With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Arcade Fire, Bad Bunny, Sharon Van Etten, Ibeyi, Belle and Sebastian, Otoboke Beaver, and Maria Chiara Argirò. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Arcade Fire: WE [Columbia]
After revealing that new work was underway on a new Arcade Fire record during the pandemic, the band made good on the promise with “The Lightning I, II” in March, announcing its sixth album WE with the single. Arcade Fire also released “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)” from the album ahead of its release. WE is Arcade Fire’s final album with Will Butler, who announced his departure from the group just two days after the arrival of “The Lightning I, II.” Read Sam Sodomsky’s review of WE, which he describes as “an album that reclaims the band’s trademarks after a decade spent fighting against them.”
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Sharon Van Etten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong [Jagjaguwar]
Sharon Van Etten wanted her sixth album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, to arrive as one complete work, so the singer-songwriter didn’t issue any singles ahead of its release. “I wanted to approach this release differently, to engage my fans in an intentional way, in an effort to present the album as a whole body of work,” Van Etten said in a statement. “These 10 songs are designed to be listened to in order, at once, so that a much larger story of hope, loss, longing and resilience can be told.” The follow-up to 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow was written largely in Van Etten’s home studio in Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read Pitchfork’s feature profile “Sharon Van Etten Is an Institution Now.”
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Bad Bunny: Un Verano Sin Ti [Rimas]
After stepping out in his impeccably tailored Met Gala look earlier this week, Bad Bunny is back with new music. The 23-track Un Verano Sin Ti follows the Puerto Rican superstar’s 2020 full-length El Último Tour del Mundo, which won the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Musica Urbana Album. Bad Bunny teased the new LP through a Bugatti ad that listed a Puerto Rico phone number. Dialing the digits triggered an audio clip of a new single and a text message in Spanish that revealed the album title. Revisit Pitchfork’s 2020 interview “A Day in the Life of Bad Bunny, Introverted Superstar.”
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Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz are Ibeyi, using the name of a Yoruban spirit representing twins. On their third album Spell 31, the Diaz sisters return to themes of spirituality with richly textured electronic arrangements. Pa Salieu makes a guest appearance on “Made of Gold,” and Berwyn joins the duo on a cover of Black Flag’s “Rise Above.” Jorja Smith also makes an appearance on “Lavender & Red Roses.” Spell 31 is the first full-length from Ibeyi in nearly five years, following 2017’s Ash.
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Belle and Sebastian: A Bit of Previous [Matador]
Belle and Sebastian made their new album, A Bit of Previous, in their native Glasgow. It’s the first time since 2000’s Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant that the band recorded in its home city. “We clocked in every morning,” Stuart Murdoch wrote in the album’s liner notes. “We played our songs, we wrote together, we tried new things, we took the proverbial lump of clay, and we threw it every day.”
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Otoboke Beaver: Super Champon [Damnably]
Super Champon is the fast and fierce new album from Japanese punk quartet Otoboke Beaver. The 18-track LP clocks in at around 20 minutes, with some songs barely stretching to 15 seconds. Super Champon follows the group’s 2019 record Itekoma Hits. The band has called its new album its “masterpiece of chaos music,” noting that “champon” is a Japanese noun meaning “mixture or jumble of things of different types.”
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Maria Chiara Argirò: Forest City [Innovative Leisure]
Forest City is the third album from Rome-born, London-based multi-instrumentalist Maria Chiara Argirò, following her 2016 debut The Fall Dance and 2019’s Hidden Seas. Argirò’s inaugural release for Innovative Leisure also marks her first venture into electronic production. Argirò released several singles ahead of the LP’s release, including “Greenarp,” which she said “is about experiencing a beautiful natural scene and a reoccurring dream of being in nature.” Argirò continued, “The dream is blurred together with the reality of waking up.”
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