Quick-fire Roundup - January 2026
Short reviews for some of our favorite releases of the past month.
Quick-fire Roundup is our chance to highlight a few of the albums we’ve been digging from the past month that we may not have had the time or energy to pump out full essays for. These releases nevertheless deserve a gold star and a spot on the podium.
Jenny on Holiday - Quicksand Heart
39:40 // January 9, 2026 // Transgressive Records
It’s been a couple of years since we’ve heard from the, eh, dark pop duo Let’s Eat Grandma, but apparently vocalist Jenny Hollingworth needed a different outlet to make some slightly less dark music. Her debut solo effort, Quicksand Heart, is exactly that: pretty fun. In essence, it’s bouncy indie pop with a healthy dose of 80s synths on top. The colourful production works wonderfully well on the extroverted opening stretch, making every grand chorus Pop. Unfortunately, once Jenny on Holiday (a name that really isn’t all that much more review-friendly than Let’s Eat Grandma, but I digress) slows things down, things get a little too saccharine. Cuts like “Dolphins” and “These Streets I Know” are ultimately cute, but not exactly interesting enough to warrant hitting the replay button. Quicksand Heart is at its best when it’s avoiding more subtle songwriting and pumping out gigantic hooks instead, occasionally and surprisingly strengthened by Jenny’s inability to fully achieve what such a chorus requires from her voice. This album thrives on the confidence and catchiness exuded by the second half of closer “Appetite”, and while I wish these ten songs had even more of both, Jenny on Holiday’s debut is a perfectly lovely time. (7.0/10)
- Jesper
Hällas - Panorama
44:10 // January 30, 2026 // Aventyr
Sweden’s Hällas has been my favorite of the multitude of retro hard rock bands coming out of the woodwork in Scandinavia for a while now. After all, their sense for ‘70s vibes feels unusually genuine, and their incorporation of heavy metal and prog rock influences make everything go down even smoother.
With all that said, Panorama is pretty clearly the best LP from the band yet. It’s also a bit of a departure from their typical formula, seeing the prog rock elements become the focus rather than a rewarding sideshow. Opener “Above the Continuum”, which sprawls over twenty-one minutes in duration, makes these intentions clear, and is a monumental success, imbued as it is with the kind of absurdly grand aspirations which powered classic epics like “Supper’s Ready” or “2112”. This new addition predictably doesn’t quite measure up to such comparisons, but the fact I’m even mentioning such canon-defining tracks speaks volumes. And, even if that stellar first song is the strongest on this album, second track “Face of an Angel” impresses in a completely different way, emerging as one of the biggest bangers in the Hällas catalog to date. If the album’s remaining three cuts don’t shine relative to those twin highlights, they also do nothing to dispel the notion that Hällas are at the absolute peak of their game. Panorama sounds like it could’ve been released in 1975, in the best way. (8.0/10)
- Sunnyvale
Plantoid - Flare
47:41 // January 30, 2026 // Bella Union
The second album from UK band Plantoid is a strange one. This isn’t to say that the nine songs presented here are particularly inaccessible to underground music fans, but nonetheless Flare feels unique, built upon an odd fusion of contemporary prog rock with dream pop. These two scenes might not be the most natural pairing, and indeed there remain some “WTF” moments to be found, but for the most part it works charmingly, and indeed has become one of my most-listened-to records of recent weeks. Your personal mileage may vary with this unusual sound, but at the very least it makes for a fun and often captivating spin. (8.0/10)
- Sunnyvale
YĪN YĪN - Yatta!
40:59 // January 23rd, 2026 // Glitterbeat
Easily the most buoyant and indiscriminately replayable release that has passed my ears in some time, Yatta!’s disco-happy, surf-sprayed psych jams are an evergreen copse of positivity in the salty, salty (…) desert the year so far has splayed out for us. Its overwhelmingly pentatonic sound scans as very much East Asian and is probably considered an affront to public decency in the band’s native Netherlands — but with such bright motifs and perky deliver, who’s to complain? With eerier cuts like “Night in Taipei” in reserve, YĪN YĪN don’t place too much weight on the midtempo grooves that were very clearly their comfort zone for this record, and with the pacing of both individual tracks and the record as a whole veering on the side of alacrity, you don’t have to stick around long to get the best of it. Hooray. (7.5/10)
- Hugh Puddle
Reol - 美辞学 (Rhetorica)
33:58 // January 21st, 2026 // SME
Responsible for two of the most enduringly infectious electropop records of recent(ish) times with 2016’s Σ and 2020’s Kinjitou, Reol has worked her way into the ‘20s with a reliable, if intermittently excellent streak of all-out bangers. 美辞学 (Rhetorica) is to my ears the most dialled-in she’s ever sounded — and if this inadvertently entails her least stylistically unified or least pyrotechnically-produced experience to date (amidst this revolving door of co-producers, once misses the mayhem that producer Giga to go the whole hog, but alas), then it’s still a fair showing for one of the most vocally adroit and vim-endowed figures in her style. (6.5/10)
- Hugh Puddle
MØL - DREAMCRUSH
42:24 // January 30th, 2026 // Nuclear Blast Records
DREAMCRUSH will certainly be a polarizing album. On one end, it is a deviation from MØL’s typical style and identity that dominated the sound waves of debut Jord. On the other end, this is probably the most accessible album from the Danish act to date, providing an opportunity for new fans to lean into blackgaze in a more comfortable, bite-sized fashion. Regardless, DREAMCRUSH is a natural evolution for the band as they begin to feel even more comfortable with their melodic sensibilities and strengthen their cleaner focus. Although it doesn’t reach the same heights as its predecessors, the band’s newest record slots itself nicely into their discography, showcasing their dynamic songwriting ability and immense talent in creating massive sounding records. (7.0/10)
- Tyler White
+1 to the MOL review that isn't hyperbolic in one direction or the other. Perfectly fine blackgaze record that I probably won't remember a year from now, and that's okay.