For the second time this semester, here’s a brand new set of new adds! These reviews introduce us to recent releases by Atlanta emo band Microwave, seasoned indie crooner Angel Olsen, English pop icon Charli XCX, and R&B's Summer Walker.

I hope this eclectic selection of albums, along with our contributors' canny critical stylings, carries you gently into the autumn chill, such as it is in the city of Angels.

- Lucy Talbot Allen, Music Writing Director

Microwave - Death is a Warm Blanket

Microwave’s Death is a Warm Blanket is their best and heaviest record yet. In the album’s short thirty-minute runtime, the Atlanta-based emo/alt rock band manages to deliver the most honest and emotional piece of music they’ve ever written. Death is a Warm Blanket is about heartbreak, moving on, growing up, and the grueling life of the touring musician.

Contrary to previous work from the band, this time around, Microwave has let go of their hopeful outlook, and traded it for a much darker, more brutal, yet far more honest perception of life and adulthood. Even the album’s title implies a level of hopelessness, putting the band’s vulnerability on full display, and exhibiting powerful self-awareness and self-reflection.

Lead singer Nathan Hardy wears his heart on his sleeve, and plays around with harsher vocals and screams way more than he did in Microwave’s previous work. His vocals are one of the highlights of the record, and when they are combined with the instrumental hectic heaviness, the band creates a new sound, one filled with chaos and raw emotion. This is one of the most powerful pieces of music I have listened to in a long time, and I continue to be blown away with each listen. It’s powerful and unrestrained.

The record is meant to be listened to as one piece of music, so don’t be tempted by that shuffle button when hearing this album, because the way the tracks glide from one to the next is so beautiful and seamless, it sounds as if you’re listening to one grand, epic song. The thought put into the production and mixing of the album is clear. Death is a Warm Blanket is an album to pay attention to, and will definitely be remembered in the emo scene for a long time to come.

- Amber Kroner, DJ

RIYL: Basement, Citizen, Brand New
Recommended Tracks: 2, 6, 8, 10
FCC: Explicit (track 10)

Angel Olsen - All Mirrors

“I could not come back the same / This city's changed, / It's not what it was / Back when you loved me / Walking down that path we made / When we thought what we had was such a good thing.”

These words echo from singer-songwriter Angel Olsen’s lips as she cries out to a past love, effortlessly putting into words what we all wish we could say to that one person we cannot forget. This is how Olsen’s Fifth Album, All Mirrors, begins. This heart-clenching track, “Lark,” immediately brings her audience into the tonal and sonic world of All Mirrors. She invites her listeners into her brilliant mind for 48 minutes, and shares stories that invoke such universal notions as heartache and what it is to be human.

The album is sonically a large leap for the singer-songwriter, whose roots lie in simple production with her voice and insightful lyrics carrying the track, as seen in fan-favorites like “For You.” The album is both incredibly musically cohesive and bold. It combines the best aspects of her lyrical ability with a newfound dramatic production. “All Mirrors,” the album’s titular first single, is emblematic of this new sound. The production is dark and complex, feeling almost cinematic. It seems to be an ode to her thoughts, a way of expressing her pain and confusion in a blaring musical web. The frequent instrumental breaks let the listener indulge in the nearly-bizarre and undoubtedly-effective nature of the sonic progression of the album. It is so cohesive you nearly forget you are listening to an album, and instead feel entranced into another world.

The closing track, “Chance,” is potentially the most emotive part of the entire album. Olsen is seemingly preparing herself to open her heart to the world and others again; she is steeling herself for vulnerability. Over a classic ballad-melody, in enchanting vocals, she sings, “All that space in between where we stand / Could be our chance.” This seems to be representative not only of a readiness to open oneself up to a particular person, but also of the ability to let go of the pain and the darkness of the world, and forge a new path: to say it is okay to start over. Olsen outdoes herself with All Mirrors; it is the perfect fall record for anyone willing to give themself a chance, to love again, to let go.

- Kristiane Alphson, Assistant Music Director

RIYL: Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, Sharon Van Etten, Julien Baker, Mitski
Recommended Tracks: 1, 2, 11
FCC: Clean

Charli XCX - Charli

A month before the release of Charli XCX’s self-titled fifth album, Pitchfork named her “the Pop Star of the Future.” While I wasn’t sure what this entailed at the time, the statement feels like nothing short of a self-fulfilling prophecy following the release of Charli.

In the past, Charli’s total embrace of and apparent love for pop music was off-putting to my personal music tastes. However, Charli shows her almost uncanny ability to boil pop music down to its most basic structures while still coming across as new and innovative. As always, she consistently sticks to the traditional pop songwriting form, but unlike other songs making use of this standardization (take, for example, John Legend’s overplayed “All of Me”) her music hardly sounds overdone or boring. This can probably be at least in part attributed to the hefty contributions of ingenious producer A.G. Cook, whose PC Music label boasts a melting pot of influences and an overall synthetic Eurohouse aesthetic.

These experimentations in electronic sound are the backbone of the album’s update on classical pop structures. “Click” takes a sharp turn in its last 30 seconds, which transitions to jarring blares of synth that elicit the same vibe as rocks in a blender. Probably the widest array of sonic experimentation is combined seamlessly in “Shake It,” which features Charli’s voice distorted to sound like bubbling water, and various robotic synths programmed to the beat of the artist’s own breath before changing pace to incorporate an eclectic lineup of features (Big Freedia, Brooke Candy, CupcakKe, and Pablo Vittar). The contrasting vocal performances might appear out of place if not for Charli’s pop sensibility and the album’s overall seamless production.

