Photo Credit: Broken Social Scene, Kevin Drew (Visual) + Jordan Allen (Layout)
First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week, serving up first impressions, favorite or least favorite songs, and whether or not they’re worth a second listen. Check back for more each Friday night or Saturday morning.
Yeesh, the new release calendar overfloweth this spring, don’t it? I still have five reviews (one mini, one full-length) in various stages of composition of albums released way back on March 27th! Taking a little road trip to NYC last week didn’t help me catch up, though I did at least manage to sneak out a full-length review for the latest from Ultrabomb, the new punk supergroup from Hüsker Dü bassist Greg Norton. This week’s column is mostly today’s new drops, though it also includes just a little bit of catch-up—Holly Humberstone’s new one came out back on March 10th and Gia Margaret’s on April 24th, while Kacey Musgraves’ latest totally snuck up on me when it came out last week. So did the Black Keys, who I didn’t even realize had an album coming out! Ditto the new one from Muna, which I had no idea came out today until I was doing final edits to get this thing posted. I’m just one man, I do what I can! Here’s what I’ve checked lately, in the order in which I listened to ‘em:
Holly Humberstone, Cruel World (Polydor): ”God knows I’m 24, I’m still a baby,” Holly Humberstone sings on “Peachy,” but even if she’s “just” 24, there’s an impressive maturity in the English singer’s sophomore LP. Fans of her debut hit “The Walls Are Way Too Thin” will undoubtedly enjoy songs like “To Love Somebody,” “Cruel World,” and the Sabrina Carpenter-ish “White Noise”—effervescent pop that also sounds sad, wistful, built on pop beats, plush synths, and Humberstone’s double-tracked voice. But it’s when she goes full forlorn on “Die Happy” and “Beauty Pageant,” where her vocals are unadorned and not double-tracked, that the full emotional power of her voice comes to the fore. What a voice! Such ache. The attitude of Cruel World can be best be summed up from a lyric from “White Noise”: “So play a sad song, DJ, I just wanna sway tonight.” This album will have you swaying for days. Will I Listen Again?: Definitely.
Gia Margaret, Singing (Jagjaguwar): “Singing” may seem like a pedantic title for an album, but for Gia Margaret, singing isn’t something to be taken for granted. After her well-received 2018 debut There’s Always Glimmer, Margaret suffered a vocal injury that made her unable to sing. She didn’t give up on music, though, instead developing her instrumental approach on 2020’s Mia Gargaret and 2023’s Romantic Piano. But now, after eight long years, Margaret’s voice is back, and wow, what a return. The sound of Singing blends a more traditional piano-based singer-songwriter style with fluttering synths, ambient soundscapes, and trip-hop beats. Sonically, this album downright glistens, an effect amplified by Margaret’s voice, double-tracked and echo-y and whisper quiet yet warm and inviting. Though there are a mountain of guest stars, including David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), Amy Millan (Stars, Broken Social Scene), Kurt Vile, Sean Carey (Bon Iver), and Deb Talan (the Weepies), they’re all incorporated seamlessly into the album, none of them disturbing the careful balance of Margaret’s sound. Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth recorded and produced some of the album’s sessions, including album highlight “Good Friend,” using a kitchen sink approach to instrumentation that includes harp and sitar and record scratches and finger percussion and Gregorian chants that still sits comfortably alongside the rest of the album. What a record, easily one of the best of the year so far. Will I Listen Again?: Absolutely.
Kacey Musgraves, Middle of Nowhere (Lost Highway): When I first heard Kacey Musgraves’ 2024 album Deeper Well, I was gobsmacked by how good it was, and that impression never lessened with repeated listens either—the album landed at #7 on my best-of list that year. By comparison, her follow-up Middle of Nowhere is…fine, I guess? Musgraves leans much further toward modern country sounds than the ‘70s-singer-songwriterly Deeper Well, but like last time out she also leans heavily on clever lyrical conceits, like the Beatles-esque lovelorn lament “Dry Spell” or the pointed dig at country posers “Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy” (which also features a fine guitar solo courtesy of Billy Strings). There’s also a surprising Mexican influence running through a few songs, especially the accordion-heavy back-to-back duets with Miranda Lambert (“Horses and Divorces”) and Willie Nelson (“Uncertain, TX”).
