Today marks 25 years since September 11, 2001. I went back and forth on how much to acknowledge that here. The Weekender is where I tell you what I’ve been listening to, watching, and reading, and I didn’t want to turn it into some grand 9/11 retrospective.

But there are a handful of records and one remarkable video I’ve returned to over the years that are connected to that day in very different ways. So we’ll spend some time with those alongside the usual recs. Here’s some of what’s in this issue:

• my favorite new release of the day

• one of my desert island records happened to drop on 9/11

• a 9/11 concept album that’s also one of the decade’s best

• perhaps the greatest piece of art ever tied to September 11

• my favorite NPR Tiny Desk set of the year so far

• an 83-minute video essay that may be the most thorough takedown of someone I’ve ever seen

• a thriller you should read before the movie arrives next month

• and September’s Wax Museum Book Club pick is a 1950s classic

The Weekender drops every Friday exclusively for paid subscribers. Your $5 a month or $50 a year gets you one of these every week, plus the full archive and $10 off in the Gift Shop. If you like finding records, movies, books, and rabbit holes you may not have stumbled across otherwise, that’s what I’m trying to deliver.

Thank you for supporting human curation. Now let’s get into it.

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Welcome to The Weekender, where I gather up the records, movies, shows, books, and assorted internet detours I think are worth carrying into the next couple of days. Consider your weekend sorted.

Included in this issue, a very fun one IMHO:

• the release of the week comes from one of my favorite artists of the decade

• a classic band finally gets the live album treatment

• a long-lost Detroit garage rock record has been rescued

• 33 ⅓ songs to soundtrack peak patio season

• four and a half hours of one of the best producers alive doing his thing

• the very welcome return of a band we may have taken for granted

• an 86-minute head trip enters The Wax Museum Film Canon

• and a fitting book to revisit after losing one of America’s greatest writers

The Weekender drops every Friday exclusively for paid subscribers. Your $5 a month or $50 a year gets you one of these every week, plus the full archive and $10 off in the Gift Shop. More importantly, it gives me an excuse to spend an unreasonable amount of time digging for things worth recommending to you.

Thanks for supporting human curation. Now let’s get into it.

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Guess who’s back, back again. PATIO GROOVES. Tell a friend.

For the uninitiated: every season, yours truly refreshes the PATIO GROOVES playlist with whatever’s been in heavy rotation around here.

And with fall creeping in, we’ve arrived at my favorite time of year. The first cool morning. Football on TV. That weird back-to-school feeling that apparently never goes away. This is peak patio season, when sitting outside with a drink turns into thinking about where the hell the last 20 years went.

I tried to bottle that feeling into this mix. 33⅓ songs spread across six decades, full of hazy memories and the general rude passage of time.

It starts, appropriately enough, with Dolly Parton singing, “Back through the years I go wanderin’ once again, back to the seasons of my youth” on “Coat of Many Colors.” That slides directly into Harlem Shakes singing, “I got a coat of many colors, sold it off online…” And we’re off and running.

As always, about half the playlist comes from this year, with new favorites from Wild Pink, Squirrel Flower, Alabama Shakes and plenty more. There are some names you might not know yet, including Small Pond, Dogwood Tales, and Idle County, that I’m excited for you to hear.

Enough from me, enjoy the tunes, and I’ll see you tomorrow for The Weekender.

PATIO GROOVES 🍂 Fall 2026

Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music

Tracklist:

1. Dolly Parton – Coat of Many Colors

2. Harlem Shakes – Sunlight

3. Being Dead – Nightvision

4. The New Pornographers – Sing Me Spanish Techno

5. Momma – Speeding 72

6. Fontaines D.C. – Favourite

7. Wishy – Lovesick

8. JW Francis – Radio Tower

9. Dogwood Tales – Ralph Sampson

10. Westside Cowboy – Well Done Kid, You Did It

11. Gregg Allman – Midnight Rider

12. The Hollies – The Air That I Breathe

13. Gaz Coombes – Don’t Say It’s Over

14. Polaris – Hey Sandy

15. Alabama Shakes – American Dream

16. Manchester Orchestra – I Can Barely Breathe - Reimagined

17. The War on Drugs – Under the Pressure

18. Squirrel Flower – Cleveland

19. Bon Iver, Danielle Haim – If Only I Could Wait

20. Small Pond – Silver Coin

21. Jam City, Aidan, Bawo, Ox Eye – My World

22. Bonobo, Joy Crookes – Always on Your Side

23. Widowspeak – If You Change

24. Ratboys – The Window

25. Wooden Shjips – These Shadows

26. Snag – Juneberry

27. DIIV – The Fountain

28. Wild Pink – Dead For A Sec

29. Tracey Nelson – Hercules

30. The Strokes – Lonely in the Future

31. Ringo Deathstarr – Kaleidoscope

32. Friko – Get Numb To It! - Demo Version

33. Idle County – Long Gone Saviors

For more PATIO GROOVES, stream the full collection: Spotify | Apple Music

Enjoy more music curation from The Wax Museum

The Wax Museum

13 Great Albums I Somehow Missed Until Now

I spend a lot of time chasing whatever just came out, but crate digging never takes a day off here at The Wax Museum. Some of the best records I’ve heard this year were released decades ago, and a few of them have already become all-timers in my personal rotation…

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2026 Best So Far: 50 Albums, 50 Sentences

The Wax Museum is billed as the record-mendation newsletter, and today we’re making good on that promise: fifty great albums of 2026, reviewed in one sentence each. For listeners with a growing backlog and limited free time…

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The Wax Museum

Cheers to SPRITZCORE 🍹

Welcome inside The Wax Museum, broadcasting from Orlando, where the heat index will hit 110° today. Mamma mia…

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2 months ago · 18 likes · 12 comments

It’s my birthday this weekend! To celebrate, the music gods have dropped an absurd amount of good stuff today.

The Weekender drops every Friday exclusively for paid subscribers, and since I’m turning 38, I’m running a little 38 Special: this weekend only, an annual subscription is $38 instead of the usual $50.

That gets you a new Weekender every Friday for less than 75 cents an issue, plus full access to the archive and $10 to spend in the Gift Shop. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, this is the weekend to do it.

And there’s a lot waiting for you in this one:

The Listening Room

• my favorite record from a stupidly stacked release day

• a long-awaited collaboration that somehow lives up to the hype

• the wildest remix project I’ve heard all year

• a forgotten 2000s record finally gets reissued. RIYL: Air, Röyksopp, Zero 7

• an ’80s dance funk record I somehow missed until this week

The Screening Room

• a video essay with some genuinely surreal timing

• my favorite Tim Curry performance enters The Wax Museum Film Canon

• a movie Hollywood tried very hard to make disappear

The Reading Room

• the life story behind one of jazz’s most fascinating characters and catalogs

• the book I’m finally pulling off my shelf for a Fall read-along

Thanks for supporting human curation. Your subscription gives me an excuse to spend an unreasonable amount of time digging through records, movies, books, interviews, essays, and assorted corners of the internet so you don’t have to.

Now let’s jump in.

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Welcome to The Weekender, where I gather up the records, movies, shows, books, and assorted internet detours I think are worth carrying into the next couple of days. Consider your weekend sorted.

Included in this week’s roundup:

• two brand-new albums that will be on repeat for the foreseeable future

• a record no one seems to be talking about, so I will

• one very fuzzy excuse to spend the weekend on the patio

• my deepest crate-digging pull in a while

• a great, mostly unseen live set from an artist about to level up

• the most fucked-up movie I’ve seen all year, yet also one of the funniest

• a long-running comedy still pulling off dumb jokes beautifully

• a very good reason to revisit one of my favorite writers

• and a longread that gets at why discovering music feels increasingly broken

The Weekender drops every Friday exclusively for paid subscribers. Your $5 a month or $50 a year gets you one of these every week, plus the full archive and $10 off in the Gift Shop. More importantly, it gives me an excuse to spend an unreasonable amount of time digging for things worth recommending to you.

Thanks for supporting human curation. Now let’s get into it.

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There is something deeply stupid about buying a record months before you can hear the whole thing, especially when the album will be streaming at midnight the day it comes out. And yet, every few months, I look at my preorder receipts and realize, oops, I did it again.

Some are easy calls from artists I trust. Others are based on one killer single, a promising left turn, or the FOMO belief that I’ll regret not grabbing the good pressing while I had the chance.

So here we go again: 13 records coming this fall that I’ve already committed to owning, based on varying amounts of evidence and common sense.

This newsletter may get clipped in your inbox, so click here to read the full issue in your browser.

August 21

Wild Pink - Still Coming Down

Get Vinyl: Morning Haze (Signed)

Every Friday in The Weekender, I reserve the first spot for my favorite new release of the day, and this week’s will almost certainly belong to Wild Pink’s sixth album, Still Coming Down. Nearly half the record is already out, and the singles are bangers, people, especially “Round of Applause At The End of the World,” with its wonderfully paranoid and weirdly yearning lyrics.

John Ross remains one of the best lyricists in indie music, and after Dulling the Horns pushed Wild Pink to another level, he’s surrounded himself with greatness here: basically the entire MJ Lenderman/Wednesday cinematic universe, with Xandy Chelmis on pedal steel, Landon George on fiddle, and Lenderman on guitar, plus Meg Duffy of Hand Habits. They recorded it all at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios with Wax Museum Hall of Famer Alex Farrar.

August 28

Interpol – This Mirror Weighs a Ton

Get Vinyl: Red | White | Spanish

I may have been too quick to put Interpol in the same basket as Bloc Party, two bands that came out swinging and then spent a long time making subpar records. Bloc Party’s singles from their upcoming Anatomy of a Brief Romance are so bad I’m starting to wonder if they should just cancel the album. Interpol, meanwhile, have gone the opposite direction: every single from This Mirror Weighs a Ton kills so hard that I bought the record blind. Here’s hoping they have another great one in them.

Velocity Girl – 1989–1992

Get Vinyl: Creamsicle

I’m a sucker for a good “before they were officially them” compilation, and 1989–1992 collects Velocity Girl’s pre-Sub Pop years, when they were figuring out their huge pop hooks, fuzzy guitars, and lovelorn melancholy. You get early singles, unreleased songs, covers, and forgotten favorite “Forgotten Favorite,” all newly remastered.

September 11

This Is Lorelei – The Singer in My Band

Get Vinyl: Dinked | Sky Marble | Bone White | Lime Green

Nate Amos has been on an absurd run lately, between This Is Lorelei, Water From Your Eyes, and having everyone from Hayley Williams to Jeff Tweedy covering his songs. The Singer in My Band is his Matador debut, and he made almost the entire thing himself, with a few family cameos, including his dad ripping a banjo solo on the title track. Very excited to hear this for the first time when the needle drops.

September 18

Perennial – Modernism

Get Vinyl: Pink

You pretty much know what you’re getting with Connecticut trio Perennial. All their songs kind of sound alike. This is a compliment, because their brand of garage rock, dance punk, organ stabs, feedback, and 90-second adrenaline rushes absolutely kicks ass. Modernism gives you 10 more of them in about 20 minutes. Love this band.

September 25

Wishy – Nature’s Pill

Get Vinyl: Painter’s Palette | Black Ice with White Cornetto | Devils Blush Pink

Indianapolis rockers Wishy arrived on the scene fully formed with their 2024 debut Triple Seven. Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites trade vocals and songwriting over shimmery, ’90s-inspired guitars, making catchy power pop without sanding off the edges. Nature’s Pill feels like the inevitable breakout record, and I think a lot more people are about to find out how good this band is.

October 9

Cameron Winter - Live at Carnegie Hall

Get Vinyl: Red | Black

Hot off the presses, announced yesterday: Geese frontman Cameron Winter’s December 2025 Carnegie Hall show is officially coming to vinyl, complete with an instantly iconic gatefold of Winter smooching with Andrew Carnegie.

At just 23, Winter became one of the youngest artists to ever headline the 135-year-old venue, playing alone at a piano with his back to the audience, performing cuts from his solo debut Heavy Metal, as well as debuting three unreleased songs.

Paul Thomas Anderson and Benny Safdie were there filming the whole thing, and we still have no idea if that footage will ever see daylight. Until then, I will happily settle for the record.

October 16

The Avalanches – No Bad Memories

Get Vinyl: RGB (Signed Print) | Yellow

First things first, the album art is bad. I know you shouldn’t judge by covers, but this gave me pause. But The Avalanches are a perfect three-for-three on albums, spanning three decades, so I can’t doubt them now. There are supposedly 31 tracks on this beast, and we can expect plenty of special guests: so far Jamie xx, Karen O, and Jessy Lanza. Stoked!

Fontaines D.C. - Dopamine Chamber

Get Vinyl: Pink | Blue | 45 RPM 2 LP | Black | Alt Cover

Speaking of bad album art, Fontaines D.C. continue their streak of awful covers, but it’s what’s inside that counts, and Romance was one of the best albums of the decade. The bio for Dopamine Chamber promises their “most radical shift yet,” moving away from the guitar language of their previous records, which sounds like we may be getting a synth-pop Fontaines album. Risky move, but first single “Marianne” rips, so why not?

The Mars Volta – Lucro Sucio; Unfinished Business

Get Vinyl: Red

I’ve been adamant here that the critics got Lucro Sucio wrong, and I’ve likened it to the album I wanted Tame Impala’s Deadbeat to sound like. So I love that The Mars Volta are going back to it, critics be damned.

Unfinished Business reworks the album through much heavier, more expansive live versions, with fans voting on everything from which performances made the cut to the cover art. These songs are built for louder, longer, and weirder in a live setting.

