It’s been six years since Phoebe Bridgers released her last solo album, and in that time she has retreated from the ironic, hyper-online persona that helped establish her popularity. Her third studio album, Lost Weekend, buoys itself within the liminal world of early aging. In lead single “Lost Boys”—who characteristically “Never grow up, never go home”—Bridgers is dreamy and carefree, the accompanying music video set in a fantasy world with knights in armor and Bridgers dressed as an elf. The album is full of synths and her voice is often heavily AutoTuned, creating an almost underwater effect that unmoors us from time and place. But that escape is a fantasy. On “Still Standing” she addresses her recently deceased father, to whom the album is dedicated, singing “I can’t imagine you dead / But you are every day / Thank you for everything.” On “Kill Me” she sings, “Times are scary / My boys are getting married / Turning twenty one / I’m not but I was once” over swelling guitars, heavy and full. Having been 21 when her debut album Stranger in the Alps was released—an album that shaped my emotional volatility then—the nostalgia for it rings true. I don’t scream anymore. I don’t drink, and I think hard before I put anything online. There’s something simple about feeling everything at top volume, about asking strangers for attention and them giving it to you. It’s a simplicity I miss—being responsible is often quite boring, and understanding the world in all its devastating complexity is exhausting. Bridgers, like many our age, wants more simplicity. Ahead of this release, she has played several secret shows and didn’t allow phones, a policy that extends to her upcoming tour. Lost Weekend urges listeners to be present before we’re trying to escape the next iteration. —Marisa Clogher
Born Steven Eugene Grove in Maryland, Euge Groove first rose to fame with his famous sax part on the smash hit from the Miami-based group Exposé, “Seasons Change.” From there, he worked stints with the legendary soul-jazz group Tower of Power and appeared on albums with stalwarts such as Joe Cocker, Aaron Neville, and Richard Marx. After battling health issues in recent years, Groove has returned with The Phoenix, an album that focuses on themes of resilience. The title track, which also doubles as the lead single, has the typical Euge Groove sound: playful and funky with a finger-snapping beat. “Heart of Gold,” a soaring track that references his recovery from open-heart surgery, features his soprano saxophone and has more of a gospel-infused R&B sound to it. He also pays tribute to his dogs with tracks such as “Lil’ Man” and “Odysseus,” the latter being the name of his cardiac service dog. After 14 albums and staring mortality in the face, Euge Groove’s comeback album could very well be his best effort yet.—Ryne Hancock
Once upon a time, hey thanks. were a pop-punk band who took their name from a Wonder Years song, ended it with an exclamation point instead of a period, and played club shows that felt like DIY house-show parties. But now the party’s over, and Avoidance addresses what’s left in the afterglow. The mask comes off and anxiety sets in as you begin to interrogate every social interaction you had until all you’re left with is a tangled mess of self-doubt. They capture that isolated feeling by embracing Depeche Mode on this album. In hindsight, their last album, 2022’s Start/Living, was the perfect bridge to cross the gap in creative direction the band was heading for, experimenting with glittery synths and modulated vocals. On Avoidance, the new wave worship is fully realized with driving bass and reverby drums speckling each track. This album is so obviously crafted with care and depth, but something about it keeps me from staying engaged with many of the songs until the end. I’m left feeling that tracks like “Recollection” or “On 45” lack a throttle or, at the very least, a vessel to contain their new grandiose and expressive style. Even though those tracks tend to drag, there are some synth bops on this record I love, like “Is It Fate, Is It Mine?,” “TENSION,” and the title track. Although sprawling, Avoidance creates a hi-fidelity atmosphere that transcends the band’s roots. —Dalton Spangler
