What June 19th, 2026 releases do YOU intend to use in YOUR campaign to conquer the galaxy and crush a million worlds under your mighty boot-heel? (Tomorrow?)
This is a ridiculously big new-releases week, with some people counting as many as 400 of the things, all in one go. And to make things worse, next week there's a new Madonna album, so a lot of the media attention is being hoovered up by that already while this week's stuff gets the short shrift. Shame on you, Madonna!
If we put Madonna aside for the moment though (and who hasn't?), I guess the big album this week is the new one from Muse, The Wow! Signal. Now, I'm not a big fan of these guys, and this album isn't going to change that, but I'm actually more concerned about the title since there are at least two bands named "The Wow Signal" out there as well as at least ten albums called that by other bands. Don't they have Google? This is a major act! And what's wrong with, I dunno, "The Holy Shit Signal"? Anyway, I think this is album #12 for them.
Then there's the "new" album by the Butthole Surfers, After the Astronaut. This is actually a "lost" album that was recorded in 1997, slated to be released as The Last Astronaut in 1998, but then shelved by Capitol Records for about, oh, 29 years or so. Now it has been unearthed, cleaned up, properly mixed and mastered, etc., etc., with the correct artwork and the original title and everything, coming out on digital and white vinyl, just in time for most of their original fans to play at their retirement parties. Nice work! Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of these guys either, but I guess I never did learn how to surf.
This week's pick-of-the-week will have to be another toss-up (sorry!) between Temples and Beth Orton.
Temples, Bliss:
You might remember these guys from their highly-regarded 2014 debut album, Sun Structures, one of the best non-Dukes-of-Stratosphear 1966-68-era British psychedelic pop pastiches, like, ever — good enough to make it into the BEA Overall Top 1,500, even. Of course, you can't keep making the same pastiche over and over again, so during the past 12 years they've gradually modernized their approach with lots of synthesizers and drum machines and stuff like that. I still really like their songs though, and their singer still has that clear high tenor while refusing to sing into a clear-sounding microphone with proper EQ applied, so that's... good? Probably.
Beth Orton,The Ground Above:
If I were a music critic, I'd recommend this over the Temples LP because it's just a better album in terms of lyricism, sound/vocal quality, and general craftsmanship. I haven't heard all the others she's done, but I'd say this is just as good as Central Reservation and Sugaring Season (the two I'm most familiar with), and it may even be better — I'll know when I hear the whole thing (she didn't pre-announce this until just last week). Just a really well made LP, but definitely not as fun 'n' catchy as the Temples album.
As for the (best of the) rest...
The Telescopes, Static Charge
Normally I'd get reasonably excited about a new Telescopes album — this is their 19th LP though (in 38 years) so it's not like there's a shortage. Also, the release dates got all mixed up, and they only put up one preview track, which frankly isn't all that great. So, expectations are a bit low for this one.
Georgia Gets By, Heavy Meadow
Here's the full-length debut LP from New Zealand's Georgia Nott, who also sings for The Broods. The Broods are more of an electropop act though, whereas this is more folksy and acoustic, and though it often veers into "Americana" territory, the songs are much more real and memorable, and her vocals are fantastic. Again I'm concerned about the title though, since "Heavy Meadow" has been used already by multiple bands and albums (not to mention that it's a pun), and I'm also concerned that it only seems to exist on Spotify at the moment. Sometimes people just need extra time, I guess.
Las Robertas, All We Need is Now
This six-piece band from Costa Rica does psychedelic guitar-oriented dreampop, sort of, with all the lyrics in English. Pretty good, overall — the only problem I have with this one is that they shouldn't need six people to sound like they do. At least one person is probably in there just to play tambourine or something. Also, the vocals could be better.
Proun, Maybe Luck
Proun is a fairly interesting trio from Austin, TX, who I'd describe as "folkie-post-punk." It's another debut album where the instrumentation is minimal so that the songs will be recognizable when played live by just the three of them, but there's some fairly intricate guitar work in there that helps make up for it. The name "Proun" refers to a Russian art movement that popped up around the time of the Bolshevik revolution, so maybe they're Communists or whatever, but it might also be an oblique reference to the word "pronoun." We just don't know.
The Pretty Reckless, Dear God
Holy smokes, this is some high-energy bad-girl hard-drivin' rock 'n' roll, straight from New Yawk City. Why can't I meet women like Taylor Momsen where I live? It's so unfair... It's their 7th album, and I'm guessing the title track is not a cover of the XTC song from 1986. Maybe that's for the best.
LOWREV, It's Hard to Lie to Strangers
Nice, somewhat-twee indie-pop/rock debut album by what appears to be a solo act, from Pittsburgh, PA. The singer, Joshua Fiedler, reminds me of The Auteurs' Luke Haines a little bit — because I'm sitting there thinking, "okay, the vocal fry is pretty accurate, but how does he keep it going the whole time?" Pretty good guitar work too, actually.
Cate Kennan, Shadows
She's from Los Angeles and makes a kind of ambient southwestern dreampop, like Julee Cruise used to do for David Lynch movies, only with fewer synthesizers. I like it, it's her second album, but it's not a revelation or anything.
Daydreamers, Have You Tried Screaming?
This is a fairly commercial four-piece Britpop/Britrock band from London, and I believe this is their debut album. There's a fairly clear Coldplay influence, and that's probably all you need to know going in, really. Earlier this month we had that album from Overpass that was in the same vein, so maybe Britpoprock is making some sort of comeback. Woo-hoo.
Some Velvet Sidewalk, Critters Encore
They're back after 30 years, and they sound pretty much the same, which is to say "energetic, but not very tight or meticulous in their musical approach." But hey, if you liked them before, you'll like them now, right? Of course! Why not.
Finally, there's this new album called Escape From God, by a solo artist named Bella from Alberta, Canada who goes by the stage name bea bea. It's almost-unlistenable lo-fi emo garage-o-rama, and she might even be a "furry" (not that there's anything wrong with that). Whether or not she actually succeeded in her escape attempt is anyone's guess (God has a pretty tight security system), but if you ask me she probably double-named herself "bea bea" just to get our attention here on BestEverAlbums.com. Well, guess what — it worked! I fell for it! Nice job, Bella.
Next week there's the aforementioned Madonna record, plus a new Robyn Hitchcock live LP, and... a new Deep Purple album! You can never get enough of those, I guess.
Last edited by MadhattanJack on 07/22/2026 09:39; edited 2 times in total
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 😄
I'm pretty excited for the new Jack White album after how great No Name was. _________________ My overall top 100 is far from fleshed out at this point, so here are some charts I am actually proud of:
Top 100 Albums of 2025
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.
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! 😄
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MadhattanJack
albummaster
