100% JULY 2026

please pretend the above says July 2026

It’s Gannon again with a JULY 2026 playlist! A Lot of hardcore on this one. I’m kind of sorry about that in a way, because I know that kind of super abrasive punk is REALLY not most people’s cup of tea. However, I am desperately, hopelessly obsessed with the genre. One day, I’ll try to put into words and convince you why I think it’s the most exciting thing happening in guitar music. Not today though. Give these tunes a try!

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1. Baby Blue - Badfinger

There was a bunch of music lists going around Twitter this month - lots of guys ranking the best power pop songs of all time. Power pop is such a sick, largely overlooked genre - I LOVE medium-rocking songs with massive love-lorn hooky choruses.

Anyway, I saw this Badfinger song featured on a few of these lists. Now Badfinger is a band I’ve HEARD OF but never really listened to. This one’s a heater. There are totally devastating melodies from the start - that bit where he sings “a special love i had for you/my baby blue”: holy shit, what a magical sequence musical micro sequence! What the fuck is up with that? How and why does it sound THAT good?

It’s kind of crazy there really ins’t much of a power pop scene these days, because this kind of songwriting is so elemental to the rock and roll tradition. I do have a theory that explains this - power pop has been subsumed by emo: the subject matter and the hooks of power pop are all there, and that scene is BUSTLING. I guess to prove this theory, I will need to hear what a noodley midwest emo cover this track. @algernoncaldwell GET ON IT!!!!!

2.Kayleigh (Live in London) - Marillion 

Earlier this month, I was watching HardLore’s great interview with Patrick Walker of the band Warning. Warning specializes in heart-rending doom metal;, so I was surprised to hear Patrick talking about falling in love with music through the band Marillion.

Back in 2014, I worked at a video game/movies/record store, and for some reason, or vinyl shelf was always brimming to the gills with Marillion albums. They have these REALLY egregious album covers - super romanticized handpainted images of this really goofy Commedia dell'arte-looking clown enduring the tragedy of day to day life. CRAZY over the top - looked like bad second wave prog.

I judged a book by its cover and assumed it wouldn’t be my thing. Hearing this stoic doom dude talk about how he became obsessed with this band made me go “I gotta put this on.” This song is killer! Goofy in the way a conceptual arena rock act with is goofy, but the earnestness and passion they deliver this song really won me over. And again, massive love-lorn hooks. This one rocks.

3. Two Girls (Live) - Townes Van Zandt

If you haven’t heard Townes Van Zandt’s Live At The Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, put it on RIGHT NOW. It’s a recording of Townes playing solo in a packed Houston bar on a sweltering Summer night. But the moment he plays, the room goes dead silent. It’s an incredible recording, you can feel the heat of the room. It’s an absolute testament to the power of just guitar and vocals.

One of the greatest country records ever, and one of the greatest live records to boot. Transcendently great.

4.Baby I’ll Change - Fiddlehead

For my money, Fiddlehead is one of the best bands going these days. I love their sound - on paper, they’re hardcore adjacent, but the sound is lyrical, rocking indie rock, and mature, melody-forward emo. This new song is one of their best - anthemic and gutting, written in memory of a fixture of bost hardcore ficture Jimmy Flynn. It’s a heartbreaking, beautiful tribute.

5. Armed With a Mind - Have Heart

Appropriate to follow up the Fiddlehead track with their frontman’s former band, the legendary Have Heart. I love a stomping mid-tempo punk track like this. That chorus is nasty. You can just feel the kids going crazy to this one. Another straight edge track so good, it’s got me considering taking up the lifestyle.

6. Outcast - Trapped Under Ice

I’ve just come to the realization this month that Big Kiss Goodnight by Trapped Under Ice is a 10/10 album. A triumph beyond the standards of hardcore - an insanely rocking hardcore masterpiece. There were a few weeks this month where this song was ringing through my head all day.

7. Born into Ruin - Ethic

Fucking nasty guitar on this one. Not for the feint of heart.

8. On GP - Death Grips

Lot of sad songs on this playlist this month. This one’s the heaviest. Listener, be warned.

I love Death Grips, but the first time I heard this song, I didn’t return to it. I found the subject matter to be too heavy - it’s all about MC Ride’s intense suicidal ideation. I came back to this song this month after listening to the Jokerman podcast ep on Jenny Death. The way they were taking about this song as Death Grips’ masterpiece made me reevaluate. The thing I find incredible listening to the song now is how it sends a triumphant message of hope: the beauty of endurance, and the power of love for our friends and family. A shattering, difficult, but beautiful song.

