Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0158 (January 6, 2026)

GREETINGS.

For those of you who’re new, welcome to Heathen Disco.

What is this???

This is a newsletter about music that publishes twice weekly, with five new things to listen to (or not…) in each.

What can I expect?

For 2026, Heathen Disco is changing focus to only covering new music. It’s my thoughts on a release and a way to listen to it, wherever possible.

What is “new music”?

The criteria for this: as recent of a release as possible, with exceptions when absolutely necessary. Typically I won’t go back further than 12 months to the current date. This includes new reissues or archival stuff — it just has to be a new release, physical or digital.

This has less to do with the composerly concept of new music, or the long-dead New Music Seminar, though if you want me to cover that stuff, make it happen.

Where can I send my new music to you?

If you have new music you want me to hear, send it along. Tell your bands, your friends’ bands, your publicist, whoever. This is where it goes.

[email protected] (digital)

PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA (physical)

If you have a different email for me, you don’t. Send the music to one of these two places. Previously established emails are graveyards and there’s more of a chance that I’ll see what you’re sending if you send it to the right place.

I can’t possibly check out your link in bio. I won’t be able to respond for a download. Get in touch. Direct contact matters.

Where the old music coverage going?

I have an archive of writing going back 25+ years. I used to publish some of that stuff here. That’s all changing. There is a second newsletter that I’m getting ready right now that will publish the following:

• My old writing (and this’ll be the only place you can get it)

• New thoughts on old music

• Me going out and buying a bunch of cheap used records and covering them

More details on that soon. Yes, you’ll be able to subscribe to both for a discount.

Can I share this newsletter?

Far be it from me to stop you! I’d like as many people to read this as possible, so please share Heathen Disco with anyone you think would be interested.

If I review your release and you find it favorable, I ask that you share the newsletter with a link. Yes, you can use the content for promotional purposes, even if it’s behind a paywall. Otherwise, what’s the point?

What’s up with subscriptions?

Much of the content on Heathen Disco is paywalled. You will get something for free with each one I publish, but you will get more when you pay.

Simply put, you will make my life a lot easier if you pay me to do Heathen Disco. It’s easy. It costs $3 a month to subscribe, or $35 a year. That’s a lower price point than most music newsletters, and this one doesn’t miss.

Your support is greatly appreciated!

Here we go…

WINGED WHEEL Desert So Green LP (12XU)

[out this Friday]

Winged Wheel’s third album finds the lineup solidified (pedal steel player Leon Slack, sometimes of Water Damage, and Steve Shelley with his tubs and shakers and brushes, forging a supergroup out of a bunch of friends fuckin’ around in the mail during COVID), and the reins pulled in from last year’s Big Hotel in ways that don’t surprise as much as satisfy. The notion of this younger generation who probably had Sonic Youth written on at least one belonging (bookbag, leather jacket, notebook cover) getting to play atop The Shelley Shuffle is, in the parlance, some sort of wish fulfillment, the luckiest break there is with one of the most definitive drummers of their times and places. Together they summarily hit an excellent zone capped by Evol and A Thousand Leaves on both sides, the droning, homemade Goth/Slowdive bootleg longsleeve foursided print-meets-Sofia and Chloe range, and the same sort of partially improvised, big-room improv/jam orbits they achieved before take on darker, more muted hues while playing to the strengths of the ensemble (“Beautiful Holy Jewel Home” retains some of the doomsday twang menace of Cory Plump’s old band Spray Paint, but finds its wallflower inner child and climbs its vines straight to the windows; closer “The Suite Goes Quiet” hits an Eastern motif that wouldn’t be too out of place on a Powers/Rolin collab, or a Polvo record). I was pleased with the environments they’d spun up before, but the verdant, arid spaces they build here are ready to be lived in. Best one yet.