10 New Albums to Stream Now: The Beatles, Lil Peep and More Editors’ Picks

EDITORS’ PICK: The Beatles, White Album: Super Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition
“There’s a moment on the Beatles’ new ‘Super Deluxe’ edition of the White Album that sums up all the glories of their 1968 masterpiece,” writes Rob Sheffield. “And weirdly, that moment is ‘Good Night.’ There’s always been something mysterious about ‘Good Night’ — the album’s orchestral finale. It’s a tender ballad from John, one he always meant for Ringo Starr to sing, without ever explaining to Ringo (or anyone else) why. Many fans dismissed it as a coy joke. But it nearly steals the show on the new box set, in a previously unheard outtake where all four Beatles sing it together. John, Paul, George and Ringo harmonize the ‘good night, sleep tight’ refrain, over John’s folkie finger-picking. It’s hard to believe this great version sat in the vaults all these years, gathering dust. But after you hear John play ‘Good Night’ on guitar, the song is no joke at all — it feels instead like a cry from the heart, cleverly disguised, waiting for the world to notice 50 years later.”
Read Our Feature: The Beatles’ New White Album: Why ‘Good Night’ Is a Gloriously Weird Revelation

Lil Peep, Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 2
Lil Peep’s first posthumous full-length releases is a requiem for who Gustav “Gus” Elijah Åhr was — and an examination of the pop star he could have been. Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 2 is less a rap album and more a pastiche of 2000s pop punk and emo. (Think Biggie’s Life After Death, if he grew up worshipping Good Charlotte and My Chemical Romance.) The ultimate reward and tragedy of COWYS, Pt. 2 is how it positions a nascent star singing about his unknown fate, even as he was artistically coming into his own. Peep’s various collaborators manage to lionize the young figure’s past and growing influence, while sketching a compelling vision of what a more focused, pop sheen could do for the SoundCloud rapper growing out of the distinction. Death, mainly the one Peep envisioned for himself, is the thematic center of the album; the Long Beach rapper obsessively documented his thoughts about passing, like specters he couldn’t escape. Lyrics like “I was dying and nobody was there,” or “If I try suicide, would you stop me?” are mere snapshots of Peep’s larger frame of mind, mired in a melancholy that carries well into his afterlife. Charles Holmes
Read Our Review: On the Posthumous Hate Me, Lil Peep Refined His Instinct for Hits

Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers, Bought to Rot
The Against Me! frontwoman’s new LP with her side project Devouring Mothers is full of bare-knuckled confessionals, hard-hitting and often hilarious, fusing punk, country and straight-ahead bar-band rock into with the tossed off zeal of vintage Replacements. There’s a freakout in an Amsterdam hotel room, a passionate plea from inside a bizarre love triangle and a tongue-in-cheek, junky-tonk screed against Chicago, where Grace currently lives (“learn how to make a pizza you fucking jack-offs”). Grace says she was influenced by fellow Florida native Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever while working on the LP; her emo-punk slow dance shout-along “Born In Black” suggests the spat-on goth-club kids Petty poked fun at in “Zombie Zoo” getting to holler back, screaming into their shared abyss, letting it reflect their angst in all its gossamer glory. Jon Dolan

Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore, Ghost Forests
Avant-garde music can also be tender and inviting – think Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Speigel, Laurie Anderson, Robert Wyatt, John Fahey. This duo project feels rooted in that notion. Lattimore’s already made one of the year’s best LPs, the deliciously hypnotic Hundreds of Days, an all-instrumental set built around her Lyon and Healy concert harp. Baird is a dreamy folk singer and fingerstyle guitarist with a long collaborative resume (Kurt Vile, Bonnie Prince Billy, Espers, Heron Oblivion, etc.).This mini-LP amplifies the best in each artist. It’s great to hear Lattimore’s elegant tunefulness carried by Baird’s voice — a perfect match, ethereal but earthy. And Lattimore brings out Baird’s experimental side: “Between Two Worlds” is a deep space jam of searching electric guitar lines, organ drones, and harp pointillism that recalls Jerry Garcia’s more far-out solo efforts. It’s a perfectly-balanced 36 minutes, and hopefully a foreshadow of more to come. Will Hermes

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland: Deluxe Edition
The third in Jimi Hendrix’s series of consecutive milestones, Electric Ladyland still explodes with electric energy. It’s home to the definitive “All Along the Watchtower” (the arrangement Dylan latched onto a few years after he heard this) as well as possibly the most mimicked guitar lick in Hendrix’s catalogue, the chicken-scratch wah-wah intro to “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” — and there are 14 other individual, unforgettable masterpieces before you even get to those two. A new, 50th anniversary box set chronicles Hendrix’s headspace leading up to this chef-d’oeuvre with private demos, a jaw-dropping live performance by the Experience at the Hollywood Bowl, a documentary about the LP and a 5.1 surround sound mix of the record, which is also remastered in its original form, by engineer Eddie Kramer. With detailed liner notes and reproductions of Hendrix’s handwritten lyrics and requests of his record labels (such as using the Linda McCartney pic now on the cover, as opposed to the 19 nude women the U.K. put on the front of it), it the closest representation Hendrix could have hoped for with his self-appointed “director” title, and then some. Kory Grow

