The Avalanches – No Bad Memories (2026) Review: 31 Tracks of Nostalgia With Teeth
The Avalanches – No Bad Memories (2026) Review: 31 Tracks of Nostalgia With Teeth
The Avalanches have always treated memory as something you can cut up, rearrange and make dance. No Bad Memories, their fourth album and first since 2020’s We Will Always Love You, takes that instinct into the bright, slightly sinister world of jingles, commercials and childhood consumer culture. Its 31 tracks are presented as a collage of fragments and full songs, a maximalist record that asks whether a sound can feel joyful and manipulative at the same time.
The album is scheduled for 16 October 2026 through Modular Recordings. Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi are joined by new member Andy Szekeres, while the guest list includes Jamie xx, Karen O, Rivers Cuomo, Panda Bear, Mike Patton, Jessy Lanza, Nikki Nair, Ryoji Ikeda, Barry Can’t Swim, Suzanne Ciani and many others. On paper, this is an Avalanches-sized project: a dense cast, a long sequence and a concept built from the scraps of everyday media.
The early reviews point to the record’s central contradiction. NME calls it excessive and overstimulating by design, noting that 31 tracks fill roughly 52 minutes. The Arts Desk hears a concept album about consumerism that remains engaging, while the Guardian’s interview with the group describes a playful, energetic and deliberately unruly work. Those descriptions do not cancel each other out. The album’s overflow is both the point and the challenge. See the NME review, The Arts Desk review and The Guardian’s interview with The Avalanches.
No Bad Memories is not simply a new version of Since I Left You. The debut turned samples into a dreamy, seemingly endless summer; this album looks more directly at the systems that sell us those dreams. Ad jingles and computer-era sounds are not just nostalgic decoration. They point to the way brands and technology become attached to personal memory. The Avalanches make that argument through abundance: the listener is surrounded by more voices, references and bright little sounds than can be absorbed in one pass.
For readers searching for a No Bad Memories review, the album’s appeal will depend on whether that overload feels like play or clutter. It is an ambitious, curious record that makes a strong case for deep listening, though its 31-track structure can also feel exhausting. The band’s collage craft remains compelling; the harder question is whether every fragment earns its place in the larger picture.
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Album Information
Artist: The Avalanches
Album: No Bad Memories
Released: 16 October 2026
Year: 2026
Genre: Electronic, sampledelic pop and plunderphonics
Label: Modular Recordings / Polydor
Length: Approximately 52 minutes
Previous album: We Will Always Love You (2020)
No Bad Memories Tracklist
Here is the complete standard digital track order, with featured artists included where credited.
Bd-R
Together (featuring Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss)
Xerox Altalink B8055 (featuring Ryoji Ikeda)
I Give Everything I Have 2 U (featuring Loaded Honey)
Every Single Weekend (featuring Jamie xx)
Friends Forever
Blue Shadows (featuring Karen O)
Logoland
Like Clockwork / Hit By Traffic (featuring Khadija Al Hanafi)
All The Time In The World (featuring Rivers Cuomo, Vegyn and Baby Marlboro)
3D Glasses Not Included
Vida (featuring Erick the Architect)
Paradise Island (featuring Khadija Al Hanafi and Mike Patton)
Unicorn Quest™ (featuring Ryoji Ikeda)
Far Away (featuring John Glacier and Khadija Al Hanafi)
He Lives In The Old World (digital edition exclusive)
Can’t Get Over Losing You (featuring Portraits of Tracy)
Watch Out! It’s Cloudy (featuring Khadija Al Hanafi)
Highfield (featuring Panda Bear)
El Dorado TV Spot (featuring Haley Joel Osment; digital edition exclusive)
Under Yr Power
SUV Heaven (featuring Khadija Al Hanafi)
One More Fantasy (featuring Carly Simon)
Break Out Corporate Tag (featuring Ryoji Ikeda and Portraits of Tracy)
Magic Wand (featuring Barry Can’t Swim)
Superfun!™ TV Spot (featuring Mike Patton and Haley Joel Osment)
No Bad Memories
Our Love Is Alive (featuring Suzanne Ciani and Barry Can’t Swim)
Total Recall (featuring Mike Patton; digital edition exclusive)
Final Credits (featuring Loaded Honey; digital edition exclusive)
The Pavements Light (featuring Haruomi Hosono)
***The official store marks these songs as exclusive to the digital album. See the band’s official store listing for the full tracklist and release information.
