Musiquarium Album Reviews 2026

A$AP Rocky – Don’t Be Dumb

A$AP Rocky finally returns after an 8 year gap.

Since 2018’s TESTING, listeners have been eagerly awaiting A$AP Rocky’s follow-up album, to the point that it had become the thing of legends — but, after 8 long years and plenty of delays later, Don’t Be Dumb is finally out.

On Don’t Be Dumb, A$AP Rocky throws a bunch of different genres at the wall to see what sticks, making for a fascinating, albeit incohesive album — one that feels more like a traditional rap album with some experimental moments, but when he does experiment, the results are mostly quite good and leave you wanting to hear more.

ORDER OF PROTECTION is a pretty tame opener, acting more like an intro, which then takes us to HELICOPTER, which feels like something N.W.A might have made back in the late 80s (808 cowbell and all). NO TRESSPASSING, STOP SNITCHING and STOLE YA FLOW are all menacing bangers. STFU is one of the most interesting and experimental songs here, sounding a bit like a Death Grips track. AIRFORCE (BLACK DEMARCO) is an electronic song that also evokes some Death Grips, until it slows down and sounds closer to something like Purple Rain.

ROBBERY sounds like something you’d hear in a 1920s speakeasy. PUNK ROCKY is best described as an indie rock song, making it the biggest outlier on the album — in fact, I’d love to see an entire album in this style from a major rapper — well, as long as it doesn’t end up like Lil Wayne’s Rebirth.WHISKEY (RELEASE ME) is quite good up until Damon Albarn (Gorillaz) enters, accompanied by several annoying ad-libs (“boo-boo-boom!”, “skrrrrrrrrrrrt!”, “doot doot doot doot”, etc.).

It could have leaned harder into the experimental angle and it didn’t really live up to nearly.a decade of anticipation, but Don’t Be Dumb was still a good listen with a mix of experiments and more traditional bangers.

75 / 100

Charli xcx – Wuthering Heights

Charli experiments with an orchestra on this brilliant and ambitious film soundtrack.

Released as the soundtrack to the newest film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s famous and controversial work, Wuthering Heights sees Charli xcx experimenting with orchestral instruments and noise on this compelling work, which is so much more than just a mere soundtrack.

The opening track, the gothic and haunting House, which features spoken-word vocals from John Cale of The Velvet Underground, minimal instrumentation and a distorted industrial climax, was an incredibly bold choice for a single, let alone the first single since Charli xcx’s critically and commercially successful BRAT era, only two years prior. This song sees a surreal combination of two musicians whom are separated by half a century of age, and from different generations and completely opposing ends of the musical spectrum, but sees Charli thinking outside of the box of pop confines by having sought out a collaboration with such an artist in the first place, seeking a sound that was both elegant and brutal (as John Cale had described VU). Considering John Cale’s production work with the late German chanteuse Nico and with New York City punk rocker Patti Smith (on her seminal 1976 album, Horses), he’s had a legacy of working well with women.

Chains Of Love was a slightly more conventional single that followed House only a few days later, but is no less rich or exquisite. Wall Of Sound is appropriately-titled, with a wall of strings that push up against Charli’s vocals. Dying For You and its delayed synth intro feel like something Kate Bush would have made in the 1980s. Altars is a grandiose romantic ballad with a sensual drum beat. Eyes Of The World sees an appearance from singer/actress Sky Ferreira. Funny Mouth is an epic closer, with some intense industrial flourishes.

Charli promised that her next album would be the anti-BRAT — and this does fit the description, as the instrumentation on Wuthering Heights is primarily vintage, rustic and a little bit industrial, so it doesn’t feel much at all like BRAT, though it does still feel 100% like Charli. There are still flavours of 1980s revivalism throughout the album, and no other song gets quite as dark and strange as House, but this is far more experimental than most pop artists would ever dream of being. If Charli’s goal was to make an album that was both elegant and brutal, I’d say she succeeded. Every track here was immaculate and theatrical and I love seeing pop artists be this adventurous and unpredictable.