It’s become a cliché to call a new Rolling Stones album their best one since Tattoo You—an album released in 1981. Foreign Tongues might very well fit that bill, but that ain’t saying much. Mick Jagger has said over the years that his vision for the Stones is to make records that sound like whatever is popular at the time—and adding a Stones-y twist. This approach is both admirable and confounding—admirable that they want to change with the times and resist the urge to make another Exile on Main St, confounding because the results have not been great. Foreign Tongues is no different. It’s trendy these days to have big choruses that jump out of shitty Bluetooth speakers, and the Stones really went for it here. Soaring choruses are all over this record. But after a while, listening to the album becomes a bit of a slog—even though we get some rockers (“Divine Intervention”), some disco (“Jealous Lover”), and some country (“Ringing Hollow”) along the way. It’s a small miracle that the Stones put out a new record in 2026. I commend them for trying to sound like 2026 instead of some ‘60s nostalgia trip. They’re called the Rolling Stones for a reason. It’s their nature to move forward, results be damned. —Bald Mick (of The Shitty Stones)
It’s been 25 years since The Strokes released their debut album Is This It and ushered in a full-blown garage rock revival. In the ensuing decades, the band has released six more full-length records. Somehow, there is still a contingent of fans who expect every record to sound like the ones they wrote as dirty 20-somethings hanging around smoky NYC clubs. Those fans will have to keep waiting, because this album isn’t that. On the Rick Rubin-produced Reality Awaits, we see The Strokes firmly situated in mid-life and grappling with themes of love, loss, war, power, greed, and capitalism in songs laced with complex instrumentation and weird vocal effects, all packed inside the most radio-unfriendly formats. Cinematic and sprawling, opener “Psycho Shit” clocks in at over five minutes and as singer Julian Casablancas scream-growls, “You kill your prey from your nest / From behind a desk, psycho shit / You have no honor or no balls / Discipline is delicious,” it becomes quickly clear this record has a bone to pick. It goes on to tackle AI, the state of the modern music industry, the military-industrial complex, consumerism, and the general apathy of our current existence. The two opening and closing tracks are the most sonically challenging on the record, though “Dine N’Dash” and “The Fruits of Conquest” are among the best offerings on the record. But the middle chunk—comprised of the tongue-in-cheek “Lonely in the Future,” the maudlin “Falling Out of Love,” the Prince-esque “Going to Babble On,” and the earworm single “Going Shopping”—is highly accessible. The beauty of this record, however, lies in its totality. It’s a mere nine tracks with a 43-minute run time and on first listen, it feels a bit strange: The sprawling song lengths, the spoken-word interjections, the AutoTune (the internet is big mad about that). But with repeated spins, the vision comes together. The Strokes could have tried to recreate “Last Nite” or “Reptilia” until the end of time and it would’ve made plenty of people happy. But I, for one, am down for this weird middle. They’re playing with the shape of their sound in a way that feels confrontational, and listeners should be game to meet the challenge. —Erin Hall
Diamond-cut between shimmering points of tension and release, local four-piece Swarm Comp’s debut album It Can Happen Anywhere feels like a long and eventful quest with a friend. Featuring shifting rhythms of scuzzy rock, the record frames feelings that are discordant and satisfying in the same breath. Opening with “Jen’s Last Night On Earth,” the album begins a journey that is both joyful and dark, moving along with impatience. The expansive feel of the record begins to take shape in “Thief” as we hear about the life of a pirate, or, more pointedly, a fool. Across a vocal line that blisters with intensity, we’re fixating on the ocean breeze. When “Coves” provides a skippy little break, and shifts languages to Spanish, we’re put back in a joyous groove and sent along our way. Even if finding a spiritual center to the album feels challenging with its myriad pushes and pulls, the almost nine-minute wanderer “Great Job!” provides a throughline of Swarm Comp’s insistent and reckless catharsis. With tempo shifts, varying vocal lines, and revisitings upon revisitings of motifs slowly emerging from the competing melodies, “Great Job!” collapses in on itself and slowly disintegrates. When we arrive at the end of the album, with the aptly named “Touching Grass,” the finish line has us feeling sweaty and spiritually cleansed. —Eva Karl
