Best Ever Albums

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

Repo — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 19:30:05 GMT

Author: Repo

Posted: 08/14/2026 23:30

Hulder ....

Link

... is my personal favorite female black metal vocalist! And I love this video! My total dream girl! lol. I think she recently put out a new album too!

Yup! Just dropped last week! Here's the album premiere...

Link

Will have to listen late night tonight! 😈

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:01:07 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 08/14/2026 21:01

Repo wrote:

How cool would it have been if Phoebe had made an out & out Black Metal album. And it was really good. THAT would deserve Best New Music for sure.

Wouldn't she ruin her voice doing that? 🤔

Besides, we already have Emma Ruth Rundle, though I guess she saves the really heavy stuff for collaboration LPs (like the one she did with Thou back in 2020... that's doom metal of course, I think there's some screamo/croak-shrieking involved but I don't think she's the one doing it). Her new album is coming out on Sept. 18, by the way, probably no screamo on that one at all... Chelsea Wolfe used to do some scary-type stuff back in the day too, and as mentioned above her new LP comes out next week, but she doesn't do screamo either, AFAIK. (Not that I've heard her entire discography, of course!)

I mean, honestly, I just don't know how they do it. I can barely get past 15 seconds of a Linda-Blair-in-the-Exorcist impression before I have to go get a glass of water, but these people are doing this every night for well over an hour per set.

Link

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

Repo — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:01:06 GMT

Author: Repo

Posted: 08/14/2026 16:01

Repo wrote:

Hmmmmm....

Will be checking out Phoebe Bridgers, Kiwi Jr. & Sweeping Promises I think. I on the fence regarding Kiwi Jr too. Definitely stuff I've heard many, many times, BUT it's my favorite kind of stuff.

How cool would it have been if Phoebe had made an out & out Black Metal album. And it was really good. THAT would deserve Best New Music for sure.

Anyways, listening now & it sounds like Phoebe. Sure it will be a grower and hoping its her best yet! 🤓

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

Repo — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:52:22 GMT

Author: Repo

Posted: 08/13/2026 23:52

Hmmmmm....

Will be checking out Phoebe Bridgers, Kiwi Jr. & Sweeping Promises I think. I on the fence regarding Kiwi Jr too. Definitely stuff I've heard many, many times, BUT it's my favorite kind of stuff.

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:53:51 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 08/13/2026 20:53

What August 14, 2026 releases will YOU etc., etc... I've basically run out of clever things to open with at this point.

Let me begin by saying I didn't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities last week by referring to Dionne Warwick as "legendary" while not using the same word to describe Carly Simon. Clearly, both qualify for the "legendary" tag, and indeed Simon should probably be considered more legendary because Warwick's hits were mostly written by Burt Bachrach and Hal David, whereas Simon wrote most of hers by herself, as I recall. However, none of her songs were ever covered by The Stranglers or Splitsville, so they don't score as highly in the MadhattanJack so-called "Rating System."

Anyways, in addition to Simon's new LP Comes in Waves (which is pretty nice, actually) and Warwick's DWuets, I mentioned that there's a new Ann Wilson & Tripsitter album, Consecrated Ground. Only one preview track has been available for that one, called "I Will Not Be Coming Back," but that makes no sense to me because isn't that exactly what she's doing?

The new Phoebe Bridgers album, Lost Weekend, sounds like it's another good one from her, and the new Laura Veirs album (Temple Songs) is another fine collection of nice, pretty folk tunes with occasional jazz bits to add to this week's list. I nearly included the new Marilyn Manson LP too (One Assassination Under God, Chapter 2), but then I remembered that Marilyn Manson is a dude. Oops! Oh well!

Today there was also a semi-surprise announcement about yet another new LP from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, entitled Alien Metal. (I thought we had GWAR for that?) It's supposed to be a techno album with few (if any) guitars this time, in case you're still trying to keep track of their release schedule (which seems like it would be full-time job).

That doesn't leave much, unfortunately! So if my pick-of-the-week isn't Phoebe Bridgers (and maybe it should be), I guess it has to be Pallida Cavtat.

Pallida Cavtat, La distanza tra noi e la riva
Pallida Cavtat is a post-punk trio from Apulia (aka Puglia), Italy, and this is their debut album. They've got some very cool tunes here, but as for the band name, "pallida" is the Italian word for "pale," but "Cavtat" is a town in Croatia near Dubrovnik, straight across the Adriatic Sea from Apulia (the "boot-heel" region of Italy). So while the name probably means something, I don't know what that would be exactly. Regardless, if you don't mind lyrics in Italian and lots of eye makeup, this is actually a pretty good record.
Sweeping Promises, You Say I Romanticize
I never said anything of the sort, but this is the third album from this lo-fi/DIY male+female punk duo from Lawrence, Kansas, whose last LP, 2023's Good Living is Coming For You, got a pretty good response here on BEA. I'd have to say this one is an improvement over that one, especially in the songwriting — I'd like to hear them recorded in a proper studio, maybe with fuller (or at least less minimalist) instrumentation, because I really think their songs would benefit from it. But I'm basically an idiot and nobody listens to me, so they probably won't do that.
Hovvdy, Big World
This is the sixth album from this lite 'n' sunny-sounding indiepop duo from Austin, Texas, another in the always-growing list of bands who use two "v"s to replace what would normally be a "w" in their name in order to make it unique enough to grab the dot-com internet domain name before someone else thinks of it. Well, it worked because they got the domain name, but I'm still going to pronounce it "HOHHV-DEE" until someone other than Discogs tells me to stop.
Slow Joy, Esteban Flores
Slow Joy is the stage name of Esteban Flores, a guy from Dallas, Texas who is known in the music biz as "Slow Joy," and this is his new album, Esteban Flores, which is actually his real name, not "Slow Joy" which is really a stage name. This is his second LP and I guess you could call it "emogaze," except that I really hate that term.
Mason Ramsey, Outlaw in Love (Amazon link)
It's the second album from this 19-year-old country singer (aka "Walmart Yodeling Kid") from Golconda, Illinois, whom we all remember as a BIG favorite of BEA's own JOSweetHeart. I'd have to say it's not quite up to the standard set by his debut LP, 2024's I'll See You In My Dreams, but that's probably because big-name songwriters were brought in to co-write the songs, giving it less of a "traditional" (some would say "retro") vibe and more of a "manufactured" one — though he still sounds enough like Hank Williams that he probably won't alienate his existing fans.
Detects, The Future At First
Here's the fourth album from this electrodarkwave act from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, of all places. They seem to be about as obscure as you can get these days — looks like all their physical releases are on cassette, probably DIY, with practically zero information available about the band members since they would probably be killed in a town like Hattiesburg if they were ever to be identified as an electrodarkwave band (Hattiesburgers are "strictly thrash," as everyone knows). This album is more synth-oriented than their previous ones, but it's not bad, at least if you like murky-sounding goth stuff and all that sort of thing.
Strange Lot, ST
This band, which started out as a solo act but now consists of four guys from Austin, Texas (again!), is what I would call a "sinister psychgaze" outfit with a strong Roky Erickson influence — the songs tend to be edgy and ominous-sounding without sounding too gloomy, which is a neat trick, and there's lots of reverb and psychedelic flourishes fading in and out, etc., etc. The singer isn't bad, but let's just say he "lacks conviction" and sounds like he might want you to think he's on drugs for most of the album. Personally, I really like stuff like this, but your mileage may vary, assuming you can even afford to drive anymore.
Blinder, Low-Res (released August 11)
Blinder is a nu-metal/metalgaze band from Adelaide, Australia — which I must say seems to have a burgeoning rock scene these days since I keep finding good bands from there. This is Blinder's debut EP, with 5 tracks, but they're not on Discogs yet so it might be a little early to add them to BEA. They're high-powered, tight, and well-produced, though I suppose not overly original. The vocals are the big draw here — they have a male lead singer (Will Wright, I think) who sounds just like Bono (except that he can also do screamo, unlike Bono), and a female lead singer (Ella Phillips) who sounds a lot less like Bono, which is even better!
Kiwi Jr., Blowin' Up
This is the fourth album from these four guys from Toronto, who are a twee-ish melodic guitar-pop band (for the most part). I'm kind of on the fence about them — it's like they write catchy 'n' fun tunes, but don't really play them very well. Maybe they need a different producer? Could just be me, I guess.
Postures, Together, Slowly
The debut LP from a nice, somewhat sadcore-ish chamber-pop quartet from Melbourne, Australia. I can hear some Tame Impala influence here, along with maybe some High Llamas too, but I'm not quite ready to anoint them as the Next Big Pop Thing just yet. Definitely some potential, though! (They'll need better album cover art of course, in case you bothered to look.)

