5 of My Most Anticipated Albums of the Fall

Dear listeners,

Fall is a perennially busy season for new music releases, and the deluge can be a bit overwhelming. Fear not: Today I’m here to help.

For the Times’s annual Fall Preview, out in print on Sunday, I listened to a bunch of upcoming releases, and this playlist is a brief collection of my recommendations — five albums that, I can now confirm, are worth getting excited about. Some of these LPs showcase familiar names pushing themselves in new directions (Kim Deal is finally releasing her first solo album!) while others (from the English folk singer Laura Marling and the New York post-hardcore group Drug Church) find artists finally coming into the peaks of their powers, perfecting unique sounds they’ve established across previous albums.

We’ve also got a power duo (the R&B auteur Dawn Richard and the experimental composer Spencer Zahn) and a power quartet (a new coalition of indie-rock lifers who have named themselves, fittingly, the Hard Quartet). There’s a little something for everyone on this playlist. Check it out and spring forward into fall.

You call it superstitions, I call it traditions,

Lindsay

Listen along while you read.

1. Kim Deal: “Crystal Breath”

Since her earliest days in Pixies and her long-running alt-rock group the Breeders, Kim Deal’s hazy, cotton-candy voice has been a one-of-a-kind mainstay in underground rock, but she’s never released a full solo album until now. At turns abrasive and achingly sweet, “Nobody Loves You More” is pure Deal, whether she’s offering her own off-kilter version of yacht rock on the lead single “Coast” (which I shared in a previous Amplifier) or turning more experimental on the angular, staticky “Crystal Breath.” Even at its most infectious, a misty melancholy hangs over the album; it marks Deal’s last collaboration with her friend and longtime engineer Steve Albini, who died suddenly in May. The lilting, pedal-steel-kissed standout “Are You Mine” sounds like a simple, doo-wop-inspired love song but turns out to be an ode to Deal’s late mother, who struggled with dementia. Even in the midst of all that loss, “Nobody Loves You More” heralds, for the 63-year-old Deal, a fruitful new beginning. (Nov. 22; 4AD)