EAR•WAX Newsletter 005 | September 2026
Tracklist:
- Audio Fiction and Music Updates!
- Gavin Gaddis reviews The Bird Roads from Tin Can Audio
- Best of Everything But - Part 1: Quality 2026 Country Albums Worth Your Time
- Coming Up on the Flipside
- October 7th - our next Infinite Mixtape, where Ross McFarlane makes me a mix and a fan of the Scottish World Cup team.
- October 14th - our next episode of Drama Club where we talk about Writing for Sound
We could really use your support on our Patreon. If you appreciate our efforts at EAR•WAX, please consider contributing to our fees for the website, newsletter, podcasting, and helping pay our writers and staff. Supporters receive bonus playlists, access to our Discord, early episodes, and more.
NEWS AND UPDATES!
Audio Fiction Announcements:
True Tales of the Illuminati - Season 3
If you listened to the last episode of our magazine, you’ll have heard an excellent treatise on writing comedy for audio by Max Kreisky. You also would have heard that Max’s show, True Tales of the Illuminati, the audio sitcom about conspiracies gone wrong, is returning with its third season premiering on Nov 26, aka American Thanksgiving. Look forward to their five episode season, with new episodes dropping every two weeks. Something to surely be thankful for!
The Cold Plunge named semi-finalist for the Austin Film Festival
In a recent issue of both the magazine and newsletter, I wrote about how The Cold Plunge was one of my favorite audio fiction pieces of the year. Now it’s just named a semi-finalist in the Austin Film Festival. We wish writer Sunny Bleckinger the best of luck.
The Fable and Folly network to end in December
On a sad note, the Fable & Folly network recently announced they will close-up shop officially in December. The team has been honest and upfront about their reasons, next steps, and resources. As a member of the network from the very beginning, I bring nothing but appreciation for Sean, Eli, Russ, and everyone at F&F for their support these past several years.
Music Shorts:
New Song You Must Hear: Nobro - Girls Like Us
Rip it up with this punk banger.
The New Colossus Festival 8th Edition announces initial lineup:
One massive festival. A billion bands. Various clubs in the Lower East Side. Take it from me, it's the best time imaginable. This year's New Colossus Festival was a highlight of 2026, and I'm so excited to learn about a new crop of artists that will be rocking our socks off next March. This is just the tip of the iceberg with more to come, and a surprising onslaught of international talent too. I'll be going back, and if you've never experienced it, you owe yourself a new music treat.
The Deathray Davies return:
The Deathray Davies are back with “Red Lights,” the first advance single from their forthcoming album LAMPSHADE EARTHQUAKE MICROPHONE, a spellbinding set of pocket symphonies that cull inspiration from vintage garage rock and psychedelic pop nuggets while employing heady musique concrète embellishments and ornate studio wizardry. The album is due this November.
Audio Fiction Review: The Bird Roads by Gavin Gaddis
The Bird Roads is a new audio drama miniseries from Tin Can Audio, written by Ella Watts and starring Ferah Ahmet as pilot Noor Latif. The story kicks off with Noor flying her plane Blackbird across an infinite ocean, an off-screen apocalypse having flooded the world and sparked a supersized hurricane dubbed the “giga-storm.”Noor’s trying to find her two lovers, Finn and Aster.The series is currently available in both episodic free podcast format, as well as the classic Tin Can Audio methodology of putting the entire series up for direct purchase on Bandcamp. This particular Bandcamp version comes with the added incentive of lightly re-editing episodes to flow directly into each other without credit sequences, allowing for the entire story to be consumed in one sitting without stopping for intros and outros every five-ish minutes. Given the short length of the episodes, I highly recommend the Bandcamp edit over the podcast edit. While not a problem exclusive to The Bird Roads, I find bite-sized audio drama pacing suffers quite a bit from intro/outro segments when consumed too close together. It’s an issue we all put up with for the sake of the medium, but when given the opportunity to consume a text as a text and not small tracts, I take it.
It’s been six years since I’ve checked in on Tin Can Audio with the podcast The Dungeon Economic Model. It’s heartening to see Amber Devereux is still out there delivering incredible sound design and music. The beating heart of The Bird Roads is Devereux’s deft hand at keeping a sense of place to Noor wherever she is.
As your local autistic audio drama critic, I’m going to say two things back to back that might sound contradictory, but I genuinely mean:
1. The Bird Roads is a sincere, eager miniseries full of passionate acting and deft sound design. It is absolutely worth your time and money to buy the Bandcamp version and experience as fully intended.
