New Music Friday: 13th Floor New Album Picks: August 4, 2023

Its that time again! New Music Friday is here, and we’ve got a new album by a classic Kiwi band, plus four more you’ll want to check out.

1. Strawpeople – Knucklebones (Big Bop) They are back. Paul Casserly and Fiona McDonald had the idea to collaborate again during a combined 50th birthday celebration and the result is something Fiona feels proud of: “I called Paul when we got the master back, and said, good job us.” For her, working with Casserly again was “a rare treat. Paul has always been my favourite writing partner. We usually agree on things and for some reason our outsized egos don’t seem to overlap.”

2. Miles Kane – One Man Band (Modern Sky) Fifth solo album from Miles. “The whole album is pretty pumping,” Kane says. “There was a conscious effort that I wanted to make it super upbeat. I didn’t want any strings. No brass. No piano. I just wanted it to be like what got me into playing guitar. A bit like a song like ‘Inhaler’ on the first album [2011’s ‘Colour Of The Trap’] – I wanted that energy again. That was the objective that we had.”

3. Rain Parade – Last Rays Of A Dying Sun (Label 51) More new music from the Paisley Underground. Original members Matt Piucci and Steve Roback are still at it. “As a band, we feel that creating a sound that is unique is essential. And we think that we have done that here” says Piucci. “As for how others respond to it, we feel that art is a deeply personal experience for the “end user”, if you will. We tend towards the impressionistic rather than expressionistic. In the end, we try to bring inspiration, comfort and or joy to our listeners… or at least a sense that they aren’t alone.”

4. Annie Hart – The Weight Of A Wave (Uninhabitable Mansions) Direct from Brooklyn, this is Annie’s fourth album. Here’s what she has to say about the video for Stop Staring At You: “This song was inspired by a very charismatic friend of mine who was addicted to looking at how many likes they had on Instagram. I had fallen under their otherwise charming spell and was along for the ride of their friendship and fun adventures. One night, I saw them surrounded by fawning half-fans and saw them basking in the glow of this empty affection, and all lit up by being worshiped, and I just saw the sad emptiness of that kind of existence and knew there was nothing I could do for this person, that they had became the prisoner of their own misery. This song is about not judging your self worth on other people’s half-attention and finding your true value in yourself and your real relationships.

5. Current Joys – LOVE + POP (Secretly Canadian) Current Joys is the musical project of Nick Rattigan. Rattigan watched Everybody’s Everything, the documentary of Lil Peep, and recorded a cover of “walk away as the door slams”. But the itch wasn’t scratched, and what began as a moment of homage morphed into something bigger, deeper and more fundamental, a point where the seemingly haphazard – in his home, in Peep’s process – opened Rattigan up to an entire creative space and a new approach to bending or even detonating genre.