New albums from The Mountain Goats, Shearwater, The Durutti Column, and Trashcan Sinatras, plus a 4CD Cherry Red shoegaze archive.
Plus the Billy Joel proto-metal record that time forgot, Blues Traveler on deck, and Darren Leach just dropped The Wipers’ Is This Real? into the Hopper.
This Week on Dig Me Out
The 1970 Billy Joel Metal Album That Time Forgot
J Dziak, Tim Minneci, and Chip Midnight, August 4, 2026
Before “Piano Man,” before “Uptown Girl,” before he was even Billy Joel, there was Attila. A two-man Hammond-organ-and-drums duo turning out prehistoric proto-metal on Long Island in 1970. The album is 59 minutes and 59 seconds of a young songwriter trying to sound like Iron Butterfly and mostly succeeding. We spent the episode on the specific chaos of the record he’d rather you never heard.
Know a lost or forgotten album that deserves the spotlight? Suggest it for a future episode.
Coming Up Next
Blues Traveler – Travelers and Thieves (Tuesday, August 11)
John Popper’s harmonica, Chan Kinchla’s guitar, and the second Blues Traveler record, the one that turned a New York bar band into an H.O.R.D.E.-tour headliner without any of the songs you’d hear on the radio yet. Travelers and Thieves (1991) is the one longtime fans defend hardest. This week is a Patron Album Review picked by Patrick Testa from the Board of Directors.
After that on Aug 18: Tora Tora Surprise Attack (1989) as the next 80s Metal episode.
Give Travelers and Thieves a spin before Tuesday and come ready with what works and what doesn’t.
Want to hand-pick an album for a future episode and join us on the show to dig into it? Join the Board of Directors at dmounion.com.
New Releases
The Mountain Goats – Days
Think back to 2005, headphones on, “This Year” from The Sunset Tree landing on you like a hand on the shoulder, and John Darnielle becoming the poet laureate of surviving your own life. Twenty-plus records later, he still writes like the guy who could not shut up about the specifics. Days is out August 7 on his Cadmean Dawn imprint, arriving less than a year after their last, and it started as a Goths sequel (working title: Grunges) before becoming a broader meditation on 90s nostalgia and mortality with songs literally titled “Song for Layne Staley” and “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds.”
What works: Still Listening Magazine frames the tonal move directly: “Days’ music is deceptively chipper, content to rage against the dying light in a gentler fashion.” New wave synths, country-tinged harp from Mikaela Davis, and Darnielle finding grace in every wounded weirdo he writes about.
What doesn’t: Fans on r/themountaingoats split on the execution, with a vocal contingent finding some lyrics “really corny” and the rhyme schemes too simple for the conceptual ambition. Even Darnielle’s most devoted apologists concede that at 27 albums deep, the batting average has to slip somewhere.
Shearwater – The New World
Cast your mind back to 2008, Rook on repeat, Jonathan Meiburg’s strained tenor pushing against instrumental thickets that sounded like Talk Talk had gotten a job on a research vessel. Meiburg is a working ornithologist as much as he’s a bandleader, and Shearwater have been quietly making cerebral, nature-infused art rock as an Okkervil River spinoff since the late 90s. The New World is out July 31, self-released and crowdfunded, recorded across four years in London, Berlin, Brooklyn, and Texas with members of Malian group Ngoni Ba, Shahzad Ismaily, and Laurie Anderson on the closing track.
What works: Uncut gave it 9/10 and praised how it “throngs with nature imagery” while tackling truth and misinformation. A Bandcamp fan quoted on the release page called it “the band’s best to date, its songs ring with clarity, urgency and depth.”
What doesn’t: The same Uncut review frames the cost of admission: this is expansive but focused music with Thom Yorke-adjacent vocals, and the lack of obvious hooks means it’s not background music. If you’re not willing to sit down with it, the record will slide past you.
The Durutti Column – Renascent
Picture Manchester in 1980, Factory Records catalog number FAC 14, Vini Reilly’s guitar sounding like the most quietly emotional instrument on any label in Britain. The Durutti Column were always Joy Division’s spiritual counterweight on Factory, and Reilly’s intricate, nylon-string fingerwork influenced everyone from Johnny Marr to Bradford Cox. Renascent is his first studio album in 16 years, out July 31 on London Records. Reilly suffered multiple strokes that left him unable to play guitar and financially vulnerable. Longtime collaborators Bruce Mitchell and Keir Stewart assembled the record patiently over a decade, recording Reilly in his kitchen from a van outside during the pandemic.
What works: Silent Radio lands the verdict without qualification: “Surely a record that will be remembered as one of the greatest comeback albums of the 21st century.” Reilly’s “intricate, instinctive melodies and bold, fluid fingerwork” remain intact.
