Got a few releases here that I’m really excited to share with you this week. 2026 is already starting to blank 2025 in terms of what we’re getting, though that may also be a case of staring more deeply into what’s out and ahead. Q1 gold cashed in below. Enjoy these records like I do.

And send in more! PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA // [email protected]

And subscriiiiiiiiiibe, so you can read all of this. But start here, with the confidence that you’ll still be enjoying this debut by the end of the year.

STATION MODEL VIOLENCE s/t LP (Anti Fade / Static Shock)

Kind of unfair to call this “the new Total Control band” as Daniel Stewart is the only common link between the two, but here we are, DX teaming up with R.M.F.C.’s Buz Clatworthy and a host of others, playing a set of songs rooted in an intermediate band (KX Aminal), and effectively putting the sting back in post-punk. All of the different tangents Total Control might’ve taken are thinned down to thread a needle occupied by very specific timeplaces: a few strains of strummy big room UK-centric rock in the turn-of-the-‘80s mode (Crisis, early U2, The Sound, Comsats, Chameleons, Big Country), with the same stared-into-the-eclipse burn/aggression of This Heat in the Deceit/Health & Efficiency era, American counterparts from Mission of Burma or mean-streaked R.E.M. to For Against, and Australians such as Flowers (pre-Icehouse) or some of the more stern moments of the Go-Betweens. Huge sled of clean guitars comin’ atcha (including a 12-string), muted/box percussion, vocal cantor drone, and the dystopian Total Control stage is here, only now we’re in reckoning mode, every song sounding like it could either be a prayer to the midday sky or a funeral procession (can’t they be both, though?). Band has a crisp, burning cold sort of presence, like one of those days when the sun is barreling down on the previous day’s snowfall from a cloudless ceiling, taunting us with brightness below freezing. Truly exciting, one of the best things I’ve heard in this early year.

More heat below the drop. Punch in!