Unsatisfied by the aggregate mid-year lists? Maybe because they’re missing Elder, Spirit Adrift, Truckfighters, Liminal Sky and many more.

I have a lot of reservations for mid-year lists. Personally, there will likely be several dozen albums from the first half of the year that I won’t discover or properly listen to until I’m wrapping up the year-end list. Nevertheless, I always encourage people to make use of the tools available to discover music. Just know that we are far beyond the illusion that any one person, or even an aggregate of thousands of people, can even remotely make a definitive best of list. Even if such a thing could exist, it would still be irrelevant to most people, as most have a very individualistic, personal, emotional relationship with music. Combined with the fact that there is far too much music released for any one person to hear, the only way to approach music discovery is to chase down the flavors and styles that appeal to you.

If you like and crave psych prog, space rock, doom metal, heavy metal, stoner/dessert/fuzz heavy psych, art rock, post-rock, prog pop, post-punk, new wave, goth, darkwave, jangle pop, big music, garage punk, garage psych, garage noir, slowcore, doomgaze, instrumental jam, psych pop, dark cabaret and/or baroque pop for starters, you ought to find something up your alley here.

5. Liminal Sky – All Tomorrow’s Darkness (Karisma)

Just as I was wrapping up my final albums piece, I was listening to Messenger’s second and final album, Threnodies (2016) and wondered why such a great band disbanded so quickly. An answer came literally the next day when this album came out, which is explicitly described as a continuation of Messenger’s musical path, helmed by Jaime Gomez Arellano (producer of Ghost, Ulver, Opeth, Paradise Lost) and Daniel Knight, collaborating with lyricist Mat McNerney (Hexvessel, Beastmilk/Grave Pleasures), who’s recent loss of his mother brought an honest, direct line to his grief and loss. While Messenger was a pastoral mix of folky psychedelic prog, this project brings in a host of Nordic collaborators for a more expansive post-rock approach to their progressive art rock. The album creates an atmosphere of desolate beauty that can translate into bleak English countrysides or coldly forbidding Scandinavian landscapes. This makes a perfect listening companion to the more celebrated doom of the Warning album, released the same day.

6. Warning – Rituals of Shame (Relapse)

It’s a pleasant surprise to see Patrick Walker gifting us with a third installment of his epic doom metal project Warning. Since the classic Watching From a Distance (2006), he’s released four albums as 40 Watt Sun, exploring shades of slowcore, doomgaze and post-rock. This is recognizably a return to Warning’s signature doom, but with significant touches of widescreen post-rock, with a mournful take on late period Talk Talk. In a way, Walker’s songs are more devastating than ever as they’re beyond mournful — they’re about surviving what should have destroyed him and it’s accompanying guilt and moral exhaustion. This sounds like a shattered shell of a man falling apart, but with the backdrop of gloriously majestic musical dirges. So, not a fun in the sun kind of summer release.

7. Harvey Rushmore & the Octopus – Mindsuckers (Taxi Gauche)

Formed in Basel, Switzerland in 2015, Harvey Rushmore & the Octopus were strong out the gate with their debut The Night (2017), their brand of Kosmische fueled psychedelic dread fully formed. They’ve honed their craft on subsequent albums, and their fourth is their best yet, with a grander, cinematic sweep to their psych noir. Massimo Tondini’s vocals remain distorted and blended in the music, but they’re delivered with just the right amount of deadpan black humor and menace, like Roky Erickson and Clinic’s Brian Campbell. Their signature hallucinogenic surrealism, urban paranoia and cosmic unease is so up my alley that I’ve revisited their earlier albums and appreciate them even more. RIYL the heavier space choogle of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Osees (Protein Threat, A Foul Form), Slift, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Frankie and the Witch Fingers.

8. Brigitte Calls Me Baby – Irreversible (ATO)
9. Cardinals – Masquerade (So Young)
10. The Twilight Sad – It’s the Long Goodbye (Rock Action)

11. Season 2 – Power of Now (Upset the Rhythm)

Feelies-influenced jangle pop and Flying Nun style guitar pop are like crack to me, especially coming from a Melbourne band with roots in the scene that gave us Dick Diver, Chook Race and The Stroppies. The overlapping layers of vocals from Carolyn Hawkin, Freya McLeod, Claudia Serfaty and Charlotte Zarb evoke The Raincoats, Slits and Sleater-Kinney, but with infectiously brisk, melodic pop structures and charming single-not solos like on “Tugging at the Cable” that have kept me coming back for more all year so far.

