Best New Releases, June 13: King Gizzard, Mary Halvorson, and more
It’s another week of great new releases! New King Gizzard, plus a pair of outstanding new jazz records, some reissues of under-the-radar greats, and more. Check out this week’s best new releases.
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Phantom Island
Fifteen years after they formed, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are still dead-set on making all their records distinct from each other. (Fun fact: With 27 LPs and three EPs under their belt, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are close to matching the number of felony convictions on Trump’s “record”—pun very much intended). But, all joking terrifying aside, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s latest full-length, Phantom Island, finds the psych-rock band collaborating again with orchestra musicians. The difference is that, this time around, they do so with far more strength, confidence and coherence than last year’s Flight b741, an LP that now seems relatively risk-averse in retrospect. We’ll have more on this one soon. – Kurt Orzeck
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Mary Halvorson – About Ghosts
Prolific guitarist Mary Halvorson returns with her Amaryllis ensemble for a set of progressive, yet unpredictable and consistently thrilling avant garde jazz. About Ghosts is our Album of the Week, and in our review, Langdon Hickman said, “Its emotional enigmas come from charting space that we do not always have pre-existing emotional connection to; that freshness is the thrill.” -Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Graham Hunt – Timeless World Forever
The fifth album from Midwestern singer/songwriter Graham Hunt covers a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time, encapsulating a wide swath of sounds that includes fuzzy power pop, lo-fi indie, the drum-machine bedroom pop of artists such as Eels or Folk Implosion, and swirling moments of psychedelia like the mesmerizing “CRC.” It’s a remarkable set of songs that are overflowing with pop hooks and scruffy charm, and don’t be surprised if you end up spinning Timeless World Forever all summer. Also, make sure to read about the influences that went into Graham Hunt’s new album. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Brandee Younger – Gadabout Season
Somewhere between word-of-the-day emails, facing personal challenges, and finding transcendence in an instrument she calls “life-changing”—the harp that belonged to Alice Coltrane—Brandee Younger’s third album for Impulse!, Gadabout Season, meanders through an “Afrofuturist sonic palette,” a description from bassist-producer Rashaan Carter, to strike a balance between the old-school hip-hop and R&B she’s known for fusing and stretching with jazz ideas and the rich church background she grew up with. Perhaps I’m just reflecting on the passing of Sly Stone, but Younger’s ever-growing American songbook, full of inspiration from her peers and legacy ancestors, makes Gadabout Season an open-book, accessible piece of modern jazz. – John-Paul Shiver
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)
Subsonic Eye – Singapore Dreaming
Over the past decade, Singapore’s Subsonic Eye have been building up a catalog of gorgeously dreamy jangle pop with big hooks and infectious choruses. Their fifth album, Singapore Dreaming, is no different in that regard, rife with shimmering layers of guitars and sparkling pop melodies. At times they rocket into vintage shoegaze sounds reminiscent of the Lilys on “My iPhone Screen,” while “Situations” has a touch of driving post-punk energy. And if I didn’t emphasize it enough before, those guitars really do sound spectacular. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
WPTR – Redness and Swelling at the Injection Site
There’s really only one reason a musician in an active band decides to put out a solo album on the side: The musician wants their captive audience to learn more about who they really are. Peter Gill—he of Philadelphia indie-rock bands 2nd Grade and Hour—passes with flying colors in that respect on Redness and Swelling at the Injection Site. The debut record he’s issuing as WPTR contains 18 short musical vignettes documenting Gill’s observations of nature, animals and human behavior. The bedroom recordings are so fragile and quiet that they make Daniel Johnston’s material sound hi-fi in comparison. It’s a thing of beauty, how Gill conveys his musings so delicately that, by the end of the 27-minute record, the listener inevitably views their surroundings with sensitivity as well. Three cheers for osmosis—oh, and Gill’s tender touch too. – Kurt Orzeck
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Cyrus Pireh – Thank You, Guitar
Those of you pining for the most wildly inventive avant guitar din out there need look no further than what’s on Palilalia, the label run by chief ax lifer, Bill Orcutt. From Chuck Roth, Kris Gruda, Shane Parish, Wendy Eisenberg and Ava Mendoza (the latter three part of Orcutt’s Guitar Quartet), there’s just no shortage of the art of the riff. Tack on Cyrus Pireh to that imposing list. On the fittingly titled Thank You, Guitar, Cyrus’ panoramic sonic vistas, chock full of dizzying loops, mangled effects, fingerpicking beauty and dissonant honks and blown-out skronk, will cause both jaws to drop in awe and ears and minds to spontaneously combust. Pireh not only knows his way around the fretboard but his titles are his bag too, too. He named his 2022 record Still Here, Still Ripping (he certainty is) and one of the pieces on this newest slab is titled “Infinite Shred.” There might not be a more apt descriptor when it comes to Thank You, Guitar than that. – Brad Cohan
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Madlib – WLIB AM: King of the Wigflip
It’s been a heavy week. We’re making space for the passing of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, who, in their time, took control of the studio and made it their lab, and by both accounts, changed the modern music landscape: blessings and respect. As Questlove eloquently put it: “Sly created the alphabet that we are still using to express music. He was the first to take advantage of being a bedroom musician, multi-track recording, the wah-wah, the drum machine, and doing everything by himself. We praise Stevie Wonder and Prince for these things, but Sly was the prototype. He also single-handedly revived hip-hop with all of the samples that came from him.”
Madlib’s WLIB AM: King of the Wigflip, a mixtape that sets many wheels in motion (go see Mndsgn’s Snaxx for example), now in 2025, is that loving trip back in time where we hear younger Talib Kweli rap faster but still not care about radio play. On “The Plan PT1,” Georgia Anne Muldrow gives us a taste of the sweet R&B, soul, hip-hop, and jazz fusion she’d make a full career in 15 years later. That low-slung funk bomb “YoYo Affair Pt. 1 & 2” from Frezna, that DJs all over would miss the entry and exit cues, but the dancefloor was forgiving because the track was essential like fog in the Bay Area.
The mixtape in modern times has become that private collection, a lab of ideas that a producer/DJ would put together to align ideas or decipher the differences, but in most cases, it’s all frequency connected. WLIB AM: King of the Wigflip (which may still be a quiet shoutout to WLIB in New York) recalls a pre-Spotify era where DJs could focus on putting unknowns on and be part of one specific “wigout.” Shouts to BBE for bringing this frequency back. It’s vital. – John-Paul Shiver
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Locrian: The Crystal World (15th Anniversary Reissue)
The wide sonic palette that Chicago trio Locrian has surveyed over its two-plus decade arc has revealed a group inherently challenging to pin down. On their noisy quest, the boundless Locrian have left nary a stone unturned as they’ve deconstructed black metal, electronic and ambient music, drone, harsh noise and post-metal, ultimately piecing together the shards then assembling them into their own distinct vision. No more is this confluence of styles crystallized in full but on their 2010 touchstone, The Crystal World. The blackened and bleak probings that this then-newly-minted power trio (original members André Foisy and Terence Hannum welcomed drummer Steven Hess into the fray) blasted out, is, arguably, Locrian’s magnum opus and crucial signpost in the post-metal and experimental music canon. This fifteenth anniversary edition (released via the Utech label) has been afforded the remastered treatment, further intensifying and enhancing its oceanic waves of heady drone, pummeling drums and ghostly chants (courtesy of Erica Burgner-Hannum). The Crystal World is a ceremonial cosmic odyssey of hallucinatory and ear-splitting magnitude and this special 15th anniversary reissue will hopefully put new light on how ahead of the curve Locrian were–and remain. – Brad Cohan
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
