Stream Perfume Genius’ Glory and more albums for New Music Friday

The cover of Glory perfectly captures Mike Hadreas as a musician: he spills himself from the stifling comfort of his home, twists his body into positions that are uncomfortable but natural in their own way. We’re the observer at the bottom of the image, regarding his unapologetic impressions of humanity with gratitude, concern, confusion, and hope. Glory’s music is structured like a comedown: opening with the cathartic Americana of “It’s A Mirror,” a song that reckons with shortcomings both personal and professional, Glory proceeds in a more subdued but no less emotionally pulverizing fashion. There’s the Yo La Tengo hush of “Left for Tomorrow,” the waltz-ish resplendence of “Full On,” and “In A Row,” a pitch-black satire of the creative process where Hadreas, kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a car, is grateful for the material: “Take me the long way round / Think of all the poems I'll get out.” Hadreas is not above irony, but uses only to bolster the sincerity that makes him one of the most essential songwriters of his generation. — Jordan Darville

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The Bay Area-based song-maker SPELLLING’s last album, The Turning Wheel, was one of fantastic proportions: spellbinding chamber pop and whimsical images of emperors with golden eggs and little deer as metaphors for her musings on an antagonistic world. Her new album, Portrait of My Heart, is not so in the clouds. She plunges into reality with a wide-screened rock sound and writing that may be her plainest ever: “You’re a psychopath and I loved you for that,” she wails on “Alibi,” an Avril-coded grunge rock song. It’s unexpected to hear a usually experimental artist take on such canonic sounds — big anthems and grand weepy ballads — but she makes them compelling. Her voice, husky, wild, and innately mythical, imbue something special to every lyric she sings: even when it’s something so banal as “I’ll go wherever you lead,” she delivers it with the drama of the best karaoke belters.—Steffanee Wang

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Baltimore hardcore band Jivebomb's influences are diverse and nonlinear, they cite '80s horror movies, Billie Holiday, and J Dilla as moulding their latest album. ETHEREAL is not a project designed for mass consumption, though, even in a time of hardcore's widened visibility. Vocalist Kat Madeira delivers her vocals with a death growl but conjures the angels in her lyrics, referring to heavenly imagery on songs like "Survival Ain't Taught" and "Estrela," a fierce reminder to never get complacent. Clocking in at just over 15 minutes, the album is a grisly and corrosive collection of songs that are filled with flesh-stripping riffs and relentless drums. Think of it as less of a short, sharp shock than a lurching guttural explosion. — David Renshaw

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“Ashes fall in August / In October, the blood shines,” Eiko Ishibashi sings in Japanese near the end of “October,” the opening track from Antigone. “Covered with ashes, long winter / Spring is yet to come,” she begins on the following track, “Coma.” Her new album is named for the tragic Sophocles heroine, sentenced to be buried alive after attempting to give her brother a proper burial against the orders of the king; across its songs, one can find grim observations like these, sung serenely over layers of lush instrumentation. — Raphael Helfand. Read the full review here

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These days, deluxe albums have gone the way of TV shows: There’s too many of them, and not enough good ones. Ariana Grande’s eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead avoids this fate simply by the fact of it being made by Ariana Grande because, let’s be real, nothing she makes can ever be truly bad. But the six new songs of Grande’s “attachment” also aren’t on par with the original — something I say not as an indictment but an acknowledgement of her humanness. I still like “twilight zone,” the plushiest of the bunch with thousands of layered vocals on the hook, is dreamy. “Warm,” an inoffensive bop about the bliss of being in love, is also highlight. The metaphors on “dandelion” get a little weird but Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh’s kooky jazz-infused beat wins me back. These songs may be a 7 for Ari, but for any lesser pop star they’d be 10s. — SW

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