One sign of hope in these troubled times has been the resurgence of vinyl albums as viable consumer products. Being one who once routinely puzzled over the perfect albums to give friends and family for the holidays, who then lost that option when everyone ditched their turntables and CD players, I can only applaud the return of physical albums — on vinyl, no less — as things to acquire, yes, and to covet, yes, but also to give.
If you’re also so inclined, here are some long-playing gems released this year, all made here in the Bluff City.
Above Jupiter – Abscission (Red Curtain Records)
This group happens to be from Memphis, and happens to be very young, but you’ll be impressed with their new album regardless of such details. And lest you imagine that, with a name like Above Jupiter, these youngsters are synth-giddy sci-fi freaks, note that this is a remarkably warm, almost old-fashioned-sounding album. Part of that’s due to recording it at the home base of the rapidly expanding Red Curtain Records.
As the label notes on its website, “the band knew these songs would benefit from the analog warmth of a professional studio, and they found the perfect home at Memphis Magnetic Recording Co. All songs were tracked live in the room using the studio’s collection of vintage instruments.”
The album is imbued with homespun sounds, right down to the slightly out of tune piano on the closer, “Evergreen.” Part of what’s striking is the growth of the songwriting since their earlier releases, the melodies and underlying chord changes echoing the sometimes eerie musical choices of artists like the Flaming Lips or David Bowie, influenced by jazz and even classical music’s Romantic era.
Above Jupiter’s members have always had sophisticated palates. “We’ve been calling it art pop,” drummer, singer, and composer Graham Burks III told me last year as the band picked up steam. What they created then fit that tag, with a kind of New Wave twist, but the new album takes on a more expansive scope, musically and lyrically. Ostensibly a “Shakespearean-style tragedy” about four fictional characters created by the band, the sometimes cryptic lyrics, sung with genuine youthful forthrightness, reward repeated listening even where the wordsmithing feels a little green (à la Brian Wilson). And if you can’t quite make out the narrative, the lilac-colored vinyl LP version of Abscission includes a zine booklet that tells the story through lyrics, paintings, and prose.
Above Jupiter’s record release show is this Saturday, November 22nd, 7:30 p.m. at the Green Room at Crosstown Arts.
Optic Sink – Lucky Number (Feel It Records)
One of the city’s most inventive bands is also, it turns out, one of its most prolific, with Lucky Number being their third LP in five years. Each successive release has also marked a quantum leap in the group’s sound, with 2023’s Glass Blocks marking the group’s first recordings with bassist Keith Cooper, and a corresponding boost in their oomph factor. The latest drop adds even more of that. The Optic Sink of 2025 is a locked-and-loaded band, road-hardened, achieving a chemistry cemented by sweat and hot lights.
And yet they’ve stayed true to the original aesthetic mapped out by band founders Natalie Hoffmann and Ben Bauermeister, pairing Hoffmann’s dry, disaffected vocals (more restrained than her work in Nots) with her ingenious old-school synth lines and drum machine beats from Bauermeister (Magic Kids, Toxie). “I really like the tension of a more human voice that is sounding pretty machine-like, but mixed with these actual machines,” Hoffmann told the Memphis Flyer at the time of their debut.
Five years later, while the large brush strokes of that blend have remained, the beats have grown more complex, the arrangements more nuanced, more dynamic, and, with Cooper’s bass more integral than ever, the bottom more heavy. All along, the band has always composed and performed on actual hardware as three humans in the moment, recording their basic tracks live rather than splicing software and loops. Adding to that, Hoffmann’s inclination to play guitar again, first apparent on Glass Blocks, has only grown on this album, to spectacular effect. And finally, as if put up to it by the music’s increased muscularity, Hoffmann’s vocals have taken on an energizing, aggressive tone, that, paradoxically, also gives way to out and out singing in places. It’s a virtuoso performance by her, track after track, the cool deadpan of her earlier work sometimes giving way to outright rage or full-throated lament.
Lawrence Matthews – Between Mortal Reach & Posthumous Grip
This album was a long time in the making, as Matthews shrugged off the stage name of Don Lifted and embraced a more authentic, harder-edged version of himself three years ago. After the opener, “Green Grove (Our Loss),” begins with classic soul strings, the track briefly dips into some very Don Lifted-esque atmospherics until a harder-hitting beat kicks in. Matthews’ new voice is one of grim determination, mixed with a new playfulness that might even make it scarier. “This blood, this soil, infused, this river/This money, this drink, devour your mental …”
And just then it cuts to some mid-song banter from an old record by Mississippi Fred McDowell. That’s typical of the whole album. As Matthews explains, “My narrative mirrors the narrative of so many folks who have lived and died poor, fighting for scraps, even while their songs are known all across the world. I felt a kinship with them, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be that. So while I was signed to Fat Possum, I started to pull from their catalog for samples. Nearly every sample on this new album is from Hi Records, Fat Possum, or Big Legal Mess. And even though I’m not signed with Fat Possum now, we have a great relationship and they’re helping me take care of business. So this project, to me, was channeling those artists’ stories.”
The spirit of the album is not celebratory, but rather drenched in sex and death. It’s an approach Matthews dubs Southern Gothic. “Outside of one Stylistics sample, every person sampled on the record has passed,” Matthews explained when debuting this work. “Most of the songs are about death — death and love and obsession. And, being from the South, violence. How much violence I’ve experienced in life, and how much violence is brewing in me, because of what I’ve experienced. Those elements of my life had no place in the music I made as Don Lifted. But with this project, I could express my anger and frustration more directly. I’m expressing the ways violence has come at me and comes out of me. Now, I’m leaning into that without shame.”