Yep, ‘Since I Left You’ is indeed a masterpiece. The plunderphonic epic was so groundbreaking and immersive, even its creators knew they couldn’t top such a spectacular body of work: it took The Avalanches sixteen years to find it in themselves to release a follow-up, a task that surely weighed on them in that time. Neither 2016’s ‘Wildflower’ nor 2020’s ‘We Will Always Love You’ could match up to the impossible standard The Avalanches have set for themselves, but they were heartwarming releases nonetheless. Now in current year, ‘No Bad Memories’ is once again giving us that warm, fuzzy feeling.

Nostalgia has always been an ingredient the Australian outfit have cooked with— an inevitability when your albums are based so heavily around iconic samples— but ‘No Bad Memories’ may be the first time the group have commented directly on our desire to go back to simpler times. The project is littered with clips and snippets from old adverts, allowing The Avalanches an avenue to explore how jingles and the like have affected our view of the past: hell, the record’s title is itself a reference to floppy disc marketing from the 80s! In some ways, Chater and company fall victim to the same nostalgic biases their listeners do, as their newest crop of tunes acts as an out-and-out love letter to the physical media that inspired ‘Since I Left You’ almost 30 years ago. With so many familiar sounds at play, it’s no surprise to hear that these songs make for pretty easy listening.

The Avalanches may not be adhering as strictly to the plunderphonic rulebook as they used to (and they have lost a degree of uniqueness in the process, truth be told), but that hasn’t stopped them from putting together some truly cheery numbers. The group essentially spell out their approach on ‘Our Love Is Alive,’ when Suzanne Ciani proclaims that “you don’t actually hear them as separate sounds: they all blend into the first sound and change the way you feel,” and then go on to prove it throughout the rest of this heartwarming inclusion. ‘No Bad Memories’ is home to a staggering number of guests that give the record room to indulge in a huge array of voices and textures. There is no show-stopping moment a-la ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ this time around— in 2026, The Avalanches invite you to sink into the happy-go-lucky performance Rivers Cuomo brings to ‘All The Time In The World’ and the intoxicating mixture of comfort and longing that overtakes ‘Together.’

A record featuring a whopping 31 songs might raise a few eyebrows, but ‘No Bad Memories’ does manage to glide through much of its runtime quite smoothly: the closing stretch from that groovy title track to the contemplative atmosphere of ‘The Pavements Light,’ in particular, may just be the closest the group have ever come to recapturing the pure magic of ‘Since I Left You.’ Perhaps the greatest misstep the album makes, then, is in its very concept, which railroads The Avalanches into jolting you out of the experience more than a few times. Charming as an inclusion like ‘Xerox Altalink B8055’ may be, it only winds up doing what most adverts do by irritating a would-be listener (and in complete truth, the callback between the following ‘I Give Everything I Have 2 U’ and ‘Final Credits’ would be much clearer without so much filler in-between). The ‘SuperFun!™ TV Spot’ isn’t getting a sale from us, at least.

We just want to get back to the actual music, which tends to be pretty sweet: it should go without saying that Chater and company’s work continues to be produced to perfection, but we’ll never pass over a chance to sing their praises. Whenever The Avalanches actually commit to their craft, they have us in the palm of their hand— the stomping modern pop of ‘Can’t Get Over Losing You’ and the endearing bass lines of ‘Magic Wand’ are just some of the crisp soundscapes that await you, buried in amongst this scattered tracklist. Yes, ‘No Bad Memories’ is quite messy in its construction, frequently cutting away from the likes of ‘Every Single Weekend’ and ‘Blue Shadows’ before they’ve had a chance to grow or develop. The album listening experience is not unlike flicking across radio stations, if those stations all happened to be playing excellent electronic music.

‘No Bad Memories’ is no ‘Since I Left You’— its endless interludes may actually have you questioning its title in places— but it is cut from the same cloth. The sample-based standouts across this exercise in nostalgic bliss (when they appear) are just about everything you’d want them to be: they’re comfy, they’re fun, c’mon it’s an Avalanches album! The group may never surpass or even meet their own past successes, but that’s alright. We’ll tip our hat to the new record anyway.