But on the whole, there isn’t anything that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go the way, say, “The Architect” or “Cardinal” did last time out. It’s not bad, but I wouldn’t expect to see it on my list of favorites come the end of the year. Favorite songs: “Dry Spell,” the insistent acoustic guitar strummer “I Believe in Ghosts,” the sunny, folky “Rhinestoned” (way better than that tortured pun would imply), and the gentle and haunting “Coyote” (with Gregory Alan Isakov providing spectral backing vocals). Will I Listen Again?: Probably.
runo plum, Bloom Again EP (Winspear): Like Musgraves, runo plum’s debut full-length Patching was another one that wowed me from the beginning: I raved about it when it dropped last November and it quickly rocketed up my I’ll-write-it-up-some-day-I-swear favorite albums of 2025 list. Much like Patching, Bloom Again is a song cycle that builds from heartbreak to newfound love. But while Patching centered on plum’s quivering, echo-drenched voice and acoustic guitar strums, it also often augmented them with drums, electric guitars, or synths. Bloom Again has none of that extra adornment: it’s just plum’s voice, guitar, and bared soul.
“butterflies” starts the album out in lovelorn territory, plum examining the post-breakup wreckage of her life by declaring “Now I don’t think I know what love is anymore/ Maybe it’s something I wasn’t made for.” “salt and soap” continues in slow, sad, examining-the-wreckage territory. But there’s a shift to cautious optimism with “be gentle with me,” an acoustic take on a Patching track whose bare bones arrangement (some light overdubbed backing vocals are all that keep it from being a solo take) reveal the heart that was slightly obscured by the album’s more spacious atmospherics. “pink moon” is not, as I had initially hoped, a Nick Drake cover, but it’s damn near as effective, a confessional love song yearning for a lover’s smile, dimpled cheeks, and freckled shoulders. By “monarch,” plum is giddy with love (“Wildfire burning through rational thinking/ I’m giddy, I’m giggling, my feet up kicking”) though you’d never know it from the austere instrumentation, which still shuffles at a slow pace but at least adds a subtle piano mix. The title track wraps it all up with plum and her new paramour in a comfortable place, looking to the future.
Even more so than Patching, Bloom Again is a quiet, contemplative, lyric-forward set of songs, with stark instrumentation and repeated refrains rather than hooky, ear-grabbing choruses. That plainness might overstay its welcome at album-length, but at six tracks over 18 minutes, it works wonderfully. plum continues to blow me away, and I look forward to whatever she does next. Will I Listen Again?: Absolutely.
Broken Social Scene, Remember the Humans (Arts + Crafts): Broken Social Scene’s 2002 breakthrough You Forgot It in People is one of my favorite albums of the century so far, and while none of their subsequent albums have hit me quite so hard, ringleaders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning and their collective of, oh, let’s say 10+3 band members have churned out plenty of great songs along the way.
I was a little hesitant to get excited about Remember the Humans, both because the big single “Hey Amanda” didn’t do much for me and because the album title gave me bad Dexter series finale flashbacks. Fortunately, it’s a solid, adventurous indie rock album. It starts off strong with “Not Around Anymore,” its ornate arrangement of piling guitars and horns conjuring the old maximalist grandeur BSS has long been known for. In typically eclectic fashion, they explore David Byrne-ish ebullience on “The Call,” watery Cure guitars and bass with jabs of mellow sax on “The Briefest Kiss,” and even a little BSS-as-Springsteen on the pumping, radio-friendly “Paying for Your Love.” Considering the band’s liquid lineup, it’s cool to see two of their classic singers return to the fold: prodigal mid-to-late-Aughts singer Lisa Lobsinger helms the giddy pop crescendo “Relief” (maybe my favorite song on here), while O.G. singer Leslie Fiest’s throaty voice floats in on a distorted breeze on the ethereal “What Happens Now.” Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
idle threat, you’ll forget the sun (Tooth & Nail): Some day, my brain will finally remember the difference between Razor & Tie, the all-purpose hard rock record label that—oops!—hasn’t existed in eight years, and Tooth & Nail, the long-running Christian alt/metal record label. Today was not that day, which is how I ended up listening to a new album by Nashville-based Christian melodic hardcore quintet idle threat.
