New Releases & Staff Picks - 9/25/26

STAFF PICKS
DARIO - 
JAKE - 
Kimber - 
MARY -
ZACH - 
DREW - 
PAT - 

PROTOMARTYR - Hotel Usona CD/LP (Domino)  
Hotel Usona is Protomartryr's seventh full-length studio album. Recorded with legendary producer Dave Fridmann (Nick Cave, MGMT, The Flaming Lips) at his own Tarbox Road Studios in western New York, it's an effort that finds the Detroit post-punk outfit reckoning with the horrors of our current moment. It is not easy listening. It's essential. Over the last two decades, Protomartyr-vocalist Joe Casey, drummer Alex Leonard, bassist Scott Davidson, guitarist-multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Greg Ahee-have built one of the most rewarding and often exhilarating bodies of work in recent memory by veering in and out of darkness, grappling with what most frightens us, saddens us, disgusts us, embarrasses and enrages us. The stuff that makes us human. Casey has imagined his country as an aging hotel here, each song a room haunted by it's own troublesome guest: the slow paralysis of modern life (Sounds We Cannot Hear), AI (Feed the Sewer), deportation (Third Country), warped patriotism (Exalted Eagles), violence (The Knife Dream), even JD Vance (Converts). It's a hard look at a nation in free fall, gripped by fascism. Musically, Ahee has built worlds within a world, drawing new influence from the Middle East and '50s exotica, finding common ground between dread and joy, a speciality. All of it-Leonard's drumming in particular-is rendered more tangible and terrifying by Fridmann, whose son, Jon, contributes horns. You can feel the stakes in every song, feel the band levitating to meet them. They've never sounded more powerful.

JULIA JACKLIN - Gem CD/LP (4AD)  
Julia Jacklin has made a name for herself as one of Australia's most internationally celebrated songwriters, with nominations at both the ARIA and Libera Awards, sold-out shows globally, massive tours, appearing at major festivals from Glastonbury to Pitchfork, Newport Folk to Primavera, countless accolades for her critically acclaimed albums. After touring flat-out for years on three beloved releases, Julia found herself at home out of contract with her record label, looking for a new manager. For the first time since I started out, I had this big chunk of time without any industry expectations and no-one to ask me what was going on, she remembers. It was liberating and it was scary. Jacklin wanted to do things intentionally this time around. She wanted to back herself. And she wanted to make the record at home in Melbourne: something she'd never done before. “I want to love and be loved, but I also want to feel free. The tension between those two things has been the central question of my life,” This is the theme that underpins her fourth album The Gem. When Julia first moved to Melbourne from Sydney in 2017, she discovered a little bar called The Gem on a back street in Collingwood, where bands pushed dining tables to the side and set up in a corner on the floor. The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. “I felt like I was almost doing it in the dark, just trusting that I was going to find something,” says Jacklin of the record, which conjures images of excavation, of reinvention, of trusting your instincts and surrounding yourself with the people and things that make life worthwhile. It's a soaring document of the songwriter's journey back to herself.

LEON BRIDGES - Happiness Anytime CD/LP (Columbia Records)  
Leon Bridges presents Happiness Anytime, his highly-anticipated fifth studio album produced by J. Lloyd and Lydia Kitto of Jungle. The album's title serves as both a mission statement and an invitation. It's music you can put on no matter how you're feeling and be immediately transported somewhere coastal and warm. In crafting the album, Leon Bridges focused on feeling, storytelling, and his vocal performance. Lydia Kitto brought melodic intuition and harmonic detail, and J. Lloyd shaped the production, arrangements, and sonic structure. The result is an album that feels unusually cohesive, like three musicians discovering a shared vision, drawing inspiration from Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, Brazilian music, soul, disco, and South American rhythms

M83 - I Wrote You A Letter CD/LP (M83)  
The iconic project returns late September with it's milestone 10th studio album, I Wrote You A Letter. Twenty-five years after his debut, M83 (Anthony Gonzalez) stands as a genuinely era-defining electronic act, renowned for pushing indie-electronic into the mainstream while maintaining absolute critical credibility. Recorded between Los Angeles and Paris alongside Benoit de Villeneuve, this new record follows the highly acclaimed Fantasy (2023) and features striking artwork by celebrated Australian photographer Bill Henson. This release marks a historic chapter, encapsulating a quarter-century of sonic evolution.

BLONDSHELL - Violins CD/LP (Partisan Records)  
Violins, the third album from Blondshell, finds Sabrina Teitelbaum digging in. Following her acclaimed 2023 self-titled debut and 2025's If You Asked For A Picture, the 11-track Violins trades the veil of bad romantic relationships for something braver, asking how we balance the world's violence with it's beauty across songs about troubled friendships, religion, the body, and the long, unglamorous work of healing. It's an album of grandeur, drama, and tragedy, built on virtuoso hooks, swelling guitars, and big lead lines, pulling in fresh touchstones from Gang of Four, Teenage Fanclub, The Go-Betweens, and Sade, alongside lyrical nods to Leonard Cohen and Pavement. From the anthemic frenemy portrait of ‘Heart Has To Work So Hard’ to the sunny, insomniac daydream of ‘Lucky’ and the disarming closer 'Fur Elise,’ Violins captures the sound of an artist who has stopped overexplaining and started rendering art on her own terms.

