It’s time for another album review round-up. This week, we have new releases from Mariachi el Bronx, Felsmann + Tiley and Charli xcx, plus albums from KMFDM and Lapêche that were released in the past few weeks.
Mariachi El Bronx – IV
Mariachi El Bronx, the offshoot of The Bronx that focuses on mariachi and other styles of Latin American music, is back with their fourth album and it’s an intense ride. Singer Matt Caughthran tells tales of love and loss, life and death, that can make you chuckle and pull at the heartstrings. Sometimes, like in “El Borracho,” he’ll do this in the same song. Over the years, the band has grown as musicians and that shows throughout IV and the album is filled with sonic details that show how in sync the instrumentation is with the lyrical content, like the strings that mimic a trapped bird on “Songbird” or the rhythm that resembles a slowly trotting horse on “The Takers.” Get the album, but also try to catch Mariachi El Bronx live. You won’t regret it.
For more on the new Mariachi El Bronx album, read my interview with Matt Caughthran in Music Connection.
Charli XCX – Wuthering Heights
Brat is a good example of how a viral marketing campaign can make me loathe something. Maybe the album, which I thought was meh, would have grown on me if it hadn’t been overshadowed by “Brat summer.” That said, I was curious to hear Charli xcx’s soundtrack for Wuthering Heights just to see maybe I would react differently to her music without the trying-to-hard marketing campaign surrounding it. After all, I didn’t dislike her music pre-Brat. Overall, Wuthering Heights, the album, is solid. “House,” Charli xcx’s collaboration with John Cale is, by far, the strongest track on the album. It sounds gothic in the literary sense. In fact, the gothic haunted house vibe continues throughout the album. Even the most conventional pop songs, like “Eyes of the World,” are filled with noisy elements that bring to mind shrieking ghosts and wind howling through the moors. Now, I’ve yet to see Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and the last time I read Emily Brontë’s novel was in high school, but it sounds like Charli xcx is tapping into the themes and plot points for the lyrics and it works. Aside from “House,” club-friendly “Dying for You” and “My Reminder” are standouts on the album.
Get Wuthering Heights by Charli xcx.
KMFDM – Enemy
To be honest, I haven’t listened to KMFDM in many years, so I didn’t really know what to expect from the band’s 24th album, Enemy. Overall, I would have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised to hear that, after more than 40 years, KMFDM hasn’t lost the mix of rage and cheekiness that I always appreciated. “L’etat” immediately caught my attention, even though the only word in the song I understood before turning to Google was guillotine. It’s heavy and ominous with a strong groove. “Yoü,” an energetic, club-friendly track, is the first songwriting contribution from Sascha Konietzko and Lucia Cifarelli’s daughter, Annabella Konietzko. The band’s sense of humor comes into play on synthpop number “A Okay” and “Stray Bullet 2.0” is a solid industrial dub cut. Closer “The Second Coming” is dark, unsettling and certainly reflective of the current era.
Felsmann + Tiley – Protomensch
If you’re one of the millions of people who have streamed the spacey, kind of disturbing reinterpretation of the M83 song “Solitude,” then you know who Felsmann + Tiley is. The German duo, who have also gave us the haunted reinterpretation of The Irrepressible’s song “The Most Beautiful Boy,” just dropped a new album, Protomensch, that expands on the vibe of those productions. Opening with the ambient synthwave of “Memory” and quickly moving into the unsettling “Opiod,” which features U.K. band Pet Deaths, Felsmann + Tiley score music for dreams, and nightmares, that look like they were directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and Panos Cosmatos. On songs like “Reset” and “Warum,” they essentially play the build-up a trance track without ever letting it erupt into festival banger. With “Always You,” featuring Woodes, and “God Is Lonelier,” featuring Laius, they offer an incredibly somber twist on synthpop. It’s all fantastic stuff, particularly for fans of bands like M83, Chromatics and Tangerine Dream in their film score era.
Get Protomensch by Felsmann + Tiley
Lapêche – Autoelic
Autoelic is a good word. It means the purpose of an act is the act itself. And, in a timeline as messed up as this one, it’s a really good idea to do things just for the hell of it. On Autoelic, the third album from Lapêche, there is that feeling of making music for the sake of making music and it’s refreshing. The band plays in the classic indie pop style, where harmonies are juxtaposed with guitar noise, but they aren’t afraid to step out of the confines of genre, like on the grunge-y “Double Knotted,” brooding, goth-tinged “Phantom of Cinder” or the bright and synthy “Monsoon.”
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
Listen to Beatique, February 2026, featuring music from ADULT., Kneecap, The Clash, The Cramps and more.
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