New Music Friday: 13th Floor New Album Picks: July 7, 2023

New Music Friday is here again. How time flies! As always we have chosen 5 brand new albums released today that we think deserve your attention. Here they are:

1. PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old Year Dying (Partisan/Liberator ) Its always an event when PJ makes new music. The new songs, Harvey says, “all came out of me in about three weeks”. But that was only the beginning. The key to what would happen next – at Battery Studios, in North West London “The studio was set up for live play, and that’s all we did,” she says: if I Inside the Old Year Dying is a very tactile, human record, that is partly because just about everything on it is rooted in improvisation: spontaneous performances and ideas, recorded at the moment of their creation. So, is it worth the wait? Click here to read the 13th Floor album review.

2. Alayna – Self Portrait Of A Woman Unravelling (Nettwerk) Debut album from this young Kiwi. Regarding the title…Alayna says, the album is like a diary of sorts about her struggles with depression and mental health. She has created a beautiful body of work as a reflection of that. Alayna is also a very talented artist who has drawn some wonderful imagery throughout the campaign and is documents on her socials. Click here to watch the 13th Floor Video Session with Alayna recorded yesterday!

3. Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings (Ghostly International) It’s Julie’s third album, one that took six long years to make, with tragedy striking along the way. Julie says, “My hope for The Greater Wings is that it lives as a love letter to my chosen family and as an expression of the depth of my commitment to our shared future. Being reshaped by grief also has me more aware of what death does not take from me.” Click here to read the 13th Floor interview with Julie Byrne. 

4. Chris Stamey – The Great Escape (Car Records) The former dB keeps on rocking. The genesis of the record came from a 2017 tour with Alejandro Escovedo, in which Stamey was musical director and Eric Heywood the pedal-steel player. Stamey says, “I marveled every night at how Eric magically shaped the songs; his instincts were just spot-on. After the tour, I ended up writing a number of tunes with steel in mind, and was fortunate enough to have him add some of his alchemy to these.”

5. Little Dragon – Slugs Of Love (Ninja Tune) The band’s 7th studio album and here’s what they tell us about it.:  “We’ve been exploring different ways to collaborate and communicate. Dissolving patterns and making new ones. Nurturing our ability to curiously press down keys, to bang — sometimes hard sometimes gently — on different things, strumming strings, recording sounds and investigating the limits for how much or little a sound can be tweaked…” Ok, well its got Damon Albarn on it so it must be cool, right?