Finally, there's a new live album from Sparks called Live on the Moon, except that they never actually played on the Moon, they're just saying they did (specifically, they're saying the album was recorded in the Taruntius Crater, on the northwestern edge of Mare Fecunditatis), probably to avoid lunar licensing fees or something. Also, famous actress Cate Blanchett is on the album as the show's emcee, and we know she's never been on the Moon, though she probably could have gone there as the Goddess Hela via the Bifröst Bridge in Thor: Ragnarok if there had really been a Sparks gig going on up there. (I would've just gone to one of the London shows, personally.)

Next week looks to be maybe a bit better, with new stuff from Chelsea Wolfe, Weezer, Lambchop, Mystery Jets, and the Afghan Whigs. We'll also finally get that new covers LP from Stefano Guzzetti that was supposed to come out on July 24 but got delayed, probably because someone finally realized that nobody ever heard of him. 😄

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Thu, 6 Aug 2026 17:31:34 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 08/06/2026 21:31

What August 7, 2026 releases are YOU going to regret mentioning a week later when you realize you were unwittingly participating in a media pile-on that the celebrity being piled on hardly deserved?

No blockbusters this week — there's a new album from emo-rockers Citizen and another from folk-rock singer Margaret Glaspy, and on Wednesday of next week there's the comeback LP from Smash Mouth, but I doubt any blocks will be busted by any of those unless they're, like, small blocks made of cheese or something like that.

So, I guess my pick-of-the-week would have to be this album:

Man/Woman/Chainsaw, Cannonball
This is the debut LP by a not-at-all-punkish "art punk" indie-rock act from London, consisting of four women and two guitarist-guys named "Billy." One of the guys named Billy sings lead on a couple of tracks too, and he's... okay, but most of the singing is done by bass player Vera Leppänen, whose voice is great but could maybe stand to be a bit stronger and more aggressive for some of this material. That's a minor issue, though. They also have a violinist, who gives their tunes a "traditional" vibe that vaguely suggests blues, folk-rock, 70s pop, or even so-called Americana, without being too obtrusive, usually. (I assume this is all intentional, and I have to admit that it's not a bad formula, nor does it even sound all that formulaic.) I like their songs too, and there could even be some hit potential, but I've said that before and I've nearly always been wrong because I no longer have any idea as to what a "hit" is. With a name like "Man/Woman/Chainsaw" you'd expect more heavily-distorted guitar crunch, and you don't really get it, but frankly that's nit-picking. The only real downside of this one, for me, is that it brings back some very bad memories of when I got divorced and my ex-wife insisted on keeping our chainsaw for herself in the settlement. I loved that chainsaw, dammit.

Meanwhile, there's other stuff.
Rachael Wood, It's Not the End of the World
Rachael Wood is currently the guitarist for The Wedding Present, but she's only been in the band long enough to appear on one Weddoes record, 2025's Maxi EP. I really liked Maxi though, so hopefully she'll stick around longer than most of their previous guitarists. As for this record, it's sort of a surfgazey affair with LOUDquietLOUD and quietLOUDquiet bits. Her vocals (is she a contralto or a mezzo-soprano?) are subtle and mostly understated on the tracks I've heard, so maybe this record has that same "minor issue" as the Man/Woman/Chainsaw album... but all in all, it sounds pretty cool.
Strawberry Alarm Clock, Where's One?
Okay, there's a lot to unpack here, starting with who's still alive. Apparently these guys were quite young when they started back in 1967, so they're unusually intact for a 60s band. Lee Freeman and singer Jimmy Pitman have passed away, but they've still got singer/keyboardist Mark Weitz, George Bunnell on bass, Randy Seol on drums, plus Gene Gunnels on... whatever he's on, so that's a majority of the original group already, plus producer Steve Bartek is heavily involved. (You might remember him as a key member of Oingo Boingo; he apparently played the flute with SAC early on, and he even co-wrote four of the songs from their first album.) Guitarist Howie Anderson has been in the lineup since 1986, so let's be fair, that makes him a SAC veteran too. In fact, if he'd been in the US Air Force assigned to the Strategic Air Command, he'd be a SAC 'n' SAC veteran! Yeah, I've got a million of 'em... Anyway, this isn't their first reunion record, since they got together in 2012 to make Wake Up Where You Are, but that was mostly not-so-great re-recordings of their old material, and quite frankly not very compelling as an album. (It might be noted here that their big smash hit "Incense and Peppermints" was officially credited to songwriters John Carter and Tim Gilbert, and sung by Greg Munford, none of whom were actually in the band, so it wasn't included.) This album is all new stuff — ten originals plus two Beatles covers, "Day Tripper" and "Within You Without You," and some of it is really good, especially for a bunch of old guys. SAC were never super-inventive or "out-there" musically, and they're not trying to "reinvent" themselves as such here. This is basically just a very nice 60s-style psychedelic-lite pop album with a bit of stylistic diversity (which they sort-of always had) and recorded with modern studio gear. That just means the sound is more compressed, there are digital effects being used, and the drums sound a lot better. It's not a "perfect facsimile" of that original 60s sound and probably isn't intended to be, but while I don't want to overrate it (especially since the album cover is terrible), it's actually one of the best old-guy reunion albums I've heard in quite a while — especially if we're only counting guys who are older than I am.
The Anchoress, As We Once Were
One might describe Catherine Anne "The Anchoress" Davies musically as what it might sound like if the Simple Minds had hired Kate Bush to sing for them in the 2010s, but that's only because she sounds somewhat like Kate Bush (though without the spectacular 6-octave range) and she was, in fact, a member of the Simple Minds for about 4 years during the 2010s. Her solo work is still a little too slick and artsy-proggy for my tastes, but she's obviously very talented and the production work is top-notch. There's even a duet with Eaves Wilder (track 3, "Damsels"), though Eaves isn't really out-front on the track doing her super-waifish voice thing. (Which makes me wonder why Davies would bring her in at all, but I guess you can't just throw all the waifishness in there in one big lump or people will freak out, riot, smash shop windows, and so on. Nobody wants that! Except me.)
The Mountain Goats, Days
These guys have been making fine indie folk-rock records since 1991, and I think this is now their 24th studio album — that's a lot of albums! Their last one, Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan, was supposed to be a kind of musical-theatre concept LP, but on this one they seem to be happy just making wry and semi-obscure pop-cultural references for humorous effect, at least with the song titles. The title of track 8, "Best Hard Rock Albums 2013," is especially on-the-nose for me, since my own 2013 BEA year chart is one of my most stupidly annotated ones that I spent lots of time on and still nobody has given it a single rating.
Megasound, Megasound
How is it we've gotten all the way to 2026 and nobody has called a rock band "Megasound" before? Or am I imagining this? Anyway, they're a power-pop/pop-punk trio (two girls and a guy) from Minneapolis, fronted by Kerry Alexander. She and one of the other members (the guy) used to be in the Bad Bad Hats, which is, or was, also a pretty good band name. (I'm guessing the Bad Bad Hats are now defunct, though.) Nothing groundbreaking about this album, but it's fun, nicely-recorded, and has some fairly catchy tunes. Great for parties!
Professor and the Madman, Dreamworld
PatM is a punkish psychedelic quartet consisting of two guys, Alfie Agnew and Sean Elliott, who were in D.I., an 80s-era punk band from Fullerton, California, plus two guys from The Damned, namely drummer (and O.G. London punk) Rat Scabies and bass player Paul Gray. Agnew is one of the three Agnew Brothers who collectively were in so many California punk bands they became the subject of their own documentary last year, Agnew: The Story of a California Family. (Admittedly, no one has actually seen this documentary.) This will be PatM's 5th studio LP, and the two pre-release singles suggest that it's more psychedelic than punk this time, which (if true) would be sort of the reverse of their previous album, 2020's Seance. And yes, they took their name from the Simon Winchester book, which — if I'm being totally honest here — might be a safer recommendation than this album. We'll see!
Slow Fiction, Dollhouse
This might be grossly unfair, but I would probably tag this NYC band as a "garagegaze" act — they're clearly trying to create a big wall of distorted guitar sound with lots of reverb, which is good, but singer Julia Vassallo has a vocal style that would probably be more appropriate for a more traditional/conventional hard-rock band. The same might be said about their songwriting too, though the songs themselves are perfectly fine. Maybe that doesn't make much sense, but those are really just "quibbles," and I like what I've heard from them so far.
Ceremony, Tell Me Your Dream
For those of you who follow this kind of stuff, this is the band commonly known as "Ceremony West Coast," who play semi-melodic hardcore punk, as opposed to "Ceremony East Coast," which is more of a shoegaze-with-occasional-dreampop band. The latter group is known here on BEA as "Ceremony (Skywave)" because their members used to be in another band called... wait for it... "Skywave"! So by putting the word "dream" in one of their album titles, it's possible that Ceremony West Coast is making a hostile move here to take over the "Ceremony" name nationwide and push Ceremony East Coast out of their pre-established territory. We all know what that means... BAND WAR! If they're successful, this could become known as the "Big Takeover," which coincidentally is the name of the magazine that I first heard about all of this from. That magazine was named after a song by DC punks the Bad Brains, who in turn were named after a song from the Ramones album Road to Ruin, which in turn describes what will happen to your brain if you try to follow this runaway train of logic like I just did.
Stumbleine, Head Over Heels
Stumbleine is the stage name of Peter Cooper, a chillwave/dubstep/vaporwave musician and producer from somewhere in the UK. Smashing Pumpkins fans will recognize the name "Stumbleine" as a track from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but this record sounds nothing like the Smashing Pumpkins, unless it's one of their more ambient-sounding albums. It's a good chillwave record, but it's ultimately background music, with voice samples used in lieu of people singing lyrics and what-not.
John Carpenter, Cathedral
It's not a movie soundtrack this time, it's music to accompany his new graphic novel of the same title. (Can graphic novels have soundtracks? I mean, why not? "Think outside the box" is what I always say, at least when I'm in a box filled with characters from John Carpenter movies.) Instrumentation-wise it's largely electronic (as you'd expect), but it's kinda heavy-metal too, and sorta proggish as well, and of course it isn't exactly intended to put you at ease. Not really my thing, but it's well put-together.

