Eight New and Upcoming Albums I'm Recommending
Featuring the familiar and unfamiliar in Listening Sessions' latest new-music round-up
It’s been about two months since I last turned my attention here to new music. I’ve listened to a lot of albums in June and July and found eight that I think you will love. Some are obscure and the last two are among the biggest releases of the year. All are worth your attention. My previous round-ups for 2026 are here, here and here.
What new music have you been digging? What new albums should I be checking out? I’d love to know.
Eight New and Upcoming Albums I’m Recommending
By: Robert C. Gilbert
There is a jolt when hope in a new piece of music is justified. Last year, composer, arranger and bandleader Darcy James Argue posted a clip of Cécile McLorin Salvant singing a snippet of ‘With Every Breath I Take.’ Argue was conducting his arrangement of the Cy Coleman and David Zippel tune. Playing it was the Metropole Orkest. McLorin Salvant sang the line, “if only I believed that dreams come true.” The last three words were sung with a pause between each. The strings cushioned her and as the phrase ended, they encircled her with a sound like fairy dust dissipating.
The clip was all of 10 or 15 seconds (alas, I can’t seem to find it!) but it was flabbergasting. It was from a series of concerts McLorin Salvant, Argue and the Metropole Orkest gave of his arrangements of an especially rich program of ballads. I shared the excerpt with a hope that this music would be recorded and released on an album. That hope came true at the end of June.
With Every Breath I Take (Nonesuch) has Jules Buckley conducting Argue’s arrangements for the Orkest. Of the 10 compositions of the album, one is by McLorin Salvant (‘Left Alone’) and the others span jazz, the theatre and the movies.
They don’t make recordings like they used to is a variation on a cliché but when pondering this recording, I think it applies.
The great ballad albums of yore had a lush, opulent romanticism. Strings that were rich, not saccharine. Brass that was deep in colour, not just pushing the beat. A rhythm that provided a pulse but not much else. A singer of commanding artistry who pulled it all together. With Every Breath I Take is similarly built, fulfilling the hope I had over a year ago.
McLorin Salvant remains a singer with a precise, crisp delivery, every word ringing through and Argue’s charts burst with creativity, seizing the opportunity to put a new stamp on everything from Duke Ellington’s ‘Sophisticated Lady’ and Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Lush Life’ to Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Being Alive’ and ‘Send in the Clowns.’ The highlight for me is the spritely, episodic ‘Barbara Song,’ written by Kurt Weill. The album is easily a contender for one of my very favourites of this year.
Another aspect of this music to note is that despite the stature of much of the music that is being interpreted and the use of a large symphony orchestra, With Every Breath I Take is a close listen. So is bassist John Clayton’s Two-o Duo (self-released), out at the beginning of July.
It’s a series of duets between Clayton, his son Gerald Clayton on piano and the singer René Marie—one of the album’s 11 tracks, an affecting version of Ellington’s ‘Come Sunday’ features all three. I put it on a few weeks ago, intrigued by a write-up about it by Lee Mergner on his Substack (read it here) and quickly knew this album was a cut above.
Its special quality comes from, in part, an imagination in the songs selected for the duets with Marie. Most are well-known and they come equally from the world of pop as they do from the world of jazz. The elder Clayton and Marie’s transformation of Billy Joel’s ‘The Longest Time’ from gimmicky doo-wop to slowly focusing on Joel’s lyrics is ace as is a medley of songs about smiling: ‘When You’re Smiling,’ ‘Smile,’ ‘Make Someone Happy’ and a quick coda of ‘Put on a Happy Face.’
There’s one original song included, credited to all three, ‘One the Day You Were Born,’ on which Marie dances with the younger Clayton. It is a wonderous performance. The three duets between father and son function as interludes, either bluesey (‘Nail…In Need’) or impressionistic (‘En La Orilla Del Mundo’ and ‘Forth’) and are equally noteworthy.
I’m generally leery of longer albums these days but Two-o Duo is an hour well spent. It’s calming, soothing and full of pure musicianship.
These adjectives would also apply to vocalist Gretchen Parlato’s upcoming The Wise Ones (Edition Records), coming out on September 11. As is quite often with many of my forays into new music, Parlato is a musician new to me but one who has been making music for about 20 years now.
There is significant jazz pedigree on this album with Parlato supported by Robert Glasper, Gerald Clayton and Mark Guiliana, who is also Parlato’s husband. Becca Stevens and Mesh’ell Ndegeocello are on it too. The music defies easy categorization—always a good thing, in my opinion—and balances well a harmonic and rhythmic sophistication with a breezy, light quality.
Parlato is a direct, intimate singer. The preview track that is out, ‘Never Come Down,’ co-written by Parlatto, Guiliana and Alan Hampton with Ndegeocello adding a spoken-word interlude illustrates the album’s gentle insinuation of beat, syncopation and groove, and has a nasty hook with handclaps added.
I admit I was a tad wary when I put Inverted Tango (Composers Concordance Records), the first recording by the Holland Court Jazz Trio, released just this past Friday (July 31), on to listen. Would it be florid and cheesy, a kind of faux jazz that would leave me cold (as tempting as that may be in the middle of another hot summer) or be something far more intriguing?
