New Music Friday: The best albums out Jan. 23
NPR Music
NPR
4.3 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
The Starting 5
(00:00) Intro: Cat Power, 'Redux' EP
(02:14) Lucinda Williams, 'World's Gone Wrong'
(07:36) Carolina Chocolate Drops, 'Genuine Negro Jig' (15th Anniversary Edition)
(15:19) Kashus Culpepper, 'Act I'
(20:00) The Lowest Pair, 'Always As Young As We'll Ever Be'
(25:29) Julian Lage, 'Scenes From Above'
The Lightning Round
- Ari Lennox, 'Vacancy'
- Sammy Brue, 'The Journals'
- V/A, 'Naive Melodies'
- Della Mae, 'Magic Accident'
Sample the albums via our New Music Friday playlist on NPR.org.
Credits
Host: Stephen Thompson
Guest: Jessie Scott, WMOT
Audio Producer: Noah Caldwell
Digital Producer: Dora Levite
Editors: Otis Hart, Elle Mannion
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Try me. |
| 0:04.7 | Try me. |
| 0:09.0 | Darling tell me I need you. |
| 0:16.7 | Happy Friday, everyone, from NPR Music. |
| 0:19.6 | It's New Music Friday. |
| 0:26.8 | I'm Stephen Thompson here with Jesse Scott from WMOT in Nashville. Welcome back to the show, Jesse. |
| 0:39.3 | Thank you. So good to be here. It is a pleasure. So the music we are hearing is part of a reissue campaign. Cat Power put out a classic album called The Greatest 20 years ago. Now it's being reissued with a three-song EP called Redux, where she's kind of revisiting that classic |
| 0:46.5 | sound, including with a cover of nothing compares to you by Prince, as popularized by Shnade |
| 0:52.9 | O'Connor. Jesse, what do you think? |
| 0:54.6 | It's such a trip. |
| 0:55.9 | I'm particularly fond of Try Me. |
| 0:59.5 | Anybody that redos, 1958, James Brown, |
| 1:03.4 | and the famous flames in power ballad style is a worthy entry. |
| 1:11.6 | And you gotta pay particular attention to the piano. |
| 1:15.5 | It sounds like it banged off the ionosphere |
| 1:18.9 | way back a couple of decades ago. |
| 1:21.0 | I love this. |
| 1:22.1 | I need you. |
| 1:32.7 | Cat Power has kind of been working with these, you know, with these great session musicians for ages. |
| 1:34.0 | In fact, the cover of Nothing compares to you that's on this EP is a tribute to Teeny Hodges, |
| 1:39.9 | a guitarist who played on the original album, The Greatest. |
| 1:43.5 | And so she's, you know, as you said, pinging off the ionosphere, just like blurring the |
... |
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