I didn't really miss that much this time — obviously there was the new Chris Brown surprise-drop LP, Brown (good matching color choice there), which I'm guessing will have about as much impact as the Snoop Dogg surprise-drop LP had a few weeks ago, meaning you might never hear about it again until after the 2028 election. But of course I didn't actually post the list below on May 8, I'm only doing it now, so I could easily be lying about having not missed much. Meanwhile, I still consider my two picks from Thursday to be completely defensible, but having listened to it some more, the Cola album really does deserve some love. Look at this album cover! It's like a DeChirico wallpaper catalogue!
Cola, Cost of Living Adjustment: Cola is a Velvets-influenced post-punk trio from Montreal who have a bit of that early-80s "angular" thing going on, which nearly always means "I like them," at least coming from me. There's a fair amount of sprechgesang and bored-singer happening here too, but not all the time. (The lyrics are pretty good, so that kind of makes up for it.) Musically there's nothing fancy about these tunes, as they're all stripped down to be live-playable by just the three guys, only one of whom sings... but they still manage to do some interesting things, despite the minimalism commitment. Lots of people would probably rank this album higher than the new Haunted Youth and Asteroid No.4 albums I picked back on Thursday, to be perfectly honest. (I guess I wouldn't even blame them. Okay, maybe a little.)
Basement, WIRED: This emo-punk band from Ipswich hasn't made an album in several years, and they say they're trying to "expand their sonic palette," but they still sound American. If they just up and moved to Minneapolis, nobody would know. I do like this LP, more than most emo-punk records, but maybe that's not saying much.
Lemoncello, Perfect Place (stream not currently available on Bandcamp): I'm pretty sure these are original tunes, but they sound like 400-year-old traditional Irish/Gaelic folk songs, only they're recorded with a cello and electronics. It's a similar approach to that of Dead Can Dance, only DCD programmed their synthesizers to sound more like real instruments, and this duo doesn't do that. Probably because they just don't want to. Still, don't expect electronic music "tinged" with Irish traditional and a cello; it's the other way around.
Sissy Spacek, Geometric Reason: This is an LA-based industrial/noise dark-ambient act who named themselves after a beloved veteran movie actress because, well, that's just what you do in the industrial/noise dark-ambient genre. They've made about 70-ish albums, at a rate of about half-a-dozen per year, because... they can! This one is three tracks of musique concrète and abstract soundscapes, mostly using musical instruments (as opposed to nature sounds or household appliances). Not unlike most of their work. Total time, just under 51 minutes... Next one should be out in a couple of weeks.
Unwed Sailor, High Remembrance: Here's an album of occasionally dreamy/gazey, but more often conventional rock instrumentals by four guys from Oklahoma. My guess is they hired a singer, or perhaps a series of singers, and they hated them all for various reasons (surely not personal ones) and just decided they couldn't take it anymore. It's too bad, really — they'd have a lot more commercial potential with a singer. (Not Eddie Vedder, though. That would be a disaster.)
Vanessa Van Basten, Yes: Sometimes bands just insist on naming themselves as deceptively as possible. This particular case-in-point is a post-rock trio from Genoa, Italy, not a well-dressed European classical violinist or opera singer as the name might suggest. They're best known on BEA for their Disintegration EP (four tracks/23 minutes of covers from The Cure's Disintegration LP); this doesn't sound much like that, though. It's... okay.
War on Women, Time Under Tension: Here's a feminist hardcore band from Baltimore (where else?), who have gotten progressively more musical over the years, to the point where some of the tracks on this LP have a more pop-music sort of feel to them. OH NO! Don't worry though, they're still on "our side." (Note that in the middle of this album is a 32-minute track called "Shapes," which is actually an episode of the Lincoln Square podcast about the state of women's rights in the USA under the current misogynist-fascist regime. After that, track 7, "Feels Good," is a live track, and that's followed by "Malevolence," the only seriously hardcore-punk track on the album. But on track 9, "Balance," we're back to the podcast audio, like "Shapes" but this one lasts less than a minute, and track 10, "The Movie Fear Starring Reese Witherspoon," is in fact the audio from a trailer for the movie Fear, starring Reese Witherspoon. Track 11, "Hunger Stones," is an audio capture from this Youtube video, which apparently has nothing to do with feminism or Reese Witherspoon. Long story short, this album has only 7 actual music tracks on it, and the non-music tracks are all Youtube audio rips. Not that I'm complaining.)
