Stream of the Crop: 10 New Albums for Heavy Rotation 3/4

When it comes to writing about the darker side of relationships, there are few songwriters more adept than Cursive and The Good Life frontman Tim Kasher, and his third solo album No Resolution is no exception. The album juxtaposes Kasher's more traditional-sounding compositions with orchestral interludes, all of which will be featured in his directorial debut movie of the same name, which will come out later in 2017. However, the album doesn't need visual imagery to craft a moving story that centers around an engaged couple's restlessness surrounding a deteriorating relationship, and as it usually occurs in real life, there is no resolution.

—Jonah Bayer, Tim Kasher Is Anxious About the Children He Doesn't Have

The project sees Bruner Jr. leading his band of brothers—that is, Stephen, and younger brother Jameel, who records as Kintaro and also played with The Internet—across its 11 tracks, while also taking to the mic as a vocalist. The album's pedigree of contributors is almost as impressive as Bruner Jr.'s own contributions: Alongside Thundercat and Kintaro, features include Mac Miller, the late George Duke, and Washington, during whose Epic sessions  Triumph was made. The result is an intricate blend of jazz, prog, rap, soul, and R&B.

—Will Schube, Ronald Bruner Jr.'s Triumph

It's easy to forget Khalid is still three years away from having his first legal drink. He's dressed head to toe in Versace, a sign of his early success, but is unwaveringly demure in his manner. Articulate and well-traveled, he carries himself with certainty and poise, and he is relentlessly polite. Often throughout our conversations I have to remind myself of his age: Only 14 when Frank Ocean's Channel Orange was released, he is part of a generation who grew up witnessing a redefinition of black masculinity. Khalid's hunger for emotional transparency and vulnerability has its roots in this music, and he even pays tribute with an intoxicating cover of Ocean's "Lost."

—Eddie Cepeda, IRL Paso: Texas Singer Khalid Is Making Music to Connect To

Last Place is a return to the comforting idiosyncrasies we have always loved about Grandaddy. Like all of their albums, Lytle's songs carefully balance the beautiful with the bizarre, returning to the band's endearing signatures—the quirky electronic squibs, the chunky, fuzzed out power chords, the wistful piano riffs, and a plethora of hooks delivered by Lytle's unmistakably vulnerable falsetto—that thrive with a newfound blitheness that came from a pressure-free environment back home in Modesto. Not many reunions, comebacks, whatever you want to call this, result in an album this good.

—Cam Lindsay, The Return of Grandaddy: Still Making Music That's Pretty and Uncomfortable

Two years ago, Rolling Stone Country named Caroline Spence an artist to know ahead of her debut album Somehow. It was a beautiful piece of folk that set the bar high for any of her future endeavors of hers. Luckily, her sophomore release Spades & Roses pole vaults over that bar with ease. Spades & Roses mixes haunting gothic bluegrass with themes of Americana to create a piece of work that will make you fall in love with the genre again.

—Annalise Domenighini, Hear Caroline Spence's Sophomore Album 'Spades & Roses' Now

For anyone who has ever scraped together the change they keep in a mug beside their bed to do nothing more than marinate in the amber-soaked settee of their local pub, the nuance of how it feels to have no money (and no future) is evident in Sleaford Mods back catalogue, whatever your age[…] Three years and several albums and EPs later, Williamson has – in his own words – "got money now". That's not to say having money has changed the band, though. Far from it, in fact. So what's English Tapas about, then? At its root, it's about the environment that continues to inform the work of Sleaford Mods. Perhaps more so though – and to give it some more nuance than that – English Tapas documents a part of society that's rarely discussed through music; a loose discussion, of sorts, of what happens when the spirit of Sleaford Mods' world approaches the latter end of its spluttering existence, bad habits and demons and circumstantial situations still intact.

—Ryan Bassil, Sleaford Mods and the Ballad of Britain's Lost Rave Generation

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