Album Of The Week: Styrofoam Winos Deliver “Any River”

10:51 AM EDT on June 16, 2026

Are you familiar with the doctrine of the trinity? The word never comes up in the Bible, but Christian theologians see the concept spelled out all across scripture. It's simple in one sense but also mind-meltingly complex: There is one God in the universe, but that God is three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are separate personalities, but one in essence. The idea of a triune God is radical enough to get Christians rejected as polytheists by other monotheistic religions, but it's incredibly important to the faith because of how it informs the premise that God is love. Instead of a lonely deity out there in the great beyond, desperate for someone to reciprocate His affections, we're told that ultimate reality is a community, delighting in each other, taking care of each other, submitting to each other. It's a beautiful vision, even if you dismiss it as myth.

Maybe this is sacrilegious, but I believe we get a glimpse of that beauty within any great band. It's especially true of a band like Styrofoam Winos, where three distinct personalities come together into a unified whole. Joe Kenkel, Trevor Nikrant, and Lou Turner each bring tunes to the table, and they constantly swap instruments based on the needs of the song. They take turns in the spotlight, sublimating their egos in service of something greater than themselves, and the resulting joyful noise far exceeds what any of them could have come up with alone. “It's a sweet alignment of forces, cooperative and collaborative,” explains their friend, fan, and fellow Michael Hurley devotee Will Oldham, noting how good their music makes him feel.

All bands are teams to some extent, but a lot of bands are like football teams: frontperson as quarterback, guitars and keys as wide receivers and running backs, rhythm section as the offensive line. The Winos are more like a basketball team where every player can slide into every role. They're not interchangeable in the sense that they share the same style or skill set, but they'll succeed in any configuration because they're each willing and able to play whichever role the moment demands. “Song Voltron,” they call it. Think of them as Yo La Tengo for a new generation — they even have a married couple in Turner and Nikrant — except they're even more egalitarian, and in lieu of an East Coast pedigree they grew up in the South idolizing David Berman.

Like Hoboken's finest, the Winos are content to operate within the underground. Rather than striving to break through to a mass audience, they've spent the 2020s pursuing their muse and cultivating a network of likeminded music geeks in their home base of Nashville and across the country. They're in the music business, but also the business of community. It's what they've been up to in the years since they graduated from Belmont University and began jamming after shifts together at the now-defunct J&J’s Market And Cafe. I found this excerpt from their Nashville Scene interview inspiring:

KENKEL: On a very granular level, making weird shit is a great mini form of rebellion that’s important for our little community. Speaking personally, for mental health, creating stuff that doesn’t fit into the straight and narrow path feels great. It’s like, “Fuck whatever else is going on, I’m just going to make this weird little piece of art.” While that might not necessarily be, like, “helpful,” it is what is important to do.

TURNER: Like: “AI could never! Big business could never!” It’s important to be your weird little self.

NIKRANT: It’s inherently political, I feel like, because you’re just creating joy and something you care about out of thin air. It hasn’t been preapproved by an approving body, or it hasn’t been commodified into something.

TURNER: It’s important to support your local subculture, as my friend Dan would say. The more we can create another world, the more the shitty existing world can migrate to that one. We have to keep creating a new world, and not let fear keep you from doing small things, because small things are all we have to do really.

NIKRANT: They are only small things if some power says they are small.

That world they’ve helped to create has been gaining more and more recognition. They’ve all logged time in the Roadhouse Band with Ryan Davis, one of the breakout stars of the indie world in recent years, who released the Winos' self-titled debut on his stellar Sophomore Lounge label in 2021. Another big fan is MJ Lenderman, who covered “Long Black Veil” with the Winos on his Live And Loose! live album in 2023 and has featured Nikrant in his band. For 2024’s Real Time , they moved to the reliably awesome Dear Life Records, co-run by Lenderman’s bandmate Jon Samuels. They’re back on Dear Life for LP3, Any River , dropping this Friday.

It’s hard to pin down the Winos' sound with much specificity, partially due to the “three songwriters” thing and partially due to a willingness to make many kinds of songs. I love that their debut album is categorized as “traditional folk” on Apple Music and begins with a post-punk track unlike anything else in their catalog. But it’s correct enough to say they operate at the intersection of indie rock and country, bringing a downbeat slacker energy and a charming sense of humor to rootsy rock ’n’ roll. If they’d showed up a few years earlier, maybe they’d have been on Paradise Of Bachelors alongside Nap Eyes, another great band with a similar disposition.

You get a sense of their range in Any River ’s opening stretch. Turner takes the lead on “Pearls,” sort of a Courtney Barnett-meets-Real Estate groover blessed by chilled-out vibes, a sly shifting head-bob pulse, and a sneaky abundance of riffs on guitar and bass alike. (Key lyric: “You’ve got a pearl tucked inside of your clammy tendencies.”) Nikrant taps into his falsetto for the beautifully earnest Neil Young-ish love ballad “BBQ,” flanked by his bandmates’ glorious synths and vocal harmonies. (Key lyric: “Tomatoes and beans and scratched up knees in the summertime/ I believe in everything we’ve got cookin’ tonight.”) Then Kenkel takes the mic for “Somebody Wants To Send You A Message,” which sounds sort of like Dire Straits blasting on a houseboat, laced with cowbell, online ennui, and a skronking bass clarinet solo from producer Jim Marlowe. (Key lyric: “Enter my chatroom of passion.”)

