From what I gather, before dropping her own album, Caroline opened her own recording studio. It totally fits the whole vibe of self-promotion, which seems to be quite a headache for musicians these days.
She actually started her own "imprint," sort of like a sub-label, called SUCK records. (The new album was recorded at Animal Rites studios in Los Angeles, which is owned by John Congleton, who used to be in The Paper Chase...) I haven't seen anything saying she opened her own studio too, though that's always possible.
musicoed wrote:
Speaking of fire, I wanted to mention another release from this week that also has flames on the cover—a burning car, to be exact.
Shedfromthebody- We Fly into Windows (22/X-2026/43) (Album)
The music left me pretty indifferent, but it’s tagged as doomgaze, among other things, so I thought it might be right up your alley.
Indeed, this is one of the most egregious examples of Bandcamp mis-tagging I've seen in a long time (and that's saying something, since I see that all the time). They've got themselves tagged as "metal alternative-metal doom-metal doomgaze post-metal Finland," and the only one of those tags that's even remotely accurate is "Finland." ...
It seems I only remembered one part of the term—the bit about "record." On the other hand, it is precisely record labels that handle the promotion of releases these days. So, in the end, my two errors effectively canceled each other out—like two negatives making a positive.
Subconsciously, I wanted to believe that music promotion should be handled by companies that are also directly involved in the recording process. Otherwise, such organizations risk becoming little more than usurers—entities that might actually benefit from an artist’s financial failure.
This brings us neatly to the second point: the crucial role the first tag plays in promoting a release. As it turns out, Bandcamp treats the first tag as the primary genre for a release. This determines how an album ranks in global search results and whether it appears in the relevant genre-specific collections on the site’s homepage.
As it happens, an artist might make a typo or simply forget to add tags altogether, which leaves the album invisible to search. When you combine this with the default rules for selecting an opening track, the whole system starts to look like a kind of "controlled chaos."
Editors
I made a point of checking, and I’m relieved to see that the Editors’ album isn’t on your 2009 list.
Otherwise, my theory—that we have opposing tastes which somehow manage to coexist within the same musical sphere—wouldn’t hold any water. In my view, the band’s 2026 release is one of the dullest in their entire discography.
Thao
As for Thao, she recorded a very charming single with Neko Case, but beyond that, I haven’t found anything on her 2026 album that really stands out to me.
Yello
I don’t recall ever listening to a full Yello album before, but given the general lack of quality releases in 2026, this one actually seems quite interesting at first glance.
I was also looking forward to a few other albums; while they offered some compelling individual singles or tracks, none of them quite reached the level of "release of the week."
Subconsciously, I wanted to believe that music promotion should be handled by companies that are also directly involved in the recording process. Otherwise, such organizations risk becoming little more than usurers—entities that might actually benefit from an artist’s financial failure.
Hmm... I don't mean to seem contrarian, but it seems to me that practically the entire history of recorded music, at least in the rock/pop idiom, involves artists trying to free themselves from record labels who constantly interfere in the recording process in such a way as to stifle their creativity and push them to do things that are at odds with their creative instincts and preferences. When "companies" obtain the kind of control they really want, you get boy bands, manufactured girlpop, and Nickelback.
Meanwhile, I could go on for pages and pages about record labels steering bands into financial failure, if not catastrophe — I'm an XTC fan, after all — but I'd say it's pretty rare for a label to actually benefit from those catastrophes. Still, if there's a way to do it, you can absolutely bet that they've thought of it, used it, and kept using it, assuming it did indeed work to their benefit somehow.
Quote:
As it happens, an artist might make a typo or simply forget to add tags altogether, which leaves the album invisible to search. When you combine this with the default rules for selecting an opening track, the whole system starts to look like a kind of "controlled chaos."
I think you can still search on the artist/album names, though the results are skewed and manipulated more than I'd prefer. As for the controlled chaos, that's almost inevitable. You've got people who don't want to be tagged or categorized in any way, trying to succeed within a system that increasingly can't function at all without extensive tagging and categorization. Some recording artists can see what's happening and have begun to accept it... others, not so much. I'm not saying it's good, it's actually really bad, but I just don't see a practical alternative as long as the barriers-to-entry remain almost non-existent, like they are now.
Quote:
Yello
I don’t recall ever listening to a full Yello album before, but given the general lack of quality releases in 2026, this one actually seems quite interesting at first glance.
I prefer their early stuff (I know, what a shock), so if you're interested in them I'd recommend listening to Side 1 of Solid Pleasure first, so that you have a healthy amount of respect for them as you work your way through the other albums — some of which are quite disappointing by comparison.