In the case of punk (and perhaps beyond), Twisted Teens has become New Orleans’ #1 musical export this year. Composed of Caspian Hollywell and “Razor” Ramon Santos, this is their second record of the year, and it likely won’t be their last. They’re pulling a real Guided By Voices by releasing back-to-back records that rival each other in quality. It’s arguable that Twisted Teens was a bit more energetic on Blame The Clown, leaning into the spirit of Mardi Gras revelry. Florida Water Blues mellows out for a chiller, albeit still pop-forward record, perfect for the summer slowdown. Their range is most plain on tracks like “Weather The Season” with its gentle doo-wop melody and the epic closer “Sun Go Down,” which sounds like it should be sung around an Arabi levee campfire as wood pops and red-hot embers glide off into the river. However, some of my favorite cuts from the album have plenty of energy to spare. “Swamp” not only paints a flattering image of New Orleans as “a crazy swamp just about in the crotch of America” that “smells like ket and two-piece chicken,” but it’s really about choosing the life you want and accepting the consequences that come with decomposing down here in Southeastern Louisiana. Twisted Teens only seem to be getting better and better, and the world is noticing, as they were just signed to Sub Pop in August and are playing with artists like The Breeders and Kurt Vile. I’m excited to see if they can turn 2026 into a truly generational run—so far they’re well on their way. —Dalton Spangler
U.K.-based Swedish artist Nina Winder-Lind presents a raucous and celebratory collection of songs on her debut album Wild Love. Living in the seaside city of Brighton, England, Winder-Lind and her band have created something electric and fresh despite being a fairly faithful example of the rock genre. Winder-Lind’s bold vocals are raw and disarming, singing accompanied by a cacophony of instruments resembling a contemporary chamber orchestra. With a distinctly 1960s throwback style, Winder-Lind’s lead single from the record, “Girls,” is an anthemic and pensive treatise on girlhood, a meditation on the contradictions of its pains and joys. In “Headfirst,” the primacy of emotion is confirmed, as her singing builds in repetition: “Thank God for all that I feel.” Winder-Lind is a celebrator of existence: the good, the bad, and the ugly, and the muscular vibrato with which she sings emits a life-affirming energy. Following in a genealogy of artists such as Joanna Newsom and Fiona Apple, Winder-Lind’s debut is a spectacular tribute to being human, and may just leave you changed. —Eva Karl
Cronus is a novelette that depicts a dystopian near-future America where segregation never ended, and various historical milestones from our world (like the election of the first Black president) never occurred—and also, time travel is a commercial enterprise. Wealthy white folks can go back and visit eras of history where they can experience “thrill,” like 1921 Black Wall Street, during the racial massacre that claimed the lives of hundreds of Black residents. The main character, Annabeth, is a Black woman who works for the time travel company, and in between dealing with the stressors of living in a segregated society, she has visions. She’s one of many Black people beginning to suffer from what the government is calling false memory syndrome, as she sees a world where Black people did eventually get equal protections under the law. This culminates in her being recruited by an organization that tells her that there’s nothing false about those memories. The story is short but effective—not a single word is wasted. Its impact is in its plausibility, especially with the current administration hard at work erasing Black history and a tech oligarchy that is using their billions to reshape the country in their image. The setting is slightly more technologically advanced than ours, and the unfolding realization of what those “false” memories really are is satisfying. If you can handle depictions of institutional and overt racism, and need a short read in your life, this novelette will satisfy you. —Danny Cherry Jr.
Someday We Won’t Remember This is a deeply personal work of nonfiction, depicting the author’s life in blunt and vivid prose. Doc McLemore’s debut is partially about how their father tried to kill their mother, but is so much more than that—it weaves together a narrative of trauma, identity, addiction, and family secrets using McLemore’s memory, medical records, court documents, interviews, and journals, as well as letters from their father while he was incarcerated, to make an emotionally rich debut. It was approached with the eye of investigative journalism, diving deep into their family life and the recesses of their memory. The chapters are dated and bounce back and forth from the early 1990s to the 2010s, which lends itself well to a book about the things we carry in our memories and how they shape us, as we get a glimpse into both the inciting incidents that led McLemore where they are, and the things that followed them years later. It was tough to read at points, though not due to a lack of quality writing. This is a well-told story—and not a very long book—so if you can handle McLemore’s plainly stated truths, you will enjoy this book, and maybe even be inspired to think about your own life and the things that led you to where you are. —Danny Cherry Jr.
