June music preview: Janelle Monáe ushers in The Age Of Pleasure and Killer Mike makes a long-awaited return

This June is bringing plenty of good music, with Janelle Monáe ushering in The Age Of Pleasure, Killer Mike dropping his first solo album in over a decade, Trevor Powers making his grand return to Youth Lagoon, and Bob Dylan releasing an enigmatic live album. If that’s not enough, we’re also getting a posthumous album from the genius Arthur Russell and new albums from the likes of Kelly Clarkson, Christine and the Queens, Noel Gallagher, Jason Isbell, Jenny Lewis, Wye Oak, and Kool Keith. Happy Pride Month and happy listening.

Bob Dylan: Shadow Kingdom (June 2)

Shadow Kingdom, the concert film that Bob Dylan live streamed in July 2021, was only available for 48 hours before disappearing. But now, nearly two years later, the film is officially being released alongside a live album of the performance. Featuring new Rough And Rowdy Ways-esque arrangements and interpretations of songs throughout Dylan’s career with a backing band including Shahzad Ismaily and Big Thief’s Buck Meek, it’s another exciting chapter in the ongoing story of one of our greatest living songwriters. [Peter Helman]

Bully: Lucky For You (June 2)

“Mezzi was my best friend,” Bully’s Alicia Bognanno says of her beloved pet dog. “She made me feel safe and empowered, she showed me that I was worth loving and never judged me or viewed me as a let down. I always felt accepted, understood and so much less alone. Mezzi was living, breathing proof that I was worthy of being loved.” Bully’s new album Lucky For You was largely inspired by Mezzi’s passing, and it brings poppy new textures to Boganno’s fuzzed-out, ’90s-inspired alt-rock without sacrificing any of her trademark intensity. [Peter Helman]

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds: Council Skies (June 2)

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds have a new album that landed today. Council Skies—titled after a book of the same name by English artist Pete McKee—was produced by Gallagher and Paul “Strangeboy” Stacey and features Johnny Marr on three tracks. “It’s going back to the beginning,” the erstwhile Oasis songwriter says of the album in a statement. “Daydreaming, looking up at the sky and wondering about what life could be … that’s as true to me now as it was in the early ’90s. When I was growing up in poverty and unemployment, music took me out of that.” [Peter Helman]

Protomartyr: Formal Growth In The Desert (June 2)

Detroit post-punk kings Protomartyr recorded their new album Formal Growth In The Desert at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas. Written in the wake of frontman Joe Casey losing his mother to Alzheimer’s, the LP is about “getting on with life” in the wake of tragedy. While there’s plenty of Protomartyr’s usual doom and gloom, there are also moments of real beauty, particularly on closing track “Rain Garden.” “There’s a lot of love in this album, which is something that doesn’t really exist in Protomartyr before,” Casey explains. “I didn’t want to start the album with love, because you have to earn it.” [Peter Helman]

Christine and the Queens: PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE (June 9)

Christine and the Queens is on a roll. Fresh off last year’s Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue) and a frank, moving set at this year’s Coachella, Chris is already back with a whole new set of songs. Described by Chris as the “second part of an operatic gesture,” PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE is inspired by the play Angels In America and features not one, not two, but three tracks with Madonna. Up and comer 070 Shake also features on two songs, including the single “True love,” an electric meditation on ethereal love. [Drew Gillis]

Janelle Monáe: The Age Of Pleasure (June 9)

Although Janelle Monáe has spent the majority of the past few years being a movie star, she’s still an incredible pop star when she wants to be. The Age Of Pleasure is her first album since 2018’s great Dirty Computer, and early singles “Float” and “Lipstick Lover” have shown exactly why Monáe has become such a huge deal. Monáe is in her horny era, and it’s going to be fun as hell. [Peter Helman]

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: Weathervanes (June 9)

In addition to being a good tweeter, Jason Isbell is a heck of a songwriter. Weathervanes, his new album with backing band the 400 Unit, tackles weighty subjects like love, depression, and gun violence with Isbell’s signature empathy and grace. “There is something about boundaries on this record,” Isbell says. “As you mature, you still attempt to keep the ability to love somebody fully and completely while you’re growing into an adult and learning how to love yourself.” [Peter Helman]

Jenny Lewis: Joy’all (June 9)

Jenny Lewis’ new album Joy’all—that title is a portmanteau of “joy” and “y’all”—is her first for Blue Note/Capitol Records and her first since moving to Nashville. She recorded the LP at Nashville’s RCA Studio A with veteran country producer Dave Cobb, and it merges the expected country influences with classic soul and ’90s R&B. Expect lots of pedal steel and good vibes. [Peter Helman]

Squid: O Monolith (June 9)

Squid emerged alongside a wave of experimental young art-punk bands from England, but they quickly separated themselves from the pack with their excellent debut Bright Green Field. They’re about to follow that up with a new album called O Monolith, and the tracks we’ve heard from it have been as weird and proggy and exciting as ever. “There’s a running theme of the relation of people to the environment throughout,” says guitarist Louis Borlase. “There are allusions to the world we became so immersed in, environmental emergency, the role of domesticity, and the displacement you feel when you’re away for a long time.” [Peter Helman]

Youth Lagoon: Heaven Is A Junkyard (June 9)

