AhabThe Boats of the Glen Carrig (Napalm)
Depression Cherry by Beach House
Golden PelicansOldest Ride, Longest Line (Total Punk)
Los Angeles noise-rock group Health haven’t released a proper full-length in six years, at least if you don’t count their 2010 disco edits of their sophomore album (2009’s Get Color) or their 2012 soundtrack to the video game Max Payne 3 (which some of their fans don’t even know they’ve done). But no matter how many years you figure Health have been dormant, the new Death Magic is a tremendous return, an evolution toward accessible pop that keeps their ear-shattering violence intact. Health still scour their songs with shock waves—their idiosyncratic noise splits the difference between “civil defense siren” and “sharpening a katana”—but now they lend a crackling aura to blunted house percussion and Top 40 hooks. Even when the lyrics get grim, Health’s music gleams: on “Life” they make anxiety, aimlessness, and fatigue sound positively triumphant. —Leor Galil
On her full-length debut, 2013’s Pull My Hair Back, Canadian singer-producer Jessy Lanza tamed the bite of the acidic synth stabs and palpitating electronic bass in her tracks, weaving them into mystical, placid tapestries of R&B. For her new EP, You Never Show Your Love, she collaborated with Teklife producers DJ Spinn and Taso, creating four songs that find a middle ground between Lanza’s relaxing atmospherics and Spinn and Taso’s high-energy catharsis. The last two songs turn up the pace and the bass: one is a footwork-flavored tune with a posthumous appearance from DJ Rashad, and the other courts the ghetto-house heads in her audience. On the ace title track, Lanza weaves rattling percussion into her beguiling, sumptuous sound. —Leor Galil
