Albums

Tiarn is a gorgeous sophomore record by Australian ambient-folk producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Hana Stretton. Like its predecessor, it comes alive off the record, a living and breathing tapestry of sound. Where Soon found its focus on the Australian bush, this latest project casts its gaze on the endless shores of the Pacific Ocean, where Stretton’s boundless textural explorations reflect a world suspended in blue. 

Rowena Wise’s “Bad Things Feel Good*” expands on her impressive debut with quiet sincerity and intimacy as calling cards. She moves between swooping maximalism and spine-tingling closeness, juggling contradictory elements. The mess has been transmuted into something beautiful, with a skillfully directed emotional sting—the bigger picture without losing sight of small details—the perfect soundtrack to contemporary emotional life.

Max Subar’s “Anything Could Be” started with ten days alone in a house on a frozen Wisconsin lake — just a mobile rig, live vocals and guitar. Back in Chicago, a small cast of collaborators gave the recordings flesh without crowding them. Loose, lived-in and radically patient, Subar walks us through his Merge Records debut track by track.

Nora Stanley’s “Glass” is a quietly gorgeous debut. Previously known as an instrumentalist, Brooklyn-based Stanley has found her feet as a songwriter with remarkable speed and apparent ease, her primary muse the poet Anne Carson. As the album progresses, personal and political themes twine inseparably around each other. Perfectly timed and executed with a grace and lightness extraordinary for a debut.

Blake Hornsby’s “Brugmansia” leans heavily into British acid folk, styling its creator as a pointedly anachronistic lysergic troubadour. Songs stretch out as if baking in the sun, existing somewhere between traditional song, avant-garde composition and ancient rite. A strange and beguiling songwriter’s album, “Brugmansia” is a living record defined by real musical ingenuity.

Ed Askew’s posthumous “The Final Painting” captures the fragile poignance of a great artist in the December of his years, giving one last shake of his feathers before exiting the stage. The album occupies a space between Bowie’s “Blackstar” and Cohen’s “You Want It Darker,” not raging against the dying of the light but dancing towards it with outstretched arms.

Sir Richard Bishop’s “Hillbilly Erotica” moves away from the gnarly aggression of “Hillbilly Ragas” into gentler territory, with mostly improvised solo guitar that ebbs and flows with sharp dexterity. The music soars with clusters of notes in places and creates space and quiet with minimal, precise picking in others — minimalist maximalism from a guitarist of remarkable prowess.

On “Reunion”, Mama’s Broke’s third album, Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria touch the darkest aspects of human life with openness and admirable musical originality. The Nova Scotia duo weave Appalachian and Eastern European traditions into songs that touch on economic inequality, violence against women, and stunningly beautiful, lyrically enigmatic ballads in the spirit of Time (The Revelator)-era Gillian Welch. They find something worth saving in the dark.

Prairiewolf’s “Zone Poems” blurs the line between studio recording and live album, its material cherry-picked from 2025 sets in Crestone and Denver, then layered, manipulated and rearranged. Each decision is discerning, the sound never overcrowded. Previously made recordings have been examined, forensically operated on and crafted into a precise, clean set of songs that captures a trio’s energy.

The Powers Ensemble share the mutant DNA of Will Oldham, “Astral Weeks” and Robbie Basho, and there’s a freshness to “Kindling” which is disarming but also makes your blood sing with recognition. Each song captures a communal rush of discovery — messy ecstasy achieved with flair and concision.

Creekbed Carter Hogan’s “Peasants Revolt” acknowledges the possibility of an imminent apocalypse but is steeped in medieval uprisings, the Haitian Revolution, twenty-first-century trans activism and Americana. The songs are exuberant in their difference, and it’s the sudden shifts to or from the personal that make it such a unique album. A detailed American pastoral, beautiful and powerful.

Kevin Coleman’s “K.C. Blues” is happy to sweep through styles and moods, bringing in experimental folk, Americana and blues over six tracks and forty minutes. Made in bedrooms and basements, it is looser and more open-ended than “Imaginary Conversations”, each musician seamlessly contributing to a coherent sound. An exciting, impressive album that rewards deep listening.