First off, I believe I may have been right about the new LP by The Church — in fact, it might be even better than Hologram of Baal, which would make it their best since Priest = Aura, despite it being a double-album. (It's 17 tracks, but the last one, "Sacred Echoes," turns out to be three different pieces strung together, I guess because 19 is an unlucky number in Australia.) I do realize this all means nothing to most of you out there, but trust me, it's vitally important to us "Church people."
I was definitely right about the new Wavves album being rescheduled — it's been moved to Friday, Nov. 13, the same day as the new U2 album, Carnaval de Luz. There are preview tracks on some of the streaming services now, and they're not bad, though they do sound sort of emo-ish... "Pinesol," which appears to be the first single from it, is a real "banger" actually. I'm going to try to be cautiously optimistic about this one.
More (mostly) good stuff
Mystic Tea Party, Slipstream
This debut LP came out with no pre-announcement, which makes sense because otherwise it would just be like any other tea party, I guess... They're a male-female tripgazer/dreampop duo from Melbourne, Australia, and I have to say this album is really good for a completely DIY effort — somebody should sign them immediately. (Assuming people still do things like that...?)
Bad Waitress, In the Hollow
Bad Waitress are an all-female punk quartet from Toronto who seem to have taken a turn towards the goth genre with this album. Personally I really like it, and they even remind me of Shana Falana now, but I'm concerned they're only doing this to take advantage of the special tax breaks you get in Canada for being in a goth band.
Slough, S/T
Slough is a 4-piece grungepop band from Kitchener, Ontario, led by the unfortunately-named Marcus Wanka, who used to be in Hank (the band, that is, not just some guy named "Hank"). This album is their debut, and it's got a 90s-era Teenage Fanclub, maybe Ash-like infectious-power-pop vibe to it. If this were the 90s, I'd say there was hit potential here, but now that it's 2026... hard to say. They might warrant continued monitoring. (Not that kind of monitoring.)
Clinic, Wild in the Streets
Album number ten for Clinic sounds fairly similar to the previous nine, basically psychedelia-tinged electro-dreampop with a strong hint of weirdness and a vague sense of tension and unease. The late David Lynch might have liked them, but I don't recall any of their material being used in any of his movies...?
The Oscillation, Interference
This appears to be a solo artist from Czechia named Demian Castellanos, who does psychedelic drone-rock jams pretty much all by himself (usually jamming is done in groups of at least three, so I'm not sure you can even call it that if it's just the one guy). I'm not sure why he calls himself "The Oscillation" either, since most of these tracks only use one or two chords, but it could have something to do with the fact that "I, Demian Castellanos" is an anagram for "Man Seed Oscillation." (If so, that's very clever, and he gets a cookie for sure!)
What November 6, 2026 releases do YOU have to beat for a spot in the playoffs?
I've been saying for the past 2-3 weeks that there wouldn't be many big-name releases for the rest of the year that aren't Christmas albums, but then I found out about these new releases from Bryan Adams (How's it Goin'), James Blunt (Airplane Mode), Asia (Indigo, so yes, Geoff Downes is still alive and still making records), Gilbert O'Sullivan (On the Record — remember him? I sure hope not), and Kings of Leon (O My Beloved). Sleep-inducing bedroom-popster Rex Orange County also has a new one appropriately called Dream Fatigue, which seems unfair to Boston-area grungegaze band Dream Fatigue, or would have if I'd ever heard of either of them before. (As it turns out, I'm the only one who hasn't.) And there are even a couple of metal LPs by bands you've probably heard of, namely Hatebreed with Fatal Paradox and Cult of Luna with In the Shadow of Your Shadow — and of course those are just two among the zillions of metal albums that come out pretty much every week, none of which I know anything about whatsoever.
I should add that last week I mentioned a new album by old-school garage-rockers The Fuzztones — the title is Just Once — but it's actually a collection of old live tracks, all of which are songs they only ever played once. So it's sort of "new" in the "previously unreleased" sense of the term, but it's still a live album, and the most recent recording is from 2017.
Meanwhile, Steven Wilson, the guy from Porcupine Tree who's probably more famous now for making deluxe-packaged surround-sound remixes of your favorite 70s and 80s albums, has a new one called Requiem for a Village, a concept album (of course) about... a dead village?