October 23

The Olivia Tremor Control – The Same Place

Get Vinyl: Ocean Blue

Last month marked the 30th anniversary of Dusk at Cubist Castle (Aquarium Drunkard published a great oral history for the occasion), which makes it even stranger that we’re just months away from a brand new Olivia Tremor Control album. The Same Place is their third and final double album, 27 tracks assembled from recordings made before the deaths of Bill Doss and W. Cullen Hart, and reportedly nearly 20 years in the making. After this long, there was never going to be much deliberation here. Instant buy.

Water Damage - Repair

Get Vinyl: Black

The tough-to-Google Water Damage remain one of the bands I most need to see live. Repair is four songs, each around 20 minutes and taking up an entire side of vinyl, built around the band’s “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation” approach. They also insist on at least two drummers and two bassists, with each song limited to a single reel of tape, which is why the tracks here are simply named “Reel 38,” “Reel 41,” “Reel 43,” and “Reel 45.” Only one is streaming ahead of the October 23 release, but buying the album unlocks the whole thing digitally right now. I will be ignoring that convenience and stubbornly waiting for the wax.

October 30

Nouvelle Vague - A Date with Depeche Mode

Get Vinyl: Black

Nouvelle Vague have spent more than 20 years turning post-punk and new wave classics into breezy bossa nova, and they now have Depeche Mode in their sights. A Date with Depeche Mode takes on 13 songs with a rotating cast of mostly female vocalists. Give “Enjoy the Silence” a listen. The song has been covered damn near 300 times, but Nouvelle Vague’s smoky lounge treatment still manages to make it feel like their own.

That’s my fall damage so far. If I missed something that belongs on the blind-buy list (right now I’m debating the upcoming M83), drop it in the comments. Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow with a new edition of The Weekender for paid subscribers.

See you tomorrow,
Jared

Enjoy More Curation from The Wax Museum

• Where to Start With the 10,000 Concert Archive Everyone’s Talking About

• 13 Great Albums I Somehow Missed Until Now

• Your New Favorite Summer Playlist Is Here 😎

The Wax Museum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, Wax Museum may earn money from qualifying purchases made by users that were directed to Amazon.com via one of our affiliate links at no cost to you.

Greetings from The Wax Museum, and welcome to The Weekender, where I gather up the records, movies, shows, books, and assorted internet detours I think are worth carrying into the next couple of days.

For this week’s roundup, I’ve got:

• the long-awaited return of one of our greatest songwriters

• three more favorites from the most stacked new release day of the summer

• one of the best farewell concert films I’ve ever seen

• The Wax Museum Film Canon: every five star movie, concert film, documentary, and miniseries I’ve recommended, in one private Letterboxd list

• a video essay on why movies don’t look good anymore

• an addicting 1944 novel about five days of very bad decisions

• a list of the 100 best sophomore albums, plus five glaring omissions

• and a fascinating look at the ridiculous amount of work required to put 100,000 people in the palm of your hand.

From now on, The Weekender is exclusively for paid subscribers. Your $5 a month or $50 a year gets you one of these delivered every Friday, plus the full back archive, and $10 off in the Gift Shop. More importantly, it gives me an excuse to spend an unreasonable amount of time digging around for things worth recommending for you.

Thanks for supporting human curation. Now let’s get lost.

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I spend a lot of time chasing whatever just came out, but crate digging never takes a day off here at The Wax Museum. Some of the best records I’ve heard this year were released decades ago, and a few of them have already become all-timers in my personal rotation.

This batch spans 1972 to 2023, from forgotten funk and Midwest emo to Japanese jazz, trip-hop, shoegaze, and plenty of stuff in between. Some were embarrassing blind spots, some came through reissues or compilations, and others were random discoveries that sent me straight down a rabbit hole.

So here are my 13 favorite new-to-me albums of 2026, in chronological order. Better late than never.

Aphrodite’s Child - 666 (1972)

Stream: Spotify
Get Vinyl: Red | Black

Genre: Batshit Progressive Rock

We’re not easing into this list, we’re getting weird right off the bat.

I must have been living under a (prog) rock to have missed 666, the sprawling double album from Greek band Aphrodite’s Child, composed by Vangelis as a loose adaptation of the Book of Revelation. The concept alone is insane: a circus stages the Apocalypse of St. John while the actual apocalypse is happening outside the tent, until the performance and reality start bleeding into each other.

Recorded in 1970 but held back until 1972 because Mercury looked at this thing and said absolutely not, 666 is a sonic riot of psychedelic rock, Greek folk influence, extended noise, narration, chants, and full-blown prog excess. By the time Vertigo released it, the band had already broken up.

I don’t know what was in the water at the end of the ’60s (it was acid), but it produced some wonderfully unwieldy records like this behemoth.

Father’s Children - Who’s Gonna Save The World (1973)

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Funk

Here’s one courtesy of Chicago gem-finding institution Numero Group, who rescued Who’s Gonna Save the World from obscurity in 2011 after the album sat unreleased since 1973. It’s filthy, sunny, spiritual funk loaded with fuzz guitar, bubbling percussion, shimmering keys, and stacked harmonies that make every chorus feel communal. It’s a gold mine for samplers, with Kanye lifting “Dirt and Grime” for The Life of Pablo’s “Facts.”

The Chameleons - Script of the Bridge (1983)

Stream: Spotify
Get Vinyl: Blue and Orange

Genre: Post-Punk

Another entry in the increasingly embarrassing “where has this been all my life?” file. Released 43 years ago this week, Script of the Bridge is an hour long debut with no dead air, all chiming guitars, cavernous reverb, and huge melodies that sound absurdly current. Play that opening riff from “Don’t Fall” for someone with no context and you could convince them it’s a new Turnstile single.

My favorite moment comes a few songs later, when “Monkeyland” suddenly bursts open into that enormous, euphoric chorus, which is why it ended up on this summer’s Patio Grooves playlist.

The Lazarus Plot - Something Good Has Got To Come Out Of All Of These Goodbyes (1998)

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Red | Black

Genre: Female-fronted Midwest Emo

I first got hip to Illinois four-piece The Lazarus Plot through Numero’s Sequoia box set, which landed on my 2025 Gift Guide for Physical Media Lovers, and I finally got around to digging through their complete recordings.

Something Good Has Got To Come Out Of All Of These Goodbyes collects their brief two-year run into one sweet, deeply melancholic blast of Midwest emo, with Laura Laurent’s vocals giving all the twinkling guitars and emotional wreckage a softness that guts you. “Charmed, I’m Sure” is my favorite of the bunch.

Mojave 3 - Out of Tune (1998)

Stream: Spotify
Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Alt-Country

I liked Mojave 3’s debut Ask Me Tomorrow, the album Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell, and Ian McCutcheon made in the ashes of Slowdive, but for whatever reason I stopped there. This year I finally went down the rabbit hole, and Out of Tune is the one I keep coming back to. By album two, the band had expanded into a five-piece and gone much deeper into pedal steel and country rock.

For a bunch of English musicians recording in Glasgow, Out of Tune sounds hilariously uninterested in England. As you can tell by the album art, this thing has its head somewhere on the California coast, but more Neil Young than Beach Boys, full of sun-faded folk-rock.

All five Mojave 3 albums were finally reissued on vinyl this summer, so now is a very good time to make the same overdue deep dive I did.

Marc Leclair - Musique pour 3 Femmes Enceintes (2005)

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Ambient

Marc Leclair, better known as Akufen, made Musique pour 3 Femmes Enceintes (Music for 3 Pregnant Women) while his wife and two close friends were all pregnant, structuring the album around stages of pregnancy with tracks like “64e Jour” (64th day), “150e Jour,” and “236e Jour.” The result is 70 minutes of beautifully textured ambient, glitch, microhouse, and field recordings that slowly shift from hazy ambience into something more physical as the album moves toward birth. It’s the most relaxing record on this list, and after spending two decades trapped on CD, it finally made its vinyl debut this summer.

Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006)

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Opaque Marigold

Genre: Indie Folk Rock

I have no good excuse for missing The Trials of Van Occupanther for nearly 20 years, especially when opener “Roscoe” sounds like a song genetically engineered for my taste. Midlake takes ’70s soft rock and woodsy folk, then piles on flutes, piano, and thick harmonies, anchored by Tim Smith’s warm, wispy vocals. Major Veckatimest vibes, which came a few years later. It’s cozy shit, and one of those records where I knew about three songs in that I’d be living with it for a long time.

Lamp - Yume (ゆめ) (2014)

Stream: Spotify
Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: City Pop

Lamp have some of the prettiest melodies I’ve heard in a damn while, and Yume feels like 50 straight minutes of them showing off how effortlessly they can make one. Yusuke Nagai and Kaori Sakakibara’s dual vocals glide over bossa nova, city pop, lounge jazz, and harmony-heavy pop without ever crowding out the real MVP here: these ridiculously lush arrangements, full of warm guitars, synths, flutes, and harps. Instant mood enhancer.

Uyama Hiroto - Freeform Jazz (2016)

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Clear (going in and out of stock)

Genre: Nu Jazz

Keeping the good vibes going, Uyama Hiroto’s Freeform Jazz absolutely oozes style, with beautiful, expressive jazz built around head-nodding beats and ridiculously good percussion. It’s atmospheric without ever fading into the background, and perfect music for a house party. Even better, the album turns 10 this year and is finally getting a vinyl reissue after the limited original pressing was fetching over $500 resale.

Amber Mark - 3.33am (2017)

Stream: Spotify
Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Alternative R&B

I came to Amber Mark through Franc Moody’s disco remix of “Lose My Cool,” which has gotten plenty of spins on my SPRITZCORE playlist, and eventually figured I should probably hear the record it came from. Glad I did.

3.33am is elevated R&B with gorgeous summer energy, full of airy production, rich harmonies, and Mark’s ridiculously smooth voice. Somebody desperately needs to repress this on vinyl, because the cheapest copies are currently around $300.

A Beacon School - Cola (2018)

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Dream Pop

A Beacon School is the project of New York multi-instrumentalist Patrick J. Smith, and his debut Cola has a way of putting you into a flow state. It runs on loops and steady pulses, especially on the six-minute “It’s Late,” which locks into a trance-y beat and rides it out. It’s easy on the ears, but there are enough grooves, electronic textures, and surprises buried throughout to keep it from ever feeling too sleepy. Now I’m curious to jump into 2023 follow-up yoyo and hear if/how much the sound evolved.

What Is Your Name? - The Now Now and Never (2022)

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Red and Blue Splatter

Genre: Post-Rock

Where my Parannoul heads at? Dive into this one with me. The Now Now and Never takes that same maximalist approach to shoegaze, stacking crescendos on top of crescendos until the whole thing feels ready to explode. The production is crunchy, lo-fi, and ridiculously dense, with blown-out guitars, glowing synths, chopped vocal samples, and post-rock builds fighting for space. It’s noisy as hell but still beautiful and nostalgic. Give the opening title track a spin and blast off.

a.s.o. - a.s.o. (2023)

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Trip-Hop

Inject this into my veins! The self-titled debut from Berlin duo Alia Seror-O’Neill and Lewie Day takes the early-’90s Portishead/Massive Attack template and gives it a beautifully modern polish: skeletal drums, dusky basslines, noir guitar, hazy synths, and Seror-O’Neill’s breathy vocals. A front-to-back run of downtempo bangers, and about as convincing a modern take on classic trip-hop as I’ve heard. When’s the follow-up?

Hey friends, thanks for digging with me. Lemme know the best old record you’ve discovered lately. I’m always hunting for the next rabbit hole.

And if this wasn’t enough, there’s plenty more record-mendations coming tomorrow. Paid subscribers get a new edition of The Weekender every Friday, my grab bag of albums, movies, shows, books, longreads, and assorted internet detours worth carrying into the weekend.

Basically, I spend all week digging around for good shit so you don’t have to.

Upgrade here and I’ll see you in your inbox tomorrow,
Jared

The Wax Museum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, Wax Museum may earn money from qualifying purchases made by users that were directed to Amazon.com via one of our affiliate links at no cost to you.

Greetings from The Wax Museum, and welcome to The Weekender, where I gather up the records, movies, shows, books, and assorted internet detours I think are worth carrying into the next couple of days.

For this week’s roundup, I’ve got:

• two debut albums out today that have immediately jumped near the top of my 2026 pile, including my current song of the year

• psychedelic Thai folk music, a bittersweet comeback record, and 25 years of Norwegian jazz weirdness

• a wonderfully curated music biopic collection

• a new TV adaptation with a “killer” soundtrack

• a KEXP set from one of my favorite young bands

• a baseball book that helped get me through the first half of a truly miserable Red Sox season before baseball decided to become fun again

• and one herculean attempt to rank all 73 Beatles solo albums

This is the first Weekender exclusively for paid subscribers, so thank you for being here. Your $5 a month or $50 a year gets you one of these every Friday, plus the full Wax Museum archive, and $10 off in the Gift Shop. More importantly, it gives me an excuse to spend an unreasonable amount of time digging around for things worth recommending to you.

Enough housekeeping. Let’s get into it.

Read more

Hey friends,

Tomorrow night at 8 PM ET, I’m going live for my fourth Whatnot show, and I have assembled 35 signed records for you to fight over.

This is easily the best lineup I’ve brought to a stream. There are signed copies of some of this year’s biggest releases from Charli xcx, Rostam, Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan, James Blake, and Ratboys, to name a few.

That’s alongside Built to Spill, Wilco, Bo Burnham, Cate Le Bon, Oklou, Spoon, The Beths, The Hotelier, Jessica Pratt, DIIV, and plenty more.

