Danny Neill

Maisy Owen’s debut Dark On A Sunny Day is a singer-songwriter album that, for a first attempt, shows remarkable maturity and a kind of timelessness in her style. Even when stripped down to the bare bones of voice and guitar, it still has enough detail to hold its spell. Maisy Owen sounds like she has a fascinating journey ahead.

White Fence’s Orange, out now via Drag City, is Tim Presley’s first album in seven years — and it sounds freer and more expansive than ever. With Ty Segall again in the producer’s chair, these songs are built for electricity, celebrating melody whilst unafraid to show hurt, fear, and despair. There is an audible joy in the playing.

Blood Sucking Maniacs, the self-titled debut from Terry Allen’s multigenerational family band, is out now on Paradise of Bachelors. Spanning five generations and 121 years across twenty-two tracks, it folds in Jo Harvey Allen, sons, grandsons, Panhandle Mystery Band stalwarts and a barrelhouse-piano-playing matriarch captured on seventies cassette. Free, wild, tender, and gloriously unruly — Americana cross-pollinated across the ages.

Kris Drever’s “Doing This For Love” is an artfully crafted meditation on the unglamorous reality of 4am alarm clocks and quiet sacrifices. Infused with northern grit, it stands as a powerful tribute to the working lives it depicts. These songs are born of struggle but elevated by love, each with the potential to secure a lasting place in the folk canon.

Juni Habel’s Evergreen In Your Mind is an absolutely wonderful record. Eleven songs of comforting timelessness built on homely nylon guitar and subtly deployed production — from the perfection of Stand So Still to the mesmeric suspense of Gitarhum. This is 41 minutes of sumptuous music that cleanses the mind and reconnects you with the things that matter in life.

Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke, Tommy Peltier’s “Echo Park (The 70’s Sessions)” catches the moment a jazz lifer reinvented himself as a songwriter in 1970s Los Angeles. Recorded in a hillside house near Echo Park Lane, these eleven tracks brim with melodic invention — each could be convincingly sold as a long-forgotten seventies hit. Out now via Drag City.

Canadian songwriter Cat Clyde comes flying in like a midnight courier, express‑delivering through Concord Records the most intimate dispatches of her life. Mud Blood Bone crackles with urgency even as Cat bares her soul. It is her most personal record yet and also her most electrifying, a pulse‑quickening rush, wrapped in confession.

Katherine Priddy’s third album, These Frightening Machines, marks a bold shift in energy and intent. No longer anchored by the standard tools of her genre, Priddy moves between folk tenderness and fierce, pop-inflected urgency with rare confidence. From the powerful opener Matches to the devastating closer Could This Be Enough?, this is her most fully realised work to date.

In the Low Light is one of the strongest albums of its kind this year — a record that puts songs and the emotive stimuli that drove them front and centre. Written in the shadow of profound personal loss, Lucy Kitchen strikes a remarkable balance between darkness and light, unflinching in its grief yet quietly alive with hope.

On ‘The Call,’ Montreal-based quartet Bellbird turn jazz presumptions upside down, with the rhythm section dictating form while horns take care of tempo and sonic character. Even as they run with carefree abandon, they never lose the listener. Every track features juicy melodies and audio patterns that are pleasing to the ears, launching themselves on a flight that sounds rather timeless.

Matt Kivel’s eighth album, Escape from L.A., is his most autobiographical offering—a nine-year labor of love weaving personal memories with cultural touchstones. Like Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, it plays with time and perspective. From the gentle shuffle of Santa Monica to the ominous throb of Tidal Wave, Kivel has crafted a widescreen reflection on home, memory, and place.

In Dream Life, Marta Del Grandi crafts a captivating art-pop landscape where reality and imagination blur. Moving beyond the “oil painting” textures of Selva, this album embraces a detailed, contemporary “photobook” style. From the staccato energy of the rhythmic single “Antarctica” to the hazy, shifting title track, Del Grandi delivers a sophisticated, ground-breaking collection that redefines pop music for 2026.