But it's not sad, stately, or pastoral, it's more spooky, edgy, and eerie-sounding, though it's not also not "dark ambient" or goth either, it's definitely a proper prog-rock LP, so don't get it confused with this other album. And while it's not quite in time for Halloween, it came pretty close. The album cover photo is pretty clearly an homáge to the first Black Sabbath album, which makes you wonder why he didn't make it even more like the first Black Sabbath album since he knows the remaining Sabs personally (having done surround-sound mixes for them). The album also has a narrator (actor David Tennant), and on top of that, Wilson is only using analog synths and real instruments on it — no digital stuff. It's even being released on Fiction Records, The Cure's old label, though it sounds nothing like The Cure. More importantly (from my perspective), XTC's Andy Partridge wrote most of the narration and co-wrote some of the lyrics, because good-ol' Steven did XTC's surround-sound mixes too... and even if he hadn't done them, who else would you call on to help write spooky and edgy lyrics for your scary new album? Andy doesn't sing or play any instruments on it, but it's still more XTC-related than anything else being released this week. At least... that I know of.
So... there ya go. Long story short, if you're seriously into prog-rock, and aren't bothered by some voice-over narration between tracks, this could easily be your Album of the Year.
Department Store Santa Store Dept.
There are Christmas albums too, of course — Sufjan Stevens is releasing one called Worst Christmas Ever! that might just be worth getting despite the title, and there's also Alanis Morissette with Good Weather For Immaculate Conception (note that Amazon.com is saying the physical CD is an "Amazon exclusive," but they've said that before for CDs that didn't turn out to be all that exclusive). And let's not forget that new Wintry Mix EP from Superchunk, because that would force me to add this sentence you're reading now long after the rest of this material was originally posted. Maybe the biggest-deal Xmas release so far is not an album but Olivia Rodrigo's a new single, "take me home (4 christmas)," which is probably not a cover of Dan + Shay's "Take Me Home for Christmas" from their 2024 Christmas album, It's Officially Christmas. (Why the plus-sign there, by the way? That looks suspicious to me.)
C'mon Man What We Duo-in' Out Here Man Dept.
Except for the Steven Wilson album, I'm not seeing a lot out there that I'm especially interested in this week, but that only makes it harder to choose what to put in the top spot. So... maybe I should narrow it down to the... not just one or two, but a whopping THREE albums made by duos who don't have bass players? (Admittedly, one of them was released last week and I missed it, but even two is a lot, seeing as how the world is so dominated by bass players.)
Party Dozen, 21 Bum Salute
This semi-experimental, sometimes-noisepop duo from Sydney, Australia has a rather unusual configuration — it's sax 'n' drums, plus electronics that are either pre-programmed or run live onstage (by both of them) with loopers. Kirsty Tickle (yes, I checked the spelling) is the singer and sax player, and Jonathan Boulet is the drummer who also does the production work. It's quite impressive, but I doubt they'll remain a duo for long because making all that sequencer/looper stuff work in a live setting is a huge pain in the you-know-what.
Girl Tones, Precious
Girl Tones is a girlpunk act consisting of two sisters, Kenzie & Laila Crowe from Bowling Green, Kentucky. (I had no idea there were women in Kentucky!) It's just guitar and drums with no bass player, the same duo configuration as Honeyblood, who I liked enormously, as well as Japandroids, The White Stripes, and of course The Big Nose Attack. What some no-bass duos do is have the guitarist play through a frequency-crossover box, or maybe just a Micro-Pog pedal, to split the low-end output to a bass amp while the rest goes to a regular guitar amp, but I don't know if Girl Tones does that when they play live or not. (This is also one of the reasons 7-string guitars were invented, supposedly. I mean, somebody told me that once. He might have been lying...)
Disgusting Sisters, Skin & Blisters(released October 30)
This more-pop-than-punk LP is also the work of two actual sisters, Julianna & Josephine Hopkins, from London. Thankfully the whole "disgusting" thing seems to be just a joke, though I haven't actually met them in person... The album is currently digital-only, but they're getting some decent media coverage, so maybe we'll get a disgusting physical version. They've enlisted all their family and they've enlisted all their friends, it helped save their relationship and made it work again — sorry! wrong album there — to be their backing musicians when they play live, so there may be some bass being played because of that, but they're still doing the recordings with just the two of them. The sound is a bit closer to regular girlpop than the two acts mentioned above, but there's some sprechgesang (if not outright rapping) going on in there so they should still appeal to fans of fun bands like Wet Leg and Dry Cleaning, as well as female-fronted pop-punk groups in general.
Getting Progressively Less Duo-Oriented Dept.