12. Bad//Dreems – Ultra Dundee (Gutto)

One of the most overlooked Australian bands, Adelaide’s Bad//Dreems have released their fifth and best album just in time to declare an indefinite hiatus. Drawing on the long tradition of Aussie garage punk and literate pub rock (Cold Chisel, The Angels, The Saints, Midnight Oil, The Triffids, Died Pretty), Bad//Dreems established a savage satirical wit sharper than Mick Dundee’s custom 16+” Bowie knife since their 2013 debut EP. Conceptually Ultra Dundee addresses a state of mind in Australia’s identity, both the good and bad, gritty social commentary delivered with nuanced ferocity and tenderness with their most varied, experimental musical backing. Those so inclined to let this soak in will likely be compelled to circle back to the rest of their strong catalog.

13. A.A. Williams – Solstice (Reigning Phoenix)

It feels like yesterday that the classically trained multi-instrumentalist A.A. Williams was a new voice in goth-tinged doomgaze, but it’s already been four years since her last album, As the Moon Rests (2022). The album is still settling in my brain but it might be her best, though more restrained. While there’s more quiet space, it feels more epic, cinematic, and emotionally intense. I don’t know how unusual it is for classical musicians to cross over to pop, but metal fans should be lucky to have her, as she treats heavy music with the same respect as she would her minimalist heroes Arvo Pärt and Górecki. It’s also a good story that her change in direction was finding a beat-up Telecaster on the side of the road. It spoke to her, so she picked it up, gave it some TLC and learned to play it. Now using a 2001 Gibson Explorer Gothic, she constructs hybrid orchestral and post-rock crescendos with her own distinct flavor of dark folk and doomgaze that rewards repeated listens with multiple layers of translucent beauty. RIYL Emma Ruth Rundle, Chelsea Wolfe, Marissa Nadler, Anna von Hausswolff.

Fire In Her Eyes – Look Into the Sky (Dream Wizard)
Here’s a welcome surprise, a whopper of a psychedelic prog-folk double album debut from sister duo Daniella and Natasha Livingstone of North London. Daniella wrote many of the songs in the hospital while fighting leukemia, immersing herself in a wondrous psychedelic dreamland informed by Donovan, Hindustani Classical, jazz-rock, Kate Bush and bits from a plethora of folky British psychedelic folk prog bands. The flute driven music augmented by piano and ornate chamber arrangements rocks hard enough at times to fit in next to contemporary psych noir from Blood Ceremony, Jess and the Ancient Ones, and Purson/Rosalie Cunningham.This has a more positive, healing vibe, leading to the happy news that Daniella pulled through and recovered from her illness. Now they have a gloriously expansive, uplifting soundtrack to that story.

Motorpsycho – The Gaia II Space Corps (Grammafon)
Motorpsycho released their eighth album this decade with The Gaia II Space Corps. Even a fan like myself can get fatigued by their massive output, but it’s an extremely great piece of psych prog that could rise in the rankings. After their return to indie rock whimsey with Yay! (2023) and Neigh!! (2024), I continued to enjoy their music, but didn’t see much reason for them to dominate the Fester’s Lucky 13 like they used to. But still with both their self-titled album last year and this, they are still remarkably consistently great.

Glowsun – Novæ (Glowsun)
Their first release since 2015’s Beyond the Wall of Time, this is an unexpected return from my favorite French Colour Haze acolytes. Just like their gorgeous cover art, the tones and riffs of their desert psych instrumental jams have always sounded meticulously constructed and arranged. The trio lineup is reconfigured around creative anchor Johan Jaccob with original drummer Yann Duvivier returning, and François Hannecart from math core band Oddism. The heavy fuzz approaches doom levels at times, with plenty of dynamic shifts into Middle Eastern motifs and desert atmospherics. This is the kind of album worthy of playing in a loop (or better yet, in a mix with Colour Haze, Causa Sui, Papir, My Sleeping Karma, Monkey3, The Machine, Electric Moon, and Naxatras).

Shaking Hand – Shaking Hand (Melodic)
This Manchester band’s debut came out back in January, and I recently revisited and realized what an addictive and satisfying guitar album this is. They draw from post-rock, noise, math rock and post-punk via Slint, Sonic Youth, Women, Mogwai, June of 44, etc. The licks and tones form a cohesive whole into a really promising debut.

