Monthly Report: May 2026 Albums
1. Jobi Riccio - Face the Feeling
I don't get to work concerts at my teleprompting job all the time, but when I do it's often tribute shows (i.e. people can use a lyric monitor onstage when they're doing someone else's songs they don't perform all the time), and last week was an incredible one: Songwriters Celebrate John Prine at Wolf Trap. I'm going to cherish a lot of memories from those two days of rehearsals and performances, meeting Aoife O'Donovan and Margo Price and seeing Emmylou Harris dance around onstage. But one thing that's definitely going to stick with me was hearing Jobi Riccio for the first time when she opened the show with Prine's "Summer's End" and her own "Idaho." She's from Colorado and received the John Prine Songwriters Fellowship Award early in her career, her voice is incredible, and her second album is one of those records where it feels like one life-changing heartbreak looms over every song, even the songs that aren't about that relationship. When I hear "Idaho" I think about Riccio going over the arrangement with Prine's band and how Kenneth Blevins should pick up the beat on the second chorus, and "A Little of the Time" and "Wildfire Season," man, those are some great lyrics. I feel like Yep Roc releases a lot of records by older established artists who already have diehard fans, but I hope they're good at breaking younger artists, because Riccio really really deserves to be heard. Here's the 2026 albums Spotify playlist that I'm constantly updating with new releases.
2. Eleni Mandell - Tailspin
Los Angeles's Eleni Mandell has been one of my favorite singer-songwriters for a long time, and I thought she reached new heights with her 11th album, 2019's Wake Up Again. In the announcement of he first album in seven years, though, Mandell says "I didn't know if I'd ever make another record," as she'd apparently been raising two kids and working as a high school English teacher. And I'm very grateful that she did make another record. Tailspin is in part an album about divorce and single motherhood, and "Hard To Be Lonely" and "Go Look At The Sky" have a deep sense of loss and longing. But it's got some of the sweetest melodies and most pastoral arrangements in her catalog, and there's a hard won joy and whimsy in songs like "Life Is Sometimes" and "Old Man, Old Dog."
3. Kacey Musgraves - Middle of Nowhere
Kacey Musgraves followed her Grammy-winning triumph Golden Hour with a fairly large musical pivot on Star-Crossed, and even her next album Deeper Well, while more of an acoustic singer-songwriter record, felt like another evolution in a new direction. They were perfectly good albums, but just about every fan would agree they weren't as good as her 2010s stuff, so I am pretty happy with Middle of Nowhere feeling like classic Kacey, reluctant as I am to drag out a "return to form" narrative. Her hatchet-burying Miranda Lambert duet "Horses and Divorces" and "Rhinestoned" are probably the songs that put the biggest smiles on my face, but the whole thing is excellent.
4. Ecca Vandal - Looking For People To Unfollow
Historically I haven't discovered a lot of new artists to listen to on YouTube, I just don't trust their algorithm. But I made more of an effort to browse YouTube for new music last year when I wrote a Spin list of the best music videos of 2025, and Ecca Vandal's breakout hit "Cruising To Self Soothe" made my top 10 after I stumbled upon her great videos. Rap-rock is a dicey genre that I don't always have a lot of time for, but Ecca Vandal, an Australian singer/rapper of Sri Lankan descent, combines the genres in a way I like and don't feel like I've heard a hundred times. I prefer the guitar-heavy stuff on the first two-thirds of Looking For People To Unfollow, she has a great scream that reminds me of Joan Jett, but the last few tracks that lean more toward beats and rhymes also sound pretty great.
5. Columbia Icefield - A Silence Opens
January brought the posthumous release of pedal steel genius Susan Alcorn's collaboration with Nomad War Machine, and soon after, I was delighted to hear from Out Of Your Head Records that they had another album that Susan played on coming out this year. Alcorn was part of the band that played on trumpeter Nate Wooley's 2019 album Columbia Icefield, and he'd reconvened that band to record music composed and/or inspired by late trumpeter Ron Miles. It's sad to think that Wooley made A Silence Opens to pay tribute to one friend, and then lost another friend that worked on the album by the time it was released, but what a beautiful, powerfully emotional record to remember both of them by.
6. Future Islands - From a Hole in the Floor to the Fountain of Youth
I got to interview Future Islands for the second time about their new B sides collection, and then went to their 20th anniversary show in Baltimore, and it was really incredible to see a band that used to play The Depot headline Pier Six Pavilion. "The Fountain" and "Find Love" from this compilation sounded great live, too. I'm always fascinated by would-be title tracks that were left off albums, and it's kind of shocking that "As Long As You Are" wasn't on 2020's As Long As You Are, that's a fantastic song.
7. War On Women - Time Under Tension
20 years as an active band is a long time and not a lot of Baltimore bands have gotten there. War On Women might, though, they're already 15 years in. "Messages Unsent" from their 4th full-length is one of my favorite songs they've ever written, and I also like how "Serve" and "Hunger Stones" remind me a bit of Shawna and Brooks's very underrated previous band Avec.
8. Ashley McBryde - Wild
I love the sound of Ashley McBryde's Jay Joyce-produced album, but I also really enjoy the creative partnership she's forged with John Osborne of Brothers Osborne. Osborne produced her 2022 concept Lindeville, and Wild feels like a chance for him to help her make a record that's really heavy on electric guitar, at times feels more like a southern rock album than a country album, he might play more solos on here than he did on the last Brothers Osborne album. "Behind Bars" is such a good lyric.
9. Drake - Maid of Honour
There are a lot of ways for an artist to release more than an album's worth of music in a year -- deluxe editions, staggered weekly or monthly releases, B-sides, and so on. I don't think an old-fashioned double album is the best move all the time or even most of the time, and I think what Drake did in May -- a traditional rollout for his highly anticipated Iceman with two surprise albums coming out simultaneously -- was a pretty good way to super serve his fanbase with different kinds of records without it feeling like a retread of 2018's Scorpion. Iceman is more or less the straight up rap album while the other two go in different danceable/melodic directions. I hate Habibti, it's like a weaker More Life or Views, but I like Maid of Honour, it feels like a worthy continuation of one of Drake's most underrated albums, Honestly, Nevermind, with Gordo co-producing more than half the tracks, a Peggy Gou sample, a lot weird playful uptempo sounds that I haven't heard on a dozen other Drake albums.
10. Willie Nelson - Dream Chaser
The big news about Willie Nelson's latest album is that it contains a song co-written with Bob Dylan, only the second time they've written a song together ever. Their 1993 duet "Heartland" was good but kind of a by-the-numbers topical song that seemed like it may have originated in their work with Farm Aid. Dream Chaser's "I Can't Read Your Mind" is a nice little melancholy number that feels appropriate coming from two guys who have each recorded multiple Frank Sinatra tribute albums. And other new songs like "Wonder What I'm Gonna Do" and "I Don't Think I've Cried Today" get extra pathos from just how positively ancient the 93-year-old Nelson sounds now.
The Worst Album of the Month: Fakemink - Terrified.
I don't listen to a lot of UK rap but I respect that they've developed a whole sound and lineage at this point that's pretty distinct from American hip hop. And then I hear something like Fakemink, a 21-year-old from East London who makes derivative Soundcloud rap with a British accent, and I wonder if he could be the Gavin Rossdale of our time, but that's probably too generous. It's so funny to compare Fakemink's pretentious defense of his music to the idiotic sex raps on "Like A Virgin" and "Hard Candy," this guy really thinks he's doing some next level shit.
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