Oso Oso, An Exchange of Information
Formerly known as "Osoosooso," I guess they just decided "Oso Oso" was easier to pronounce, and since it too is a palindrome, why not? This is either a solo act or a duo depending on what day of the week it is, but the main guy is Jonathan DeMitri (aka "Jade Lilitri") from Long Beach, NY, who has one of those reedy, slightly-high-pitched nasal voices that are ideal for making power-pop records. So it's a good thing this is a power-pop record (his sixth!), even though it's not a power-pop band name, nor a power-pop album title. The songs are snappy, catchy, crunchy, and hook-filled, and that's what matters, though I also like the album cover since it has a giraffe on it.
TV Priest, Cartoons
TV Priest are a somewhat abrasive-sounding but not quite "angular" post-punk quartet from London, who used to be called Torches but changed their name when they lost their only female band-member and (I assume) simultaneously realized there are several dozen other bands also named "Torches." They're sort of reminiscent of The Fall, with a fair amount of sprechgesang happening with the vocals, but a little more danceable. Pretty good for what it is, and of course any time someone does an album cover involving a plastic bag, I'll respond positively even when it isn't.
Computerwife, Born From a Wish
Addie Warncke's second album as Computerwife isn't quite as rough and lo-fi as her self-titled 2023 debut LP, but it's still quite rough and lo-fi. This time she has a real bass player and drummer though, and since she's probably not recording the whole thing on a laptop in her apartment like she did with the first one, the results are more of a properly-assembled punk/grunge/garage-rock album (with occasional shoegaze bits). It's more abrasive though (because the guitars are clearer and louder), and more upbeat, and frankly it's a better, more cohesive album... but I suspect this won't appeal so much to her original fans. Or, maybe it will. Original fans are unpredictable.
Sky is Alright, FINITE.
We've all heard a lot of loose talk (along with mountains of definitive scientific evidence) that the sky is doing pretty badly these days. So maybe it's nice that this duo of two guys, one of whom lives in London and the other in LA — they've also got two additional guys for live gigs — are willing to put their names on the line to say that maybe the sky isn't doing so badly after all. Actually no, it would be better if everyone treated the situation as the species-threatening existential crisis that it is, but that doesn't mean that such a duo can't make a decent heavy-popgaze album, does it? Okay, maybe it does, but this album isn't bad. Some of the tracks do get a little ponderous at times, but it's still plenty loud. That has to count for something...
Spoons, Nightlife
I, for one, would forgive you for thinking this Canadian new wave/electropop band, founded in 1979, had packed it in back in the 80s after the quite-good Arias & Symphonies (1982) and the not-quite-as-good Talkback (1983), both on A&M Records, failed to make them big pop stars. (They even had a minor hit with a song called "Nova Heart.") As it happens, they did sort of pack it in in 1988 or so, but then got back together about 20 years later to record 2011's Static in Transmission, and in 2019 they made another album, New Day New World. So this one is album #8 for them, and it's... pretty good? Frankly, it doesn't sound like they've changed much since the 80s, right down to the old-school analog synth sounds. (There's less guitar, though.) As I recall, the knock on them back in the day was that the songs on their albums were too "samey," with simple motorik 120-bpm drum patterns and not much variance in tone or atmosphere. The same is kinda-sorta true here, at least for the first 6-7 songs or so (there's even a track called "Doomed," which is perfectly danceable and barely registers on the "darkness scale"). Historically-speaking, I don't know if that's enough to explain why only one of their albums (Arias & Symphonies, the one with "Nova Heart" on it) is listed here on BEA, but I guess it could be...? Life isn't fair, after all.
AloneKitty, Wide Awake
Here's the third album from a shoegaze-classic solo act turned power-trio from Toronto, led by one Michelle K, whose voice sounds like she might be transgender (though I don't know that for a fact). And I'm sorry to say the vocals are really the only weak point here — the guitars sound great, indeed the whole thing sounds great, and the previous album (last year's sad not sad) was... well, also great. Since it's a shoegaze record, the vocals might not be as much of an issue as they otherwise would be, but even so, more melodicism and tonal variation in that area could go a long way.