For the uninitiated, Whatnot is a live auction app where sellers run items in real time while everyone bids in the chat. Think Twitch meets eBay.

I’ve watched enough vinyl streams to notice the same problem: too many auctions creep back up to normal retail prices, usually for the same inventory you can find elsewhere.

That is not what I’m doing. Tomorrow night, every record starts at $1.

Some of these signed records regularly sell for hundreds of dollars. You’ll have a few seconds to bid, and the highest bidder when the clock runs out gets the record. I’ll pack everything up and ship this weekend.

You can browse the signed records and pre-bid right now here.

You can also enter a max bid ahead of time if you can’t make the show. Whatnot will automatically bid on your behalf, up to the amount you choose, while you go live your beautiful offline life.

Signed Vinyl in the Show

Ariana Grande
The Beths
Bleachers
Bo Burnham
Built to Spill
Cate Le Bon
Charli XCX
Descendents
DIIV
Everything But The Girl
The Format
Future
Gouge Away
The Hotelier
Hotline TNT
Hurray for the Riff Raff
Iron and Wine
James Blake
Jessica Pratt
Kacey Musgraves
Local Natives
The Midnight
Militarie Gun
Momma
Noah Kahan
Not for Radio
Oklou
Olivia Rodrigo
Ratboys
Rostam
Shakey Graves
Spoon
Wilco

And here’s the best part: new Whatnot users can get $25 to spend with this link.

The credit works anywhere on the app, or you can bring it to the show tomorrow night and walk away with a record on me.

Even if you don’t plan on bidding, come hang out. I’ll be spinning good music, giving away free vinyl throughout the night, and attempting to keep up with the chat while dozens of records leave my house.

See you Friday at 8 PM ET,
Jared

P.S. A quick programming note: Tomorrow also brings the first weekly edition of The Weekender for paid subscribers. These Friday issues are something extra for the readers supporting The Wax Museum, while the usual free exhibits will continue two or three times each month. For more on the new schedule, plus 15 record-mendations, catch up on last week’s supersized Weekender here.

The Weekender has been asleep since March, but I am pleased to report that it has been poked with a stick and is alive again.

Even better, it is going weekly.

After 160 issues of The Wax Museum, this remains my favorite exhibit to put together: a Friday grab bag of records, movies, concerts, shows, books, and assorted rabbit holes worth carrying into the weekend. Beginning next Friday, August 7, a new Weekender will arrive every week for paid subscribers.

I’ve been fortunate to see an uptick of readers sign up for a paid sub lately, and I wanted to give those supporters something substantial and reliable in return. At $5 a month or $50 a year, patrons will now get 52 Weekenders a year, full access to the archives, and a $10 Gift Shop coupon. That’s less than a buck per issue.

The regular Wax Museum exhibits are not going anywhere. I’m still publishing two or three free longreads a month, and I don’t take your attention for granted. The fact that you continue to show up and read any of this means the world to me.

This week’s return is open to everyone, and I’ve loaded it up with a full stack of things to listen to, watch, and read. Consider it the Boar’s Head sample at the deli counter before you order the full pound.

Next Friday, the velvet rope goes up. Today, admission is free. Let’s dig in.

This Weekender may get clipped in your inbox, so click here to read the full issue in your browser.

The Listening Room

Records, songs, and other sounds for your weekend.

The Durutti Column – Renascent (2026)

Stream: Bandcamp

Get Vinyl: Deluxe Coke Bottle Green | Yellow

You could say The Weekender is feeling renascent, which is a fancy way of saying active again and, conveniently, the title of The Durutti Column’s 28th (!!) album, their first in 16 years (!!!!). After multiple strokes permanently altered Vini Reilly’s virtuoso guitar playing, I never expected another record, much less one this luminous, achingly beautiful, and quietly strange, a comeback worthy of sitting beside The Return of the Durutti Column and Vini Reilly.

Curió Curió - Curió Curió (2026)

Get Vinyl: Neon Orange | Black

Stream: Bandcamp

The Strokes this, Charli xcx that, my favorite release from last Friday came courtesy of Mr Bongo, a label that apparently keeps a warehouse full of diamonds in the rough. Rio-born singer and actor Luiza Monteiro and German producer Dustin Braun stir MPB, samba, Brazilian jazz-funk, and icy European disco into one high-drama cosmic groove that had me in its pocket instantly.

snag - All The Cages Holding Us Will One Day Turn To Dust (2026)

Get Vinyl: Juneberry

Stream: Bandcamp

Milwaukee screamo trio Snag’s third LP, and first for Deathwish, is all panic-stricken screams and pummeling stops and starts until “Juneberry” appears smack in the middle with pedal steel, horns, and layered harmonies, like someone opened the door to a haunted country bar. It could have stuck out like a sore thumb, but instead it’s the album’s emotional core and one of my favorite songs of the year.

fabric presents Mount Kimbie (2026)

Get Vinyl: Black

Stream: Bandcamp

Fun one out today: London institution fabric handed Mount Kimbie the keys to its quarterly mix series, and they came back with 26 tracks built for the club. It is the duo’s most dancefloor-minded release in years, including new originals “Monroe” and “Jomox.” If this is anything like their 2018 DJ-Kicks mix, we’re in for a treat.

Aphex Twin - Drukqs (2001)

Get Vinyl: Deluxe Box Set | 4 LP Standard

Stream: Bandcamp

It was announced this week that Aphex Twin’s sprawling 2001 double album Drukqs is finally coming back to vinyl on October 30, rescuing physical media sickos from paying the $400 it has been fetching secondhand. Once greeted with mixed reviews, it now feels like one of those records the future had to catch up with, and its return means the entire Aphex Twin catalog is back in print.

Roy Ayers & Ubiquity - He’s Coming (1972)

Get Vinyl: Verve Vault Series

Stream: Spotify

Inspired in part by Jesus Christ Superstar, Roy Ayers’ 1972 jazz-funk sermon has everything you could want: deep basslines, nasty breaks, spoken-word passages, soul harmonies, and “We Live in Brooklyn, Baby,” one of the coolest songs ever committed to tape. It is now back on vinyl through the Verve Vault series, cut all-analog from the original master tapes and pressed on 180-gram vinyl.

The Screening Room

Movies, shows, concerts, documentaries, and assorted moving images.

Five Videos to Remember Glen Hansard

Some deaths hit harder than others. This one did for me. Glen Hansard died this week at 56, and if you ever watched him perform, even through a laptop screen, you know he never seemed capable of giving a song less than everything he had.

I came to know Hansard through The Swell Season, the folk duo he formed with Markéta Irglová, and through Once, the 2007 film they starred in together. Their duet “Falling Slowly” won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Hansard had a way of taking a song from tender to full-body exorcism. This NPR performance of “When Your Mind’s Made Up” is the best example I know. It spends several minutes tightening the screws, then blows the roof off.

Then there is his performance of “Fairytale of New York” with Lisa O’Neill and members of The Pogues at Shane MacGowan’s funeral. Shane’s widow and sister eventually leave the pews to dance, and the church turns grief into a wake. It does not get much better than this as a send-off.

Hansard began busking on the streets of Dublin at the age of 13, and even after the Oscar and sold-out concert halls, he never lost the instinct to play for whoever happened to be standing nearby. Here, a family on vacation in Sicily casually stumbles upon an Oscar winner singing in the street.

He also possessed the Irish gift of turning a quick anecdote into a one-man show. This story about meeting Van Morrison is hilarious.

We were lucky to live at the same time as Glen Hansard. I’m grateful so many of these performances were captured, each one proof of how completely he gave himself to music.

Lollapalooza 2026 Livestream

Stream: Hulu and Disney+

Lollapalooza takes over Chicago’s Grant Park this weekend, and those of us without wristbands can still watch from home. Tonight’s run of The Smashing Pumpkins into Charli xcx into Not for Radio is what I’m looking forward to most, and I’ll also be seated for The xx closing out the weekend, hopefully with a new song or two. Go here for the full livestream schedule.

Bon Dylan Full Set at Eaux Claires (Bon Iver Covers Bob Dylan)

Stream: YouTube

After an eight-year hiatus, Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner brought Eaux Claires back to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and the clear highlight was “Bon Dylan,” a 90-minute Bon Iver-and-friends set tearing through Dylan songs from across the decades. The closing run of “All Along the Watchtower” into “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” especially rocks. An official release would be nice, but until then, this full recording will have to do.

For more live Bon Iver, I included VOLUMES: ONE among my 50 favorite records of 2026 so far.

The Wax Museum

2026 Best So Far: 50 Albums, 50 Sentences

The Wax Museum is billed as the record-mendation newsletter, and today we’re making good on that promise: fifty great albums of 2026, reviewed in one sentence each. For listeners with a growing backlog and limited free time…

Read more

2 months ago · 87 likes · 23 comments · Jared Smith

The Yussef Dayes Experience - Live From Cape Town

Stream: YouTube

Yussef Dayes is one of those drummers who can make jazz feel loose, precise, and spiritual. His band features Elijah Fox on keys and Rocco Palladino on bass, son of the great Pino Palladino, and for this Cape Town performance they are joined by the Thanda Choir and Lizwi Choir.

Dayes also understands how to present live music better than almost anyone: beautiful locations, pristine sound, cinematic footage, all dropped onto YouTube for free. After the recent Fuji, Japan set, Live From Cape Town is another one to put on the biggest screen in your house and turn up louder than necessary.

The Reading Room

Books, longreads, interviews, lists, and internet rabbit holes.

Here’s a stack of all the books I’ve read since the last Weekender four months ago. Some I loved, some I didn’t. These are the four I’d press into your hands.

Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen (2026)

Back in The Weekender #13, I called Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War “without exaggeration, the scariest book I’ve ever read.” She may have topped it with her latest scenario built around a genetically engineered, airborne strain of bubonic plague, reconstructed through interviews with epidemiologists, intelligence officials, military leaders, scientists, doctors, and policymakers. It moves like a thriller and ends like a nightmare, leaving me in the same fear-filled silence I now associate with finishing an Annie Jacobsen book.

Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams (1988)

For anyone who wants a summer beach read with a side of existential dread, Joy Williams’ 1988 Florida Keys novel follows Liberty and Willie, young married drifters who break into empty luxury homes, drink the owners’ champagne, sleep in their beds, and move through paradise like ghosts. It is bleak, very funny (the last line of Chapter 1 had me cackling), and full of sentences that make the whole world feel slightly off-center. This is one I’ll be returning to for the rest of my life.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (2024)

And speaking of writers trying to recover a sense of wonder from a damaged world, meet Cyrus Shams, a newly sober Iranian American poet obsessed with finding a death meaningful enough to justify a life. His mother was one of 290 people killed when the good ol’ U.S. Navy shot down Iran Air Flight 655, and that inherited grief feeds a meditation on mortality, identity, and our desperate need to matter. Akbar is a poet first, and you feel it on every page: sentences dense enough to reread for pleasure, carrying the same aimless wartime ache you’d find in Hemingway or Fitzgerald into a much different kind of American life.

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover (1968)

Lastly, a perfect book for the dog days of summer. Henry Waugh is a bored accountant who retreats into an absurdly detailed baseball league of his own creation, complete with dice, scorecards, statistics, player biographies, and 56 seasons of accumulated lore. This is less a baseball novel than a black comedy about solitude, male obsession, and what happens when a harmless private hobby becomes the only world that still makes sense. Office Space meets Moneyball meets Synecdoche, New York, as the players break records, live, die, and carry on while their creator slowly loses his marbles.

A true lost classic, recently rescued by New York Review Books, who will also reissue Coover’s debut The Origin of the Brunists in a future season (take my money!). There are currently a bunch of NYRB titles discounted on Amazon, and I already have more than 10 sitting in my cart, so please send recommendations and/or financial intervention.

Hey, thanks for stopping by The Wax Museum. If you enjoyed your stay, pass this along to a friend whose weekend could use an upgrade.

I’ll be back next week with a massive signed-vinyl livestream and the first Weekender behind the velvet rope.

Until then,
Jared

The Wax Museum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, Wax Museum may earn money from qualifying purchases made by users that were directed to Amazon.com via one of our affiliate links at no cost to you.

Five months ago, I put together a calendar of upcoming vinyl represses and promptly underestimated how many labels would decide now is the perfect time to celebrate every conceivable anniversary.

So we’re due for an update.

Below you’ll find a chronological look at the most notable represses, remasters, deluxe editions, and box sets announced for the remainder of the year. Some are long overdue, while others are shameless attempts at your disposable income.

Bookmark this page and check back often, as I’ll continue updating it whenever new titles are announced.

This email may be too long for your inbox - click to read in browser mode.

