The Best Albums of 2026
Anxious Sound
10
Saw You Out with the Weeds
Suitor
10-Song LP
Released March 10 on Feel It
Favorite tracks: Model Actress, Factory, In the Country, Dull Customer
09
in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music
Dagmar Zuniga
14-Song LP
Released April 10 on AD93
Favorite tracks: Plenty for All the Masses, Plenty (For All of Life's Messes), Garden (feat. Hayes Hoey), Photography the Hard Way (feat. Hayes Hoey), Why I Remember (Each Day of Summer), Her Master's Voice, In Filth Your Mystery is Kingdom
08
Orange
White Fence
11-Song LP
Released April 24 on Drag City
Favorite tracks: That's Where the Money Goes (Seen from the Celestial Realm), I Came Close, Orange for Luck, Your Eyes, Unread Books, I Wanted a Rolex, Blind Your Sun
07
An Undying Love for a Burning World
Neurosis
8-Song 2xLP
Released March 20 on Neurot
Favorite tracks: We Are Torn Wide Open, Mirror Deep, First Red Rays, Blind, In the Waiting Hours, Last Light
06
Hotel Usona
Protomartyr
9-Song LP
Released September 25 on Domino
Favorite tracks: Sounds We Cannot Hear, Exalted Eagles, The Knife Dream, Feed the Sewer, Lavender — Gospel
05
EXPO
Ulrika Spacek
11-Song LP
Released February 6 on Full Time Hobby
Favorite tracks: Build a Box Then Break It, This Time I'm Present, Showroom Poetry, Expo, Square Root of None, A Modern Low
04
Eternal (Live)
Joy Division
192-Song Collection
Released September 25 on Rhino
Favorite tracks: Transmission (Live Hope and Anchor 1979), Candidate (Live Acklam Hall, London 17th May, 1979), Dead Souls (Live The Factory, Manchester 13th July, 1979), Candidate (Live The Factory, Manchester 13th July, 1979), Transmission (Live The Factory, Manchester 13th July, 1979), Dead Souls (Live YMCA, London 2nd August, 1979), Transmission (Live YMCA, London 2nd August, 1979), Transmission (Live Les Bains Douches, Paris 18th December, 1979), Transmission (Live Paradiso, Amsterdam 11th January, 1980), Love Will Tear Us Apart (Live Paradiso, Amsterdam 11th January, 1980), Love Will Tear Us Apart (Live Effenaar, Eindhoven 18th January, 1980), Dead Souls (Live Effenaar, Eindhoven 18th January, 1980), Transmission (Live Effenaar, Eindhoven 18th January, 1980), The Eternal (Live The Warehouse, Preston 28th February, 1980), Transmission (Live The Warehouse, Preston 28th February, 1980), Twenty Four Hours (Live The Lyceum, London 29th February, 1980), The Eternal (Live The Lyceum, London 29th February, 1980), Komakino (Live The Lyceum, London 29th February, 1980), Dead Souls (Live The Moonlight Club, London 3rd April, 1980), Dead Souls (Live Ajanta Theatre, Derby 19th April, 1980), Transmission (Live Ajanta Theatre, Derby 19th April, 1980), Ceremony (Live High Hall, Birmingham 2nd May, 1980), Transmission (Live High Hall, Birmingham 2nd May, 1980)
03
Train on the Island
Aldous Harding
10-Song LP
Released May 8 on 4AD
Favorite tracks: One Stop, Train on the Island, Worms, Venus in the Zinnia, What Am I Gonna Do?, Riding That Symbol
02
Midnight Zone (OST)
Laurel Halo
9-Song LP
Released March 13 on Awe
Favorite tracks: Sunlight Zone, Oreison, Twilight Zone, Fracture, Abyss, Hadal, Sunlight Zone (Strings Version)
01
In Grief or in Hope
Big|Brave
8-Song LP
Released June 12 on Thrill Jockey
Favorite tracks: A Shape of Shame, Holding Tongue, Verdure, An Uttering of Antipathy
The Canadian experimental noise act BIG|BRAVE makes loud sounds feel colossal, interpreting volume as something physical. For over a decade—and ten albums as of this writing—they have articulated this through tense, dissonant compositions that often blend furious anxiety with hushed serenity. On In Grief or in Hope, the band—here consisting of guitarist/vocalist Robin Wattie and guitarist Mathieu Ball, with Liam Andrews on bass—deconstructs the familiar architecture of heavy music to near-disappearance and fashions the raw materials—distortion, vibration, abrasion, repetition—into an eight-part offering of fraught, tumultuous grandeur.
For the first time in the band’s discography (2025’s Ost has one track with percussion), BIG|BRAVE has made an album without drums. The sound shouldn’t feel so enormous without them, but it does. The absence changes the band’s physics. In place of percussion, the band builds with increased abrasion. Guitars scrape against guitars. Notes sustain until their edges fray. Amplifiers hum and howl. Dissonance accumulates slowly, like a shift in pressure. Songs expand and contract according to their own internal gravity. It all feels immense yet strangely skeletal.
Even Wattie's impassioned, chant-like vocals feel untethered. Sometimes they rise above the squalls of electricity. Sometimes they get tangled inside them. Voice and noise become competing forms of friction, wearing against each other until a new melodic language emerges.
For all its stormy abrasion, In Grief or in Hope is not merely unrelenting noise. Tenderness is buried in the commotion. Moments of beauty survive, albeit sometimes bruised and distorted. Hope exists somewhere in the open spaces. Or maybe it’s grief. BIG|BRAVE doesn't make the distinction easy.
TR, December 2026