We are currently living through the future that cyberpunk writers from the ‘80s warned of: tech-overlords and capitalism run amok, gross income inequality, and technologists trying (but mostly failing) to create artificial intelligence that rivals the minds and labor of humans. This Machine Kills Billionaires is a perfect short story collection for this moment. Containing four stories, it begins with the award-winning novella The Hidden God. In it, billionaires are dying off, largely at the hands of the tech they helped create. While this is occurring, the main character, Izzy, a philosopher, is working for a Silicon Valley billionaire, helping train the world’s first Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) on morality and philosophy. As the story progresses, Izzy sees there may be more to the AGI than she can see, and from there, the story raises philosophical questions that harken back to the proverbial trolley problem: Would you take one life to save many? The next tales aren’t slouches either. One follows a truck driver who is running behind on his delivery; another follows climate activists who are planning to bomb a power plant. The final story is more literary in nature—more contemplative with an emphasis on the philosophical question it raises—but the cyberpunk elements present in the first stories are still there. The collection is cathartic and philosophical but doesn’t sacrifice suspense and tension. The prose is crisp and page-turning, and the depictions of future technological hellscapes paint vivid portraits. Though our reality’s billionaires may not end up getting hoisted on their own petards like the billionaires in this collection, reading this book could be a consolation.— Danny Cherry Jr.
The 2010s are officially old enough to have music histories being written about them. That decade of punk and DIY music was what I grew up around as a teen, so naturally a book mentioning many old favorites caught my eye. Andrew Sacher, the longtime managing editor at BrooklynVegan until the recent layoffs, was on the front lines as a music journalist throughout most of this era. Naturally, he does a good job laying out the people, places, record labels, and bands that formed this movement, often referred to as “emo revival” or “fourth wave emo.” The book starts out in the late 2000s, when bands were inspired by ‘90s emo projects like Cap’n Jazz and Braid of “second wave emo” and wanted to recreate that style in spite of mall emo and Warped Tour making the term a vague descriptor at best. Starting in odd venues like VFW halls, barns, churches, and basements, the emo revival would eventually grow into an influential scene in the early 2010s where headline tours regularly sold out 1,200-capacity venues like Union Transfer in Philly. Though tons of bands are mentioned throughout the book, some of the most pivotal mentions include Algernon Cadwallader, The Menzingers, Title Fight, Touché Amoré, and Joyce Manor early on. Those bands would help give rise to The Hotelier, Foxing, Modern Baseball, and PUP, as well as the return of cult bands like American Football. Although he’s covering a lot of ground, Sacher presents the story well, organizing the book into sections dedicated to specific years, further divided into chapters that highlight significant moments. The lack of detailed photo captions throughout the book is irksome, and Sacher’s style can read a bit stiff and encyclopedic sometimes, but when you’re trying to wrangle in such a wide range of bands, it’s challenging to prioritize immersive storytelling. Although he holds a generally favorable view of the movement, Sacher does address some of the problems within the scene as well, including the “emo ceiling” that held bands back, the lack of diversity on stage, and the #MeToo era scandals. If you’re at all interested in punk, indie, or alternative subgenres generally, there’s a lesson to be found here on the power of DIY and open-minded communities who prioritize musical growth and personal accountability over fame and money. —Dalton Spangler
James Sallis, who died in January, is best known for his novel Drive, adapted into the movie of the same name starring Ryan Gosling. A sometimes New Orleans resident and Tulane affiliate, he captured the ebbs and flows of the city in the mystery series featuring New Orleans private eye/poet Lew Griffin. Other work includes a set of profiles of American guitarists and a biography of author Chester Himes. Like the late Leonard Cohen or (the still-living) Walter Mosley, Sallis’ lifespan and personality led him to muse about the inevitable passage of time for longer than many artists have careers at all. This, his last novel, is no exception, following a cop-turned-jazz guitarist summoned back to his small riverfront hometown—perhaps in Sallis’ native Arkansas, though not explicitly stated—to aid in an investigation. It blossoms into a series of mysteries, flashbacks, and meandering ruminations on the nature of the past and what’s knowable, punctuated by enough musical references to fill a mixtape or two. Like Sallis’ Griffin novels, Backwater sheds the strict whodunit structure and linearity for something more meditative, with his jazzman detective relying on stage-honed improvisational skills rather than investigative procedure to make it through the gig as best he can. —Steven Melendez