July 24

• David Bowie Catalog: Blackstar | The Next Day | Heathen | Reality | A Reality Tour

  

• Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (New Remaster)

  • Red | Black

• Echo & The Bunnymen - Songs to Learn & Sing (Yellow and Black Marble Vinyl)

• Goo Goo Dolls - Let Love In (20th Anniversary Red Eye Vinyl)

• Keane - Under the Iron Sea (20th Anniversary Zoetrope)

• Mac Miller - Blue Slide Park (Green Double Vinyl with Blue Slide Stripe)

  

• Mojave 3 Catalog: Ask Me Tomorrow | Excuses for Travellers | Out of Tune | Puzzles Like You | Spoon and Rafter

• Peter Tosh - Legalize It (50th Anniversary Gold Vinyl)

• Sleater-Kinney - Call The Doctor (White Pearlescent)

• Snow Patrol - Eyes Open (20th Anniversary Gold Double Vinyl)

• Sum 41 - All Killer, No Filler (25th Anniversary Iron Gray Vinyl)

July 31

• Alien Ant Farm - ANThology (25th Anniversary 2 LP)

  • Smoked Lava | Black

• B.B. King & Eric Clapton - Riding With The King (Remastered in honor of B.B.’s 100th Birthday, Gold 2 LP)

  

• Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits (Deluxe) (UO Exclusive Purple Splatter 2 LP)

• Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation 2 LP

• Ween - 12 Golden Country Greats (Deluxe) (30th Anniversary 3 LP)

  • Powder Blue | Black

August 7

• Bill Withers - Live at Carnegie Hall (Magenta 2 LP)

• Cheech & Chong - Up in Smoke (Green Vinyl)

• The Durutti Column - Vini Reilly (35th Anniversary Remaster)

• The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced (Opaque Yellow Vinyl)

  

• LSD and the Search For God - LSD and the Search for God (Bone White Vinyl)

• Superheaven - Ours is Chrome (Metallic Silver Vinyl)

• Vince Guaraldi - It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Zoetrope Vinyl)

• Warren Zevon - Life’ll Kill Ya (Sea Blue Vinyl)

August 14

• Big L - Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous

• Blue Oyster Cult - Agents of Fortune (50th Anniversary Gold Vinyl)

• Bôa - Twilight (25th Anniversary Zoetrope Vinyl)

• Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Catalog: Blow in the Wind (Apple Red) | Are a Drag (Green) | Love Their Country (Mustard Yellow)

• Mos Def - The Ecstatic 2 LP

  • Graphite | Red

    

• Nirvana - Incesticide

• Run D.M.C. - Raising Hell

August 21

• The 1975 - Being Funny In A Foreign Language (Clear Vinyl)

• The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers (White Vinyl)

• Geese - Projector (Orange Vinyl)

• Geese - 3D Country

  • Translucent Pink | Red

• Hayley Williams - Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party (Glum Plum Vinyl)

  

• Macy Gray - On How Life Is (Translucent Yellow Vinyl)

• Nas - It Was Written 2 LP

• Queen - Live at Wembley ‘86 (3 LP)

• PUP - The Dream Is Over (10th Anniversary Clear, Red, Orange Swirl Vinyl)

• The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks (Multicolor 4 LP)

• Roosevelt - Roosevelt (10th Anniversary White Vinyl)

• Staind - Break The Cycle (25th Anniversary Black Ice/Black Wave Vinyl)

• Vince Guaraldi - It’s a Mystery, Charlie Brown (Indie Exclusive Magnifying Glass Clear Vinyl - “Solve a mystery to find a hidden track, just like Snoopy!”)

  

August 28

• Air - Moon Safari (Orange Vinyl)

• Beach House - Teen Dream (Pink and Blue Double Vinyl, limited to /1000)

• DJ Shadow - The Mountain Will Fall (Neptune Mist Vinyl, limited to /300)

• Joan Jett - Bad Reputation (45th Anniversary Sky Blue Vinyl)

• Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges - Club Da Esquina

• Prostitute - Attempted Martyr (Gold Vinyl)

• Rick James - Come Get It! (Blue Vinyl)

• Sophie - Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides (Pearl Colored Vinyl)

• Various Artists - JAWS Soundtrack (50th Anniversary Human Blood Red Vinyl)

• Wes Craven - Scream Score (30th Anniversary Woodsboro Bloodbath Red Vinyl)

September 4

• The All-American Rejects - Move Along (Deluxe White 2 LP)

• Angelo Badalamenti - Blue Velvet Soundtrack (40th Anniversary Vinyl)

  • Half Silver / Half Royal Blue | Silver | Black

  

• Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five (30th Anniversary 2 LP)

• Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club (30th Anniversary Pearl 2 LP)

• Mort Garson - Mother Earth’s Plantasia (50th Anniversary Eco-Green Vinyl)

• No Use For a Name - Making Friends (Red Inside Yellow Vinyl)

• Woody Shaw - Song of Songs (Jazz Dispensary Top Shelf Series Vinyl)

September 11

• blink-182 - Buddha (Picture Disc)

• Funkadelic - Maggot Brain (New Remaster)

  • Bubble Yum | Solar Flare | Tequila Sunrise | 45 RPM

  

September 18

• Bob Seger - Face The Promise (20th Anniversary Tiger’s Eye 2 LP)

• Earth, Wind, & Fire - Greatest Hits (Aquamarine 2 LP)

  

• The Lemonheads - Car Button Cloth (30th Anniversary White Vinyl)

• New Found Glory - Sticks and Stones

• The Smashing Pumpkins Catalog: Pisces Iscariot 2 LP and Adore 2 LP

• Thursday - No Devolución

  • Metallic Heart | Black

October 2

• The Band - Jubilation (20th Anniversary Vinyl)

  • Clear Sea | Clear Burgundy

• The Beatles - Rubber Soul (Orange Vinyl)

• Clairo - Sling (5th Anniversary Vinyl)

  • Bubblegum Pink | Jungle Green | Buttermilk Yellow

• The Marias - Submarine (2nd Anniversary Half Clear / Half Sea Blue Vinyl)

  

• Uyama Hiroto - Freeform Jazz (10th Anniversary Clear 2 LP)

October 16

• Rise Against - Revolutions Per Minute

  • Amethyst | Purple

October 23

• De La Soul - Stakes is High (30th Anniversary 4 LP Box Set)

  • Spoke Effect | Silver Vinyl

  

October 30

• Michael Jackson - Thriller

  • Black Liquid Filled Vinyl | Golden Pearl | Red and Black Marble

• Mitski - Puberty 2 (10th Anniversary Forest Shadow Colored Vinyl)

November 6

• Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend (2 LP Expanded Edition)

December 4

• Joni Mitchell - Blue (Blue Vinyl)

  

• Otis Redding - Otis Blue / Otis Redding Sings Soul (Blue Vinyl)

For all these records, you’re gonna need a vinyl tote bag. Get $10 off that or anything else in the Gift Shop when you upgrade your subscription for just $5. Additionally, supporters get access to all past paywalled exhibits.

Thanks for visiting. Next Friday is the trumphiant return of The Weekender!

See you then,
Jared

The Wax Museum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, Wax Museum may earn money from qualifying purchases made by users that were directed to Amazon.com via one of our affiliate links at no cost to you.

Welcome inside The Wax Museum, broadcasting from Orlando, where the heat index will hit 110° today. Mamma mia!

Weather like this calls for bubbly drinks and bubbly music, so I went looking for songs that felt sun-drunk.

Before long, I had invented a new genre, and I will share it with you now, since this is the kind of thing you can do when you have your own newsletter and no editor around to stop you.

I’m calling it SPRITZCORE, the soundtrack to your Aperitivo Hour(s). It’s a little yacht, a little disco, a little French pop, a little Balearic, a little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side… sorry.

Bookending the playlist is Nirosta Steel, who’s the talk of music discourse right now, and for good reason. Steven Hall, under the Nirosta Steel moniker, just dropped his four-decades-in-the-making MY SKYSCRAPER, an 83-minute uneven collection of works-forever-in-progress.

The MY SKYSCRAPER cuts on constant repeat for me are the Balearic disco of “BOSS TRIX (BENNY’S SONG)” and the space lounge-y “GO FOR THE NIGHT,” both of which are pure bottled SPRITZCORE, baby!

Enjoy those two and the rest of the 33⅓-song SPRITZCORE playlist, aka The Spritz List. SPRITZCORE is less of a genre than a feeling, so go add your own suggestions in the comments. This is a mix I’ll continually update, so give it a follow and spread the good word of SPRITZCORE.

The SPRITZCORE Playlist

Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music

Tracklist:

1. Nirosta Steel - BOSS TRIX (BENNY’S SONG)

2. Chromatics - Cherry

3. Washed Out - Amor Fati

4. MUNYA - Un Deux Trois

5. Tennis - I’m Callin’

6. Paul Cherry - Our Night

7. Air - La femme d’argent

8. Todd Terje - Preben Goes to Acapulco

9. Discovery - Orange Shirt

10. Yuksek - Always On the Run (Peter & The Magician Remix)

11. Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers (The Magician Remix)

12. Panama - Always (Classixx Remix)

13. Disclosure and Al Green - Feel Like I Do

14. Daft Punk feat. Todd Edwards - Fragments of Time

15. Tanlines - Real Life

16. Little Dragon - The Pop Life

17. 14KT - Gee Whiz

18. Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band - PIMP

19. Evans Pyramid - Never Gonna Leave You

20. Marvin Gaye - I Want You

21. Todd Rundgren - Hello It’s Me

22. Ambrosia - How Much I Feel

23. Joe Jackson - Steppin’ Out

24. Ra Ra Riot - Valerie

25. Crumb - Sleep Talk

26. Jamie xx - Obvs

27. Mr Twin Sister - Lady Daydream

28. The Durutti Column - Future Perfect

29. Télépopmusik - Breathe

30. Everything But The Girl - Nothing Left To Lose (Four Tet Remix)

31. The Juan Maclean - Running Back To You

32. Delorean - Stay Close

33. Zero 7 - In The Waiting Line

34. Nirosta Steel - GO FOR THE NIGHT

This playlist is the latest entry in our ongoing, actually human-curated mixtape series. No algorithms or AI slop, just handpicked tracks from someone with too many records and not enough shelf space.

For more summer jams, check out the seasonally refreshed PATIO GROOVES (Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music)

And if you like your playlists with a side of paranoia, check out WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON (Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music) with an accompanying longread of the CIA’s covert activity in 1960’s Laurel Canyon.

Lastly, if you missed it, I did a midyear album review, highlighting 50 killer records in 50 sentences. It’s the fastest way to catch up on the latest and greatest.

The Wax Museum

2026 Best So Far: 50 Albums, 50 Sentences

The Wax Museum is billed as the record-mendation newsletter, and today we’re making good on that promise: fifty great albums of 2026, reviewed in one sentence each. For listeners with a growing backlog and limited free time…

Read more

2 months ago · 68 likes · 22 comments · Jared Smith

Before I sign off, I’m shipping up to Boston and Portland, Maine next week. The itinerary currently consists of lobster rolls, Narragansetts, and wandering into every record store I can find. If you’ve got recommendations for records, food, breweries, bookstores, or hidden gems, I’m all ears.

Until next time,
Jared

The Wax Museum is billed as the record-mendation newsletter, and today we’re making good on that promise: fifty great albums of 2026, reviewed in one sentence each. For listeners with a growing backlog and limited free time.

To make it easier to browse, I sorted everything into ten categories, from essentials and debuts to short records, jazz, country, live albums, rap, dance records, and crate-digging detours.

This isn’t a ranked list (though the first five are my current favs). For that, I keep the Album of the Year Leaderboard updated throughout the year, where new releases rise, fall, and occasionally get bullied by whatever I’m currently obsessed with. You’ll find that at the bottom of this issue. Happy digging!

This big boi is likely too long for your inbox, so click here for browser mode.

The Cream of the Crop

If you only hear five albums from 2026, start here.

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Get Vinyl: Red | Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Scottish duo Boards of Canada return after a thirteen year absence to alter your brain chemistry with beats that feel like childhood memories, conspiracy documentaries, and the end of the world all at once.

Favorite Song: The Air-like “You Retreat In Time and Space”

heavensouls - westside trapped

Get Vinyl: White
Stream: Bandcamp

Nigerian-born, Houston-based producer heavensouls (born Chidi Obialo) is only 19, which makes the scope of westside trapped feel even more ridiculous: a sprawling, sample-heavy collision of Afrobeat, jazz history, and digital-age production that stands as one of the year’s most alive-sounding records.

Favorite Song: The nine-minute, rage-fueled anarchy of “shed a tear for me”

Puma Blue - Croak Dream

Get Vinyl: Deep Ocean Blue
Stream: Bandcamp

Puma Blue, the alias of South London’s Jacob Allen, takes his biggest swing yet on Croak Dream, a smoky late-night blend of dark, gothic R&B and trip-hop beats that sounds like Jeff Buckley wandering into a Portishead session.

Favorite Song: This is a question where you ask ten different people and get ten different answers — for me, it’s the title track.

Ratboys - Singin’ to an Empty Chair

Get Vinyl: Opaque Green (Autographed) | Hundred Acre Wood | Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Chicago four-piece Ratboys have become one of those bands I trust with my time, and Singin’ to an Empty Chair rewards that trust with Julia Steiner’s open-hearted writing and a band that knows exactly when to twang, shuffle, and rip.

Favorite Song: My favorite 20 minute stretch of music this year, the penultimate three-song suite of “Just Want You to Know the Truth” → “What’s Right?”→ “Burn It Down.”

Thomas Dollbaum - Birds of Paradise

Get Vinyl: Roseate Spoonbill Pink
Stream: Bandcamp

Birds of Paradise spent three years in limbo before Dear Life Records rescued it, which is wild because Tampa-raised Thomas Dollbaum sounds completely in command here, turning Florida ghosts, pill mills, and I-95 exits into prime crunchy folk-rock.

Favorite Song: “Coyote” featuring MJ Lenderman on drums and backing vocals.

The Rookies of the Year

Five debut albums that announced themselves in a big way.

April + VISTA - Traditional Noise

Get Vinyl: Translucent Fly Green
Stream: Bandcamp

Never a dull moment on Traditional Noise, April + VISTA’s long-awaited debut, where cinematic strings, glitchy electronics, guitar bite, and April George’s stunning vocals are packed into short songs that refuse to sit still.

Favorite Song: “Very Bad News,” which sounds like a lost James Bond theme.

