Lots of great new albums are dropping today to get us rockin’ through the weekend! All of these albums and more are now streaming on Apple Music and Spotify.

Reborn – Kavinsky

Per NME:

‘Reborn’, Kavinsky’s first record in nearly nine years, carries the air of a more relaxed creator – he was blatant enough to tell us this record is, quite literally, about “driving the car more slowly”. But what Kavinsky considers the scenic route still leaves deep tyre marks: ‘Trigger’ and ‘Renegade’ are as ambitious and futuristic as anything he’s ever done. In fact, the album’s lead single, ‘Zenith’, was imagined as a sequel to ‘Nightcall’ – proof that the past looms large in the rear-view mirror.

Palomino – Miranda Lambert

Per Pitchfork:

In many ways Palomino springs directly from The Marfa Tapes, Lambert’s winning 2021 writers round with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall, full of deeply-felt storytelling and boozy punchlines. Palomino reimagines some of Marfa’s highlights and re-engages Randall, a former Emmylou Harris sideman, as co-producer and co-writer alongside Lambert’s longtime MVPs, Luke Dick and Natalie Hemby. Unlike the dusky Nebraska sound and campfire harmonies of The Marfa Tapes, Palomino is not tonally coherent. But neither was 2016’s The Weight of These Wings, Lambert’s most ambitious display to date, and that record’s unleashed spirit returns on Palomino, demonstrating the tensile strength of Lambert’s craft in all sorts of settings.

Alpha Games – Bloc Party

Per Spin:

Alpha Games is a reconfiguration of sorts. It’s not imitating the earlier works in Bloc Party’s catalog so much as it is building from them. Produced by Adam Greenspan and Nick Launay (IDLES, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nick Cave), their latest creation is an exceptional addition to their arsenal. The pounding reverberation on the opening “Day Drinker” causes lead vocalist Kele Okereke to work in harmony with it and not against it. The singer is as steadfast and melodic as ever. He shares his flaws with stark self-awareness: “[Little bro] says he knows when I’ve been drinking/He says he knows when I am lost.”

Portals – Kirk Hammett

Per Louder:

Refreshingly, none of the tracks sound like unused Metallica demos, nor do they bleed together in a brain- melting patchwork of sweep picking and speed runs. Instead, Portals showcases the compositional and technical strengths of one of heavy metal’s most influential and visionary guitarists.