5 new releases we love: Wye Oak gets tectonic, Andy Stott slows it down, and more

By The A.V. Club, Max Freedman, Brian Howe, Nina Corcoran, Josh Modell  |  November 22, 2019 | 6:00pm

Music Features A-Sides

Photo: Kendall Atwater

Ratboys, “Alien With A Sleep Mask On”

[Topshelf, November 12]

It was only a little over a week ago that Ratboys released “Alien With A Sleep Mask On,” the first single from the band’s next LP due out in 2020, but I’ve already probably contributed roughly a hundred of its total number of plays on Spotify. After the gentler alt-country vibes of much of the band’s earlier work, the anthemic rock promise lurking below the surface has arrived, transforming this song into a fully realized power-pop gem that wields its crunching, distorted chords with cathartic abandon. Julia Steiner’s voice still walks the delicate line between frail and fierce, the better to deliver this sly ode to not quite feeling all there. If this is the direction the band is moving in for the upcoming album—and judging from the superb, electric live sets it’s been delivering in recent months, it is—let’s hope it doesn’t stop. [Alex McLevy]

Andy Stott, It Should Be Us

[Modern Love, November 15]

There’s only one instance where lagging makes a video game better: when you’re tripped out, watching the graphics blur and flash simultaneously, and you feel like you’re moving at the speed of light. It’s a disorienting visual that makes you inordinately aware of the pace at which you’re existing, and it makes the world you’ve otherwise become accustomed to turn into a foreign landscape. Andy Stott’s new EP, It Should Be Us, is the musical equivalent of this. The Manchester producer teased the nine-song release as “slow and raw productions for the club,” and he’s not wrong. But for those already familiar with Stott’s work—namely the abrasive, metallic, frigid clangs-turned-techno of 2012’s Luxury Problems and 2014’s Faith In Strangers—It Should Be Us will sound hazy and, for him, somewhat gentle. It’s a welcome shift from his previous albums, and a rare instance where the feeling of the world melting in slow-mo as you race ahead feels enthralling. [Nina Corcoran]