Every year just around the first or second week of June, we put together a list of our favorite records of the first half of the year, and every year it gets longer. Thirty became 35, 35 became 40 and so on. This year, it’s just two entries shy from the length of our actual year-end list, which is an arbitrary decision, we grant you, but it feels like it should be a little bit shorter, right? The fact that we came so close to 50 only tells you how much great music has been released in this still-young year, which means it’ll only get that much more difficult to narrow down at the end of the year. But that’s a problem to be worked out later. For now, enjoy our picks for the best albums of 2026 so far.
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore – Tragic Magic
Already close friends and established composers within the contemporary ambient scene, Tragic Magic marks the first full-length collaboration between keyboardist/vocalist Julianna Barwick and harpist Mary Lattimore. Recorded in only nine days at the historic Philharmonie de Paris, the album thrives on human connection, sublimating lifetimes of musical spirituality into singular, free-flowing interplays. Barwick and Lattimore match each other like water and wind, elemental forces whose paths are simultaneously parallel and entwined. Each of these seven songs expands from a musical conversation into a sonic embrace, bursting with history and eager for new discoveries. – Parker Bennett
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Big|Brave – in grief and in hope
Big|Brave have spent more than a decade building their sound into a force of creative experimentation. With every creative shift, the Montreal group manipulate elements of doom, drone, and noise to presents atmospheres at once enchanting, chilling, and grandiose. Their drumless 10th studio album in grief or in hope is a remarkable sonic journey into distortion and melody—a beautifully intimate and cathartic experience. Big|Brave have been on a roll of late, releasing a new album each year over the past four years–all of them excellent—and in grief or in hope is yet another testament to their unconventional and uncompromising vision. – Michael Pementel
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Blackwater Holylight – Not Here Not Gone
Portland’s Blackwater Holylight delivered a hidden gem of a record with 2021’s Silence/Motion, pairing stoner rock with a gothic pall and a swirl of dreamy psychedelia. And in the nearly five years since that release, they’ve further honed the hazier, shoegazier aspects of their sound, reemerging with something beautifully dense on Not Here Not Gone. It’s no stretch to say that this is their most beautiful record to date, and arguably their best, showcasing even more depth and versatility and densely otherworldly dirges like the breathtaking closer “Poppyfields.” They’ve always been a somewhat genre-evasive band, if nonetheless loosely rooted in the greater world of doom, but here they’re elevating toward an even more indefinable and incredible realm. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Boards of Canada – Inferno
It figures that Boards of Canada, one of electronic music’s most mythic duos, should make a long-awaited return amid an era of deepfakes and politicized misinformation, of doomsday clocks ticking past the Iron Maiden mark and their own music being lifted for the sake of fascistic trolling. Where once the duo employed an uncanny familiarity for the sake of a kind of curiously warm ambiguity, on Inferno, their first new album in 13 years, they shuffle and reassemble similarly eerie parts for much more unsettling ends, juxtaposing apocalyptic visions and the words of religious figures with some of their most haunting material to date, all the while configuring some actual bangers in the form of highlights like the Vangelis trip-hop “Arena Americanada,” the hauntological industrial dirge of “Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan” and the gauzy post-punk shimmer of “Prophecy at 1420 MHz.” It’s good to have them back—even if I’m feeling uneasy about what it all means. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Bosse-de-Nage – Hidden Fires Burn Hottest
There isn’t a fine line between bands that get drawn into improv jamming as if Charybdis were beside them and acts that play consummately complex music while following sheet music they spent thousands of hours writing and revising. The line is about three feet thick. It took Bosse-de-Nage eight years to craft Hidden Fires Burn Hottest, and it shows they weren’t frittering away most of that time but rather sculpting this masterpiece to perfection. Listen to the eight-minute “Frenzy,” which throws a temper tantrum, quiets down and then starts freaking out again, and you’ll be convinced this is blackgaze at its finest. – Kurt Orzeck
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Brånd – Tåg & Nåcht
