Something I've always believed to be part of the engine that keeps Record Club moving through these seven years and counting is its continuity. You can't have a music club that chews up albums and spits them out and forgets about them. You need to remember everything that came before it. Over time, then, there's a cumulative effect. We're building the foundation of a lifetime of listening to music, one brick and one album at a time.
That's why I'm always quick to talk about our "RC alumni," which is just a cheeky way of talking about the artists that have passed through Record Club. After 383 weeks, the pool of alumni has grown pretty unwieldy, and there's no way I can keep all that info in my brain at any given time. But I do try to keep in touch with most of them, follow news stories, and also focus on keeping diligent notes on subsequent releases. You can go to the supplemental archives at any time and scroll down to see the list of (as of this writing) 234 albums that have been released by RC alumni after we covered their album in Record Club.
I've attempted to listen to all of those albums at least once. Some are going to be added to my iPod and become part of my life, while others get a quick listen and a few words spilled on them and then only exist in my mind from the blog. My stamina in this task has waxed and waned over time as well. I was mostly caught up by the end of 2025, but haven't really done much at all in 2026, so I'm like 40+ albums in the hole right now. But I'm feeling motivated lately, so I'm going to restart that journey once again.
I have also been thinking about how limiting the idea of "follow-up albums" is to our purposes here. There are plenty of artists in Record Club who will never follow up with a new album after their week of RC is over. For example, if the artist is dead. Or, ya know, less morbidly, just doesn't release music anymore. And so what, are we supposed to forget about these artists, let them lie in a heap and rot from our memory while spending every waking moment sludging through the endless yearly output by fucking Cheekface or fucking Fastball?
My solution is that I want to start diving a little deeper into the discographies of the artists who fall into this category, artists who have albums that might be worth exploring, but who released those albums before Record Club put the artist in the spotlight. Sometimes I just need a little push to get started on such a journey. Go back to the supplemental archives, and you'll see my self-push is a list of 50 albums, a list that will be covered one album per week.
What I'm picturing—and you know how these blogging ideas go, they are infinitely malleable—is that I will, once a week, cover one follow-up album, and one deep-dive album. They will be structured as reviews, and they will be SHORT. One paragraph. Which, as you know, is easier said than done for me. But I'm trying to balance my time more wisely recently, and I can't commit to adding another hour of blogging to my already tight blogging schedule. But I think it would be doable to bang out a couple 200-word reviews every week. Look for these on Friday mornings (mostly) before the proper RC reviews.
This is all in service of the continuity. Once you're part of Record Club, you're part of Record Club FOR LIFE. I never want to forget any artist that we've ever covered here, and the only way to remember is to listen, and to write.
Here's a slate-clearing before we get properly started. Seven one-paragraph reviews for RC alumni follow-up albums that I'm already very familiar with from listening this year. One week from Friday, I'll start the RCAA posts in earnest, hopefully every Friday morning, at 6:59 AM. Thanks for reading! I know it's sort of a joke at this point, but I'll say it anyway: if you want to help out with this RCAA project, let me know!
Iron & Wine
Years to Burn — RC Week 20 — 2.5 pukes out of 5
Light Verse — RC f/u #29 — 3 pukes out of 5
February 27, 2026
Stepping back, I think I'd say that what we're witnessing here is an indie folk artist with a moderate following and a long-passed critical peak easing into legacy status. Pam was at the concert, she said it was packed. I have no doubts about that. There's a body of music here. But I think I'm past the point where I'm getting excited for new Iron & Wine. I think Hen's Teeth sounds very nice, but it also sounds like Sam Beam going through the motions. The songwriting is weaker than it's been in my time with this dude, is the thing. Which makes sense, when you're slipping into legacy status. You're putting out new albums to give yourself a reason to tour and play a couple of those new songs interspersed among the hits. All I know is that "Robin's Egg" is rough, not at all what I'm here for. Maybe "In Your Ocean" saves that, I guess. My point here is that Sam Beam still knows his way around, it's just that, as you get older and become a legacy act, things just slow down a lot, and there's only one "In Your Ocean" on your album, instead of an album full of them.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
Mitski
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We — RC Week 242 — 3 pukes out of 5
February 27, 2026
Mitski is one of those artists who feels like she should be "for me" but all the evidence that I uncover points toward the undeniable fact that she is "not for me." At one point, perhaps briefly, she nailed the aesthetic that I was looking for, but as she moves in slower, heavier, more boring directions, her popularity has increased tenfold, meaning that she is not "for me" but is definitely "for" many other people. I know it's not "about me," but if I had to make it "about me," I'd say that Nothing's About to Happen to Me is Mitski's attempt to rope me in again. She gets about halfway there. There are songs that fucking whip on here! "Fucking whip" is not a phrase I've used in the context for Mitski in a very long time, so that right there is proof that I like this album better than I have liked the last three Mitski albums. But it's also got its slow moments, and its cringe moments (all the cat stuff). The best I can say is that it's not as forgettable as the RC album was. The worst I can say is that the slow stuff is still too slow. But overall, I like this one. Listen to something like "Cats" and try to understand the low bar and the way that this album clears it.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
