Album reviews (7/3): mary in the junkyard, SML, OSEES, more

Welcome to July which has roared in like a lion on fire. It is hot here in NYC with temperatures hovering around 100° all weekend, which is not promising for outdoor cookouts on this holiday weekend. Holiday weekends are also not promising for new releases and it’s a typically slow Friday, with really only one major release in the Indie Basement world, but it’s also one of my favorite albums of the year so far — the debut album by London trio mary in the junkyard. I also review the latest from jammy LA jazz-heads SML, OSEES‘ krautrock inspired latest, and a four-decades-in-the-making double album from Arthur Russell collaborator Nirosta Steel.

For this week’s Indie Basement Classic I’ve got one of my favorite ever Ivo-era 4AD releases.

If you want to play catch-up on recent releases, check out the Indie Basement Best Songs & Albums of June 2026 roundup and my list of The Best Albums of 2026 So Far (Mid-Year).

We also just published the site-wide BV’s 40 Favorite Albums of 2026 So Far.

In other news, The Yummy Fur announced their first album in 28 years, The Wolfgang Press announced their second album since reforming, and Dinosaur Jr will have a new one out in August.

Well, that’s enough chit chat for this week. Have a nice long weekend and check out the reviews below.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: mary in the junkyard – Role Model Hermit (AMF Records)
Mesmerizing debut album from this very talented young London trio who you may have seen open for Wet Leg

The cover art for London trio mary in the junkyard’s debut album features a sepia-toned, vintage-looking photo of a fisherman with a pet mouse on his shoulder. The seaman in question is actually the band’s singer-guitarist, Clari Freeman-Taylor, and the story behind that image plays out on Role Model Hermit‘s closing track, “mouse,” which is about the fisherman and his pet meeting again in the afterlife after a seafaring accident. “I’m so sorry we drowned / The sea swallowed us, and then spat us out,” she sings over crashing drums, guitar squall, and swelling strings. “Mouse, at least I’ve found you now, my beautiful mouse.” It’s sweet, sad, nuanced, and a perfect way to end this wonderful, idiosyncratic, and surprising album.

At first blush, Role Model Hermit seems like more fuzzy, shambolic indie — not that there’s anything wrong with that — but it soon becomes clear that it was made by very skilled musicians. Freeman-Taylor and bassist Saya Barbaglia studied classical music together in school and contribute violin, viola, and cello; David Addison, meanwhile, is a skilled, inventive drummer and percussionist from the same school as Jim White. Produced by Oli Bayston (Kelly Lee Owens, Alexis Taylor), the album features thorny arrangements that also come with the roses, whether it’s the thicket of arpeggiated guitars on “Blood,” the mix of dark folk and gossamer harmonies on “Thou Shall Sprout,” or the clattering groove of “New Muscles.” Basslines in current indie rock are often a neglected element, but Barbaglia is a superstar here, laying down memorable, melodic grooves on every song.

Across it all is Freeman-Taylor, whose coquettish vocal style mixes wonder and melancholy, delivering sharply observed, deeply felt lyrics from a unique point of view and in a pronounced accent. Take the devastating, cinematic “Crash Landing,” which details a doomed, gunpowder-hot relationship that goes from “You opened up like a coconut” to “You came in like it was all my fault / Crash landing / I never want to see you again.” Her expressive voice has all the nuance of a gifted actor, drawing you even further into these well-written, hook-filled songs.

Role Model Hermit is one of the most distinctive, impressive debuts in recent memory, and even more so when you consider that mary in the junkyard are just getting started.

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SML – Spontaneous Music Live (International Anthem)
This Los Angeles jazz/electronic/jam quintet’s first live album captures much of what makes their performances so special

The best set I saw at this year’s Big Ears festival was LA five-piece SML (Small Medium Large), who built lengthy, danceable electronic pieces out of jazz improvisations. Bassist Anna Butterss, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann would start playing and settle into a groove, and synthesist Jeremiah Chiu would then sample and manipulate it with a suitcase full of modular synths, creating a loop that became the real launching point for the performance. They played in the round in a disused bus terminal, and it was fascinating to watch — and infectious to listen and dance to — as each piece morphed over 20 minutes or so. SML are essentially a jam band, but one built from different parts than the genre usually runs on.

SML have released two studio albums, but those were both captured live — they don’t have “songs” per se, every performance is new and different — and now here’s their first live album, which was recorded during a three-night residency at LA’s Zebulon in December 2025. There are two 25-minute jams, “The Drums” and “Roundabout,” which both snake through tempos, styles, and genres — jazz, funk, rave — and these players, who all have impressive CVs, are adept at all of them. Spontaneous Music Live doesn’t quite capture the exhilaration of seeing it all unfold before your eyes, but it will definitely make you want to experience it as soon as possible. With the members’ busy individual touring schedules keeping them so far from ever doing a proper tour, this may have to do.

