Rambling Fox

August 2026 Music Round-Up

Art by Sancoon

There's a few months every year which end up becoming absolutely clogged with new releases. August was one of them. And then I made my life even more hectic by buying so much other crap.

New Music Immediate Impressions

Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Weekend

P-Bro could've taken the easy route. The double-whammy of Punisher and Boygenius' self-titled album turned her into a generation-crossing super star, and if she had had the desire to do so she could've comfortably leaned onto the now-popular sad girl indie rock anthemics and scored a hit record. Instead, she's gone straight for the difficult third album route. Between the surge of fame with Boygenius, the loss of her father and her newfound love with Bo Burnham, Bridgers has been going through a lot in both good and bad; Lost Weekend is exactly what its title implies, a flurry of manic time where everything is a blur and you try your darnest to hang onto any little bit of lucidity to keep you on your track. The preview single "Lost Boys" (and can I just say, kudos to her for just releasing one song before the album as a single, like in the good old days) was a clear and direct banger, but a red herring for the record itself - the album is full of headier production where walls of pitter-pattering sound rise and fall all around your head, where her confessional singer/songwriter melodies are interrupted by sudden stylistic switches as the songs transform with no warning, where doors to new places open and close in an instant. It's an emotionally heavy and texturally hefty record and I'm still discovering new parts from it. What a follow-up. Album of the month.

Interpol - Mirror Weighs a Ton

I honestly just completely forgot / ran out of time to listen to this one in time for this blog entry. I'm sure it's an Interpol album. I hope to be positively surprised - the last time I really got a kick out of them was during the El Pintor days (madly underrated record).

Jim James - Wowed Out

There was a period of time where I genuinely thought that Jim James' solo career was getting a whole lot more interesting to follow than what was happening with My Morning Jacket at the time, but he seems to have settled onto a comfortable if not particularly exciting groove and I'm finding it difficult to hold onto. Wowed Out is a typically JJ-esque mix of classic rock, soul and pop influences, all centered around James' impossibly earnest delivery and lyricism where each word seems straight from his heart and which makes their directness come across charming more often than corny. It's a cosy listen. It's something I've heard him do countless times before now and as easy as it is to listen to, the songwriting is a little too cosy and comfortable for its own good as well. A completely pleasant listen that I will no doubt gladly pick up from a record store at a discounted price, but which isn't setting off any kind of fireworks.

Lambchop - Punching the Clown

I know I already said that Phoebe's new album is my album of the month, but Kurt Wagner's latest is giving it a serious run for its money - and I wasn't expecting this at all. I've been greatly enjoying Lambchop's foray into increasingly more abstract electronic soundscapes across their last decade's worth of albums, and that's probably partly why this return to something more "organic" feels like it has such a hit. But it's also because there's nothing to hide Wagner's old age anymore - there's no electronic filter around his vocals and the time-worn gruffness is now out in the open, and the sparse arrangements sing their own kind of mournful wistfulness. Wagner is frequently backed by backing vocalists and choirs of various set-ups - that's this album's Thing - and they're like a beautiful Greek choir backing his solemn spotlight. There's so much emotional pathos and headiness to Punching the Clown, and they soar across some truly beautiful melodies. I've been addicted to this album a lot over the past couple of weeks and it's shaping up to be one of 2026's surprise hits.

The Mountain Goats - Days

The Mountain Goats seem to have settled on a routine for me, alternating between albums that sort of get lost and ones that suddenly reinvigorate my love for Darnielle's crew. Last year's Through the Fire Across From Peter Balkan is an album I do like but perhaps I admire it more than I actually cherish it, and though I stand by my positive early takes from last year I can't say I've gone back to it much. And then Days appears and suddenly I'm getting obsessed again. What begins as a quasi-sequel to Goths (which has become my favourite TMG album, maybe?) with a sequence of songs observing the minuteae of the winners and losers of the grunge era, ultimately transforms into a very thinly veiled set of allegories about legacy, long careers and the setting sun in the horizon. Like with Lambchop there's a lot of pathos to Days, but on this album it's been dressed up in whimsical, frolicking indie pop tunes full of splendour, giddy energy and sudden strikes of bittersweet smiles. It's a short album but packs a lot of punch in its thirty-odd minutes, and gets more delightful with each listen. I was already excited to see the band next month, now I'm really looking forward to it.

