Listening: April 2026

Is Hurts Like Hell my favourite album of the year so far? I think it might be. My listening in 2026 keeps coming back to solo women writing from inside something difficult—Cornfield on the quiet weather of motherhood, Jessica Pratt’s debut (transfigured here by Asher White’s cover version), h. pruz circling dependency and control without landing too hard on either. I’m not sure there’s a tidier thread than that, so I’m not going to invent one.

Al Green was April’s Catalog Club pick, which sent me to several new-to-me albums, including I’m Still in Love With You and The Belle Album. I came in expecting singles plus filler and found something fuller—a man I’d mostly known for the biggest hits and the mistreatment of women, now sounding more searching and stranger than I’d given him credit for.

The other surprise is Troubadour by Tiberius, which I haven’t written about yet. I didn’t realise I’d been returning to it so often that it would clear dozens of other records in the count.