White County native Beth Ditto’s solo album “Fake Sugar,” her first since Gossip broke up, is slated for release later this year. Ditto, in a conversation with Pitchfork, called the record “my Southern album but not necessarily a country album.” She shared this track earlier this week on BBC Radio’s Mistajam:
And, in case you missed it, Little Rock’s Pallbearer released a mammoth follow-up to its acclaimed 2014 album “Foundations of Burden,” drawing from influences as diverse as Pink Floyd and Type O Negative and garnering critical impressions that range from “slow for the sake of slow” (Pitchfork) to “Holy shit” and “a gluttonously pleasurable listening experience” (Stereogum). Here’s the title track.
And most recently, Pallbearer’s cousins-in-plodding-meditations-on-existence, Sumokem, dropped a new single from the band’s upcoming release “The Guardian of Yosemite.” For listeners (like this one) who adored Sumokem’s 2015 record “The Madness of Lu Shen Ti, Vol. 1,” news that “Guardian” was mastered and almost ready to go couldn’t have come soon enough. Here’s “Warning,” to be released on 7-inch vinyl alongside a cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Emerald.”