Metal-Archives notoriously gatekeeps on an arbitrary basis of what it considers metal, yet Brånd somehow earned an entry on the site. The Austrian one-man act is labelled “raw black metal/punk” even though their debut album Tåg & Nåcht is too eccentric to be condensed to “rock music.” You could argue it’s all in the attitude, but Brånd smirk throughout; no grimacing at all. Hell, they draw more from Devo, and beef it up with toe-tapping rhythms and funky bass, than they do any goth-adjacent post-punk act. Whatever, accidents happen, and Tåg & Nåcht plays like one long misstep that, through divine intervention, thankfully, made it to tape. – Colin Dempsey
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Brown Horse – Total Dive
Brown Horse’s third album Total Dive vibrates at the frequency of the highway’s hum, alit by the glow of an 18-wheeler headlights in the rearview. The Norwich, England alt-country band—that phrase itself speaking volumes about the rarity of just such a band—capture a persistent weary and lonesome feeling throughout their third and best album to date, its 10 songs alternately bearing alt-country’s earthy grit and grunge’s dense array of fuzz. They’re not the first band to thread a needle from Jason Molina to J Mascis, but theirs is a particularly potent blend, harnessing lightning through the left side of the FM dial. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
By Storm – My Ghosts Go Ghost
From the first track, this new project from two thirds of Injury Reserve—RiTchie and Parker Corey—stakes out a sonic trajectory for a duo that has to balance the grief of an end with the optimistic will to move forward. RiTchie’s vocals, mournful, manipulated and layered, describe the anxiety of a couple becoming parents (“been us two, it’s finna be three”) that unavoidably resonates with the equally emotionally complex context of Stepa J. Groggs’s death that made three suddenly two. A heavy, ticking drum track finally hits the last third of the track, exploding into a microcosm of the whole project: a swirl of glitches that doesn’t end the amalgam of grief and hope so much as recombines it into the birth of something new. – Flora Arnold
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Ora Cogan – Hard Hearted Woman
When I interviewed Ora Cogan earlier this year, she spent nearly as much time speaking about the music she loved as she did her new album Hard Hearted Woman. Townes Van Zandt, Dolly Parton, Norma Tanega, Greek folk music, the Vancouver noise scene—it all colors the sound of her first release for Sacred Bones, which captures the depth and diversity of her uniquely gothic psych-folk. There’s an eerily supernatural element to songs like “Bury Me,” which is steeped in darkwave and gothic rock, while the acid twang of “The Smoke” is enrobed in dense clouds and haunting waltz “Outgrowing” feels like a Mazzy Star seance. Cogan’s unique background in different styles and scenes gives her music an enchanting versatility, and mystery that’s well worth unlocking. – Jeff Terich
Read more: Ora Cogan embraces the complexities
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Converge – Love Is Not Enough/Hum of Hurt
What’s better motivational fuel than a new Converge album? Easy—two new Converge albums. As if sensing that the feeling of exhaustion and fatigue might finally catch up with most of us by the time the B-12 shot of the February-released Love Is Not Enough has worn off, Converge reach out just before the year’s halfway mark with Hum of Hurt, a much-needed boost of volume and aggression for the road ahead. Companion albums of sorts yet individually searing in their own right, Love Is Not Enough and Hum of Hurt offer complementary variances on form—the former a burst of punchy and immediate metallic hardcore and the latter a more abrasive permutation with the venomous churn of noise rock. Each one roils with anguish amid some of the tightest and most potent rippers the band’s delivered in over a decade, both offering concise and concentrated reminders of how cleansing a fire theirs truly is. – Jeff Terich
Read more: The storm is always there—an interview with Converge
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Cryptic Shift – Overspace & Supertime
Questioning whether these absolutely enormous macro-scale pieces even count as songs misses the point. The cosmicism is the thing itself, ascending beyond the outer bounds of groups like Cynic, Voivod and their ilk into the same specialized air that Rush at their most grandiloquent often went. These pieces break apart at the joints because they are voyages across universes, where each riff is a planet, a moon, an atmosphere, a species, and a half-hour long track is a genuine voyage. Every track here bristles with that incredible “where the fuck will this go next?” energy, adding a youthful vivacious cheer to the otherwise madly technical and progressive. It feels like the idealized form of late teens breaking their teeth on prog, heavy metal, shred and out-there punk records blowing each other’s minds in the basement. You can practically hear the joyful laughter. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Dry Cleaning – Secret Love
