5 New Albums You Need: Nourished by Time, Earl Sweatshirt, Wolf Alice, and more

Stream every standout album released this Friday with The FADER’s weekly roundup.

Every Friday, The FADER’s writers dive into the most exciting new projects released that week. Today, read our thoughts on Nourished By Time’s The Beautiful Ones, Earl Sweatshirt’s Live Laugh Love, Wolf Alice’s The Clearing, and more.

Nourished By Time: The Beautiful Ones

On the follow-up to 2023’s Erotic Probiotic 2, Marcus Brown deals with the change in status that breakthrough album handed him. “Look at what I made true, Little bit of fame too,” he sings on “Baby Baby.” Brown is too good of a writer to spend his time coasting on a victory lap, though. Sidestepping complacency, he switches to raising class consciousness and stressing the importance of industrial action. “If we all strike right now, the gravy train stops” he says, one of many lines on The Passionate Ones that would sound equally at home on a placard as they do in his soulful and scuzzy pop songs. The Passionate Ones offers up both personal memories and political rallying cries with a deft touch. Brown writes about his feelings of disillusionment, disgust at geopolitics, and raging against the machine on forward-looking songs that pull from R&B, funk, shoegaze, and post-punk without ever forgetting that the purpose of music’s past should be to guide its future. “Max Potential,” which leans into the spectral ’80s dreampop sound of Cocteau Twins to speak about mental health issues and a love that steadies the ship, is one stand out. “9 2 5” is the dizzying high point, though. Joyful piano house chords skip over a nagging melody as Brown recounts the story of a gig worker at the crossroads of creativity and economic reality, determined he “won’t let the dreamer die.” It’s a vintage sounding floor-filler that speaks to the very real concerns of life right now. That mixture of authenticity and escape makes The Passionate Ones essential.

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Earl Sweatshirt: Live Laugh Love

As is so often the case with great artists, Earl Sweatshirt’s most significant asset has been the tension between the superpowers he possesses in his medium and the often ugly humanity that undergirds it. The awe-inspiring technical talent behind excellent releases like I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, Some Rap Songs, and Feet of Clay didn’t exist simply as monuments to Thebe Kgositsile—they had the heart of an unapologetic eternal student. “You wanna chase instead of find,” shrieks a worked-up unc on “gsw vs sac,” the opening track on Earl’s new album Live Laugh Love. In previous projects that castigation would be directed inward as much as outward, but on Live Laugh Love, Earl Sweatshirt sounds more grounded than ever before. He righteously seeks his flowers on “Gamma (need the