Souled American waited thirty years to make another record. They did not use the time to hurry. Souled American 隔了三十年才回來。他們沒打算趕時間。

L'Arpeggiata & Christina Pluhar — La Torre del Oro

Christina Pluhar has spent twenty years using the theorbo as something closer to a passport than a specialist instrument, and her new album begins, logically, at a port. The Torre del Oro is the twelfth-century watchtower that used to count gold onto ships bound for the Indies, and the record follows what came back: sixteenth-century villancicos sitting next to Venezuelan polo margariteño, a Mudarra romanesca folding into a Mexican son jarocho, Murcia's fandangos answered by anonymous South American dance forms four hundred years later. The trick, if there's a trick at all, is that Pluhar refuses to treat the old and the new as different categories; the ensemble plays them with the same weight, the same generosity of pulse, and the seams disappear. It's a record that sounds obvious in the way really good ideas do. Christina Pluhar 把 theorbo 當護照用了二十年。新作從塞維利亞的 Torre del Oro 出發——那座十二世紀用來清點前往新大陸貨船的黃金塔——追蹤這些船返航帶回來的聲音。

Souled American — Sanctions

The last Souled American album, Notes Campfire, came out in 1996, which was the year Joe Adducci and Chris Grigoroff seemed to decide that recording was too much in a hurry to be worth their time. They kept playing, occasionally, to small rooms. Now they are back, and what's striking about Sanctions is that it doesn't sound like a comeback — it sounds like they simply picked up where they'd left off, as if thirty years were a long pause between verses and nothing more. Twelve songs, cut mostly live, sung in that suspended half-drawl that has always floated a few beats behind the band. The album's patience is almost confrontational. Nothing arrives; nothing resolves; the record sits there, breathing. If you've spent the last decade finding it harder and harder to listen to music that wants your attention right now, this is the opposite proposition, and the relief is considerable. 他們上一張專輯是 1996 年的《Notes Campfire》。之後三十年，Joe Adducci 和 Chris Grigoroff 偶爾在小場子演演，沒有再進錄音室。

Frog — Frog for Sale

The Bateman brothers have released three albums in fourteen months, which is either a sign of something breaking open or a quiet emergency, and in the case of Frog for Sale it turns out to be the first. Twelve songs about the way money gets in the way of love, written under the patron saints of Paul McCartney and Buddy Holly, which is a combination that only works if the writing has enough plain melody to hold its own. Frog always has. The cover is a childhood photograph of Daniel holding the infant Steve, and the tenderness of that image — an older brother who has been looking after a younger one all along — sits under the whole record like a foundation. Bateman 兄弟 14 個月出三張。這次寫的是"錢如何擋在愛情前面"，寫作靈感掛著 McCartney 和 Buddy Holly——這組合要成立，歌得有夠乾淨的旋律扛，Frog 一直都有。

Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns — Bitches Blues

Weejuns is Norwegian slang for Norwegians, and the title is a wink at Miles Davis, neither of which would matter much if the trio — Mollestad on guitar, Ståle Storløkken (of Supersilent) on organ, Ole Mofjell on drums — weren't serious about the double provocation. Their 2023 debut was a live double album; this is a studio follow-up, and the added control makes the dynamic swings feel even more extreme: six instrumental tracks that move from heavy, riff-based pulse to something so rubato it drifts like chamber music, and then drop back without warning. Storløkken's Hammond is the secret weapon, providing both the harmonic ground and most of the bad weather. Weejuns 是挪威俚語的"挪威人"，專輯標題顯然在對 Miles Davis 眨眼。Mollestad 結他 + Supersilent 的 Ståle Storløkken 管風琴 + Ole Mofjell 鼓。

Blue Mitchell — The Thing To Do

Label廠牌

Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series

Mitchell's 1964 debut as a Blue Note leader is famous for two reasons, both of which hold up. First, it contains one of Chick Corea's earliest appearances on record, at twenty-two, already sounding like himself. Second, it moves through styles — the calypso figure of "Fungii Mama," the ballad grief of "Mona's Mood," the swinging exit of "Step Lightly" — as if the trumpeter were refusing to be placed. Junior Cook, Gene Taylor, and Al Foster are a rhythm section of unflashy intelligence. Kevin Gray's all-analog remaster, cut from the original tapes and pressed at Optimal, makes the case for the Classic Vinyl Series more efficiently than any sales pitch could: a record that had been reissued before, but had never quite sounded this open. Mitchell 1964 年為 Blue Note 的首張領銜作，兩個收它的理由：

Kris Drever — Doing This For Love

Drever made his name as the guitarist in Lau, the Scottish trio whose extended instrumental pieces rewired what you thought a folk band could do, but his solo work has always moved in the other direction — inward, toward the kind of songwriting that cares more about a specific harbor or a specific argument than about the grand structural gesture. Doing This For Love continues that. Ten songs, place names doing a lot of the emotional work ("Pilot Whales," "Catterline"), a cast of collaborators (Rachel Sermanni, Louis Abbott, Cahalen Morrison) chosen for what they withhold as much as what they contribute. The CD dropped a week ago; the vinyl is today. Lau 三重奏的蘇格蘭結他手單飛新作。Lau 那個把民謠樂團的 form 徹底重寫的三人組——但 Drever 的單飛作往往走反方向：向內，關心某個港口、某場爭吵，而不是宏大結構。

Crippled Black Phoenix — Sceaduhelm

Justin Greaves has been running Crippled Black Phoenix for almost twenty years as a loose collective built around a simple, stubborn premise: that rock music ought to be able to carry grief without becoming maudlin. Sceaduhelm — an Old English word meaning, roughly, shadow-covering — is the most withdrawn record the project has made. Written and recorded across 2023–2025 in Lincolnshire, Stockholm, and Louisville, it puts three vocalists in rotation (Belinda Kordic, Ryan Patterson, Justin Storms) and resists every opportunity to build toward the big chorus. The deluxe vinyl edition comes in a gatefold with a three-piece pop-up paper theater you assemble yourself, which is both absurd and, in context, kind of moving: a physical object that asks you to take your time with it. Justin Greaves 把 CBP 這個鬆散集體撐了快二十年，前提很固執：搖滾應該扛得起悲傷而不至於變成濫情。

Jessie Ware — Superbloom

Two records into her disco reinvention, Ware has become the most meticulous pop craftsman in Britain who hasn't been properly canonized — her studio sense, her phrasing, the way she treats a string arrangement as a piece of dramaturgy rather than decoration, all belong to a tradition closer to Sade than to contemporaries. Superbloom is her sixth, and early listens suggest the temperature is a few degrees cooler: the dance impulse remains, but the drama has been pulled back, which may turn out to be the most grown-up move she's made yet. Alt-cover pressings in pink and gold are already selling out at the usual retailers. Ware 兩張 disco 轉型作之後，已經是英國現在最細膩的流行工匠之一。她對錄音、樂句、絃樂編排當戲劇使用而非裝飾的處理，屬於 Sade 那一脈而非同輩。