The Autocollants, Hidden Smile
This group was a lo-fi tweepop quartet from Seattle who started in 1995-6, released 4 singles, then packed it in shortly after releasing a comp of those singles (entitled Why Couldn't Things Just Stay The Same?) in 1999. They got back together a few years later to become the highly-respected shoegazers Tears Run Rings, and have (so far) made four consistently good albums, the most recent being 2024's Everything in the End. Now, for some reason, they're back as the Autocollants again with their very first full-length LP, sounding just as twee they did back in the 1990s. This is one of the clearest indications I've yet seen that twee is making a comeback, because why else would they do this? They could have made another Tears Run Rings album, everyone would have been happy, but instead this is the move. I think there's something nefarious going on, and I'm not going to rest until all the twee conspirators are exposed and held accountable!
Anyway, it's getting late, and I couldn't find a masked band this week, so I'm off to get some sleep. Next week it's the debut album from GIRLBAND! as well as a new one from some obscure group from Ireland calling itself "U2," which I assume is some sort of parody act. ("U2" = "You Too," get it? Very funny.)
Last edited by MadhattanJack on 11/07/2026 07:48; edited 1 time in total
Subconsciously, I wanted to believe that music promotion should be handled by companies that are also directly involved in the recording process. Otherwise, such organizations risk becoming little more than usurers—entities that might actually benefit from an artist’s financial failure.
... but I'd say it's pretty rare for a label to actually benefit from those catastrophes. Still, if there's a way to do it, you can absolutely bet that they've thought of it, used it, and kept using it, assuming it did indeed work to their benefit somehow.
Everything changes so rapidly. Things that might seem to defy common sense become perfectly logical once you delve into the essence of what is unfolding. Why tie oneself down with obligations to independent, highly professional musicians—or go to the trouble of turning them into stars—when it is already clear that, in the near future, all that will be required are a few hired hands to serve as mere attendants to an evolving musical superintelligence?
MadhattanJack wrote:
musicoed wrote:
As it happens, an artist might make a typo or simply forget to add tags altogether, which leaves the album invisible to search. When you combine this with the default rules for selecting an opening track, the whole system starts to look like a kind of "controlled chaos."
I think you can still search on the artist/album names, though the results are skewed and manipulated more than I'd prefer. As for the controlled chaos, that's almost inevitable. You've got people who don't want to be tagged or categorized in any way, trying to succeed within a system that increasingly can't function at all without extensive tagging and categorization. Some recording artists can see what's happening and have begun to accept it... others, not so much. I'm not saying it's good, it's actually really bad, but I just don't see a practical alternative as long as the barriers-to-entry remain almost non-existent, like they are now.
I’ve mentioned before that I regularly receive a large number of emails and links—including those from Bandcamp—so there’s certainly no shortage of information about new releases. However, our discussion prompted me to take another look at Bandcamp itself, specifically as a search tool.
To my surprise, I actually started having some success using tags. The main mistake I hadn’t noticed before was that the default setting—labeled "best-selling"—wasn't actually showing "new arrivals." Even so, I still occasionally come across the odd release from a different year, rather than just from the past week. But that’s not the most disappointing part. I tried to find a specific album—one I already knew about and for which I even had a link—by using tags. I applied four different tags, yet the album I was looking for didn't appear among the five results provided. It’s possible, of course, that I did something wrong again.
MadhattanJack wrote:
musicoed wrote:
Yello
I don’t recall ever listening to a full Yello album before, but given the general lack of quality releases in 2026, this one actually seems quite interesting at first glance.
I prefer their early stuff (I know, what a shock), so if you're interested in them I'd recommend listening to Side 1 of Solid Pleasure first, so that you have a healthy amount of respect for them as you work your way through the other albums — some of which are quite disappointing by comparison.
Thanks—I gave it a try, just for the fun of it. But while it’s engaging to look back and take stock of the current year, that’s not enough of a reason to go digging through the discographies of even the most well-known and respected artists.
I suppose I could claim something like, "I only listen to music released within the last week"—but, in truth, once the new year arrives, the previous one really does lose all its appeal.
Hey, I like that one! Kind of soft without being too pleasant... Added! :)
Lowly - Baglaens (Video)
I think I even saved this track for the final tour in 2019.
And now, after checking, I can say for sure that this song took second place on my personal list for the 2019 tournament.
Moving on to this week, it’s clear that we’re drawing ever closer to the most intense period of year-end assessments. In just two weeks, the first rankings from professional evaluators are set to appear. Consequently, the number of significant new releases should begin to dwindle.
Twisted Teens - The Holy Cross Tigers (6/XI-2026/45) (Album)
These artists—previously unknown to me—have just released their third consecutive album, which, much like the two that came before it, will likely appear on this year’s "best of" lists.
I’m not exactly a die-hard fan of this kind of music, but every now and then, certain tracks really grab me. This release is no exception.
