Our summer edition of Albums Quarterly is here! Is it that summery, though? You can be the judge…
In our latest edition, it’s apparent that certain releases have been out into the wilderness for a while. Such as the volume of new releases each week, it’s fair to say that majority get overlooked. The shelf-life circa-2026, far less in an attention economy where something becomes old news within the blink of an eye.
We’re a bit old fashioned that way. We like to let things wash over, and with some albums released at a certain time of year, they don’t quite have the impact they do when the sun rests a little bit warmer on the bones.
What we’re trying to say is that there’s something to be said of the long game. So many publications are in a space race to publish reviews or interviews without giving things the proper time they deserve. That’s why waiting in the bull pen isn’t such a bad thing. People’s lives are busy and new releases are always missed (hell, we even miss them!). We hope that features like this are a chance for people to both connect and re-connect.
Going through our latest AQ, and there’s been some wonderful releases so far in 2026. If it continues the same way second half of the year, then it could be one of the strongest of the decade so far. Again, you can be the judge…
Chevreuil: Stadium
Computer Students ™
Remember double albums? There have been a few of them in this decade, and Chevreuil make their long-awaited returned by releasing one in Stadium.
The Nantes duo of Julien Fernandez and Tony Chauvin create math-rock conceived from a sound lab. It’s purified to the point where it’s translucent, and while people will call to mind genre touchstones, Don Caballero and Battles, there’s something more minimal here. It vibrates all the way to the nerve endings.
For noise-rock aficionados, Stadium is where one goes for something more hypnotic. In many ways, it’s noise-rock’s pathway to psychedelia, and as Chevreuil continue to build new paths, hopefully there are more to come in the future. Because make no mistake, this slaps!
Choncy: Trademark
Feel It Records
Anyone miss Parquet Courts? And for that matter, Total Control? Fear not, because Choncy have been plugging away during this decade in a quest to fill both voids.
The Cincinnati outfit return with Trademark, and it’s what it says on the tin. With mind-mangling bass lines and guitar stabs, this is the kind of post-punk hopscotch that everyone needs to get involved with.
Some great acts have come out of the Cincinnati so far in this decade, and on the back of Trademark, Choncy continue to lead the line on that front. A union of indie-rock and proto-punk the way it should be done, this band gets you to all the right places. Trademark, the band’s finest outing so far.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Circle Bros: Wade
Morctapes
There have been many Labradford worshipers over the years, but none have cut as close to the bone as Circle Bros do on Wade.
The brainchild of Gent-based lifer and Morctapes founder, Wim Lecluyse, Wade is like a re-imagination of the Prazision LP. Languid, scarred instrumentation that grows deeper in tone and texture the more you delve into Circle Bros’ world.
It’s brooding stuff, capturing the harshness of a European winter. And while many slowcore newcomers have tried to zero in on something similar, none have reached the depths that Lecluyse does on Wade. One of the sleeper records of the year, which all readers need in their lives.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Eugene Dubon: The World Is On
Self-released
American sing-speak master, Eugene Dubon, follows up his excellent 2022 release, Finish Line with The World Is On.
To be honest, it feels like Finish Line was only released last week, such as the breakneck speed this world moves at. And speaking of, Dubon gives a pretty good account of it throughout The World Is On. With skinny guitars and minimal bass chug, it doesn’t intrude on his sharp diatribes that are like a university lecture in the gutter.
It’s this street-level vibe that makes Dubon and, in turn, The World Is On such an accomplished listen. It’s bitter, it’s grimy, and it’s indicative of these times. The world is, indeed, on, and so is Eugene Dubon.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Wendy Eisenberg: Wendy Eisenberg
Joyful Noise Recordings
Experimental shape-shifter, Wendy Eisenberg, sheds more new skin on their self-titled solo LP. Here the New York-based artist strips it all back with a straight up folk record.
Well, straight up in a left-of-centre kind of way. There are still plenty of nice twists and turns here, but instead of hairpin guitars and long-form mind fuckery, Eisenberg injects some sweet pop sensibilities into their songs amid knotty guitars and arcing pedal steel. It’s like a perpetual serenade in a candle-lit roadhouse in the middle of the nowhere.