Next week, we've got new albums from Laura Veirs, Phoebe Bridgers, and Carly Simon, along with Heart's Ann Wilson (with her backup band Tripsitter, who are not the original Tripsitter who recorded California Son back in 2004... don't be fooled, folks). Also, legendary Dionne Warwick has a new record, which they're saying will be her last, as she's going to have a proper retirement now. Good for her! (She's also suing, but it's her evil old management she's going after, not the slightly-less-evil hackers.) 😄

(Supposedly some guys are releasing new albums next week too, but we'll just sort all that out later when things have settled down a bit.)

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:13:21 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/30/2026 21:13

What July 31, 2026 releases would Ariana Grande sue you for using your l33t haxx0r skillz to not-so-legally obtain in advance? Why not all of them! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Ariana's new album, Petal, will probably hoover up most of the media attention this week, and word on the street is that it sounds just like an Ariana Grande album should sound. So we'll just pretend that doesn't exist and move on. Apparently there's also some sort of Green Day movie coming out called Nimrods, but the greatest-hits soundtrack album contains only one new track ("I'm Never Gonna R.I.P."), so I'll just treat that as a "single" for now. On top of that, there's a new Shearwater album, The New World — and it's a good one too, with plenty of their usual nature sounds in the background. It helps that by now I've learned not to get up in the middle of their albums thinking I left the windows open.

Unfortunately, there's no obvious pick-of-the-week here, so I felt like I should fall back on old fanboy loyalties and give the nod to the new comeback LP from 80s Welsh guitar-pop-rockers the Darling Buds, Same Sun | Same Sky.

You might remember their big late-80s hits like "Hit the Ground," "Crystal Clear," and my personal fave, "It Makes No Difference." Then again, you might not. They actually got back together about a decade ago, but only managed one 4-song EP (Evergreen) at the time. This new LP seems to be just about as good as anything they did back in the day, though there's no one track that's on the level of "It Makes No Difference." Also, there's some question as to whether that character in the title is supposed to be a vertical bar ("|"), or just a regular slash. But hey, it makes no difference to me! I feel nothing... at all! Ahhh-huh!

But there's more.

Trashcan Sinatras, Ever the Optimist
It's their seventh studio LP, and their first since 2016's crowdfunded Wild Pendulum. They don't seem to have lost their ability to write great pop songs, so that's good. Track 2, "Games For The ZX Spectrum," is the obvious single here (if singles still matter to anybody) and it may be the best song I've heard from them, including their big 1990 hit "Obscurity Knocks." I'm a bit concerned that the song title may confuse people (the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was one of the earliest 8-bit home computers), but for all I know it could be that one missing clever touch they've needed all along to finally put them over the top and make them The Biggest-Selling Band of All Time.
Mallory Hawk, Chinook
Stereogum chose this as their Album of the Week (subscribers only, sorry), and hey, why not? She's a very talented indie-folk/pop/rock singer from Philadelphia with a voice reminiscent of Juliana Hatfield's. She seems to be doing her level-best to avoid being easily categorized or pigeonholed into a particular genre, doing things like track-sequencing from introspective acoustic folk ("Four O' Clocks") directly into a near-punk rave-up ("Caretaker") without even asking for permission from the Style Police. (Thankfully, the Style Police are highly susceptible to bribery, so I'm sure she'll be fine.)
The Durutti Column, Renascent
It's Vini Reilly's first album back after a 15-year hiatus, and... well, I'm just going to come right out and say it, he wasn't that good a guitar-player to begin with, but over the last few years he's suffered a series of strokes that have unfortunately degraded his playing ability even more. (I know, I know, I'm a horrible person.) Nevertheless, it's a pretty good Durutti Column LP, and if you liked the older stuff, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
The Cleaners From Venus, Beryl & Ruff Go Shopping
Martin Newell & Co. have been making more than an album per year for over a decade now (especially if you include the stuff he's released under his own name), most of it recorded on a Tascam 8-track Portastudio in his kitchen. As a general rule, I tend to like everything he puts out, but over the years the lo-fi production has become sort of distracting, not least because I know he could sound so much better if he just upgraded that kitchen.
Crush Fund, GO
I guess I can't be certain, but from what I gather Crush Fund is an all-transwomen punk band, from New York City, and this is their debut album, though it's digital-only for now (they apparently released a limited-edition CD combining their first two EPs in 2024, so maybe this is their second album if you count that). It's not all hardcore, but quite a lot of it is, and they do have a lot to be pissed off about. So yeah, four trans women doing hardcore punk, how can you not like that? I mean, sure, maybe if they sued you for illegally obtaining a copy of their album in advance, that I could see, but I suspect they'd be more than willing to settle out of court in exchange for an apology and a promise not to do it again.
Family Stereo, The Thread
Family Stereo is the nom de plume of Blake Watt, son of Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn, aka Everything But the Girl. He does lite-pop, folk-rock, almost-easy-listening type stuff, mostly. Like everyone else, I was hoping for Love Not Money Pt. II, but I'm guessing he doesn't want to be seen as a "nepo-baby."
April Spring (released July 26), Making Memories With Fireflies
Here's another one for the "bands with misleading names" list, since it's a blackmetalgaze act from Denver, where Spring doesn't really happen until mid-May at the earliest. (Maybe that's the whole point, though.) They're significantly less heavy than Deafheaven, but it's the same basic idea, though the vocals are more strangled-sounding than screamo. (Is there a "strangle-o" subgenre? There should be.)