La Roux - Old Flames (6/XI-2026/45) (Album)
An artist I’ve known for a long time—someone who doesn’t exactly set the world on fire, but occasionally delights with the odd melodic track.
Natalie Bergman - I Killed A North American Songbird (6/XI-2026/45) (EP)
This artist has a name that sounds very familiar to me, and she has a very interesting single that serves as the opening track. I can’t say anything more than that for now.
... Moving on to this week, it’s clear that we’re drawing ever closer to the most intense period of year-end assessments. In just two weeks, the first rankings from professional evaluators are set to appear. Consequently, the number of significant new releases should begin to dwindle...
This year, the well-known trio of experts has already kicked off the season with their year-end album lists. As always, I’m struck by the consensus in their choices—it seems the selection really isn’t all that vast. That’s likely why they’re in such a rush to weigh in early: they want to avoid any appearance of plagiarism.
But in all seriousness, I expected even worse.
This year, the well-known trio of experts has already kicked off the season with their year-end album lists.
As is often the case, I can only guess what you're referring to — only three year-end lists have appeared so far though, and only the one from Uncut has made it onto YearEndLists.com already. (I'd link to it on Uncut.com, but it hasn't even made it onto their own website yet.) The other two are from MOJO and the Rough Trade Blog.
Personally, I kind of expected the Phoebe Bridgers album to probably take the top spot in a decent number of paid-media lists for 2026. Obviously I'd prefer to see The Asteroid No.4 or even Sphere up there, just like I would every year, but you can't win 'em all, I guess... especially when nobody has ever heard of either of those bands. And to be fair, the Phoebe Bridgers albumis pretty good — I'll probably put it on my own 2026 chart at some point, after I listen to it again. I sort of almost-damned it with faint praise back here by just saying it "sounds like it's another good one from her." Clearly it is, but I probably should have given it a bit more ink/love than that at the time.
... — only three year-end lists have appeared so far though, and only the one from Uncut has made it onto YearEndLists.com already. (I'd link to it on Uncut.com, but it hasn't even made it onto their own website yet.) The other two are from MOJO and the Rough Trade Blog.
Personally, I kind of expected the Phoebe Bridgers album to probably take the top spot in a decent number of paid-media lists for 2026. Obviously I'd prefer to see The Asteroid No.4 or even Sphere up there, just like I would every year, but you can't win 'em all, I guess... especially when nobody has ever heard of either of those bands. And to be fair, the Phoebe Bridgers albumis pretty good — I'll probably put it on my own 2026 chart at some point, after I listen to it again. I sort of almost-damned it with faint praise back here by just saying it "sounds like it's another good one from her." Clearly it is, but I probably should have given it a bit more ink/love than that at the time.
That’s right; these three publications are constantly competing to see who can release their list first. After they drop, there’s usually a lull—lasting at least a week.
Rough Trade, once a staunch ally of the alternative scene, has been gradually drifting toward the mainstream.
As far as I recall, *Uncut* and *MOJO* never release their lists anywhere other than in their own print magazines.
I make a point of not listening to Phoebe Bridgers’ albums until the year-end roundups are out. And I’ve never once been wrong about her knack for crafting memorable melodies.
If my favorite albums ever show up on these publications’ year-end lists—even in the very last spots—I’ll be sure to head outside just to check if the world is coming to an end.
What Friday Nov. 13, 2026 releases are YOU unlucky enough to get excited about... ehh, what was this thread about again?
Everybody this week is buzzing about the new U2 album, Carnaval de Luz, the title of which is Spanish for "Carnival of Light," which was the title of this Ride album so they had to translate it into Spanish because Heaven forbid they might actually have to come up with a completely different title just to avoid accusations of Ride-plagiarism. That aside, I consider myself a U2 fan, and while I consider this new album (their 16th) to be almost their worst ever (it's not quite as bad as Songs of Experience), it does have some Spanish lyrics in it, like, here and there... so I'll accept that the title can be justified on that basis. (And if you think I'm making fun of them now, wait 'til you read the Paste Magazine review... among others.)
In addition to U2, in the "people you've heard of" category this week we've also got Yngwie J. Malmsteen with his 23rd (give or take) studio album, Hell or High Water. Nobody is excited about this one because apparently Yngwie is a really mean and rude person who insults people (especially critics and other musicians) for practically no valid reason at all. I remember his first album, Rising Force, was pretty impressive, but maybe that's only because none of the highly insulting songs on it were directed at me personally. (At least, that's what they said...) There's also a new posthumous album by the late Waylon Jennings called Diamonds — this isn't that big a deal either, since there have been several posthumous Waylon Jennings albums (only two of which are listed here on BEA), and this one won't be the last, plus there are 47 other fine albums of his to choose from overall. Still, there are people out there for whom this will be the Big Album Release Event of the Year, so if you're one of those people, by all means enjoy this new Waylon Jennings album!
