January/February 2026
veers off beyond melody into moody beds of textured sonic voltage
Man, I feel like we haven’t talked in so long! Did you miss me? A little? No silly, it’s nothing like that, in fact Valentine’s Day was me just doing my best to love myself Ru-Paul style, with the help of a bowl of butter-Parmesan-brussels-sprouts tagliatelle and a gummy-enhanced walk around the reservoir, with the newest, most idiosyncratic and tingle-delivering artists in my earbuds and dark thoughts mixed with delight swirling through my being. Anyway, I’m here babe! We can hang out now!
As we established in my 2025 best albums list, last year was a tart and sweet cornucopia. But much as I juiced the grapefruit, there’s nectar left to be squeezed, not least of which is Blizzard, the debut by camera-shy young Irish genius Dove Ellis. He’s been rightly compared to Jeff Buckley for his passion and vocal range, but there’s something about his boldness and songcraft that also reminds me of Sinead O’Connor. His soaring falsetto does things to your body. “Little Left Hope” has been my main swoon for a minute now…
Now you’ll watch the blackout
Creeks, were they from you?
Where do they hide?
In the flashing hills, in the dewing pride
You’re stepping out of your bones
You’re stepping out of your bones
So teach me to atone
We were fattened among the calves, and
Flailing among the mites, you weaved a tangle
Yeah, soon they come down
Wings and a word
Calling aloud for melody
Now everybody be here in the room
Now is the fake
The real is the word
Sault have spent years putting out acclaimed albums while remaining enigmatic and anonymous, and are known for taking big swings, including a splashy and hugely expensive music/performance art event that semi-collapsed under its own weight and ended up triggering a $2.2 million lawsuit against Sault main man Inflo by lifelong friend and collaborator Little Simz. The truth is Sault really don’t need to reach for a sense of importance — their new one is a classic that straddles genres, based in soul I guess but with the elevated confidence of fine art; it’s got the swagger of Massive Attack at their peak, and strays into what sounds a bit like the avant garde indie territory of Chanel Beads and caroline.
I’m on top of the world
All I need is belief
Good things will come
After the pressure
I walk with love
It’ll set you free
Love and war
Must go higher
I refuse to fight with fire
This is a warning
Milkweed are a duo from London known only as “R” and “G” who have a highly organic, shifting approach to making music, letting it evolve and breathe with a variety of collaborators or stripping down to basics. Their new one Remscéla is ambitious, using the ancient Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge as its source material and spinning it out into a loose, grungy and distorted iteration of folk music that sure gets slowgraffitti’s fluids flowing. The lyrics on “Exile of the Sons of Uislu” are suitably gruesome.
News reached Ulster and everyone said that it would be a shame
Sons of Uisliu fall for the fault of a bad woman
Conchobor sent for them and the sons of Uisliu crossed the sea
Promises of safety came to stand upon Emain green
Noisiu was met by a spear thrust broke his back and through him down
Field broke out in slaughter Derdriu taken and her hands were bound
No one left but by the spike of spear or by the slash of sword
Three hundred and fifty men laid down Emain Macha burned
I figured Jawnino for sure had to be in the same scene as John Glacier, as they’re both based in London and have been busy taking rap in a surprisingly arty, dreamy direction. If there’s a sound of now they’re surely it. But I can find no evidence that they hang; Jawnino is apparently more in the orbit of noise genius Klein. He keeps his identity secret and his lyrics fresh as grass. I like hearing about bitches and guns as much as the next guy but this is something new…
Feet in the rave
Something more than your name
Trying to hold on to something
Look, fantastic books in the rain
Thought your name was Alise
But your pal just told me that it's Elaine
I think these people treat me the same
Since the screen collided with numbers
Pressed against the first offense
A song by Hollister making amends
He's still at the gate and bench
I can smell thе hate from a mile away
The stеnch is turning me on
Look, fantastic books in the rain
I just bust out one in the blue Powerade…
Next up, from the aurora borealis-kissed Scandinavian experimental pop soil that has produced Robyn and Bladee and Yung Lean and Sally Shapiro and Fine amongst so many others emerges Sassy 009, the project of Norway’s Sunniva Lindgård. She challenges herself and us to dance/dream our way in and out of seasonal affective disorder, with a grab bag of electronica that’s not afraid to twist and turn, autotuned and not, emotional, layered and complex.