Leaning into the lighter side of their post-punk and folk-influenced tendencies, Dry Cleaning’s Secret Love blends twangy basslines with plucky guitars, and Florence Shaw’s blissful vocals with the occasional horn. The South London group find moments of pure harmony on tracks like “Cruise Ship Designer” and “Joy,” and dive into heavier, harsher tones on “Blood” and “Evil Evil Idiot.” Secret Love is a testament to their musicianship, each of the four members offering their strongest performances to date. While the album finds them building off much of the one of a kind sound they harvested on Stumpwork, this time around Dry Cleaning dives even deeper, crafting precision art rock soaked in cheeky lyrics. – Virginia Croft
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
ELUCID & Sebb Bash – I Guess U Had to Be There
ELUCID and Sebb Bash have worked together before, on both solo ELUCID releases and a highlight of Armand Hammer’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, but the terrain they cover on I Guess U Had to Be There still sounds like untread ground, a strange and disorienting landscape of beatless ambience, dissonant loops and off-kilter rhythms. Though perhaps not more abrasive than 2024’s Revelator in a literal sense, given that record’s ample use of distortion and noise, I Guess U Had to Be There is an act of reshaping hip-hop into new shapes and structures, the duo’s chemistry something more like quantum physics, and a listening experience that dares you to venture into the unknown. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Fatboi Sharif & Child Actor – Crayola Circles
Horror and dissonance are Fatboi Sharif’s bread and butter—he crafts nightmares better than just about any emcee. And yet the outstanding Crayola Circles only ever alludes to either, the New Jersey rapper building surrealist vignettes over productions from beatmaker Child Actor that come in more hues than the titular crayon brand’s trusty open-top box of 64. Though it runs less than a half hour, Crayola Circles shuffles through myriad mind-bending vignettes, each one captivating in its capsule of curiosities. Even the actually nightmarish moments, like “Night Terrors,” feel more abstract than visceral, a perfect representation of the suggestion of a monster being far more effective than the close-up reveal. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
GENA – The Pleasure Is Yours
It’s the frequency at which the drum hits that creates that smooth bap. This sets the stage before a single note is deliciously sung by Liv.e. It indicates that GENA—short for “God Energy, Naturally Amazing,” and loosely inspired by Gina from Martin—has been immersing itself in the boom-bap era of Neo-soul, which we so desperately need in the 2026 season. With the Fela Kuti vibes of “omo iya ati baba” at the end and the Karriem Riggins production savvy displayed all over The Pleasure Is Yours, his Dilla-esque “Unspokerrn” is making this a complete project, post D’Angelo’s passing, that reaches for spiritual divinity. I shall proceed to file this under the “when you need to get your head right” section of your record store; GENA is pocket AF, soulful like Anita Baker on eleven, and retro-futuristic as a Thundercat/Georgia Anne Muldrow baby. GENA is just right now, by leaps and bounds. – John-Paul Shiver
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Momoko Gill – Momoko
Momoko Gill is a unique figure among the already overflowing community of talent in the London jazz scene. After previous collaborations with Alabaster dePlume and Matthew Herbert, the vocalist and multi-instrumentalist delivers a gorgeously eclectic debut solo statement with Momoko, showcasing her versatility as a musician as well as her deftness in navigating a whole spectrum of vibes, from the eerie trip-hop of “Shadowboxing” to the energizing groove session “No Others.” She even brings a cast of jazz MVPs into the invocation of peace on “When Palestine Is Free,” reaching out a hand from one community to another. But mostly Momoko is all about that groove, its consistent rhythmic flow offering a reminder that she’s as formidable behind the kit as she is in front of the mic. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Hammok – When Does This Place Become Our Scene
Hammok want you to touch grass. That’s not such a shocking statement to hear from a group that started up during lockdown in 2020 and honed their skills until stages were finally ready to have them. But aside from simply being an explosive and dynamic set of post-hardcore with infectious choruses, abrasive riffs and energy to spare, When Does This Place Become Our Scene frequently concerns matters of community and connection—essential ideals for both the survival of punk and hardcore scenes and society alike. I’m not saying that a punk show can save the world, but the Norwegian trio’s sophomore album gets at the basics of both how to build something and how easily it can be torn apart—with no shortage of barnburners to emphasize that point. – Jeff Terich
