Sam Means and Nate Ruess of The Format, courtesy of the artist’s Facebook page.
First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week, serving up first impressions, favorite or least favorite songs, and whether or not they’re worth a second listen. Check back for more each Friday night or Saturday morning.
Well, it finally happened: I missed a week, not because of a pre-planned holiday, but because life just got in the way. That said, I did get started on the 1/23 column that I never finished, so this week’s column will cover some releases from this week and some from last week. First up, here are the new releases from last week that I checked out, in the order in which I listened to ‘em:
Searows, Death in the Business of Whaling (Last Recordings on Earth): Death in the Business of Whaling is Alec Duckart’s second full-length album as Searows, but first recorded with a band in a professional studio. While Duckart utilizes the ingredients of folk—hushed, intimate vocals, gently strummed acoustic guitar, banjo, stand-up bass, drums that are understated if they’re present at all—the Searows sonic stew is more atmospheric, more akin to the gray skies of Duckart’s Pacific Northwest home than sunny hills and dales. Phoebe Bridgers would be a good “RIYL” comparison, though this album reminds me most of albums I recently reviewed in this column by Rachel Bobbitt and runo plum (the latter of whom has opened for Searows on tour). I loved both of those albums, and I loved this one too. Favorite song: the darkly majestic crashing waves of “Dearly Missed.” Will I l Listen Again?: Definitely. This album is too lyric-forward to reveal itself on just a listen or two.
Megadeth, self-titled (BLKIIBLK/Frontiers): I’ll be honest: one of the main reasons why I didn’t get a column out last week was because I did a deep dive through the entire 17-album-strong Megadeth catalog in anticipation of this, their final release, and with the hopes of doing a ranking of all of their albums. Will I still do that? Maybe! But in the meantime, this finale? Holy cow. No one would fault Mustaine if he slowed down—the man is in his mid-60s, and dealing with a hand condition called Depuytren’s contracture that makes playing the guitar excruciating, hence his impending retirement. But he did not do that here: on songs like “Tipping Point,” “I Don’t Care,” and “Made to Kill” Mustaine and second guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari thrash at the type of blinding speed we heard on Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? way back in 1986. The album isn’t wall-to-wall speed, though: songs like “Hey God?!”, “Puppet Parade,” and “I Am War” offer up the slower, more ominous sound of the Countdown to Extinction/Youthanasia era, and “Another Bad Day” could slot right into the tracklist of Cryptic Writings. The sense of finality creeps in on two songs: “Let There Be Shred” is as badass yet delightfully dorky as its title implies, while “The Last Note” serves as a defiant yet heartfelt farewell.
I do kind of wish the album ended there, but tacked on as a bonus track is a cover of Metallia’s “Ride the Lightning,” a song Mustaine cowrote prior to get kicked out of that band. That song feels like it’s pretty much only here to draw in the curious, and it’s fine but not particularly revelatory: instrumentally, Mustaine and his current cohorts nail it, but it becomes clear that Mustaine and James Hetfield have very different strengths as vocalists and Mustaine is much better at writing lyrics and melodies that sound cool with his own inimitable voice rather than singing in Hetfield’s style.
But if it gets more ears on the album? Good. Because if there’s one thing I learned last week, it’s that Megadeth’s catalog was surprisingly consistent in its awesomeness all the way to the end, and this album, while not going to replace Rust in Peace as the pinnacle of aesthetic and creative potential, it’s a pretty fuckin’ phenomenal metal record Will I Listen Again?: Hell yes.
The Format, Boycott Heaven (The Vanity Label): It’s unlikely that the band Fun. will reunite as long as Jack Antonoff keeps writing and producing diamond-certified singles for pop stars like Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter. But it also felt equally unlikely that we’d see anything else from his Fun. bandmate, lead singer Nate Ruess, whose one and only solo album dropped way back in 2015. And certainly no one expected Ruess to reunite The Format, the band he started as a teen with multi-instrumentalist Sam Means.
