Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay’s second album as LUMP is our recommendation of the week. It can be easy to dismiss these songs as scraps from whatever doesn’t find their way into Marling’s “main” albums. But those ideas, coupled with Lindsay’s marvellous synth work, come to have a life of their own here, and “Animal” has some of the best tracks we’ve heard from both musicians in a while.
“Excelsior!” is the first LP by NYC-based singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels. Produced by Sam Evian, the album features contributions by the likes of Courtney Marie Andrews, Hannah Cohen, A.O. Gerber or Lomelda’s Hannah Read. If you’ve followed us long enough, you know this means we’ve already sticked our seal of approval five times. Come for the copious namedropping, stay for some of the best lyrics of the first half of 2021.