Eradescents, Before Today: Extreme-lo-fi noisy garage punk from Arcata, California. This one starts with two short/repetitive instrumental jams that I would describe as "intro music," so it's really more like a 4-song EP than an album, but regardless, I like it. I just can't explain why just yet.
Five Eight, Help a Sinner: This band of "a bit older now" punks from Athens, Georgia have been around for 38 years, and this is their 12th studio album. They seem like nice guys, and their records are lots of fun, so why hadn't I heard of them before? I don't have the "block all Athens GA bands" setting turned on in my new-releases feed, do I? Oops, dang, it looks like it was on. How did that happen... Hmm, maybe I should keep it on, just to be safe.
Cloud Houses, Cost of Conscience: A fairly conventional pop-rock album by a six-piece band from Chicago who could use a better singer, and preferably just one. I'm only mentioning them here because they have the word "cloud" in their name and some people (i.e., me) seem to think that implies a more "airy" or dreamlike sound that this band doesn't really have.
Croz Boyce, Croz Boyce: Hardly the first time two members of Animal Collective (in this case, Dave "Avey Tare" Portner and Brian "Geologist" Weitz) have released a duo-within-the-band album like this, but this might be the first time such a duo have given themselves their own band name. Usually they release stuff under their own stage names and then re-credit them to Animal Collective later, so maybe they've decided to stop doing that now. Essentially what they did here was collaborate remotely via the internet, taking a guitar lick here, a chord progression there, and then just adding layers — they didn't get together in the same room at any point to write and/or finish the songs, and you can sort of tell, to be honest. Personally, I'd say this record is nice enough, but mostly for Animal Collective completists, assuming such people exist (if they do, I feel for them, since few bands have discographies as confusing as theirs).
Next week actually looks pretty dicey, so no advance predictions for May 15th. (It might be a good week to go back and review stuff that got missed earlier in the year.) 😄
Last edited by MadhattanJack on 05/19/2026 21:55; edited 1 time in total
Lauren Lakis, Deadlights: Ms. Lakis was living in Los Angeles and slowly building a Hollywood acting career until around 2022 or so, just as the COVID pandemic was starting to peter out. Then I guess she realized Hollywood sucks, so she up and moved to Austin, Texas (which is odd, since Texas isn't much better) to make reverb-heavy darkgaze records instead. This is her fourth, on a new label (RidingEasy), and it's the best one yet! I had practically no expectations for this record, not to mention that's a terrible cover photo (I'm actually kind of a "smile guy" myself), so it was a really pleasant surprise when I finally took a moment to listen to it earlier today. (To be fair, you don't expect someone going by the name "Lauren Lakis" to be a darkgaze act, much less a really good one.) Kind of a powerful record, actually.
There was also this album, but I don't want to offend any Swifties who might have found this page on a Google search, so I'll skip the description on it.
The 15th is shaping up to be a little better than I thought, but we'll see what happens, I guess!
Kevin Morby is arguably one of the finest singer-songwriters of the past ten years, BUT you can STILL hear the records he listens to late at night in his songs. Luckily Mr. Morby has got a badass record collection stacked with the likes of TVZ, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. BUT, to get to that next level he needs to remind us of just one person - himself. And I heard from a little birdie ( ok, a Pitchfork record review. lol) that this just may be the record in which he outruns those influences and scores a personal best. And I may just stay up to midnight to find out!
What May 15th, 2026 release(s) do YOU have your ears & heart set on when midnight strikes?! 🔭👀
Ehh... I guess most of the bands out there didn't want to compete for clicks, likes, column-inches or whatever with the new albums this week from Drake (Iceman), Peter Frampton (Carry the Light, his first in 16 years), Ziggy Marley (Brightside), and Lady Gaga, who has jumped head-first onto the "reimagined album" train with a new version of last year's Mayhem LP that's supposed to be much more scary and depressing than the original. Sounds great! Fans of modern prog-rock might also be semi-happy to learn there's another Bruce Soord solo LP, Ghosts in the Park (he's the frontman for Pineapple Thief).
