The Friday Refrain: What's New In Music

Welcome back to the Refrain and welcome to the middle of the summer months! We've got a few more releases than last week today, so let's hit those brass tacks. Indie rockers Dirty Projectors are back with Lamp Lit Prose. Minnesota native rockers The Jayhawks released Back Roads and Abandoned Motels. Prog metal Between the Buried and Me return with their second release this year, the aptly named Automata II. Alt Country Rockers Cowboy Junkies continue a steady release of albums with All That Reckoning. The artist of my favorite 2017 pop-ish ep released an lp today, it's Amy Shark with Love Monster. And then we've got the sophomore releases of today: indie songsters Luluc's Sculptor, and brassy funky The Suffers' Everything Here.

Should I Bother?

• Dirty Projectors: Layers of production weave in and out well on this one. I've never really gotten into Dirty Projectors but enjoy their stuff.
• Between the Buried & Me: The track I include is really bizarre with this jazzy honky tonk groove. Not as hardcore as the Automata but makes up for it in spades with character.
• Cowboy Junkies: This album is stretched out on the lawn of an ampitheater soaking in the sun music
• Luluc: Simple but textured, I like their sound. There is this quirky track where the drums start off almost in a free form jazz style and then fade into the background when the light vocals and guitars come in. Really cool juxtaposition.
• The Suffers: It's got a great groove and she has a great voice.
• Amy Shark: This is the only album I gave a full listen, fyi. There are some great gems on this album, but I think it falls a bit short of the EP. It's over twice the length of her EP and only shares the large single, "Adore," which is pretty crazy for releases in her genre really. Bea Miller reused most of her eps on her albums. Even K. Flay had more overlap between her EP and LP.  It's an ambitious album, well worth a good listen because if you were a fan of Night Thinker, you're going to have favorites. (I bet I love the whole album by the end of the year)
• The Jayhawks: Listening to this, my husband was about to say, "This is nice, reminds me of the Jayhawks, what is it?" So obviously, Jayhawks fans you are in luck!

Well there we be. Check back in later this week for some more picks out of today's releases and I promise a good Wordplay Wednesday... There are amazing band names and album names this week, it's rife for the picking. Anyway, enjoy the music and Happy Listening!