New Music Friday: 13th Floor New Album Picks: April 21, 2023

New Music Friday is here once more. Tomorrow is Record Store Day but today we’ve got some tasty new releases  to recommend to you. Here’s our 5 top picks.

The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda has chosen these 5 new albums for your consideration released today.

1. Ingrid and the Ministers – Boofhead Ingrid and band are from Wellington and they are making a glorious racket here on their second album full of feisty, blues-infused punk rock. “It’s about power imbalances in relationships, and how nobody wins if we just keep perpetuating the same cycles of abuse that screwed us up in the first place,” said Ingrid. Click here to watch the 13th Floor interview with Ingrid.

2. Ian Hunter – Defiance Part 1 (Sun) At age 83, the former Mott The Hoople frontman just keeps on rockin’. There are guests aplenty including, Slash, Duff, Jeff Beck, Ringo Starr and Mike Campbell, to name just a few. Says Ian, “There are a lot of reasons for calling this album Defiance,” Hunter said. “It’s, like, people my age shouldn’t be making records, blah, blah, blah. But we’ve still got a bit left.” We can’t wait for Part 2. Click here to read the 13th Floor album review.

3. Damien Binder – Bright Side The fifth solo album for this Kiwi now based in Perth. “We managed to get a few different feels going rhythmically and it’s made for a record where each song is quite unique from the next but it all hangs together seamlessly,” explains Damien. Click here to watch the 13th Floor interview with Damien.

4. Everything But The Girl – Fuse (Verve) The 11th studio album by the British duo. Here’s what Tracey Thorn has to say about the reunion with Ben Watt, “After so much time apart professionally, there was both a friction and a natural spark in the studio when we began,” Thorn said. “However much we underplayed it at the start, it was like a fuse had been lit. And it ended in a kind of coalescence, an emotional fusion. It felt very real and alive.”

5. Esther Rose – Safe To Run (New West) The fourth album for this country-folk singer. Says Esther, ‘This album feels different to me than everything I’ve made before it. But who knows? I’ve traded hurricanes for wildfires.”