SEVEN music IN SEVEN

Welcome to Seven in Seven, where each Thursday in this space we typically take a look at shows coming to the region over the next week. Due to the current coronavirus pandemic though, most venue doors have shuttered, and few concerts are taking place. That doesn’t mean the music stops, and new releases are coming out weekly from artists you know and love and some waiting to be discovered. Whether your musical tastes are rock and roll, jazz, heavy metal, R&B, singer-songwriter or indie, there’ll always be something to check out on the docket each Friday.

Here are seven of the best hitting shelves and streaming services Sept. 25:

1 IDLES —“Ultra Mono”

As one of the more exciting bands to come out of the UK in recent years, IDLES is bringing brash, punkish sounds. Having attained mainstream success in their native country, the group looks to do the same here in the U.S. with album number three, “Ultra Mono.” It’s a wrecking ball of an LP, full of witty and boastful lyrics along the lines of “Like Conor McGregor with a samurai sword on roller blades” (“Mr. Motivator”) and “Not a single thing has ever been mended/By you standing there and saying you’re offended” (“Grounds”). Whether that’s enough for them to catch on worldwide remains to be seen, but IDLES is making a lot of noise, and it’s hard to ignore.

2 Anna Von Hausswolff — “All Thoughts Fly”

There might not be a more interesting album this year than “All Thoughts Fly,” which finds Anna Von Hausswolff extending herself into solo instrumental mode, with an entire record consisting of just one instrument, the pipe organ. It represents absolute liberation of the imagination, radiating a melancholic beauty that’s distinguished by fluid transitions of contrasting elements: calmness and drama, harmony and dissonance, much like the place that inspires the music. The organ on the album is situated in Gothenburg and is a Swedish replica of the Arp Schnitger organ in Germany. It is the largest of its kind, tuned in Quarter-comma meantone temperament in the world, and was built as part of a 10-year research project focused on revisiting 17th century North German organ building craft.

3 Surfer Blood — “Carefree Theatre”

Indie rockers Surfer Blood had a remarkable rise, from rehearsing in a Florida storage container to mainstage at Coachella and touring with the Pixies. Then after an all-too-commonplace major label disaster, the band rebounded quietly, putting out two adventurous albums and consistently touring the world for over a decade. It’s the kind of resilience and hard work that’s admirable in our disposable age, and it looks like the band’s output won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Ten years, four fulllength records and a few lineup changes later, the band has re-centered itself with its tightest and most focused songs in years on album number six, “Carefree Theatre.”

4 The Electric Mud — “Burn the Ships”

Also hailing from the Sunshine State, The Electric Mud offers stoner rock stylings that meld their love for the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, their shared Florida roots and a deep appreciation for the proto metal of Black Sabbath and the prog metal of Mastodon. The result is “Burn the Ships,” which sees the band slowcooking and serving to the masses a punishing rhythm section and dizzying twin guitars alongside gritty, soulful vocals.

5 Night Shop — “The Fountain” EP

Night Shop, the solo songwriting project of the prolific Los Angeles drummer Justin Sullivan, he of Flat Worms, Kevin Morby and The Babies, follows up the 2018 debut LP “In the Break,” with a collection of six songs that finds Sullivan reflecting on the bonds of love and friendship sustained over decades as a touring musician. That communal theme is apparent in the record’s lineup of collaborators, which includes Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee on vocals (“In the Twilight Sun”),

Meg Duffy of Hand Habits on guitar and bass, Jarvis Taveniere of Woods on engineering and multiple instruments, Anna St.

Louis on backup vocals and Sofia Arreguin of Wand on piano. The songs carry a lot at once, with lines that capture the easy camaraderie of knowing someone so well and the patterns that can sometimes feel like a constricting loop.

SOUNDCHECK

IDLES: “Mr. Motivator” Anna Von Hausswolff: “All Thoughts Fly”

Surfer Blood: “Summer Trope”

The Electric Mud: “A Greater Evil”

Night Shop: “Waiting” Twin God: “Animate” Bob Mould: “American Crisis”

6 Twin God — “Deaths” EP

Conceived in 2016 as Bryan Elkins’ heavy new beginning, Twin God took a turn from the elaborate riff-stacking of his previous metal band, In Musth, to a sharper focus on concise songwriting, eventually taking shape with the same musicians he had collaborated with for most of his adult life. Noise rock, math rock and sludge metal are woven into a backdrop of mania, words screamed hellishly raw through sickening anthems of self-scrutiny, standard dissection and endless bile for the cruel. The influence of heavy innovators like Big Business, Black Cobra and Botch show through, too. “Deaths,” the band’s debut EP, sees storytelling that reaches in opposing extremes to pointed effect regarding — what else? — two deaths. Both tracks evoke chasms and dread like a feeling of falling, but each with its own unique spin.

7 Bob Mould — “Blue Hearts”

Perhaps the most directly confrontational work of Bob Mould’s four-decade career, “Blue Hearts” is a raging, 14-track collection described by its creator in a statement as “the catchiest batch of protest songs I’ve ever written in one sitting.” Produced by Mould at Chicago’s famed Electrical Audio with longtime collaborator Beau Sorenson engineering, the album nods to the veteran singer-songwriter’s groundbreaking past while remaining firmly planted in the issues of the day. It’s both seething and pointed, the raging yin to his last record’s positive yang. The acoustic opener, “Heart on My Sleeve,” catalogs the ravages of climate change, while “American Crisis” spits plainspoken fire at the people who fomented this catastrophic moment in history, while “Forecast of Rain” questions the ethos of American community.