New Music Friday: The best albums out Aug. 21
NPR Music - NPR
NPR Music's New Music Friday features a deep dive into standout albums released on August 21, spotlighting emerging and established artists with
Key takeaways
- Brennan Waddle's self-titled album blends grunge and country ('grungetry') with introspective lyrics shaped by her lived experiences, including sobriety and spiritual reflection.
Main topics
- New album releases on August 21
- Brennan Waddle's self-titled debut
Notable quotes
"It feels like a great introduction to her. If you're first hearing her on these songs, you're like, what is this?"
Conclusion
This week's New Music Friday celebrates two powerful new albums that blend emotional depth
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:00) This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the Trump administration is taking credit for a major drop in violent crime, murder, robbery, assault, all down in big cities and small towns. We're going to dig into the numbers and unpack whether this is really as simple as the president claims it is on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:35) Happy Friday, everyone, from NPR Music. It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Celia Gregory from WNXP in Nashville. Welcome back to the show, Celia. So good to be with you as always, Stephen. It is a pleasure. Now, I have it on good authority that you have just seen several gigantic stadium shows. What did you see? Speaker 6 (0:54) Yeah, Foo Fighters just played the last show that will be in the original Nissan Stadium in Nashville. It was Queens of the Stone Age. The band we lovingly refer to as Mannequin P on the radio here at Nashville Public. radio. And what an awesome triple bill. But yeah, it was really, it was a fun show and just like a hundred degrees though. So I felt very much my age and very much like it's August. Speaker 1 (1:15) You eventually reach a point, we did an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour recently, like, about concert etiquette and how, like, you know, people at the front row of giant shows are, like, defecating because they don't want to lose their spot. So charming. And so, you know, we did an episode about it, and we were talking about, like, what do you look for in a concert? And I was like, shade and bathrooms. Yeah, we've changed, you know. Speaker 6 (1:40) Such a spectacle. And you know what? To have rock and roll bands killing it like that and selling that many seats, it is kind of encouraging for me. Speaker 1 (1:47) Well, let's kick off the show with somebody who is not yet playing stadiums, but perhaps should be. There are several acts this week that have songs that seem perfectly engineered for stadiums. Brennan Waddle, her new album is self-titled. Speaker 6 (2:52) Steven, okay, Brennan Waddle is a local to me artist. So big excitement around this release for us. And it's not her first record, but it is her debut on the indie label Anti. And that's also home to her friend and fellow artist and collaborator on this record, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahachie. So very exciting for them to come together, not just on tour with Wilco, but now to have this record. for Speaker 1 (3:15) all of us to hear and enjoy. Yeah, and it feels like a star turn in a lot of ways. And, you know, we just came out of the song Scorpio, which has kind of big, waxahatchy energy, right? That mix of kind of big, crunchy Americana sounds, but with this wistful... twang to it. Katie Crutchfield, you know, kind of co-produces this record and you really hear her stamp on that song. Speaker 6 (3:39) Yeah, it's so exciting to hear and, you know, slight changes to the voice of Brennan Waddle, which has always been strong. I mean, she's really an acolyte of like Lucinda Williams. You can't hear this record and not hear Lucinda. And there's this like balance of darkness and lightness in her voice, you know, almost like gravel, but... Gargled with mint or something. Interesting. Speaker 6 (4:03) Whiskey and mint. There we go. And that's my flavor. So trust me when I say sing her live. I mean, it sounds just as raw, but also pitch perfect as it does on record. So must see when she tours your Speaker 1 (4:14) town. You mentioned Lucinda Williams. And I think in the back half of this record, especially, you really start to hear that Lucinda Williams vibe roll in, especially in some of the wearier, slower, folkier songs like High Priestess. where there's an atmospheric quality, but she's able to kind of get her voice. She's still pretty young. I mean, Brennan-Waddle has been around for a while now. She's been putting out music since 2012, but she manages to tap into some of the world weariness of a Lucinda Williams. Speaker 2 (4:45) Who I am with you is who I am. I'm coming on strong. It won't take too long or time. I keep trying to understand that you know love. Speaker 2 (5:17) But I can't Speaker 6 (5:22) Stephen, she sort of labeled this herself as grungetry, like grunge tree, like country and grunge together, because it's not a straightforward country record. You know, you've got really big guitars, like on Pretty Little Fantasy, with assistance from Snail Mail's Lindsay Jordan, too. Speaker 1 (5:37) That particular track, the guitars are ported out of an Alice in Chains record from 1993. This fusion of grunge and country, that's not just throwing cute terms around. Like, there is a grungy vibe to this record. Speaker 2 (5:51) I won't pretend, so make your mind up, with my hand up, my blue sky heart, and the curves blur. Speaker 1 (6:40) One thing that I like about this, because this record is clearly, you know, kind of being presented as a national breakthrough. You know, this, it's, as you said, it's her first album on Anti. She's getting a big national push around it. But she has been releasing music for a good long time, well over a decade. And I think that lived experience is coming through on this record. You know, she had a religious upbringing that she's been coming to terms with. She's now sober. She's taken up meditation. She's kind of done a lot of the youthful transgression that shapes so many musicians, but she's been around long enough and she's been trafficking in this sound for long enough that she's able to take the wisdom of those lived experiences And channel them into this record that still has this, like, here's who I am, the kind of record you might put, it sounds a little bit like the kind of record you might put out when you're 22, but she's not. Speaker 6 (7:37) I love that take because, yeah, it feels like a great introduction to her. If you're first hearing her on these songs, you're like, what is this? Even if it's been an evolution. What you mentioned about the lived experience and now... being sober, I think you can tell in like sort of the observational storytelling of like Fake Cowboy, right? That song is so Nashville, I can smell it in the American Legion, right? And the storytelling is so vivid because she's able to experience it as an observer and not be in the thick of it. Speaker 6 (8:29) And one more thing I was like loving to read in the liner notes is that during tracking she had to step out multiple times to cry and marvel at the journey of a song, you know, and where your imagination can take you. I think she's really owning her own. storytelling and songwriting and, of course, appreciating the champions she has. So it just feels like almost like a rebirth and a reemergence. And I hope everybody gets to hear this record now. Speaker 1 (8:53) Absolutely. That is Brennan Waddle. Her new album is self-titled. Next up, Squirrel Flower. Squirrel Flower's new album is called Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going. Speaker 1 (10:06) So Squirrel Flower is Ella Williams. She's a singer-songwriter from Chicago. She manages to marry this kind of observational, quiet, indie folk music with, kind of like Brennan Waddle, big, chunky, awesome guitars. And Amazing Guitars is a major recurring... theme in this episode. This record is very guitar forward. If you have not seen her Tiny Desk concert from 2024, where she closes with this song called Iowa 146 that like makes me blubber, she is a phenomenal talent. Speaker 1 (10:46) I'm so excited she's Speaker 6 (10:47) back. Oh, same. And also, shameless self-promo, we have her in our Sonic Cathedral. So two pieces of homework for the listener, the tiny desk and the Sonic Cathedral session from WNXP. I was, same thing, I'm just crying and trying not to have that picked up in the mic in that small space. Truly a stunning talent and hearing her deepen over the course of several records. Some of these songs remind me of some of her earlier stuff. She did go into a harder rock direction, her last record, but this really covers a lot of ground here too.