100% JUNE 2026

It’s Gannon again with another playlist. Here are the tunes that grabbed me this JUNE of 2026:

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1. Love Plus One - Haircut 100

I was watching an interview with the dude who fronted and still fronts the ULTRA CLASSIC, ULTRA CANONICAL hardcore band Youth of Today. Really interesting guy! You can see he got into the scene because that’s where all the weirdos were. Musically, I have to admit the “youth crew” sound Youth of Today pioneered misses me a bit. To some guys in this musical scene (a scene in which, am becoming more and more obsessed with, to the point I am often saying to myself “why the hell can’t I stop talking or thinking about hardcore????) this band and this sound is everything. I’ll get there, I hope.

Anyway, I was watching an interview with this guy, and he’s saying in the early 80s he was going to every “weird” music should he could. He used the band Haircut 100 as an example of how wide his tastes were. “I was going to see Agnostic Front one night and Haircut 100 the next!” Something like that. Hearing the name Haircut 100 immediately made me think, “oh my god what a 80s New Wave band name, I bet they have at least one killer single.” They actually got a ton of killer tracks off of their one album. They have sound that straddles both dance edge of punk inspired bands, and a hint of the smooth mellowness the frontmen of these bands all embraced when time came for them to put out their first solo album. It’s pretty cool! Makes me want to go back and compile all the best stuff from forgotten British new wavers with cuckoo names.

2. Falling Into It - Joyce Manor

I love a short song, and I love massive hooks. Not much more to this one than that. Joyce Manor, like youth crew hardcore, are a musical entity I wish I liked more. I like power pop-y forward pop punk and these guy are the biggest band doing that right now. They got a handful of songs I’m really rocking with. Fake ID, Constant Headache, I Know Where Mark Chen Lives. But they got a lot of tracks that leave me cold. More hooks please! More big dumb hooks! This song’s got em so I’m chillen

3. Jesus was a Cross Maker - Judee Sill

Judee Sill is an artist who I don’t feel like was getting a lot of play when I was becoming a proper music dork in 2008, but who is massively influential in the current lyrical folk inspired sect. I got this song rec from an interview with Karly from Wednesday, actually, who’s at the forefront of that scene. She pointed to the lyric “He’s a bandit and a heartbreaker/ Oh, but Jesus was a Cross-Maker.” What a fucking line. Insane. You need to get into Judee Sill NOW!!!!

4. Jeep - Kim Petras

This song’s a grower for me. First time I heard this I thought to myself, ugh, does every pop act have to do a country homage song to try and score a crossover chart hit these days!?!? Well, like the best Kim, this one pays more with repeat lessons. Monster hooks. Taken from a chopped up acoustic riff. Kim’s ad-libs are also great - the meaning laden “fuck…”, the fireworks “pewwww” before the outro. I guess the idea for the song came from Kim being German, and Germans calling all cars “Jeeps” - kinda f in the way some southerners call all sodas “Cokes.” The German interpretation of middle of nowhere romantic America is also a funny element in the song. Slipknot and stupid gas station shirts. Very in vogue these days.

5. Boys of Summer - codeseven

Boys of Summer was one of those songs I remember in my youth hearing referred to as basically dogshit by either my dad or the music critic intelligencia. So for much of my life
I wrote this song off as dogshit. Nowadays, I feel like many of these sorts of songs previously derided songs have stuck around so long and proved themselves to be too undeniable to be totally written off. “Whatever, fun is fun” feels like the attitude. Anyway this cover is pretty fun, works great as a hardcore song.

6. Five Eyes - Demonstration of Power

I believe this is a Scottish straightedge hardcore band. That’s cool. Learned about this song from a clip that was going around twitter of the lead singer hitting a psychotic two step to butterfly kick during the song’s breakdown. It looks so cool. If you’re in your twenties, learn to two step NOW!!! A lot harder to figure that out without looking insanely lame in your 30s. Anyway this song is sick. It has like 4 breakdowns. Fucking insane.

7. Money in My Pocket Version - Joe Gibbs

Really loving dub these days. Mellow enough to put on while you’re working, but has a creeping ferocity that keeps me in a “coiled panther on the creep” mindset. May this song thusly propel you.

100% MAY 2026

writing about my monthly music playlists

hello. every month i make a playlist of the songs that are grabbing me. I have been doing this since 2015. I call these playlists “100%,” because they’re 100% killer. I’d like to share these playlists with you now, in this GUTTER letter and GUTTER letters to come. These are gonna be ROUGH and minimally edited, but if you like music, talking about music, whatever, I think you might dig this! If you give it a shot, at least one song on these playlists will change your life every month GUARANTEED!

and if you do like what you hear here, or just wanna talk tune, PLEASE, let me know! there’s always 773-666-AGUN, but there’s also the #music channel in the GUTTER discord. I’m around! I’m snoopin!

