9 Albums You Should Listen to Now: Chat Pile, Melissa Auf der Maur, and More

Now six years into their career, Chat Pile have a better understanding of what their strengths are, and how they define their sloshing mix of noise rock and post-hardcore.

Chat Pile: Who Loves the Sun [The Flesner].

On Who Loves the Sun, their third album, the Oklahoma City band assumes position with aplomb to tear apart “their grievances with the modern world”: AI, genocide, the powerful elite, isolating technology, and ever-mounting greed.

And they fight back, with sludge riffs and droning guitars like plates of metal peeling backwards. Even as our planet itself erodes, Chat Pile still strive to keep their humanity despite what surrounds them.

Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampBuy at Rough Trade.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Bass Womb Room: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings [Envision].

Some 16 years after her last studio album, Melissa Auf der Maur is back with a new collection that spans the decade-plus before and after she stepped back from the public eye.

On Bass Womb Room: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings, the former Hole bassist cobwebs together a trove of living-room demos with eight brand-new compositions, which double as the soundtrack to a new photo exhibition she’s presenting in Ontario.

The demos, says Auf der Maur in press materials, were written amid “rising pressure from the major label-driven music industry […] to make glossy hit songs to dominate radio airwaves.

These songs are the sound of my internal experimentation and a way of keeping the Montreal art girl alive inside.” The record follows the March release of Auf der Maur’s Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A ’90s Rock Memoir.

Beyoncé: B’Day 20th Anniversary Edition [Sony/BMG].

Beyoncé, photo by Max VadukulI’m going to make a bold claim: B’Day is the best Beyoncé album. Now, you may balk at me. “Surely,” you’ll sputter, “this album from 2006 can’t possibly measure up to—let alone trump—the two decades of paradigm-shifting, cross-genre, cross-media innovation that followed.” To that, I invite you to revisit B’Day’s tracklist: “Suga Mama.” “Kitty Kat.” “Freakum Dress.” “Green Light.” Wall-to-wall-to-wall-to-wall bangers, and that just the original CD version.

The deluxe edition is where we reach all-timer status: “Beautiful Liar,” “Check on It,” the six-minute extended edit of “Get Me Bodied.” Of this I’m certain—if I’m throwing on a Beyoncé album front-to-back at a party, 10 times out of nine it’s B’Day.

Any excuse to revisit it (especially with some new goodies in tow) is an excuse to have a good-ass time.

Karrahbooo: Not Da 2 [self-released].

Karrahbooo got her start in the Lil Yachty-helmed crew Concrete Boys. Her hilarious, aloof bars on songs like “Where Yo Daddy?” and “Not Da 2” immediately stood out from the collective’s debut statement, It’s Us Vol.

1. In 2024, the rapper parted ways with the boys, which was sad news for the them, but not for us. Two years later, the Atlanta rapper is free from her previous label deal and has released her debut album, which is exactly as good as you’d expect it to be.

Karrahbooo’s unbothered flow glides effortlessly through a hodgepodge of styles—soulful cruising and speaker-blowing bass, nostalgic horn loops and sizzling synths.

She’s as mean and boastful as ever, but there are some sweet moments, too, like an unexpected drop-in from mom on the closing “Do U 1 Better.”.

Arab Strap: Half-Told Tales [Rock Action].

For three decades, Arab Strap have been committed to immersing their fans in seedy, sexed-up worlds via bleak poetry and glowering guitar chords. But they’ve always found new subject matter to write about, often responding directly to the world around them.

On Half-Told Tales, the duo takes aim at “political figures and very wealthy demagogues that I don’t trust to look after anyone’s interests but their own,” they explain in a statement.

But there are surprising pockets of vitality across the album; just listen to the skyward chords on “Sunsong.”.

Anyone who watched Adéla Jergova on the South Korean competition series Dream Academy or its Netflix counterpart Pop Star Academy—better known as the show that spawned Katseye—saw her solo break coming a mile away.

The Slovakian trained ballerina and top-tier mom friend developed an adoring fanbase (her competitors included) during her time on the show; when she was cut, even her mentors insinuated it was, in part, because of her overpowering individual shine.

Now with an EP and an opening slot on Demi Lovato’s last tour under her belt, she’s asserting top dog status on her debut album Prima, titled after the best ballerina of the bunch.

For all the discipline ballet requires, Adéla’s pop star persona still has room for calculated mess, channeling Bangerz, Fakemink, and a smidge of Amala-era Doja Cat across an array of sequin- and sweat-laden tracks.

Carmen Villain: Memoria [Smalltown Supersound].

Carmen Villain’s Memoria is the kind of album you sink into. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ theory of deep listening, the Norwegian composer’s latest takes things slower and deeper than ever, weaving bioluminescent dub techno with diaphonous ambient straight out of a spiritual retreat.

Chalk it up as another Smalltown Supersound triumph.

Told Slant: What’s Up [Mtn. Laurel Recording Co.].

The world you were born in no longer exists, and the New York that Felix Walworth grew up in is all chain stores now. On his fourth album as Told Slant, the DIY rocker interrogates the question: What does it mean to love a place you don’t recognize.

They’ve described What’s Up as an ode to the city where one really shouldn’t, but one must throw themselves “somewhat maniacally to the project of self expression and subculture in one of the most hostile environments on earth.” It’s the sort of gritted-teeth optimism that’s a whole lot easier with a crew in tow, and Walworth taps Skullcrusher and Florist bandmates Jonnie Baker and Emily Sprague to scale the mountain with them.

Mykki Blanco: Cafe Paradiso [Transgressive].

It tracks that Mykki Blanco’s new album Cafe Paradiso arrives shortly after his completion of grad school—this is an LP tailor made for the young, glam, and searching.

Or, as Blanco puts it, “for my cosmopolitan aesthetes to sit alone in a café and work on crafting the life of their dreams.” Only practice makes perfect in that regard, and Blanco’s vignettes are full of backroom flirtations, dance floor makeouts, and plenty of “Butt Sex.” Moving deftly through post-punk, sexy drill, and atmospheric club, Blanco nails the boozy, starry-eyed vibe of strolling through the East Village looking for a little strange—one of the downtown art crowd’s most venerable past-times.