Charli xcx’s Wuthering Heights works very well as a standalone album, something many soundtracks fail to do, and while I’m yet to see this music in the context of the film, I can still say that this has the potential to become one of the memorable film soundtracks of all time — that’s how great it is.

100 / 100

Gorillaz – The Mountain

Damon Albarn returns from India.

Following family losses and a spiritual journey to India, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett take Gorillaz up to heights unseen since Plastic Beach on the grand and ambitious The Mountain.

The title track uses classical Indian music and includes a spoken word bit at the end from late actor Dennis Hopper (who previously appeared on the Demon Days track Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey’s Head). The Moon Cave goes a bit funky, with a more typically Gorillaz electropo sound. One’s enjoyment of The Happy Dictator might depend on whether or not you like the campy duo Sparks, (who makes an appearance here). Damon Albarn sings of how hard it is saying goodbye to those you love on the emotionally-packed The Hardest Thing. Orange County‘s upbeat sound and the constant whistling was more annoying than endearing.

The Plastic Guru sounds like a less tripped-out Flaming Lips. The God Of Lying should appease fans of old school Gorillaz. Delirium was a lot like The Happy Dictator, in the sense that you might love or hate the silliness of it. Damascus is a spicy Gorillaz track with a killer Yasiin Bey feature. The almost 50s sounding Casablanca has Johnny Marr (The Smiths) and Paul Simonon (The Clash). The Sad God ends with a bass line that feels like more like it’s from a doo-wop track than anything.

Like most Gorillaz projects, The Mountain is very feature-heavy. Literally every single one of the 15 tracks has features, which is admittedly fitting for a grand project like this. This does bring me to my next point though, which is about the contrast between Damon Albarn’s slow, lethargic voice and everyone else. However, you can feel the sincerity in his voice, and so it works here better than it may have in the past.

The Mountain works fairly well conceptually, with lyrics about life, death and the afterlife and a cohesive use of Indian instruments and vocals. A lot of your enjoyment of The Mountain will also depend on your enjoyment of Indian music. George Harrison’s use of sitar and Indian influence was just a part of The Beatles DNA in the late 60s — here, Damon Albarn fully immerses Gorillaz in an Indian flavour; it’s not my thing, but it is bold and adventurous.

The Mountain doesn’t top the band’s first three albums, but it’s easily their most engrossing work in 15 years. I can’t see myself returning to this often and there were several songs I wasn’t fond of, but it’s still a work of art and passion nonetheless.

75 / 100

Kim Gordon – PLAY ME

Kim Gordon continues to be the hippest septuagenarian in music.

After fully immersing herself in the trap instrumentals of The Collective, Kim Gordon and returning producer Justin Raisen are back with perhaps her best sounding batch of songs yet.

Much like its predecessor, PLAY ME revolves around criticisms of technology, particularly the recent A.I. push (DIRTY TECH, BLACK OUT) and though detractors of The Collective may write the lyricism off as curmudgeonly, the hysteria and anxieties surrounding technology (and the resulting human redundancy) are more valid than ever.

The title track starts the album off feeling like some sort of dystopian, sci-fi blaxploitation film, making for a riveting opener. The Sonic Youth reminiscent lead single NOT TODAY is a blend of post-punk, dream pop and krautrock; GIRL WITH A LOOK has a similar dreamy instrumental. Dave Grohl provides the beats on the bizarre BUSY BEE. The ire of SUBCON seems to be directed towards a certain tech-obsessed billionaire, criticizing his short-sighted ambitions to have the elite abandon Earth for the substantially less-inhabitable Mars (“You wanna go to Mars and then what?”); then there’s POST EMPIRE which seems to target a particular western world leader. NAIL BITER is full of fuzzed-out, bass.

