Skip to main content

New Music Monday: Our Most Anticipated Albums of 2016

new music monday our most anticipated albums of 2016 vampire weekend
Image used with permission by copyright holder
This week’s New Music Monday is breaking format slightly by focusing not on a record that’s come out recently, but on what’s to come. Below you will find three artists whose records are some of our most anticipated albums for the coming year.

Mount Moriah – How to Dance – Merge Records – Release Date: February 26, 2016

In early October, Mount Moriah released a 7″ single (featured in this column, in fact) containing the studio version of “Calvander,” a garage demo of “Baby Blue,” and a live rendition of “Plane.” While the last track on the 7″ is from the band’s debut, “Calvander” and “Baby Blue” are as yet unreleased. About a month later, “Cardinal Cross” became the first official preview of the band’s third album, How to Dance. The track shows a more muscular side of Mount Moriah, specifically of Jenks Miller’s already impressive guitar playing. It bears more resemblance to their live show (cf. their cover of Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues“), which is hardly a negative. Given how strong Mount Moriah’s self-titled debut and sophomore albums are, How to Dance has big shoes to fill but the band seem well up to the challenge.

Cardinal Cross

Vampire Weekend – TBA

2013’s Modern Vampires of the City was a revelation from Vampire Weekend. After something of a sophomore slump with Contra in 2010, the band returned with their strongest album yet, proving how far they had come lyrically and musically. Ezra Koenig’s lyrics had moved on from tales of university life and holidays to deeper, philosophical questions. Koenig has compared Vampire Weekend’s first three albums to a bildungsroman, specifically Evelyn Waugh’s classic Brideshead Revisited. As in the final third of Waugh’s novel, religion and death are prominent themes on Modern Vampires, with track titles including “Unbelievers,” “Diane Young,” and “Worship You,” among others. Musically, the band are still producing relentlessly catchy pop, but their palette and sound have expanded. Modern Vampires is fuller than the previous two records, thanks in huge part to keyboardist and songwriter Rostam Batmanglij’s attention to detail in constructing the tracks. If Modern Vampires was the final entry in Vampire Weekend’s coming of age tale, then whatever album they release next should prove a fascinating step.

Vampire Weekend - Ya Hey (Official Lyrics Video)

The Wrens – TBA

Consistent readers may recall that last year The Wrens were on New Music Monday’s list of most anticipated albums for 2015. As longtime fans of the band and astute readers may suspect, no album was forthcoming. The band has, as the front page of their website notes, been keeping people waiting since 1989. After a full seven years between their second and their albums, their yet-untitled but allegedly mastered fourth album will come out some 13 years after their third, assuming it is released in 2016. Given the New Jersey indie rockers’ history, the results should prove worth the wait.

The Wrens - This Boy Is Exhausted - 3/20/2009 - Mohawk Outside Stage
Terence Praet
Terence Praet contributes to The Manual’s New Music Monday column. He studied Philosophy and History at Skidmore College…
Everything points to Apple TV+ making a change you’re not going to like
Is an ad-supported tier coming to Apple TV+?
The Apple TV Plus Logo

It turns out that TV worked pretty well under its old model. According to a new report from Business Insider, Apple TV+ may be the latest streaming service that's set to introduce an ad-supported tier and charge those who don't stream with ads a premium fee to access their great shows and movies.

At this point, the report is still speculation, but Apple has made several recent hires in the advertising space that seem to suggest the direction they're planning to take. The company recently hired former NBCUniversal ad executive Joseph Cady to serve as executive vice president of advanced advertising and partnerships, a move that comes following the company's hiring of another former NBCUniversal executive, Jason Frum, who joined Apple's video ad sales team.

Read more
From Gilda Radner to Ali Wong, these are the best female comedians of all time
These women from all generations will make you laugh out loud
Ai Wong comedian 2017 Moontower comedy festival

Hot take: I don’t care for straight male comedians. It’s not that they’re not funny, they’re just … I don’t know, boring? Maybe that’s reductive of me, but I never seem to leave a straight male comedian’s set feeling particularly inspired. And though some may argue that it’s not important for a set to "inspire" its audience, I’d actually argue that the opposite is true. For me, I want to see a comedian use humor to address real issues and say real things about the world, even if they do it in a completely goofy way.

Therefore, I tend to prefer female and female-identified comedians. They’re sharp, tough, and have often seen shit that makes their comedy feel raw and true. Undoubtedly there are male comedians who do this, too, but to a much lesser degree, in my very humble and very personal opinion.

Read more
12 classic sci-fi books everyone should read
If you love science fiction and reading, these classic sci-fi novels are a must
Man reading a book and drinking coffee

It may feel like we were recently living in a science-fiction dystopia life -- and in some ways, we were -- but that doesn't mean that we should simply avoid an entire genre of writing. Hardly. In fact, this is probably the perfect time to explore classic sci-fi books, to see what the masters have written, and maybe even see if someone predicted anything like this. Many, though, simply ignore sci-fi wholly and completely because of an association with robots, aliens, and the like.

Long story short, if you think you don't like sci-fi, you have never read great books from the genre. But indeed, many such books abound, including a number that has delighted generations of readers going back well over 150 years. In fact, one of the best things about so many sci-fi books is their very timelessness. As by definition, this type of fiction breaks away from the norms of the everyday world -- whether slightly twisting things or taking place on entire other worlds -- the stories often feel as fresh and relevant today as when they were published decades ago.

Read more