What doesn’t: No More Workhorse notes not every experiment lands: Reilly’s spoken-word vocals on “Liars” create “a strange effect” with his “almost rap-style vocal,” and “Your Shadow at Evening” with its drum-dominated approach “doesn’t quite resonate.” A record this hard-won gets a lot of grace, but the honest read is that some tracks work and some don’t.
If you want to hand-pick an album for a future episode and join us on the podcast to dig into it, that’s exactly what the Board of Directors is for. Join at dmounion.com.
Trashcan Sinatras – Ever The Optimist
Remember 1990, “Obscurity Knocks” on college radio, the Trashcans announcing themselves as the Scottish band that took jangle-pop’s melancholy and layered it with the kind of harmony that made you rewind cassettes. Frank Reader’s voice, John Douglas’s melodies, and a run of records (Cake, I’ve Seen Everything, A Happy Pocket) that quietly kept the Aztec Camera flame alive through the Britpop bombast. Ever The Optimist is out July 31, their first proper studio album in about six years, and the title tells you exactly which pole of the Reader-brothers songwriting spectrum they’re leaning into this time.
What works: Louder Than War frames what fans of A Happy Pocket have been waiting for: the record “leans into the melodic warmth and lyrical care that made them essential in the first place, without pretending three decades haven’t passed.”
What doesn’t: The same Louder Than War piece also names the tradeoff: the Trashcans have never once tried to sound like a different band, and this record isn’t going to convert anyone who hasn’t already found their way in. If jangle-heavy Scottish sadpop has never been your entry point, Ever The Optimist isn’t the U-turn.
Also Out This Week
Various Artists – We Are the Beautiful: Two Decades of Shoegaze 1991-2011: Cherry Red’s 4CD, 67-track compilation covering shoegaze’s whole arc from 1991 through the second and third waves. AllMusic’s Paul Simpson praises how it “gathers highlights and deep cuts” with “plenty of quality material from shoegaze’s original wave” that wasn’t on prior comps. Notable omission: My Bloody Valentine (licensing).
The Darling Buds – Same Sun / Same Sky: Andrea Lewis’s C86-era Welsh alt-pop band’s first new album in a decade, still riding a jangle-and-fuzz template that was underrated in 1988 and remains underrated now. Out July 31.
Starflyer 59 – Disappointed EP: Jason Martin’s long-running project turns in another compact bulletin from the shoegaze/dream-pop spectrum, released July 31 on Velvet Blue Music.
Strawberry Alarm Clock – Where’s One?: First album of all-new material in 14 years from the “Incense and Peppermints” band, with five of the six original members from their 1967-68 records back in the room. Bill Kopp at Musoscribe says it might be “one of my potential picks for the year’s best.” Out August 7 on Big Stir.
Billy Morrison – Hollow: The Idol/Cult guitarist’s second solo record, following 2024’s The Morrison Project. Out August 7.
Fresh in the Hopper
The queue keeps stacking. Here are the picks worth bookmarking. They’ll all be appearing in upcoming polls.
The Wipers, Is This Real? (1980), submitted by Darren Leach. His pitch is efficient: “Because many bands have covered their songs, including Nirvana who covered 2 tracks from this album alone.” Portland’s foundational post-punk record, the one Kurt Cobain would name-check for the rest of his life.
The Firm, The Firm (1985), submitted by Chip. With Led Zeppelin and Bad Company both done, Paul Rodgers and Jimmy Page formed a supergroup with Tony Franklin and Chris Slade. “Radioactive” hit number one on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart and the video got MTV airplay. Chip’s real question: was the rest of the album worth digging up? Guessing yes.
Kick Axe, Vices (1984), submitted by Tony. Rated 10/10 by Martin Popoff, and Tony’s got a specific defense: “’Heavy Metal Shuffle’ should have been HUGE.” Canadian melodic metal that lived just under the surface of the 80s hard-rock explosion.
Handsome, Handsome (1997), submitted by Darren Leeman. Post-Helmet supergroup with members of Cro-Mags and Quicksand, an album that Darren describes as “tight, melodic and punchy,” the connective tissue between alt-metal and the post-hardcore explosion.
Got a lost or forgotten album that deserves the spotlight? Drop it in the Hopper.
What are you reaching for first this week? Darnielle’s 27th, Meiburg’s four-year globe-trotter, Vini Reilly finally recording again, or the Trashcans doing the thing only the Trashcans do?
Hit the comments and let me know. And if this roundup saved you some time, consider subscribing to support the mission.
Join the Board of Directors at dmounion.com