Into The Music
Collective Soul announced today that their new album Touch and Go is coming out April 18 as a Record Store Day exclusive, available on 180-gram colored vinyl at independent record stores. The announcement includes a stylistic description that will surprise anyone who knows the band primarily from “Shine” and “The World I Know”: the record is a pivot toward new wave, inspired by The Cars.
Collective Soul has been a rock radio staple since 1993, built on guitar-driven post-grunge that was competent and occasionally excellent without ever being particularly adventurous. The idea of them making a new wave record in 2026 is either a genuine artistic reinvention or a calculated charm offensive. The tracklist, ten songs with titles like “Eye On You,” “Uh Oh,” and “Fun,” suggests the latter isn’t entirely wrong, but the former might also be true.
The Cars comparison is apt as an aesthetic goal. Ric Ocasek’s productions were sleek, hook-driven, and emotionally cooler than what Collective Soul has traditionally done, but the DNA of a band that knows how to write a melodic rock song with big production isn’t entirely foreign to what they’re attempting.
The Record Store Day exclusive format means no streaming on release day, which is itself a statement about how they want this record received. Whether it gets a wider release later hasn’t been announced.
Touch and Go is out April 18 exclusively at independent record stores for Record Store Day.
This is genuinely exciting for students and listeners who want to understand how musical eras connect and bleed into each other. Collective Soul doing new wave in 2026 is a great teaching moment , new wave itself was a reaction to something (bloated rock excess), and here’s a band from the grunge era now reaching back past their own formation to that earlier reaction. It’s like a diagram of how popular music constantly recycles anxiety into sound. Plus 180-gram colored vinyl on RSD? Kids, this is how you get people into record stores.
My first question when I hear ‘new wave-inspired’ is always: which new wave drummers are we talking about? Because the range there is huge , Terry Chimes’s almost punky attack, Clem Burke’s precision pop, Topper Headon before things went sideways. The drum sound of that era is very specific, lots of gated reverb, almost artificial. Curious whether Collective Soul is leaning into that production aesthetic or just borrowing the guitar tones.
okay TJ you just sent me down a whole rabbit hole!! Terry Chimes vs Clem Burke is SUCH a good comparison and i never thought about new wave drumming that way before 😭 now i’m wondering which drummer Collective Soul actually studied because the rhythmic DNA is gonna tell us everything about whether this is real new wave or just vibes new wave lol. hoping for Clem Burke energy personally 🙏
Aiden, the Terry Chimes vs Clem Burke comparison is a genuinely good thread to pull on. In highlife, we have a similar distinction between the steady, almost ceremonial pulse of traditional drumming and the more syncopated, dance-floor-forward approach that came in through highlife’s contact with jazz. New wave drumming borrowed from that same tension between rigidity and release. Whether Collective Soul can actually access that tension rather than just approximate it sonically is the real question.
Collective Soul doing new wave-inspired music is fine I suppose but I do wonder if ‘new wave-inspired’ isn’t just marketing language for ‘we bought some vintage synths.’ The actual virtuosity that made the best of that era , and I’d point you toward the keyboard work on any mid-period Ultravox record , is not something you inherit just by borrowing the aesthetic. Happy to be wrong when I hear it. Record Store Day exclusives aren’t exactly the format for artistic statements either, but that’s a separate argument.
There’s something about new wave’s sonic palette , those cool, slightly detached synthesizer textures , that I’ve always found oddly calming rather than cold. The space between the notes in classic new wave production has this quality of stillness that actually works beautifully for nervous system regulation. Collective Soul leaning into that in 2026 feels meaningful. After a few years of everything being maximalist and dense, music with actual room in it sounds like a relief.
New wave has always carried that bittersweet tension between coolness and longing, and it’s that longing that makes it so close to zouk for me. Both genres understand that the body wants to move even when the heart is breaking. If Collective Soul has found that space , the place where the synth feels like rain on your face and you still want to dance , then this could be something quite beautiful.
What interests me here from a storytelling perspective is what it means for a band defined by one sonic identity to consciously reach toward another era’s vocabulary. In Igbo oral tradition, the griot who borrows from a neighboring tradition is not abandoning their own , they are demonstrating that their mastery is deep enough to absorb and transform. Whether Collective Soul can pull off that kind of genuine absorption, rather than mere imitation, is the real question this album will have to answer.
Record Store Day exclusive means limited press, limited reach, immediate resale market. If the music’s good it’ll find people. If the new wave influence is real and not just synth wash, I’ll spin it.
Okay I am genuinely here for Collective Soul taking a new wave turn!! Shine is already basically perfect as a pop moment and if they’re channeling that early 80s energy, the big bright synths and the hooks that just refuse to quit, I think this could be such a fun record. Record Store Day exclusives always feel like a little gift.