New Music Friday: The best albums out Jan. 26 (and why they deserve reviews)

NPR Music

NPR

Music

4.3 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2024

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's plenty about Wall of Eyes, the new album by the British rock trio The Smile, to remind you of Radiohead, the band with which The Smile shares Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. But there's something about The Smile that resists feeling like Radiohead redux, and on this week's episode Ann Powers, Tom Huizenga and Sheldon Pearce get to the bottom of what makes Wall of Eyes so satisfying on its own terms.

Plus: Discussion of a week's worth of great albums leads to a conversation about the state of music criticism, which took a blow last week when the long-standing, much-beloved, occasionally-hated website Pitchfork was folded into the men's magazine GQ and much of its staff laid off.

Featured Albums for January 26, 2024:
1. Patricia Kopatchinksaja, Reto Bieri, Polina Leschenko — Take 3
2. Benny the Butcher — Everybody Can't Go
3. Katy Kirby — Blue Raspberry
4. The Smile — Wall of Eyes

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from SAP Concur, a leading brand for integrated travel expense and invoice management solutions.
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0:14.4	Learn more at concur.com.
0:16.6	A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language
0:22.2	and the strong opinions.
0:24.0	Be forewarned.
0:25.0	Hi everyone, I'm Anne Powers, a critic at NPR Music and I am joined today by two of my favorite opinionators,
0:36.2	Tom Heisenga, Hey Anne.
0:37.7	And Sheldon Pierce.
0:38.7	Hello?
0:39.7	How are y'all doing today?
0:41.5	We're recording on the day that the Oscar nominations came out and so I have to ask you the most important opinion of the day which is how do you feel about Ryan Gosling getting a nomam for the greatest song written in the 21st century?
0:56.0	I'm just Ken.
0:58.8	I'm just hoping he gets the opportunity to perform it at the stage the stage show I think that would truly be a moment.
1:06.0	Yes with with that hair you know I have a sweatshirt and the sweatshirt, right? Right.
1:13.0	He seems to love the bit, really.
1:15.0	Throughout the press junket, he was playing into it so hard.
1:18.0	I watched it with my mom and she said,
1:20.0	are those really his abs?
1:22.0	We had to Google it. Well I want to see a Ryan Gosling Billy
1:28.8	Eilish like throw down or maybe they could do like a la la land style dance that's that's my hope.
1:35.0	Well on a more serious note I I'm not heard all the scores but I thought there was a
	...

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