New Music Friday: The best albums out July 18

All Songs Considered

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Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alex G. Paramore's Zac Farro. Lord Huron. It's a packed release week, and we've got Chelsea O from Buffalo/Toronto Public Media on the show to unpack all the greatness.

Intro:

• Sly & The Family Stone, 'The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967'

The Starting 5:

• Alex G, 'Headlights' (Stream)

• Jim Legxacy, 'black british music (2025)' (Stream)

• Zac Farro, 'Operator' (Stream)

• Lord Huron, 'The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1' (Stream)

• Disiniblud, s/t (Stream)

The Lightning Round:

• Cam, 'All Things Light'

• Forth Wanderers, 'The Longer This Goes On'

• Jess Ribeiro, 'Mixtape'

• Billie Marten, 'Dog Eared'

• Two Shell, 'Iicons'

See our long list of albums out July 18 and sample more than 50 of them via our New Music Friday playlists on npr.org.

Credits:

Host: Stephen Thompson
Guest: Chelsea O (BTPM)
Producer: Simon Rentner
Editor: Otis Hart
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language.
0:08.8	Happy Friday, everyone from NPR Music. It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Chelsea O from BTPM's The Bridge in Buffalo, New York. Hey, Chelsea.
0:18.7	Hey, Stephen. Thanks for having me.
0:20.6	It is a pleasure to have you join us for the very first time, if I'm not mistaken.
0:25.0	You are correct.
0:33.7	The sounds you are hearing behind us, the music you are hearing behind us, is Sly and the Family Stone from a new live album they have out today called The First Family Live at Winchester Cathedral, 1967.
0:48.0	The track is, I Can't Turn You Loose. If you, like many of us, are still mourning the death of Sly Stone back in June, this is a lovely way to revisit a band kind of coming into its prime.
1:01.5	So as I understood it, this is the earliest live recording of the group.
1:06.1	What a remarkable artifact to have. And while that it hasn't kind of existed in the world until now,
1:11.6	it feels like there's still a ton of great sly in this family stone music out there in the archives waiting to be unearthed.
1:19.6	For sure. And I think what struck me with listening to the song in particular was just how, like, tight they are dynamically. It's insane.
1:31.2	It's out today, so you probably haven't heard it already.
1:34.1	We highly recommend that you dig in.
1:37.1	We've got a ton of great records we're going to talk about today.
1:39.6	New albums from people like Alex G, Jim Legacy, Lord Huron,
1:44.1	and so much more.
1:46.2	I actually, I loved every single one of these albums.
1:50.3	First up on the show, though, we've got the new album from Alex G.
1:54.4	Alex G's new album is called Headlights.
2:00.7	Music I went out looking for a real thing
2:10.6	Didn't notice it was hanging by the door
2:16.6	Didn't leave a message or anything
	...

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