My one criticism with PLAY ME is BYEBYE25!, a 2025 remake of the opener from 2024’s The Collective, which changes the lyrics to reflect major and controversial topics of that year. It would make more sense to have left it as a non-album single, but seeing as I liked it the first time around (and it still bangs here), then its inclusion isn’t too big of an issue.

Although I preferred The Collective‘s more experimental and overall psychedelic production, PLAY ME refines the admittedly rough edges and abandons the density of that album’s dark sound, making for what’s probably her most rounded (and relatively accessible) solo album yet.

PLAY ME is short at just under 30 minutes and it isn’t as bold or challenging as The Collective was, but this is still an excellent work from the veteran alternative rocker. I was a fan of Kim Gordon long before she went solo, but I still never expected the bassist of Sonic Youth to be one of my favourite major artists of the 2020s and yet, here we are.

90 / 100

Megadeth – Megadeth

Megadeth releases their final album.

The final album from Dave Mustaine’s Metallica-spite machine, simply titled Megadeth, finds the metal pioneers giving one last hurrah before bowing out after four decades of ass-kicking thrash metal

Tipping Point was a strong lead single that has Megadeth still sounding fierce and fiery. Let There Be Shred shows that age hasn’t slowed down Dave Mustaine’s ability to shred. The album ends with a re-recording of the 1984 Metallica song Ride The Lightning, which Dave Mustaine had co-written while still in the band. It obviously sounds inferior to Metallica’s version, but it’s still nice to see Dave returning to one of his songs that preceded Megadeth.

Yes, Mustaine’s lyrics can be cheesy and his vocals aren’t what they once were, but this is Dave Mustaine, a man who was always known more for his shredding than his lyrics or singing. Even then, considering both the throat cancer that he battled at the start of the decade and his age (64 as of writing), Mustaine’s voice could have sounded much worse.

Megadeth may not be the grand and epic finale that many fans may have envisioned or wanted, but it’s Dave Mustaine doing what he does best and going out on his own terms and it’s still a respectable ending to one of metal’s most legendary bands.

65 / 100

U2 – Days Of Ash

U2 sounds (somewhat) inspired again.

Days Of Ash is the first collection of new music from U2 since 2017’s Songs Of Experience (2023’s Songs Of Surrender was just remakes of several of the band’s greatest songs). Inspired by increasingly worsening geo-political tensions, wars and unpredictable world leaders, Bono feels the most inspired that he’s sounded in over two decades.

Days Of Ash sounds like U2 trying to recapture the protest-powered proto-punk of 1983’s War, but it comes off as U2 trying to recapture War as sexagenarians; regardless the effort is noble.

American Obituary is a decent, politically-charged opener (if not a little cheesy), with the following two tracks also being fairly decent songs. Wildpiece is a 1+ minute long interlude with spoken word vocals and feels random on such a short project. Yours Eternally features Ed Sheeran, but is better than you’d expect.

U2 will never relive the artistic or commercial glories of their nearly perfect body of work between 1980-1993, but they don’t have to; all people want is a half-decent new U2 album and while this is only an EP, it feels like a step in the right direction.

That cover artwork is just awful though.

60 / 100

War Child Records – HELP(2)

The long-awaited spiritual successor to 1995’s The Help Album.

Produced by James Ford (who has previously worked with several artists here), HELP(2) is the spiritual successor to 1995’s legendary The Help Album, which was released to raise funds for war-stricken areas in the world. Unfortunately, three decades later, the world is still rife with war and geo-political tensions, so it seemed appropriate for a sequel.

Like the first Help album, HELP(2) compiles a dream team roster of some of the biggest acts in music today, including older acts like Arctic Monkeys, Beth Gibbons, Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Beck, Depeche Mode and Pulp, as well as newer artists like Black Country, New Road, The Last Dinner Party, Fontaines D.C. and Olivia Rodrigo.