The Holland Court Jazz Trio is comprised of bassist Frank Wagner and drummer Dave Meade, who first recorded together in 1988, with pianist Dave Marck and, on five of the album’s eight tracks, violinist Ben Sutin. To my very pleasant surprise, Inverted Tango is meditative jazz—relaxing though not antiseptic—in which the idea of the tango is realized both in the use of minor keys and modes, and with each group member being as much of a leader as an accompanist.
That’s best heard in the closing cover of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Manic Depression.’ Other cuts that stand out are Marck’s ‘Hi-Ya,’ a witty commentary on Thelonious Monk’s ‘Bye-Ya,’ a lush interpretation of Strayhorn’s ‘A Flower is a Lovesome Thing’ and the shifting ‘Phrygian Natural Six,’ written by Wagner.
A new, good soul album that came across my desk in the past two months is singer Alicia Waller’s full-length debut, Louder, Then (Missing Piece Records), out since the end of May. Waller is trained as an operatic soprano. She also has a Master’s degree in international relations and music diplomacy.
I wouldn’t have necessarily known the former from listening to the album. There is a natural feeling for soul and jazz that her classical background does not preclude. Her voice is impeccable with a big sound that still has a fluidity of feel—it is broad without being overpowering. That’s a formidable duality. Seven of the album’s eight songs were written or co-written by Waller with the driving opener, ‘Tempo 120,’ the high point and a regal cover of one of Donny Hathaway’s finest, ‘Someday We’ll All Be Free,’ being another standout.
I have to thank Suffragette Records’ social-media feed for hipping me to Laure Briard and her new album, Voyage Mental (Midnight Special Records), which hit stores at the start of June.
Suffragette Records is a record store out of Tasmania that specializes in music by female artists—long a particular interest of mine—and it recommended Briard’s latest for anyone who is partial to the music of Françoise Hardy. The retro feel of Voyage Mental’s cover, artist and album title rendered in thin, curvy, groovy lettering, is reflective of its wonderful, throwback music.
It is dreamy pop with an edge, whether through the acid-folk of the title track, the shuffles of ‘My Two Hours of Sleep’ and ‘Surprises’ or the psychedelia of the title track. Another album to check out that has slipped through without much notice.
Paul McCartney’s latest, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, (Capitol Records) has had more notice that almost any other album released this year and indeed, the question may arise as to why am I bothering even mentioning it. After all, my focus here is mostly on albums that escape the limelight. But, here’s the thing. I bought the album on cassette (a recent obsession of mine that I wrote about here) not really expecting much, Beatles fan though I am, especially as ‘Days We Left Behind,’ the first preview track that was released for the record, emphasized how old McCartney is now, his voice wispy and thin.
It’s probably an unfair criticism, I will grant you, particularly as the album, on which McCartney plays almost all of the instruments, strongly argues for his continuing vitality.
It reminds me of Ram, another recording where he was mostly a one-man band. It can safely be said that McCartney’s gifts for hooks, harmonic progression and earworms are inextinguishable. ‘Ripples on a Pond,’ ‘We Two’ and ‘Come Inside’ are all sterling examples of what may pass for contemporary pop, particularly the former, that still have a timeless quality.
Nostalgia is weaved throughout the recording. There are tributes in song to John Lennon (‘Days We Left Behind’) and George Harrison (‘Down South’), for starters. Ringo Starr duets with McCartney on ‘Home to Us.’ It’s frankly a trite song but still packs a wallop with history and magic—almost 65 years of it now—that counteracts that dismay.
Yes, the world already knows about The Boys of Dungeon Lane but that’s not stopping me from recommending it.
Thinking of Macca pulling it off yet again leads to thinking of the Beatles and that can also lead to thinking of their chiefest contemporary, the Rolling Stones, which now exists more as a co-operative than as a band.
They have a new album out too and again, the world knows all about it and feeding the addiction once again, I bought it on cassette.
My awareness of the Stones ends in 1972 and Exile on Main Street. That’s 54 years separating it and Foreign Tongues (Polydor Records). That both seems like a lot of time and not much considering how the new album feels so redolent of the classic Stones sound: Keith Richards’ guitar lines cutting glass, drums that rest on the backbeat and now in the hands of Steve Jordan though Charlie Watts does appear on ‘Hit Me On the Head,’ Steve Winwood guesting throughout on keyboards and McCartney playing bass on ‘Covered in You.’ Robert Smith of the Cure and Bruno Mars guest too. And what of Mick Jagger?
Well, he makes the argument that being an octogenarian doesn’t necessarily mean nodding off here, there and everywhere, weaving tales of incomprehension and just generally looking like hell day and long into the night. As concerns Jagger, 80 may be new 25 and even if Foreign Tongues runs a little long, its moments of exhilaration—and there are many—like the rush of ‘In the Stars’ and ‘Never Wanna Lose You,’ the countrified ‘Ringing Hollow’ and the closing, unvarnished cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Beautiful Delilah,’ a reminder of the Stones’ roots in American rock, and rhythm and blues, more than compensate for the fact that may take a while to appear.
Jagger defies age. A living testament to striving to do what one loves, a lifeline to the rest of us just sludging through. He keeps strutting at 83 while I, at 48, take ten minutes to muster up the energy to take out the trash.