the crowd's
week

Echo & the Bunnymen
— Apples For Isaac

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · BMG

Twelve years of silence and the brightest record they've ever made. Clem Burke, of Blondie, on drums — he died before it came out. Start with "Brussels Is Haunted".

Twelve years after their last record, Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant return with the Bunnymen's thirteenth album — and with a backstory that makes it heavier than it seems. Apples For Isaac was practically finished in 2021, but the revision process dragged on so long that Clem Burke, the Blondie drummer who played on the sessions, died before seeing it released. What comes out now is, paradoxically, the sunniest record in their discography: eleven short songs, with strings, open choruses and that sunglasses-indoors attitude that has never left them. "Brussels Is Haunted", "The Honey" and "Lab Rats Ran" are the highlights. For anyone who grew up with Ocean Rain, it's a return well above anything you could have expected — and for everyone else, it's a good way into one of the founding discographies of post-punk.

critics 79

beabadoobee
— Pylon

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · Dirty Hit / Interscope

Fourth album and the loudest of the lot. Sonic Youth, Helium and Dinosaur Jr. dripping from the guitars. Isolation, nostalgia and obsession in her early twenties. Bea Laus is back, and angry.

After the polish of This Is How Tomorrow Moves, nobody expected beabadoobee to turn around and go back to the noise of her first EPs. Pylon is Beatrice Laus's fourth album and the most volatile of them all: saturated guitars, crackling drums and writing that doesn't hide the isolation, nostalgia and romantic obsession of recent years. You can clearly hear what she's been listening to — Sonic Youth, Helium, Dinosaur Jr. — but the pop structure is still there, and that's what sets it apart from most 90s indie revivalism. It's the only record this week with a clear consensus between critics and listeners, and the most complete of her career from start to finish. From our list, it's also the name most likely to fill a venue in Lisbon tomorrow morning.

critics 74 · users 80

Agnes Obel
— The Meaning of Flowers

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · Deutsche Grammophon

Six years after Myopia and now on Deutsche Grammophon. Twelve songs written, recorded and produced alone in Berlin, about pregnancy and metamorphosis. Dedicated to her daughter.

Six years after Myopia, Agnes Obel is back — and back on Deutsche Grammophon, which says almost everything about the direction of this record. The Meaning of Flowers was written, arranged, recorded and produced entirely by her in her Berlin studio, with guests coming in only on violin, cello, lap steel, harmonium, flute and saxophone. These are twelve songs about the sense of connection to everything living that she says she felt during pregnancy, drawing on sources as different as the poetry of Enheduanna, the writings of Hannah Arendt and Emanuele Coccia, and Danish pop from the 80s and 90s. Her voice is often pitch-shifted, almost unrecognisable, and the piano remains the centre of gravity. The record is dedicated to her daughter. "Laymelli" is the best place to start.

users 81

Boy Harsher
— Get Mean

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · Atlantic

Darkwave signed to Atlantic — yes, you read that right. Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller split up in 2024 and kept touring. Twelve tracks recorded in eight different places.

Few major-label signings have made so little sense on paper and so much sense in practice: Boy Harsher, who built everything on the margins, release Get Mean on Atlantic. It's the Massachusetts duo's third studio album and their clearest, poppiest and most eighties of all — which doesn't make it any lighter. Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller split up as a couple in 2024 and kept going on stage together every night, and the record's twelve tracks live off that impossible situation: love, loss and survival, delivered with the usual coldness of the synths. It was recorded in eight different places across the United States, Mexico and Italy, and you can hear that dispersal. It's still music for a dark room — only now with choruses.

users 77

featured

Emma Ruth Rundle
— These Killing Times

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · Errant Child

Sixth album, on her own label and with a full band again. Jess Gowrie (Chelsea Wolfe), Gina Gleason (Baroness) and Marissa Nadler join her. She wanted to make a hopeful record. She managed it.

Emma Ruth Rundle says she wanted to make a hopeful record — which, coming from the person behind Engine of Hell, sounds almost like a provocation. These Killing Times is her sixth album, out on her own label, Errant Child, and marks a return to the full-band format after the barer records of recent years. It was produced with Sonny DiPerri, recorded at LMNL Studios in Santa Monica and Octopus Beak in Los Angeles, and has a dynamic of silence and explosion not heard from her in quite some time. The band she put together is an argument in itself: Jess Gowrie (Chelsea Wolfe), Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos), Gina Gleason (Baroness), Marissa Nadler and Amelia Baker (Cinder Well). The eight songs alternate between the personal and the political, and "Anvil" and "Human Kindness" are the obvious ways in. It's the best listener score among the week's established names — and it's our cover.

users 85

Slow Pulp
— Melodie

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · ANTI-

Third album and the first on ANTI-. Between the expansiveness of Yard and the fog of Moveys, with Elliott Kozel producing. Fewer guitars, more ideas. Stereogum's album of the week.