The lead single (and appropriately-titled) Opening Night finds Arctic Monkeys revisiting an old unfinished AM era song, but blends in the more recent sensibilities from their latest LP, The Car — and it’s easily the best and most memorable song here. Flags with Damon Albarn is pretty boring, especially following such a good Monkeys song. Let’s Do It Again! by The Last Dinner Party sounds like it’s going for a glam rock, 1973 era Bowie cabaret vibe. Strangers by Black Country, New Road is a pleasant enough song with electronic piano, but is more of that twee stuff they’ve been doing since last year’s Forever Howlong.

The ever lovely Beth Gibbons performs a warm, sparse and understated cover of The Velvet Underground’s classic 1967 track, Sunday Morning. King Krule’s The 343 Loop is just a brief little instrumental that feels more like an interlude. Depeche Mode does a synthesized cover of (disgraced) singer Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Universal Soldier. Helicopters changes things up with some dub music. Beabadoobee covers Elliott Smith’s Say Yes, but strips it of its torment.

Fontaines D.C. covers Sinéad O’Connor’s Black Boys On Mopeds. Warning by Geese’s Cameron Winter is initially one of the more interesting and experimental songs here, but the music is ruined by his awful, deadpan vocal delivery. Pulp’s Begging For Change is a decent rocker from the recently reunited Britpoppers, but the spelt-out lyrics are a little bit cheesy. Wet Leg sounds less obnoxious than usual here on Obvious.

While I commend HELP(2) for its noble intentions and its charitable nature, there just weren’t enough songs here that interested me when all was said and done, though it does have some good variety. Despite the shortcomings of this album, I hope it performs well and I’d love to see more charitable efforts like this from the music industry.

70 / 100

Ye – BULLY

Who is the real bully?

After a year of his worst controversies yet, including more pro-Nazi sentiments, the releases of the (now unavailable) controversial singles WW3, COUSINS and HEIL HITLER from the (fortunately) unreleased WW3 / CUCK / IN A PERFECT WORLD album, and his use of A.I. to finish his vocals on recent projects like VULTURES 2 and DONDA 2, BULLY is finally here, following several work-in-progress iterations and half a dozen delays from March 2025 to March 2026. My theory is that Ye was intentionally teasing his audience throughout that entire year with BULLY, dangling it in front of fans, but instead of giving it to them, he released the aforementioned controversial singles instead and kept making them wait for an entire year.

A couple days prior to the final release date of March 27, some vinyl and CD copies of BULLY were sold early (possibly intentionally), leading to near-instant fan outrage on social media due to the preservation of the A.I. vocals that fans have been complaining about since the previous year, as well as a wave of order cancellations — this led to Ye responding on X with an updated tracklist and the reassurance of no A.I. vocals on an updated album soon to be released.

Why would Ye hide the fact that the physical albums that diehard fans would buy would still have outdated versions of songs and A.I. vocals, when they are inevitably going to find out and make a fuss about it? Was that always the intended album, with fans only bullying Ye into releasing a “better” version of the album — the version they wanted? Was it the extra push Ye needed for motivation and encouragement? Or is Ye just trying to maximize the album’s sales by having people buy multiple versions of the album? God only knows…

Compared to the original 13 song sequence found on physical copies, the final version of BULLY (for now) has 18 tracks, with the new songs comprising of the first 8 songs (other than ALL THE LOVE), with the original BULLY album taking up the rest of the runtime, with the exception of MISSION CONTROL and the CAN cover/reinterpretation LOSING YOUR MIND, which have both been omitted from the digital album.

And that leads me to the most important change that Ye made (at least in the eyes of the fans), which was changing the vocals from A.I. voice modulations to his actual vocals — the one thing that seemed to make the difference between this album being good or bad.

