Release Day Eve: Anyone got something they're geeked about?! 🔭👀
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MadhattanJack
Diabolical Mountebank
Profile
- #221
- Posted: 2 hours ago
- Post subject: Re: Release Day Eve
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| DommeDamian wrote: | | Only saw this post now because of BEA's new feature of seeing forum posts linked to releases. But I really appreciate you for shouting out and listening to my compo-EP. Thanks. New stuff on the way. |
Cool! I tend to like the guitar-based stuff you do more than the synth-based stuff (this is true for everyone of course, not just you), but more people should listen to Highdrate from last year, which is even more impressive in addition to being a full-length LP. You've even got saxophones in there! Your singing has improved a lot since you started too, which is always nice. (And if you're using auto-tune, which I don't think you are, my advice is to never admit it.)
Anyway, keep up the good work, man! 😄
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MadhattanJack
Diabolical Mountebank
Profile
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What September 4, 2026 Releases are likely to give YOU a stroke at Midnight?
Nothing to add (or apologize for, even) from last week — there was a new Beach Vacation album called Delayed Affection, but of course that's why I delayed showing it affection until right now. If bands want me to mention them immediately, they should give their albums titles like "Instant Gratification" or "Immediate Writeup," so that I'll know.
This week is a lot like last week — not a lot of big names, no clear 'n' obvious pick-of-the-week, but some decent stuff, some of it by people you've heard of. Hard to say what's likely to get the most music-media attention, but it might actually be the new Dexy's Midnight Runners album, Love, which bandleader Kevin Rowland is saying will probably be their last. It's...okay. I'm not gonna criticize.
Last week I arranged the marquee stuff "chronologically" by the age of the artist, and the "oh-by-the-way" stuff in categories at the end, and... nobody complained! So I'm going to do that again, only... even more rigidly organized.
The Geriatric Set
The 84-year-old Arthur "Crazy World of" Brown has a new album called Nature, a collaboration with Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Not bad for someone born in 1942, but I suspect Dan is doing most, if not all, of the songwriting here and probably playing most of the instruments as well. There's also a new Slaughter And The Dogs album called White Heat — their last proper LP was 2016's Vicious, and they still play live, so I guess they never really went away. They were part of that cohort of mid-70's UK pub-rock bands that decided to make the transition to the punk scene, along with the Stranglers, Only Ones, Eddie & the Hot Rods, and so on, and at this point they're probably best known for being the Sex Pistois' opening act at the famous Manchester Free Trade Hall gig in July 1976.
Last week I also mentioned Lulu, still looking great at 77, who was supposed to have a new LP called Let the Girl Sing Out tomorrow. Apparently somebody remembered that she'd already put out an LP in April of this year, so the new one got moved to January 15, 2027. (Sorry, Lulu fans!)
The Overwrought 35-60 Demographic
The new album from Arab Strap, Half-Told Tales, sounds like it's going to be good, veering semi-wildly (as they do) from punkish shouting to introspective folksy guitar-strumming, and they haven't lost their Scottish accents either, so I can certainly recommend that. There's also Kasabian's new LP, Act III, which had been delayed a few weeks — it sounds like this one's going to be not so good, unfortunately. It's their third album since replacing original frontman/domestic abuser Tom Meighan with also-original member Sergio Pizzorno. Sergio isn't a bad singer; he sounds a bit more nasal than Meighan, but some people prefer that. The fact is, I've just never been impressed by these guys. There are some fairly cheesy electro-dance tunes included here, and while the album has 13 tracks, 3 of them are just short instrumental "interludes" to separate the album into three "acts" — something about an "opera" they're trying to conceptualize, apparently. Good luck with that!
Australia's Natalie Imbruglia, who was big in the late 90s/early 2000s but hasn't been quite so big since, has a new LP called Algorithm, her first since 2021's Firebird. No word on whether or not the music on it was composed algorithmically, but you can never be too careful these days. So I guess she's back, and there's also a new one from Ellie Goulding, a big star in the UK but not so much elsewhere, called I Know Too Much. She's got a lot of fans, but it still just sounds like standard-issue electro-girlpop to me.
Birmingham, UK four-piece pop-punk band Johnny Foreigner have a new album called Forwards! I suspect they're pretty good live, but they've always struck me as... I dunno, "busy-sounding," maybe? Almost like math rock, but with more (and perhaps too much) enthusiasm. There's also a new LP from Audrey Horne, which is the stoner/hard-rock band made up of five guys from Norway, not the naughty-but-nice high-school-girl character from 90s TV series Twin Peaks, as played by Sherilyn Fenn. Their new album is called Achilles, and I'm really just mentioning it so readers won't get tricked into listening to it just because their name is an indirect David Lynch reference.