Read more: Exchanging energy with Hammok
LIsten/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Aldous Harding – Train on the Island
There’s an awful lot of parasocial meaning-digging in music. So much so that it’s a scary concept if the same lyrical detectors stumbled upon Aldous Harding. On her fifth effort, Train Upon the Island, doubling down on her cozy and obscure indie-folk, her cryptic breadcrumbs remain. From whatever “Venus In the Zinnia” is all about (beyond being a brilliant call-and-response humdinger) to talking about incels while eating stones and the all-too-human disappointment of people mocking your new haircut, there is a lot to divulge among the minimalist plink-plonk production: once rich, then sparse. Somehow, by being as evasive and indefinable as ever, Harding’s work has never sounded so confident and reassuringly familiar. – Elliot Burr
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Harriet Tubman & Georgia Anne Muldrow – Electrical Field of Love
Long-running and venerable power-trio monolith Harriet Tubman are the sublime exemplar of 21st century Black Music and with Electrical Field of Love, they’ve, arguably, reached the pinnacle of their journey of singular sound and vision. And they couldn’t have pulled it off without vocalist Georgia Anne Muldrow in the Tubman fray, whose powerhouse, spiritually-minded and bluesy wail and croon brings a jaw-dropping element to the trio’s psych/jazz/electronics/dub/reggae/rock mind-melt that translates into a near-religious experience. Sonically, righteously and aesthetically, Hendrixian guitarist Brandon Ross, monster bassist Melvin Gibbs (also author of the recently-released must-read book, How Black Music Took Over The World), drummer JT Lewis and Muldrow are operating on a whole other level. – Brad Cohan
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Hiding Places – The Secret to Good Living
The Secret to Good Living is an album of moving parts that do so gracefully and deliberately, of sick riffs under the guise of indie folk, alt-country and slowcore. There’s a ragged sensibility to Hiding Places’ music even when it’s at its most gentle, a roar of guitars always just a few measures away from its most tender moments, cutting through expressions of missed connections, wasted time and regrets with a peal of distortion, whether via the nocturnal haunting of “One Hand” or the low-simmering grief of “Waiting.” The Brooklyn band thrive in those quiet understated moments when a primal scream won’t do, but a well placed solo most certainly will. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Wesley Joseph – Forever Ends Someday
It’s not technically wrong to call Wesley Joseph’s Forever Ends Someday one of the year’s best debuts, though it was preceded by two long EPs or mini-albums, depending on how you look at it, each of which showcased the versatile UK artist’s growth catching up with his ambition. With Forever Ends Someday, Joseph delivers an eclectic and dazzling set of songs that find the connection between Little Simz, Frank Ocean and Yves Tumor, steeped in rich electronic production and weighing heavy with the expectations of adulthood when yesterday’s regrets still linger. Joseph is in good company here, with the likes of Nicolas Jaar, A.K. Paul and Danny Brown providing either production or vocal contributions, but the blend of diversity, cohesion and emotional weight reveal the arrival of an artist who can pull off just about anything he attempts. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
KÁRYYN – Physics Universal Love Language (PULL)
For all of the flighty language of quantum physics, neuroscience and more that KÁRYYN cloaks her work with when discussing the curation of her projects, the proof is in the emotional gravity of the work. She doesn’t land far from an artist like Florence + the Machine but the affair has a greater air of Björk artfulness to it, allowing the melodrama to work on the heart the way it needs to. The greatest compliment however is how, in medias res, this music defies intelligence, resonating so strongly the emotional-imagistic terrain that to cloud up the experience with words feels like cutting off a poet to explain their line to them. As a peer to Rosalia’s inestimable Lux, PULL bypasses its own artifice toward a ruminative loving ache. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Mandy, Indiana – URGH
It’s called URGH for a reason. Intensely physical to an even greater degree than the band’s excellent 2023 debut i’ve seen a way, Mandy, Indiana’s sophomore album is meant to felt—emotionally perhaps, but moreso in the sense of leaving a bruise or requiring a bandage. It’s in part reflective of the very real medical trauma two members of the band underwent separately in the year before it was made, as well as the injustices that vocalist Valentine Caulfield rails against, but there’s an artfulness and a versatility to the group’s approach to cacophony that’s breathtaking on its own. And if you’re left wondering whether I mean their form of noise is beautiful or if it feels like a punch to the stomach: Yes. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Memorials – All Clouds Bring Not Rain
