The Most Important Releases from the World of Music This Month
By Camillo Vegezzi and Lorenzo VillaThis month, the music world lost one of its greatest icons. Brian Wilson elevated pop music to such extraordinary heights that no one has ever truly matched him—yet everyone has benefited from the path he paved.
And while we mourn his passing, we remember that music lingers long after the last note. These sounds remain with us: grief and protest, memory and rebirth. From submerged cities to spoken-word revolutions, from reissued ghosts to frequencies that won’t fade, this month’s picks resonate deeper.
And as always, you can keep listening with our companion playlists on Spotify and Tidal.
New Album
Mourning [a] BLKstar – Flowers for the Living
“Dead people receive more flowers than the living because regret is stronger than gratitude”: this haunting line is the seed from which Flowers for the Living bloomed – the eighth album by Mourning [A] BLKstar, the poetic-musical collective born in Cleveland in 2015. Ten years in, and the group remains true to what they’ve always done best: surprise, transform and inspire. Flowers for the Living is a layered and emotionally dense record, yet instantly gripping. Genres blur effortlessly – jazz, hip-hop, soul, a constant presence of horns that linger even after the track ends, and the sharp-edged avant-poetry of their lyrics. Voices intertwine, shifting and reemerging across tracks, forming a collective, orchestrated and deeply human sound – at once committed and playful, desperate and urgent. As in the group’s founding intentions, this work too is guided by Black traditional roots and their trajectories into the present and the future – musically, politically and socially. More than ever – even more than on Reckoning (2018) or The Cycle (2020) – the album speaks of politics: police violence (in the track Lil Bobby Hutton, dedicated to Robert Hutton, the Black Panther member killed in 1968, at the age of seventeen, by the Oakland police), anti-migrant policies and the need for solidarity in the face of it all. Each track pulses with a sense of community, of resistance, of remembering what and who we’re fighting for. Maybe to remind us, in fact, that living matters more than regret.
Listen/Buy on Bandcamp.
Soundtrack
Atlantide – Original Soundtrack
Atlantis is the sunken city – vanished, hidden and reimagined in countless versions from antiquity to today. In Atlantide, the 2021 film by Yuri Ancarani – one of Italy’s most imaginative and compelling contemporary filmmakers, moving freely between shorts, video art and hybrid documentaries – Atlantis becomes Venice. Or rather, not the Venice we know: not the picture-perfect lagoon city on tourist postcards, but its invisible edges. The forgotten islands of Sant’Erasmo and San Francesco del Deserto, where no gondolas glide and tourists never set foot. Instead: souped-up speedboats, trap music, dead-end jobs and endless summer days for local teens.
Five years after its release, the film’s soundtrack – once a CD-only limited edition – is finally streaming. And it’s a trip. A soundscape that elevates the film’s silences and visual meditations, but stands powerfully on its own too, drawing the listener in with a hypnotic blend of elements: trap beats crafted by Sick Luke, Italy’s cult hero of mainstream trap; cutting-edge electronica from Warp Records’ Lorenzo Senni, whom we introduced you to last month, teamed up with producer Francesco Fantini; and a weave of ambient sounds and dialogues pulled directly from the film. It’s immersive, dark and trippy – the soundtrack to a submerged Venice that feels hauntingly real. Straight bass, psychedelic techno and trap. Neon lights and disorientation. Who knew the lost city had this kind of sound?
Single Track
Drugdealer + Weyes Blood – Real Thing
The ’70s are all there – synths, straight-ahead drums, a bassline leaning into funk and soaring sax solos. You can hear the entire decade packed into Real Thing, the new collaboration between Drugdealer and Weyes Blood. Natalie Mering’s sensual, melancholic voice fits seamlessly into the warm, vintage production by Michael Collins (aka Drugdealer) and Max Baby, giving life to a ’70s collage that’s just the right amount of kitsch – and irresistibly catchy. This isn’t the first time the two have worked together on a track: “Suddenly” and “The End of Comedy” in 2016, and “Honey” in 2019, are all proof of a collaboration that just works.
Listen on Bandcamp.
