Notable Releases of the Week (10/3)

Happy October! This very eventful week for music kicked off with the announcement that Bad Bunny is playing the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Show, and then we got the exciting announcements of the returns of Hum, Chapterhouse, and Ink & Dagger; new Boys Life music for the first time in nearly 30 years; and more. Hear us talk about all of that and more (including that cryptic Sonic Youth tease) of this week’s new music and music news on the new episode of BV Weekly.

As for this week’s new albums, I highlight seven new albums below, and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement, including Rocket, Snõõper, Pynch, and Peel Dream Magazine. On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include AFI, Thrice, Upchuck, Alfa Mist, Author & Punisher, FearDorian & osquinn, Kelly Moran, Jamie Woon, Klein, Nicki Bluhm, Jeezy, Idlewild, Drink The Sea (R.E.M., Screaming Trees, etc), 50 Lions, Weirs, Gully Boys, Ava Luna, Alex Orange Drink (The So So Glos), Real Bad Man & Genevieve Artadi, Malibu, Mask, Glimmer, Molly Nilsson, Haerts, Say She She, Rachael Yamagata, The Deep Dark Woods, Johnny Football Hero, The Dwarfs Of East Agouza, Alice Cohen, Blue Lake, Creative Writing, Gatlin, Dolo Tonight, Pain Magazine, Carter Faith, Orbit Culture, Deaf Havana, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Mayday Parade, the Sparks EP, the Glean EP, the S. Carey EP, the Ink EP, the live Naima Bock EP, the DFA comp, the Waylon Jennings comp, the deluxe edition of Wild Pink’s Dulling the Horns, the deluxe edition of Coheed & Cambria’s The Father of Make Believe, the 20th anniversary edition of My Morning Jacket’s Z, the 30th anniversary edition of Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, and John Carpenter’s Halloween: The Complete Expanded Collection box.

Read on for my picks, and listen to the new episode of BV Weekly for more on this week’s new music and music news. What’s your favorite release of the week?

Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound (The Flenser)
The second full-length from Agriculture sets themes of Zen Buddhism and queer & trans life to a backdrop of genre-transcending post-metal.

Agriculture emerged as the rightful heirs to early Liturgy’s “ecstatic black metal” throne on their 2022 debut EP, and then sealed the deal with their 2023 self-titled debut album and 2024’s Living Is Easy EP, but now that designation feels like an understatement. On their second full-length, The Spiritual Sound, Agriculture aren’t the heirs to any other band’s throne. They’re forging their own path, one that’s far too complicated to pin down as one specific subgenre. Musically, “post-metal” feels most accurate just because of how open-ended it is. Black metal is still a prominent ingredient in this album, but there’s so much more. “Micah (5:15am)” sounds like a cross between screamo and speed metal. The beginning of album opener “My Garden” could pass for Slipknot. There’s as much fast-paced black metal as there is slow-paced sludge, and co-lead vocalist Dan Meyer brings in echoes of Songs: Ohia and Mount Eerie with slowcore parts that fit even more seamlessly on The Spiritual Sound than they did on any of Agriculture’s other records. On the especially climactic album closer “The Reply,” Emma Ruth Rundle adds in harmony vocals that make things sound even more shimmering. Lyrically, the album is just as deep and varied. Dan’s lyrics bring themes of Zen Buddhism into the modern world, while Leah Levinson’s lyricism was informed by queer history, and queer and trans life. Everything that Dan and Leah sing (or shriek) about carries immense weight, and that, combined with the larger-than-life instrumentals, is what makes The Spiritual Sound such a towering listen. Regardless of genre or vocal style or the varying levels of audible discernibility in Agriculture’s lyrics, this is music with power and feeling and that comes through at this record’s every turn.

Prewn – System (Exploding In Sound)
The indie rock singer/songwriter’s second album is noisy, jagged, and strangely beautiful. It’s also her most personal yet.

We’ve come to associate “most personal album yet” with something a little more quiet or stripped back, but Izzy Hagerup’s second Prewn album System defies that stereotype entirely. Izzy refers to it as a “private journal made public,” but it’s just as noisy, jagged, and multi-layered as her remarkable 2023 debut album Through The Window. I’ve previously described that album as a cross between Karen Dalton and Dinosaur Jr, and that description or a similar one would fit System as well. System is fueled by the folky warble of the former, the cacophonous indie rock of the latter, and embellishments that range from rickety bedroom pop to orchestrated chamber pop. It’s as dark and strange as it is tuneful and welcoming, and the lyrics reflect a similar dichotomy. As she said in a recent interview with Colin Kirkland, “There’s a nastiness to life. I like to weave that in with the sweetness of it.”

