It’s been one hell of a busy October musicwise here in Spare Oom. Not only did we have the long-awaited return of Outside Lands, but there was all sorts of great music that dropped, and this is only the first half of it!

POND, 9, released 1 October. I jumped in on this one unheard essentially due to having heard about them and reading rave reviews, and I wasn’t let down. It’s got that early 00s alt-dance-rock thing going with a bit of post-punk skitteriness to it as well. A really fun listen!

Brandi Carlile, In These Silent Days, released 1 October. I’ve been meaning to listen to more of Brandi’s stuff because she’s a musician that all the critics love but nobody (apart from KEXP) ever seems to play her stuff. And this is an absolutely lovely album worth checking out.

JOHN, Nocturnal Manoeuvres, released 8 October. Also known as JOHN (TIMESTWO), this is yet another band I found thanks to KEXP during one of their music festival broadcasts a few years back. Loud and growly (and indeed played by two guys named John), they’re up there with Idles as a band that’s really fun to listen to loud.

BADBADNOTGOOD, Talk Memory, released 8 October. Yet another capitalized band name! You may know them as the band behind the super-groovy remix of Future Islands’ “Seasons” a few years back, their new record is a fun album of funky and poppy jazz.

Johnny Marr, Fever Dreams Pt 1 EP, released 15 October. Marr drops the first of multiple EPs that will create a full album that’ll be released later in 2022. This particular EP sounds a lot like his work with Bernard Sumner in Electronic.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Georgia Blue, released 15 October. During the November Presidential election last year, Isbell tweeted that if Biden won the state of Georgia, he’d record a full album of songs from bands from that state. Biden won, and Isbell made good on it, releasing an absolutely amazing record of songs from REM, Cat Power, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Indigo Girls, The Black Crowes, and more. Highly recommended!

The Beatles, Let It Be Super Deluxe, released 15 October. This had to have been the toughest Beatles album for Giles Martin to work on, considering its source material and its history as a solid but admittedly spotty-sounding record. Still, he manages to improve on the Spectorized flourishes (dialing back the schmaltz a bit and making it less muddy) and even include the original Glyn Johns attempt when it was still known as Get Back. He did a fine job and of course we’re going to get Disney+ just so I can watch the Peter Jackson documentary!

Coldplay, Music of the Spheres, released 15 October. Their 2019 album Everyday Life was a huge favorite of mine and a very dark and inventive record for them, so I was expecting they’d follow their usual pattern of following it up with a radio-friendly poppy album. I didn’t quite expect…a space-themed concept album? It’s definitely a bit odd and weird in places, but it actually expands on the experimentation of Everyday Life, and that’s definitely a plus in my book.

ONETWOTHREE, ONETWOTHREE, released 15 October. This was one of those records I checked out purely because of the AllMusic review. It’s a fascinating record featuring three female bassists from three separate Swiss post-punk bands (Klaudia Schifferle from Kleenex/LiLiPUT, Madlaina Peer from Noknows and Sara Schaer from TNT/Souldawn) and it certainly sounds like a record that came out in 1981 and loved by college radio deejays. It’s a really fun listen.

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More to come!