Last but not least, there's...

Collective Soul, Touch and Go
This one was actually released back on Record Store Day (Apr. 18), but that was a limited vinyl-only pressing, and I totally ignored it at the time (along with lots of other people, apparently). If I even saw it at all, I must have thought it was some kind of reissue, but either way... no! It's new stuff! As it happens, Collective Soul never really stopped making records, they just never managed to outsell their earlier ones. This LP is supposed to be an homage of sorts to 80s new wave pop, especially The Cars. They don't actually sound much like The Cars, but I guess that's never stopped them before.

All in all, not too shabby, though I'm not seeing a lot of cool obscure and/or last-minute stuff in the hopper like I did last week. And next week looks to be slower, though there are new albums scheduled from Ceremony, The Anchoress, The Mountain Goats, Strawberry Alarm Clock (yes, they're still around), and Wedding Present guitarist Rachael Wood. 😄

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 04:14:16 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/26/2026 08:14

Here's a few more from the "obscure stuff" pile, including a couple I missed from the previous week or three. None of these are actually bad, but after you get past the first four or five on this list, let's just say I wanted to hear them all the way through first.

Gloss (from July 17), Bitter and Insolent
This is an all-female nugaze/grungegaze quartet from Perth, Australia. They actually identify themselves as an "all-femme queer shoegaze and dreampop" act, but you know, tomato, tuh-mahto. This band is the best argument for moving to Perth that I've ever encountered, but admittedly that might not be saying much.
Portraits Of Tracy, Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV!
You sort of have to hear this one to believe it, and it's not what you'd expect based on the album cover. Also, regardless of how much I like the album, I have to disagree about the source of our primal instincts.
Attic Salt, Stay in the Midwest
The third album from a power-pop-punk band from Springfield, Illinois with a female co-lead singer, and I'll just be brutally honest, their male co-lead-singer should probably just let her do all the lead vocals. Very fun album with no bummer/downer tracks, and no songs over 3 minutes, but it still avoids sounding dumb or silly. (The album cover is an homage to an old Beach Boys compilation album, namely Made in U.S.A., but I'm not sure if this is deserving of extra points. It might be.) It's too bad this album didn't come out a week earlier, since the title might have prevented me from moving to Perth.
Milkswarm, Boywalk
This is the second LP from a somewhat chaotic-sounding noisepopgaze quartet from Chicago, so that's two Illinois bands in a row. There's a small amount of sprechgesang involved, and so far they've yet to press up any physical releases, but no matter — they've got a fairly distinctive sound, and overall I like them. Terrible album title, though. (Their first LP was called "Sodakink" too, so this could be their Achilles' heel.)
Lisa Molinaro (from July 17), Blind Trust
Here's the debut LP from Portland, OR native Molinaro, whom you'll all remember as having played viola for Modest Mouse. (I don't think she's still doing that, but it isn't because of a restraining order or anything like that.) It's kind-of dreampoppy, kind-of chamber-poppy, and some very nice tunes. As you can see on the album cover, she has an awesome hairdo, and since that's what drew my attention to the LP on Bandcamp, I'd say this is yet another great example of why you should make your hair look as big as possible on album covers.
Suede Grooves (from July 21), Enough
This is the second 5-song EP from this Portland, OR shoegaze-lite duo. The singer on tracks 1 and 2 has a high tenor voice that's extremely reminiscent of Ian Masters from the Pale Saints, so much so that I had to check to make sure they weren't signed to 4AD Records. Unfortunately, the other singer takes over after that, and his voice is probably the reason 4AD didn't sign them.
Odor Eater, But For Who?
Another Portland, OR act (I swear I'm not doing this deliberately), this is a male-female duo that do mostly-danceable, occasionally catchy retro motorik-style synthpop. Their album covers are awful and their band name is worse, and don't even get me started on the "who vs. whom" rule, but musically they're great!
Mould, Hoping as a Coping Mechanism
Not Bob Mould, but that's okay... sort of... this Bristol, UK (finally!) group would be a post-punk band if their singer didn't sound so old-school punkish — I wouldn't call him a a "Johnny Rotten imitator," but he's in the same vein. Thankfully, we all like old-school punk too, right? Don't we? (Maybe don't answer that.)
The Bradipos Four, Reverb Gang
Here's a classic-retro, and yes, quite reverby surf-rock guitar-twanger band from Caserta, Italy. They've been together for about 30 years and this is their 7th album, so they know what they're doing surf-rock-wise, despite being from Italy. The town of Caserta is about 35km north of Mt. Vesuvius, and I don't think you can surf there, but there are Tyrrhenian Sea beaches about 40km to the west that might have waves on windy days if you get there early. Cowabunga!
Bliss Abyss (from April 17), Bliss Abyss
I'm only including this one to point out that people are still, to this very day, giving themselves shoegazey band names and tagging themselves as "shoegaze" on streaming sites despite not really being shoegaze at all. "Bliss Abyss" is really a power-pop band from Oakland, and they're not bad, they're actually quite good (at power-pop), but they're also not going to sell a lot of records/streams/downloads if they're misleading potential fans like this. Truth in packaging, folks — not something to blow off!
Sound Effects Of Death And Horror, A Martian Odyssey
This appears to be a solo act — a guy named "John" who lives in the UK and does 80s-style synthwave instrumentals that are somewhat lacking in low-end frequency response. So you just have to take his word for it that this is a "Martian" odyssey and not just incidental background music for a walking tour of Ipswich or something like that.

Also, a new Shannon Lay album, Past the Veil, is supposed to be coming out on Tuesday, and this coming Friday it's Ariana Grande, Trashcan Sinatras, the Durutti Column, and the return of the Darling Buds. After that, I think we might be entering a bit of a "lull period," but I've been wrong about that before, so... fingers crossed, I guess!

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:46:46 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/23/2026 20:46

What July 24, 2026 releases are YOU... now, see that, I've already lost my train of thought.

Obviously whenever there's a new Robyn Hitchcock studio album released, especially an "electric" one, the easy thing for me would be to say "nothing else matters dammit, this is the album!" or something casually dismissive (of everything else) like that. But of course, I don't do the "easy thing," I do the thing that... well, now that I think of it, I guess I really just do the easy thing.

Robyn Hitchcock, The Confuser (all tracks already streaming now, so you have no excuse)
Robyn's last album, 2022's Shufflemania, sounded a bit "loose" because he brought in lots of different backing musicians for almost every track. This time he's got the same three guys on bass drums 'n' guitar for the whole thing (with only Kimberley Rew and Gillian Welch doing guest-shots), and the resulting LP is not only tighter, but more upbeat and energetic, helped along by a mostly cleaner, more stripped-down production sound. Depending on which Robyn you prefer, this could be the best thing he's done (aside from the Venus 3 and Soft Boys reunion albums) since 1999's Jewels for Sophia, maybe even earlier. I prefer "Rockin' Robyn," of course.