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Nirosta Steel – My Skyscraper (ULYSSA)
Forty years in the making, this double album collects two hours of unreleased recordings by Arthur Russell collaborator Steven Hall, spanning psychedelic disco, poignant folk, and more

Born in Scotland before moving to the US when he was 15, Steven Hall is a musician, singer, and songwriter who moved to New York in 1980 and was introduced to Arthur Russell by Allen Ginsberg. Hall and Russell soon became musical collaborators and recorded together until Arthur succumbed to AIDS in 1992. Hall also made his own music as Nirosta Steel, though he didn’t actually start releasing it until the 2010s. My Skyscraper collects two hours’ worth of recordings spanning more than 40 years, including work made with Russell.

For something this sprawling, My Skyscraper holds together remarkably well. Hall and Russell orbited the same world of echo, and these lo-fi jams, most on the funky, too-slow-to-disco side of the club, are warm, intimate, and inviting. The album opens with “English Party,” a song that was apparently written for Madonna (who, incidentally, also has a new album out today), and pulls you in immediately with fluid bass and very ’80s synth stabs.

Other highlights: “Lost In Music” is not a version of Sister Sledge’s single but Hall’s own dreamy disco number that you could imagine being played at one of David Mancuso’s Loft parties; “YEHMA” is druggy funk with a charmingly unhinged falsetto vocal; and “Go for the Night” is calypso-spiced smooth R&B perfection that was written with Russell and performed with Arthur’s Landing, Hall’s Arthur Russell tribute group featuring other musicians who worked with him.

There are also two stretched-out numbers, conjoined twins born of the same acoustic guitar chord, that feature Russell on drums. Plus: torch songs, folky numbers, and a beautiful bit of a cappella titled “Grey Boy.” Admission: I only learned of this album’s existence a couple of hours before sitting down to write this and haven’t gotten to spend much time with it, but I can already tell My Skyscraper will be in constant rotation for the rest of the summer, if not the rest of the year.

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OSEES – Off Course (Deathgod)
John Dwyer and co. swerve into Can-style krautrock and welcome back Brigid Dawson into the fold on yet another strong album

Ever-prolific, ever-changing West Coast band OSEES dropped Off Course out of the blue a few weeks ago on a Friday — release day — after I’d already written Indie Basement. Because of the timing, I kinda forgot about it, but never count John Dwyer and co. out, because this is another killer swerve from these guys. Having recently explored prog metal and synth rock, Off Course sends them into krautrock territory. Specifically, Can-style, percussion-forward jams that are still undeniably OSEES.

“We went back to an older method of writing for this one,” Dwyer says. “We jammed and jammed and jammed. I took the tapes home and ironed out some mutant tunes.” He also brought in Brigid Dawson, who was in the group during their Thee Oh Sees days in the early 2010s, for vocals, and it’s very nice to hear her sing alongside Dwyer again.

Off Course opens with two awesome epics: the album’s title track, which makes great use of the current two-drummer lineup and is powered by an insidious two-note bassline; and “Hecate’s Reflection Is a Trick,” where Don Rincon and Paul Quattrone are both doing their best Jaki Liebezeit tributes while Tom Dolas lays on some very out-there synth atmospherics. Those tracks are worth the price of admission alone, but the back half of the album gets a little more melodic and ’60s-inspired, finishing with the baroque-leaning, organ-forward “The Brute on His Knees,” which is as close to Procol Harum as OSEES will ever get, all while still armed with that impressive percussive groove.

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INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC: The Wolfgang Press – Bird Wood Cage (4AD, 1988)
The Wolfgang Press reformed in 2024 after 30 years apart and just announced their second album (new single “Speakers Don’t Speak” is great), which is as good an excuse as any to revisit one of their best albums.

The longest-running band on 4AD from the label’s original Ivo Watts-Russell era, The Wolfgang Press began in 1983 as Birthday Party-inspired post-punk squawk but ended up in the ’90s as club misfits, still gothy, but inspired by De La Soul and house, with Michael Allen’s distinctive growl/howl serving as the connective tissue through it all. Falling right in the middle of their original 12-year run was Bird Wood Cage, the band’s third album, which had one foot in their past and one in their future and sounded like nothing else at the time.

The Wolfgang Press made the album with producer Flood, who would go on to work with everybody (Nine Inch Nails, U2, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins, The Killers, etc.), and Bird Wood Cage sounds like a band who’d just been handed a brand-new box of shiny toys. They still made a goth album, but a fun one that didn’t employ any of the classic tropes, and the creativity in the production and arrangements is all over these memorable, danceable songs. Dub had always figured into The Wolfgang Press’ sound, but with Flood’s assistance, “Bottom Drawer,” “Hang on Me (For Papa),” “Swing Like a Baby,” and the awesome “The Holey Man” are like Sly & Robbie lost in Berlin.

It was their emerging funky side that made the biggest impact. “Raintime” is a fretless-bass slow burner with unexpected string and brass arrangements and modern, sample-powered percussion; “Kansas” is sinister funk with a very subversive, JFK-inspired video; and “Shut That Door” closes the album in a squall of skronky James Brown riffage and fuzzed-out bass. The CD version was even better, adding all four songs from their 1987 Big Sex EP, including the Talking Heads-ish “God’s Number” and one of their best-ever songs, “The Great Leveler.” The Wolfgang Press aren’t as well remembered as Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, This Mortal Coil, or Pixies, but they made some of the most forward-thinking music on 4AD, and Bird Wood Cage marks the start of their imperial era.

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