New Music Friday: The best albums out May 24
On our survey of the week's most exciting new albums, WRTI's Nate Chinen and NPR Music's Sheldon Pearce get all wrapped up in the amniotic embrace of a new album by a guru of the L.A. ambient-jazz scene.
The new album by Carlos Niño & Friends is called Placenta. If you know anything about Niño, you'll probably be able to guess that the subject that title suggests — pregancy and childbirth — are taken very seriously. Those "Friends" are crucial too: Niño has become a central figure in a scene whose reverberations are starting to be felt well beyond the community itself, and are drawing more artists in. You can hear Niño on André 3000's flute album New Blue Sun, and André returns the favor here.
Also this week: The fourth album by DIIV sees the indie rock group leaning into shoegaze-inspired sounds, and Andrew Bird creates an album in tribute to the "Golden Era" jazz tunes of the 1930s and '40s he heard on Sunday morning radio shows as a young adult in Chicago.
Featured Albums:
• Carlos Niño & Friends, Placenta
• DIIV, Frog in Boiling Water
• Andrew Bird Trio, Sunday Morning Put-On
Other notable albums out May 24:
• Tiny Habits, All For Something
• Vince Staples, Dark Times
• Alex Sipiagin, Horizons
• Machinedrum, 3FOR82
• Joshua Moshier, semipermanence
• Nathy Peluso, Grasa
(Image credit: Todd Weaver)