What we got: This week at South Records
Mike D releases his debut solo album Thank You this week, remarkably marking the first full-length collection of new music from a Beastie Boys member since 2011. Beginning as a series of zero-pressure experiments in his home studio, the album gradually grew into twelve tracks of inventive post-electronic grooves, hypnotic hooks and playful production. Mike’s instantly recognisable voice leads the way through an album that deliberately avoids easy categorisation – loose, curious and exploratory, and more interested in following new ideas than recreating the past. More than three decades after the Beastie Boys continually blurred the lines between hip-hop, punk, funk and electronic music, Thank You finds Mike D still pulling sounds apart and putting them back together in unexpected ways.
Elsewhere, Pulp’s Live! captures their triumphant 2025 O2 shows, recorded in the week their comeback album More reached Number One and bringing new material together with classics from across their catalogue. Dinosaur Jr. return with There Near, their sixth album since the original trio reunited, with J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph delivering another set of huge riffs, melodic songwriting and unmistakable guitar noise. Allah-Las head into more atmospheric and instrumental territory on Sirenas, drawing on everything from The Durutti Column to Popol Vuh, while John Carroll Kirby’s Piano Works 2016–2026 collects fourteen spontaneous pieces recorded around the world over the last decade. Mastodon channel grief, resilience and solidarity into the heavy and emotionally charged Marrow Deep, while Russian Circles continue to refine their cinematic instrumental post-metal across the seven tracks of Nine. There’s also Asher White’s wildly eclectic Love Aggregates, moving between art-funk, orchestral pop, folk, jazz and electronic noise; a 30th anniversary 2LP of Fu Manchu’s stoner-rock classic In Search Of..., newly remastered and accompanied by early four-track demos; and a welcome vinyl return for CSS’s brilliantly chaotic, electro-rock debut Cansei de Ser Sexy.
→ Recommended
The Cure’s third album Faith arrived in 1981, pushing the stark, minimal sound of Seventeen Seconds somewhere darker and more atmospheric. Built around Simon Gallup’s prominent basslines, sparse keyboards and Robert Smith’s increasingly desolate songwriting, it includes “Primary”, “Other Voices” and the haunting title track. Bleak without ever becoming one-dimensional, Faith sits at the heart of the remarkable run that would culminate in Pornography the following year, and remains one of The Cure’s most immersive records. Rare Irish first pressing right here.
