It’s the industry standard now that albums don’t come out in January. It makes sense really. No one wants to release music in such a cursed month. Each year swarms of locusts infest Liverpool and other cities like, erm, can’t think of any others. Ghent, there’s one. In every city, basically. This obviously makes wearing headphones impossible (‘bug-attractors’). Bad time for music.
There’s also the obvious one: All the streaming services go down in the build up to Chinese New Year. Then, when Mark Whalberg hosts the annual ‘Turning on the Streaming Services’ ball on the 31st January, (always considered to be a mistake seeing as Chinese New sometimes hasn’t started/has already started by this point) everyone is overcome with emotion, as their spotify accounts unlock and millions of children around the world wake up to stockings full of ‘Apple Music’.
So to prepare for the big February album haul, we’re taking a look at the top 100 albums coming out in the first week of February that are more than likely going to be epic. There’s bound to be loads after a month of no releases.
100. Kali Uchis - Orquideas
Alright, so apparently this album is already out. It says it came out on January 12th actually. This seems weird as in January, it’s usually illegal to release music. Not sure how this one slipped through the cracks.
99. Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
I absolutely love this album. It’s some of his most moving work in years. Yes, it came out last year, and not in a couple of weeks. But it’s not actually February yet so I am slightly uncertain which albums are going to come out. I’ll try and stick to the format though.
98. Marika Hackman - Big Sigh
So I’m being told by my editor (a sock with some googly eyes and a tennis ball inside it) that this album also came out on January 12th. Big day for music! Sad no one will have heard yet, because you can only listen to music on Spotify now (goodbye Deezer, and vinyl) and everyone’s accounts are still locked.
97. Orbital - Snivilisation
This one came out in 1994, but it’s a classic. What else am I supposed to write? It’s not fucking february, I can’t see the future. I don’t know what will come out. Nobody does. There’s got to be some kind of backlog but I don’t know why I’ve even been asked to do this really. I’ll give it a proper go with the next one.
96. Lana Del Ray - Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Obviously this came out last year as well. Who’s even meant to be releasing an album this year? I’m sure Vampire Weekend are. That would be awesome. Lana Del Ray might release another one as well.
95. LCD Soundsystem - The Quarry Recordings
One can only dream.
94. Sun Kil Moon - ?
He has so many albums, surely he’ll release something. Imagine if that came out in the first week of February, how impressed you’d be?
93. Ween - The Mollusk
This is a great album we’ve talked about before in one of these lists, because they are impossible and I don’t have many points of reference anymore as the days get longer and the years get shorter and I find myself worrying about all the things in my life that are shit and whether anyone actually likes me and Pitchfork is shutting down which is a bad sign for written music journalism in general, no matter what you think of the site, and who wants to get music reviews from GQ because that fucking sucks because I don’t want to read about Joanna Newsom next to a list of ab workouts and it makes it all seem pointless to hone a craft if the very thing you end up getting good at in ten years appeals to a demographic of nobody but misogynistic fifteen year old boys and it has to written as an instagram post where you claim that you’re re-writing the musical canon and then put a Father John Misty album as the greatest album ever made.
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1. SZA - SOS
Ok so this one is actually just Pitchfork’s number one album of last year. The mad thing is if you actually look at the release date it came out in 2022. I guess it’s not just me that fumbles the bag with this whole ‘correct dates’ thing sometimes. In 2024 I’m going to kill the Gregorian calendar with my bare hands.
Thanks for checking out our top 100 albums that are coming out in the first week of february! If you can think of any more, please, tell Aidan Shard on the bar, and he’ll write them down and slip it under the door of my bedroom while pretending he can’t hear me crying!
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