A debut acoustic album, startling in its daring, for Cameron Picton’s solo project—a psychedelic fugue in full swing.
Within the recent London rock scene, Black Midi ticked all the boxes: youth, a sense of collective purpose, energy, virtuosity, and a scholarly approach to blending genres. Alas, after three albums as exhausting as they are significant, and ahead of a tremendous mourning (Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin passing away in January at 26), the band brings its short but feverish run to a close. In the wake of frontman Geordie Greep (the dense The New Sound in 2024), it is the bassist (among others) Cameron Picton who today updates us on this burst of creative energy with his solo project My New Band Believe, already responsible for two singles (Lecture 25 in 2025, Numerology in 2026) that have piqued our curiosity. The eponymous album validates our expectations: these new compositions are as far from Black Midi’s nervous tension as they are from its own dizzying ambition.
Cameron Picton switches off the pedals and, among other things, brings in the services of several members of Caroline, whose trademark exacting standards, meticulousness, and economy are indeed echoed here. In his somewhat “Dogma”-tinged approach, the refined guitarist had established two fundamental commandments: no electric instrument, no musician from Black Midi – “two rules I broke from the very first track”, he promptly notes.
Already a high point of 2026
Yet the album’s baroque sensibility in My New Band Believe leans more toward Syd Barrett and the Canterbury scene (Robert Wyatt or Henry Cow) than toward the chaotic twists of Hellfire (2022). Alongside a love-story ode (Love Story, reminiscent of the past glories too often overlooked by Tobias Jesso Jr.) and a catchy miniature like the irresistible Opposite Teacher, My New Band Believe erects real cathedrals: Heart of Darkness and Actress, each eight minutes long and labyrinthine, winding through a maze of strings and keyboards. Note: Cameron Picton’s ornate tapestries share with those of his original band a tendency to resist a casual listen. To truly grasp what may become one of the year’s peaks, one must let oneself be pulled into the intricately woven lace of this folk-tinged, psychedelically adorned tapestry, savoring its phrasing, its touch, its sweetness as well as its rough edges.
Is it because one of its triumphs—where even the creaks are silky—goes by the title Pearls ? One thinks more than once of Tom Rapp’s Pearls Before Swine, one of the most celebrated “hidden treasures” of the 1970s, a miraculous source of rare jewels. It would seem that Cameron Picton has indeed found the key to the treasure chest.
My New Band Believe (Rough Trade Records/Wagram). Release scheduled for April 10.