Slow Pulp started out in Madison and ended up in Chicago, and in recent years they've made the slowest and most solid progress in American indie rock. Melodie is their third album, the first on ANTI-, and was produced by Elliott Kozel with Emily Massey and Henry Stoehr from the band. Sound-wise, it sits somewhere between the guitar expansiveness of Yard and the sleepy fog of Moveys: the guitars are still there, especially in the middle of the record, but there's much more attention to pop textures and unexpected progressions. Critics were divided — Stereogum made it album of the week, others found it repetitive — but listeners had no doubts whatsoever. It's the kind of band that has always worked better on a small stage than on a score sheet.

critics 68 · users 73

Feldup
— Towards Happiness

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · Talitres

The week's best listener score. The Frenchman went into a proper studio for the first time, with a band, and came out with paranoid post-punk with a Windmill accent. Start with "Cover My Ears".

Feldup built a huge following far from any traditional circuit, and Towards Happiness is the record where that story changes scale. It's the first time he's gone into a proper studio — Amaury Sauvé's Apiary, in Laval — and the first time he's brought a band: the Showerheads, with Alexandre Wettstein, Pierre Miceli and Sauvé himself on drums. The original plan was a record about healing; what came out was a portrait of everyday life in a spiral, between peaks of paranoid noise and cold, ethereal drops. The debt to London's Windmill scene and to post-punk is obvious, but there's math rock, noise and shoegaze here in equal measure, and Talitres — one of the best French independents — knew exactly where to place it. "Cover My Ears" was the first single. The week's highest user score and, for us, the discovery to follow closely.

users 90

Wasia Project
— Nocturne

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · AWAL

Debut album from siblings Will Gao and Olivia Hardy. Classical training twisted into art pop, soul and trip-hop, with the record growing darker as it goes. It starts in the street and ends at home.

Wasia Project are Will Gao and Olivia Hardy, brother and sister, both classically trained, and they got here after years of building an audience with EPs and singles — and, in his case, with a role in Heartstopper that brought a whole new audience into the conversation. Nocturne is finally their debut album, released on AWAL, and it's considerably darker than what we knew of them: twelve tracks that take their familiar piano and strings and throw them into art pop, soul, trip-hop and dance production. The sequence is conceived as a whole night — it starts with the pulse of heading out into the street and gradually settles into an almost domestic ending. "2515", "Bleeding Gold" and "Whale Call" were the singles. Very favourable reviews and a young audience growing fast: a natural candidate for a mid-sized venue here.

users 81

Whirr & Luster
— Whirr & Luster

EP

EP · 18 Sep 2026 · Free Whirl

A shoegaze split between the Bay Area old guard and the new Los Angeles generation. Four tracks, two from each side. Whirr's first material in years. Short, and it stings.

A split between two generations of the same genre is always a statement, and this one is particularly clear. On one side, Whirr — a Bay Area five-piece who helped define heavy shoegaze over the last decade and hadn't released new material in years. On the other, Luster, from Los Angeles, formed with the explicit idea of pushing the genre forward rather than re-enacting it. There are four songs in all: "Spiral Again" and "Wish I Could Give You The World" from the former, "Against the World" and "Forever" from the latter, released by Free Whirl on 12-inch, CD and digital. Trip-hop and dream pop creep in at the edges, but the weight is the same as ever. It works as a good summary of the state of shoegaze in 2026 — and as an argument for anyone who doubted the revival still had legs.

users 73

Neil Young
— Second Song

album

LP · 18 Sep 2026 · Reprise · com The Chrome Hearts

Album number fifty. Recorded at Shangri La with Lou Adler producing, seven semi-acoustic tracks. Two of them written in the 60s and never released. The title track runs to almost twelve minutes.

Second Song is Neil Young's fiftieth studio album — a number that no longer means much at this rate of release, but one worth noting. It's his second record with the Chrome Hearts, recorded at Shangri La in Malibu and produced by Lou Adler with the Volume Dealers (Young himself and Niko Bolas), the same team behind Talkin' to the Trees. There are seven songs, in a stripped-back, semi-acoustic register, with the title track stretching to almost twelve minutes — and serving as the first single, which no longer surprises anyone either. The curiosity lies in "Casting Me Away from You" and "I'll Love You Forever", both written sometime in the 60s and never released until now. Critics reacted well. At eighty, he keeps making records with the urgency of someone who still has things to say.

critics 77