This Week's Notable Releases: Olivia Rodrigo, Piebald, and Wiki

Here in New York, we are still reeling from the Wu-Tang Clan calling the Knicks’ historic second-half comeback on Wednesday night (but job’s not finished!), and we’re also coming off a busy weekend thanks to Governors Ball . Dave and I talk about those things and more on today’s episode of BV Weekly , on which we also talk a lot about the new Olivia Rodrigo album and its Robert Smith duet, which is also one of the albums I have a written review of below.

On top of the six I highlight in Notable Releases this week, Bill talks about La Sécurité, Horse Lords, CFCF, Jon Spencer, and Paycheque in Indie Basement . And this week’s honorable mentions include Genghis Tron, Fruit Bats, Khemmis, BIG|BRAVE, Tim Barry, Big D and the Kids Table, Sublime, Goose, Embrace (the UK band), Midland (the country band), Yes, Pussy Riot, Midge Ure, Jim Jones, Blxst, Jessie Reyez, Jesse Welles, Bebe Rexha, The Bobby Lees, Mary Halvorson & Ambrose Akinmusire, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Mon Laferte, Sister Gemini, Diles que no me maten, Alex Amen, Ruth Garbus, the Mekons dub remix album, the Light Once Lost (mem Initiate) EP, and Anysia Kym & Tony Seltzer’s Purity (Flips) .

Read on for my picks, and listen to the new episode of BV Weekly for more of this week’s new music and music news. What’s your favorite release of the week?

Olivia Rodrigo – You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love (Geffen) On her wisest, wittiest, most adventurous album yet, the pop trailblazer enters her ’80s new wave/synthpop/post-punk era, with help from The Cure’s Robert Smith himself.

Is Olivia Rodrigo the coolest pop star of her generation? She’s masterfully able to capture the Gen Z/Gen Alpha pop zeitgeist while also appealing to Gen X and older Millennial music nerds, and she’s now honed this across three consecutive albums, each more mature and adventurous than the last. On You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love , she’s fully in her ’80s new wave/synthpop/post-punk era, with echoes of Gary Numan (on late album highlight “Expectations” in particular), New Order, and The Cure, as well as an actual duet with The Cure’s Robert Smith on the remarkable “What’s Wrong With Me.” (One song that doesn’t sound like The Cure is the song that’s called “The Cure.” That one sounds like a Smashing Pumpkins ballad.) There’s also some ’90s indie and alt-rock (the Jim-E Stack co-produced “Purple” and the at-times-No-Doubt-esque “My Way”), as well as the Swiftian pop ballads that Olivia has tugged at heartstrings with since her first album. She’s not the only current pop star with a cool record collection, but few to none of her peers fuse the classic alt-rock canon and present-day pop stardom as seamlessly as Olivia and her longtime producer, indie rock veteran Dan Nigro, do. The 23-year-old’s lyrics are wiser and wittier than they’ve ever been, and the arrangements are some of her most complex. It makes for a progression from Sour and Guts that’s as logical as it is unpredictable.

Piebald – Tales for the Rages (Iodine) The cult indie/emo/post-hardcore/power pop heroes return with their first album in 19 years.

When you hear the words “first Piebald album in 19 years,” you probably either think “holy shit!” or “who?” with very little in between. Piebald are true cult heroes of the indie/emo/post-hardcore/power pop sphere who never got nearly as big as they deserved but who are intensely loved by those who have been exposed to their charms. And after nearly two decades without new music, they finally add a new chapter to their story with Tales for the Rages . It sounds about as “classic Piebald” as it gets, and I almost can’t believe how “classic Piebald” it does sound considering how long it had been without new music. If there was any rust to shake off, they must have done so behind closed doors, because this sounds like the same spirited, hungry band that gave us We Are the Only Friends We Have over two decades ago.

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Wiki – Ancient History (Wikset Enterprise) The rapper’s first multi-producer album in seven years is a lush, detailed, effortless-sounding example of New York rap at its finest.

Ever since Wiki released his majestic 2017 album No Mountains In Manhattan –an album that is both good enough and New York enough for a permanent place in the New York rap canon–he’s seemed more interested in putting out underground, small-scale projects than in repeating or topping the scope of NMIM . That’s still the case, but his new album Ancient History just might be his grandest-sounding album since. It’s his first with multiple producers since 2019’s OOFIE , after doing multiple single-producer projects throughout the first half of the 2020s, and it’s filled with the kind of lush production and detailed lyricism that New York has been known for since the original boom bap era. But if No Mountains In Manhattan felt like the kind of album that was built to bring New York rap to the world–an Illmatic , a Reasonable Doubt , etc– Ancient History is more like your favorite local joint; a Monkey Barz or a Return of the Mac . He’s not shooting for the stars; he’s staying down to earth and coming out with a record that sounds effortlessly great in the process.

YHWH Nailgun – Magazine (4AD) The experimental Brooklyn band’s first album for 4AD is just 11 minutes long, yet still feels complete.

YHWH Nailgun’s first album for 4AD has a total of 10 songs that clocks in at just 11 minutes, and yet it actually does feel like a full-length album. The band’s noisy, industrial-tinged experimental rock on this record is as intriguing as it was on last year’s debut album 45 Pounds and it’s perhaps even more unsettling.

Soft Curse – Liminal Ritual (self-released) Three members of State Faults fuse stoner doom, prog, and emo in their new band Soft Curse.

Following the sporadically-active screamo/post-hardcore band State Faults releasing one of their best albums yet with 2024’s Children of the Moon , three members of the band (vocalist/guitarist Jonny Andrew, guitarist Michael Weldon, and bassist Jef Overn) and non-State Faults drummer Dan Ford have released the debut album by a new band they formed called Soft Curse. Recorded live with frequent State Faults collaborator Jack Shirley, Liminal Ritual finds Soft Curse toeing the line between stoner doom, prog, classic metal, and melodic emo–if you can picture a cross between Circa Survive and Electric Wizard, you wouldn’t be far off. The band themselves call it “gloom metal.” Whatever you call it, it’s kickass stuff.

Kelsey Lu – So Help Me God (Dirty Hit) The long-awaited second album from the art pop singer, songwriter, and cellist is fueled by a range of emotions and sparkling beauty.

Art pop singer, songwriter, and cellist Kelsey Lu has finally released her first proper full-length album since her 2019 debut LP Blood , and it was worth the wait. Co-produced by Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman and featuring Sampha on the song “Better Than That,” So Help Me God gives you sparkling art pop, sweeping ballads, skittering synthpop, and a truly anthemic album closer called “Cutting Off the Head of a Ghost.” It’s fueled by a range of emotions, it’s “about facing the parts of myself I tried to move past, and realising they were still shaping everything,” Kelsey says, and it sounds absolutely gorgeous.

Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including La Sécurité, Horse Lords, CFCF, Jon Spencer , and Paycheque .

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases and Indie Basement archives.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out the latest episodes of our weekly music news podcast BV Weekly and the BV interviews podcast .

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_Originally reported by [Brooklyn Vegan](https://www.brooklynvegan.com/olivia-rodrigo-piebald-wiki-yhwh-nailgun-soft-curse-kelsey-lu-reviews/)._