HERMANOS GUTIERREZ - Los Ojos Del Condor CD/LP (Easy Eye Sound) 
Hermanos Gutiérrez presents a new world of sound on their latest album Los Ojos del Cóndor, leaving behind the cosmos for the coastal mist of Lima, Peru where the brothers' lineage takes root. On their third collaboration with Easy Eye Sound, Alejandro and Estevan Gutiérrez craft an odyssey through lush musical soundscapes, trading the wide-open canyons of the American West for the rhythmic pulses of South America. Produced by Dan Auerbach.

GILLA BAND - Pugnello CD/LP (Rough Trade) 
Gilla Band never know where they're going next. For over ten years now, the Dublin quartet - vocalist Dara Kiely, guitarist Alan Duggan Borges, bassist Daniel Fox, and drummer Adam Faulkner - have been redefining what you could loosely call rock music in the 21st century, influencing a wide swath of similarly forward-thinking guitar acts along the way. Across 2015's Holding Hands With Jamie, 2019's The Talkies,and 2022's Most Normal, the band perfected a vision that wasn't quite post-punk, wasn't quite noise-rock, wasn't quite anything besides an idiosyncratic, ground-breaking hybrid that could only come from the four of them. As soon as they submitted Most Normal for mastering, they began the patient search for their next destination. Over time, the process led them to their fourth album Pugnello, the boldest left turn in a career full of them. In the four years since Most Normal, each member embarked on other artistic endeavors. Kiely fostered a newfound love of painting, Faulkner played drums for Lankum on the road, Fox became an increasingly in-demand producer guiding ascendant acts like Sprints, Lambrini Girls, and Mandy, Indiana, while Duggan Borges launched his solo project the Null Club with collaborations featuring Mandy, Indiana's Valentine Caulfield, the Horrors' Faris Badwan, Miss Grit, and Brooklyn MC Elucid. All their extracurricular activity existed in parallel with the exploratory route towards Pugnello, but also informed the band as they reconvened to crystallize the album's vision.

ALICE IN CHAINS - Unplugged LP [Reissue/1996] (Sony)  
Originally recorded in 1996, Alice in Chains MTV Unplugged captures one of the most powerful and intimate performances of the era. The set showcases Alice in Chains' signature blend of haunting melodies, acoustic arrangements, and raw emotional depth. Recorded at Brooklyn Academy of Music in NYC, the performance finds the band reimagining fan favorites including ‘Nutshell,' ‘Down in a Hole,’ ‘Rooster, Would?', and ‘Brother’ in a stripped-back setting that highlights the strength of their songwriting and harmonies. 

MEGIAPA - Intentions LP (International Anthem)  
Intentions, the debut of LA-via-Chicago beat maker, composer, and multi-instrumentalist megiapa, is a 40 minute master class in synth-heavy, jazz-informed Neo-soul. megiapa's lush and emotionally layered album, feels less like a collection of songs and more like a living archive of transformation. Across it's warm synths, fluttering basslines, meditative voice notes and spiritual grooves, the Los Angeles- based producer, vocalist and composer maps the uncertain terrain between heartbreak, healing, fear, and surrender. The album's title is genuine. “The record is literally my intentions,” she says. "It's a representation of my intentions, my dreams over the last five years or so. Those years carried the weight of upheaval: the pandemic, the collapse of a long-term relationship, a move away from Chicago, and the disorientation that follows when the structure of your life suddenly disappears beneath you.” But Intentions never sounds defeated. Instead, it radiates the quiet confidence of someone learning to trust herself in real time

WILLIE COLON & HECTOR LAVOE - Cosa Nuestra CD/LP [Reissue/1969] (Craft Recordings)  
Willie Colon and Hector Lavoe's first gold-selling release for Fania arrived in 1969. Driven by standout tracks largely written by the duo - including Che Che Cole, Juana Pena, Te Conozco, and the bolero Ausencia - Cosa Nuestra became their breakthrough album and a cornerstone of Latin music history. In 2024, Rolling Stone named it one of the 50 Greatest Salsa Albums of All Time.

SONNY CLARK - Art Of The Trio LP [Reissue/1080] (Blue Note Records) 
Pianist Sonny Clark's trio performances receive the premium Tone Poet treatment, highlighting his melodic touch, rhythmic elegance, and hard-bop sophistication. Blue Note Tone Poet Edition - audiophile vinyl reissues cut from original analog tape. 