In breaking news from the world of Billy Childish, which is to say "Kent," there are also simultaneous album releases coming from Thee Headcoats and Thee Headcoatees, presumably just for the purpose of confusing people. The former's new LP is a collection of material that's mostly been previously released already under the name "Children of the Sect," so the album title is also Children of the Sect, since this will further max-out the confusion which we thought was already super-ultimate-sized because of their irritating insistence on spelling "The" with a double-"e" to prevent software that makes handy sorting exceptions for "The" from working properly. (My solution: Tag editors!) Meanwhile, the latter's LP is entitled Ev’rybody’s Gonna Be Happy, and the advance reviews are saying it's a "return to form" and similar to the all-girl garage-punk, have-fun-at-all-costs aesthetic of their 90s records. Like most of their previous albums, it's a mix of covers and originals (the title track is an old song by The Kinks), and I'm sure their fans will be pleased with it — though I can't say that with any certainty because there are no preview tracks available.
Finally, NYC post-no-wave noise-rockers Live Skull have an album called What Could Go Wrong? It's a fair question, since this is now their fourth album since reuniting in 2016 with Mark C. as the only original member, and none of those albums have been listed here on BEA (as opposed to the seven pre-breakup albums, all of which are listed). Naturally I blame billionaire Mark Cuban for this, since people probably think (with zero evidence of course, except that they're roughly the same age) that "Mark C." has been Mark Cuban this whole time, and they're still upset about his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks, not to mention there's the increasingly prevalent realization among everyone in the human race (with all sorts of evidence!) that billionaires are the direct cause of all the evil in the world. (Also, they smell bad. Billionaires that is, not Live Skull, they smell just fine. Please don't ask me how I know.)
Moving right along...
Another Week With No Obvious Winner Dept.
Like last week, there are lots of albums coming out that are... okay, but not one that clearly stands out. So, because it's Friday the 13th, I'm going with the one that sounds the most like My Bloody Valentine.
Crate, ST
The thing is, lots of bands claim to be influenced by My Bloody Valentine but make no effort to sound like them. Presumably they want to define their own sound and that's fine, but it's frustrating for fans who just want to hear more MBV-like albums, since MBV itself refuses to make such albums (or any albums) themselves. At the same time, Crate, a quartet from New York City, isn't the first band to hit on the idea of writing fairly conventional (but well-crafted) indie-rock/pop-style tunes and then playing them in an MBV-like way, complete with that motorik beat, detached-sounding down-mixed female singer, whammy bar, layers of fuzz, plenty of reverb, and so on. Crate's execution of this idea is one of the best I've heard (though admittedly my memory isn't what it used to be). Not all of their songs are MBV-adjacent, and the band seems just as happy sounding like Isn't Anything or even conventional indie-rock as they do sounding like Loveless, but... that's okay! Nobody wants them to be a tribute band, we just appreciate them occasionally reminding us of the good ol' days. So, thanks Crate! Nice work!
Trentemøller, ST
Anders Trentemøller, from Denmark, released his first album The Last Resort about 20 years ago, and since then he's been trying to top it, both commercially and critically, but ehh... hasn't. On his previous two albums, 2022's Memoria and 2024's Dreamweaver, he started moving more into the electrogaze/dreampop idiom, but most of the tracks on both albums were fairly subtle and subdued, like his earlier IDM/electronica stuff. He brought in a different female singer for both of those albums too, and he's done the same here (this time it's Sakura, from Austria), but with this one he decided to write and record some near-epic bangers, with a big production sound and more guitars (also big) than he's used before, though admittedly not enough to say the album is "guitar-oriented." (Sorry.) I think it's the best album he's ever made, but fans of his earlier stuff might not appreciate the bigness.
GIRLBAND!, ST
GIRLBAND! is a trio from Nottingham, UK, and yes, all three of them are women (this has to be explicitly stated because there have been multiple bands in the past using that name, or similar names, who were all men — presumably trying to get more girls to attend their live shows by deceiving them into thinking they were... actually, let's just skip all that for now). This is a really solid pop-punk debut LP with some grunge and 60s influences, and the singer, who goes by just "Georgie" (in fact, they all just go by first-names-only) has one of those gutsy, tough-throaty voices that works perfectly in a hard-rock/grungepop context like this. (Her voice has been compared to Fiona Apple's, so not quite as ragged as, say, Courtney Love's, but if you liked both Holeand Fiona, you might like this too.) As of right now they're not on Discogs yet, but they did make it onto AllMusic, so... added!
