Just two months after Lana Del Rey released her new album Chemtrails Over the Country Club, the singer has shared three new songs from her next LP Blue Banisters.
Released quietly to streaming services without social media fanfare, the three songs are the title track “Blue Banisters” and “Text Book” — both co-written by Del Rey and Gabriel Edward Simon, Pitchfork reports — and “Wildflower Wildfire,” co-written and produced by Kanye West collaborator Mike Dean.
On April 27th, Del Rey revealed that Blue Banisters would arrive on Independence Day, July 4th; the singer previously hinted at a Chemtrails follow-up titled Rock Candy Sweet, but the Blue Banisters cover art uses the same cover art as that previously announced LP.
Following the release of Chemtrails Over the Country Club, Del Rey responded to a Harper’s Bazaar article “Lana Del Rey Can’t Qualify Her Way Out of Being Held Accountable” that was critical of the singer’s cultural appropriation.
“Just want to say thank you again for the kind articles like this one and for reminding me that my career was built on cultural appropriation and glamorizing domestic abuse,” Del Rey said at the time via Instagram Stories. “I will continue to challenge those thoughts on my next record on June 1 titled Rock Candy Sweet.”
Blue Banisters — which has not been formally announced yet by the singer’s label — would mark Del Rey’s third album over a year-long span, following her July 2020 spoken word album Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass and March 2021’s Chemtrails Over the Country Club.
ALBUM REVIEWS
Canadian duo Softcult name their stunning first album after the well known Alexander Den Heijer line “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” That belief in brave transformation and choosing something healthier runs through everything Mercedes and Phoenix Arn Horn do. The twin sisters know that idea intimately after spending over ten years in pop rock outfit Courage My Love, before stepping away in 2020 when major label life began to feel too restrictive to survive creatively.
Softcult emerged soon after in 2021 with ‘Another Bish’, a sharp edged dream pop statement that made it clear they would not be boxed in. A run of four gritty EPs followed, steeped in Riot Grrrl spirit, alongside hand assembled zines, an intensely loyal online following and high profile support slots with Muse and Incubus. Each move has helped build a carefully protected DIY universe where honesty and release come first.
The sisters have never sounded more grounded or self assured than they do on their self produced debut ‘When A Flower Doesn’t Grow’. The album loosely traces the process of escaping systems of abuse, control and expectation, opening with the weightless ‘Intro’. From there, the grimy surge of ‘Pill To Swallow’ finds Mercedes confronting how bleak the world can feel in 2026 with the line “no more promises of better days”, while still choosing resilience over surrender.
‘When A Flower Doesn’t Grow’ is packed with songs that run on pure fury. ‘Hurt Me’ erupts as a blistering release that recalls Nirvana at their most savage, while ‘Tired!’ barrels forward as a no nonsense punk blast aimed at suffocating pressures, with Mercedes biting back “tired of the expectations, tired of your explanations.” Elsewhere, the hazy drive of ‘Naïve’ and the deceptively bright ‘Queen Of Nothing’ bristle with restrained anger, and the charging ‘16/25’ pulls no punches when calling out predatory behaviour. ‘She Said, He Said’ cuts just as sharply, its spoken word delivery flipping between mockery and menace to deepen the band’s guitar led resistance.
Softcult’s debut feels like a natural step forward from their spiky punk roots while also opening doors to new sounds. The loud soft swing of ‘Not Sorry’ bursts with relief and joy, marking the most carefree moment they have ever put on record. At the other end, closing track ‘When A Flower Doesn’t Go’ strips everything back, blending acoustic folk with scorched post rock textures. The duo sound at ease moving between these poles, but it is the fragile hush of ‘I Held You Like Glass’ that lands hardest, leaving room for vulnerability and quiet heartbreak to linger.
