New Music Friday: Gracie Abrams goes for the jugular, and jungle gets a heartbreak concept album
Mid-July is supposed to be a lull. Nobody told this Friday. A pop tentpole, a long-gestating auteur R&B record, a reverse-order breakup album, a post-hardcore reunion and a cumbia-ambient fever dream all landed at once, and the only unifying thread is ambition. Here are five worth your weekend.
Gracie Abrams — Daughter from Hell (Interscope). Abrams' third album arrives with the confidence of someone who spent last year opening stadiums and figuring out she belonged there. Produced largely by Aaron Dessner with Dan Nigro, the 16-track set (plus a Target-exclusive bonus, "Crazy Girl") turns her whisper-to-a-scream diaristic pop up a few notches; Justin Vernon lends background vocals and synths to the opener. Leads "Hit the Wall" and "Look at My Life" trailed it in May and June, and a tour of the same name follows. "I'm beyond ready for it to belong to everyone else," Abrams said ahead of release. As of today, it does.
Steve Lacy — Oh yeah? (RCA). Four years after Gemini Rights made him a Grammy-winning bedroom-funk star, Lacy returns sounding restless and gloriously unbothered by expectation. Oh yeah? smears alt-R&B against punk snarl and glitchy electronics, with SZA surfacing on "Is It Cool?" and Erykah Badu on "Pure Colour"; the lead single "Nice Shoes" balloons into a nine-minute epic with a hidden coda. Rolling Stone called him "a defining pop auteur," and the record earns the label by refusing to chase a single. It just makes the catchy thing look effortless.
Nia Archives — Emotional Junglist (Island). The Leeds-born producer's second album, following 2024's Silence Is Loud, is a breakup record told backwards — beginning in numbness and rewinding through obsession, recklessness and first love. Chopped breakbeats and subterranean bass share space with indie-pop, orchestral sweeps and trap, with production help from James Ford and Ethan P. Flynn and a co-write from Julia Michaels. The reverse sequencing is the masterstroke, converting a familiar set of love songs into something with actual suspense, all the way to the police-resistance kiss-off "Boys in Blue."
Quicksand — Bring On The Psychics (Equal Vision). The New York post-hardcore lifers led by Walter Schreifels return with their first album in roughly five years, since 2021's Distant Populations. It's a mature, heavy, texturally rich record — vast soundscapes crashing into raw feeling on cuts like "Crystallize," "Supercollider" and the more subdued "Days You Run To." Distorted Sound's 8/10 verdict framed it plainly: a band this deep into their catalog have no business sounding "vital as ever," and yet.
Lido Pimienta — Caribenya (ANTI-). The Colombian-Canadian firebrand follows last year's classically minded La Belleza by plunging back into cumbia and threading it through ambient electronica. Sung mostly in Spanish, it honors the genre's Caribbean-coast roots while stretching it: "Tóxica" pairs a hypnotic chorus with hard sonidera cumbia, "Marea" leans dembow, and Nelly Furtado turns up on "Hoy Por Ti." Guests including Chancha Vía Circuito and Ana Macho keep the palette restless. Call it a refraction, not a culmination — which is exactly how Pimienta likes it.
Sources: NPR Music, New Music Friday July 17; Daughter from Hell (Wikipedia); Rated R&B, Steve Lacy review; Slant, Nia Archives review; Distorted Sound, Quicksand review; Treble, Lido Pimienta review