My New Band Believe - My New Band Believe

Get Vinyl: Oxblood Red with 7-inch | Black
Stream: Spotify

While Geordie Greep stayed big and loud after the Black Midi split, Cameron Picton went inward on My New Band Believe, turning 118 stringed instruments and acoustic textures into a solo debut that keeps revealing new corners.

Favorite Song: “Love Story”

Mon Rovîa - Bloodline

Get Vinyl: Red
Stream: Bandcamp

Bloodline is protest music with a soft voice, which feels like a magic trick when Mon Rovîa turns complicated questions of ancestry, war, and belonging into warm indie folk that comforts without letting anyone off the hook.

Favorite Song: Catchy opener “Black Cauldron,” a chill, folksy song about… checks notes… child soldiers, burning churches, lived trauma, childhood displacement..

Girl Scout - Brink

Get Vinyl: Clouds
Stream: Spotify

The Alex Farrar Cinematic Universe expands again with Brink, where Swedish trio Girl Scout deliver the kind of hooky, hazy, grunge-kissed debut that sounds engineered in a lab to make me say, “yep, that’ll do.”

Favorite Song: If you’re like me and waiting around for Alvvays LP4, songs like “Crumbs” and “Dead Dog” should hold you over.

Shaking Hand - Shaking Hand

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Shaking Hand’s self-titled debut is all tension and release, jagged guitars, mantric vocals, and slow-burn builds that make it one of the records I keep reaching for most this year.

Favorite Song: Math-rock insta-classic “In For a… Pound!”

All Killer, No Filler

My favorite albums under 33 1⁄3 minutes.

Feeble Little Horse - bitknot

Get Vinyl: Clear Green Swirl | White | Silver

Stream: Bandcamp

On bitknot, Pittsburgh’s feeble little horse sound tighter and stranger now as a trio, doubling down on noise-rock squall, pop hooks, and songs about trying to stay human while the algorithm keeps tapping on the glass.

Favorite Song: I have a different favorite every day, today it’s “Rewind.”

Greg Mendez - Beauty Land

Get Vinyl: Indigo Clear

Stream: Bandcamp

The Elliott Smith comparison is inevitable, but Beauty Land earns it the hard way, with Greg Mendez turning grief, addiction, and self-forgiveness into 14 small songs that somehow feel enormous.

Favorite Song: Opener “I Wanna Feel Pretty” is lead single for a reason.

Slippers - Slippers 08

Get Vinyl: Pink | Black

Stream: Bandcamp

At 22 minutes, Slippers 08 does not waste a second, serving up crisp guitars and pocket-sized power-pop songs that know better than to linger past the hook.

Favorite Song: “Blueberry Peel” and “Wants for Everyone,” both of which can be heard on my summer Patio Grooves playlist.

Quiet Light - Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2

Get Vinyl: Bundle on Marbled Green and Marbled Blue

Stream: Bandcamp

24-year-old Texas-raised electronic folk artist Riya Mahesh, aka Quiet Light, makes bedroom pop for the moment right before sleep, when old conversations and parking lot confessions materialize as you curse at the ceiling.

Favorite Song: The melancholic, saxophone-laced “Berlin”

Midrift - Silhouette

Get Vinyl: Purple Shadow Marble

Stream: Spotify

Midrift are barely out of high school, which makes Silhouette all the more impressive, a bruising emo-shoegaze debut that hits me like the first time hearing Taking Back Sunday.

Favorite Song: The penultimate “Safe and Sound” is a nice slice of Midwest emo.

Lost in Translation

Five incredible albums that just happen to not be in English.

Radwan Ghazi Moumneh & Frédéric D. Oberland - Eternal Life No End | ليلة ظلماء ملعونة، كحياة طالبيها

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Built from years of collaboration, Eternal Life No End sounds like two musicians inventing a shared language for grief, where Radwan Ghazi Moumneh’s Arabic vocals cut through Frédéric D. Oberland’s synths and sax like a flare in bad weather.

Favorite Song: Centerpiece “The Serpent”

Anadol & Marie Klock — Manivelles

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

The best thing about Manivelles, Anadol and Marie Klock’s second collaborative album, is that it feels genuinely curious, mixing folk, krautrock, French pop, and organ-driven oddness without sanding down the parts that make it strange.

Favorite Song: The wobbling “Magnitude 6.3,” shout out to the Roland Rhythm Arranger on this one.

Bill Orcutt & Mabe Fratti - Almost Waking

Get Vinyl: Transparent
Stream: Bandcamp

Mabe Fratti has made every year-end list I’ve done since starting this publication, and the streak continues with Almost Waking, where her gorgeous voice and cello meets legend Bill Orcutt’s guitar in a record as beautiful as its cover art.

Favorite Song: “El Inicio es cuestión de suerte”

Antropoceno - No Ritmo da Terra

Get Vinyl: Galaxy Orange
Stream: Bandcamp

Speaking of killer album artwork, Antropoceno’s No Ritmo da Terra pairs Poty Galaco’s jaguar-stalked cover with music just as wild, folding Amazon field recordings, Brazilian folk, post-rock, glitch, and metal into one massive ecological fever dream.

Favorite Song: The melodic metal of “Pe Rembi'urama.” And shout out to all the birdsongs sprinkled in throughout the record.

Kiss Facility - KHAZNA

Get Vinyl: Black (Sold Out)
Stream: Bandcamp

Kiss Facility’s KHAZNA pairs Sega Bodega with Arabic vocalist Mayah Alkhateri for a downtempo trance record so hypnotic I put it on during a run and ended up in a full meditative state, just drifting through life like Peter Sellers in Being There.

Favorite Song: The smooth, float-y “Plasma”

Country Roads

The country umbrella keeps getting bigger, and the music keeps getting better.

Gun Outfit - Process and Reality

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

On Process and Reality, Gun Outfit stretch cosmic country into panorama mode, filling 81 minutes with dusty guitars, homemade instruments, patient sprawl, and apocalyptic haze from a California ranch session with a forest fire burning nearby.

Favorite Song: The first track on Side B, “Cherry Blossoms in Leschi”

Daughn Gibson - Lake Mary not mysterious

Get Vinyl: N/A
Stream: Bandcamp

Daughn Gibson’s first full-length in over a decade heads into the Florida swamps, where his deep, haunted croon turns palm trees, dive bars, and bad decisions into country noir with a cocktail umbrella stuck in it.

Favorite Song: The back-to-back boozy duet of “Cocoa Beach” moving into “Sacred Life,” which sounds like a long lost classic.

Zoh Amba - Eyes Full

Get Vinyl: Blue
Stream: Spotify

Zoh Amba built their name in New York’s avant-garde jazz scene, but Eyes Full heads straight back to Kingsport, Tennessee, trading saxophone fire for muddy blues and Appalachian ache.

Favorite Song: “Another Time,” which you can hear on my summer Patio Grooves playlist.

Ovven - Gnawing At The Cord

Get Vinyl: Blue (Signed)
Stream: Bandcamp

Back-to-back Alex Farrar picks, since Eyes Full was recorded at his Drop of Sun Studios and he produces this one too, but Ovven’s Gnawing at the Cord more than earns the credit with loose, fuzzy alt-country that leaves Owen Burton’s sharp writing plenty of room to breathe.

Favorite Song: “Abbreviated” is the good stuff.

vegas water taxi - long time caller, first time listener

Get Vinyl: Galaxy
Stream: Bandcamp

On long time caller, first time listener, vegas water taxi basically asks “what if Matty Healy made a country record?” then turns British self-loathing, internet-era romance, and pedal steel into something too funny to be dismissed as a joke.

Favorite Song: Opener “brat summer,” a song about police rounding up those who aren’t living the Charli xcx lifestyle.

Movers & Groovers

The albums most likely to improve your mood, commute, or kitchen dance moves.

Jump Source - Fold

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Jump Source’s Fold has the rare electronic-album quality of working everywhere: in headphones, in the car, in a coffee shop, and at 1:20 AM when you suddenly decide you are a club person now.

Favorite Song: “Shattered” featuring Helena Deland is maybe my most-played song of the year. Also billy woods on “Empty Bars” is a left field cameo that works.

Telenova - The Warning

Get Vinyl: Red and Black Marble | Black
Stream: Spotify

Telenova’s The Warning is dreamy synth-pop with actual pulse, turning Angeline Armstrong’s ethereal vocals, sleek grooves, and real-life band turmoil into one of the year’s most replayable records.

Favorite Song: “IN THE NAME OF YOUR LOVE” slaps. Telenova also remixes their own songs under the Telenoir name and those are worth seeking out too.

Nightmares On Wax vs Adrian Sherwood - In A Space Outta Dub

Get Vinyl: Light Rose | Black
Stream: Bandcamp

As much as I replay Adrian Sherwood’s dub rework of Spoon’s Lucifer on the Sofa, I was always going to be all-in on In A Space Outta Dub, where he gives Nightmares On Wax’s classic a low-end second life for its 20th anniversary.

Favorite Song: His rework of “You Wish,” seen here as opener “You Bliss”

Johnny Blue Skies - Mutiny After Midnight

Get Vinyl: Red | Black
Stream: Spotify

Johnny Blue Skies gives Sturgill Simpson permission to get loose on Mutiny After Midnight, a fun, funky, proudly horny country-disco record that I assume absolutely murders live.

Favorite Song: “Don’t Let Go.” Then it’s the Eddie Murphy cover “Party All the Time.” I must also state my least favorite song, the cringe-y “Stay On That.”

Holy Fuck - Event Beat

Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Baby Blue

Canada’s Holy Fuck haven’t lost a step on Event Beat, which starts in a chaotic sprint and settles into the kind of hypnotic, body-moving pulse they’ve always made sound easy.

Favorite Song: “Gold Flakes” and “Elevate” are among their career best.

Rap Rotation

The hip hop records that stayed in heavy rotation. Hey, remember when Drake dropped three albums at once and everyone just moved on the next day lol

Tony Bontana - My Name

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Birmingham rapper Tony Bontana has dropped nearly 60 Bandcamp releases since 2020, but My Name is the ideal entry point, with lung-emptying bars about injustice and survival over this year’s most beautiful soul-loop beats.

Favorite Song: “Soft Dreams,” where he flays those who stay silent on the genocide against Palestinians.

Action Bronson - Planet Frog

Get Vinyl: Sold Out
Stream: Bandcamp

Planet Frog is my favorite Action Bronson project since Blue Chips 7000, a no-filler record full of hilarious one-liners, natural chemistry, and some of the best beats he’s rapped over in years.

Favorite Song: Can’t beat the backcourt duo of “LEBRON HENNESSY” and “OLYMPIC VINCE CARTER”

Tierra Whack - WHACK’S MUSEUM

Get Vinyl: Pink
Stream: Spotify

Tierra Whack opens WHACK’S MUSEUM by acknowledging that people wanted her to rap more, then spends 27 no-filler minutes making everyone sound extremely reasonable for asking.

Favorite Song: Lead single “WAX PAPER” with a classic Conductor Williams beat.

KNEECAP - FENIAN

Get Vinyl: Red & Black Splatter | Red & Black Tricolor | Black
Stream: Spotify

If Fine Art proved KNEECAP had the juice, FENIAN is where they start looking like something bigger: Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí turning Irish rap, rave energy, and political heat into movement music with a smirk.

Favorite Song: “Liar’s Tale,” sound of the times.

.idk. - e.t.d.s A Mixtape by .idk

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

On e.t.d.s. A Mixtape, James Aaron Mills, aka .idk., somehow holds his own next to a guest list that reads like a dream blunt rotation: Black Thought, Madlib, RZA, Pusha T, MF DOOM, and DMX.

Favorite Song - The No I.D. produced “HALO”

Ya Like Jazz?

The year’s best excuse to listen to more jazz.

Fabiano do Nascimento & Vittor Santos e Orquestra - Vila

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Genre: Samba Jazz

Fabiano do Nascimento has released music at an absurd clip this decade (12 records since 2020), but Vila feels like a new peak, a lush, sixteen-piece samba-jazz bloom rooted in the Rio neighborhood where his guitar story began.

Favorite Song: Opener “O Tempo (Foi O Meu Mestre)” sets the tone.

Aaron Shaw - And So It Is

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

On And So It Is, Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist Aaron Shaw turns the physical toll of a bone marrow failure diagnosis into a debut that feels startlingly alive, especially once you know his breath, the thing every wind player depends on, was no longer a given.

Favorite Song: Expansive ten-minute centerpiece "Heart of a Phoenix"

Adam O’Farrill - ELEPHANT

Get Vinyl: Opaque Blue | Black
Stream: Bandcamp

ELEPHANT is Adam O’Farrill’s first quartet record as the lone horn voice, and he makes the space count with sharp trumpet melodies, oceanic atmosphere, and a modern jazz palette wide enough to fit Ryuichi Sakamoto and Radiohead.

Favorite Song: “The Sea Triptych,” an ode to the mystery of the open water.

Momoko Gill - Momoko

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Genre: Vocal Jazz

Momoko Gill’s self-produced debut Momoko pulls half the London jazz-adjacent scene into her orbit, but the center always holds: drummer-first grooves, layered vocals, electronic flickers, and songwriting that gives all the moving parts somewhere to land.

Favorite Song: “When Palestine Is Free,” featuring a 50-person choir and full brass section.

Your Brother’s Keeper & Gary Bartz - Where Rivers Meet

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Genre: Contemporary Jazz

Where Rivers Meet captures the passing-the-torch energy running through London jazz, pairing new ensemble Your Brother’s Keeper with spiritual jazz legend Gary Bartz for a record that feels rooted in the smoky ’70s.

Favorite Song: Transcendent closer “Mantra”

Recorded in Front of a Live Audience

The concerts I’ve been replaying all year.