Meanwhile, there are albums out this week from The Strokes (Reality Awaits); the aforementioned Charli XCX (Music, Fashion, Film, not necessarily in that order); Cypress Hill (Dios Bendiga, their first all-Spanish-language LP); and "60 is the new 35" standard-bearer Shania Twain (Little Miss Twain, her 7th studio LP, not including the two or three albums' worth of demos and other material they released to exploit her huge 90s popularity). Unfortunately the Stefano Guzzetti covers album was moved to Aug. 21, because Stefano cannot be pinned down, and how dare you even try! Also, Australia's Ed Kuepper has a new live album to go along with his new 6-song EP with The Aints, Autocannibalism (that's a real thing by the way, but I wouldn't suggest trying it yourself unless you're one of those "MAGA" people). And while this thread isn't supposed to be for pricey reissues, I feel compelled to say there's a new box set of all the Mojave 3 albums, remastered on vinyl, because it's never too soon to pick out things to put on your Christmas list. (Oops, I just re-checked and it's sold out already. Never mind! 🙁 )

And that's not all! We also have...

Lockstep, I Know What I Saw
These guys are awesome. They're a doomgazer trio from Nashville, this is their debut album, and there's practically no trip-hop involved whatsoever. What a relief! They seem to be more on the "heavy slowcore" side of the genre, so they might even appeal to metal fans. (Not metalheads though, since those folks are on a whole different level.)
Ian Sweet, Shiverstruck
"Ian Sweet" is the nom de plume of Jillian Medford, a somewhat waifish-sounding indie-rock, almost-post-punk singer from Los Angeles. I'm not going to complain about the gender-incongruous name because I probably wouldn't have noticed her previous albums if she'd released them under the name "Jillian Medford" either, but c'mon, "Ian Sweet"? I can't help but think this name is holding her back, because someone who sounds this good and can write songs like these should be much better known than she is. She needs one of those non-gender-specific "transgressive" names, like "Eartheater" or "Destroyer." "Ian Sweet" sounds like a name for an octogenarian UK glam-rocker from the 1970s.
Spearmint, Chase Me
It used to pain me that we lived in a world where no one had heard of Spearmint, because I'd not only heard of them, I owned a copy of their first album, A Week Away, and I even liked it, but despite all that I somehow never managed to score a date with Zooey Deschanel. (I think I still have the album somewhere, though...) They've still got the same lineup they had back in 1985, and all their albums are good... just not quite "great." Historically speaking, there are too many 70s-retro touches, the vocals are "just okay" really, there aren't enough hooks and dynamics, and there are few (if any) short bursts of chaos or discordance to "liven things up." As for this album though, there's only one preview track (which is very good) and a single or two, and based on those I'd say they sound better on this album production-wise than they have in years. Maybe ever. We'll see!
Pete Yorn, All The Beauty
I've always sorta liked Pete, which I realize might be damning with faint praise, but while I haven't heard everything he's recorded, it's fair to say that he's released some good stuff and also some bad stuff. Word on the street is that this LP is likely to be counted amongst the good stuff, and if the two pre-release singles and the preview track ("1986") are accurate representations, I'd have to agree. He even sounds less bored than usual, but I think he'll remain recognizable to most of his fans. (I still really like his version of "Moon River," by the way. Almost as much as Audrey Hepburn's!)
Josaleigh Pollett, If I Let It Quiet
This is the fourth album from Pollett, a sort-of "leftfield" art-pop/dreampop (with occasional crunch) singer from Salt Lake City, Utah. This one sounds a lot like 2023's In The Garden, By The Weeds, which is a good thing. Actually, this one might be a little more polished-sounding, which is... also good? Definitely worth a listen if you're into this sort of stuff, which I guess I obviously am.
Blue States, Where the Fades Meet
The Bandcamp pages for Andrew "Blue States" Dragazis (originally from Greece, now based in London) still tag him as downtempo electronica, but I suspect that was from when he was first starting out in 1999 and they just haven't gotten around to updating them recently. (See this BEA chart by ButterThumbz for a handy intro to downtempo and related genres, by the way.) Since then, Dragazis has evolved into more of a mod-psychedelia guy, not quite 60s pastiche, but clearly influenced by that hip-cool Swingin' London sound. Probably won't appeal to everybody, but it kind of surprised me, at least.

I have a list of five or six others that I might post later, along with a two or three I missed from earlier, but posting everything all at once... that just seems completely excessive, if you ask me. It would be nice if they'd space these releases out a little better, but the music industry not only refuses to listen to my advice, I think it really does this just to spite me. It's a lot like the US Government in that respect. 🫠

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 03:37:07 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/23/2026 07:37

Cheddar wrote:

I was not expecting to see a Charli XCX album in the New Releases section for tomorrow. After Brat I am all in on checking out what she has to offer.

Oh, this album is going to be a lot better than Brat. There were four songs on Brat that were over three minutes long, but this one only has two!

Even the videos are better.

Link

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

Cheddar — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 02:05:31 GMT

Author: Cheddar

Posted: 07/23/2026 06:05

I was not expecting to see a Charli XCX album in the New Releases section for tomorrow. After Brat I am all in on checking out what she has to offer.

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 20:24:42 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/17/2026 00:24

What July 17, 2026 releases do you suspect might be involved in the massive international idiocratic conspiracy?

This week actually looks pretty good. There are new albums from Steve Lacy (Oh Yeah?), Yard Act (You're Gonna Need a Little Music), Tricky (Different When It's Silent), Sophie Hunter (Stereoscope), and Gracie Abrams (Daughter From Hell), all of which sound like they could have hit potential, even the Yard Act album — though I'm not 100% sure yet about the Sophie Hunter LP, because they've been very secretive about that one. The two advance singles sounded fine, though. (Not my "thing" genre-wise, but still... fine. Better than what I could do, anyway.)

By the way, the new Kasabian album, Act III, has been moved back to Sept. 4, but apparently special hotlines have been set up for people who might attempt to harm themselves because of the delay.

There's stuff for the geriatric set too this week, with 70's AOR dinosaur-rockers Foreigner coming back with a new LP entitled In the Eye of the Storm, and non-dinosaur (but still geriatric) Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye with his very first solo album, Goin' Local. He says the title refers to his wanting the record to sound like it was made in New York by real, local New Yorkers, but honestly, what else was he going to do? He's lived there practically his whole life. Regardless, I really like what I've heard of it, which only makes it seem more unfortunate that it took him this long to record it. Thankfully he's only 79 years old, so he's probably got time for at least another single or two. (I'm going to regret writing that if anything bad happens to him in the near term...)

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't think anything was going to displace the Swapmeet album as my pick-of-the-week, and I was right, but three others came close. This week was unusual too, in that there was practically nothing among the new 'n' obscure stuff that I thought was worth mentioning, other than Swapmeet itself.