Wavves, Cherry Soda(<— Amazzzon link)
Okay, back here I predicted that this album would be "pushed back a week or two," which turned out to be correct, but I also stated that "the idea for this album was to make an early-2000s 'mall emo record' the way Wavves might have done one," and that this "sounds totally awful." To some extent this is still true because the idea is still totally awful in the conceptual sense, but the album itself is actually just fine as it turns out, and track 2, "Pinesol," even has song-of-the-year potential. Maybe even hit potential, though of course my reliability regarding hit potential is roughly 0% (that's "zero percent" in case you need me to spell it out for you). I guess the whole thing is actually more impressive because bandleader Nathan Williams managed to assemble a quality record out of what had become a real fiasco, so kudos to him! (I've never been able to do that myself, but of course I'm usually the one assembling the fiasco.)
Fucked Up, Grass Can Move Stones Part 3: Year of the Rooster
Here's another of those "Year of the [Insert animal species-name here]" records from this long-running odd-yet-brilliant progressive-punk (with screamo!) band from Ontario, Canada. This is the third album of a rock-opera trilogy about, well, talking animals that get years named after them, and there are only four tracks on it, but in the grand Fucked Up tradition the whole thing will probably run about 90 minutes or more depending on how much material per-track they can fit onto one side of a vinyl LP these days. It's sort of like what Tales From Topographic Oceans might have been like if Yes had been trying to keep you awake the whole time.
The Living Pins, Roxy Unicorn
This DIY indie-rock/guitar-pop band (with three women and one guy) from Austin, Texas apparently started all the way back in 1996, but didn't make a record until 2021, and this is their first full-length album. It's pretty good, too! Quite similar to The Bangles' first album or two, right down to the subtle 60s-psychedelic influences. I don't really have anything bad to say about it... it's just unfortunate they weren't able to record and release this stuff back when it could have made them into huge stars.
Tuesday's Just as Good Dept.
Three other albums that I liked came out this week on the 10th, because some people think it makes more sense to release albums on Tuesdays so that they don't have to compete with Friday night news dumps, movie premieres, weekend football games, and so on. Smart!
Cradle, Boosterseat
Cradle is a 6-piece shoegaze band from Philadelphia who like to add bits of hyperpop, glitch, and trip-hop into their songs. (I assume this is why they need 6 people, since it usually takes two specialists to run the highly complex "glitch device.") It's a cool idea and well-executed, though it sort of begs the question of whether or not there's market-demand for it. ("Hey, you put glitching in my shoegaze record!" "Oh yeah? Well, you put shoegaze in my glitch record!" and so on.) I'll admit I'm impressed with the results, but I do worry that some folks might think the whole thing is too clever for its own good, or that production trickery is being used to compensate for songs that might otherwise lack "banginess."
The Giraffe Told Me in My Dream, Far Motor Luminescence
Look, if you're in a 5-piece Taiwanese blissed-out shoegaze band with an angelic-sounding female singer and a giraffe tells you something in a dream, you have to start a band and make great-sounding albums based on what the giraffe tells you, right? I mean, that's certainly what I would do in that situation. Also, I like giraffes.
Whisper Gang, Becoming Pt. 2
Whisper Gang is a quartet from Toronto, also a dreampop/shoegaze act but more spacey, and frankly more "proggy," than most — and they definitely like to do the soaring guitar leads, crescendoes, minor chords... you know, stuff like that. Maybe something like this could be a "gateway drug" for fans of bands like Genesis or Renaissance who want to finally start (gradually) getting into 21st-century culture. (Just in case Radiohead wasn't enough.) And like 2024's Becoming Pt. 1, this new record is a 5-track EP, so I for one am just going to move all the MP3 files into the same folder and pretend it's a standard 10-track album. They can't stop me! (Can they?)
Next week...
The Dog Days of Winter have officially arrived, but there'll be a few items of interest, including new albums from Bodywash, Lael Neale, and Desperate Journalist, plus a movie soundtrack from Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore. There's also a live album from Maruja and an "encore" album from Laibach, because I guess everyone really liked their last one. (I had no idea.)
Until then! 😄
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