Manchester Orchestra - Union Chapel London, England

Get Vinyl: Sea Blue
Stream: Bandcamp

For my money, Manchester Orchestra are one of the best live acts on Earth, and this Union Chapel set shows they do not need volume to wreck you, just Andy Hull, Robert McDowell, natural reverb, and songs echoing off stained glass windows.

Favorite Song: Do yourself a favor and listen to encore “The Silence,” a slow-burner that turns into a damn-near spiritual experience by the end. Mamma mia.

Florry - Smells Like... Florry Live As Hell

Get Vinyl: N/A
Stream: Bandcamp

Dear Life Records gets another one on the board with Smells Like… Florry Live as Hell, a 14-track blast from shows between 2023 and 2026 that captures Florry sounding loose, loud, and on the edge of coming apart.

Favorite Song: Set staple “Take My Heart,” from Portsmouth, NH on 11.21.25

SML - Spontaneous Music Live

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Spontaneous Music Live is exactly what it says it is: two side-length pieces of unedited improvisation, recorded live at Zebulon during SML’s December 2025 residency, just weeks after the release of the band’s second album HOW YOU BEEN, with Side A as one track and Side B as the other.

Favorite Song: Do not make me choose a side.

Bon Iver - VOLUMES: ONE (SELECTIONS FROM MUSIC CONCERTS 2019-2023 BON IVER 6 PIECE BAND)

Get Vinyl: Ducky Yellow | Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Bon Iver’s first non-studio release, VOLUMES: ONE, pulls ten live performances from 2019 to 2023 and reminds you that the band’s best versions often happen on stage, where the arrangements are bigger and stranger.

Favorite Song: Tough one. I was in the crowd for this “HEY MA” recorded at 2023’s Pitchfork Fest, but the version of “HEAVENLY FATHER” floored me.

Hurray for the Riff Raff - Live Forever

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Recorded over two nights at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, Live Forever makes the case for Alynda Segarra as one of the defining voices of the decade, pulling The Past Is Still Alive and older standouts into a live set that crackles with grief, protest, and hope.

Favorite Song: Closer “Pa’lante” is a hell of a way to finish the performance.

Digging in the Crates

The best compilations and mixes released this year.

War Child Records - HELP(2)

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Spotify

Thirty-one years after the original HELP, War Child’s HELP(2) brings in a stacked lineup, including Arctic Monkeys (their first song in four years), Depeche Mode, and Olivia Rodrigo for a charity compilation that’s worth your time and money.

Favorite Song: “Stranger” is my favorite Black Country, New Road track since Isaac Wood left. But the one that really hits is Cameron Winter’s jarring protest song “The Warning.”

DJ-Kicks: Sofia Kourtesis

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

The best DJ-Kicks mixes feel like self-portraits through other people’s records, and Sofia Kourtesis makes this one feel especially personal, moving through grief, Peru, memory, and dancefloor release.

Favorite Song: The dazzling “Los Poemas No Siempre Riman” remix.

Various Artists - When There Is No Sun: Intergalactic Music Is Of the Outer Darkness

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

Curated by Ricardo Villalobos, When There Is No Sun sends Sun Ra’s poetry and Arkestra recordings through techno, house, drum and bass, ambient, and deep-space electronics for some cosmic weirdness and spiritual healing.

Favorite Song: Groovy “The Endless Realm” featuring Tunde Adebimpe.

New Now - Red Xerox (Chicago Youth Beat 2020-25)

Get Vinyl: Black
Stream: Bandcamp

If you want to understand why people keep talking about Chicago’s young guitar scene, Red Xerox is the cheat code, packed with Wax Museum favorites like Horsegirl, Lifeguard, Friko, Sharp Pins, and Free Range.

Favorite Song: Friko’s demo of “Get Numb to It!”

Minnesota Artists United Against ICE - Melt ICE

Get Vinyl: N/A
Stream: Bandcamp

If Red Xerox documents Chicago music right now, Melt ICE does the same for Minnesota, pulling 110(!) local songs into a massive mutual-aid compilation where the scene shows up, gets loud, and puts its money somewhere useful.

Favorite Song: This is an impossible task with 100+ songs, but I’ll go with she’s green’s live version of “Cabin Song.”

Album of the Year Leaderboard (77 Songs)

Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music

And that’s the midyear damage report.

For the living, breathing version of this list, here’s the Album of the Year Leaderboard, where I keep tabs on the year’s best records as they rise, fall, and get body-checked by new arrivals.

The Best Songs of 2026 (So Far) (175 Songs)

Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music

And if the above albums wasn’t enough music, I’m also keeping The Best Songs of 2026 (So Far) playlist stocked with my favorite tracks of the year. Sort by newest added and dig in for the latest.

And now it’s your turn. Tell me what connected most with you, what I missed, and which album you’re taking with you into the second half of the year.

It’d mean the world to me if you’d support The Wax Museum. $5/month gets you full access to all exhibits and helps me keep making ridiculous lists like this one.

I send out this publication roughly once a week. For those looking for up-to-the-second vinyl news, drops, and deals, join 25,000 other collectors and follow my other project, Vinyl on Sale, the Internet’s #1 vinyl resource!

Lastly, once a month I go live and auction vinyl records on Whatnot! Think of it as Twitch meets eBay. Here’s $25 free to spend on your first purchase anywhere on the app. Stay tuned for my next show in a few weeks.

Until next time,
Jared

The Wax Museum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, Wax Museum may earn money from qualifying purchases made by users that were directed to Amazon.com via one of our affiliate links at no cost to you.

After rigorous testing on patios, porches, pools, decks, and folding chairs, the PATIO GROOVES playlist is back, and better than ever (I mean it this time).

For the newcomers: every season, your esteemed curator emerges from his listening cave to share what’s been in heavy rotation lately.

The playlist has a few requirements: every song had to feel at home on a summer afternoon, and every song has to be something I could hear repeatedly without getting sick of it by Labor Day.

The result is 33⅓ tracks spanning 50+ years of music, with roughly half released within the last year. Sunny grooves, deep cuts, and a bunch of future classics.

Now pour something cold, hit play, and enjoy.

A programming note before the playlist. I am going live this Friday night, June 12th at 8 PM EST on Whatnot, auctioning off 50 records from the Vinyl Me, Please collection.

I’ve wanted to do this show for a long time, and it should be a baja blast. Everything starts at $1, there will be giveaways, good tunes, and plenty of deals.

Come hang out and get a record on me! Get $15 free on your first purchase through this link: https://whatnot.com/invite/thewaxmuseum

PATIO GROOVES 😎 Summer 2026

Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music

Tracklist:

1. Mato - Summer Madness

2. Steely Dan - Babylon Sisters

3. The Waterboys - We Will Not Be Lovers

4. Man/Woman/Chainsaw - Nosedive

5. Johnny Blue Skies - Party All The Time

6. Nelly Furtado - Say It Right

7. Kurt Vile - Chance to Bleed

8. This Is Lorelei, Waxahatchee - Where’s Your Love Now

9. Fontaines D.C. - Roman Holiday

10. Khruangbin - August 10

11. Thomas Dollbaum - Coyote

12. Dirty Projectors - No Intention

13. Wild Pink - Round Of Applause At The End Of The World

14. The Allman Brothers Band - Blue Sky

15. Fastbacks - In the Summer

16. Slippers - Blueberry Peel (Reprise)

17. Slippers - Wants For Everyone

18. The Smashing Pumpkins - Perfect

19. Jack Landess - Sun Soaked

20. Nightmares On Wax, Adrian Sherwood - You Bliss

21. Radiohead, Jacques Greene - Lotus Flower (Jacques Greene Remix)

22. Delorean - Deli

23. crushed - starburn

24. Josaleigh Pollett, Crowd Shy - The Witness

25. Weezer, Wednesday - We Might as Well Be Strangers

26. Zoh Amba - Another Time

27. The Avalanches, MGMT, Johnny Marr - The Divine Chord

28. Kevin Morby - Javelin

29. The Chameleons - Monkeyland

30. Roxy Music - More Than This

31. Lumidee - Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)

32. Santigold - You’ll Find A Way (Switch and Sinden Remix)

33. Girl Scout - Crumbs

34. The Strokes - Oblivious

For more PATIO GROOVES, stream the full collection: Spotify | Apple Music

Thanks for visiting. If you enjoyed your stay, consider a $5 donation. Patrons will receive $10 off in the Gift Shop. Treat yourself to this vinyl carrying tote!

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Catch ya Friday,
Jared

Today is a big day. In fact, it might be the best new release day of the year so far.

I mentioned in my recent Blind Buys newsletter that I would have to resist kissing my mailman as he hands me new records from Boards of Canada, Kurt Vile, Iceage, and Manchester Orchestra. Oh yeah, and Paul McCartney’s first album in 13 years.

But as excited as I am for those albums, I've spent just as much time this year getting pulled into debut records from artists who seem destined to hang around for a while.

Last year brought us standouts like Saya Gray and Mei Semones. In 2024, we got Wishy, Friko, and Mk.gee. I dare say the freshman class of 2026 is even stronger.

For this list, I'm looking for fully realized debut albums that stick long after the first spin. One more requirement: they need to be available on vinyl, since this is The Wax Museum after all.

That means a few excellent debuts didn't make the cut, at least not yet:

• Sadie - Better Angels (hyper bedroom pop from intriguing new label Bloody Knuckles)

• Dave Adewumi - The Flame Beneath The Silence (spiritually charged jazz from rising young trumpeter)

• American Road In New Jersey - s/t (gorgeously chill indie folk from Roy Blair and James Ivy)

The moment any of those land on wax, we’ll revisit the conversation.

Until then, with apologies to XXL, this is The Wax Museum Freshman Class of 2026: fifteen debut albums worth your time, your turntable, and maybe even your year end list.

Today’s newsletter may be too long for your inbox — click here for the full post.

The Wax Museum Freshman Class of 2026

Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music

Here’s a playlist of my favorite song from each album by our Freshman 15, clocking in at around one hour. The best hour of your week? Many are saying it.

Morgan Nagler - I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It

Get Vinyl: Purple

Genre: Folk Rock

Morgan Nagler waited until age 47 to release her first solo album, I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It. You may know her as the Grammy-nominated co-writer of Phoebe Bridgers’ arguably best song “Kyoto,” but after spending years helping other artists tell their stories, the collapse of her own engagement pushed Nagler to step to the front of the stage.

Produced by King Tuff and featuring a stacked cast of indie ringers (Courtney Barnett, Allison Crutchfield, Madi Diaz, Bethany Cosentino), the record hits the ground running with three straight knockout songs, with “Orange Wine” the one I keep returning to. I featured it on my Spring Playlist, and months later it still feels like an instant classic.

My New Band Believe - My New Band Believe

Get Vinyl: Oxblood Red with 7-inch | Black

Genre: Chamber Rock

Black Midi fans are not surprised to see both Geordie Greep and Cameron Picton delivering stellar solo debuts after their band’s breakup. We already knew they had the juice.

While Greep’s The New Sound leaned into the maximalist chaos that was Black Midi’s bread and butter, Picton’s My New Band Believe takes a different path entirely. The album is almost entirely acoustic, with minimal processing and a reported 118 stringed instruments woven throughout, revealing a new detail every time you spin it.

Aaron Shaw - And So It Is

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Experimental Jazz

What a stunning week for jazz. Sonny Rollins died at 95 on Monday. The next day would have been Miles Davis’ 100th birthday. If there was ever a moment to wonder who’s carrying the torch, Aaron Shaw makes a pretty compelling case.

On And So It Is, the Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist channels the physical and emotional toll of a bone marrow failure diagnosis into a debut that feels deeply alive. Knowing that Shaw’s illness affected his ability to breathe, and therefore his ability to play, gives the music an added weight. It’s a document of someone finding new ways forward through the thing he loves most, and it’s my favorite jazz record of the year so far.

Kiss Facility - KHAZNA

Get Vinyl: Black (Sold Out)

Genre: Arabic Downtempo

If you want to be put in a trance, pun very much intended, throw on Kiss Facility’s KHAZNA. I put this thing on during a run and ended up in a full meditative state, just drifting through life like Peter Sellers in Being There.

The project pairs Sega Bodega with Arabic vocalist Mayah Alkhateri, who studied artists like Slowdive, the Radio Dept., and Enya while shaping her approach here. You can hear all of it in the music. Even though the lyrics are impenetrable to me, the emotion lands immediately.

Mon Rovîa - Bloodline

Get Vinyl: Red

Genre: Appalachian Folk

Born in Liberia during the country’s civil war, escaping the life of a child soldier, and later adopted by a white American family, Mon Rovîa brings an extraordinary life story to Bloodline.

After initially making R&B, Rovîa found his way back to the indie folk he grew up loving, drawing from his love of Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver to carve out a space entirely his own. Bloodline is a warm record that wrestles with identity, heritage, and injustice. It’s protest music, but the kind that heals rather than riles.

Menzies - Holding My Cold Hand, Even Though Yours Is Warm

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Indie Rock

If Isaac Wood had grown up in New Zealand listening to MJ Lenderman, he might’ve made something like Holding My Cold Hand, Even Though Yours Is Warm. Genre-fluid four-piece Menzies fills these songs with hyper-specific slices of Kiwi life, delivered in a conversational, spoken-word style that feels like you’re hearing someone’s inner monologue. It’s one of the most fun debuts I’ve heard all year, full of sharp observations, left turns, and melodies that stick.