Uffe Lorenzen – Glemte Spor (Bad Afro)
I’m a huge fan of everything Uffe has done under this name or Lorenzo Woodrose, and his bands On Trial, Baby Woodrose, Spids Nøgenhat, Dragontears and most recently, Lydsyn. He’s a one-man industry of Danish heavy garage psych. This album is a personal history of Danish songs from 1967 to 1999 that helped shaped his musical identity, many of which are anti-war and protest songs. This expands on the covers he did, at least one for each of his last five solo and Lydsyn albums. For most of us who can’t tell the difference between these Danish covers and his originals, it’s just more great music to get acquainted with, and a good gateway for newbies into Uffe’s psychedelic world.

White Denim – 13 (Bella Union)
New White Denim is always welcome, but I do miss when they were a real band. Meaning, it’s mainly James Petralli in his studio. He undoubtedly has that auteur talent that can churn out tunes with at least as much success rate as later era Beck and Prince. This latest is purposefully his most eclectic, a patchwork of influences of rock, funk, soul, dub, country, psych and Beefheart-like surrealism. There is much to admire here, but it might get lost in the dense mosaic for some, where it all becomes a multi-colored beastie that bops along to it’s quirky rhythms. I see this album being forgotten, then rediscovered by fans willing to drill down to it’s impressive DNA.

The Coral – 388 (Run On)
After a series of elaborate (and pretty fabulous) concept albums, The Coral were taking a breather with no real plans for another album since 2023. While filming a documentary and doing a stripped-back tour, they got back in touch with the music that inspired them in the beginning — Lee Perry’s Congos/Black Ark era dub, rocksteady, Stax, 2-Tone, Ethiopian jazz and spaghetti westerns. They spontaneously recorded the songs on a vintage Tascan 388 and mixed them the same day retaining a rough and raw warmth. The result is a relaxed vibe of the band playing on a seaside deck lit only by tiki torches and the stars. In other words, a smashing summer album.

And Also The Trees – The Devil’s Door (AATT)
Another band handpicked by Robert Smith to open for The Cure, except it first happened for And Also The Trees 46 years ago. This album completes a trilogy that includes The Bone Carver (2023), and Mother-of-pearl-Moon (2024) involving a dream-state deep dive into the memory, landscape, and rural gothic emotional core of their native Worcestershire through the use newsreels, folklore and oil paintings. The band’s sonic signature has been fairly consistent since (Listen For) The Rag and Bone Man (2007), partly due to Justin Jones’ mandolin-like shimmer invoking that British rural gothic atmosphere, dark jazz structures and filmic scope. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds are often given credit for this vibe, but And Also the Trees deserves equal credit, and more so for consistently delivering top quality post-punk/psych noir (17 albums) without a single artistic stumble. From the opening track, we cross the threshhold through “The Devil’s Door” into the mythic underworld consisting of cosmic folklore of the “Seven Skies,” a “Bridge” overseen by a supernatural “Guardian,” documented with oil on canvas by “The Painter,” the haunting ancestral fear invoked by the macabre “Gallows Tree,” followed by a luminous moment in “The Golden Light” and spectral “Lost Girl.” The dream-journey cycle concludes with “The Last Hours” and the reprise of the title theme. This album is incredibly beautiful, and doomed to be completely ignored by the gnat-like attention spans of mainstream listeners.

Blackwater Holylight – Not Here Not Gone (Suicide Squeeze)
On their fourth album, this L.A. via Portland quintet have honed their sound to their most distinctive yet, stamping their signature style of spectral, dreamy, psychedelic doomgaze. With production assitance from Sonny Diperri (DIIV, Emma Ruth Rundle), they achieved a perfect balance of ethereal fragility and immersive, heavy doom. When I first heard their 2018 self-titled debut, I considered them having similar potential as Messa at the time. It may have taken their creative arc longer to get there, but they’ve reached that level.

Crown Lands – Apocalypse (InsideOut)
The duo of Cody Bowles and Kevin Comeau have evolved from White Stripes/Wolfmother influenced hard garage rockers on their EPs and debut in 2016-20, to practically a full on Rush tribute on Fearless (2023). After a so-so ambient excursion last year, they’re back to prog in a big way, diversifying their inspirations beyond Rush to include the likes of King Crimson, Yes, The Who, Jethro Tull, Triumph, and 80s era solo Ozzy. It’s great fun, maybe their best album. And does Cody’s vocals just keeping getting higher? It’s impressive, but dang that’s high. I made a chart of the highest rock vocalists below.