Charli shows the artist more vulnerable than she has ever been, especially on solo tracks like “Thoughts,” “White Mercedes,” and “Official.” The album’s impressive list of distinguished collaborators is a huge asset to the work’s cohesiveness. However, it is when she is alone that we get to see her indulge in the self-examination that culminates in the beautifully intimate “Official.” “You know the things that make me smile / The face I make before my tears fall down.” The track’s lyrics and pared down arrangements capture Charli’s vulnerability in a way that hardly exists in the rest of her discography.

At its core, Charli is Charli XCX’s tribute to her ponderings of the future. The fact that it is self-titled seems entirely fitting given that a celebration of her past and future underlies the entire album and is addressed explicitly in the album closer “2099.” What other material could be expected of the future of pop herself

- Barbara Rasin, DJ

RIYL: SOPHIE, Christine and the Queens, Lorde, Dua Lipa, AG Cook
Recommended Tracks: 1, 4, 5, 12
FCC: Explicit (tracks 2, 5, 7, 8, 13, 15)

Summer Walker - Over It

“Is that Usher?” was my immediate reaction during a first listen to Summer Walker’s highly-anticipated album, Over It. When the all-too-familiar voice of the 2000s R&B icon jumped on “Come Thru,” I realized that Walker samples Usher’s 1997 hit, “You Make Me Wanna…” on the song. This is only the beginning. The 23-year old revives the realness in R&B, defying the watered-down stylings of modern R&B songs which tend to recycle cliché or corny love quotes. Walker gives it to us raw. She uncovers the trials of love through anguish, elation and everything in between, while also not taking herself too seriously. “I would never shoot you, maybe just wave it around / Definitely be my last love,” Walker cleverly quips about her complicated love interest on “Me.” Humanness is at the center of this 18-track journey, which she states is “based on a true story.”

Two thousand nineteen has been defined by strong female artists – City Girls, Megan Thee Stallion and Lizzo were the soundtrack to Hot Girl Summer, and they seem to have passed the torch on to 23-year-old Summer Walker for Sad Girl Autumn (or Thotumn, whichever you prefer). Walker’s breakout album, Last Day of Summer, rose to the top of the charts with its viscerally real and raw lyrics, smooth vocals and intimate acoustics. Walker opens up about struggles of love, lust, and desire on tracks like “Deep,” “CPR,” and “Girls Need Love,” which explore the fire and desire of passionate yet dysfunctional relationships. The album became a Sad Girl Autumn favorite, but luckily with Over It we have a new selection to add to any symp playlist.

Walker pays homage to several R&B greats throughout Over It while adding in her own touch and vocal flair. The Atlanta native also takes the opportunity to prove once again that she undoubtedly possesses the vocal range, vulnerability and songwriting skills required to do the Mariahs, Kellys and Michelles of R&B proud. On “Playing Games,” Walker’s rendition of the Destiny’s Child classic “Say My Name,” Bryson Tiller drops in a rap verse to go with the hip-hop elements and puts a spin on the timeless track. As Walker describes the miscommunication and “games” between them: “I’m just tryna match your words with your actions / I need more than satisfaction / Is you really bout that action?” Desperation and frustration echo in her lyrics, while Tiller simply fires back,“I wanna get in your feelings, not in your business / I wanna get kissing / Get him outta the picture.” Aaaand suddenly, you sort of feel like texting your ex. Yeah, this album does that.

Walker spares no emotion in this album. “I’ll Kill You” encapsulates the juxtaposition of passion and anger that goes with being completely in love, with the help of Jhené Aiko, a fellow R&B queen. The pair cleverly goes back and forth between knowing they sound crazy, trying not to sound crazy and admitting that they are crazy. Aiko raps, “Don’t want no problems, I wish a bitch would / Try to come between us, it won’t end up good / You know I love you like no one else could.” Between Walker’s seamless range and Aiko’s rhythmic flow, possessive girlfriend has never sounded so good.

On “Fun Girl,” Walker strips it down – no pun intended, although
she did formerly work at an Atlanta strip club – as she recalls hurtful comments toward her by men who said she “wasn’t cut right / Can’t turn a ho into a housewife.” She explores the double standard of knowing what she wants, making money, and not letting herself be used: “Guess that makes me undesirable / Guess that makes you so attractive / Life’s unfair.”

Walker is not to be slept on – the Apple Music Up Next artist released her EP just this year, and only months later received a feature from Drake on “Girls Need Love (Remix).” Other noteworthy features include A Boogie wit da Hoodie on single “Stretch You Out,” PARTYNEXTDOOR on “Just Might” and 6LACK on “Like It.” The soulful messiness of Over It cements Walker’s place in R&B and hip-hop, raising the bar for R&B albums to come.

- Diana Fonte, DJ

RIYL: Ari Lennox, H.E.R., Kehlani, Sabrina Claudio
Recommended Tracks: 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 11
FCC: Explicit (all tracks except 8)

NEW ADDS: Microwave, Angel Olsen, Charli XCX, Summer Walker