There is a scene in the 1982 documentary I Heard It Through The Grapevine in which the writer James Baldwin is in conversation with several prominent New Orleans Civil Rights leaders, including Oretha Castle Haley and Hosea Williams. In this conversation, they point out that although Louisiana had achieved political representation by Black leaders across the state, things had not materially improved for the Black community. It was instead apparent that those political figures were being used to uphold the status quo—in other words, representation alone was not enough. That scene feels in conversation with journalist and academic Steven W. Thrasher’s latest book, The Overseer Class: A Manifesto. Deftly drawing upon history, political theory, philosophy, current events, and pop culture, Thrasher examines how the white supremacist ruling class has co-opted identity politics and how individuals from marginalized communities and identities—not just race, but also gender identity, sexuality, class, disability, and so on—become part of the “overseer class,” which, as Thrasher describes it, is “a phenomenon in which people from marginalized populations amass power not by uplifting people from the communities they come from, but by collectively cracking the skulls of their own.” Though the police immediately come to mind when thinking of overseers—Thrasher shares an anecdote about when he briefly considered joining the NYPD in the early 2000s, thinking that he, as a queer Black man, might be able to reform that institution—he also explains in detail that they exist at all levels of society: politics, medicine, non-profits, academia, etc. It is the arena of academia where Thrasher himself has famously experienced the most harm from the overseer class. Under pressure from the U.S. government, Thrasher faced charges and was fired from his role as the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of Social Justice in Reporting at Northwestern University for his solidarity with students protesting the genocide in Gaza, betrayed by many colleagues including fellow Black and queer academics. Thrasher writes about both his personal experiences and those of others with a righteous and justifiable anger; while a rigorously researched and well-written book, it is meant to be a call to action, not merely contemplation. Whether we opt for reform or revolution, Thrasher’s central thesis is that we first need to move toward solidarity, invoking the words of Toni Morrison: “‘just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.’” —Mary Beth Campbell
Di’Anno tells the cautionary tale of what can happen when a rock’n’roll rebel lives long enough to face the consequences of a reckless, lone wolf lifestyle. Paul Di’Anno’s rough vocals defined Iron Maiden’s first two albums, but his even rougher attitude ultimately led to the group seeking a replacement in 1981. Months later, his former band with a new singer, Bruce Dickinson, became household names thanks to The Number Of The Beast. Director Wes Orshoski originally envisioned this documentary as a collection of old comedic tales revolving around Maiden’s so-called lost singer, but that changed dramatically when he entered Di’Anno’s life in 2017. After decades of negligence and poor medical treatment, Di’Anno’s leg had swollen to an alarming size that kept him bound to a wheelchair and unable to perform anymore. The once mighty metal titan sold off his Maiden royalties decades prior and now struggled to sustain himself, let alone find a path towards recovery and a return to the stage. Seven years of footage follows Di’Anno through his lengthy stay in Croatia to receive medical treatment, his return to performing again, and his death in 2024. This is a difficult watch with some seriously gory footage of Di’Anno’s knee surgery, but the resulting documentary serves as an intimate portrayal of aging after a life spent running free. —William Archambeault
