Skip to main content

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

New Music Preview: Blood Orange, Ohmme, and Wild Nothing

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Recommended Videos

Blood Orange – Negro Swan

Blood Orange’s fourth album, Negro Swan, comes out August 24, but the catalogue of Devonté Hynes, the artist behind Blood Orange, reaches farther back. Raised in England, Hynes started out as a teenage punk in the U.K. band Test Icicles before releasing two orchestral acoustic pop records as Lightspeed Champion. Only in 2011 did he release the first Blood Orange LP, Coastal Dreams. 2013’s Cupid Deluxe and 2016’s Freetown Sound both received critical acclaim. Rolling Stone called Freetown Sound a “masterpiece of composition, curation, and choreography [that addresses] present-day black art and experience while refusing limits at every turn,” and Pitchfork ranked Cupid Deluxe among the “100 Best Albums of the Decade (So Far)” in 2016.

Blood Orange - Charcoal Baby (Official Video)

No music from the album accompanied the initial announcement of Negro Swan’s release date on July 19, but in the days since, Hynes has shared two songs from the record: “Charcoal Baby” and “Jewelry.”

Negro Swan arrives on Friday, August 24, via Domino and is available to pre-order through Amazon, Domino Mart, and iTunes.

Ohmme – Parts

Ohmme is a Chicago-based duo comprised of Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart. Still in their 20s, Stewart and Cunningham are both classically trained musicians and established players in the Chicago music scene. The list of artists the two have collaborated with reads like a who’s who of Chicago music stars and includes Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Chance the Rapper, Whitney, and Twin Peaks.

Ohmme - Icon (Official Video)

The duo plays with the tropes and stereotypes surrounding female singer-songwriters. Cunningham and Stewart present gorgeously harmonized, delicate vocals, but rather than backing up those vocals with amiable melodies, they challenge listeners with psychedelic guitar work and dynamic shifts. That’s not to say there are no melodies or hooks in Ohmme’s music. “Icon,” an early single from the duo’s forthcoming Parts LP, is undeniably catchy with the duo’s ear-catching vocals harmonies in full swing and perfect guitar riff.

Parts arrives on Friday, August 24, via Joyful Noise and is available to pre-order through Amazon, iTunes, and Joyful Noise’s online store.

Wild Nothing – Indigo

Jack Tatum has been releasing music under the moniker Wild Nothing since his critically acclaimed 2010 debut, Gemini. The act’s synth-heavy take on indie pop almost glimmers, and Indigo, its forthcoming album, looks to continue that trend. The album announcement notes that the record finds Tatum “at his most efficient, calculated, and confident after a decade of making music as Wild Nothing,” and that Indigo returns to the “fresh, transcendent sweep” of Gemini.

Wild Nothing // Letting Go (Official Video)

For the creation of Indigo, Tatum worked to collapse the “man vs. machine dichotomy.” Writing pieces of songs on a multitude of instruments, he made highly detailed demos before recording the album over four days at Sunset Sound with Cam Allen (drums) and Benji Lysaght (guitar). Tatum looked to produce the album in a clear, ’80s-inspired fidelity in contrast to the tendency toward lo-fi production among his peers. “I wanted it to sound like a classic studio record … I think about how my music will age. Ideas of ‘timeless’ are going to be different — so if Indigo is not timeless then it’s at least ‘out of time.’”

Indigo arrives on Friday, August 31, via Captured Tracks and is available to pre-order through Amazon, Capture Tracks’ online store, and iTunes.

Did you miss on July’s releases? Check ’em out here.

Terence Praet
Terence Praet contributes to The Manual’s New Music Monday column. He studied Philosophy and History at Skidmore College…
The Pitt season 2: Everything we know so far
The second season is coming just a year after the first one debuted
Noah Wyle in the Pitt

Over the course of its remarkable first season, few shows have done more to earn a fanbase than The Pitt. The Max Original, which is set in a Pittsburgh emergency room and told over the course of a single shift, hour by hour, is both an old-fashioned medical drama and a modern look at all the ways that American systems are crumbling.

After the first season wrapped up on April 10, many are eager to learn more about a second season. After all, The Pitt is the kind of show that seems like it could run forever. Here's what we know about the show's second season so far:

Read more
Will we be getting a Black Mirror season 8?
The anthology series just debuted its seventh season on Netflix.
Paul Giamatti in Black Mirror

Following the debut of Black Mirror's seventh season on Netflix, attention has naturally turned to whether we'll be getting any more stories from the mind of creator Charlie Booker. Black Mirror has become one of Netflix's biggest successes, but the show has not officially been renewed for an eighth season yet.

Although the show hasn't been renewed by Netflix yet, Booker has made it clear that it's not because he's out of ideas. "Yes, there are some stories that are pretty much fully baked and ready to go," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "And there are others where I've got chunks of story or concept that I'm just slightly trying to work out."

Read more
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman go to war in the first trailer for ‘The Roses’
This story has already been adapted into a feature film once.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman in The Roses

Anytime you get two heavyweight actors together and ask them to do battle on screen, the results are almost guaranteed to be electrifying. That's certainly what the first trailer for The Roses promises. The movie, which is adapted from Warren Adler's 1981 novel The War of the Roses, stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as a married couple whose relationship disintegrates over the course of the film.

The two play Theo and Ivy, a married couple living an idyllic California life. When Theo's career crumbles just as Ivy's is taking off, though, buried resentments in their relationship come to the surface. Andy Samberg, Allison Janney, Ncuti Gatwa, Kate McKinnon, Sunita Mani, Jamie Demetriou, Zoë Chao and Belinda Bromilow are also in the cast. It was directed by Jay Roach.

Read more