song about the spiritual investigation of long-term relationships,” says Taylor Goldsmith. “How a part of ourselves will be unknowable forever, despite our deep connections and intimate understandings of each other.”

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Sting: I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart)

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The veteran British rocker is about to start a North America tour, joined by his longtime collaborator, guitarist Dominic Miller, and drummer Chris Maas. The new power trio, dubbed 3.0, launches with this single. Stereogum calls it "a raspy rocker that's driven by the fabled Bo Diddley beat."

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Linkin Park: The Emptiness Machine

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The California band returns with a new lineup and its first album since the 2017 passing of former lead singer Chester Bennington. Vocalist Emily Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain join Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Dave "Phoenix" Farrell and Joe Hahn. The group's next album, From Zero, is due in November.