Eisenberg never makes the same record twice, and Wendy Eisenberg is yet another fresh chapter in a story that is turning out to be one of the most intriguing of this era.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Drew Gardner: Wave Field
VHF Records
Another to file in the criminally overlooked pile, Elkhorn’s Drew Gardner goes it alone for some hard-boiled krautrock-inspired jams on Wave Field.
It’s more kraut-rock for the campfire, though, which is a place Gardner has thrived in the past and it continues here. These compositions guide you to stress free places. It’s almost like a trip without the chemical refreshments, cleansing the mind in ways only the best music can.
It’s no mean feat, but Gardner manages to carve out his own voice here. These pieces, slowly unpicking your mind the more time spent with them, and it’s yet another release in our latest edition of AQ that has flown completely under the radar. Simply put, get Wave Field in your ears. Now!
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Luca Cimarusti Interview: “Your best teachers are going to be your collaborators”
Guttersnipe: Extinction Burst!
Night School
The world needs a band like Guttersnipe more than ever, and thankfully the Leeds duo mark their return with Extinction Burst! Something that sounds like a car crash.
Think Wolf Eyes navigating through the grimiest back alleys of punk. Guttersnipe, taking tension to places that, quite frankly, no other band has this year.
Albums like this only need to be written every five or 10 years. To capture such intensity on record is a rarity, and with so many noise acts falling short when transferring their live performance to record, Guttersnipe mirror it perfectly on Extinction Burst! In their less-is-more approach, it makes moments like this all the more special.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Willem Heylen: Short Stories
Ramble Records
Another gem unearthed from Belgium, this time it’s experimental guitarist, Willem Heylen, who returns with his latest LP, Short Stories.
Here, Heylen is the architect of 18 beautiful sketches of jazz-inflected blues with plenty of twangs and open space for good measure. It’s something that will deeply resonate with fans of early William Tyler.
But that’s not to say Heylen’s work is derivative. There’s a subtle mystery to these recordings that sees the artist explore far and wide. 18 tracks may feel like a lot, but this journey that is over in a flash. Almost to the point where you need to play it all again.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Memorials: All Clouds Bring Not Rain
Fire Records
All clouds really do not bring rain. It certainly rings true to in the case of Memorials who seem to just get better with age.
The Canterbury duo of Verity Susman and Matthew Sims shake off the comparisons to Stereolab with something where the saccharine of indie-pop pierces through to walls that go beyond krautrock.
It’s all swirls, plinks and sweet synths, as All Clouds Bring Not Rain really does see the duo add new threads to the psychedelic patchwork. With all the hot weather that has filled our lives over the last week, All Clouds Bring Not Rain has been an essential part of the day.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Menzies: Holding My Cold Hand, Even Though Yours Is Warm
Self-released
Like many anomalies in this world, Menzies is the latest. The Wellington collective, making tunes that should be reaching a far wider audience than they are; the evidence, their sparkling debut, Holding My Cold Hand, Even Though Yours Is Warm.
Like their kindred spirits in trans-Tasman cousins, Twine, Menzies illuminate indie-rock like few others do. It’s sing-speak, but not your intellectual mind-numbing exercise. These stories, ripped from the street level. (And the rugby pitch.)
It’s this locality that makes Holding My Cold Hand, Even Though Yours Is Warm the winning record it is. Menzies, clearly inspired by their immediate surroundings and these songs are all the better for it.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Kathryn Mohr: Carve
The Flenser
This decade, the Oakland-based songwriter has been tinkering away by mixing folk and hauntology with some overlap with the likes of Grouper Amanda Votta. On Carve, Kathryn Mohr flips and script, releasing her finest record to take.
This is fully-formed darkness, with new layers of dread. Think PJ Harvey taking the Dry sessions to the kind of extremities that would leave most in therapy and you may just land in the orbit that Mohr thrives in on Carve.
If there’s been a better song than Doorway written this year, then I’m yet to hear it. It’s wordplay that hangs on the knife’s edge, and it’s where Mohr inhabits frequently throughout these songs. Carve, yet another in a long line of that should be finding new ears in this world.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Pete Power: Funland
Kool Tone Records
Looking at the cover to Pete Power’s debut full-length release, Funland, and one could mistake it for a Half Man Half Biscuit LP. (I mean, maybe Power and Nigel Blackwell do have a natter of tea and scones?).
