Styrofoam Winos are the antidote to supergroups. Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel are three multi-instrumentalists and songwriters who rolled together like the fluff in a tramp’s pocket, they met while working in a now-defunct market and cafe in Nashville. After years of jamming and collaborative songwriting, they released a self-titled debut in 2021 and a follow-up, Real Time, in 2024. Both records were full of endearingly haphazard arrangements, winning country melodies and sharp songwriting. Any River (June 19th, 2026, on Dear Life Records) is more of the same, but better.
You can tell a bit about them by the company they keep: songwriter and Friendship drummer Michael Cormier-O’Leary is an admirer, as is Will Oldham, and the various band members have toured with Ryan Davis and MJ Lenderman. That gives you some clues about their sound: you might expect ragged but literate Americana, tall tales told in a drunken drawl, lo-fi sensibilities and high ideals. You’d be right, partly. But what the Winos can also do, as Lenderman has said, is boogie. Any River’s perky opener Pearls kicks things off with a smart, surprisingly slick guitar line and goes on to describe the American pearl industry in oddly specific geographical detail. The guitar hits raspier and rougher patches as the song progresses, but the rhythm section remains crisp and tight.
The groove comes from various directions too. Somebody Wants to Send You a Message has a choppy new wave sensibility and a chorus that builds from a moment of calm to an interjection of Beefheartian bass clarinet. At times, as on I Felt You, the country influences are helped along by a rhythmic and melodic dynamism that owes something to power pop. Influences are wide and subsumed with impressive ease. At times, the band resemble Tanglewood Numbers-era Silver Jews, or Big Star, or even Little Feat, but it’s all done in service of the song, and it’s always underpinned by a rootedness in the traditions of country music.
The three band members move freely between instruments, so sometimes you’re not quite sure who is doing what, but this barely seems relevant. What is important is how they work together, with each member able to locate a particular song’s unique atmosphere without any apparent effort. Swimminin is a brisk, fuzzy, percussive stomp: glam dynamics and psych guitars. BBQ has a minimal groove that anchors a song, which sits somewhere between the Jayhawks and Smile-era Beach Boys. Off My Mind combines louche, laid-back jazz-country with Turner’s quietly emotive vocals, while the low-key epic Just For You has a windblown, yearning warmth to it, augmented by delicate piano notes and the sudden jolt of a distorted guitar solo.
These songs are invariably rich in lyrical detail. New Friend sees the strange and the mundane rub shoulders in a way that is almost utopian, while Kenkel’s trumpet solo is a playful masterstroke. Lyrical themes – particularly the subject of water – run between songs. On You’ll Never Take Me Alive, water functions as one of many symbols of freedom. The keyboard on closer Gettin’ Down seems to circle around itself, a kind of liquid swirl. ‘I wanna be like water if I can,’ David Berman once sang, paraphrasing Bruce Lee. With Any River, Styrofoam Winos have taken that sentiment to heart and created an album on which everything seems to flow.
Any River (June 19th, 2026) Dear Life Records
Order: https://styrofoamwinos.bandcamp.com/album/any-river