It’s only fitting that Memorials first came together as a project to write and record film scores, as the duo of Verity Susman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (Wire) offer a widescreen, cinematic take on psychedelic pop on their sophomore album All Clouds Bring Not Rain. It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer, euphoric sound of the album, wherein the duo filter Afrobeat through David Axelrod soundscapes on “Mediocre Demon” or add even louder drums to a krautrock hallucination on “Bell Minor.” But within these amplified wonders are subtle details to revisit and uncover, making All Clouds Bring Not Rain the rare album that both offers a headphone escape and demands to be played as loud as possible. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis – Deface the Currency
Every time I remember this is half of the members of Fugazi, I get angry again. The love these players show to Northern Virginia and D.C. musical traditions writ large is consistently beautiful and heartfelt; four albums in to a jazz career, you’d never guess these guys came from the world of hardcore, so complete is their adoption of jazz language and R&B/soul/funk forms. Lewis, formerly a guest player, is the icing on the cake that brings it all together, elevating the Messthetics from mere impresarios of a multitude of musical languages into an honest-to-god jazz combo. – Langdon Hickman
Read More: The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis make a profound impression
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Miss Grit – Under My Umbrella
Characterized as a more personal follow up to 2023’s Follow the Cyborg, Margaret Sohn invites us under their umbrella, and behind their persona, for a concise set of songs reflecting a complex interior world. Sohn’s production follows the lyrics, stripping away some of the more directly nostalgic trip-hop influences to develop a lean approach to atmospheric world-building that complement their vocals better than ever. The result is an urgent expansion and refinement of Miss Grit’s particular style. Beats drive forward harder and faster. Sohn’s beautifully haunting voice, in turns manipulated and breathy, floats higher but even more effortlessly. – Flora Arnold
Read more: Miss Grit finds a new energy
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Mitski – Nothing’s About to Happen to Me
Mitski reins in her sometimes thudding humor, fuses the musical sophistication of her previous album with the mutant pop genius of Be the Cowboy and delivers easily the best album of her career. The songs sear the heart, with the loose narrative of a woman losing herself preparing beautiful dramatic scenes of the storms of the inner heart in the midst of seemingly-mundane common life. Mitski wields the granularity of country and folk, speaking of soap, coins, and house cats, against the theater of Brecht and a touch of Wagner. Kurt Cobain, the quiet ghost over it all, feels perhaps finally satisfied, wowed by a genre-agnostic maestro wielding music like paints on a palette making portraits of the complex wonder of lay humanity. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
My New Band Believe – My New Band Believe
After previously showcasing his chops as a member of the short-lived but bright-burning prog trio black midi, Cameron Picton returned with a project that took the rhythmic complexity and instrumental intricacy of that celebrated band and applied it to an all-acoustic chamber folk sound with more Bert Jansch than Robert Fripp in its DNA. On the self-titled debut from My New Band Believe, Picton and a large cast of collaborators craft songs both gorgeously labyrinthine (“In the Blink of an Eye,” “Heart of Darkness”) and deeply moving (“Target Practice,” “Radiance”), showcasing a dazzling proficiency without casting aside vulnerability or matters of the heart. Every time I hear Picton sing “Don’t cry, you deserve this” on opener “Target Practice,” it’s hard not to be overcome with more emotion than you’ll know what to do with—just in time for the avalanche of riffs on “In the Blink of An Eye” come tumbling in to replace that tenderness with sheer exhilaration. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Neurosis – An Undying Love for a Burning World
It exists. I don’t think I’m alone in suggesting that would be enough, that Neurosis simply dusting off and re-emerging after nearly a decade in hibernation is worth celebrating. But the return of the underground metal legends coincided with the announcement that Sumac and former Isis frontman Aaron Turner is now a member of the band, and together, they’ve crafted one of Neurosis’ best albums in two decades. Wrapped in gauzy atmosphere and as heavy as they’ve ever sounded, An Undying Love for a Burning World is apocalyptic yet empathetic, overflowing with hope and humanity even when standing at the edge of the abyss. Neurosis albums tend to be draining listening experiences, but An Undying Love gives back all that it takes. – Jeff Terich