For now, though, the big matter is Funland. Continuing on from his self-titled EP (on of the best of 2025), Power gives it some more of the Sebadoh treatment and, closer to home here in Liverpool, if Funland was released during the glory days of the Kazimier, then it may have been the centrepiece of those times.
For the devoted few of 2026, though, Funland hits the way you’d imagine it to. A fine addition into the local lo-fi places of worship, and beyond.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Plankton Wat: The Vanishing World
Sun Cru
As Plankton Wat, Portland’s Dewey Mahood creates the kind of breezy psychedelia that is like a rainbow coalition for lifers. From metal heads to acid-damaged hippies, the Plankton Wat experience is for everyone, and with the summer finally here, The Vanishing World is most certainly the soundtrack to it.
There’s plenty of tight noodling on offer here, and whether you’re in an open green field or on a road-trip with your best pals, this lands perfectly every time.
It’s something that seeps slowly into the bones and all the to the marrow. Not that I’m a seasonal type of person when it comes to music, however a winter concern, this is not. Plankton Wat’s The Vanishing World for the now, so what are you waiting for?
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
The Reds, Pinks & Purples: Acknowledge Kindness
Fire Records
Glenn Donaldson is never far from releasing new music, and with Acknowledge Kindness, he it marks the first new new material under his new home, Fire Records.
On Acknowledge Kindness, the wily San Francisco dream-pop mainstay gets real wistful. Echoes of The Cure run as deep as they ever have throughout these songs, which take a little long to cotton on to.
But eventually they do, and with each passing moment, with Acknowledge Kindness, Donaldson’s latest chapter is one of his most heartfelt, revealing itself as the kind of comfort blanket we all need during these fucked up times.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
The Remotes: Ready For It
Hobbledehoy
In the late ’90s /early ’00s, The Remotes were one of a handful of bands that captured a time. There was a modesty to their songs, and alongside the likes of Gersey, Art of Fighting (Ollie Browne’s other band), The Blackeyed Susans and Lucious Jackson, it was a lovely little corner of the world for Australian indie music.
While it slowly faded away in the late ’00s, The Remotes are back with Ready For It. And honestly, it’s like they’ve never been away. These songs from the Melbourne trio, so refined they ring out of the speakers and light up the room as bright as they always have.
Again, it’s the modesty that wins the day on Ready For It. The Remotes, baking folk into indie-rock into that imbues a locality that sounds like no one but them. It’s their own little patch of the world, and everyone’s invited to share all of it.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
The Leaf Library Interview: “We didn’t hold back on things we wanted to hear”
Ana Roxanne: Poem 1
Kranky
Like a lump in the throat, certain albums just get you, and Ana Roxanne’s Poem 1 is one of them.
Following 2020’s Because of a Flower (as mentioned earlier, which only seems like yesterday), Poem 1 is worth every moment of your time. With Roxanne weaving magic from behind the piano, her compositions call to mind Mimi Parker’s finest moments in Low. Each song, running into the next like an elongated, folk-inspired dreamscape.
Which makes Poem 1 something that you keep going back to; these songs, purely magnetic. There’s a naked intimacy that Roxanne combines with emotional depth, making this her best release yet. And in 15 years’ time, it’ll probably still be seen as that.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Sooj: Crusher
Numero Group
Following Duster’s ability to do no wrong, this time members of the band join forces with fellow dream-rockers, Dirty Art Club as Sooj.
The title of their debut LP, Crusher, is the big juxtaposition of 2026; the only thing crushing about it, its emotional heft. It’s synth-laden slowcore for your daydreams. Floaty, atmospheric bliss as only Duster knows how, and alongside Dirty Art Club, the pair find wonderful new depths.
Close your eyes and let Sooj fill your thoughts with the beautiful noise, because for all of its sleepy-eyed soundscapes, Crusher connects all the dots in your mind.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Sloome: Blue Fire Doom
Cherub Dream Records
Has anybody ever wondered what My Bloody Valentine would have sounded like it Lou Barlow fronted them? Or, on the flipside, if Bilinda Butcher was in the Bakesale sessions? The answer might just be Sloome.
