Our Top 7 Vinyl Releases of 2026
Album Reviews from Trey Anastasio to Angine de Poitrine
Relix Daily
June 19, 2026
June 19, 2026
On his latest album, Dream Chaser, Willie Nelson leads with the title track, the latest in a series of songs he’s released in recent years about aging and how it has affected him. “Last night a new song came to me faster than I could write it down,” he sings, then muses, “Sometimes I wonder if there’ll be another, then another comes around.” Ultimately, he concludes, “You may not understand it, why we live with the sacrifice/ But it’s worth every mile to get to sing for a while.” Paul McCartney would surely agree. Although nearly a decade Nelson’s junior—McCartney turned 84 on June 18—he, too, has been taking stock of where he’s been and what it’s all meant. Not superficially nostalgic but, rather, warmly reflective, the 14-track The Boys of Dungeon Lane…
Trey Anastasio Live and Acoustic may have only been recorded last year, but it was years in the making. While steadily outputting blue-ribbon tunes for Phish’s catalog (“What’s Going Through Your Mind”) and for his namesake band (“All Pretending”), Anastasio has simultaneously been accumulating a quieter, more song-oriented cache to fortify his episodic acoustic tours with songs that appear calibrated for the format—songs like “Lost in the Pack” and “A Little More Time,” both of which hit in some kind of idealized way here.
By now, most of us recognize the Internet to be a vast wasteland of AI slop and political ragebait. But once in a while, something peaks out from the depths to remind us that the internet is also how we find weird new music. Quebec duo Angine de Poitrine are that reminder. In early 2026, the band’s performance for KEXP went viral on YouTube – two figures dressed in all polka dots, wearing papier-mâché masks, playing hyper-complex yet freakishly fun microtonal math rock. Two months later, Angine de Poitrine dropped their second album, Vol. II, proof that Internet hype isn’t just smoke and mirrors.
One of the most-alluring entries in the Grateful Dead family discography is even more so with the arrival of Not for Kids Only (Deluxe Edition), which can be purchased here. Making its vinyl debut, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman’s 1993 quasi-children’s LP is outfitted with four alternate versions – two previously unissued – on side four.
It’s 2026, and it’s easier than ever to feel ungrounded—endless Internet doomscrolling at home, and the world on fire outside. Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett feels you. She’s called her latest album, Creature of Habit, “a dichotomy—beauty versus the darkness,” but the feeling she encapsulates is that wandering, unmoored sensation of being adrift amidst the madness. The album isn’t as disorienting as that might sound; Barnett works to embrace the uncertainty lyrically and musically, creating a warm, intimate and mellow set of guitar songs that’s among her best.
One word often used to describe Tedeschi Trucks Band over the group’s 15-year existence is retro, which makes the title of their sixth album, Future Soul, an ironic departure. Musically, Future Soul doesn’t remake the band’s gumbo of classic rock, blues, soul and jazz into something futuristic, but it does reposition Tedeschi Trucks Band as more pop-forward and accessible. From the opening bluesy riffs of “Crazy Cryin’,” it’s clear this slinking groove is still classic TTB, driven by Derek Trucks’ one-of-a-kind guitar tone, Susan Tedeschi’s soulful vocals and the 10-piece backing band’s expressive horns and backing vocals. It is, however, a contrast to 2022’s I Am the Moon, a four-part, two-plus-hour song cycle that blended tight songwriting with expansive, jazzy excursions.
SPAGA are full of life on SPAGA Plays Dead. With Aron Magner on piano and keyboards and serving as main soloist, this instrumental Grateful Dead covers LP also taps solo songbooks of Jerry Garcia on “Eep Hour” and Bob Weir with “Heaven Help the Fool,” which, along with “Cumberland Blues,” hews closest to the original of Plays Dead’s six cuts.