Also, for those of us who were miffed about the 3-month postponement of the upcoming new album by The Church (supposedly still entitled Lacuna), there's a new Kilbey/Kennedy album called Things We Did on Earth. I've been mostly skipping these (this is actually the ninth K/K album), but I'm listening to it now and I think it's better than any of the other ones from them that I've heard. (I guess they still don't want anyone to know about all the questionable stuff they did on other planets.)
Aside from that, there are really only four albums I'm interested in this week, and while I can't say I'm "excited" about any of them, one does seem to be the clear pick-of-the-week: Mad Honey.
Bridge Over Cumberland is the second proper LP from this shoegaze-pop band from Oklahoma City (go Thunder?) that made my 2023 BEA year chart with their first one, Satellite Aphrodite. Unfortunately, nobody else seemed to notice it, but this new one sounds a lot better and could conceivably even double the debut album's BEA Rank Score. Musically, it starts out with a really slow/sad number entitled "I am a Wall, I am a House," but I assume they're only doing that (along with the cover art) to lull you into a false sense of security, or else to try to get people like me to drop the "shoegaze-pop" tag and take them more seriously as artists (which is silly, because what could possibly be more artistic than shoegaze pop? NOTHING, THAT'S WHAT). Anyway, don't worry, it picks up in the middle of track 2 and pretty much keeps it going from there.
The other three:
Bleary,Little Brain: This one's sort of a debut album (they did a six-song mini-album back in 2019), and it's by another shoegaze-pop band, this time from Nashville, TN. Their singer sounds a little like Kim Deal, and the band sounds (to me) like Sad Day for Puppets, which is good except not many people remember Sad Day for Puppets. Except maybe the puppets... The other problem here is that we've already had the new Deary album from a month ago, and the new Teary album is coming out two weeks from now, so this could get a little confusing because all three of these bands sound very similar to each other — it's not just the band names. (There's also a solo folk-singer from Canada who goes by the name "Weary," but I'm not super-worried about her at the moment.)
The City Gates,Chimera: This is the fourth album from a Montreal band who used to be a shoegaze act but have now seemingly moved in a more darkwave/coldwave/whateverwave direction. (I'm guessing they accidentally turned the house lights on during a gig at some point and found out what most of their fans were wearing.) That's not necessarily a bad thing, nor is this a bad album, and if you like Editors and Interpol you might very well like this too. But either way, I'm afraid this is another band that only appears on BEA charts made by me personally. So yeah, sure, maybe I'm the problem.
Martyna Basta,Winged in Collapse: This is sort of a "discovery" from my own perspective, as I hadn't heard of her before (this is her fourth album). She's an avant-garde neo-classical singer from Poland, whose style could be tagged as "spookypop" by people who don't take tags very seriously — but let's face it, this stuff does sound very spooky, and yet somewhat pop-oriented at the same time. I guess that's why I like it. She doesn't really sound like Marissa Nadler, but if you like Marissa Nadler, you might like this.
I've got eight, maybe nine Honorable Mentions for this week, but next week is looking even thinner than this week did, to be honest. Still, Radiohead fans (I know there are still a few of you around here) might like the new Ed O'Brien solo album, Blue Morpho, on which there do seem to be guitars and real drums being played. Yay!😄
I, personally, am looking forward to listening to all this new Drake music. I'm glad Drake has overcome his biggest flaw, finally realizing music is not about quality over quantity, but about releasing absolutely whatever in such a large mass amount that nobody wants to bother listening to any of it to pan out the okayish stuff... wait, what, where is this going—
Best album cover of the year, really nice cute synth sax and speaksung bits, and then the last track goes hard.
I rather like this, actually! 😄 I'm not so sure about "best album cover of the year," but both of them already have solo albums listed on BEA, so if someone adds this one before I get to it, be sure to enter them both as collaboration members.