It’s been eight years since Trevor Powers released an album under his electro-dream pop project Youth Lagoon, and despite the breakneck-speed upheaval of the past near-decade, his sound is still as meditative and subdued as before. Back in 2016, Powers opined that there was “nothing left to say” with Youth Lagoon, but across Heaven Is A Junkyard’s 10 soft and wandering tracks he’s found plenty. Centered around Powers’ twinkling upright piano, whispery vocals, and the spring of a CR78 drum machine, the project reflects his own interpolation of dusty, dreamy Americana—an aesthetic world where drug abuse, suicidality, and generational challenges float in and out of eyeline. Per a press release, Powers says that Heaven Is A Junkyard is “about all of us.” Whether or not any work of art can ever actually speak so broadly, there is a universality somewhere in the hermetic world Powers crafts: What human experience doesn’t toe some line between godliness and futility [Hattie Lindert]

Killer Mike: Michael (June 16)

As any Run The Jewels devotee could argue, Killer Mike isn’t known for holding back. But Michael, the rapper’s first solo album in over a decade, finds the 48-year-old MC at a turning point in his life, where “raw” looks different then it did 10, even five years ago. Decades into a career defined by brash, indisputable verses taking the powers that be to task, Mike started going to therapy and grew curious about the inner forces ruling his own life, drawing inspiration from this most personal struggles as opposed to the collective rage and disenchantment that serves as a jetpack on RTJ’s back. “Motherless,” a standout single from the album, finds Mike intimately reflecting on losing his mother and grandmother, topics he’s never spoken about so plainly and outright. As the meditative, time-worn wisdom of “Motherless” indicates, there’s no better time to do so than the present. [Hattie Lindert]

Kool Keith: Black Elvis 2 (June 16)

In 1999, veteran underground rapper and unrepentant weirdo Kool Keith donned a fake pompadour and shades, reinvented himself as interstellar rock star Black Elvis, and released an album called Black Elvis/Lost In Space. Now, over 20 years later, that album is getting a sequel. Black Elvis 2 features Ice-T, L’Orange, Raaddrr Van, Dynamite, J. Stylez, Agallah, and Marc Live, and like every Kool Keith project, it will likely be very weird and very wonderful. [Peter Helman]

Kelly Clarkson: Chemistry (June 23)

Call it serendipity or an act of the dramaturgically inclined divine: just as her beloved talk show makes a cross country move amid rumors of on-set tension, Kelly Clarkson’s long-awaited divorce album Chemistry is almost here. A few fortunate L.A.-area individuals have already heard the 14-track album, while the rest of the world has three initial pure pop-rock singles to grasp onto. Well-fit for an early summer relief, these tracks aren’t life-changing, but they might not need to be. If divinity stays on the side of Clarkson’s fans, an album of new tracks won’t snuff out the possibility of a full “Kellyoke” tour, which has the potential to usher in a new era of respect for the charismatic star, who has a voice revelatory enough to quiet a stadium and unite generations raised on both Nirvana and Billie Eilish. [Hattie Lindert]

Albert Hammond Jr.: Melodies On Hiatus (June 23)

Albert Hammond Jr., whom you might recognize as the lead guitarist of the Strokes, is following up 2018’s Francis Trouble with another new solo album. He wrote Melodies On Hiatus with help from professional songwriter Simon Wilcox, and he’s already shared the record’s entire first half. It includes a surprising feature from DC rapper Goldlink and plenty of Strokesian guitar goodness, and there should be plenty more where that come from. [Peter Helman]

Arthur Russell: Picture Of Bunny Rabbit (June 23)

Cellist, composer, and producer Arthur Russell died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1992 at the way-too-young age of 40. Although he never saw the success he deserved in his lifetime, he has been hailed in the years since as an influential avant-garde pop genius. Fortunately, he left behind a treasure trove of unreleased material, and there’s still new music that we haven’t heard yet. The upcoming Picture Of Bunny Rabbit is a collection of nine songs from the the era following World Of Echo, the lone album that Russell released during his lifetime, and his HIV diagnosis in 1986. [Peter Helman]

Wye Oak: Every Day Like the Last: Collected Singles 2019–2023 (June 23)

Wye Oak released their last album, the very good The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs, back in 2018. Since then, the long-running indie-rock duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have largely shifted their focus from album-length statements to standalone singles, six of which are being bundled together with three brand new tracks on the forthcoming Every Day Like the Last: Collected Singles 2019–2023. “Every Day Like The Last—that could mean every day like the day that came before, or it could mean every day like the last day that you get,” Wasner explains. “Both meanings apply. But for me, trying to live inside of the uncertainty is the theme. That is the thread that ties all the songs together—tolerating the discomfort of not knowing.” [Peter Helman]

Lunice: Open (June 23)

Montreal dance producer Lunice is probably still best known for his work with Hudson Mohawke as one half of the duo TNGHT. He’s finally following up his 2017 solo debut CCCLX with a new album called Open, a title that matches the record’s collaborative spirit. Rappers and producers like Cali Cartier, Zach Zoya, Yuki Dreams Again, DAGR, and DRTWRK all contribute, and early single “No Commas” is a welcome reminder of Lunice’s inimitable talent. [Peter Helman]

Lucinda Williams: Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart (June 30)

Despite a tornado that damaged her house, a pandemic that devastated the world, and a stroke, legendary roots rock singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is still here and recording vital new music. Following her recently released memoir Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You, Williams is returning with a new album called Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart that boasts guest appearances from Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa, Angel Olsen, Tommy Stinson, Margo Price, and more. [Peter Helman]