Singers ranked by highest range and tessitura.

1. King Diamond (Mercyful Fate) | Range: F1–E♭6 | Tessitura: E4–C6
2. Rob Halford (Judas Priest) | E2–C6+ | G4–E5
3. Jónsi (Sigur Rós) | B2-C6 | E4-A4+
4. Justin Hawkins (The Darkness) | C3-C6 | F4-B4
5. Joshua Kiszka (Greta Van Fleet) | C3-C♯6 | E4-B4
6. Cody Bowles (Crown Lands) | Tessitura E4-A4
7. Jon Anderson (Yes) | B2-F♯5 | E4-E5
8. Geddy Lee (Rush) | E2-B5 | F4-A4
9. Cedric Bixler‑Zavala (The Mars Volta) | C3-C6 | E4-A4
10. Chris Cornell (Soundgarden) | C2-A5 | G3-E4
11. Axl Rose (Guns N’ Roses) | F1-B♭6 | G3-C5
12. Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian) | B♭1–A5 | G3-B4
13. Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche) | C3-C6 | D4-G4

The Hiveminds – The Restless’ Park (Back to Beat)
The second album from these Norwegian garage punkers was a real earworm for me. I love the hints of surf guitar in their angular post-punk structures, hitting similar tones and pleasure buttons as UK bands Shaking Hands, but with a bit more motorcycle grease.

Additional thoughts on other releases. Finnish psych prog post-rockers Onségen Ensemble add vocalist Vilma Pesola on their fifth album, giving the collective a more cinematic, gothic grandeur. The Hanging Stars are back after just two years with their sixth and potentially strongest album, Just a Day for those who dig UK cosmic country, jangle pop and psych pop. Smirk is one-man punk project from Nick Vicario, showing a promising progression on his third album with emotional impactful, jangly post-punk along the lines of Protomartyr. Mary in the Junkyard is a new band from the UK Windmill scene, a unique combo of indie folk, art rock and post-punk. Eddy Current Suppression Ring have come back from a decade long hiatus with In Light of Recent Events. I bought the vinyl of Sundecay’s The Blood Lives Again because the album art is incredible, and the Toronto band’s psych-tinged doom is not so bad either. I’m really enjoying Golems of the Red Planet’s experimental surf covers of John Zorn’s Masada compositions on Surf Masada. Slift, Requiem in White and Hällas  released solid albums for fans of space rock, goth/ethereal wave/deathrock, and symphonic prog. Sweden’s Makthaverskan reminded me how much I like their hybrid of gothy post-punk, jangle pop and dream pop. Toronto’s The Get Alongs released a couple fun, primitive garage EPs early in the decade, then their debut Weather Permitting (2023) that showed them emerge as a promising indie group. Their second album refines their approach from lo-fi shambolic influences to more structured, melodic tunes, and just a whiff of The Replacements’ melancholy. Chicago’s Wyatt Waddell comes out the gate strong with his debut, is progressive pop soul and funk bursting with potential with melodies worthy of McCartney and even some Yes.

It’s worth noting that Muse’s The Wow! Signal, bubbling just under my top 100, is their highest critically regarded album in 20 years, since Black Holes and Revelations (2006), a welcome return to their heavier sci fi prog. However I still have problems with the off-putting production that overdoes the current production trends of overcompression, drum processing and cluttered with too many busy layers of synths. Along those lines, it’s disappointing but predictable to see Temples, once a very promising UK psych pop band, release their weakest album in Bliss, which treads awkwardly in EDM waters, just like Tame Impala has been doing, with even less satisfying results.

Playlists: Spotify | Tidal

Coming Soon

Body Type – Tally (p)doom (Jul 24)
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever teased us with a single, but there’s no signs that they have a new album coming, four years since their last one. Thankfully we have Sydney’s Body Type, who released one of the best albums of 2023 with Expired Candy. This should have been released a month earlier because we need this ALL. DAMN. SUMMER.

