Prodigious local songwriter and musician Al Riggs is back with their zillionth home-recorded album, Lavender Scare, which Riggs released to their Bandcamp subscribers on July 1 before it goes public on August 2, one week from today. But we’re stoked to bring you the album a week early, which is streaming in its entirety below.

If you don’t know where to start in Riggs’s dauntingly copious catalog, this is a great entry point. Accessible and catchy, it’s an overcast synth-pop album (played exclusively with a MIDI controller) of engulfing moodiness that evokes fond memories of The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, as well as less fond memories of the U.S. government’s persecution of gay people in the mid-twentieth century.

Riggs deliberately dropped the album right after Pride Month with a reminder that “the first Pride was a riot,” referring to Stonewall. These themes, though, are more tacit than overt in the album, forming a silent backdrop for the personal vantages Riggs fans have come to expect. Listen to the album below, and watch for our review in Wednesday’s issue.  

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