Read more: Neurosis made the album of their lives
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize – Nine Inch Noize
Moments create moments. Soundtracks create collaborations, collaborations create tours, tours create albums and festival appearances, which create… moments. In bringing Alex Ridha’s dancefloor production as Boys Noize into the fold over the last two years, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ended up giving the industrial rock of Nine Inch Nails something of a glow-up. Taking cues from Kraftwerk’s The Mix and Minimum-Maximum, Nine Inch Noize uses more synths and faster BPMs in live settings to recast NIN favorites and chestnuts alike. The results meet the, ahem, moment: delivering aggrieved themes and sonics, in a time of massive political grief, to older rivetheads and younger influencers who may share more grievances (and grooves) than they realize. – Adam Blyweiss
Listen/Buy: Spotify
Bill Orcutt & Mabe Fratti – Almost Waking
Orcutt at this point in his career, miles and miles away from punk and noise, has fallen deeply in love with the electric guitar, a sentiment that oozes from every subtle focused note he plays. He finds beautiful common ground with the equally sensitive Mabe Fratti, who dances playfully around the stable ground provided by Orcutt’s focused playing. The result is in turns elegiac and teasing, maintaining punk’s pithiness while rooting itself firmly in an improvisational folk body. Joy bleeds over these songs like light, breaking up the blues in beautiful washes of yellow and green. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – Happy Today
With a body of work spanning three decades, guitarist Jeff Parker has left an indelible impression on the sound of 21st century jazz. But even within his vast body of work, his live recordings with the ETA IVtet—featuring bassist Anna Butterss, saxophonist Josh Johnson and drummer Jay Bellerose—all feel like special entries, a window into the psychic chemistry of four musicians all vibrating on the same frequency and taking a journey on the same heady groove. Happy Today is no different, but released amid a dark year both personally and politically, it feels like a moment of release and celebration, not just a work of stellar musicianship (which it is, to be clear), but one of genuine joy. – Jeff Terich
Read more: A Beginner’s Guide to Jeff Parker
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Poison Ruïn – Hymns from the Hills
Poison Ruïn began with a good idea—lo-fi, old-school punk with a medieval visual aesthetic and instrumental dungeon synth intros and interludes—and since the release of their first two cassette EPs, the Philadelphia band have shown just how much potential could come from that kernel. Their sophomore album Hymn From the Hills is a personal best and a highlight for punk writ-large this year, building on their raw blend of d-beat and deathrock with infectious power pop melodies (“Lily of the Valley”), black metal blastbeats (“The Standoff”) and even a proper ballad, “Howls from the Citadel.” It’s a thunderous and unpredictable soundtrack for storming the castle, harnessing dark power for triumphant ends. – Jeff Terich
Read more: Poison Ruïn’s expanding realm
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Portrayal of Guilt – …Beginning of the End
…Beginning of the End is Portrayal of Guilt’s most imaginative and innovative work. Taking divine punishment of the human race as its overarching theme, the album shows the Austin trio developing their sound from the brutal blackened screamo of their first four albums and infusing it with unexpected influences. While the band still deliver punishing riffs on songs like “Human Terror” and “Heaven’s Gate,” they’re counterbalanced by an increased focus on groove, with the rhythm of “Ecstasy” in parts resembling trip-hop, in others Nine Inch Nails. A satisfying blend of melody and noise. – Greg Hyde
Read more: Ruined world—a conversation with Portrayal of Guilt
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Ratboys – Singin’ to an Empty Chair
The failed attempts to describe precisely the genre Ratboys work in underscore their magic well. At once too earthy to be arch and too poppy to be emo, they feel like a return to that magical window of early ’90s alternative music where the tides of so many waters suddenly collided. Chris Walla amplifies the sonic breakthrough the band showed on The Window (our 2023 Album of the Year) on Singin’ to An Empty Chair, expanding that country sincerity to a broad survey of alternative music, using the focused work on that previous record to set up this even more expansive one. Ratboys still feel like they’re on the edge of an explosive masterwork, a rising tension they’ve maintained for half a decade now and one that does not cease to thrill. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Rhododendron – Ascent Effort