Yet here we are! And it’s great to have them back. Single “Holy Roller” offers up some of the soaring, maximalist pop that Fun. would be looking to hear, but as the psychedelia-tinged opener “No Gold at the Top” shows, Boycott Heaven has a lot more to offer than that. The sound more often than not reminds me of what Weezer might sound like if Matt Sharp were still in the band, that perfect blend of pop savvy with rough edges and unexpected weirdness, albeit augmented with Ruess’ confessional lyrics and Broadway-big vocals. Will I Listen Again?: Definitely.
Other albums from January 23, 2026 that I was planning to listen to for this column but haven’t gotten to yet: Poppy, Empty Hands; Draag, Miracle Drug EP; The Damned, Not Like Everybody Else; Goldfinger, Nine Lives; Lucinda Williams, World’s Gone Wrong; Van Morrison, Somebody Tried to Sell Me a Bridge
As for the new albums dropped this week, far and away the best one I heard was the With Affection, the new one from St. Louis’ own Middle Class Fashion, which I gave its own write-up here. If you like indie pop tunes that are as unique and quirky as they are catchy, this is the album for you, and I highly recommend you give it a spin. Here’s some other I checked out from this week’s new releases:
Sébastien Tellier, Kiss the Beast (Because Music): This is my first exposure to prolific French singer, keyboardist, fashionisto, and former Eurovision contestant Sébastien Tellier, but man, what an interesting blend of styles this album is. It has its own easy-to-follow bifurcation: Basically, if the song title is in English (like the title track, or “Refresh”), the song sounds like Daft Punk had a baby with New Order. If the song title is in French (like “Naif de Coeur” and “Mouton”), the tempo drops, the synths get plusher, and Tellier sings in a deep, sexy purr, like Serge Gansbourg meets latter day Leonard Cohen. That order gets stirred up a bit by two songs with pretty killer guest spots: Tellier and guest Nile Rodgers conjure up a boogie wonderland for Kirkwood, Missouri’s own Slayyyter to go full disco diva mode on the very Kylie Minogue “Thrill of the Night,” while Kid Cudi’s guest spot on the downtempo hip-hop track “Amnesia” sounds cool as hell but definitely sticks out more as unlike anything else on the album. Will I Listen Again?: Yeah, it’s groovy, baby.
Buzzcocks, Attitude Adjustment (Cherry Red Records): Steve Diggle continues to carry the torch for Buzzcocks, one of the first and best punk bands to ever come out of the UK. And while the speed and nervous energy of early Buzzcocks singles like “Orgasm Addict” and “What Do I Get” and “Ever Fallen In Love” may not be present, Diggle’s gift for melody and skill with twisting a lyric (like the “queen of the scene” who is “trying to get to Heaven in a suicide machine”) remain very much intact. The band announced this album, their first in four years, as “punk rock with a Motown vibe,” and while I hear that, it sounds more to me like classic Buzzcocks crossed with the Ramones. While it’s not on par with the band’s early all-time classics or solid, muscular later records like 2006’s excellent Flat-Pack Philosophy, it’s still definitely a blitzkrieg bop. Favorite of the batch: “Tear of a Golden Girl.” Will I Listen Again?: Probably.
Kula Shaker, Wormslayer (self-released): I admitted my ignorance of much of the (London) Suede discography in this space a few months back, but now it’s time to admit that I know even less about their Britpop cohorts Kula Shaker. What I do know: they had two pretty big hits, the Indian-tinged “Tattva” and their groovy cover of Billy Joe Royal’s “Hush,” and they were probably the most divisive band of the Britpop era, their name often serving as a punchline. Divorced from the context of their history? This album is pretty groovy. It sounds like a psychedelic take on the Arctic Monkeys’ lounge lizard period (yes, I know Kula Shaker predates that band by quite a lot) accented with traditional Indian instrumentation. Will I Listen Again?: Yeah, and I’m thinking I may need to give the rest of their discography a proper appraisal.
Other albums from January 30, 2026 that I was planning to listen to for this column but haven’t gotten to yet: Joyce Manor, I Used to Go to This Bar; Large, Marine Life; Yumi Zouma, No Love Lost to Kindness| Jason Green
