New Music Friday: 8 albums to hear this week

Charli XCX announced her new album, how i’m feeling now, just a couple of weeks into lockdown. Finding it hard to sit still, creatively, she set to work writing, recording, and mixing the record in time for a May 15 release deadline. The result is an album that captures the feeling of isolation practically in real-time. Where her last album, Charli, and its preceding mixtapes, saw the singer surround herself with a huge cast of collaborators, there are no features on how i’m feeling now, with most of the teamwork happening on the production of the tracks instead. The album kicks off with the suitably tense and apocalyptic “pink diamond”, and things only get more anxious from there. The sugar sweet pop of “forever” is undercut by its glitchy and distorted synths, while even tracks that might have once been described as ‘club bangers’ have a particular erraticness or insularity to them. It’s a unique document of a unique time.

Elsewhere this week, Perfume Genius releases the stunning Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, Moses Sumney releases the second half of his double-album græ, and Yung Lean returns with Starz. Take a listen below.