Much like biology’s perpetual fascination with the crab, given enough time any music scene will inevitably reinvent King Crimson. In the case of Rhododendron, the generational evolutions on that raw, dark, technical prog band’s legacy such as the intensification of post-rock angst by Slint, the freneticism of Cap’n Jazz or the blistering energy provided by Don Caballero leave room for them to sidle up the more ecstatic and superlatively technical wings of avant-garde and progressive metal. These are stage plays of drama and color, offering more in their musical storytelling than most bands produce over years of lyrics. Ascent Effort finally focuses their compositional approach and matures the material without taming it, producing their first album that feels like an unseamed continuous whole, an Ingmar Bergman film scored by jazz-punks the way Pink Floyd used to do in London basements in the mid-’60s. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Jill Scott – To Whom This May Concern
The first track on Jill Scott’s To Whom This May Concern is called “Dope Shit,” and if that doesn’t tell you enough, the introductory verses from Maha Adachi Earth most certainly will: “I do dope shit/Pay attention.” That’s been Jill Scott’s mission statement since making her 2000 debut with neo-soul essential Who Is Jill Scott?!, one that remains her raison d’être on her first set of new music in more than a decade. She’s in the company of both legendary peers and fellow innovators (DJ Premier, Too $hort) and next-generation emcees (JID, Tierra Whack), but they’re never more than supporting players in a show that belongs to Scott throughout every stylistic shift and permutation, from psychedelic grooves (“Beautiful People”) to jazzy soul (“Offdaback”) to funk-poetry (“Ode to Nikki”). In short, Jill Scott is doing dope shit—pay attention. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Seefeel – Sol.Hz
Everything about Seefeel’s seventh LP feels like illusion, like camouflage. The portmanteau of its title includes a reference to light, and yet the aural reality is that you’re joining the band for a ride in the dark. Lean, dub-influenced beats and saturnine atmospheres give off the impression that Sol.Hz was played and/or recorded underwater, ebbing and flowing in volume and intensity as the moon-driven tides might. Songs and band members fade in and out, the head bangs along with gossamer rhythm tracks. Despite their long embrace of the instrumentation of traditional rock, the gently insistent Sol.Hz may be Seefeel’s most purely electronic-sounding album. – Adam Blyweiss
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Setting – Setting
Setting is best understood not so much through the fusion of styles they merge as the chemistry between the musicians as that fusion takes place. On the North Carolina trio’s first release for Thrill Jockey, Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly and Joe Westerlund merge electronic and acoustic sounds seamlessly, each of its five tracks unfolding slowly through evolving landscapes of hypnotic rhythms and heady drones over seven, eight, even 11 minutes, as is the case with its epic psychedelic vision quest of a closer, “Derring-do.” To hear the three of them bring a piece to life is a marvelous thing, carrying each lengthy track to an ever higher plane. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Station Model Violence – Station Model Violence
Station Model Violence’s personnel list reads like a who’s-who in Australian punk and post-punk in the 21st century, featuring members of Total Control, R.M.F.C. and Slug Guts—which in other words means they’re a kind of real-heads underground supergroup, but without the drawback of oversold expectations. Yet it’s still enough to tell you these are seasoned veterans with an uncanny talent for bending post-punk into fascinating and progressive shapes on their debut album, juxtaposing taut rhythms against Murmur jangle and Eno-like “warm jets” guitar leads and a hypnotic layer of saxophone. They have grit and grime enough to sprint through the under two-minute skronk of “Drip Away” but unburdened by the kind of boundaries that might have curtailed the eight glorious minutes of psychedelic motorik punk on “Heat.” Station Model Violence is that rarest of debuts, built on community and camaraderie but with its gaze well beyond familiar boundaries. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Sunn O))) – Sunn O)))
For nearly three decades, drone metal legends Sunn O))) have pushed their sound into experimental and visceral soundscapes. While more immediate than some of their previous efforts, the band’s 10th studio album is a powerful showcase of their talents, Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson offering an 80-minute collection of hypnotically captivating drone. From their creative use of field recordings to the duo’s ability to meld meditative (and heavy) sonic textures into mesmerizing compositions, the record is another superb entry in Sunn O)))’s discography. – Michael Pementel
