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 and EPs from Jeff Parker, Jlin, Alicia Keys, Aeon Station, and Michael Hurley. 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 earns an affiliate commission.)
Jeff Parker: Forfolks [International Anthem/Nonesuch]
With last year’s rapturous Suite for Max Brown, Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker delivered a set of rich, melodic songs to celebrate his mother. Forfolks is a collection of newly recorded solo guitar compositions, some of which he wrote in the mid-1990s. For example, Parker has released album closer “La Jetée” in two forms already: with the band Isotope 217 in 1997 and then Tortoise a year later. He also recorded his own versions of the jazz standard “My Ideal” and Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” for the album.
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Gary, Indiana producer Jlin composed her four Embryo pieces in between commissions. “I was just writing trying to get out of my own head,” she said of making the EP in a press release, adding that she was “trying to stay afloat mentally” in the process. Jlin’s last full-length was 2017’s Black Origami; she is currently working on a follow-up LP for Planet Mu. Read the Best New Track review of “Embryo.”
Listen on Apple Music
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Tidal
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen/Buy at Bandcamp
Buy at Rough Trade