Ultra Lights

Sometimes, what the year needs is just a solid indie rock slap in the face; a no frills hook n’ hackles free-for-all that taps all the right buttons. This year the honors on that release go to Atlanta’s Ultra Lights. Offered up on longstanding indie institution Chunklet, the album springboards off of the songwriting of John Robinson (Turf War, Illegal Drugs) and it’s clear that he’s spent more than a few years in the cut-glass riff trenches. The record swings at ‘00s tipping point tanglers, snarling with the kind of aloof itch that Jonathan Fire*Eater wielded so well and Spoon make their bread n’ butter, but dragging it through a kind of post-pavement malaise that’s more delightfully rumpled than that crowd could ever muster. Dip a decade or so later and the band has a few shades of ‘10s shoulda beens and fellow cig-monikered miscreants The Soft Pack. There’s no need to tie strings and search out the seeds here, though, the band’s processing eras of sweat and sinew into every ounce of Pleasure’s All Yours.

The album’s far from boiler plate, to be sure. It’ hung on the sharp wit and razor hooks from Robinson. Over the 80-grit riffs he winds up nostalgia’s easy pull, spars with gut feelings and bad omens, then mulls underserved dreams and worst case scenarios. The band’s got a penchant for twisting choruses into barbed wire, turning knife-sharp nihilism into a coping mechanism that cuts first before the world can draw its bounty of blood. It’s a solid strategy in 2026 as optimism seems to falter and flail in the face of capital, graft, and complacence. The band closes out with the bruised ode to baggage, “Got Damage,” a sentiment that’s more universal than ever. Few of us are skating through without a bite out of the psyche, but Ultra Lights are making the damage the diet on their soundtrack, and making it feel good in the process.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.