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. Or, in this case, Sunday evening. Hey, I tried, man!
I always intended the reviews in this column to be short and sweet—the reviews in the very first column each fit into a single Threads post—but as you may have noticed if you read these regularly, my words have a way of running away with me. This week, I did get carried away enough on one review to have to spin it off into its own review (that’d be the new long-lost 1998 Surfers album After the Astronaut; you can read that review over yonder), but otherwise I kept things blissfully brief this time out. While I’m highlighting some lesser-known artists, I do want to note that there are two bigger name artists who dropped albums this week that I wanted to check out but just haven’t had the time yet: Beth Orton’s The Ground Above and Muse’s The Wow! Factor. Are they any good? I sure hope so, and I look forward to finding out! Here are this week’s writeups:
Borderline, self-titled (Empire): After last year’s excellent Chrysalis EP, New Zealand quartet Borderline return with their self-titled debut full-length, a collection of that crisp, driving, dance-y, modern pop-rock sound with super-clean vocals that’s sure to appeal to fans of bands like The 1975, Almost Monday, or their fellow Kiwis in Balu Brigada. Some songs push their dancier side even further, almost to Justin Timerlake territory. With any luck, this band finds big success on the radio. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Julez and the Rollerz, Dirty Little Rock ‘N’ Roller (Lolipop Records): If you’re looking for a pick-me-up, you could hardly do better than the half-hour of power unleashed this week by Julez and the Rollerz. Singer-guitarist Jules Betterman and her rotating cast of Rollerz offer up dramatic, poppy, punchy woman-led indie rock tunes filtered through the classic crunch of power pop and garage rock, all bopping guitars and wailing guitar solos and Betterman’s big, brassy vocals. Betterman’s earlier efforts were party albums, but turning 30 has her deep in, as High Fidelity called it, “one of those ‘what does it all mean?’ things,” giving the songs depth beneath the big, catchy melodies. For me the best tunes were the positively soaring “I Don’t Know You” and “Always Hard 4 U,” which plays like a garage-ier vesion of the Juliana Hatfield Three bop “This Is the Sound,” but really there’s not a week one in the bunch. Will I Listen Again?: Definitely.
Exploring Birdsong, Every House We Built (Long Branch Records): If you’re like me, you read the band name “Exploring Birdsong” and thought that this band might be on the appealingly twee side. Hardly: most of the songs here flat-out rock with big, distorted guitars, bass, and synths, while singer Lynsey Ward’s beguiling vibrato is the real star of the show her emotive, bewitching vocals giving the songs a sort of Kate Bush fronting Evanescence feel. Ward plays piano too, but its melodies are often buried deeper in the mix, more a subtle shading than the main melodic push of the song.
The big rock moves are cool, but to me the best songs are the ones that lean harder into icy, new wave-y synths, like “Romanticise,” “Spy in the House of Love” (which is not a cover of the hit Was (Not Was) song…or of the band The House of Love, for that matter), or, even better, “I_You” (the secret word is “love”), which is just a pumping, synthy pop masterpiece. For a little something different, I also love the lush string swell and multi-layered vocal harmonies of piano ballad “Cartography.” Will I Listen Again?: Probably not front-to-back, but I will definitely be adding those synth-ier tracks highlighted above to my faves-of-2026 playlist. | Jason Green