A Concept Album About Advertising and Memory
The album’s concept turns on a familiar contradiction: advertisements interrupt our lives, yet their sounds can become part of the memories we keep. A jingle from childhood can return with a warmth that has little to do with the product it once sold. The Avalanches use that gap between feeling and intention as creative material. Their subject is not simply advertising as a villain; it is the way commercial sounds become woven into private nostalgia.
The Guardian interview describes the group drawing on old adverts, technological sounds and fragments from popular culture. The band’s sample-based method lets those pieces carry their history with them. A sound arrives with the residue of where it came from, then is placed in a new context. That can make the album feel affectionate, but there is a sharper idea underneath: the consumer world keeps inserting itself into memory, and the soundtrack of growing up is often full of things designed to sell us something.
The album title is therefore knowingly complicated. “No Bad Memories” sounds like a promise to keep only the good parts. But the record’s subject suggests that memory is rarely that clean. Pleasant recollection can include a corporate slogan, a TV ident or a toy-commercial jingle. The Avalanches do not ask listeners to reject those memories; they ask us to notice how they got there.
This concept gives the 31-song length a purpose, though it does not remove the risk of sprawl. The sheer number of small pieces mirrors the feed-like, interruption-heavy culture the album examines. At the same time, a conceptual justification cannot make every transition equally satisfying. The strongest moments create a clear emotional or rhythmic connection between fragments. The weaker ones may feel like one more bright object in an already crowded room.
Production: A Collage That Knows It Is a Collage
The Avalanches’ production has always depended on discovery and rearrangement. Here, the group use a wider range of source material than the vinyl-centred mythology around Since I Left You might suggest. In a MusicRadar interview, Robbie Chater discusses the changing sample landscape, including digital sources and the complex work of clearing samples. The technology may change, but the central craft remains choosing which fragments speak to each other.
The production is built to reward attention. A sound can function as a rhythm, a joke, an emotional cue or a signpost to another time. That makes the record feel busy in a way that is not accidental. A short burst of sound can suggest a television commercial; a sudden shift can mimic the feeling of changing channels. Rather than smooth away every seam, the group often make the joins part of the listening experience.
There is pleasure in that density. The album encourages the listener to follow a sound, lose track of it, then recognise it later in a different form. It can feel like rummaging through a box of old tapes and forgotten objects, except the box has been arranged by two producers with a strong sense of rhythm. But there is also a limit to how much detail one sitting can hold. When every moment seems to contain another reference, the listener may stop hearing the distinctions.
The Guest List: Community or Overcrowding?
The guest roster is extensive, but the Avalanches do not rely on one conventional star feature after another. Jamie xx, Karen O, Rivers Cuomo, Panda Bear, Mike Patton, Carly Simon and Haruomi Hosono each bring a different association, while electronic and underground artists such as Ryoji Ikeda, Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Barry Can’t Swim broaden the record’s texture.
This range suits an album about memory and media. Voices enter like different channels, some familiar and some harder to place. The best collaborations appear to add to the album’s world rather than interrupt it for a feature verse. Loaded Honey’s presence on the opening and closing stretches, for instance, gives the record a recurring vocal point. The credits themselves underline the project’s central idea: a shared memory is made from many sources.
The danger is that a huge list of guests can become a substitute for a clear direction. NME’s description of the album as excessive and overstimulating is a fair warning. Not every name has equal room to shape the result, and some listeners may struggle to remember which guest appeared where. Yet the crowded cast also helps the album resist a single, tidy voice. It sounds like a cultural archive that has been opened and rearranged in public.
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Track-by-Track Listening Guide
The band’s official digital edition contains 31 tracks. Several songs have been released or discussed in advance; the rest are best approached as parts of the album’s sample collage rather than as conventional singles. This guide identifies the sequence and its credited collaborators, avoiding invented claims about unreleased song details.
That distinction matters to the review: the digital sequence is not simply a standard-length album with bonus tracks appended. Four digital-exclusive songs sit within the 31-track running order, changing its progression rather than arriving after the closer. Physical and digital listeners therefore hear different versions of the album’s architecture. The recurring collaborators also offer a useful map: some voices return at distant points, while one-off appearances widen the cast. Rather than infer a sound or story from a title alone, the track notes below focus on the confirmed running order, credits and the record’s broader concept.
1. “Bd-R”
The title nods to media technology and opens an album that treats recorded culture as part of everyday memory.
2. “Together” featuring Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss
Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss join the Avalanches, making this early collaboration a compact example of the album’s shared, many-voice approach.