It’s been four years in the Marvel Universe since Spider-Man’s (Tom Holland) last adventure, and he’s all grown up. Or maybe just finally going through puberty? The love of his life MJ (Zendaya) and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) don’t remember Peter Parker is Spider-Man because of Dr. Strange’s spell that erased him from their memories. Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) is gone, nothing but a grave to visit and a memory that pops up at precise times to remind him of important life lessons. He no longer has access to Tony Stark’s wealth and gadgets, so he’s building his own. He’s alone, fighting a lot of street-level thugs on the New York crime scene. Brand New Day is an attempt at a more mature Spider-Man movie, which makes sense since the stars will all be over 30 by the time you read this. They’ve succeeded in the sense that there’s more sexuality and it’s more boring. Florence Pugh shows up as Yelena Belova/Black Widow, taking meetings naked in a bathhouse. There’s uncontrollable white goo shooting out of Parker’s body about which I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. His body is changing and his hormones are raging when he brutalizes Scorpion (Michael Mando) in front of police. Despite the action setpieces, cameos from The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and a mystery villain that was kept under wraps throughout production which I won’t spoil here, Brand New Day slogs along as a listless series of setpieces to set up future Marvel movies with the carte blanche of a multiverse allowing origins to be rewritten or reinterpreted. It’s already the eighth highest-grossing movie of all time as of this writing, and it’s a fine movie, but it’s by far the worst of Tom Holland’s turns as Spider-Man. —Carlos A. Molina
Jane Schoenbrun’s work capitalizes on the claustrophobic nostalgia of the screens that raised a generation—hued with blue light and full of grainy, staticky old videos—and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is another strong addition in the collection (following 2021’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and 2024’s I Saw the TV Glow). In Schoenbrun’s third feature film, Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is a young filmmaker looking to reboot the slasher franchise Camp Miasma with a queer and overly academic lens. She travels to meet Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson)—the original final girl from the franchise who now lives by herself at the abandoned summer camp where the movie was filmed—to pick her brain about a moment in the film that changed Kris forever. While on the surface the movie has the standard meta, self-referential movie-about-movies schtick going on, its larger thematic offering is far more nuanced. The moment that Kris questions Billy about is a look that Billy gives during orgasm, something that Kris admits more than once that she struggles to achieve without going far away in her own head—without turning herself into a character in a movie. Then, the movie becomes real. Kris journeys through the beats of the original Camp Miasma, intent on getting out of her head and into her body, on coming and becoming the final girl. Schoenbrun is proficient in creating striking, color-saturated images which are rarely trying to disguise themselves as realistic, and their independence from realism helps us actually take it all at face value. At Camp Miasma, everything is real. —Marisa Clogher
Orson Welles’ adaptation of Franz Kafka’s posthumous 1925 novel (one of my favorites) explores the surreal and psychosexual Freudian frustrations in life through the lens of a bureaucratic hellscape. While not a perfectly faithful adaptation, Welles manages to capture the anxiety and illogical helplessness the individual feels when dealing with overbearing authorities and their opaque practices that comes to define the term Kafkaesque. If you’ve ever had to deal with the Sewerage and Water Board, you know what it means. Anthony Perkins, of Psycho fame, plays Josef K., the accused protagonist. His childlike innocence and powerlessness within the system build on the awkward tone of his role as Norman Bates in Psycho. Welles interprets Kafka’s descriptions as dream logic, using long takes, chiaroscuro lighting, and strange angles to keep our characters trapped and hidden in staircases, hallways, artist dens, and giant bureaucratic factories with impossible geometry. An eerie sexuality lingers in the air in every interaction Josef K. has with a woman, and cuckish men kowtow to The Advocate (Welles), there to legally represent them to achieve ostensible freedom. Freudian slips and imagery of concentration camp prisoners tell us what Welles believes about McCarthyism and witch hunts, and he modernizes the novel by including a supercomputer, “one of those electronic gimmicks that can give you the answer to anything.” The dialogue tells us the film will be “abstract,” and it’s worth taking on the challenge or formulating your own interpretation of the frustration. (The Trial plays on September 6 and 9 at the Prytania Theatre Uptown as part of their Classic Film Series.) —Carlos A. Molina
