Each month, we rally the team together and annoy them until they tell us the best music they listened to in the most recent calendar month. It can be something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue – it can be whatever. Once, it was even a busker someone had heard while walking through a train station.
In August, it was these things:
Rick Larson
The Velvet Underground asked the question in the classic song ‘What Goes On’ and Westside Cowboy answers over fifty years later with its debut album: It Goes On. Surely, the call back is intentional. The Velvets hit on something elemental in its simplicity: driving rhythmic guitars, mesmerizing repetition, harmonies riding the wave. It’s music that recalibrates your humors. There is so much to like about this Manchester band in its present and future promise. When the band hits a groove, like in ‘Kick Stones (The Boys)’ and ‘Pin-Up Boys’, it is pure catnip to me. The band’s performance of the former tune, an absolute gem, on ‘Later…With Jools Holland’ is goosebump inducing, everything I want from a band: passion, chops and tenuous control. Westside Cowboy supported Geese on its European tour earlier this year and I hope some of that band’s dramatic anarchy rubbed off. Let it loose, youngsters! I’m very excited for this band which, along with Mary in the Junkyard and Man, Woman, Chainsaw have suddenly jolted what had been a sleepy year in British indie rock.
I also went with my wife to see The Strokes in Bend, Oregon in a compact amphitheater on the banks of the Deschutes River. Pay no attention to certain editors of this website: this is a crucial band with a boatload of great songs. ‘Reptilia’ and ‘You Only Live Once’ would have blown the roof off had there been one. When you are called upon by your maker to summarily recount your life in music, you may be found wanting if The Strokes are not mentioned favorably. Or, maybe the infinite universe is duller than I imagine and you’ll be fine. Who knows? (Julian Casablancas might, that’s who.)
Kate Burke
You’d be forgiven for thinking that I was late to the Olivia Rodrigo party, but the truth is I haven’t left it since you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love came out in June. After an initial first listen, my overwhelming bias is towards her upbeat songs, I can’t get enough of ‘drop dead’ – and Robert Smith’s collaboration on ‘what’s wrong with me’ is a true delight.
August was an incredibly stressful month (school summer holidays, anyone?) so as a result, I feel like I spent most of it in a bubble of comfort playlists, hoping that upbeat pop punk would restore my emotional equilibrium, with a splash of ‘maggots for brains’ or two because why not. This proved to be a vaguely successful approach until Haiver and Phoebe Bridgers dropped new albums within a week of each other, and I was forced to take to my bed in a fit of melancholy. Or it might have been a stomach ulcer on account of the stress, but who can say.
Having spent the most time with Havier’s Ghost Dance, and because I have had the pleasure of hearing many of the songs live over the last year or so, my stand out tracks are ‘Crime’ and ‘Tortured’… but honestly, at 43 minutes long, it’s an excellent listen all round and should be given several whirls.
I’m loving the enthusiasm / deserved hype around Phoebe Bridgers, and the fact I can be super smug about seeing her play at the beginning of her career takes away some of the sting about now not actually being able to get tickets for far bigger venues. I need to spend more time with Lost Weekend to make a true appraisal, but from my first listen that certainly won’t be a hardship.
Will Collins
My favourite discovery of the month was the debut record from Negative Frame. Although I’d been aware of the band before, I hadn’t really heard any of their music, a situation that I’m glad has now changed. Break the Ice is a blistering set of metallic hardcore songs full of bludgeoning riffs that periodically take flight and transform into soaring and anthemic runs. The singing alternates between full throttle hardcore roars and cleaner, impassioned singing that at moments calls to mind Layne Staley of Alice in Chains. The band dextrously blend elements of hardcore and metal, even throwing in some vintage 80s sounding solos, without reverting to the uninspired tropes that metalcore too often falls into. Throughout the record, they shift tempos and intensity to keep the record fresh, even rolling out a partially acoustic ballad on Heavens Blue. When a genre has been around for a long time, it’s not easy to find new avenues to explore, but Negative Frame manage to make hardcore sound as fresh, exciting and essential as it should do.
James Spearing
Two artists returning with new music for you this month. First up is Elkka who is back making her own music and has dropped new single ‘Pick a Different Life’. While overall very familiar for anyone like me who was a fan of her last album, there is still a hint towards a new, or rather old, aesthetic. The cover art points to a y2k look and feel, while the track wouldn’t sound out of place on the clubbing episode of sitcom Spaced (from 1999). I’m all for it.
Jorja Smith is also looking back a little to the same era on her new album What Are the Odds. It’s by no means her strongest album so far, but I really enjoyed the UK garage flavour of ‘What’s Done is Done’. With yet another year of new music failing to inspire me to make any actual album purchases, maybe it’s time I fully went back to the 90s?
Fran Slater
If you listened to Episode 101 of the Picky Bastards podcast, you’ll have heard me waxing lyrical about Mary in the Junkyard already. It bears repeating. A weird, wonderful, fantastical set of songs that make up the most exciting debut album I have heard in 2026. If you haven’t listened already, make sure you do.
Another highlight for me has been Vespers by Liz Lawrence. I was already a fan, but this set of songs takes her to a new level in my eyes. It’s the kind of slightly off-kilter, emotional alt-folk that has always done it for me, with Liz’s lovely lyrics and gorgeous vocals making it a worthwhile record for anyone with taste.
Picky Bastards 