With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from (Sandy) Alex G, Charli XCX, Jenny Hval, Alex Cameron, JPEGMAFIA, and Elza Soares. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)
(Sandy) Alex G: House of Sugar [Domino]
Singer-songwriter Alex Giannascoli—known professionally as (Sandy) Alex G—wrote most of the songs on his new album in the interim period between his last record Rocket and the tour following its release. The title, House of Sugar, happens to sound a lot like the Philadelphia casino SugarHouse, but Alex G told GQ’s Colin Groundwater, “[The casino] actually wasn’t the real motivation. I didn’t name the album after SugarHouse, I wanted House of Sugar to be this temple of indulgence.”
Check out Pitchfork’s review of lead single “Gretel,” named Best New Track.
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Charli XCX: Charli [Atlantic]
Charli XCX’s long-awaited album Charli has arrived. It features a slew of guests, many of whom have already appeared on the album’s numerous singles: Christine and the Queens, Sky Ferreira, Troye Sivan, HAIM, Clairo, Yaeji, and so many others appear across the record, which marks the pop star’s first proper album since the release of Sucker in 2014.
In her Pitchfork review of the album, Michelle Kim writes, “Like many self-titled albums, it’s a reflection of the artist: in Charli’s case, one who wants to veer down experimental, transgressive, and queer pathways but constantly contemplates what it would be like to fully enter the mainstream.”
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Jenny Hval: The Practice of Love [Sacred Bones]
Norwegian experimental songwriter and novelist Jenny Hval returns with her seventh album The Practice of Love, her first LP since the critically acclaimed Blood Bitch was released in 2016. “Love as a theme in art has been the domain of the canonized, big artists, and I have always seen myself as a minor character, a voice that speaks of other things,” Hval said in a statement. “But in the last few years I have wanted to take a closer look at the practice of otherness, this fragile performance, and how it can express love, intimacy, empathy and desire.”
Read Pitchfork’s Best New Track review of “Ashes to Ashes.”
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Alex Cameron: Miami Memory [Secretly Canadian]
Australian singer-songwriter Alex Cameron said that his third album Miami Memory is “the story of a couple balancing sex with contemporary family values” and a gift to his girlfriend, actor Jemima Kirke. Kirke stars in the music video for the title track. Miami Memory follows 2017’s Forced Witness.
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JPEGMAFIA: All My Heroes Are Cornballs [EQT]
Irreverent hip-hop polymath JPEGMAFIA follows up his breakout 2018 album Veteran with the playfully titled All My Heroes Are Cornballs. Check out Pitchfork’s track review of opener “Jesus Forgive Me, I Am a Thot” and read about “Beta Male Strategies” in Levels’ The Ones.
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Elza Soares: Planeta Fome [Deck]
Brazilian samba icon Elza Soares has released her follow-up to 2018’s Deus É Mulher and the acclaimed A mulher do fim do mundo. The new record, called Planeta Fome, opens with “Libertação,” a collaboration with BaianaSystem and singer Virginia Rodrigues. Other guests on the LP include veteran rapper BNegão and rising artist Rafael Mike.
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