Pullman: III

Sometimes certain releases just land at the perfect time, and returning after 25 years, Pullman’s III is one of them.

After their John Fahey-inspired 1998 debut Turnstyles & Junkpiles and the hushed metallic sound bath that was their 2001 follow-up, Viewfinder, the supergroup of Ken “Bundy K.” Brown (Bastro, Gastr Del Sol, Tortoise, Directions in Music), Curtis Harvey (Rex), Chris Brokaw (Codeine, The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries, Come), Doug McCombs (Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day, Brokeback) and percussionist / gun for hire, Tim Barnes (Silver Jews, Stereolab et al) unveil the first great post-rock album of 2026 with III.

So good, even this early in the year, and it’s hard to imagine any other instrumental guitar-based release bettering it. The seeds of Pullman’s return, sown earlier in the decade in 2021, where at the age of 54, Barnes revealed his diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s. Even as his condition progressed, it didn’t impinge on his work from behind the kit, as he and Brown began mapping out ideas that would later result in III – a combination of the woodsy meanderings of Turnstyles & Junkpiles and the seamless melodic inflections of Viewfinder.

Where January often consists of tumbleweed across the new releases landscape, Pullman quash the notion, continuing the momentum from Brokaw and McCombs’ excellent 2025s – the former releasing one of the year’s finest records with Ghost Ship, while the latter enjoyed his own moment in the spotlight as a part of Tortoise’s wonderful LP, Touch.

III continues that trajectory, as the veterans illuminate new paths. Elastic-like instrumentation built on beguiling arrangements and multi-track layering that is like getting kissed by the sun. Perhaps the only exception being the aptly titled opener, Bray, which is more like a post-rock clarion call where Pullman storm the gates before easing us into their peaceful world with Weightless.

A song you think you’ve heard before, Weightless is all pulsating rhythms and sweet guitar echoes that sit somewhere between Yo La Tengo’s more adventurous moments and the earliest flashes of Broken Social Scene’s Feel Good Lost. There’s something more motorik here, though, and underpinned by Brown and McCombs’ Tortoise influences, it’s a song that occupies a place that stretches for miles.

And somewhere along the way, Pullman make a pit stop with Thirteen. The juncture where folk and post-rock meet, this rambling communication captures a rustic romanticism that could be mistaken for a score to Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. The last two minutes, barely a prairie hum where the silence that is no longer afforded in most art-forms circa-2026 tells its own story.

It’s Pullman’s nod to the past, eventually leaking into III’s centrepiece, October. Exquisitely crafted, blissed-out post-rock that is like a glider weaving in and out of the clouds, exploring the same space as Weightless, it’s Pullman presenting white light freedom.

III is no retread of past glories or a band immersed in nostalgia. Pullman make sure of that on closing track, Kabul, channelling the kind of layered, countrified charm one would associate with modern day purveyors, Daniel Bachman and Old Saw. Barnes’ unique, rhythmic pulse, carrying his bandmates across gorgeous landscapes, which is where Pullman’s III remains entrenched. A sound world of deep catharsis and warm textures, and at this time of year, it feels like the only place you need to be.

III is out now via Western Vinyl. Purchase from Bandcamp.