5 Charms 08.26

TS Foss - Cloud Envy (Madison, WI; 2026)

I'm markedly unsure of decisions I make
Where steps in right directions still feel like mistakes

TS Foss is the singer/songwriter version of punk scene stalwart Tyler Fassnacht (Baby Tyler, Celebrity Sightings, Proud Parents). Everything Finished, his previous album under the TS Foss name was an acoustic-forward, studio project. Cloud Envy has more in common sonically with his lo-fi punk music, everything sounding live-tracked and garage grimy, including Fassnacht's voice, which is weary as hell. But these are desperate-sounding songs, a little bit sad, a little bit urgent. Songs like "Out of Reach," "Lonely July," and "Pilots & Bagboys" come out kicking and screaming while tunes like "Say it out Loud" and "A Mile and a Month" are late-night jams that lean on Peter Briggs' weepy pedal steel for ambiance. The core band includes Briggs, piano player Emili Earhart, and C Nelson-Lifson on bass. Cloud Envy is a nice sophomore record, further extending Fassnacht's creative streak in the Madison music community.

Sarah Gordon Butler - Grainery Songs (Reedsburg, WI; 2024)

Roads around mountains
Cause we can't drive through

Sarah Gordon Butler is an artist associated with the Wormfarm Institute, an art incubator and artist residency space outside of rural Reedsburg. Butler was an artist in residence there in 2020, and has returned nearly every year since then. "Grainery Songs" was recorded in 2024. While Butler typically works in dance and theater, she also writes songs and makes stuff with her hands. As a songwriter, her main instrument is her voice. She layers vocal harmonies and rhythms using a loop pedal, adding occasional lyrics. This is not pop music, but she has a beautifully clear voice that is enhanced only by the natural reverb of an old metal grain silo. This collection of songs includes "Eileen," the subject of her recent solo dance piece where she builds the song through 30 minutes of intense movement and live looping. Butler will return to Reedsburg in September where she has been choreographing a field-sized performance Hay Rake Ballet featuring Sauk County farmers literally harvesting their hay fields to a live orchestral score and dance-like movements of tractors.

Sex Scenes - Everything Makes Me Sick (Milwaukee, WI; 2025)

I had to go the long way so I didn't go your way

Sick is an album of fast and noisy punk, tearing at the skin of the whole racist, patriarchal, capitalist system. As the song "Want & Need" goes, "how can I think on a night like this / when everything makes me sick?" The guitars and drums butcher their way through the songs, rage-filled, female-fronted hardcore punk at its finest. No guitar solos. No music longer than 2 minutes and 14 seconds. In fact, the whole album is less than 20 minutes long, so just go ahead and listen to it all the way through. Abrasive? Yes, but the recordings sound really great. Singer Sarah Turbo chomps on her lyrics, shouting her way through her list of grievances with a culture that prioritizes men and money. In "The Harder I Try," Turbo releases her demons, admitting "it only gets harder, the harder I try," countering the argument that "it gets better" as you age past the problems that plagued your youth. But if everything makes you sick, the punk community proves that music is medicine. Sex Scenes is:

Sarah Turbo - Vocals
Harrison Colby - Guitar
Connor LaMue - Bass
Gregg Twigg - Drums

Luke Callen - Fool's Spring (Eau Claire, WI; 2026)

When you cross that river and start looking back
Can you even tell what has passed
Which side is greener and which side has gone to seed
Can you even trust what you see

Classic Wiscountry songs with chiming electric guitars and whining pedal steel (courtesy of the hardest working man in Wisconsin music, Will Hansen, who also shows up this month on the snag. album). Luke Callen has a cozy western [Wisconsin] accent, aching from the time he's spent in driftless coulees and on the bluffs above the wide, gray expanse of the Mississippi River. This is a special kind of alternative country album, heavy with acoustic guitars, swampy blues, percussion, and Callen's deep voice. Clear-eyed. Poetic. Hopeful. Featuring harmony vocals from Siri Undlin (Humbird) and Sarah Elstran (The Nunnery), these tunes are rooted in the Eau Claire/Minneapolis scene, but share stories of rural bars, birds migrating, and the lives of farmers and wanderers. There are no real rock songs here, the music hearkens back to songwriter as bard, poet, even minstrel. Pick up the record while you can, and go check out Callen in concert, you'll be glad you did.

snag. - All The Cages Holding Us Will One Day Turn To Dust (Milwaukee, WI; 2026)

Ash in the air
Ash in our lungs
The sun rises with or without us

Milwaukee post-hardcore/screamo band snag. has created the album of their career with All the Cages.... Each song reveals new aspects of the band's artistic impulses, from the pummeling, mathy drums of opener "Unarrest Me" to the spectral, death-tinged shrieking in "Pray for Peace," all the way to the inclusion of the melodic post-rock tunes "Juneberry" and "Paris, WI," this album offers surprise after surprise. Each sub-three-minute song has barely begun before shifting: loud and soft dynamics, tempo changes, vocals move from screaming to singing. "Pray for Peace" is the longest song at 3:14, but the final 30 seconds is a gentle piano outro. "Juneberry" shivers with pedal steel and horns. Lyrically, this is desperate, angry anti-capitalist music, authentically punk and abrasive. After listening to this record every day for the past few weeks, I can confidently say this will be in my top 10 list for 2026. Grab a cassette or record from their Bandcamp if you like loud stuff. You won't be disappointed.