Ten New Albums I'm Recommending Now

Glorious new music Rolling Stone won't tell you about—and might not even know it exists

I haunt obscure corners of Bandcamp and YouTube the way criminals seek out dark corridors and midnight alleys. You can’t get what I’m after with a Costco membership card. I need to hunt for it in the underground culture economy.

Most of these albums are getting very little press. Some of them are getting no press whatsoever—except here at The Honest Broker.

Let’s hope that changes. These musicians operate in different genres and come from many parts of the world—but they each deserve a larger audience. Why not be part of it?

Happy listening!

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Rob Finucane: Seven Year Song
Late Night Soul Music from Oakland

There’s no website for this musician. I can’t even find a bio. And there are no YouTube videos under his name (although he might be playing keyboard on this seven-year-old rehearsal track from Zephyr Avalon, but he didn’t show up on the finished album).

If I’m correct, Finucane disappeared for seven years, and now returns with a record called Seven Year Song. There must be some clue in that.

It all makes me feel like a detective in a TV show.

Finucane’s Bandcamp page only gives you a city—Oakland, California. So that’s his total backstory: A melancholy man from Oakland.

I imagine this music was homemade. Probably late at night when the city sleeps, or doesn’t. He probably sang these midnight soul tunes for himself—and never got around to sending out a press release. And now we can overhear.

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Varijashree Venugopal: Vari
Bangalore Singer Merges Indian Classical Music with Jazz and Other Genres

If bebop originated in Bangalore, modern jazz might now sound like this. Varijashree Venugopal’s singing absolutely grabs my attention, but the instrumental accompaniment here is just as compelling. I’d buy this album if only for how Hamilton de Holanda and Victor Wooten work their string magic.

They get plenty of help from Jayachandra Rao (mridangam), Pramath Kiran (morsing—you probably know it as the Jew’s harp), and Michael League (electric sitar). I hope this band reunites again in the future—their chemistry deserves more than a one-time date.

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Landless: Lúireach
Haunting Four-Part Harmony Folk Music from Ireland

The four members of Dublin vocal ensemble Landless have sung together for more than a decade, but their songs sometimes go back for centuries. These four women intermix more modern works with traditional fare, but when performed with the in-the-moment passion of these singers, old and new blend together in an eternal present. You will hear occasional instruments not found on the Billboard Hot 100—pump organ, fiddle, shruti box, banjo—but the four voices themselves are wholly sufficient and persistently beatific.