Swapmeet, Mount Zero
They're a somewhat-fun guitar-based indie-rock/post-punk band from Kaurna Land in South Australia near Adelaide (which is pretty remarkable in itself), and this is their debut LP. I wouldn't say there's anything revelatory about it, I just really like it. They're clever without being pretentious, I guess. That's always a good explanation...
Tricky, Different When It's Silent
As you all probably know, Tricky is a rapper, not a singer, but most of his songs have vocal melodies written in, so he brings in guest vocalists to sing them. Usually these vocalists are female, and he has women singing on two of the tracks here, but the main guest singer this time is a young-ish guy from Tricky's old neighborhood in Bristol named Mitch Sanders. Not what you'd probably expect, but he does a good job. (Apparently he isn't related to Bernie Sanders, Deion Sanders, or Colonel Sanders — you can tell because none of those guys can do a decent falsetto.) The advance hype says this is Tricky's best album in at least 20 years, but of course it would say that, it's advance hype, it has to say that. Still, I was impressed with the preview tracks, some of which have some real crunch to them. (No word yet on whether or not Mitch is responsible for the crunch.)
Eartheater, Heavenly Body: If I'm The Bottle You're The Message
This one actually came out a couple of days ago. Eartheater is the nom de plume of Alexandra Drewchin, who has now made seven albums — she's kind of an ambient-pop, new age folktronica artist. She recently got married, bought her family's old farmhouse that they'd had to sell back in 2015 (and where she was born), became pregnant, and made a whole album about the pregnancy, basically (that's her on the album cover). Congratulations to the happy couple by the way, since the birth apparently went off without a hitch, the baby is doing fine, and the usual dumb-ass rumors that most tall female celebrities are subjected to on the internet regarding sex organs and what-not have presumably now been scotched. Meanwhile, I would say this album, while extremely well-made and impressive, is more new-agey and "ethereal" than her previous material — there are drum machines throughout, but you don't get a persistent beat until track 9 ("Favorite")... so she's now officially on the list of artists whose names are completely misleading, along with Skullcrusher, Tapeworms, Freak Slug, the Trailer Trash Tracys, and (arguably) Destroyer.
The Menzingers, Everything I Ever Saw
These guys from Scranton, PA made a splash in the 2010s with their albums On the Impossible Past and After the Party, but I wouldn't say it was huge splash. For good or ill they've been pretty consistent with their material for about 20 years now, and the culture has definitely shifted more than they have. This is their 9th LP, they still kind of toe the line between pop-punk and emo, and I still don't love the vocals, but overall it's a good record and they seem like nice-enough guys.

Finally, there's a 40-year comeback this week from the United States of Existence, a psychedelic-pop revival/throwback/pastiche band from Baltimore who technically made an album in 1986, so this is 40 years later and they've got a new one called Lavender Glory Trip. It's not bad. I think they tried to get it to sound like a genuine-sounding 1968 production, but had "mixed success," as they say. (Needs more fuzz pedal!)

Next week, of course, there's the new Robyn Hitchcock album, The Confuser, which I guess is his answer to Nick Lowe's 2001 album The Convincer. (They're pals, so it's okay.) Nobody is going to outrank that on any list I make, but there are also new LPs from Charli xcx, The Strokes, Spearmint, and Pete Yorn, plus a covers album from Stefano Guzzetti. Should be a good week! 😄

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 21:49:31 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/13/2026 01:49

I didn't expect to like the new Jack White album, but I guess I do? Not my usual thing, but it's probably the most fun he's sounded since the "Icky Thump" days. Someone must have told him to stop taking himself so seriously. (He did a pretty good job on Saturday Night Live a couple weeks ago, and he was in that video Stephen Colbert made just after his last show on CBS too.)

Anyways, I threatened to post more new albums, and it turns out I did miss a few, plus there were some surprise drops. All but one of the five releases below are from male-female duos, by the way. I'm sure that's just a coincidence...

CUTS, Only Love Remains
CUTS are from Bristol, and it's unclear as to whether it's supposed to be an actual duo or a solo-act dude with the same female backup, and sometimes lead, singer (Patti Aberhart) on every album. Either way, this is a quality shoegaze record, and it probably would have beaten out Sundayclub for my pick-of-the-week if I'd been aware of it. (Not entirely my fault though — they moved the release date on this one, it was originally supposed to come out last month. They also released the title track as a single over a year ago, and that sometimes causes additional confusion.)
SPC ECO, Phased
I already mentioned their last album here, noting that it was "not really the best LP they've ever done." This isn't either — they're slowing things down even more, and I'd have to say they're almost completely tripgazer now, moving more towards ambient darkwave (or something like it)... and any resemblance they had to Curve or any other 90s-era OG dreamy-shoegaze band is pretty much gone, outside of the vocal similarity. That doesn't mean they're suddenly "terrible" or anything like that, but they're not as great as they used to be, in my opinion at least. Quite prolific, though!
Baby Smith, Lately, Love is Dead
This is the debut album from a kinda-oddball Europop duo, from Berlin by way of Australia. The instrumentation here is somewhat light, maybe even minimalist, with a dreampop-sounding female singer and well-above-average songcraft. Usually I might skip this sort of record for being too "laid back," but it has a certain... panache. (There's no Discogs page yet, but I'm pretty sure they're a real band... they have a fun little video, at least.)
My Raining Stars, Toy Club
This is a fairly nice-sounding jangly popgaze LP by a solo-act guy from France; not quite "twee," but in the same ballpark. I don't hate the vocals, but as is so often the case, the vocals are the weak point here. He should hire a female singer and become a duo like everybody else, dammit!
Violette, Soft Hearted
This duo from Birmingham, Alabama does 50's, maybe early-60s twangy/torchy pop, along the lines of Duane Eddy, Petula Clark, or Sonny & Cher, but with occasional synth bloops to remind you it's a modern retro-pop recording. They've probably seen too many David Lynch movies for their own good, but I have no objection to their approach... I just don't hear a lot of catchy hooks, memorable choruses, big orchestral swells, things like that, which might give their material some "zing."

Finally, there was a new Xiu Xiu record released on Friday, namely Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, which is their "reimagining" of the Eraserhead soundtrack. It's basically an ambient/musique concrete/darkwave record, perhaps vaguely similar to the original, with a rather pallid version of "In Heaven" tacked on at the end. I've never really liked Xiu Xiu and this hasn't changed my mind about them, but I did want to mention it in case there are any fans reading this.

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

Cheddar — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:59:56 GMT

Author: Cheddar

Posted: 07/10/2026 04:59

I'm pretty excited for the new Jack White album after how great No Name was.

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Thu, 9 Jul 2026 23:33:21 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/10/2026 03:33

What July 10, 2026 releases do you, blah blah blah, etc., etc?

Obviously, any time there's a new Rolling Stones album, like this week's Foreign Tongues, the music media (or what's left of it) has to take notice. I don't, though, so I'm just going to ignore it. Meanwhile, we've got new albums from Jack White (Frozen Charlotte, which I'm guessing is not a reference to Charlotte, North Carolina or its hockey team) and Suki Waterhouse (Loveland), who is not as famous or as well-regarded musically as the Rolling Stones or Jack White, but who has to be mentioned because her name reminds me of Price Waterhouse, one of the Big Four global accounting firms who secretly control the entire world. (I'm kidding! It's probably only about 90 percent.)

Also, I'm afraid we have to talk about Finn Wolfhard. Most of us know him from his role as nerdy-kid "Mike Wheeler" on Netflix's Stranger Things, but it turns out he also sings and makes records, and his new LP, Fire From the Hip, comes out tomorrow too. It would be easy to dismiss this as just another actor-vanity project, but I haven't gotten to where I am today by doing the "easy" thing. (Indeed, I've gotten here by never doing anything whatsoever.) The fact is, this isn't a bad album — I haven't heard all of it, but the preview tracks clearly show a deliberate attempt to get that sort of spiky, lo-fi "DIY bedroom" sound reminiscent of 60s-era Beatlesque twangy-Rickenbacker guitar pop that we all love so much. Maybe a bit too much... So I checked who the (co-)producer was, and sure enough, it's Kai Slater of Chicago's Sharp Pins. "Big whoop," you say, but Sharp Pins were critic's darlings last year, and that choice is going to give Wolfhard a lot more musical credibility than he might have had otherwise as just another stupid actor.