EKEP NKWELLE - Caged Bird LP (Mack Avenue Records)  
Ekep Nkwelle has quietly become one of the most compelling new voices in jazz today, having performed at the world's most storied stages - such as Newport Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall, and North Sea Jazz Festival - and collaborated with legends including Wynton Marsalis, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Russell Malone, and Cyrus Chestnut. All before the age of 27 and without an album of recorded music. That all changes with Caged Bird, her debut album rooted in personal truth and universal humanity, serving as a reminder that music carries us through hardship and sets us all free. Inspired by Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the record details a journey from sorrow to inspiration, representing human suffering and the pursuit of a better future. Experience her story firsthand through 9 songs filled with the poise of a seasoned artist and the urgency of someone with something profound to say.

CANNONBALL ADDERLEY - Somethin Else LP [Reissue/1958] (Blue Note Records) 
KENNY BURRELL - Midnight Blue LP [Reissue/1963] (Blue Note Records)
ERIC DOLPHY - Out To Lunch LP [Reissue/1964] (Blue Note Records)  
GRANT GREEN - Idle Moments LP [Reissue/1965] (Blue Note Records)
WAYNE SHORTER - Speak No Evil (LP reissue/1966] (Blue Note Records)
The next round of the Blue Note Essentials Series, celebrating timeless jazz masterpieces that remains essential listening for both longtime fans and new listeners alike, available at an accessible price point. 

FLYING LOTUS - 1983 LP [Reissue/2006] (Brainfeeder)   
Brainfeeder presents a special remastered vinyl repress of the inimitable Flying Lotus' seminal 2006 debut album: 1983. A record that defined the emerging LA beat scene and established Flying Lotus as it's talismanic figurehead. Remastered audio by Daddy Kev; a brand new sleeve design incorporating a sleek iridescent gold metallic sleeve with emboss detailing on black vinyl.

SMIDLEY - Murphy Horse LP (Royal Mountain) 
In the past ten years, Conor Murphy the person and Smidley the band have come to exist beyond the mere creative overflow left unexplored in his work with Foxing. Through his own growth in and out of Smidley, though, art and life itself have entered into an ongoing cycle of redefinition. This redefinition isn't a destination, but a new pathway paved by Murphy's gratitude for and security in the artist, husband, and man that he's become. Smidley's third album, Murphy Horse, soundtracks this journey. Though doubt remains a recurring obstacle for Murphy, each Smidley song brings him back home to love.

BLU AND EXILE  - Time Heals Everything LP  (Dirty Science)  
Time Heals Everything is the fifth studio album from Blu and Exile, a duo that first connected in 2007 and has spent nearly two decades refining a chemistry that continues to evolve. The ten-track LP follows 2024's Love (the) Ominous World and leans deeper into their core strengths: soul-forward production, incisive writing, and left-field choices that feel instinctive rather than experimental.

ADULT DVD - Adult DVD CD (Fat Possum Records)  
[CD available now, LP next week] Adult DVD sign to Fat Possum Records - The signing arrives after Adult DVD's 2024 EP Next Day Shipping, with Real Tree Lee serving as the band's first release on Fat Possum. It is interesting that a label often discussed in the context of blues, garage, and punk chose a synth band from Yorkshire. Now, with their album debut approaching, they are at their most critical juncture.

SQUANDERERS - Bright Madness LP (Blue Chopsticks)  
Bright Madness is the third album from the improvising trio of Wendy Eisenberg, David Grubbs, and Bonner Kramer, a glorious afternoon's worth of instant compositions laid down in Asheville NC in the early spring of 2025. The sound of Eisenberg, Grubbs, and Kramer doing their damnedest to dazzle one another is encompassing, flowing from shell-game sleights of hand to effortless beauty in the flicker of an ear, a lyrical group sound, with an insistent, vivid and immediate feel.

DIMITRIAM AND THE BUG CLUB - Instant Coffee LP (Related Records)  
Limited to 200 LPs on hand screen printed multicolor jackets; new (2025) full length from the lo-fi Tucson based band. 

COMING NEXT WEEK

WISHY - Nature’s Pill CD/LP

OSEES - Off Course CD/LP

DANZIG - 3 & 4 LP Reissues

FAT DOG - Cancel Me CD/LP

MARIAS - Submarine LP Reissue

UNWOUND - Leaves Turn… CD/LP Reissue

VANISHING TWIN - Archive LP

LARRY JUNE - Who Coppin CD/LP

POKEY LAFARGE - Rent Money CD/LP

MAC MILLER - Divine Feminine LP Reissue

KING GIZZARD - Alien Metal LP 

DECEMBERISTS - Vol 3 LP

MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO - Synonym CD/LP

OREN AMBARCHI - Cooked LP

EMILY A SPRAGUE - Cyano CD/LP

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - Stadium Arcadium LP Reissue