2. The Bird Roads feels like it yearns to be a full-length podcast, or a script for a visual medium. In making the sacrifices needed to be produced, the final product feels more about the vibes than the actual content.
Check out the full review here!
Best of Everything But Part 1:
I recently guested over at Gabbie’s excellent newsletter New Bands for Old Heads and wrote about some great albums in genres many people write-off. Sharing the first half with you all this week - great country albums of 2026 you should check out. Read the whole piece here.
Do You Have an Everything But?
If you’re reading this, you likely share similar tastes with Gabbie, and good for you, because Gabbie is the patron saint of musical taste. But everyone has genres they don’t care for, or in the very least, aren’t terribly familiar with. I call these genres everything buts.
Why? Well, you’ve either said this before or have heard it before when you ask someone or someone asks you what kind of music you enjoy. The response is inevitable. “I listen to everything but fill in the blank.” Maybe it’s metal or hardcore punk, and I’m not talking about hyper-specific, niche Spotify wrapped made-up genres like Gym Phonk or Pink Pilates Princess (I refuse to believe these are real), I’m talking about the basic level music genre everyone universally understands.
For example, when people asked me what I listen to, I used to say “I listen to everything but country.” Later, I amended that to say “I listen to everything but pop-country,” because there’s plenty of older country music I greatly admire and enjoy listening to, and more and more there are new country artists emerging that I actually really like, and many of them even flirt with pop sensibilities. Here’s a list of Quality Country Worth Your Time in 2026:
mildred - Fenceline
Genre: Country / Slacker Rock
RIYL: Wilco, The Silver Jews, Pavement, Ratboys
Ratboys released a great new album this year, Singing to an Empty Chair. If you like that brand of country rock, might I suggest Oakland’s mildred and their album Fenceline. Similar to Ratboys, they blend indie rock and country with clever lyrics and great hooks, but with some slacker-rock elements: think early Wilco mixed with the Silver Jews and that’ll give you an idea. Check out Fleet Week first, which imagines a California NAVY custom with the type of detail that would make the best poet jealous.
Start with: Fleet Week
Queen Ester - Blackbirding
Genre: Country / Soul / R&B
RIYL: Lucinda Williams, Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russel
Looking for something ambitious that merges genres even more? Listen to Queen Ester’s new album Blackbirding, a musical excavation of Gettysburg that tackles moments in the civil war battlefield with the spiritual battle Black Americans have been fighting in its wake since. Mixing soul, R&B,and country while tackling ambitious and emotionally material, Ester somehow makes it look easy, and still lays down tracks both haunting and full of hooks.
- Start With: Hold Steady
Andrew Sa - American Rough
Genre: Country / Queer Country
RIYL: Lavender Country, ANHONi, Roy Orbison
American Rough is a gorgeous collection of melancholy country storytelling. This is classic sounding country through and through, with steel guitar and references to honky tonking, but Sa sings with a voice Roy Orbison might be jealous of. Imagine if ANHONI made an album of country ballads and you might get some idea of what this sounds like, although that doesn’t quite do it justice either. Lead single Lavender Cowboy is a heartbreaking ode to the late Patrick Haggerty of Lavender Country, who pioneered the queer country genre. Sa credits Haggerty with embracing his queer identity in country music, and we’re all the better for it, because this album announces a talent not to be trifled with.
- Start With: Lavender Cowboy
Nathan Evans Fox - Heirloom
Genre: Country / Folk / Singer-Songwriter
RIYL: Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell
Heading further out west, Nathan Evans Fox’s new album Heirloom is so country he worries at times about not being country enough. Case in point, in the opening track Lots of Beginnings, he sings to his daughter that he worries she’ll lose her accent. “Honey, we live in a city,” he croons, “You gotta talk how you talk. I just miss how my grandma did it.” That type of poignancy, with love and respect going in two different directions of his family tree is both simple and heartbreaking, as is every carefully crafted song on the album. At the end of the song, he acknowledges that his daughter scares him, that she’s different, before ending the verse in the most country way possible. “Lord, ain’t it a blessing.”
- Start With: Lots of Beginnings
Want more 2026 country? Check out Appalachia by Emily Scott Robinson, Nellene by Deloyd Elze, Weapons of Beauty by Jay Buchanan, and heck, even Florida Water Blues by Twisted Teens if you want some crusty punk with your gritty country.
What short blast of sound have you been vibing with? Email us at mailearwax@gmail.com and let us know or hit us up on Instagram, Tumblr, or Bluesky. No, we’re not on X. F X!