As for my "serious" picks, I've got six:

Sundayclub, Sundayclub
It's the debut LP from a dreampopgazer duo from Canada with a female singer who sounds just like Sabrina "Blondshell" Teitelbaum. How can this not be my pick of the week? It's practically automatic.
She's Green, Swallowtail
I posted about this one earlier — the screwups with the release date and the tracklist on Bandcamp (where it's still a 4-song EP) still haven't been corrected. Maybe tomorrow, but it's not a good sign, as it shows that whoever's responsible for the business side of this band isn't getting the job done, and when that happens, the bands often don't last. That said, my opinion of the record hasn't changed, either — as much as I like them, if the three tracks I haven't heard yet aren't significantly better than the four I have, this is going to be my least-favorite release of theirs. (That still puts it above a whole lot of other stuff, though.)
Luke Haines, Izzy Wizzy Let’s Get Bizzy
You all remember him from The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder, but he also makes a lot of these "tribute to an era" solo albums. Apparently this one is about English TV magic shows for kids during the 1960s and 70s (the title is a quote from The Sooty Show, used by Sooty the Bear in place of "abracadabra"), and how they might have influenced an entire generation of kids in the UK to become weirdos, drug addicts, and... OMG, Britpop fans! So, pretty much the usual sort of thing you'd expect from a Luke Haines album — it's a good record, but it helps if you've heard some of the previous ones and know what to expect going in.
Parts & Labor, Set of All Sets
Here's an interesting band from (where else?) Brooklyn, who sound like what you'd get if a post-punk, almost-noisepop, almost-nugaze band from 2005 hired a pair of symphonic prog-rock singers from 1975 and tried to make a go of it, because... why not? At least it's different, which is something most bands can't claim for themselves these days. (Or ever, really.) This is their first album after a 15-year hiatus — the last one, 2011's Constant Future, was produced by Dave Fridmann who was famous for records like the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin and The Delgados' Hate, where he had a habit of overdriving the low end and generally making things sound more bombastic than may have been strictly necessary. This album sounds both less psychedelic and less bombastic, which seems to suit them better.
Sad13, 1331
Sad13 is the solo project of Speedy Ortiz singer/guitarist Sadie Dupuis, from Philadelphia. She injured her elbow in a bike accident a couple of years ago and had to undergo extensive rehab in order to play the guitar again, but she assures us that she's fine now and that the significant increase in the use of electronic instruments on this, her third solo effort, has nothing at all to do with the injury. (Mind you, I'm not complaining or anything.) She calls this a "mixtape" though, so maybe it's not a real album either — it's 13 tracks, but the whole thing runs only about 16 minutes. Frankly, the whole thing is very suspicious. We might want to keep an eye out, in case Tiktok videos start to appear.
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, A ? of WHEN
Apparently this one is available as a 10-track download on Bandcamp and pandabearofficial.com, or you can buy it at record stores or on Amazon.com as a 5-track EP... but it won't be available for streaming anywhere, even on Bandcamp. (This is probably not a good way to maximize the album's BEA ranking points.) I'm guessing the vinyl and CD versions come with download codes for the other five tracks, but with these guys, who knows. And since I'm not going to be able to actually hear it, I'm left with just saying that most of it is supposedly centered around "harp loops" provided by Mary Halvorson, and the title track is probably a cover of track 2 from In Living Colour's Collideoscope LP, which in turn was presumably named after track 5 from the Psonic Psunspot album by the Dukes of Stratosphear, aka XTC. This is not enough of an XTC connection to get me to buy the record (sorry), but other XTC fans reading this thread might still still want to know.

I might post a few more later, depending on circumstances... but if not, next week looks a bit less interesting — to me, at least — despite, or perhaps because of, new LPs from Steve Lacy, Tricky, and Foreigner (yes, that Foreigner). I'll probably ignore all those in favor of Australia's Swapmeet and their new album Mount Zero, but hopefully more stuff will pop up in the meantime. 😄

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Wed, 8 Jul 2026 04:47:19 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/08/2026 08:47

albummaster wrote:

Just to say always love your write-ups and enjoy this thread very much 8)

Thanks! 😄

We're just past the midpoint of the year, so I figured this would be as good a time as any to post this list of six releases that somehow got overlooked during the past 6 months.

Jesca Hoop, Long Wave Home:
I'm a little surprised nobody else picked this one up since she's a fairly big name, but in any event, it's another fine album (her seventh, I think) from Hoop, the somewhat quirky folk-rock singer from Santa Rosa, California who has apparently relocated to Manchester, England, at least for now. (I should probably do that too, though I doubt most Mancunians would go for the idea.)
Keep Shelly in Athens, V:
This is a nice-sounding dream-pop/electrogaze duo from Athens, Greece, who since 2016 have had a singer named Jessica Bell as one of their two members. She sings in English, making it easy to mistake them for a UK or American band. The "V" refers to this being their fifth album, so it's also easy to mistake them for a band that likes Roman numerals. I've been on the fence about them because they sound like they could have greatness potential (track 4 on this album, "Better Said," is a good example), but too much of their material is just standard folk-tinged guitar pop. Still, not bad.
Radhika, Cine-Pop:
This is the first album by Radhika Meera Dade, from Glasgow, whose father, Sushil "Future Pilot AKA" Dade, used to play bass for the Soup Dragons. He was also in the BMX Bandits for a while, as well as The Burns Unit (along with criminally-underrated Delgados singer Emma Pollock), so I suppose Radhika could be accused of being a "nepo-baby" — but it's a very good guitar-based atmospheric pop album nonetheless, and she does have a lovely (if somewhat waifish) voice. The LP features appearances from many well-known Glasgow scenesters, including members of the Pastels, Teenage Fanclub, and Camera Obscura, and since all of them are friends of her dad, that probably won't do much to dispel those "nepo-baby" allegations.
The Sheila Divine, The Middle Ages:
These guys are (or rather, "this guy is") from Boston, and they started out as more of a shoegaze act but are now a more conventional anthemic alternative-rock band. Also, they seem to have become less of a "band" and more of a solo act with just the original bandleader, Aaron Perrino. They (or Aaron, at least) call themselves "the Buffalo Bills of Music," presumably because they keep losing in the Championship game. I've never actually seen any evidence of this band having played in a Championship game, though I could have easily missed that too if it was for one of those "filler" sports they show on ESPN2 sometimes, like Belt Sander Racing.
The Jack Rubies, Visions In The Bowling Alley:
This is the second Jack Rubies "comeback album," the first being 2024's Clocks Are Out of Time. I was one of the very few people on Earth who bought not one, but two of their three albums from the 1986-90 period and liked them, so I now consider myself uniquely qualified to say that this new one is pretty much in the same vein as their previous stuff. Good tunes, but unfortunately the production sound seems a little flat this time around, like they had the studio monitors turned too far up and failed to check what it sounded like at normal volume. Sounds okay if you play it really loud, but why would you? It's not like it's metalcore or anything like that.
Midrift, Silhouette (Amazon link):
This one, I'm a little dubious on. They're what I would call a "grungegaze" band with emo tendencies from San Francisco, this is their first album (after having released several EPs), and they apparently think of themselves as a shoegaze act influenced by My Bloody Valentine. Um, no, they don't sound like that at all, but they're also not bad if you like your grunge with a certain amount of reverb and limited guitar-solo activity. The singer's sense of melody is rather limited, but that never stopped grunge bands in the past... All in all, there might be some hit potential for these guys, and indeed their streaming numbers are fairly impressive. Personally I think they should stick to making EPs, though — after more than 4 tracks, they start to sound too repetitive. That, or maybe throw in an acoustic or orchestral number just to break up any perceived monotony.