3. “Xerox Altalink B8055” featuring Ryoji Ikeda
Ryoji Ikeda is credited on a track named after a copier model, bringing office technology into the record’s recurring commercial imagery.
4. “I Give Everything I Have 2 U” featuring Loaded Honey
Loaded Honey’s early feature pairs a personal-sounding title with the album’s wider interest in how feeling and promotional language overlap.
5. “Every Single Weekend” featuring Jamie xx
Jamie xx joins one of the advance tracks; its title places a repeated weekly ritual alongside the album’s interest in habits and media loops.
6. “Friends Forever”
The title reads like a keepsake promise, fitting a record that turns familiar phrases and cultural fragments into memory cues.
7. “Blue Shadows” featuring Karen O
Karen O’s guest appearance gives the album another recognisable voice; the track was also highlighted during the pre-release campaign.
8. “Logoland”
“Logoland” makes branding explicit in its title, a concise signpost for the album’s attention to logos and commercial culture.
9. “Like Clockwork / Hit By Traffic” featuring Khadija Al Hanafi
Khadija Al Hanafi returns on a double-titled track that sets routine beside interruption, extending her recurring role across the album.
10. “All The Time In The World” featuring Rivers Cuomo, Vegyn and Baby Marlboro
Rivers Cuomo, Vegyn and Baby Marlboro share the credit, bringing three distinct collaborators into one of the album’s broadest pairings.
11. “3D Glasses Not Included”
The product-box phrasing continues the record’s use of commercial language, with the title’s missing-glasses joke hinting at an incomplete promise.
12. “Vida” featuring Erick the Architect
Erick the Architect’s feature adds a hip-hop voice; “Vida”, meaning “life” in Spanish, sits among the album’s more direct titles.
13. “Paradise Island” featuring Khadija Al Hanafi and Mike Patton
Khadija Al Hanafi and Mike Patton share the credit on a title that evokes an idealised destination within the album’s media-aware world.
14. “Unicorn Quest” featuring Ryoji Ikeda
The trademarked fantasy title turns a quest into a branded phrase, while Ryoji Ikeda’s return strengthens the album’s recurring collaborations.
15. “Far Away” featuring John Glacier and Khadija Al Hanafi
John Glacier and Khadija Al Hanafi share this track, whose title shifts the sequence towards distance before the digital-exclusive songs.
16. “He Lives In The Old World”***
The digital-exclusive title points towards an older-world contrast, extending the record’s recurring dialogue between nostalgia and modern media.
17. “Can’t Get Over Losing You” featuring Portraits of Tracy
Portraits of Tracy features on an advance track whose title gives the album one of its clearest statements of loss.
18. “Watch Out! It’s Cloudy” featuring Khadija Al Hanafi
Khadija Al Hanafi returns on a weather-report-like title, another example of the album drawing on familiar language and media forms.
19. “Highfield” featuring Panda Bear
Panda Bear is credited here; the comparatively open title offers a change from the record’s more overtly commercial phrases.
20. “El Dorado TV Spot” featuring Haley Joel Osment***
Haley Joel Osment is credited on this digital-exclusive TV-spot track, one of the album’s most explicit links to fictional advertising.
21. “Under Yr Power”
The clipped spelling and direct address shift the title towards personal language after the preceding television-spot framing.
22. “SUV Heaven” featuring Khadija Al Hanafi
Khadija Al Hanafi returns on a title that combines a consumer vehicle with a spiritual image, continuing the album’s playful commercial contrasts.
23. “One More Fantasy” featuring Carly Simon
Carly Simon’s credit connects the track to pop history; its title leaves room for fantasy to mean either a dream or a sales pitch.
24. “Break Out Corporate Tag” featuring Ryoji Ikeda and Portraits of Tracy
Ryoji Ikeda and Portraits of Tracy share the credit on a title that makes corporate sign-off language part of the album’s collage.
25. “Magic Wand” featuring Barry Can’t Swim
Barry Can’t Swim joins a title that combines a magical promise with the album’s recurring interest in manufactured desire.
26. “Superfun! TV Spot” featuring Mike Patton and Haley Joel Osment
Mike Patton and Haley Joel Osment appear on another fictional TV spot, with the trademarked title blurring song and advert.
27. “No Bad Memories”
Placed late in the sequence, the title track complicates its promise through the album’s earlier mix of warmth, branding and nostalgia.
28. “Our Love Is Alive” featuring Suzanne Ciani and Barry Can’t Swim
Suzanne Ciani and Barry Can’t Swim bridge different electronic generations on a title that makes a direct claim about love.
