2026 Album Roundup #10
Woo into the double digits! Some bangers over the last month.
Fell Asleep in the Sun - After
Wew I was looking forward to this and it delivered. Nostalgia fuel for pop music from the late 90s through the early 2000s. But this feels like more than just pure nostalgia baiting here. The songwriting is pretty good, the vocal performances are good. I dig it all around. But the nostalgia is dope too I won't lie.
Day and Night - Carly Rae Jepsen
Woo double album by the queen of pop! I am typically not a double album guy, not many artists can fill two albums with good, necessary songs. Ends up being a ton of filler on double albums imo. This mostly works I think. It's still a big listen, 75 minutes. But I dig the stylistic differences between Day and Night and like them both enough that I can't really decide on which I prefer consistently. Just good pop music.
Hotel Usona - Protomartyr
Can't just listen to pop music all the time, I guess. JK you totally can that is valid. But this album also rules. I had heard of protomartyr but never really got into their stuff before seeing this get love online. More cinematic/theatrical than I expected but I think it works well. More varied instrumentation than a typical post-punk album. Really good.
Pylon - Beabadoobee
Bea goes full on indie rock here compared to her previous albums that were more pop-centered and I think it's a cool switchup. I was kinda bored with her last album after really digging Beatopia so I'm glad she refreshed a bit. This got overshadowed a little for me by the first two albums mentioned so I need to go back and listen more but I did like the singles and remember being into the album first time through.
Mirror Modulation - Flavor Foley
So I had never heard of Flavor Foley but I guess they're a big deal in the vocaloid scene, which uses a voice synthesizer for all the vocals. I didn't know this was such a big scene, but these guys have over a million monthly listeners on spotify so, that's something. This is interesting. At times it's pretty good. At others it's pretty bad and grating imo. I don't think I'm gonna rush off to listen to a lot of other vocaloid stuff but it's always cool to discover an entirely new scene whether it's for you or not.