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Sweet Pill – Still, There’s a Glow
There’s a burning spirit that envelops Still There’s a Glow, representing Sweet Pill in their recharged state. Their songs certainly reflect that: snappier hooks, expressive back-and-forth vocals, and a captivating balance between melodic snarl and vulnerable introspection. It results in a project that continues to burst despite the emotional toll the band carries, always pushing forward even if the layers of burnout and self-doubt have pulled them back. As we’re constantly surrounded by waves of despair, those flickering flames of hope are a presence that’s needed more than ever before. – Louis Pelingen
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Thundercat – Distracted
There’s something deeply satisfying about an artist so associated with chaos who’s able to channel that energy into work that feels perfectly composed. We know Thundercat’s bass has underpinned hip-hop, funk, punk, and other music with showstopping wizardry and enthusiastic weirdness. That shouldn’t suggest that his fifth studio LP Distracted is boring or rote. Rather, it’s the stone-cold smoothest he’s ever sounded. From his chirping arrangements and vocals in songs like the solo Star Wars vehicle “Anakin Learns His Fate” to throwing down with friends including Tame Impala (“No More Lies”) and A$AP Rocky (“Funny Friends”), Distracted shows Thundercat’s songcraft can hang with R&B and soul styling that stretches back decades. – Adam Blyweiss
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)
Ultha – A Light So Dim
Germany’s Ultha have been one of the leading lights of avant garde black metal in recent years, but with A Light So Dim, they take a detour into a gothic realm. Echoing the influence of artists such as Killing Joke and Cocteau Twins, the group blend post-punk with black metal with subtlety and sophistication, employing neither as a blunt object but as a graceful melding of two fluid and malleable sounds. There’s a riff-driven onslaught in “Her Still Singing Limbs” and a haunting ethereality (with some gorgeous vocals from Daevar’s Pardis Latifi) on “What’s Yours is Yours to Carry,” and an added attention to nuance through every shadowy corridor. Ultha provide a unique spin on gothic metal that opens up a whole new gauntlet of possibilities in their dungeon. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
underscores – U
Pop extraordinaire April Harper Grey aka underscores might’ve initially emerged from the audacious hyperpop scene, but as the genre pivots closer to earnest dance-pop, so has she. Previously combining rock and folk guitars with the scene’s sonic maximalism, U doubles down on her four-to-the-floor electro-pop inspirations—the result is her most danceable and adroitly written record. Reverential echoes of Madonna (“Hollywood Forever”), Imogen Heap (“The Peace”), and Britney (“Bodyfeeling”) are heard throughout, but the turbulent EDM grandeur of “Music” best manifests Grey’s singular, utopian vision of digital pop. Consolidating ecstatic highs and affecting reflections in the language truest to her, U is not only Grey’s finest entry in the underscores catalogue, but an exciting indicator of pop innovation. – Dom Lepore
Listen: Spotify
Visible Cloaks – Paradessence
Ambient music often is an act of creating something warm and soothing from synthetic means, but Portland duo Visible Cloaks take that idea a step further by reveling in the contradictions. Their first new album in nine years—following a number of collaborations, installations and a video game project—builds its own space in the gray area between synthetic and organic, with a number of guest musicians including Félicia Atkinson and Yoshio Ojima contributing to the richness and ambiguity of this gorgeously uncertain realm. Yet Paradessence remains both a beautiful and soothing listen both because of and in spite of this attention to uncanny detail, a transportive headphone experience that seems to only raise more questions as it goes along. – Jeff Terich
Read more: Visible Cloaks are building self-contained spaces
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Beck Zegans – Engraving of Armor
After 2023’s Squid Ink Sky, Beck Zegans dropped her pseudonym Goo and channeled a cathartic anger through the a sound with a greater degree of darkness and dissonance. On Engraving of Armor, she shapes these more abrasive textures into some of the best songs she’s released yet, shedding her lush chamber-folk sound in favor of grungier anthems, sinister dirges and a darkly atmospheric streak that reveals fascinating nuances amid the turbulence. Throughout Engraving of Armor, Zegans is the calm inside the storm, the chaos swirling all around her, the singer/songwriter only occasionally opting to become a part of it on rare moments like “Riddle,” where she yelps an exclamation that in its profanity and defiance just feels good: “Fuck everything—I’m free!” – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
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