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New Music Friday For Oct. 5: Cat Power And 7 Other Albums You Should Hear Now

By Stephen Thompson
Published October 5, 2018 at 3:00 AM MDT
Cat Power's <em>Wanderer </em>is on our shortlist of essential releases for Oct. 5.
Julien Bourgeois
Cat Power's Wanderer is on our shortlist of essential releases for Oct. 5.

With Robin Hilton out for one more week, NPR Music's Ann Powers and Lars Gotrich join me for a whirlwind tour of a busy release day. We've got the first album in five years by the spiky pop-rock band Swearin' (featuring the great and good Allison Crutchfield); the gorgeous first album in six years by Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power; the heavy, almost absurdly ambitious rock and roll of F***** Up; the versatile country of Eric Church; the springy and inspirational anthems of multi-hyphenate powerhouse Tunde Olaniran; the sprawling, deeply searching rock of mewithoutYou; the rugged metal of Matt Pike's long-running band High on Fire; and Phosporescent's Matthew Houck, whose beatific folk-rock sprawls with winsome approachability.

Featured Albums

  • Swearin': Fall Into the Sun (Stream)
    Featured Song: "Grow Into a Ghost"

  • Cat Power: Wanderer (Stream)
    Featured Song: "In Your Face"

  • F***** Up: Dose Your Dreams (Stream)Featured Song: "Accelerate"

  • Eric Church: Desperate Man
    Featured Song: "Monsters"

  • Tunde Olaniran: Stranger (Stream)
    Featured Song: "I'm Here"

  • mewithoutYou: [Untitled] (Stream)
    Featured Song: "Julia (or, 'Holy to the LORD' on the Bells of Horses)"

  • High On Fire: Electric Messiah (Stream)
    Featured Song: "Electric Messiah"

  • Phosphorescent: C'est La Vie (Stream)
    Featured Song: "C'est La Vie No. 2"

    • Other Notable Releases For Oct. 5: Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born Soundtrack; Adrianne Lenker, abysskiss; Cursive, Vitriola; Windhand, Eternal Return; Nathan Bowles, Plainly Mistaken; Molly Burch, First Flower; T.I., Dime Trap.

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Music
    Stephen Thompson
    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
    See stories by Stephen Thompson