Did Ye always plan to make BULLY with A.I.? Are the metal grills that have been adorned to his visage for the past couple of years (and part of the album’s marketing) simply an excuse for not rapping/singing, or are they a red herring, with Ye seeing the artistic potential of A.I. in music, not so different from his influential (but initially controversial) use of autotune on 2008’s 808s & Heartbreak? Seeing as the re-recorded real Ye vocals on the digital edition sound fairly good, we know that Ye is still capable, so why else would he focus so much on A.I., especially when he knows how much people are resistant to it? Did Ye think that he can be an early adopter once again, being the first to release a major album (and a possibly acclaimed one at that — though unlikely) made with A.I.? Why not?

As far as I know, Ye is often canonized as the first major rapper to break away from the confines of the genre’s gangster roots, the pioneering producer of chipmunk soul, the first rapper to use autotune the way he did and the first major artist to make post-release changes to an album in real time (The Life Of Pablo), so why is it so hard to fathom that he could use A.I. in an innovative way, rather than as a cheat? Again, I’m not a proponent of A.I., and perhaps I’m just playing the devil’s advocate, but did Ye have his reasons to experiment (with VULTURES 2 and DONDA 2 being tests), or was this simply due to the accused laziness that fans have thrown at him?

Despite how you may feel about Ye’s use of A.I. on the physical version of BULLY, it doesn’t suggest that this album is simply the result of somebody typing in “create a Ye album” as a prompt for their A.I. model — the physical edition of BULLY is actually fairly interesting, with none of the A.I. vocals actually sounding that bad (and I’ve heard some awful A.I. voice recreations).

Perhaps I’m biased towards Ye (he’s the musical figure I’ve written the most about of the new millennium), though I try not to be; it’s not like I was always a fan, as his music still had to win me over, which led me to be willing to tolerate his abrasive persona. But even if you strip away the man and the controversies, his albums each paint different sonic worlds, with no one album ever imitating the last; some of his works even border on challenging at times, which is quite rare from such a mainstream artist, and he never refuses to explore the entire emotional spectrum. How is using A.I. any different from what he’s done with autotune? Or am I giving too much credit to someone who might not even have a method to their madness? However, none of that matters too much, as the digital version of BULLY is mostly devoid of the A.I. vocals that inhabits the entire physical edition of the album anyway (which I am honestly grateful for nonetheless).

The new songs added to the front of BULLY are all killer: Ye adds some of the harder, more industrial style Yeezus bangers (KING, THIS A MUST), a Travis Scott feature (FATHER) with a James Brown sample from my favourite interview of all time, some chipmunk soul (PUNCH DRUNK, WHATEVER WORKS), a song with a beautiful Donda West voice sample (MAMA’S FAVORITE), a Donda era-sounding track (SISTERS AND BROTHERS) and a handful of features that aren’t on the physical albums (the aforementioned Travis Scott, CeeLo Green, Don Toliver, Peso Pluma).

ALL THE LOVE adds a different intro and overall feels like an enhancement from the previous version of the song. CeeLo Green adds a quirky hook to the title track. Peso Pluma’s vocals on the half Spanish/half English LAST BREATH sound rougher than the alternate version, though this one does feel more “real”, with Ye also recording his own vocals; the song is also longer than the previous version. DAMN goes from minimalism to maximalism. Ye’s recorded vocals on BEAUTY AND THE BEAST do sound like they were re-recorded last minute, but I’ll still take a slightly sloppy Ye over an artificially-generated Ye.

PREACHER MAN has the type of sped up soul samples that Ye initially made his name off of; BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is a similar style song, with a slightly better sound than the single version from 2025, though there is still noticeable surface noise from the sample source, but to my ears, that just adds character. WHITE LINES samples a Stevie Wonder talkbox performance of The Carpenter’s Close To You and has Ye revealing that he feels like a clone of himself, perhaps pointing fun at the fan theory that Ye was replaced with a clone in late 2022/2023, or perhaps its introspective and earnest. I CAN’T WAIT interpolates You Can’t Hurry Love by The Supremes and is far more enjoyable than Phil Collins’ milquetoast take on the song in the 1980s.

