It’s Friday

And one of the most buzzed-about rock debuts of the year is here courtesy 25-year-old NY-to-LA transplant Sabrina Teitelbaum, aka BLONDSHELL, who grew up on her father’s classic rock collection, discovered indie rock in middle school and experienced a modicum of online fame, pre-pandemic, as an electro-leaning pop singer. But she didn't find herself, she said, until she got sober and started gravitating toward “a bunch of songs that... that had women being enraged.” “Look what you did / You'll make a killer of a Jewish girl,” she sings on one of several pre-release singles from her self-titled album, out today. The Guardian’s Laura Snapes hears “Pixies-style loud-quiet-loud blast, Nirvana's dank guitar tone, Liz Phair's feckless delight,” and says Teitelbaum is on the leading edge of a “generation of therapised young songwriters.” And less anyone should miss the ‘90s rock streaming through her veins, there’s this non-album Cranberries cover...

On the deceptively catchy WITH A HAMMER, Korean American singer/songwriter/producer YAEJI is processing anger, too, through “dance music for drifting home from the club on deserted pavements," NME's El Hunt writes, with the help of grunge guitars here, deadpan rap verses there and a “Peter and the Wolf-style woodwind that reoccurs throughout." Or, as Yaeji describes it, “I'm just exploring weird songwriting that is peripheral to dance music”... Daft Punk’s THOMAS BANGALTER takes off his helmet and joins the ranks of dance producers going symphonic on MYTHOLOGIES, a 23-movement ballet score recorded with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine. “To write a chord or a melody and have the performers—human beings—play it and have this instant emotional quality to it, is really quite exhilarating,” Bangalter tells the NY Times. “It’s not the fight you have against machines”...

After two acclaimed albums on his own Golden Child label, Canadian indie R&B standard-bearer DANIEL CAESAR takes his “soothing blend of woozy guitar and hypnotic harmonies” to major-label Republic for album number three, NEVER ENOUGH. “I was finding it hard,” he tells Billboard, “to be a record exec and an artist at the same time”... Jazz harpist/composer BRANDEE YOUNGER revives a number of pieces, some of them previously unrecorded, by one of her heroes, pioneering jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, on BRAND NEW DAY. Her collaborators include drummer/producer Makaya McCraven, singer Mumu Fresh and hip-hop producer (and longtime Ashby fan) Pete Rock...

Also out this BANDCAMP Friday: new music from Rae Sremmurd, Ruston Kelly, Wednesday, Ellie Goulding, Jermaine Dupri & Curren$y (released Wednesday), Desire Marea, Susanna Hoffs, Jana Horn, Daughter, Heather Woods Broderick, Tim Hecker, Nathan Fake, μ-Ziq, Lights, Mudhoney, Facs, Jake Worthington, Ian Munsick, Robbie Fulks, Walter Smith, Michael Sarian & Matthew Putman, NF, Madlib x Mayhem Lauren x DJ Muggs, Niontay, Fly Anakin, La Marisoul & Los Texmaniacs, Calvin Johnson, Worriers, North Americans, Devon Gilfillian, Billie Marten, Ben Gregory, Overcoats, Hayden and Nico Paulo.

Screen Time

The Ringer’s JASON ISBELL documentary, RUNNING WITH OUR EYES CLOSED, premieres today on HBO. It’s centered on the making of his 2020 album, REUNIONS... Netflix has the LEWIS CAPALDI doc HOW I’M FEELING NOW, which chronicles the Scottish pop star’s struggles with deep anxiety and his Tourette’s syndrome diagnosis. Capaldi calls it “terrifying”... A GRAMMY SALUTE TO THE BEACH BOYS, taped in February with BRANDI CARLILE, WEEZER, ST. VINCENT and many more, airs Sunday night on CBS... The GREASE prequel series RISE OF THE PINK LADIES, with songs by JUSTIN TRANTER, has dropped on Paramount+.

Etc Etc Etc

Yes, the top story in today's mix, MICHAEL HALL’s magazine-length attempt to piece together the life and work of ROBERT MCCORMICK, who spent much of *his* life trying to piece together the life and work of the mysterious blues pioneer ROBERT JOHNSON, is the same story that was at the top of the Wednesday’s mix. It’s an amazing, beautiful, surprising, troubling and complicated story, with a deep river of American music culture running through it. An astounding piece of music journalism... TONY SCHERMAN reviews McCormick’s decades-in-the-making Johnson book, BIOGRAPHY OF A PHANTOM, which was released this week, eight years after his death, with significant and not uncontroversial revisions... Singer/songwriter MAGGIE ROGERS is going after bots and ticket fees in a decidedly old-fashioned, analog way. Tickets for her North American summer tour will be available for one day, today, at local box offices, with no online sales. Rogers herself will be in the booth at the MUSIC HALL OF WILLIAMSBURG, in Brooklyn, where tickets for her show at FOREST HILLS STADIUM will be available... The escalating (and extraordinary) price of a "Missing" STING sample... Responding to “concerns from some members of the music community,” the RECORDING ACADEMY has added two weeks to the 11-month eligibility period it announced a month ago for next year’s GRAMMYS. The Grammy eligibility year will now end Sept. 15... Ear worms.

Rest in Peace

Luscious Jackson multi-instrumentalist and singer VIVIAN TRIMBLE. She was also a member of Kostars and Dusty Trails.