The Lead Sheet ~ 6/9/2026

The Lead Sheet is your guide to this week’s new music - taking a look at newly released albums, who made them, and how listeners are responding.   

Indie-rock band Modest Mouse’s eighth studio album released this week, marking their first publication after leaving major label Epic Records. The independent release, An Eraser and a Maze, is also the first new work since the passing of founding member and drummer Jeremiah Green. Out of respect, Modest Mouse featured a series of rotating drummers for the album, to avoid a feeling of replacement. An Eraser and a Maze is thematically concerned with grief and loss, and drastically changes tone from 2021’s pop-laden The Golden Casket, substituting raw acoustic sound and bold, unpolished riffs. Reception to An Eraser is mixed so far- fans of the group are quick to embrace the new sound, calling it a slow burn that earns its big crescendos. Amongst critics, opinions are more divided, ranging from “triumphant return” to “big disappointment”. Modest Mouse is currently touring the new album, with dates in North America through the summer and fall, concluding in Sacramento, California on October 23rd. 

Early 2000s melancholy rockers Death Cab for Cutie are back with their highly anticipated eleventh album, I Built You a Tower. Like Modest Mouse, the group also departed with their longstanding label, Atlantic Records to launch under indie studio Anti- Records. Reflecting this break, I Built You a Tower rejects the Top-40-appealing melodies for dissonant chord structures and acoustic minimalism, finding unique sounds in experimentation. Post production is noticeably stripped back, retaining rough room tones and bringing frontman Ben Gibbard’s vocals to the front of the mix, with vulnerable single-tracking. I Built You A Tower is a pensive reflection on Gibbard’s recent divorce, and explores deeper meaning than the typical breakup album. Critics praise the work for its painful honesty and mature perspective, painting no villains and grappling with the gravity of starting over later in life. Death Cab will kick off a world tour, starting with North America on July 10, and dates in Europe, Asia and Australia running through November. 

Symphonic metal group Evanescence released their sixth LP, Sanctuary on Friday, to excellent critical reception. Sanctuary blends Evanescence's signature goth sound with electronic elements to create a modern hybrid that shares some DNA with Sleep Token. The album’s twelve tracks are driven by downtuned chugging guitars, heavy breakdowns, and cinematic ambient synths. Sanctuary also expands lyrically, leaving the space of personal relationships to focus on larger issues like misinformation, digital exhaustion, and political strife. Amy Lee’s operatic vocals are in top form, blasting through a cyberpunk backdrop. Fans have embraced the album, feeling Sanctuary stays true to the band’s roots while exploring new direction, and critics are calling it some of the best new music from the act in years. Evanescence will take Sanctuary on tour in July, starting with North America, and moving to the UK and Europe in the Fall, finishing in Japan, Australia and New Zealand in late 2026 - early 2027. 

This week, the ever evolving indie-pop project Of Montreal celebrates their twentieth full record, aethermead. Since forming in Athens, Georgia in 1996, the band has explored a wide range of genres including twee-pop, psychedelic rock, disco, and funk. Musically, aethermead pivots from their recent electronic phase to a vintage, garage rock sound. Listeners will hear some Beatles influence in the record’s first half, but aethermead slowly treks into an emotionally darker, more experimental soundscape. Frontman Kevin Barnes utilizes tight, claustrophobic harmonies and unorthodox song structure, exploring the upheaval and rebirth in the aftermath of a failed relationship. As reviews continue to settle, consensus is mostly positive- critics commend the album’s inventiveness and raw, live band sound, noting that aethermead is some of Of Montreal’s most organic music in recent memory. However, some listeners find the album’s lyrics off putting, feeling that Barnes missed the mark in juxtaposing grandiose poetry with crude, explicit bluntness. Of Montreal will embark on a supporting tour June 19, exclusively in the United States with dates in major cities through August 6th. 

Metalcore pioneers Converge released a second album this year, after Love is Not Enough in February. Hum of Hurt, the twelfth installment to their discography, has already received overwhelming praise for its emotional vulnerability and instrumental experimentation. The album title and its cover art refer to a bizarre phenomenon, called “the hum”, a naturally occurring, continuous low frequency that most of the population can’t hear, and is known to cause insomnia and migraines in those who can. Hum of Hurt is thematically about human strife, lack of meaning, and aging, and where Love is Not Enough was meticulous and surgically precise in its composition, Hum of Hurt leans into the anarchic, with frenetic grooves and breathless rhythms. Fans and critics are in agreement that Love is Not Enough and Hum of Hurt are kindred records, complimenting each other as two sides of the same sonic coin. Converge just wrapped up the North American leg of their current tour, and will cross the pond to the UK and Europe in late June and into early July. 

Modest Mouse- An Eraser and a Maze 

Released June 5, 2026

Glacial Pace Recordings

Death Cab for Cutie - I Built You a Tower

Released June 5, 2026

Anti Records

Evanescence - Sanctuary

Released June 5, 2026

BMG Records

Of Montreal - Aethermead

Released June 5, 2026

Polyvinyl Records

Converge - Hum of Hurt 

Released June 5, 2026

Epitaph Records