Best New Albums This Week: The Strokes, Charli XCX, Body Type, WILLOW, Alex Cameron, Portraits Of Tracy and more

A fairly big summer schedule Friday Charli xcx releases Music, Fashion, Film, her first album since Brat reshaped the culture. The Strokes return with Reality Awaits, their first in six years.WILLOW continues her run of exploratory alternative pop and beyond, the wry Alex Cameron returns, Aussie rockers Body Type release their album on King Gizzard’s label, Baxter Dury revisits ‘Allbarone’ and Portraits Of Tracy is making some of the most interesting American indie pop of the moment.

Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2026.

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New Albums + EPs

Album of the week:

Charli xcx – Music, Fashion, Film

The follow-up to Brat, and by any measure the most-watched pop release of the year. Charli spent 2024 turning a lime-green square into a cultural event, then spent the time since refusing to simply repeat it. Music, Fashion, Film arrives led by ‘Camera’, with an Aidan Zamiri-directed video starring Vincent Cassel, and the title alone signals an artist thinking well beyond the record as a format.

Music, Fashion, Film is an inevitable comedown sonically but not much has changed in Charli’s brain – even during BRAT she was questioning herself, her insecurities and her place in the world. This time around, there are lots of big names attached to the project – David Cronenberg offers advice on the closing track ‘No One Last Forever’, and the triumvirate of John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorsese are on the cover.

As promised there is a lot of “rock music”, mostly in the form of sharpened guitar tones alongside some more PC Music-style synth textures like on the commerce galaxy brain of ‘Card Declined’, the guitar through effects on ‘Camera’, the muted emo-pop-punk of ‘2007’, and the frazzled fuzz of ‘I’m Afraid’ , ‘Magic Metal Montana’ is an ode to AG Cook built on a Strokes-esque lollop, and the pop punk returns on ‘Yeah’. On first listen, it sounds like a musical exorcism of the BRAT era, an album operating on unstable ground, spilling out over the edges in an honest fashion. The album she had to make? Probably.

The Strokes – Reality Awaits

The seventh album from The Strokes, and their first since 2020’s winning The New Abnormal. Twenty-five years on from Is This It, Julian Casablancas and co. occupy an unusual position: a band whose debut is permanently lodged in the canon, still capable of surprising people when they choose to. The gaps between records have grown long enough that each new one arrives as an event in itself. 

Reality Awaits, perhaps because of the gap, and the band’s recent return via Coachella which seems to have increased their cultural cachet, finds the band in a slightly new reality – their old tight rock style is evident in the album’s DNA, it’s just pitched differently – brighter lighter – and doesn’t stray too far from the sonic sound of the last one – there’s a Phoenix-esque jam on ‘Lonely In The Future’, the soft neon rock of ‘Dine’n’Dash’, Julian Casablancas’ vocal auto-tune as deliberate effect on ‘Psycho Shit’, ‘Going Shopping’ and ‘Falling Out of Love’ and classic rock on ‘The Fruits Of Conquest’. That makes sense The Strokes are the most palpable classic rock bands we’ve got.

Alex Cameron – Late to Set

The new album from the Australian songwriter Alex Cameron, whose character-driven writing has produced some of the sharpest and most funniest songs about masculinity, failure and self-delusion of the last decade. Cameron writes from inside his narrators rather than above them, which is what keeps the songs landing. Late to Set continues a catalogue that rewards paying close attention to the words, and that is evident in the song titles like ‘Jesus Never Had No Porno’ and ‘Testosterone In Blue’.

Body Type – Tally

The new album from the Sydney four-piece Body Type, whose scratchy, melodic guitar records sit in the lineage of Australian indie that runs through The Go-Betweens and out the other side. ‘And What Else?’ which kicks off the record caught my ear a few months ago.

Body Type releasing on King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s p(doom) records and are Sophie McComish, Annabel Blackman, Cecil Coleman, and Georgia Wilkinson-Derums.

WILLOW – THE THREAD

The new album from WILLOW whose explored alternative music for years now – moving between pop-punk, neo-soul, jazz-adjacent art-rock and back again. Each WILLOW record has landed somewhere different from the last, and THE THREAD arrives with that same unpredictability baked in – WILLOW is an artist of interest – always intriguing.

Nick Hakim – I Can See

The new album from the Washington DC-born, New York-based singer and producer Nick Hakim, whose smeared, psychedelic take on soul has made him one of the most distinctive voices in the space around Blood Orange, Solange and the wider experimental R&B world. Hakim’s records reward volume and patience, all warped tape textures and vocals buried just far enough back in the mix.

Rico Nasty – RX

The new album from the Maryland rapper Rico Nasty, whose sugar-trap and rage-adjacent records have been a persistent influence on where aggressive rap has gone over the last five years. Rico has always been happiest at the loudest, most abrasive end of her range.

Foodman – HIKARIGASASHIKOMU

The new album from Takahide Higuchi’s Foodman, the Japanese producer whose fractured, playful electronic music has become a genuine outlier in club music over the last decade. Foodman builds tracks out of unlikely sounds and impossible rhythms, and the results land somewhere between footwork, ambient and something with no obvious precedent. Always worth investigating.

Portraits Of Tracy – Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV! EP

A new EP from Jaco Pastorius-referencing Portraits Of Tracy, arriving with a loaded title, and is a short successor to Tracy Amare’s 2023’s Drive Home which was 18-track concept record that served as an analogy for Tracy’s own journey in accepting herself as transgender and finding her voice as a Black, queer teen raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Portraits Of Tracy’s music touches on classic rock, hip-hop, R&B, soul, and psychedelic indie rock talent.

Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV! is a loud and playful glimpse into who I am as a person and a musician. Drawing from acts like Stereolab & The Beach Boys… to Dead Kennedys & Dag Nasty… you know it’s bound to be a fun time.”

Also released this week

• Ann Peebles – Tellin’ It (50th Anniversary Edition)
• Apollo Brown – No Pressure, No Diamond
• Baby Queen – I Hope You Don’t Remember Me
• Baxter Dury – Allbarone Versions EP
• Blue States – Where The Fades Meet
• Bootsy Collins – Metal Health
• Cypress Hill – Dios Bendiga
• Goth Fight Cage – Untaxed Vehicle EP
• Lutto Lento – 2569 EP
• Punch Brothers – The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers
• Robyn Hitchcock – The Confuser