PopMatters

Outbreak Festival 2026's Best Performances @OutbreakFest is the most consistently hailed event in European hardcore. Now, four years into that title, how can it possibly live up to the hype? READ: tinyurl.com/Outbreak26

20 YEARS AGO: Johnny Cash's 'A Hundred Highways' stands as a fitting, gentle coda, a farewell from a major talent. tinyurl.com/JCash2006

20 YEARS AGO: Thom Yorke showed that his singular vision was well-executed on 'The Eraser'. tinyurl.com/TYorke2006

For all the amazing horn playing that we finally hear from Steven Bernstein, these two records remind us that he remains daring and highly conceptual. 'ResoNation Trio' and 'Ultra Resonance' are both a #PMPick out now. tinyurl.com/Bernstein-26

Dorothe Nor’s RANGE is a story of suspension between two realms, one on a granular day-to-day scale and one whose scale is incomprehensibly vast. tinyurl.com/NorsRange

Pop Past (2007): Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s first film, THE LIVES OF OTHERS, is part paradox, part prophecy. It’s a stellar achievement in archival storytelling and historic perspective. tinyurl.com/LvsOthrsCntrl

Anchoring Widow’s Bay’s diverse horror themes in the characters’ personal anxieties transforms cinematic dread into something terribly relatable. #PMPick tinyurl.com/WdwsBayToys

For 13 years, '68 made noise rock that was, essentially, about how life-affirming it is to make songs. With 'They Are Survived', they say goodbye at full volume. @purenoiserecs tinyurl.com/68TheyAre

'Foreign Tongues' may please some Rolling Stones fans, as the individual members share inspired moments. One can hear their earnestness and desire to please. However, it is doubtful this album will attract new fans. tinyurl.com/RStones26

ElectroMatters: The Best Electronic Music of June 2026 Much of June's best electronic music reflects the long days and sultry nights of early summer, becoming a kind of elevated new age/ambient hybrid. – @for3stpunk 🎶READ: tinyurl.com/Electro0626

Which records would you say are the best albums of 2026 so far? tinyurl.com/BestLPs26

Making 'The Ground Above' may have been therapeutic for the folktronica artist, but it is not redemptive, and Beth Orton knows it. tinyurl.com/BethOrton26

Taiga Ultan's 'Shade Zero' demonstrates that conscious music-making never fully abandons rules, even if those rules are not to have rules. tinyurl.com/TaigaUltan

'The Man Who Reclaimed His Head' belongs to its early 1930s era, when the last war and the next one were on everyone’s minds, and public rhetoric often jousted between talk of warmongers, preparedness, and pacifism. tinyurl.com/ReclaimedHead

In creating a sequel to a revival album, Madonna’s 'Confessions II' reinforces the notion that the best we can hope for from our pop matriarchs is nostalgia. tinyurl.com/Madonna26

Sunken Cages creates a cosmic dance writ small in "Drums and Flowers". He has spent the past 20 years building a uniquely idiosyncratic soundworld fusing Indian instruments with pristine electronic production. 🎶 tinyurl.com/SunkenCages

Pop Past (2017): Avidity is the newfound ubiquity of “thought leadership” and the continued marginalization of actual thinking, in hashtag form. tinyurl.com/AvidityCulture