Johnny Cash and Megan Thee Stallion have two of this week's best albums (2024)

If you're already done with the 20 best albums of the year so far, we've got another five cracking LPs for you to dig into below.

It's an incredible list of albums with a little of something for everyone. The new financial year is already providing handsome returns for music fans!

Johnny Cash — Songwriter

Songwriter, the second posthumous album from country music legend Johnny Cash, could be one of 2024's most successful dumpster dives.

In the early 90s, just before he hooked up with Rick Rubin, Johnny Cash cut some songs at a little studio. His son, John Carter Cash, recently found the tapes and put together a band to help bring the sessions up to scratch and make them worthy of release.

These are not among Johnny Cash's best songs, and the production does not trump Rubin's stunning touch on the American Recordings albums. But those are two tall orders and, fact is, hearing Cash's deep bellow on a string of unheard, passable tunes about love and god and the great mystery of human nature is really comforting.

I Love You Tonite is a rough and ready love song that will make you want to waltz around a roadhouse with your sweetie at closing time, and the album is best when at its twangiest like on Soldier Boy and Sing it Pretty Sue. Songs like the Dan Auerbach-featuring Spotlight, on the other hand, feel a little clumsy in their attempts to meld new music with Cash's vocals. Thankfully those moments are rare.

It's easy to be cynical about posthumous releases, and we can't be certain Johnny Cash ever wanted us to hear these songs. But, ultimately, Songwriter feels like a net positive for Cash fans rather than a cynical cash grab.

For fans of: Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard

— Dan Condon

Megan Thee Stallion — Megan

From the outrageously raunchy Cardi B mega-hit W.A.P. to out-rhyming contemporaries with sharp, skilful flows like Plan B, Megan Thee Stallion has risen to fame spitting some of the most fun, filthy, and fierce bars in the rap game.

However, things have gotten lonely at the top for Houston's award-winning, chart-topping star. And playtime is over.

Third studio album Megan serves up more of her patented "real hot girl sh*t" with an emphasis on the real. The frisky tone of her 2020 twerk of art Good News has been supplanted with icy beats and even colder bite-backs at jealous haters, fake friends, and even fellow A-listers (Drake and Nicki Minaj are among her targets).

The sting of betrayal fuels a suite of snake-themed tracks, including the venomous, bass-heavy BOA, which flips Gwen Stefani's 2004 hit What You Waiting For? and Cobra uses snapping electric guitar and snake-charming synths to vent both frustrations and anxieties.

She's right to be angry. Megan comes after three years of legal wrangling, both with former label 1501 Certified Entertainment, and a criminal case against Tory Lanez, who's been sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting Megan in the feet.

Beyond the bitterness, there are lighter moments that provide album highlights, too. Otaku Hot Girl flexes Meg's love of anime (and works in a Jujutsu Kaisen meme for the true weaboos) and she rhymes in Japanese opposite feature MC Yuki Chiba on Mumashi.

Cuts like the sensual Spin, featuring R&B fave Victoria Monét, and banging Find Out proves the 29-year-old hasn't run out of naughty, entertaining ways to describe sex (eg "How I go from ghosting you to makin' that d**k disappear?")

Whether championing her bedroom prowess or clowning the competition, Megan Thee Stallion brings her toughest music yet. Sure, heavy is the head that wears the crown, but it sure looks good on somebody as charismatic and compelling as her.

For fans of: Cardi B, Rico Nasty, GloRilla

— Al Newstead

Dirty Three — Love Changes Everything

Comprising just six tracks (titled Love Changes Everything I through VI), Dirty Three's first album in 12 years is a vigorous reminder of what makes them so unique in the musical landscape, Australian or otherwise.

The instrumental trio — violinist and long-time Nick Cave collaborator Warren Ellis, mercurial drummer Jim White, and expressive guitarist Mick Turner — possess a rare and inspiring chemistry that feels less like composing and more like conjuring.

They're capable of evoking a range of intense emotions as they wordlessly journey through searing distortion (I), spectral ambience (II) towering, drawn-out crescendos (V and VI), and plenty of delicate, desolate beauty in what Ellis has described as an "older and meaner, sadder and totally dangerous" sound.

Recorded in just five days but mixed over a year, and coming in the wake of a national tour where they sounded as sublime and savage as ever, Love Changes Everything may well be the last we hear from Dirty Three for another decade. It's a special experience that should not be taken for granted.

For fans of: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tortoise

— Al Newstead

Hiatus Kaiyote — Love Heart Cheat Code

The fourth album from three-time Grammy-nominated Melbourne/Naarm band Hiatus Kaiyote proves, once again, they're operating in a space that's entirely their own.

Finding inspiration in everything from the films of Hayao Miyazaki to the mating rituals of leopard slugs, all manner of genres (future-soul, hip-hop grooves, neo-R&B, progressive jazz) are pulled into the orbit of the quartet's cosmic jams. They've been sampled by Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and their celebrity fans include SZA, Prince and Doja Cat, who covered their track 'Red Room'.

On Love Heart Cheat Code, this week's Double J Feature Album, Hiatus Kaiyote do a little sampling of their own. Telescope is a dose of stargazing funk that quotes both Motown classic My Girl and Sun Ra's Afrofuturist mantra Space Is The Place, and the record concludes with an unhinged remake of Jefferson Airplane's psych-rock classic White Rabbit.

If that wasn't endearingly weird enough for you, Longcat is a goofy tribute to the titular internet-famous feline and 'Cinnamon Temple' is a raucous beast driven by an athletic, distorted bass riff and commands to "f*** it up, buttercup!"

This intense creativity can sometimes be overwhelming, but like 2021 predecessor Mood Valiant, there are also attempts to rein in the wild impulses and time signatures in favour of more user-friendly moments.

Everything's Beautiful and Make Friends ride grooves that are easy-going as well as unconventional, while the title track showcases intoxicating hooks and singer/guitarist Nai Palm's gravity-defying vocals as much as their love for kaleidoscopic production.

Playful, prodigious and proudly out-there, Love Heart Cheat Code is certainly an acquired taste. But once you're accustomed to the flavour, nothing else will satisfy quite like savouring Hiatus Kaiyote.

For fans of: Thundercat, Yussef Dayes, Willow

— Al Newstead

POND — Stung!

Ten albums in and Western Australia's Pond are punching out some of their best material yet.

Early on here we get a scintillating one-two punch of (I'm) Stung and Neon River, which you can lock away as staples in the band's live set list for the foreseeable future. They are songs that prove the band's ambition has remained as bold as it always was, and now their songwriting chops are simply better.

Their unpretentious take on arty New York funk in So Lo is a particularly bright spot, the spacey Elf Bar Blues is a portal into an 80s sci-fi soundscape, while the album's eight-minute centrepiece, Edge Of The World Pt. 3, apes 70s prog in a way that treats the source material with respect, not as a gimmicky artefact ripe for cheap mockery.

There's a lot of baggage associated with the term "maturing" when it comes to rock'n'roll bands, but if you're going to release music at this rate then there needs to be growth. Pond are not just growing, they're doing it the right way. They're as fun and ambitious as ever, they just know how to do it better these days.

For fans of: Black Sabbath, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Tame Impala

— Dan Condon

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