Still Able to Consume Dairy Products — for now
Lily Seabird, a semi-grungey solo folk-rock singer from Burlington, Vermont, has a new LP called Lightspheres On Their Way, which I'm fairly enthused about since I've been waiting to get my new lightspheres from the Lightspheres.com online store for weeks. (Something about backorders due to tariffs or something.) Her voice isn't "pretty" or "lilting" or anything like that — yet again, I'm reminded of Juliana Hatfield, I can't help it, I'm programmed that way — but it works with this material, and if anything they should turn it up in the mix. Then there's Sweden's Dottie Andersson, whose new album Andersson Funeral Home is a similar kind of indie-folk-rock LP, though it's a bit more lo-fi and the vocals are much more subtle, almost never rising to shout-level. Nice tunes, but not a must-listen unless you're in Sweden, where the laws probably require it.
This Week's Actual Picks:
Sacramento's Soft Science had the top spot in the bag until I learned of a new Immersion album. What can I say? I'm nothing if not loyal to my "peeps."
- Immersion, What Is Lost Will Return
We've already mentioned Wire several times in this thread, so y'all know I'm a fan, with two of their albums and one of Colin Newman's solo LPs in my all-time Top 100. Immersion is a duo made up of Newman and his wife Malka Spigel (ex-Minimal Compact), both of whom are firmly in the geriatric set themselves. It's also the only Wire-related project going at the moment — unless you consider Wire itself to still be active (Wire's last studio LP was 2020's Mind Hive). Sound-wise, Immersion more closely resembles Githead, Newman & Spigel's former band with two other guys (Scanner's Robin Rimbaud and Minimal Compact's drummer Max Franken). But as long as ol' Colin does most of the lead vocals, and he and his collaborators aren't just doing something totally atonal, noise-based, or just bad (his 1997 solo LP Bastard was probably the best example of him doing the latter), it's probably going to sound Wire-ish enough for me. MAX POINTS! (Okay, not really.)
  
- Soft Science, Sand
These California female-fronted shoegaze-popsters (three guys and two gals) remind me a lot of the High Violets, who are (or were) from Portland, Oregon, but the High Violets haven't put out a new LP in ten years. So getting this is... well, let's just say "highly reassuring and refreshing." Soft Science has actually been around since 2011 (this is their fifth album), and I'm going to have to listen to the rest of their earlier stuff now because while I suspect this is the best thing they've ever recorded, I can't really back that up until I've properly (re-)familiarized myself. Either way, a fine LP from a band that deserves more attention.
- Diary, Spiral Bound
Diary is a five-piece shoegaze-psychedelic band from Brooklyn who have been around since at least 2017, and they've released three (I think) EPs and numerous singles/tracks, but this is their first full-length album. It's good, maybe a bit on the commercial/stadium-rock side of things, with the singer getting uncomfortably close to Bono/Chris Martin territory, but I can't say it doesn't have a certain swaggery charm to it.
- Polymoon, Mariposa Magic!
Polymoon is another five-piece band, this time from Finland, who look and sound like they've been listening to a lot of Hawkwind albums. Especially the ones from their heavy-psychedelic period (though I realize some will maintain that they never had a non-heavy-psychedelic period). I ended up liking this a lot more than I thought I would. I might even like them better than Hawkwind itself, to be honest... Their previous two releases were both 6-song EPs, but this one has 7 tracks, so in it goes.
Masked Band Dept.
- PRESIDENT, Blood of Your Empire: This masked band is fairly insistent on having their name spelled in ALL CAPS because several hundred other bands are named "President" using regular mixed case. They're an electropop act that occasionally throws a guitar chord or two in there to help listeners stay awake, but in my case, this strategy didn't work so good.
Shelf Rescues
- Sharp Pins, Mod Mayday 23: Recorded in 2023 after the release of Turtle Rock, these Portastudio demos predate what's on their much-better 2025 albums Radio DDR and Balloon Balloon Balloon. I'm not sure why they released them, to be honest... it's the same catchy Beatlesque guitar pop they're known for, but this stuff needs a proper studio treatment to get that sparkle and shininess, both of which are lacking here. "For fans only," I suppose.
- Prolapse, Mary Anne Hobbs Sessions 17.12.97-24.03.98: I'll never like their band name, and the album title isn't helping much either, but these noisy/droney post-punks from Leicester are nevertheless a good choice if you like to be overwhelmed by trebly guitar noise. Why this material was shelved for 28 years is anybody's guess, as long as anybody's guess amounts to "it wasn't very commercial."
- The Go, Free Electricity: These garage-rockers came from Detroit, and decided early on that they were going to carry the proto-punk torch, or flag, or whatever it is, about 25-30 years after the Stooges, MC5, and Mitch Ryder all stopped being especially relevant. This was supposed to be their second LP, recorded in 2000 and shelved for being too "raw," presumably. There was a bootleg of it in 2011, but this version has been spruced up and sounds a lot better, not that most of their fans are likely to care much about sound quality.
Next Week:
As mentioned earlier, next week is the 25th Anniversary of 9/11, so there's almost nothing coming out, especially from the USA. There are new LPs from Bloc Party, The Proclaimers, The Tubs, and This is Lorelei, and maybe some other stuff will pop up, but I might as well just take the week off really. Maybe I'll go to Barbados!
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