The torrent of brilliant songwriting and winsome performances continues from there. With “Swimminin,” we get a scraggly rocker straight out of Wilco’s long tail; with “Off My Mind,” a sighing, soft-focus country song like Linda Ronstadt bleeding into Fleetwood Mac; with “New Friend,” a bossa-nova-inflected would-be ’70s sitcom theme with bonus flute, trumpet, and finger snaps. Talkbox, Rhodes, pedal steel, organ, marimba, windchime, vibraphone, melodica — they’re all wielded skillfully throughout, blurring together into gorgeous textures and bursts of quirky melody. Their choices suggest a restless creativity, like they’re pushing themselves to find fresh ideas and really having fun with it.

The fun includes some subtle flashes of comedy. There’s a late Pavement/early Jicks feel to much of the album, that pungent mix of loopiness and melancholia. But whereas Stephen Malkmus’ humor always felt like deflection, the Winos exude a playful grace, as if they’re laughing off this world’s travails with dignity. “The bird did its business on my hood again/ It’s time to get on to the next thing,” Kenkel observes on the bluegrass-inspired “Next Thing.” They’re also not above a good pun. I had to check my ears on “I Felt You” when I first heard Turner sing, “What’s for dinner? Eggs two ways/ I wanna meet you on the gastral plane.”

Sometimes the droll punchlines and deadpan wordplay give way to pure silliness. On the Turner-led closing track “Gettin’ Down,” after the Winos instruct us to “Be your own Elvis/ Uh huh huh” and “Be your own Marilyn/ Lookin’ good,” we’re told to “Be your own Hendrix/ Wah wah wah.” It never fails to make me smile. Yet with “Be your own Bambino/ Goin’ home,” the tone of the music shifts, and the laughter gives way to a peaceful state of grace. As they ease out of the album, a cloud of keyboard chords and guitar riffs consumes the mix — the sound of navigating this life’s drudgery with humble optimism, unyielding perseverance, and a little help from your friends. What could be more divine?

Any River is out 6/19 on Dear Life.

Other albums of note out this week: Tierra Whack's (Whack’s Museum) mixtape Pond's Terrestrials Tucker Zimmeran's posthumous Dream Me A Dream Daniel Lanois' Belladonna Nocturne YG's The Gentlemen's Club Office Dog's Prime Corner Swamp Dogg's Swamp Dogg Contemplates The Afterlife Alex Zhang Hungtai's Orion/Mother Swim Deep's Hum LIFE's ABSTRACT / NATURAL PJ Morton's Saturday Night, Sunday Morning Janus Rasmussen's Inert Hard-Fi's Sweating Someone Else’s Fever Orquestra Pacifico Tropical's El Poder The War And Treaty's The Story Of Michael And Tanya Strawberry Panic's Gape Horno Billet Doux's Superbloom Is Here Again Sha Ray & DJ Haram's Critical Thot Lindsay Schoolcraft's Harrowing Micah Thomas' Lucid Jon Batiste's Black Mozart (Batiste Piano Series Vol. 2) Grivo's Impose Ama's Ama Warning's Rituals Of Shame RIIZE's II Mini Album Sludgeworth's Second Time Around Lee Lewis' HOWL L.O.T.I.O.N. Multinational Corporation's Machine Hallucinations student 1's truant Wild Up's Julius Eastman Vol. 5: Gay Guerrilla Dour's Agora Placebo's Placebo RE:CREATED Zoon's HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL Quiet Fear's La Tierra Arriba/El Abismo Abajo Your Brother's Keeper & Gary Bartz's Where Rivers Meet Half-handed Cloud’s Toothpaste Horse Prince Of Failure's Prince Of Failure The Limiñanas' Live At Beaubourg Casi's Casi Lost In Kyiv's We’re All Going To Be Fine Mare's Becoming Digitonal's The Night Album The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild box set Barns Courtney’s Live And Wired live album Big Freedia & SOPHIE's Released At Last EP Jordan Patterson's Songs From A Valley Girl EP Cold Court's \ (^_^) / (aka: HANDS UP) EP maehem99's Sexual Commerce EP Bad World's Maker Of Rules EP DIVIL's DIVIL I EP pyncher's I Really Mean It This Time EP Gaeya's Growth EP MojoPin's Out The Door EP Steve Rachmad's 3-6-9 EP The Pines Of Rome's When You Are As Full As The Moon EP Mixol's The Fool EP

The week's most important music stories and least important music memes.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE STEREOGUM DIGEST

© Copyright 2026

Made in partnership with Lede

_Originally reported by [Stereogum](https://stereogum.com/2502000/album-of-the-week-styrofoam-winos-any-river/reviews/album-of-the-week/)._