New Music Friday: 13th Floor New Album Picks: March 1, 2024
New Music Friday bears down on us once more. There’s a tonne of new music out today. How to know what to listen to? Listen to us…here’s our top 5 picks.
The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda picks these five new releases for your consideration:
Liam Gallagher, John Squire – Liam Gallagher & John Squire (Warner Music) The voice of Oasis and the guitar of The Stone Roses team up for an album brimming with classic Britpop. Needless to say, Liam Gallagher is excited, “I think the people that are into the Stone Roses and Oasis and that kinda thing, I think they’ll fucking love it. It’s spiritual, it’s crucial.”
2. Faye Webster – Underdressed At The Symphony (Secretly Canadian) It’s Faye’s fifth studio album and its features a collaboration with her friend Lil Yachty. “I think I hit a point in songwriting during this record where I was just like, man, I said a lot,” she says in a press note. “The record feels like a mouthful to me, but I don’t always have to be deep. I can just sit down and sing about this ring made of crystal Lego that I really want.”
3. 
The Bevis Frond – Focus On Nature (Fire) Follows the band’s acclaimed 2021 release Little Eden. The folks at Fire tell us songwriter Nick Saloman juxtaposes queueing to see “shitty” bands in the rain with a study of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, punctuating the proceedings with deep melancholy on songs and themes that stick with you till the wee small hours. There are sharp one-liners aplenty, and tongue-in-cheek observations, while the twin guitars of ‘Mr. Fred’s Disco’ go modal, then play off against each other on ‘Big Black Sky’. And, of course, it all comes to a euphoric wah-wah-fueled string-bending climax on the closing ‘Hung On A Wire’. That’s what The Bevis Frond do.
4. Paula Cole – Lo (675 Records) Back from the 90s, this is Paula’s first new album in over a decade. Lo was recorded entirely live, featuring full band performances from Jay Bellerose (drums), Chris Bruce (guitars), Ross Gallagher (upright and electric bass, backing vocals) and Rich Hinman (pedal steel, guitars). It was recorded and mixed by nine-time-Grammy-award-winning-engineer, Mike Piersante, whose unique sound is the canvas for “Lo.”
5. Leonard Powell – Slow Mover (Fake Fiancé) Formerly known as hip hop artist Medium Pace this is Leonard’s debut album as a solo artist but he’s had help from a few friends such as James Finlay (SOJØURN), Tom Taylor (Molly & the Chromatics, Cardinal Sleepdog), Silas McClintock (Silas Futura) and Jack Alexander (Short Rib) and producer Tom Broome (Tami Neilson, Home Brew, Aaradhna). Says Leonard, “It was amazing to bring friends in to lift up the songs. I’m very much still learning my instruments, so it wouldn’t have been possible to take the songs to the places they ended up without them.”