The title track starts with a brilliant sample of The Simpsons‘ Nelson Muntz’ iconic haw-haw laugh, though I have no idea how Ye hasn’t been sued by Disney yet; the rest of the track uses a sample from a Bollywood track and it’s a total banger, with CeeLo Green adding an interesting hook on this new version. ALL THE LOVE has a new opening here and a drumbeat reminiscent to that of the Yeezus track, Black Skinhead. There was originally a sample of French singer Pomme’s Soleil Soleil on HIGHS AND LOWS, though the sample wasn’t cleared so they whipped up something else that sounds close, but not quite the same. CIRCLES samples Huit Octobre 1971 by Cortex, which was sampled in 2004 on MF Doom’s track One Beer. DAMN no longer starts with the Nina Simone sample that was in the 2025 single version, though it’s better off without it; the version here is also more produced than the minimalistic version on the physical release.

The closing song on the physical edition of the CD, LOSING YOUR MIND, is practically identical to CAN’s classic 1972 song Vitamin C (Ye had previously sampled CAN’s Sing Swan Song on Graduation‘s Drunk And Hot Girls, so he’s clearly a fan), with Ye’s voice replacing the late Damo Suzuki, added modern production, and changing the chorus from “You’re losing your vitamin C” to “You’re losing your mind”. I initially wanted to hate LOSING YOUR MIND, as it comes off as lazy plagiarism, but perhaps there was a reason Ye chose this a the original closer — after all, he has been losing his mind for years, according to everybody around him. Despite the song’s flaws, as someone who loves early 70s CAN, the sound of the instruments in LOSING YOUR MIND do sound great, far more vibrant than the most recent remaster I’ve heard of Vitamin C (just the result of technological evolution).

Comparing the two versions of BULLY, the physical release feels skeletal and barren compared to the digital edition, which makes it all the more baffling that it was even distributed to stores in this state. Maybe Ye was going for a cold and isolated sound like what he achieved on 808s & Heartbreak, and while I do understand if that was his original vision, the kitchen sink approach of the digital edition ultimately sounds far more fulfilling (even though it only ends up being 10 minutes longer). I prefer the re-recorded, non-A.I. vocals (mostly noticeable on the title track, LAST BREATH and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) to the A.I. vocals, even if they aren’t perfect. And even if Ye’s original intention was to never use real vocals on BULLY, I do prefer his more conventional (and less controversial) approach to vocals than the A.I. experiments.

Ye’s use of A.I. over the past few years have been an interesting experiment, but the result isn’t significantly different enough from the sound of autotune, so I think it’s safe to say that Ye got to play around with new tech and should move on, leaving this experiment behind with the BULLY era.

BULLY is an imperfect album, with a lengthy album rollout that could have been the result of a mental health crisis and/or performance art/marketing/publicity — or perhaps, as I had earlier theorized, the entire project was a push/pull between Ye and his fans, with Ye simultaneously bullying those around him (he was vocally critical of many figures from the music industry in 2025, along with other controversial remarks and opinions) and his fans bullying him into making the album that they wanted him to make (just look at what his “fanbase” says in any of his various subreddits; they act like they know how to make an album better than Ye does).

As the smoke settles, people will probably write BULLY off as yet another Ye failure, but give it time and perhaps the eventual discourse will discuss how BULLY and its marketing were genius — after all, for somebody “washed up” like Ye (according to countless listeners and the press) managed to release a song called HEIL HITLER without actually getting cancelled, kept teasing and delaying an album for over a year and still managed to keep himself implanted firmly in the public’s eye with one of the most hyped albums of 2026. Hell, maybe the whole point of BULLY was to prove that he cannot be cancelled.

BULLY is another great, varied, flawed masterpiece from modern rap’s most exciting, infamous and most unpredictable figure, though I wouldn’t call it a comeback, as Ye was never really gone.

100 / 100

FIN

Brett Nippard

The Musiquarium