Reissue
Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition)
There are few albums that lodge themselves in your memory and shift the way you perceive reality. Even fewer manage to span the entire spectrum of emotion – so deeply that you sometimes have to stop listening, because the toll of emotion feels too much. Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens might be the only record that does all of this without ever slipping into cliché or feeling overwrought. Ten years ago, the Detroit-based songwriter transformed how anyone who encountered his fragile masterpiece would perceive grief and death. A decade later, the 10th Anniversary Edition somehow adds even more warmth and intimacy through its raw, unadorned demos – stripped of polish, but full of honesty and purity. The demo of Should Have Known Better is disarmingly simple: delicate fingerpicking and soft horns gently carry the weight of regret. The ghostly Fourth of July transforms into a nearly 14-minute odyssey, where the haunting, prophetic line “we’re all gonna die” slowly dissolves into a dreamlike instrumental voyage.
It would be reasonable to assume that it’s impossible to improve a masterpiece, but Sufjan Stevens has done it.
Listen on Bandcamp.
Video
Talking Heads, Psycho Killer
Fifty years ago, a young man of Scottish descent decided to form one of the most eclectic and musically avant-garde bands of all time: the Talking Heads. And it’s been 48 years since David Byrne, that same young man, sang in French, tinged with a New York accent: “Réalizant mon espoir / Je me lance vers la gloire, OK”, the iconic lines of a generational anthem. Until June 5, Psycho Killer had never had an official music video. Now it does. Directed by Mike Mills – not the R.E.M. bassist, but the filmmaker behind 20th Century Women and videos for The National, Sonic Youth, Air and Pulp – it stars Saoirse Ronan as an office worker who spirals into madness and then pulls herself back together. She dances, screams, writhes, laughs, argues and cries her way through the monotony of her daily routine. The band called the video “not literal, creepy, bloody, physically violent or obvious”, adding that it “makes the song better”.
Just five days after the video dropped, Byrne seized the moment to release a brand-new single from his upcoming album Who is the Sky, set to arrive on September 5. The track, Everybody Laughs, opens with a delicate acoustic guitar that slowly dissolves into a lush chamber arrangement by members of New York’s Ghost Train Orchestra. A steady four-on-the-floor kick drum pulses beneath it all, making you want to dance even as Byrne’s unmistakable voice delivers one of his signature lyrical tightropes. It’s all so unmistakably Byrne.
Watch and listen on Youtube – Bandcamp.
Radio
Radio AlHara
For once, we’re stepping out of time – offering a recommendation untied to deadlines or release cycles. Out of time only in that sense, though. Because when it comes to music, few things feel more relevant, more urgent and more in tune with the present than Radio Alhara. Founded in 2020, Radio AlHara is an online radio station broadcasting musical marathons, playlists and shows driven by a clear thread: anti-colonial, cultural and digital resistance. Based between Bethlehem and Ramallah, and hosted on the Wonder Cabinet web platform, the station was born from the vision of Yazan Khalili and his friends/colleagues as a “global neighborhood radio”. The website is stripped down to a minimalist, open chat; the programming spans genres and geographies, featuring selections from artists, collectives and labels across the world. Over the past few years, Radio AlHara has become a sonic platform for solidarity – amplifying movements and raising funds for some of the most critical moments of our time: from Black Lives Matter to the Beirut port explosion, from the Syrian-Turkish earthquake to, of course, the ongoing occupation in Palestine. An open space we deeply recommend – something to have playing in the background which welcomes you to feel connected, part of something that matters. Because we are not alone, even when the world feels overwhelming.
Listen on Radio Alhara.
Camillo Vegezzi is a freelance music writer based in Milan. He has collaborated with various music magazines and is a contributor to the cultural section of Il Manifesto. Read more of Camillo’s writing on Something Curated here.
Lorenzo Villa is a writer and editor based in Milan. He writes about lifestyle for Harper’s Bazaar Italia and collaborates with the literary magazine Galápagos. Read more of Lorenzo’s writing on Something Curated here.
Header image: Courtesy of David Byrne Who Is the Sky.