On their latest LP, Blue Fire Doom, the Mondesato, California band make some pretty swell indie-rock, drawing from the stockpile of the ’90s underground for something that comes on slow but strong.
The backend to Blue Fire Doom in particular sees Sloome finding reserves, led by the dreamy I’d Like to Tomorrow’, which an aesthetic you’d expect them to pursue on future releases. Not that we’re wishing our life away, of course. For now, Blue Fire Doom hits flush.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Edwin R Stevens: A Plague of Gimps
Wrong Speed Records
Most sensible folk would deem it criminal that someone of Edwin R Stevens’ storytelling ilk isn’t being lapped up the same way Bill Callahan has audiences eating from the palm of his hand.
The Welsh-born Glasgow-based artist has been kicking around for a while now, and with songs like these, he should be breathing life into every venue her enters. The masses loss is our gain, for A Plague of Gimps is a fever dream you don’t want to end.
These songs hit hard. The stories, borderless, evaporating time. And with a line like “No life lost, only won” (I Hung My Shadow), make no mistake, Stevens is the outlier’s outlier. With an album like A Plague of Gimps, how could he not be? This, undoubtedly his watershed moment.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
The Twilight Sad: It’s the Long Goodbye
Rock Action Records
Glasgow miserabilists, The Twilight Sad have been darkening doors for three decades now, and while their last couple of records have let some light in (synthesisers!), on It’s the Long Goodbye, they are back to their brooding best.
From the first note, The Twilight Sad teleport you into the darkest corners, and together the burden is slightly eased. As we get older, the morbid realities come into sharper focus, but instead of running away from them, on It’s the Long Goodbye, The Sads meet them head on.
While it has been diminishing returns for many ’00s acts still kicking around, The Twilight Sad are emphatically at the top of their game here. Sadcore with an acerbic edge, It’s the Long Goodbye rivals their best works.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
This House: Soft Rains Will Come
Pink Cotton Candy Records / Ramble Records / Red Wig
What started out as a communication between G.W. Sok and Ignacio Cordoba with 2024’s Is This A House has evolved; the pair, now joined by Søren Høj (drums) and P.J. Fossum (synths) for something more fully-formed in Soft Rains Will Come.
Don’t let the title fool you. This is post-punk that shatters the bones, as the former leader of The Ex rides in the maelstrom of tangled guitars, synths and hypnotic rhythms that his bandmates dispense.
It’s all the right kind of dissonance on Soft Rains Will Come, as This House revel in the quiet / loud dynamics that, in many ways, Sok was the original orchestrator of.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Score Interview: “I aim to capture that good feeling when I’m making music”
True Green: Hail Disaster
Spacecase Records
Minneapolis-based songwriter Dan Hornsby is a storyteller. Quite literally, given he is the birth-giver of the novel Via Negativa (and adapted to the film this year).
Hornsby likes writing tunes too, and following his 2024 LP, My Lost Decade, under the True Green moniker, he returns with Hail Disaster. Breezy, woodsy Americana with indie-rock thrown into the melting pot for kicks.
Some may hear some slacker echoes here, but there’s more conviction in the songwriting. Hornsby’s songs have more on the line, to the point where he needs to get these songs out. It’s do or die, and Hail Disaster is another string to his bow.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Webb Chapel: Vernon Manner
Strange Mono
Philly scuzzers, Webb Chapel return in a World Cup year following, you guessed it, their last LP, World Cup, with Vernon Manner.
This latest LP sees Webb Chapel in best-of mode. There’s a bit of everything here, from early shoegaze worship to some good old campfire scuzz that warms the bones. And stitching together these quiet / loud passages, it makes Vernon Manner the band’s most rounded effort yet.
Both brawn and tender, Vernon Manner finds Webb Chapel at their peak. Perhaps the shiniest jewel in the Strange Mono crown? Quite possible, and there’s no let-up in sight.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Previous AQs:
AQ #21
AQ #20
AQ #19
AQ #18
AQ #17
AQ #16
AQ #15
AQ #14
AQ #13
AQ #12
AQ #11
AQ #10
AQ #9
AQ #8
AQ #7
AQ #6
AQ #5
AQ #4
AQ #3
AQ #2
AQ #1