underscores
Wallsocket — RC Week 249 — 3.5 pukes out of 5
March 20, 2026
Applause warranted to underscores for attempting something different. It's just that Wallsocket was so strange and so beautiful in the way it really went for it, that I can help but view U as a slight step back. It hits hard and it's fun, but in terms of pure creativity, it's lacking. I like electropop because it's fun, not because it constantly breaks the mold, so it's all good. I'm just talking about underscores specifically, and how she had something way more than "fun" on her last outing. Still, I mean, what the fuck, why does it seem like my words in this micro-review are making it seem like I didn't like the album? Because I do. If you remove the comparison, it's a great album. If you add the comparison to Wallsocket back in, it's like going back to black and white after dealing in Kodachrome.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
King Tuff
Was Dead — RC Week 208 — 4 pukes out of 5
March 27, 2026
It feels like a dying art, the ability to make a satisfying garage rock album. They've been a dime a dozen since the early '60s, but to make something that stands out is truly a skill that not too many artists have. King Tuff is basically the best functioning garage-rocker today. He doesn't fucking miss. MOO is probably described as a "return to roots" album, just based on how spacey The Other was and how folksy Smalltown Stardust was. I love both of those records, but I'm big on a return to the garage rock show too. Only because it feels so precious, to have something like this. The songwriting is deceptively simple, but that just shows King Tuff is a student of the game. Garage rock is not complex. It's clever and it's catchy, but it doesn't have to be more than that. Listen to "Invisible Ink." This song could exist at any time in the last 60 years. How blessed are we that it exists now?
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
Robyn
Body Talk Pt. 1 — RC Week 59 — 3 pukes out of 5
March 27, 2026
If you had made me listen to the title track before anything else, I would've said that Robyn is out of her fucking mind and that she should've just stayed in temporary retirement. And while that title track is definitely still the worst song on the album, it is at worst a slight misstep in any otherwise incredibly tight and unimpeachable album of dance pop. The production is top-notch, basically every track offering a sticky hook that stays with you. "Sucker for Love" and "Talk to Me" are the ones that overpower everything else for me, so catchy are their synth flourishes. And when you zoom out and view that title track in the context of the album and what Robyn was trying to do here, you can even start to understand that—Robyn, in motherhood, is leveling up on every single quality of her life, and that includes embarrassment. Let the woman watch her hentai and slobber over Adam Driver! That's her right and privilege after having the courage to have a child! You're going to see this album in the Top Ten at the end of the year.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
Snail Mail
Valentine — RC Week 148 — 2.5 pukes out of 5
March 27, 2026
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a leveling up. I was so goddamn disappointed with Snail Mail's RC album, but this feels like in improvement in every possible way. It's the best grunge-pop album of 2026. It's the best boygenius album of 2026. It's clearly the best thing that Snail Mail has ever done. I heard that Lindsey Jordan had throat surgery to fix whatever was wrong, and knowing this now, I can hear how beautiful the singing is on this album. Was that what was missing on the last outing? Possibly. Or maybe it really does take a different production focus to achieve results. Snail Mail is big and bold now. I'm so goddamn proud.
Kacey Musgraves
Deeper Well — RC Week 268 — 3.5 pukes out of 5
May 1, 2026
I think I still have the same mild issues with this one that I did for Deeper Well, despite the fact that Musgraves has revamped her sound (jeez, how are so many of the albums today a "back to basics" attempt?). I marveled at how Musgraves the country artist made a folk album when I listened to Deeper Well. On Middle of Nowhere, Musgraves is a country artist making a country album. Which, okay, fair game! I don't hate pop country on premise alone, and the Morgan Wallen-style execution is still missing, so that's good. I land again, however, on the lyrics. Too much cringe, I'm sorry to say. I don't know why I'm so stuck on this point with Kacey Musgraves, but I hear some of the Gen Z therapyspeak and the too-clever pop turns of phrase and I zone out a little bit. Luckily, zoning out affords me the opportunity to enjoy the catchy melodies, which is good enough for me most of the time.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME, ON RCAA #1: We'll begin out discography dive in earnest with Demon Days by Gorillaz, finally check out the most recent La Rappresentante di Lista album (from 2024, whoops) Giorni felici, and start our "top RCAA news" sub-feature, with at the very least some thoughts on the new Toy Story 5 song by I assume the New Brunswick screamo band Taylor Swift.
2 comments:
I mentioned this to Nate, but a friend of a friend of a blog messaged me about U thanking me for the general underscores turn on and recommending me to listen. I agree, not as memorable as Wallsocket, but still some damn good fun
I really regret that 3.5/5 grade on Wallsocket originally, definitely at least a half-puke if not full-puke too low at this point. So it goes with the weekly carousel of Record Club.
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