Cardinals - Masquerade

Get Vinyl: Red | Black

Genre: Irish Punk

As a vinyl sicko, I appreciate when a band thinks about album sequencing, and Cardinals clearly did their homework on Masquerade. The Cork boys crafted a distinct A-side and B-side experience, with the first half leaning into bright-eyed romance and vulnerability before creating something moodier and gothic on the flip side. It rewards listening front to back, a rarity these days.

Just a quick intermission to say I would love your support to keep this newsletter alive. Support for just $5 a month, and receive $10 off in the Gift Shop and access to over 3 years of paywalled record-mendations. Thank you, love you :)

Shaking Hand - Shaking Hand

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Math Rock

Manchester three-piece Shaking Hand’s self-titled is built on tension and release. The record pulls from post-rock patience, 90s alternative grit, and nervous emo melodicism. It won’t take long to grow on you; probably the record I’ve listened to most on this list.

Ovven - Gnawing At The Cord

Get Vinyl: Blue (Signed)

Genre: Alt-Country

Owen Burton, the Nashville-by-way-of-Chicago songwriter recording as Ovven, makes a strong case for slacker alt-country having plenty of life left on Gnawing at the Cord. The songs are loose and fuzzy without burying Burton’s sharp writing under distortion. Wax Museum favorite Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Fust) produced, mixed, and engineered this one. Farrar is basically a genre tag on his own now — if his name shows up in the credits, I’m pressing play.

Mildred - Fenceline

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Americana

We stay in the same genre with Oakland quartet Mildred, who bring something fresh to the country indie scene with Fenceline. The fellas write and sing collectively, and you can hear that shared spirit in every nook of the record, from the warm melodies to the inspired songwriting and effortless harmonies. This baby is tailor-made for summer evenings on the patio.

Hiding Places - The Secret to Good Living

Get Vinyl: Lavender

Genre: Alternative Rock

Austin’s Keeled Scales has become one of the best labels at spotting talent early (Good Looks, Lunar Vacation), and they’ve done it again with Hiding Places. Though the band is now based in Brooklyn, The Secret to Good Living is rooted in the folk and guitar-driven indie rock of North Carolina, where the group first came together as college radio DJs in Chapel Hill.

The album throws a little bit of everything into the mix: slowcore, fuzzy indie rock, hushed folk. What keeps pulling me back is the tension between its whisper-quiet moments and the massive guitar leads waiting around the corner.

Girl Scout - Brink

Get Vinyl: Clouds

Genre: Dream Pop

Swedish trio Girl Scout first caught my attention opening for Alvvays, and the comparison makes sense. If you’re like me and waiting around for Alvvays LP4, songs like “Crumbs” and “Dead Dog” should hold you over.

Their long-awaited debut, Brink, arrives after a trilogy of EPs and finds the band teaming up with, oh look who it is, Alex Farrar, who seems determined to produce every album up my alley. Big hooks and gorgeous arrangements sit alongside shoegaze haze and a grungy edge that keeps the album from veering too far into indie-pop sweetness.

Touch Girl Apple Blossom - Graceful

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Twee Pop

Speaking of indie pop sweetness, Touch Girl Apple Blossom’s Graceful sounds like it was discovered in a shoebox full of K Records singles, which makes it fitting that the Austin band ended up signing to K Records. The band pulls from twee pop, jangly indie rock, and fuzzy lo-fi to concoct bubblegum sticky melodies.

Jump Source - Fold

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Tech House

My favorite electronic album of 2026 comes from Montreal duo Jump Source. Francis Latreille and Patrick Holland pack Fold with killer grooves, moving between dreamy headphone music, coffee-shop electronics, and full-on dancefloor bangers.

"Shattered" featuring Helena Deland is maybe my most-played song of the year, and the deeper you get into this nearly hour-long debut, the more rewards you find. Add in guest appearances from Loukeman, CFCF, and even rapper billy woods, and you've got the most immersive house record in recent memory.

Momoko Gill - Momoko

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Vocal Jazz

Momoko Gill steps out on her own with Momoko, a debut that pulls from her jazz, electronic, and singer-songwriter instincts. Gill’s been floating around the London scene for years, and you can hear it in how confident the record feels. She’s a drummer first, so everything moves through the grooves, while her layered vocals drift in and out like she’s sketching the songs in real time. The centerpiece is “When Palestine Is Free,” where a 50-person choir and full brass section blow the album wide open into something huge and communal.

Hey friends, thanks for tuning in! I’d love to hear what you’ve currently spinning; drop your favs in the comments or reply to this email.

I send out this newsletter once a week. For those looking for up-to-the-second vinyl news, drops, and deals, follow Vinyl on Sale, the Internet’s #1 vinyl resource!

Happy collecting, and stay tuned next week for a fun announcement!

The Wax Museum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, Wax Museum may earn money from qualifying purchases made by users that were directed to Amazon.com via one of our affiliate links at no cost to you.

Pre-ordering an album after hearing just one single is either a sign of great taste, complete degeneracy, or a total lack of impulse control. Possibly all three. But this is the life vinyl collectors have chosen for themselves.

If I could buy stock in artists, I would. Unfortunately, the next best thing is blind-buying their records on faith… and I have too much of it. So consider this part release calendar, part peek into my increasingly questionable purchasing habits.

Here are 13 albums dropping over the next few weeks, including two out today, that I’ve already committed to owning before the rest of the Internet catches up.

This newsletter is likely too long for your inbox — click here for the full post.

Today, May 15

Rostam - American Stories

Get Vinyl: Coriander (Signed) | Sumac

Genre: Persian Americana

Iranian-American artist Rostam Batmanglij, formerly of Vampire Weekend and producer behind artists like HAIM and Clairo, uses his third record American Stories to explore both his American and Persian roots. Across lyrics touching on Gaza and campus protests, Rostam blends finger-picked guitars, pedal steel, and New York folk with Persian melodies (The Voidz’ Amir Yaghmai plays the lute-like Turkish saz throughout). It’s a record full of fun turns, textures, and “wait, what the hell kind of instrument is that?” moments.

Dua Saleh - Of Earth & Wires

Get Vinyl: Blue Sapphire

Genre: Experimental Soul

I bought Of Earth & Wires on the strength of the first two singles, “Flood” and “Glow,” both of which feature Bon Iver. But there’s more going on here beyond the Vernon bait: Sudanese-American artist Dua Saleh threads together indie, R&B, electronic pop, UK dance, and baile funk into a record asking what happens when technology keeps accelerating and the world around us feels increasingly held together with duct tape.

May 22

Miles Davis - Live in Helsinki • Berlin 1964

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Post-Bop Jazz

Live in Helsinki • Berlin 1964 captures Miles Davis with the newly assembled Second Great Quintet of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and teenage menace Tony Williams, a lineup many consider one of the greatest groups in jazz history. These performances are as much about Shorter as they are about Miles; having only joined the band a few weeks earlier, Shorter was Miles’ most fascinating musical partner since Coltrane.

The big draw here is that the Helsinki performance has never been released before, while the Berlin set is finally getting its full original mono presentation on vinyl. The YouTube channel Milestones is fantastic for Miles performances, and here’s a 30-minute, lower quality snippet from the show.

May 29

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Get Vinyl: Red | Black

Genre: Electronic

I’ll have to resist the urge to kiss my mailman on May 29 when he shows up with three new records, none more anticipated than Boards of Canada’s first album in 13 years.

The Scottish electronic duo will attempt to save the 2020s with Inferno, and the first single delivers in spades, a haunting, hypnotic head-nodder that sounds unlike anything they’ve done before.

Kurt Vile - Philadelphia’s been good to me

Get Vinyl: Wooder Ice | Wissahickon Green

Genre: “Old Time, Lofi, DIY, Rock n’ Roll”

Kurt Vile is dropping his tenth album Philadelphia’s been good to me, an ode to his home city where he lives and records his music. The singles give you that laid-back Vile you know and love — lead single “Chance to Bleed” sounds like one long chorus and opener “Zoom 97” is also a great vibe. This is shaping up to be primo Patio Grooves material.

Manchester Orchestra - Union Chapel London, England

Get Vinyl: Silver | Sea Blue

Genre: Live Acoustic Rock

For my money, Manchester Orchestra is one of the best live acts going. In fall 2023, Andy Hull and Robert McDowell set up shop for a three-night run at Union Chapel in London, stripping everything down inside a gothic church where stained glass windows and natural acoustics did some of the heavy lifting. You can hear that chapel reverb all over these recordings.

Do yourself a favor and listen to encore “The Silence,” a slow-burner that turns into a damn-near spiritual experience by the end.

June 5

Rosa Walton - Tell Me It’s A Dream

Get Vinyl: Yellow (Signed Vinyl, Flexi Disc, Scrunchie) | Blue

Genre: Indie Pop

The Let’s Eat Grandma duo of Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth went their separate ways this year, with Jenny on Holiday’s Quicksand Heart dropping in January and Rosa’s solo debut arriving in June. Rosa is batting 1.000 so far, going three for three on the singles, all bright, ridiculously catchy pop songs.

Vince Staples - Cry Baby

Get Vinyl: Tri Color with Signed Birth Certificate (Sold Out) | Baby Pink | Red

Genre: West Coast Hip Hop

Multi-hyphenate Vince Staples can do no wrong in my eyes, and I’m curious to hear what he does on new label Loma Vista (also home to Manchester Orchestra) after spending more than a decade at Def Jam. After two introspective records (Ramona Park and Dark Times), the Long Beach rapper’s new album Cry Baby is advertised as a more confrontational piece of social commentary. Exhibit A is the music video for single “Blackberry Marmalade,” which was graphic enough that I became very aware of the people sitting around me on the train.

Zoh Amba - Eyes Full

Get Vinyl: Blue

Genre: Appalachian Folk

Zoh Amba has built a reputation as one of the more exciting saxophonists in New York’s avant-garde jazz world, but Eyes Full takes a hard turn back toward their Tennessee roots. This one trades the skronk for muddy blues, recorded at Alex Farrar’s Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, which has been ground zero for some of the best twang of the decade.

June 12

Kelsey Lu - So Help Me God

Get Vinyl: Bone | Black

Genre: Avant Pop

So Help Me God is the long-awaited second album from Kelsey Lu, arriving June 12 via Dirty Hit. There’s a Murderer’s Row of contributors here: production from Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman, with appearances from Sampha, Kamasi Washington, and Kim Gordon. Call me Babe Ruth because I’m pointing to the bleachers on this one — based on the first three singles, I think this thing is headed straight for the top tier of my Album of the Year leaderboard.

June 19

Your Brother’s Keeper & Gary Bartz - Where Rivers Meet

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Contemporary Jazz

There’s been a passing-of-the-torch happening in London jazz over the last decade, and Where Rivers Meet is another great example of it. The record pairs spiritual jazz legend Gary Bartz, whose résumé includes everyone from Miles Davis to Charles Mingus, with new ensemble Your Brother’s Keeper. If you like modern jazz records that still feel rooted in the smoky, searching energy of the ‘70s, this looks very promising.

June 26

The Strokes - Reality Awaits

Get Vinyl: America | Metallic Gold | Black Ice | Black

Genre: Indie Rock

Last month, The Strokes ended their Coachella set with one of the coldest mic drops I’ve ever seen, playing “Oblivius” over a video backdrop cycling through CIA-assassinated political figures, bombed universities in Iran, and finally “the last university standing in Gaza” before the building explodes onscreen.

Now they’re rolling out their seventh album, Reality Awaits, and as a Strokes vinyl completist, adding the America-colored wax to my cart was never in question. Rick Rubin mentioned all the way back in 2022 that he had recorded with the band in Costa Rica, and four years later we finally get to hear what they were cooking up. The first two singles lean hard into Auto-Tune, and let’s just say I’m hoping it all makes more sense in album form.

Hey friends, thanks for tuning in! I’d love to hear what you’re excited about; let’s take this conversation to the comments or reply to this email.

I send out this publication roughly once a week. For those looking for up-to-the-second vinyl news, drops, and deals, join 25,000 other collectors and follow Vinyl on Sale, the Internet’s #1 vinyl resource!

Until next time,
Jared

Enjoy More Curation from The Wax Museum

• Where to Start With the 10,000 Concert Archive Everyone’s Talking About

• The Spring Patio Grooves Mixtape: What I’m Playing Right Now

• 13 Great New Albums Flying Under the Radar

• The 26 Albums You Must Hear in 2026

The Wax Museum is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, Wax Museum may earn money from qualifying purchases made by users that were directed to Amazon.com via one of our affiliate links at no cost to you.

Bandcamp Friday is back, which means your money goes straight to the artists instead of getting chipped away along the way. Hard to believe this started in March 2020, but here we are, six years later and it’s still one of the easiest ways to support those making the music you care about.

This is the last one until August, so if you’ve been meaning to pick something up, now’s the time. I did some digging and rounded up a mix of new releases and a few older records that have been in heavy rotation over here. All vinyl links to Bandcamp. Leggo.

This newsletter is likely too long for your inbox — click here for the full post.

KNEECAP - FENIAN (2026)

Get Vinyl: Red & Black Splatter | Red & Black Tricolor | Black

Genre: Irish Rap

Today’s a fun release day, headlined by Kacey Musgraves and American Football. Also BLARF! But let’s start with my favorite drop: the boys from Belfast are back, linking up with the great Dan Carey for their second album FENIAN.

If you heard Fine Art or caught their Netflix movie, you know the deal: Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap trade bilingual bars over DJ Próvaí’s blown-out, rave-adjacent production. FENIAN pushes that further, widening the sound while tightening the songs.

Recorded while Kneecap was the most talked about band in the country as Mo Chara was in and out of courtrooms for trumped-up terrorism charges, these lads are starting to look and sound like legends in the making.