I, personally, am looking forward to listening to all this new Drake music. I'm glad Drake has overcome his biggest flaw, finally realizing music is not about quality over quantity, but about releasing absolutely whatever in such a large mass amount that nobody wants to bother listening to any of it to pan out the okayish stuff... wait, what, where is this going—
Obviously that was the big news today, Drake's two-thirds-surprise "triple drop," where we were all expecting just the one album but got three — prompting folks in the media to speculate as to who asked for this much Drake? The implication seems to be that three albums in one day is excessive, but I agree with you, and personally I think it's very considerate of him since it allows cost-conscious music buyers to choose the album that best matches the decor of their garage or utility closet.
I think I like the black one with the OK sign the best! It matches my tires.
Anyway, on to the Honorable Mentions:
For Breakfast, Longer Than Spring: This is an art-rock band from London who have been around for about 8 years, but haven't managed to put out a full-length LP until now. Their music is basically dreamy chamber-pop with occasional crescendoes, while the singer, Maya Harrison, sings nearly every line like she's riding an emotional rollercoaster with no safety bar. She reminds me of Toyah a little bit, actually. I guess the word is "melodramatic" (they call it "yearncore"), but if you like melodramatic pop records, this one is very well put-together.
Maia and the Squires, Sinking Into the Ocean: I think I prefer this spelling over "Maya," but regardless, this is more of a darkgaze act with psychedelic overtones (but also "yearncore" too, because of the way Maia emotes). They're from Berlin, and this is their 5-track debut EP — a good effort, I like it, but the production is a bit off. (Also, the cover art isn't great.)
Dead Pony, Eat My Dust!: They're calling this an EP (six tracks), which would make it their third (they did make a full-length LP called Ignore This in 2024). It's not quite straight-up emo, so I guess I would call them "pop-punk with riffage and occasional screamo." Is there a special name for that? Anyway, it's not bad, and it's mostly bangers, and while they're not trying to do anything unique here, fans of bands like Garbage and Paramore should like this. Also, this is the Dead Pony from Scotland, not the power-violence metalcore Dead Pony from Chicago, but losing a pony (or any horse) is difficult and sad no matter where you're from.
Kelley Stoltz, If You Don't Know Me, Buy Now: Stoltz is a highly-prolific psychedelic-pop guy from San Francisco who has now made at least 17 studio albums (his Bandcamp page says this is #19, but I only counted 17 non-live ones, including one under the name "Willy Weird"). He claims to have once played guitar with Echo & the Bunnymen, though he isn't credited on any of their live albums — he did do a full-album covers LP of Crocodiles once though, entitled Crockodials, back in 2006, so maybe he just got a little confused there. I think the reason he isn't better-known is that until recently, he couldn't sing so good, a problem he seems to have now corrected somewhat (did he take lessons? I'm not hearing much auto-tune on this LP). Also, he doesn't tour much. He's planning to tour behind this album though, so we'll see if that helps.
Touch Girl Apple Blossom, Graceful: Jangly twee-pop from Austin, TX that I assume is deliberately intended to pay homage to the Sarah Records catalogue as directly as possible. They don't do a bad job of it either, I guess? I have the same question for this band as I do for Lauren Lakis (see above): Why Texas? Do you have a deathwish or something? I still don't get it.
Deafkids, Cicatrizes Do Futuro: Deafkids are an electro-hypnopunk band from Brazil whose sound verges on "horrorcore," but — according to them, at least — it's still danceable. I suspect you'd have to be taking some pretty heavy drugs to be able to dance to this, but let's be frank, there are definitely drugs out there that are pretty heavy — not that I would recommend that you take them.
Schizo Fun Addict, Desolate Ecstasy: This is the tenth album from this droney psych-rock band from New Jersey who have yet to get an album listed here on BEA. I've been researching this, and I've come to the conclusion that they don't have an album listed here because... they're a droney psych-rock band from New Jersey! (You'd be surprised at how many bands have this exact same problem.) This one might have a legitimate shot, though. It has the word "ecstasy" in the title!
I don't know about you, BUT I could use a bit more sunshine rn. And I don't mean literal sunshine. Luckily, just in time for the beach season, Bleachers is back with what I'm hearing is his best stuff since his amazing debut Strange Desire. I've been listening to four of his latest tracks on repeat for the past couple of days, and I'm happy to report that all signs are positive without a cloud in sight. Sometimes, despite my punk & metal upbringing, I just need some rainbows and unicorns, if you know what I mean.