Mr. Brains Teeth and Sunset
Swoosh community
Given to me through dreams
Words of strange intentional bearing
Glossary worthy
Red onion under my tongue
I pull myself away from a dark and safe space
But let us venture back to London and deeper into the electronic goth darkness with feeo AKA Theodora Laird serving a bit of cockney th-fronting. Her work on Goodness is at times akin to Lucinda Chua’s stark, beating-heart-in-the-snow ballads (“Requiem”), or Portishead at their most prickly, but it also veers off beyond melody into moody beds of textured sonic voltage. She ropes in her poet dad for a couple of spoken word ones and wraps up the album with a track, “There Is No I,” that improbably betrays notes of Joni Mitchell.
Oh
The nail pierced the drum
Tore it to pieces
Like splinters
From cherry pits under my tongue
Oh
Only human
If I could recall
Every one of your virtues
Like scribbles on notepads
In Spring
In the Summer
In the afternoon…
Puma Blue ripped a heart-shaped hole into my personal 2023 and he’s been crazy prolific of late, tossing off a couple of sketchbook albums last year and ringing in 2026 with the delirium of Croak Dream. His style is unmistakeable; he reliably falls apart overcome by passion whilst dripping Bryan Ferry cool. Perhaps he’s yearning for his British tea-time as an Elton John-style expat in Atlanta? His baseline is a take on tragic 1930s nightclub chanteuse, as exemplified on “Hush,” but he explores myriad textures, each song a lovingly crafted original.
What of trust?
Such a bust
When every memory is licked with rust
I'll act tough
Do what I must
I'll adorn my husk, but I can't hold it up
Hush sweet baby, don't you cry
No need to bleed so heavy from those eyes
I went to film school in the 90s at LA City College, where they were mostly set up to teach you the below-the-line crafts, but a lot of us were there to become artists without racking up a ton of student debt. A Belgian prof named JP Geuens was the sort of grand dame of the faculty — openly contemptuous of students that didn’t impress him (almost all of them) and quick to serve up withering comments. When a friend of mine brought in some pictures of a rough-edged drag queen for a class assignment, JP sneered “this person is just trying to shock.” And that was my first reaction to the band name Holy Fuck, but the more I thought about it — it’s actually quite a beautiful and evocative name. They remind me of the kind of largely forgotten trancey dance rock bands that we used to vibe on around ‘86 - ‘88, like Bunnydrums and the Abecedarians — a bit Krautrock with a measure of psych. They’ve released a couple of scrummy tracks off their new one Event Beat, coming out soon. Thankfully YouTube has protected us with a genteel re-thinking of their band name.
Roc Marciano is hip hop distilled and perfected on new one 656, his braggy/surreal/comedic flow delivered with rasp and spiked with menace; his backing tracks bold and off-kilter. But will zoomers know whom and what he’s referencing on Trick Bag?
Skate out of Gucci like Kristi Yamaguchi
Flip you like a Samurai Suzuki
I been nice since Iceberg shirts with the Snoopy
Shoes is Berluti, my knife work work a thing of beauty…
People talk a lot of shit about Fred Again…, partly because of his posh background, but his latest USB release is one of the best EDM albums and most impressive flexes in recent memory and it’s also not really even an album — the talented young blue-blood acknowledges the irrelevance of the album concept by just dumping truckloads of (excellent) tracks for us to wade through. USB even includes different tracks on different media and platforms. I’ve clicked “like” on ten tracks already; there’s a level of undeniability here — Fred featuring a ton of different artists, bending his genius this way and that, letting us dive in anywhere to have our own unique experience.