Fortunately, it’s not the kind of cheeseball Christian music that tries to maximize JPMs (Jesuses per minute)—if the pronouns in the lyrics weren’t all capitalized, you might have no inkling this is a Christian rock band. In fact, I hazard to say the phrasing of a lot of the lyrics on you’ll forget the sun is legit impressive, and it’s “times are tough, but have hope, things will get better” attitude is actually kind of refreshing. Musically, idle threat sounds like Thrice more than anybody—the guitars chug and churn and the clean vocals wail emotively. There are screamo elements too that are a little more grating, but that’s largely a personal taste limitation of yours truly. The album’s best songs are loaded up front, though the penultimate track “meet me there” is a mostly impressive slow burn ballad (until the screams kick in 75% of the way through, that is). If this is your genre, you also have guest spots from singers and screamers from similarly minded bands to look forward to, including Stephen Keech of Haste the Day (doing his best Chester Bennington on “in tandem”), Garrett Russell of Silent Planet, Aaron Stone of My Epic, and Christian Neilsen of Meadows. Not my genre, not my thing, but I don’t regret listening to it. Will I Listen Again?: Probably not.
Carla J. Easton, I Think That I Might Love You (Ernest Jenning Record Co.): Sometimes my “this album sounds like this plus this” comparisons get so tortured they’re too much even for me. As I listened to Carla J. Easton’s latest album, I kept wanting to compare it to the poppiest side of Belle & Sebastian meets the retro charms of the Bangles, but the vibe this album was specifically giving me was of the B&S song “Best Friend,” a track off an obscure 2018 EP featuring a guest vocal spot by…wait…Carla J. Easton? Well, that explains a lot!
Anyway! Easton is a Scottish indie pop mainstay far beyond her B&S guest spot, having fronted the beloved quartet TeenCanteen in the early 2010s, teamed up with Frightened Rabbit’s Simon Liddell in the pandemic side project Poster Paints, and since 2017 has played keys with Scottish indie pop royalty (and Kurt Cobain’s favorite band) the Vaselines. I Think That I Might Love You is her fifth solo album, featuring 11 tracks and 33 minutes of effervescent pop delivered by Easton in a breathy, coy coo. It’s also utterly charming: Belle & Sebastian meets the Bangles, what’s not to love? Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Jena Malone, Flowers for Men (There Was an Old Woman Records): Most people, myself included, hear “actor tries their hand at making music” and rightly set their expectations low. But not only is Jena Malone’s new album better than I expected, it might just be my favorite album of this week, an impressive feat considering the strong crop of contenders.
Malone has been acting for over 30 years, in roles ranging from Donnie Darko to Saved! to Sucker Punch to The Hunger Games. But alongside that career, she’s also been steadily releasing experimental electronica, both as Jena Malone & Her Bloodstains and as one half of the duo The Shoe. This was all news to me so I can only speak to Flowers for Men, Malone’s first major solo release. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this: a sparse electronic affair, with methodical beats that pulse slowly like a heartbeat that Malone sings over, her aching voice often drenched in vocoder until it sounds alien. This album sounds like a brokenhearted love letter from the far-flung future. I don’t know what else to say other than this album is a vibe, and I absolutely love it. As soon as it was over, I impulsively listened to it again, sizable queue of other new releases to listen to be damned. And again. And now I’m on round #4 with no end in sight. Will I Listen Again?: Absolutely. What a captivating sonic spell this album casts. | Jason Green