Gia Margaret’s Discography (2018-2026)

Get Vinyl: Singing on Mental Clarity Clear | Mia Gargaret on Metallic Blue | Romantic Piano on Hinoki Cypress | There’s Always Glimmer on Coke Bottle Clear

Genre: Folk

Last week, Chicago composer Gia Margaret dropped her fourth album, Singing, and it lands with a bit more weight than your average release. After There’s Always Glimmer in 2018, a vocal injury forced her into silence, leading to two gorgeous ambient records, 2020’s Mia Gargaret and 2023’s Romantic Piano. “There was a time when I really didn’t know if I would sing again,” she says.

Singing is her first vocal album in eight years. The voice is back, but now it’s sitting inside something more deliberate, shaped by the years she spent working without it. You can hear that patience in the details, and in the way the songs open up with help from Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth, Stars’ Amy Millan, the Weepies’ Deb Talan, Pedro the Lion’s Dave Bazan, and Philly’s Kurt Vile. Taken together, these four records map a rare progression, where losing the obvious path opened a better one.

The Mystery Kindaichi Band - The Adventures of Kindaichi Kosuke (1977)

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Japanese Disco Funk

Sometimes you see an album cover of an awkward Dracula playing the flute and go, “yeah I’m gonna need to hear this.” And that will be the best decision you make all day.

The Mystery Kindaichi Band’s The Adventures of Kindaichi Kosuke (1977) is an “imaginary” soundtrack to a cult detective series by Seishi Yokomizo (think Japan’s Agatha Christie), arranged by Kentaro Haneda and performed by a loose collective of top-tier ‘70s Japanese city pop and session players. The result is ten instrumental cuts of straight disco funk, breakbeats, grooves, and no filler. It’s been a crate-digger staple for years.

Your Bandcamp Friday money here goes to Paris label We Want Sounds, who consistently put out high-quality reissues.

Fust - Evil Joy (2021)

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Alt-Country

North Carolina’s Fust snuck into my top 10 records of 2025 with Big Ugly, and now their debut Evil Joy is getting a much needed vinyl reissue for its fifth anniversary, courtesy of the great Dear Life Records. This one’s a bit looser and more barebones, but you can hear it clicking into place. If Big Ugly pulled you in like it did me, this is where to go back and see how it started.

Florry - Smells Like... Florry Live As Hell (2026)

Get Cassette: Black

Genre: Country Rock

We stay blessing the Dear Life label because they may have released the best live release of the year with Florry’s Smells Like… Florry Live as Hell.

Fourteen tracks pulled from shows between 2023 and as recently as March 2026 at Chicago’s Empty Bottle, this set gets close to what they actually sound like on stage: loose, loud, and on the edge of coming apart. Now please drop this on vinyl!

Eaves Wilder - Little Miss Sunshine (2026)

Get Vinyl: Yellow/Orange

Genre: Dreampop

One of my favorite April releases, and easily one of the stronger debuts I’ve heard this year, comes courtesy of North London’s Eaves Wilder. Little Miss Sunshine sits right in my sweet spot, 90s-leaning dreampop one minute, heavier, fuzzed-out guitar moments the next. If you’re a sucker for ethereal vocals and loud guitars like myself, this is an easy one to keep in rotation.

Mr Bongo Record Club Vol. 8 (2026)

Get Vinyl: Magenta | Black

Genre: Compilation

I’m going in blind on Mr Bongo Record Club Vol. 8, just trusting the curators at this point. These comps bounce across decades, genres, and moods, and usually send me down a rabbit hole of artists I’ve never heard before.

Early returns are strong. Kenny Dope’s rework of “Wish That I Could Talk To You” is a fantastic first single and has me sold on the rest.

The Visitors - Motherland (1975)

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Soul Jazz

Jazz Dispensary is one of my favorite labels, and their Top Shelf reissues do a great job unearthing rare or previously unavailable titles. This month’s selection is The Visitors 1975 spiritual jazz album Motherland, returning to vinyl for the first time in five decades. The title track is my favorite.

War Child Records - HELP(2) (2026)

Get Vinyl: Black

Genre: Compilation

Let’s end with one you’ve probably seen around, but if you scrolled past it, circle back. HELP(2) lands 31 years after the original, with War Child pulling in a stacked lineup including Arctic Monkeys (their first new song in four years), Depeche Mode, and Olivia Rodrigo.

There’s so much good stuff here. “Stranger” is my favorite Black Country, New Road track since Isaac Wood left. But the one that really hits is Cameron Winter’s “The Warning,” a jarring protest song that feels like it could outlast the moment.

All proceeds go toward supporting children affected by war, which makes this an easy one to spend on.

Appreciate you tuning in. Let me know what you picked up today, and if you’ve got a Bandcamp release, drop it in the comments so we can check it out.

I send this newsletter about once a week. For those looking for up-to-the-second vinyl news, drops, and deals, join 25,000 other collectors and follow Vinyl on Sale, the Internet’s #1 vinyl resource.

Until next time,
Jared

Enjoy more Bandcamp Friday curation from The Wax Museum!

• Around the World in 10 Records for Bandcamp Friday

• The Best Compilations of 2025 (Bandcamp Friday Edition)

• 5 Record Labels to Bless This Bandcamp Friday

• 48 New Albums to Snag for Bandcamp Friday

There’s a new archive online that, if you care about music even a little bit, you’re going to lose hours to. Chicago legend Aadam Jacobs spent four decades bringing a tape recorder to shows and walked away with over 10,000 live recordings, everything from early R.E.M. and The Replacements to bands that never made it out of their local scene. That 10,000 number is absurd. At one show a day, it would take 27 and a half years to hit that.

As of this writing, 2,477 of those shows are up on the Internet Archive (there’s also an iTunes-style player if you don’t have an aversion to vibecoded sites). Archivist Brian Emerick says more are coming soon, including a 1984 James Brown set and 1989 Pixies performance; this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The collection spans from 1984 to 2019 all around Chicago. Some of the mid-80s tapes are rough, but the majority of these sound great. Sometimes it’s straight soundboard, sometimes room mics, sometimes a mix of both, with the idea he’d piece it all together someday. That day is now.

I’ve been binging this the last few days and pulled out 10 shows to get you started, listed in chronological order, and linked to the Internet Archive stream.

Before we begin, Record Store Day is this Saturday, and I’m doing something big. At 8 PM EST Saturday night, streaming live on Whatnot, I’m auctioning off a stack of vinyl, including signed sleeves, Japanese pressings, rarities, and a few grails, all starting at $1. Yes you read that right, just one dollar!

The plan is to run 50 to 75 record collection essentials in about two hours, plus free vinyl giveaways, live music, and a plenty of surprises.

Bookmark the show now, and use this link for $15 off your first purchase. Come jam out and maybe walk away with a free record or two!

Tracy Chapman - Cabaret Metro - May 7th, 1988

Just weeks after her debut album dropped and right as “Fast Car” was starting to break, the great Tracy Chapman sounds completely locked in here, calm, precise, and in full command of the room. The recording itself is razor sharp, with her voice cutting through clean the entire set.

Sonic Youth - Cabaret Metro - November 5, 1988

I’ll let Aadam himself introduce this one:

“In the autumn of ‘88 I was working in a record store that was part of the Cabaret Metro building, so when Daydream Nation came out, I was able to hear it right away. Maybe a day before the show, I do remember taking it home and listening to it several times, something most of the audience did not have the privilege of doing. […] When SY took the stage it was of little surprise that they started with “Teenage Riot,” but it was surprising when they continued to play nearly the whole album […] I thought it quite glorious having spent so much time with the record the night before, but I recall talking to friends after and hearing disappointment because they hadn’t heard any of the songs before. No doubt that now, 30 years later, that they were very pleased to have been there. And now you can be there too.”

Nirvana - Dreamerz - July 8, 1989

Everyone’s talking about this one, and for good reason. Recorded just a month after Bleach dropped, Nirvana is still a four-piece here, ripping through a heavy set while the recording holds up well for a small club tape.

There’s likely another Nirvana show on the way, from September 30, 1989, where they opened for Eleventh Dream Day, who is in this collection a record 26 times.

My Bloody Valentine - Metro - February 14, 1992

Instead of the usual flat soundboard tape of other MBV shows floating around online, this Loveless-era set feels like you’re in the room getting hit with the fuzz. “Only Shallow,” “Soon,” “To Here Knows When” is all here, with that blown-out, wall-of-sound fully intact.

Uncle Tupelo - Lounge Ax - November 8, 1992

This set captures Uncle Tupelo as they lean fully into their country side without losing their bite; hear why they’re considered the first great alt country band.

Less than two years later they’d be kaput, with Jeff Tweedy starting Wilco and Jay Farrar forming Son Volt. There’s also video of this show online, courtesy of another archivist legend @sacramentomusicarchive.

Guided by Voices - Lounge Ax - October 1, 1994

There are four GBV sets in the archive, but this is the one to start with. Right in their mid-90s sweet spot, ripping through a stacked setlist, with Pixies’ Kim Deal jumping in on “Goldheart Mountaintop” and “Shocker in Gloomtown.” It’s a nice full-circle moment too, hearing her here and then popping up 20 years later fronting The Breeders at Pitchfork Festival 2013, where she opens with “Gloomtown,” which is also now available to stream.

Neutral Milk Hotel - Lounge Ax - May 1, 1997

Jeff Mangum was two months away from recording In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on this night, but you can hear it coming together in a big way, with an early version of “Oh Comely” opening the show, and three other songs including the title track sitting alongside deep cuts. Also on this bill was Athens’ Oliver Tremor Control, Mangum’s old band, who have two stellar 2005 shows in this collection.

Low & Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Schubas - October 10, 1998

There are four Low and four GY!BE shows in the archive, but this is the one. The encore is their famous live collaboration of “Do You Know How To Waltz?,” a 30-minute, 12-person, slow-burn drone that just keeps expanding. I’d pay big money to have this baby on vinyl.

The Swell Season - Schubas - October 24, 2006

God bless Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who make such beautiful music together. This show is pre-Once, before everything blew up, which makes it hit differently knowing what’s coming. “Falling Slowly” into “When Your Mind’s Made Up” is as good as it gets live, and you can hear the room lock in. A year later, “Falling Slowly” would take home the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Alvvays - Schubas - January 17, 2015

I’m an Alvvays connoisseur, so getting a live set like this, especially at this quality, feels like found money. The middle stretch is the highlight, featuring B-side “Underneath Us” (only officially released on last year’s 10th anniversary pressing), into deep Deerhunter cut “Nosebleed.”

I barely scratched the surface of this thing. The Cure, early Bangles, Fugazi, Pavement, Ratatat, Pinback, The Shins, Phish, Fountains of Wayne, Slint, Depeche Mode. What have I missed?

What I’ve been jamming to most isn’t on streaming, but over at Nugs, where I keep coming back to Sturgill Simpson’s Red Rocks finale from September 2025. The four hour show, featuring 41 songs, concludes with a mashup of two anti-war anthems, Sturgill’s own “Call to Arms” with Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun.”

“I wrote this song in 2015… might as well wrote it yesterday,” Sturgill says about this modern day “Fortunate Son,” a call to arms against the US war machine that’s sending our “sons and daughters off to die for some oil.” If you’ve never heard it, check out the SNL performance, with The Dap-Kings playing horns. It’s a classic.

Sturgill and Jimi kick off this season’s mix, featuring 33⅓ handpicked tracks across genres, decades, and moods, with 14 from the past year and even a cut from today’s best new release, The Secret to Good Living by Hiding Places.

This one’s built for outdoor hangs. Grill going, cooler stocked, someone asking to change the song three tracks in… consider this your soundtrack for the season.

PATIO GROOVES 🐝 Spring 2026

Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music

Tracklist:

1. Sturgill Simpson – Call to Arms

2. Jimi Hendrix – Machine Gun (Live At Filmore East, 1970)

3. When In Rome – The Promise

4. Telenova – THE DEEP

5. High Vis – Mind’s a Lie

6. Parquet Courts – Borrowed Time

7. The Dead Bolts – Beau Monde

8. Gary Davenport & Mannequin – In America There’s Everything

9. Morgan Nagler – Orange Wine

10. Alvvays – Hey

11. Geese – Cowboy Nudes

12. Ovven – Dishes

13. Miriam Makeba – Down On the Corner

14. Black Country, New Road & War Child Records – Strangers

15. Spirit – Why Can’t I Be Free

16. Spirit – Nature’s Way

17. Blind Mr. Jones – Spooky Vibes

18. she’s green – paper thin

19. waterbaby – Memory Be a Blade

20. Snail Mail – Heat Wave

21. Hiding Places – One Hand

22. Stuck – Net Negative

23. Waxahatchee – Never Been Wrong

24. Tennis – My Emotions Are Blinding

25. Gia Margaret – Good Friend

26. Dream, Ivory – Welcome and Goodbye

27. Toro y Moi – Goes By So Fast

28. Blood Cultures – Unarchiver

29. Rostam – Campus (Original Version)

30. eee gee & Matthew Herbert – I Hear a String Quartet Playing Everywhere I Go (Herbert’s Northern Lights Dub)

31. Holy Fuck – Elevate

32. Nation of Language – Inept Apollo (Tom Sharkett Remix)

33. LCD Soundsystem – You Can’t Hide / Shame on You (Live at Madison Square Garden)

34. The Rapture – Sail Away

For more PATIO GROOVES, stream the full collection here: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music

Thanks for visiting The Wax Museum! If you enjoyed your stay, consider supporting for just $5 a month. Patrons will receive $10 off anything in the Gift Shop, like this vinyl carrying tote!

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