Darryl Kissick "Character Actor"
Best known as a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist in Foxwarren, Darryl Kissick has long been drawn to music that rewards patience and close listening. While his songwriting has helped shape Foxwarren’s distinctive blend of folk, psychedelia, and experimental pop, his latest solo work reveals a more meditative side.
Character Actor was born from a convergence of personal recovery and collective uncertainty. As Kissick watched Saskatchewan skies fill with smoke from northern wildfires, witnessed increasingly chaotic weather, and grappled with the political and technological forces reshaping daily life, a quiet sense of existential dread settled in. Rather than respond with louder music, he found himself drawn toward stillness.
“While feeling overwhelmed by outside forces,” Kissick explains, “I felt compelled to make something sparse and quiet.” Throughout Character Actor, peaceful ambient passages are occasionally interrupted by harsher textures, mirroring the way moments of calm are so often disrupted by the world beyond our control.
The album’s creation was also shaped by an unexpected physical setback. After injuring himself in a hockey accident, Kissick spent six weeks confined to bed recovering from surgery. Sleep-deprived and in constant pain, music initially felt impossible. As his wife brought his recording equipment downstairs so he could work from home, something unexpected emerged: instrumental compositions began flowing naturally. “Perhaps I lacked the capacity to worry about words and melodies,” he reflects. “Whatever the case, working on this album helped bring me calm and gave me a sense of purpose.”
The resulting collection trades lyrics for atmosphere, unfolding through ambient textures, tape-warped soundscapes, fluttering acoustic guitars, and quietly cinematic arrangements. There are echoes of experimental folk, minimalist composition, and classic ambient music.
Following his recovery and touring with Foxwarren, Kissick completed the record with the help of those closest to him. His brother and Foxwarren bandmate Avery Kissick contributed drums and arrangement ideas, while Saskatchewan musicians Jakob Bjornson added double bass and Ian Cameron contributed pedal steel. The album’s striking cover artwork, created by his sister Emily Hamilton, depicts a skull pasted onto a beautiful sky—a fitting visual metaphor for the existential anxiety that inspired these recordings.
In a world that often feels impossibly loud, Character Actor offers something increasingly rare: space to pause, listen closely, and find beauty amid uncertainty.
A Certain Ratio "Tumba Rumba (EM)"
From Side-line: “A Certain Ratio mark two anniversaries in 2026: 45 years since recording “Sextet” at Revolution Studios in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, and 40 years since the release of “Force”. “The Joy of Sextet” is a nine-track companion to the 1982 album, newly mixed by Meecham from the original 1981 two-inch multitrack tapes and featuring “Tumba Rumba”, “Knife Slits Water”, “Lucinda”, “Crystal”, “Gum”, “Day One”, “Below the Canal” and “Waterline”. The second companion, “Force Majeure”, reworks the 1986 album “Force” and adds previously unreleased versions produced by the band with the late Stuart James, including the title track “Force” that was left off the original. Both arrive on 28 August 2026 on limited coloured vinyl – “The Joy of Curacao” for “The Joy of Sextet” and “Unforced Purple” for “Force Majeure” – plus CD and digital formats. Side-Line reported on the two companion albums and their announcement in an earlier article, and the band previously worked with Meecham on his reworking of “Constant Curve” in 2023.
A Certain Ratio "Force Majeure"
A Certain Ratio (ACR) revisit one of their most influential works, Force, with the new, accompanying companion album Force Majeure, out via Mute.
Offering a fresh perspective on ACR’s enduring legacy, it celebrates the 40th anniversary since its release. Force Majeure is a deep dive, featuring unreleased original versions of tracks from the album, which differs from the 1986 release, including the title track “Force,” which never appeared on the original album.
Ok Cowgirl "Rhinestone Cowgirl"
From American Highways: “
Summer is all about good driving music. And even as we’re stretching out the last couple of weeks of August before Labor Day lands with a thud, there’s still time to squeeze in a good road trip or two. Brooklyn-based band Ok Cowgirl’s second LP, Rhinestone Cowgirl, is a departure from their first album, last year’s Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut. While those oft-shoegazey songs felt at home on a walk through New York’s hippest outer borough, Rhinestone Cowgirl is a full-trottle rock record, road-ready to see the rest of America with unglazed eyes.
One of the best reasons to hit the road is a chance to mentally parse through life choices, and Rhinestone Cowgirl leads off with one hell of a declaration – “Rock N Roll Ruined My Life.” The band’s songwriter and frontwoman, Leah Lavigne, takes a moment to catalog all the upheaval caused by her chosen profession – “Tell me that I’m stuck chasing gloryThat will only chew me up and disappoint.” But once the big guitars kick in (courtesy of Lavigne and bandmates Jacob Savinsky, John Miller, Ryan Work and co-producer Alex Farrar), she’s ready to remind herself that all she needs is a few friends and her fellow musicians to believe in her – “Life will break our hearts and take our pride/Hold on to the ones that see you right.” While the next track, “Wished I Could Be,” recalls those dreamier moments from Couldn’t Save Us, this album’s third song, the super-riffy “God Made A Farmer,” is as heartland rock as it gets. The tangy anthem honors not just farmers, but office workers, bartenders, and anyone else toiling hard for far too little reward. Think of it as a song Taylor Sheridan might write if he weren’t so afraid of big cities and chose to acknowledge workers of all stripes – “When the game is rigged/None of us really win/So babe laugh a good laugh /Carve your own path.”
While Rhinestone Cowgirl isn’t exactly an exercise in optimism, it finds meaning in accepting reality and making the best of the mess that’s left. The juxtaposition of “Winner” and “Prepared to Lose” toward the end of the record highlights this. The latter is a jangly alt-pop tune that wryly recognizes the pain that life brings – “Thousand ways to live, thousand ways to go/Thank god we just die once,” while “Winner” begins with a pensive catalog of questions before opening up to acknowledge that, sometimes, mere survival is the goal – “You’re a winner/ ‘cause you’ve always had to fight/For what’s been given to so many.” Circling back to “”Rock N Roll Ruined My Life,” it’s that fight that’s gotten Lavigne and Ok Cowgirl out of Brooklyn clubs and onto the road – “They might see me just as a failed singer/But I’ve seen things that they will never know.” Leaving home – and comfort – is the only way to see these things. Ok Cowgirl is giving you both the soundtrack and the reason to do it.