Silly Rabbit Orchestra - Silly Rabbit Orchestra

Furry Loser is gone, long live Furry Loser. Teddy St. Clair debuts the next chapter of his musical journey under the moniker Silly Rabbit Orchestra with a set of whimsical, storytelling indie pop tunes which basically resume where Furry Loser left off. St. Clair's vision and range has sharpened and expanded with each release and the self-titled Silly Rabbit Orchestra album continues on that trajectory, sharing its DNA with everything that made the Furry Loser saga such a joy to listen to but the songs are a bit more expansive, bit more experimental and a bit more ambitious. They're overall longer, frequently hide little surprises inside them in the form of unexpected sections, and the ambition underneath is tangible - and it's all translating into a really good set of songs. I've not spent too much time with this yet - things have been busy - but early listens have proven that even if the name is different, St. Clair's songwriting magic remains intact.

Antony Szmierek - Decoding Birdsong

2025's Flint AotY winner returns a year after his incredible debut. It'd be impossible for Szmierek to replicate the exact conditions that lead to his first album to be so beloved in my circles, so the real question in my head is how would he evolve his craft, especially as it's only been such a short time. The answer is by just doing everything a bit harder. The name of the game is still the same - Szmierek's wry and rascally witty half-spoken work half-rap observations about the world and the people around him on top of electronic dance elements. In 2026, the small nods to the turn of the millennium sounds have been brushed off and instead the production and arrangements behind Szmierek are a lot more contemporary - and also more muscular, dishing out some particularly punchy dance backbeats that could absolutely pop off in a club setting. Szmierek still exhibits a fine balance between charming observational comedy and genuine heartfelt sentimentality, and the latter side feels just as more emboldened as the dancier tracks do, with the production twisting those emotional knifes deeper with more intensity. It's the same as the debut album but also different at the same time, not necessarily reinventing anything but also not repeating. If anything, it highlights why Szmierek is such an exciting new star in the constellation. Decoding Birdsong is an excellent album and will undoubtedly get even stronger as I spend more time with it - but above all I'm so happy he didn't turn out to be a random one-off shooting star and that we're in the beginning of a really interesting career.

Hoard Updates

CD

Digital

Hnnngggg I can't stop accruing tons of things.

As established earlier, August has been a busy month - so a lot of new albums to have been bought. Bandcamp Friday came back - hence the amount of digital things. My favourite Finnish record shop was having a sale, so I grabbed a bunch of Finnish things from there. A friend of mine was doing some storage clearance and I bought a bunch of albums off them for the price of a takeaway. I was tipped off that Fopp were selling YMO reissues for cheap so suddenly a couple of those appeared in my shopping cart while in town. And now I'm stuffed to brim with new music, on top of all the things from last month I still haven't properly dug into either. Aaagh.

On another note, strictly speaking Hyenablood's Northern Lights: Part 1 is an August release and I'd normally talk about it a bit more earlier on in this post, but I'm actually working on a post about Northern Lights in general. So, I'll discuss it more there. Incredible soundtrack though.

Music reviews

A bit of a writer's block month so only managed to get through a couple of reviews. The exciting thing here is probably the start of a new small discography project, in the shape of Daft Punk.

Most played song of the month according to Last.FM

My month's top most played list is basically a whole bunch of Phoebe Bridgers repetition, but amongst all the P-Bridgo cuts, the title theme from the aforementioned Northern Lights stands proudly and holds its fort. I already linked to a Bridgers song earlier so let's give some space for some beautiful soundtrack atmospherics.

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