29. “Total Recall” featuring Mike Patton***
Mike Patton returns on this digital-exclusive title, which links memory to cinematic spectacle within the album’s wider collage.
30. “Final Credits” featuring Loaded Honey (Loaded Honey Version)***
Loaded Honey returns for a digital-exclusive version whose title names an ending and gives the sequence a circular thread.
31. “The Pavements Light” featuring Haruomi Hosono
Haruomi Hosono closes the album; the title offers a final visual image after the record’s many product names and media references.
What Works and What Does Not
The album’s biggest strength is its sound-world. Few groups can make such a large set of references feel like they belong to the same imaginative place. The Avalanches understand that samples are not only sounds; they carry traces of the time, media and people around them. The album’s concept gives those fragments an emotional reason to appear.
Its weakness is the risk of overload. Thirty-one tracks invite the listener to skip, even as the group want the album to be experienced as a connected project. NME’s description of the record as excessive and overstimulating captures a real listening challenge. The Arts Desk’s more positive assessment suggests the same ambition can feel cohesive when the listener accepts the album’s unusual pacing.
The question is not whether 31 songs are automatically too many. It is whether the individual fragments keep earning their place. Some track titles are more memorable than others, and the dense guest list can blur distinctions between voices. But the album’s excess also mirrors its subject. The same cultural environment that feeds us branded sounds and endless choices appears here as a musical form.
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Is No Bad Memories Worth Listening To?
Yes, if you enjoy sample-heavy electronic music, concept albums and records that reward more than one pass. It is not the easiest Avalanches album to recommend to someone who wants the smoothest introduction; Since I Left You remains the clearer starting point for the group’s signature collage style. No Bad Memories is more overtly conceptual and more crowded.
The best way to approach it is to let the record play as a world first, then return to individual songs. The recurring voices, product titles and commercial fragments become easier to follow once the album’s central idea is clear. It is ambitious, playful and occasionally exhausting. That combination is part of its character, but it also means the album will divide listeners.
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Verdict and Review Score
No Bad Memories turns advertising, technology and childhood recollection into a sprawling electronic collage. Its 31-track format is both its most daring choice and its biggest obstacle. The guest list and sample-driven production give the album a vivid, communal feel, while the concept adds a sharper edge to the nostalgia. Not every fragment has equal weight, but the whole project has a clear identity.
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Conclusion
What remains after No Bad Memories is its distinct identity: a record with clear ideas, memorable performances and a few passages that ask for patience. It is best approached by listeners interested in the artist’s current direction rather than anyone expecting a return to an earlier sound.
The strongest songs give the album its lasting shape, while the weaker moments show where its ambition becomes less focused. That balance is part of the listening experience, and the record is more interesting for taking risks, even when every one of them does not land.
Which song stayed with you, and what score would you give the album? Share your favourite track and whether you would recommend the full record to another listener.
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Frequently Asked Questions About No Bad Memories
When is No Bad Memories released?
The Avalanches’ fourth album is scheduled for 16 October 2026 via Modular Recordings and Polydor.
How many tracks are on No Bad Memories?
The digital edition has 31 tracks. The physical CD listing has a shorter sequence, so check the format before buying.
Is this The Avalanches’ first album since 2020?
Yes. It follows We Will Always Love You, released in 2020.
What is No Bad Memories about?
The record explores memory, advertising, consumer culture and the sounds that become lodged in everyday life.
Who are The Avalanches?
The Australian electronic group is led by Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi, with Andy Szekeres joining the expanded line-up.
Which artists feature on the album?
The guest list includes Jamie xx, Karen O, Rivers Cuomo, Mike Patton, Carly Simon, Panda Bear and many others.
Are any songs digital-exclusive?
The digital listing marks “He Lives In The Old World”, “El Dorado TV Spot”, “Total Recall” and “Final Credits” as digital exclusives.
What genre is No Bad Memories?
It is an electronic sample collage that draws on plunderphonics, pop, dance music and experimental sound.
What are the standout songs?
“Blue Shadows”, “Every Single Weekend”, “Far Away” and “Can’t Get Over Losing You” are among its most distinctive songs.
Is No Bad Memories worth listening to?
Yes for listeners who enjoy adventurous sample-based albums, though its length and rapid changes make it a demanding front-to-back listen.
More Places to Find Music Information
For release details and streaming availability, consult the official artist or label page and the album listing on Apple Music.
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