Mid-Year Rundown

1. Elder – Through Zero
2. Spirit Adrift – Infinite Illumination
3. Truckfighters – Masterflow
4. All Them Witches – House of Mirrors
5. Liminal Sky – All Tomorrow’s Darkness
6. Warning – Rituals of Shame
7. Brigitte Calls Me Baby – Irreversible
8. Iceage – For Love of Grace & the Hereafter
9. Cardinals – Masquerade
10. Harvey Rushmore & the Octopus – Mindsuckers
11. The Twilight Sad – It’s the Long Goodbye
12. Season 2 – Power of Now
13. Bad//Dreems – Ultra Dundee
14. A.A. Williams – Solstice
15. Fire in Her Eyes – Look Into the Sky
16. Motorpsycho – The Gaia II Space Corps
17. Primitive Ring – Primitive Ring
18. Glowsun – Novæ
19. Shaking Hand – Shaking Hand
20. Uffe Lorenzen – Glemte Spor
21. White Denim – 13
22. The Coral – 388
23. And Also The Trees – The Devil’s Door
24. Crown Lands – Apocalypse
25. TVAM – Ruins
26. Blackwater Holylight – Not Here Not Gone
27. Gimmy – Labour of Love EP
28. Softjaw – Softjaw
29. Station Model Violence – Station Model Violence
30. Fra Det Onde – Smilet Er En Flyktig Tilstand
31. The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis – Deface the Currency
32. The Hiveminds – The Restless’ Park
33. Twisted Teens – Blame the Clown
34. Onsègen Ensemble – A Tale
35. The Hanging Stars – Just A Day
36. Love, Burns – Pavement Drawings
37. White Canyon & The 5th Dimension – IV
38. Earth Tongue – Dungeon Vision
39. The Bevis Frond – Horrorful Heights
40. Simon Bromide & the Bromides – Forest Mountain Forest
41. Magic Castles – Realized
42. Eddy Current Suppression Ring – In Light of Recent Events
43. Wax Head – GNAT
44. Sundecay – The Blood Lives Again
45. Golems of the Red Planet – Surf Masada
46. Slift – Fantasia
47. Phantom – Not Midnight Yet
48. CS Cleaners – What’s This?
49. Requiem in White – The Visible Heaven
50. Hällas – Panorama
51. Dead Stilettos – Bodge Job
52. Makthaverskan – Glass and Bones
53. The Get Alongs – Second to None
54. Wyatt Waddell – The Understudy
55. demleague – Tether Me to You
56. Neurosis – An Undying Love for a Burning World
57. Jack Harlon & the Dead Crows – Inexorable Opposites
58. Basic – Basic
59. Tokyo Shoegazer – Remains
60. Stuck – Optimizer
61. Telehealth – Green World Image
62. Osees – Off Course
63. The Things – Some Things Else (1987)
64. Jon Spencer – Songs of Personal Loss and Protest
65. Ist Ist – Dagger
66. Levitation Room – Equinox EP
67. Plantoid – Flare
68. Pond – Terrestrials
69. Temptress – Hear
70. Weedpecker – V
71. Trooper Salute – Tomodachi ga imashita
72. Monolord – Neverending
73. Suitor – Saw You Out with the Weeds
74. Winged Wheel – Desert So Green
75. Yakkie – Kill the Cop Inside Your Head
76. Khemmis – Khemmis
77. Lime Garden – Maybe Not Tonight
78. Bratakus – Hagridden
79. Dead Pioneers – Wagon Burner
80. Shapes Like People – Under the Rainbow
81. Evil Blizzard – Death Songs & Lullabies
82. Green Carnation – A Dark Poem Pt II: Sanguis
83. David Eugene Edwards – Mercurial Silence
84. White Fence – Orange
85. Kal-El – Astral Voyager Vol. 2
86. Setting – Setting
87. Les Big Byrd – Ruin Everything
88. New Mexican Doom Cult – Ziggurat
89. Red Sun Atacama – Summerchild
90. The Cosmic Dead – Beyond the Beyond
91. Angine de Poitrine – Vol. II
92. Wu Lyf – A Wave That Will Never Break
93. Ultrika Spacek – Expo
94. The Paranoid Style – Known Associates
95. Cryptic Shift – Overspace & Supertime
96. Portrayal of Guilt – Beginning of the End
97. Memorials – All Clouds Bring Not Rain
98. Micko & the Mellotronics – The Trinity
99. Genesis Owusu – Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge
100. Big|BRAVE – In Grief or in Hope

Other

Stuff

October 30, 2026

Queens of the Stone Age – Perfecth (Matador)

October 16, 2026

Fontaines D.C. – Dopamine Chamber (XL)

October 13, 2026

Graveyard – Fever (Nuclear Blast)