Without further ado:

100% MAY

SIDE A

1. highwire days: transcendently great power pop track. The genre of “power pop” doesn’t really exist like it used to. I have a theory that this style of youthful, highly melodic guitar music has been subsumed into emo, and further now into the burgeoning genre called “diy” that i see kids on the internet talking about from time to time. I think it’s really cool to reclaim that sound away from the signifier “emo,” even though there’s no shame in being an emo band, especially right now. Just thrilling to see sounds recontextualized into new youth movements. Anyway this song is just terrific. Tommy Keene has a ton of terrific, heart on sleeve barn burners like this. Absolutely worth the deep dive.

2. wild connection: really love the roughness of this band. contemporary punk with slide guitar: what a fantastic combo! It’s got me thinkin, you know what might sound really cool on an indie band like this? double bass drum breakdowns. Is that a million dollar idea? no. It is a “Pitchfork 7.1, 8.6 on the rerelease” idea. Love the vocals on this, love the shambolic clang of it all, and love that slide guitar.

3. man of the month: when MIKE is put up against the right production, he’s really one of the best going. I thought the Surf Gang MIKE/Earl Sweatshirt double album was a cool experiment, if a little long, but for whatever reason, this one jumped out right at. And by the way, what is up with Jpegmafia these days? I loved that dude in 2019. for his new album rollout, he through some shade at Earl and Mike for “sounding like Lucki” on this album. What’s wrong with sounding like Lucki!? It works like CRAZY here.

4. losing you: this is a cool pop song! sometimes I have a really hard time connecting to contemporary pop vocals - the drippy babygirl style really does not hit for me. But this is fantastic! This ex-Disney star’s debut is pretty freakin solid! Love the groovy 80s-y production. Sultry!!!

5. hypnotize: totally psycho freak pop song. Relistened to this album after hearing AG Cook herald this album as big inspiration on PC Music. I can hear it! Sounds incredibly ahead of its time while also sounding profoundly OF its time. Absolute maximalist brain exploding pop music. 

6. if i had a rocket launcher: a total dad rock ripper. though it was written in ’84 in response to Guatemalan genocide, the song is all too relevant. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. What a fucking chorus, man.

7. Days like these: a transcendent song - completely gutting. Low is one of the coolest bands to ever do it- and so consistent at such a high level, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life plumbing their discography. It is just so endlessly inspiring to me that this album could be so genre pushing, so deep into their career. The explosion on this song is so gutting, so totally heart rending. Beautiful, incredible music.

8. dread on the mountain top: “The smell of violence has overtaken the city” - what an opening lyric! Love the brooding intensity this song conjures. Those grooves are so sinister, so potent - it’ll just unspool you.

SIDE B
All the HEAVY tunes of the month are HERE! except the last one, that’s kind of a joke edition. like when bands in the 90s would put a secret track after 10 minutes of silence on the last song on the album.

1. everyone’s enemy: Feels awesome to be walking around in a bad mood pumping this one through your headphones. Allowing yourself the ultimate negation of punk misanthropy can be healing, folks! The breakdown on this one is so great. Always bonus points for yelling out the name of your band during the song’s coolest moment. Is hardcore the only genre to do that? It’s such a sick move. Once I can figure out how to do the equivalent move on a podcast, you will hear it.

2. destruction of my soul: “THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY OUT: BURN IT TO THE FUCKING GROUND” Terror, like Low, is another incredibly consistently great band. Their new album tears, I just adore it. I feel like in some punk circles, the comparison I’m about to make might sound unflattering, but I mean it with total love for the band: Terror is to hardcore as The Ramones are to punk. Wildly consistent, sticking with a sound that on paper might seem simplistic, but in effect is so beautiful. If someone asked you “what is hardcore,” you could point them to any Terror album and be 100% on point.

3. resist/desensitize: fucking mean, nasty shit. I love the tempo and chug on this one. also from a great album of back to back aggressive tunes.

4. barn burner: the first of a trifecta of revolting palm mutes. Really smart, gnarly lyrics on this song that really bring the heaviness home. This is Deadguy’s second album after like 20 years. How crazy is that to come back sounding this GOOD?!

5. stars: 90’s classic. If you haven’t seen Hum’s performance of this on Conan from the 90s, drop everything and WATCH IT NOW. The outro guitar bit on this song is so stink face inducing, it’s astonishing. More bands should be ripping from Hum.

6. to build a mountain: the “GO” after the first verse always gets me. HEAVY. GOOD. TO BUILD A MOUNTAIN TAKES A LONG LONG TIME.

7. forever: happy iceman release month