Little Dragon, Lover Chanting EP
Though dance music has long played a part in the sound of this quirky Swedish electro-pop quartet, Lover Chanting finds them placing it front and center. The steady synth-funk pulse of “Timothy” fades and reappears as a whistling melody floats around; and Yukimi Nagano sings a lyric about “Once on a cover of a magazine/Why does everyone want to be your friend?” that could probably apply to her band’s steady fame over the past decade. “In My House” digs a deep, ruddy South African house-inspired beat that, mid-song, opens up like flower with a flickering highlife guitar rhythm. The lead single, “Lover Chanting,” is an unabashed tribute to club life. Mosi Reeves

Liela Moss, My Name Is Safe In Your Mouth
As lead singer of the blues-gloom ensemble The Duke Spirit, this London-based belter commands stormy rock anthems. On her first album, she shrouds herself in mood with the help of strings, gauzy textures and otherworldly choirs; the sinewy “Manipura” channels swirling psych-pop and the ritual-centered bits of The Wicker Man, while “Into the Flesh” hangs suspended in the air, Moss commanding a choir to assist her conjuring of a spirit. Moss has one of rock’s great (if underappreciated) voices, but My Name Is Safe In Your Mouth shows how far it can carry when it isn’t bounded by the guitar-drums-bass-vox ideal. Maura Johnston

David S. Ware Trio, The Balance (Vision Festival XV +)
Kamasi Washington was hardly the first saxophonist to revive the so-called spiritual-jazz aesthetic of John Coltrane and his key successors like Pharoah Sanders. As early as the late Seventies, the late David S. Ware was combining blissful melodicism with mighty fervor in a way that pointed directly back to those influences. From the early Nineties through 2007 Ware led a celebrated quartet that garnered him wide acclaim — Rolling’s Stone‘s David Fricke called him a “radiantly confident player” in a review of the group’s 1995 album Cryptology— and even a brief major-label deal. This newly released live set from the 2010 installment of annual NYC free-iazz summit the Vision Festival documents a relatively short-lived but highly potent trio with bassist William Parker and drummer Warren Smith (the latter an alum of Van Morrison’s famed Astral Weeks session), formed after the quartet dissolved. While the earlier band performed Ware’s dramatic themes and the occasional standard, this lineup favored pure improvisation. The Balance is an excellent showcase for the saxist’s art at its most elemental: On this continuous three-part performance, he moves between deep sustained tones, extended through circular breathing, and squalling runs that retain a devotional focus even when they reach peak turbulence. Smith’s rumbling toms and dancing cymbal-bell work, and Parker’s rich, resonant undercurrent buoy the leader with a fierce yet articulate flow. A series of studio-outtake bonus tracks, which the trio recorded about six months earlier, expand the instrumental palette — Ware performs on soprano-sax variant the saxello in addition to tenor and Smith adds in tympani and auxiliary percussion — but achieve a similar brand of meditative communion. Hank Shteamer 

Rhett Miller, The Messenger
Like his prior agent-noun solo LPs (The Instigator, The Dreamer, The Believer, The Traveler), The Messenger highlights Miller’s writing uncoupled from the speeding locomotive of the ‘97s, and the vibe this time is especially reflective. “I Used To Write In Notebooks” is a Beatle-esque chronicle of time’s passage via technology and personal psychology; in similar spirit, “Close Most of The Time” dissects life from age 17 to 29 via cars (including a white ’69 Ranchero that “almost ran”) and equally-dysfunctional relationships. It’s the unsparing sound of a dude of a certain age looking in the mirror; the fact the album’s framed by first person mea-culpas — titled “Total Disaster” and “Broken,” respectively — tells you all you need to know about what he sees. To his credit, dude owns it, and the songs don’t wallow: they’re so hooky, tuneful and well-calibrated, they feel like absolutions even when they don’t sell themselves as such. One imagines they’re informed by years of therapy. If so, the shrinks certainly earned their fees. Will Hermes

Trippie Redd, A Love Letter to You 3
“With A Love Letter to You 3, Redd is joining the ranks of rappers — Kanye, Lil Yachty, Migos — deploying more than one album in the same calendar year,” writes Charles Holmes. “Surprisingly, Redd seems rejuvenated, not depleted, by the increased pace. In a year when many of his SoundCloud Rap peers are creatively flailing as they pursue sustained success, Redd is now stretching the creative boundaries of his sound, rather than chasing the tired emo rabbit down the proverbial hole. It’s earning him less critical appraisal, and a noticeably less prominent place in conversation, but he’s retained an audience and keeps giving them reasons to listen.”
Read Our Review: Trippie Redd Isn’t Falling Off Anytime Soon