12 Albums Out Today to Listen To: Weezer, Wild Pink, Lambchop, and More – Our Culture
In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on August 21, 2026.
Weezer, Weezer (Gold Album)
Weezer’s latest self-titled album has arrived. While they recruited TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek for The Black Album, here to revitalize their sound this time is Kenneth Blume, who cemented his post-Kenny Beats legacy with Geese’s Getting Killed last year and sought to produce “the most violent Weezer album ever.” Big words from someone who just helmed (as with Gold, along with Robyn collaborator Klas Ahlund) the new LP from post-hardcore outfit Show Me the Body, but though some of the lyrics are more passive aggressive than anything, the music – grungy, dynamic, and heavier even than Van Weezer – speaks for itself. Read the full review.
Wild Pink, Still Coming Down
Two years after Dulling the Horns, Wild Pink’s streak of beautifully rough-hewn records continues with Still Coming Down. The new album was recorded in one week with producer and engineer Alex Farrar at Asheville’s Drop of Sun studios, where vocal takes were done in two to three bursts: “There was not a ton of overthinking,” John Ross recalled. Guests on the record include MJ Lenderman and Meg Duffy of Hand Habits on guitar, as well as Wednesday’s Xandy Chelmis on pedal steel. “Strangely, I feel like I’ve found my voice on this record,” Ross added.
Lambchop, Punching the Clown
A couple of years ago, Kurt Wagner heard a simple song on the radio – a banjo playing a single chord, accompanied by a few voices – that would calibrate his new Lambchop album, Punching the Clown. His close circle of collaborators remains intact, with guitarist Andrew Broder co-writing, Mark Nevers recording and mixing, and Ryan Olson on production; holding down the banjo is none other than Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Wagner never found out who made the song. “All I had was the memory, and that memory, as we know, can be a little squirrely,” he explained in our inspirations interview. “But that’s fine; however I twisted it became what it was gonna be. It served its purpose as far as, I guess we’re talking about inspiration here, but just the fact that it had triggered something in my head that I was already thinking about, and this was an example of it, fully formed, for me to consider. And it was a reinforcement of a crazy idea I had: I want to make a record with just voice and banjo.”
Julia Holter, Materia
Materia is a fascinating companion record to Julia Holter’s 2024 album Something in the Room She Moves. Written and recorded with her band between tours, it includes several reimaginings of the Something in the Room She Moves track ‘Materia’, as well as songs originating around the making of the LP. The band once again features Elizabeth Goodfellow (drums), Devra Hoff (fretless bass), Maia (flute), Chris Speed (saxophone and clarinet), Tashi Wada (synthesizers), and Kenny Gilmore (co-production, engineering, mixing).
Brennan Wedl, Brennan Wedl
Brennan Wedl recruited Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) and Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Mavis Staples) to co-produce and perform on her striking self-titled album, which is out via ANTI-. Honing in on a sound they affectionately call “grungetry,” they laid down the record over ten days at Cook’s studio in Durham, NC; Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan came in to play guitar on a couple of tracks. “I used to cower at being perceived as anything less than a delight,” Wedl shared. “The archetype of Daddy is something I’ve been searching for all my life, but turns out, the daddy I’ve been looking for has been me all along. Be your own daddy.”
Squirrel Flower, Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going
Ella Williams has returned with a new Squirrel Flower record, exquisitely titled Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going. The follow-up to 2023’s Tomorrow’s Fire was recorded live at makeshift studio Merry Meadow in Door County, WI with co-producers Seth Engel and Jack Henry. It was then tracked in Asheville, Nc with Alex Farrar and features contributions from Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos, the War on Drugs’ Dave Hartley, Free Range’s Sofia Jensen, Twin Peaks’ Clay Frankel, and more. “He was encouraging me to lean into this ethereal, yet grounded, spacious yet textured folk music that’s so true to the early days of Squirrel Flower,” Williams said of working with Farrar.