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

albummaster — Fri, 3 Jul 2026 04:34:53 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 07/03/2026 08:34

Just to say always love your write-ups and enjoy this thread very much 😎

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Thu, 2 Jul 2026 20:30:28 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 07/03/2026 00:30

What July 3rd, 2026 releases do YOU wish were real, and not just some fake thing I made up for cheap laughs because I'm hopelessly insecure and strongly suspect that nobody is reading this thread anymore?

If there was ever a week to take off and forget all about this stuff, this is it. We're looking at an almost-historic dearth (I always liked that word) of new releases this week, with just two new studio albums by acts most people have heard of — Madonna and Deep Purple. The sad thing is that there are people will see the new Madonna album and think, "wow, what a great week for new releases!" without actually checking how many there actually are.

Earlier I mentioned a new Robyn Hitchcock "live" album, Live at Acheron, which I would normally be pretty excited about. It's not really a live album though, it's a live in studio album, which is to say he walked into the Acheron Recording Studio in East Nashville with an acoustic guitar and just recorded a bunch of his 80s favorites — along with two covers, of Syd Barrett's "Gigolo Aunt" and the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" — with no audience, no overdubs and no backing musicians. All well and good, I suppose, but he'll have a new full-band studio album called The Confuser out at the end of the month, and I'm not going to pretend I'm as excited to hear this one as i am to hear that one.

I should also say that the new Deep Purple album (Splat!) isn't bad. It's true that the three members who are still around from the classic "Mark II" lineup are 80 years old now, but apparently they can still play, it has a pretty cool album cover, the keyboardist (Don Airey) uses organ synth patches to sound just like Jon Lord, and Ian Gillan still sounds like... Ian Gillan! His vocal cords have barely aged a day! (The guitarist, though, I'm not so sure about — he seems to prefer "textures" to outright riffage for some reason.) All in all, they really don't sound that different from the band that made Machine Head, though I wouldn't expect another "Smoke on the Water" or "Highway Star."

There's also a new record from Adam "Low Cut Connie" Weiner called Livin in the USA, which I'm going to say is the pick-of-the-week purely for political reasons. Musically it reminds me of straight-up 70s/80s AOR, like some of Billy Joel's or Huey Lewis's more upbeat singles, complete with saxophones and everything. Supposedly they put on a pretty good live show... Hopefully this one gets some media attention, if only for the lyrical content — otherwise, it's probably a little too old-school Dad-rockish for mainstream commercial success.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

I'm tempted to not even mention the rest, but here they are anyway:

Wax Minds, Funatic Asylum: In addition to having the most impressively hideous album cover I've seen this year, this "weird-punk" outfit from Bremen, Germany, is actually a lot of fun. I think the word "weird" is used here to try to prepare you for how the guitars sound, but it probably won't be enough.
Smirk, Speculative Fiction: A more conventional all-guitars punk record, by a solo act from Connecticut, or maybe Brooklyn. There's some promise here, but I actually think a more bigger, more post-punk sound would benefit the material. (I'm just sayin'.)
Hey Thanks., Avoidance: Here's an 80s-retro synthwave band with "New Romantic" (which is also retro) leanings, from New Orleans, Louisiana of all places. They write some good tunes, and this is their second album — I should note that on their first (2022's Start/Living), they called themselves "Hey Thanks!" with an exclamation mark. That could cause some confusion. My guess is that whoever owns the copyright on the exclamation mark must have complained.
Miko, Petals and Marbles: Miko is the nom de plume of Rie Mitsutake, an avant-poptronica singer (at least that's what I call it) from Tokyo. (Not to be confused with Young Miko, who is actually from Puerto Rico.) For most Western ears this stuff is probably a little too repetitive and maybe a little too "bloopy" too, but if you like Japanese music in general, especially of the electronic variety, I'd say it actually has a pleasing hypnotic effect to it. (For me, it's a nice change from all that hyperpop stuff so many Japanese musicians have been producing lately.)
Wash, Wash (released on June 30th): Wash were a group of 90s OG shoegazers from Perth, Australia, and if you've ever been to Perth it won't surprise you that they were the only shoegaze band there at the time. These recordings of them are mostly demo-quality and a little harsh-sounding, despite being cleaned up for this release... but I thought I'd mention them anyway because I'm kind of a "history buff."

Finally, there's the self-titled album from Ondanaconda. Most of you have heard the expression "it's turtles all the way down"; this band from Geneva, Switzerland is just like that, only it's jaw harps all the way down. Yup, a four-piece band, all four playing jaw harps. And it's not bad, either! I like it more than your typical Eurodisco/EDM record, at least.

Anyway... that's all I've got! "Five and eleven," as they say...

Next week looks a lot better — apparently the full 7-track LP version of the She's Green album is coming out, plus we've got the Rolling Stones, Jack White, Luke Haines, Xiu Xiu, Sad13, and Sundayclub, plus a compilation of live tracks from Rain Parade.

Until then! 😄

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 22:30:40 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 06/27/2026 02:30

No surprise drops today, really. There's a new LP called This Charming Life by Communist Sex Magic that I'm pretty sure wasn't pre-announced, but that doesn't make it a "surprise," does it. The communists have been trying to use magic to force me to have sex with them for months, and I just won't do it. I've got standards, dammit! 😐

In other updates, the Temples' Bliss album has gotten some good reviews, but also a couple of pretty bad ones — Tim Sendra at AllMusic.com called it a "near total misfire," and Ruben Cross at FarOutMagazine.co.uk really trashed it, saying the album "is, unfortunately, so proud of its obnoxiousness that it bellows out its most abject qualities." So... I guess that's not good. (I still like it, though.)

I also mentioned that "expectations are a bit low" for the Telescopes' new album, and that the one preview track hadn't been "all that great." Having now heard the whole thing, I can say that expectations should have been much lower, since virtually all the tracks on it are "not that great," and I really shouldn't have added it to the BEA database in the first place. (Sorry!) Still, some people do like this sort of thing, I think? Kind-of? That's if you take enough drugs, obviously.

There was also supposed to be a new album from The 5.6.7.8.'s today called Run Run Run, and it looks like it did come out, but it's physical-media-only — at least for now, and also Japan-only. (You might remember them as the band playing "Woo Hoo" during that big fight scene in the movie Kill Bill Part II.) Apparently they're celebrating their 40th anniversary, or something to that effect. Congrats to them!

Finally, the Georgia Gets By album, Heavy Meadow, did make it onto Amazon Music and some of the other streaming services (still not Bandcamp though), so now that I've heard that, I have to say it's one of the prettiest records I've heard in quite some time — but it's even slower and quieter than I'd thought, and it gets slower and quieter as it goes along. It's a good album for sitting on your porch at your backwoods home in October and watching the leaves turn their Fall colors, I'l say that for it. (October's just over three months away, so you'll probably want to get on this right now so you'll be prepared.)

So until next week, stay safe, and avoid communist sex magicians unless you're sure your insurance portfolio covers that stuff.

Re: Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭�'�

MadhattanJack — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 02:33:40 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 06/26/2026 06:33

One more:

Chanel Beads
Your Day Will Come (2026)

Sharp-eyed avant-pop fans with good memories might recall that Chanel Beads (aka Shane Lavers from New York, New York, "the city so nice they named it twice") released an album in 2024 that was also entitled Your Day Will Come. Apparently Shane here has little or no regard for the logistical and organizational problems of informational websites that attempt to catalogue album releases and make sense of people's discographies in the face of their insistence on clever "stunts" to draw more attention to their musical output. That said, it's an interesting little art-pop/art-rock record, mostly 4/4 and guitar-based but definitely a bit "leftfield," as they say. I hope I'm not being too offensive by stating that his voice sounds like it didn't quite "change" when he hit puberty, but that said, he does a good job with the vocals and I tend to be too offensive most of the time anyway. All in all, not up there with Temples and Beth Orton this week for me, but certainly on par with the other stuff I mentioned.