Every Friday, On Vinyl features 88Nine music director Erin Wolf and Lilliput Records co-owner Tanner Musgrove delivering their top picks and a list of this week’s other releases, so the can’t-miss new albums don’t pass you by.
Twisted Teens, The Holy Cross Tigers
New Orleans’ singer/guitarist Caspian Hollywell and lap-steel player RJ Santos are the rock ‘n roll duo known as Twisted Teens, and they’ve kinda low-key crept into garage rockers’ hearts in 2026. Nina Corcoran of Pitchfork recently shared a peek at the burgeoning lore of their latest record, which doubles as their debut for the iconic Sub Pop label:
Twisted Teens’ fourth album finds dark comedy in bitter pain. The knife enters after Hollywell’s breakup with his ex-girlfriend while vacationing in Albania; the knife twists when she continues to live with him in New Orleans, he breaks his leg, and he inevitably slides into heavy drinking. Hollywell dug himself out by writing his way through it — the slow dance sway of “I Spend My Time Crying,” the rowdy admission of defeat in “Blue Rose” — while Santos and Billiard’s nimble performances function as arms laced through Hollywell’s own to pick him back up.
No amount of sorrow could stop Hollywell from injecting Twisted Teens’ music with the cheeky twang that fills a crowded dancefloor, though; the rose-colored glasses of “When We First Met” look good on everyone, including him and you. When in doubt, there’s Santos, sliding along the steel guitar in “Be An Angel” to revive a broken heart.
Hot off the heels of the release of The Holy Cross Tigers, the Twisted Teens warm up the Turner Hall Ballroom stage for Kurt Vile this Sunday night in Milwaukee. Go get yourself a rekkid at the merch table.
untitled (halo), untitled (halo)
Written over the course of a year in their Glassell Park studio, untitled (halo)’s self-titled album is about the act of construction: how memories are edited, identities are formed and personal mythology is built from the pieces left behind. The band writes music rooted in Los Angeles, one of the most sprawling (and sometimes most impersonal) music markets in this country.
Born in part from a feeling that there was a “lack of a scene or music in L.A.,” longtime friends and band members Ariana Mamnoon, Jack Dione, Jay Are and Nicholas Noneman had several years’ experience moving through the city’s DIY community before ultimately finding one another. The time spent contributing to and being shaped by the scenes around them ground their trademark ethereal, distorted and plaintive sound, wrapped in electronics-laced guitars that feel lost and found all at once.
Through their self-curated events, including their curation of a 40-person group art show with Obey and their ongoing party series held in various local venues, untitled (halo) say they’ve created the spaces and music community they once yearned for.
Hudson Freeman, Doom Country
Texas-born, Brooklyn-based Hudson Freeman grew up in a religious household, later turning to guitar and songwriting to work through his feelings. Inspired by Midwest folkheads like Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver, Freeman makes his own brand of resonant, reflective and poignant songs by employing reverb, distortion, tempo changes, acoustic and electronic instrumentation. It adds up to a rootsy Tilt-a-Whirl effect that feels like Kurt Cobain is jamming with Hovvdy as his backing band.
Freeman describes his new album as “my personal, post-apocalyptic road trip album through America in the vein of Illinois, Nebraska and [Sun Kil Moon album] Ghosts of the Great Highway. … Sonically, it’s a reference to the genre play of lo-fi sludge with folk and Americana as much as it is about American apocalypticism and having grown up Evangelical while now living through the weird end-times feelings of the 2020s.” Find it out on Mom + Pop.
Lilliput pick: The Smashing Times, Come Along With Me
The Smashing Times make music for those who like their songs lo-fi, distorted, jangly and pretty “indie classic.” Garage pop, power pop and paisley all coat the strings of the guitars strumming, and the twangily nasal mod-boy vocals with sweet girl harmonies skew shambolic yet sincere (with lots of tambo and a little amp crackle, too).
This vintage-tinged Baltimore band play tunes to add to that section of your vinyl collection in which artists like Television Personalities, Daniel Johnston and that C-86 stuff all live. They’ve been called “one the few modern acts to get the brilliant absurdities of this type of yesteryear so bizarrely right.” If you want to go down the paisley path, follow their beckoning call of Come Along With Me, the vinyl version of which is finally out on K Records.
More of our picks
- Bad Brains, Are You Ready: The First Studio Recording
- Boys Noize, 7LLVSION
- Current Joys, Rosebud
- Girl Tones, Precious!
- Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch, Bocca di Lupo and Mouth of the Wolf
- Rex Orange County, Dream Fatigue
- Shady Bug, I wanted to be there