Brandon Flowers, Thrasher
The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers decamped to Nashville for his latest solo effort, Thrasher, a full-on country album. It scans as a natural evolution from his band’s most recent effort, 2021’s Pressure Machine, though it’s a way more invigorated embrace of the genre’s tropes. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found my way back to my father’s music — ‘Country-Western’ (as he called it) — and discovered that the stories I carry really feel most at home in the skin of this beautiful American tradition,” Flowers commented. It features contributions from David Rawlings, pedal-steel virtuoso Bruce Bouton, and harmonica player Charlie McCoy.
Westside Cowboy, It Goes On
Manchester-based four piece Westside Cowboy have come through with their debut album, It Goes On. Produced by Loren Humphrey (Geese, Cameron Winter, Wunderhorse) at Greenmount Studios in Leeds, it casually reveals itself as one of the most exciting rock and roll records of the year, probably because few young bands sound this feverishly excited making it. This first impressions lines up with the band’s own ambitions: “Put simply, we wanted to make an album for our younger selves, one that reminds us of all the bodies of work that made us fall in love with music,” they explained. “We wanted the music to be instant, concise, and honest to us as people today. There will be plenty of time in the future for the sprawling triple album with horns and string sections but for now, it’s young music made by some young(ish) people. We want to make songs that are lean and imperfect. We’re really proud of it and we hope that you enjoy it.”
Chelsea Wolfe, The Dark
After a couple of sonically heavy, experimental records – including 2024’s She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She and the Converge collab Bloodmoon: I – Chelsea Wolfe returns to the gentler melancholy of 2019’s Birth of Violence. Brooding and lushly orchestrated, The Dark was co-written with Jennifer Decilveo and Ben Chisholm, with contributions from Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails), Matt Chamberlain (Pearl Jam), Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age), Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint), and Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Nine Inch Nails, St Vincent).
Denzel Curry & Kenneth Blume, ii
In all the years I’ve been doing this column, there might been a few times where a producer worked on two albums released on the same day, and there’s a good chance it was the aforementioned Alex Farrar. But two producers? Long before he rebranded himself as Kenneth Blume III, as credited on the new Weezer album as well as Geese’s Getting Killed, the producer formerly known as Kenny Beats teamed up with Denzel Curry for the 2020 joint album Unlocked. The pair has now reunited for a wildly colorful new LP, simply titled ii and featuring guest spots from JPEGMAFIA and Westside Gunn. “The work Denzel and I do has never been easy, which is why it’s so rewarding,” Blume commented. “We’ve started every project on opposite sides of a coin and fought our way to the center. When I hear this album I hear the growth and the fight in equal parts.”
Elanor Moss, The Knife, The Needle
Contemporary folk as gorgeous, knotty, and piercingly vulnerable as Elanor Moss‘ debut LP, The Knife, The Needle, is hard to come by. The London-based singer-songwriter spent three years writing the songs on the record, which follows 2023’s Cosmic EP. “I spent a lot of time playing the guitar,” Moss reflected in press materials. “I borrowed a four-track tape machine and demoed songs on it. I also started therapy again, where I was beginning to unpack my understanding of where I come from, how my family history plays out in the things I do and how I love and receive love. Out of the slowness and quiet of those rhythms came these songs.”
GB, Herzsprung
GB, the moniker of Copenhagen-based singer-songwriter and produce Gustav Berntsen, has unveiled a new album, Herzsprung, via AD 93. Berntsen made the record at a studio villa in the Swedish wilderness, which he booked using the money he made from appearing in a viral Jaguar ad in 2024. It was written, though, while the musician was living in London, stringing together lyrics from copies of Metro. The follow-up to 2024’s Gusse Music was previewed by the singles ‘Adrenaline’, ‘Starsound’, and ‘The Next Day’.
Other albums out today:
The Afghan Whig, Soft Control; Sam Smith, Hazel Eyes; Sondre Lerche, Acrobats; Natalie Merchant, Cabinet of Wonder; Lusine, Melting Days; Stephen O’Malley, Avaeken; Frances Chang, been thinking bout confession; Tyondai Braxton, Splayed Werks; Black Marble, Life in Small Space; The Cramps, Gravest Gravy; hey, nothing, Hound; James Ivy, The Seams; Stephen Holliger, Fives and Sixes; Plum, Bodies in Motion; Kyle Miller, Bed of Creeks and Coils.