What May 22nd, 2026 release(s) do YOU have your ears & heart set on when midnight strikes?! 🔭👀
I'm listening to the new Bleachers album right now — I think they made the whole thing streamable on Bandcamp a little early, actually. It's pretty good! They remind me of somebody from the 70s... maybe everybody from the 70s... 🤔
Putting all that aside though, I'm afraid this is another one of those weeks where nothing is super-exciting, and the only big-name release is obviously the new Bill Kirchen LP, Cat Out Of The Bag(Amazon link, sorry). He is, as you know, the Titan of the Telecaster. So assuming you've already pre-ordered that, and the Bleachers LP, and maybe the new LP from Bill Orcutt and Mabe Fratti (Almost Waking) that I have to mention just to maintain my "hipster cred," it's hard to decide on just one record from what's left.
But it's really down to four of them, and if I'm being completely honest, the Ed O'Brien album really is the obvious choice for pick-of-the-week even though it probably should have been a 4-song EP instead. (Also, with names like "Ed O'Brien," "Bill Kirchen," and "Bill Orcutt," these guys could easily be in the same bowling league.)
The first four songs on Blue Morpho are, to my ears, the best and most Radiohead-like thing to come out of the Radiohead collective/diaspora since... the last Radiohead album (that would be 2016's A Moon Shaped Pool). Maybe even since In Rainbows. I even like his singing voice better! The problem is that the last three songs are filler — "Solfeggio" and "Thin Places" are just relaxing ambient-electronica, and "Obrigado" starts out as a world-music-style hypno-jam that kind of stops in the middle and lapses into more ambient electronica before ending as a Pink Floyd pastiche. A lot of people will say, "Wait, what? Pink Floyd pastiche? That sounds great!" and maybe it does, and is, but to me it just sounds a little tacked-on. So while it's still the obvious choice, it's really more like the "Captain Obvious choice," if ya know what I'm sayin'. (Hopefully you don't.)
Sungaze, I'm No Longer Afraid of Heights
Don't be confused by the name — there are about 5 bands called "Sungazer," and 2 or 3 more called "The Sungazers," but this is the only one just called "Sungaze," and they're better than all the rest combined if you ask me. They're a shoegaze act from Cincinnati with a female singer, this is their fourth album, and they sound awesome. Their previous LPs had a Southwestern-Americana sort of vibe to them, which they seem to have toned down this time around. To me, that's a good thing, but YMMV.
My Precious Bunny, A Moment in My Eyes
Now, when I say that My Precious Bunny is Lily Wolter, the singer for Brighton's Penelope Isles, I'm not actually suggesting that Ms. Wolter is a rabbit or that she's precious to me personally. I'm just doing the best I can with the limited language skills I have. Regardless, this is a very good melodic-pop, and occasionally dreampop, record with some fine vocal arranging going on. (Just FYI, she also recorded an EP about 12 years ago under the name KookieLou, and appeared on Bella Union's Lost HorizonsIn Quiet Moments project album, so presumably everyone has heard of her and you don't need me to tell you how wonderfully talented she is.)
Annie Taylor, Out of Scale
This is a kind of garagey-sounding heavy psych-rock quartet from Zurich who have yet another talented female singer, but her name isn't "Annie Taylor," it's "Gini Jungi." Nobody in the band is named "Annie" or "Taylor." But now that's out of the way, they do have a certain... something. They're not punky enough to be called "punk," nor shoegazey enough to be called "shoegaze," and I wouldn't call them "hard rock" or "grunge" or "post-punk" either, though they're "adjacent" to all those genres... basically, they just rock out. If you're looking for bangers, then of the four LPs I've mentioned here, this is the one you'll probably want to check out. (Or, you could just check out the metal.)
There are at least a dozen other fine (or fine-ish) albums coming out tomorrow that didn't make my personal cut here, so maybe I'll post those later. Next week looks to be a lot bigger, with Paul McCartney, Guided By Voices, Wynona Bleach, the Greenberry Woods, Boards of Canada, and even Kurt Vile all releasing new albums, among many others, most of which I'll probably ignore in favor of the new Teary LP. 😄
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