Stay Inside – Lunger (Tiny Engines)
The NYC band deliver their strangest, most unpredictable album yet, a melting pot of post-punk, indie/art rock, horn arrangements, and more.

It took Stay Inside four years to follow their COVID lockdown-era, emo-scene breakthrough Viewing with Ferried Away, and now they’re back just 18 months later with a new label home (the great Tiny Engines) and a followup album. And call me crazy, but Lunger feels like an even bigger creative leap from Ferried Away than that long-awaited album was from Viewing. The horn players that Stay Inside have been touring with are now official members of the band, and Lunger is a shapeshifting, horn-fueled indie/art rock album that’s full of surprises. It ranges from driving Strokesy post-punk to quirky Modest Mousey indie rock to punchy Superdraggy power pop, with horn arrangements that range from baroque pop to jazz rock. I wouldn’t really call Lunger an emo record, but it does still have that explosive post-hardcore energy that Stay Inside bring to their live shows, and that separates them from a lot of bands who might otherwise be doing similar stuff on the surface. It’s the strangest, most unpredictable Stay Inside record yet, and it’s exciting to have a band keeping us on our toes the way this one has been these past couple years.

Wode – Uncrossing The Keys (20 Buck Spin)
The UK melodic black metal band’s new album refuses to choose between sugary melodicism and ass-kicking darkness.

In addition to Agriculture’s The Spiritual Sound, we also get a much different type of melodic black metal album this week from UK band Wode. Picking up where 2021’s genre-blurring Burn in Many Mirrors left off, Uncrossing the Keys finds the balance between harsh vocals and extremely catchy riffage that made albums like Tribulation’s The Children of the Night and Kvelertak’s Nattesferd such favorites in the previous decade. And since those bands have both since gone in different directions, it’s nice to have records like Uncrossing The Keys keeping that dichotomy alive, refusing to choose between sugary melodicism and ass-kicking darkness.

Today Is The Day – Never Give In (SuperNova)
Heavy music mastermind Steve Austin is back with part one of a planned two-part concept double album. It’s a depressing, industrial-tinged record informed by the state of the world.

Nearly six years after the last Today Is The Day album (released just two weeks before the world went into COVID lockdown), Steve Austin is back with Never Give In, part one of a planned two-part concept double album. The band’s new bio says the album was informed by “all the loathing, despair, despondency, and resentment for the current state of the world,” and it sounds fittingly dark. It finds the ever-changing heavy music mastermind leaning heavily into industrial, with a little dark folk in the mix too, and the whole thing sounds as apocalyptic as its subject matter.

Nala Sinephro – The Smashing Machine (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Warp/A24 Music)
The ambient jazz leader delivers her debut film score for the Benny Safdie-directed, A24-produced, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson-starring ‘The Smashing Machine.’

Nala Sinephro has skyrocketed to the forefront of the current ambient jazz renaissance thanks to a fusion of electronic music, spiritual jazz, and ambient music that’s made both of her two albums (2021’s Space 1.8 and 2024’s Endlessness) so hypnotic and addictive. Before we get her third proper album, her latest full-length project is her debut film score, for the Benny Safdie-directed, A24-produced The Smashing Machine, a drama about wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr that stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Kerr and Emily Blunt as Kerr’s then-wife Dawn Staples. With a band of her frequent collaborators (including Nubya Garcia, Sheila Maurice-Grey, James Mollison, Morgan Simpson, and others), Nala pieced together a series of compositions that toe the line between her usual meditative material, some more traditional jazz moments, and some more traditional film score-ish moments. I haven’t seem the film, so I can’t speak to how it fits in that context, but even on its own, it has much of the same allure as Nala’s proper albums.

Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl (Republic)

I only heard this album once this morning so this isn’t a proper review, but Taylor Swift’s new album would be a notable release whether you love it or hate it, and so far I’ve seen everything from preemptive Twitter hate about leaked lyrics to a five-star review from Rolling Stone. One of the many headlines is that the Jack Antonoff/Aaron Dessner era is over, and this one instead reunites Taylor with Max Martin and Shellback, who she previously worked with on Red, 1989, and Reputation. As you’d probably expect, Taylor is writing big, sugary pop songs again. It’s also a tight 12-song, 42 minute album following the decade-long The Tortured Poets Department. Another headline is that everyone assumes “Actually Romantic” is a Charli XCX diss track. Taylor also borrows some of Eras Tour opener Sabrina Carpenter’s raunch, and Sabrina is fittingly the album’s only guest–she’s on the album-closing title track. There’s also a George Michael interpolation, and Taylor sings the word “dick.” It’s obviously a lot to take in, so have at it:

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Rocket, Snõõper, Pynch, and Peel Dream Magazine.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out the latest episodes of our weekly music news podcast BV Weekly and our interview podcast The BrooklynVegan Show.

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