On their second LP of 2026, the New Orleans duo renovates their garage. Talk about striking while the iron is hot: Just as Twisted Teens’ February 2026 release, Blame the Clown, was turning up on many critics’ mid-year best-of lists, the New Orleans duo was prepping another full-length serving of down-home garage goodness. And Florida Water Blues is no batch of leftover scraps, but an expansive work that pops the lid off their trash-canned sound to let it breathe a little more, without sacrificing an ounce of its dirty-fingernailed essence. “Swamp” may appear in a fog of psychedelic backward loops and glitching drum machines, but it swiftly kicks into a raucous rocker as if snapping out of a dream, while frontman Caspian Hollywell rubs his bleary eyes to face another dreary day, like a Springsteen who never made it out of Asbury Park and still has to sing for his supper. The album’s lo-fi yet layered production is teeming with those sorts of teases—like the vintage R.E.M. jangle that lures you into the fuzz-punk howler “Why Did You Miss It?”, or the digital glockenspiel chimes that bring the frenetic “Guided Thunder” to a surprisingly sweet conclusion, or the robot choir that mysteriously emerges from the twangy rave-up “Riding.” But Twisted Teens’ greatest special effect remains the odd-couple relationship between Hollywell’s nicotine-stained rasp and RJ Santos’ sweet pedal-steel sweeps, which invest ragged road songs like “Florida Water Blues” and “Javelina” with a soulfulness and melancholy rarely heard in the anarchic underworld of garage rock. Our Favorite Lyric: “I live in a crazy swamp just about in the crotch of America/ Smells like cat and two-piece chicken, and the air’s all made of bacteria” (“Swamp”).